Raised in San Bernardino, California, during the 1970s, Klein’s early musical education came from her father Stephen Klein, a teacher and avant-garde animator whose taste ran primarily to Frank Zappa and Classical. Even more importantly, Klein’s grandparents regaled her with tales of New York in the 1930s (where her grandfather Marty Klein had worked as a stage magician), instilling a lifelong fascination with pre-World War II American popular culture into the young girl.

• YouTube: Janet Klein and Her Parlor Boys - The ukulele classic Tonight You Belong To Me (as popularized in the seminal film The Jerk) transcribed and performed by Janet Klein.
• YouTube: Yiddish Hula Boy

By the time Klein moved to Los Angeles to start college in the early ‘80s, this had translated into an interest in both early jazz recordings and the graphic designs styles of the era. Through the former, Klein discovered early female jazz singers and musicians like, Lil Hardin Armstrong (Louis’ wife and early manager) and Blanche Calloway (sister of Cab). The latter hobby led Klein to start collecting sheet music from the 1800s to the Jazz Age, at first purely for the pictures and artwork, then increasingly out of love for the songs themselves.