Veronica "Randy" Crawford was born February 18, 1952, in Macon, Georgia. She released her first single, "Knock on Wood" / "If You Say the Word," on Columbia Records in 1972, and spent the following years working club dates from Cincinnati to Saint-Tropez before settling into New York's jazz scene in the mid-1970s, where she performed alongside George Benson and Cannonball Adderley, singing on Adderley's Big Man: The Legend of John Henry (1975). Pianist Joe Sample first worked with her playing on her 1976 debut album, Everything Must Change; three years later he brought her in to sing lead on the Crusaders' "Street Life," which reached the U.S. Top 40 and became the band's most successful entry on the soul chart. In the UK, the single went to No. 5. The Crusaders' own story is told in full in their JazzProfiles.com profile.

That UK breakthrough turned into a sustained career. "One Day I'll Fly Away," from her 1980 album Now We May Begin, reached No. 2 on the UK singles chart. Her 1981 album Secret Combination spent sixty weeks on the UK Albums Chart, peaking at No. 2. Across five consecutive albums from Now We May Begin through 1983's Nightline, she crossed pop, R&B, and jazz charts simultaneously, notching five UK Top 20 singles and six UK Top 10 albums, a run of European commercial success unusual for an American jazz-and-soul vocalist. In 1982 the Brit Awards named her Best British Female Solo Artist, an unusual honor for a non-British artist, reflecting how central she'd become to the UK pop landscape of the era.

She continued to record with jazz collaborators for decades, most notably reuniting with Joe Sample for Feeling Good (2006) and No Regrets (2008), both of which earned her Grammy nominations: "All Night Long" from Feeling Good was nominated for Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance, and No Regrets was nominated for Best Jazz Vocal Album. She was set to close her career with a farewell tour of South Africa in October 2018 when a stroke forced its cancellation; she has not performed publicly since.

Crawford's voice, warm, jazz-rooted, and equally at home over the Crusaders' groove-heavy jazz-funk or the pop-soul productions of her UK hits, made her one of crossover jazz's most commercially successful vocalists outside the United States. Her later-career reunion records with Joe Sample brought her back toward straight jazz vocal repertoire after decades of pop and R&B chart success.