She made her debut there in as the lead vocalist for the premier jazz orchestra led by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis. Her career seemed poised to take off, but an Elektra records contract proved disappointing. Bucking commercial pressures and yearning for artistic freedom, Bridgewater moved to Paris in the early s. She moved back to the U.
The singer, who has been married three times, recently shaved her head as a symbol of the new personal and creative freedom she enjoys. The song is so wrenching, she often decides in the middle of a show whether to perform it.
Singing it in New York was an easy decision, Bridgewater said, but there have been some Southern cities on her tour where she has chosen not to at the last minute.
I want to die as a work in progress. All Sections. About Us. The French press wrote reams about her. French TV came calling. French audiences flocked to the show. I started doing jazz concerts in theaters! It was incredible. Indeed, nothing like it had happened to Bridgewater before. Now Paris was hanging on her every note. After a brief stint back in Flint, to help her ailing mother recover from a bout with lung cancer, Bridgewater returned to Paris in to star in "Lady Day," based on the life of another tormented American jazz singer, Billie Holiday.
Because Bridgewater didn't speak French, she learned-and performed-the script phonetically. Again, France went wild, prompting "Lady Day" to extend its run for months. By now divorced from Moses and living with her two children in Paris, Bridgewater began to realize that she had found something that had eluded her back home in the States.
Call it acceptance, popularity, respect, honor, whatever, it felt more warm and embracing than anything she had experienced in Manhattan or Hollywood or any point between. I forgot who I was. There, people actually wanted me to do jazz concerts. Practically since the moment Bridgewater had set foot on French soil, in , she had led a charmed life, and the romance between the American jazz singer and the Parisian public matured like a great love affair. Before long, she was hosting her own TV show "52nd Street," a jazz interview program , performing on national variety programs, appearing in made-for-TV movies with French star Charles Aznavour, performing as a black Sally Bowles in an African-American version of "Cabaret," signing autographs as she strolled down the Champs-lyses.
In a way, of course, Bridgewater simply was retracing the steps that so many gifted but neglected American jazz musicians had made before her.
But for Bridgewater, the seduction of France extended well beyond music. We ate better, because everything was fresh. We lived better. Not long after Bridgewater had arrived in France to do "Lady Day," she met Jean Marie Durand, a jazz-club manager who would become her husband in and father of their son, Gabriel Morgan Durand-Garrett, in A year later, Bridgewater released the most stunning recording of her career, "Keeping Tradition" Verve , which all at once reminded the jazz world outside of France that one of its most promising talents had blossomed into a master.
The brilliant scat vocalizing she produced on this recording was of a stature no female singer under 50 had achieved since the heyday of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. More important, the maturity of Bridgewater's singing, the depth of her interpretations, the funk-tinged flavor of her rhythms announced the arrival of a major figure.
It would be only be a matter of time before the jazz world caught up with her. Her delivery, obviously, is pretty brash, and this pleases non-Anglo peoples. But at the same time, she could sing. There's no more Ella, no Sarah'? Putting their money where their tastes were, Menard and Simard booked Bridgewater as an opening act for American singer-guitarist John Pizzarelli in ; Montreal reacted much as Paris had done a few years earlier.
Critic Alain Brunet of La Presse called her "the jazz singer. And that's what happened to Dee Dee in France. She figured out exactly who she was, apart from husbands and record companies and all the rest.
And last year, when Bridgewater headlined at the festival's biggest auditorium, in Montreal's Place des Arts, she earned screaming, standing ovations for her tribute to the music of Horace Silver. The composer, who was to have accompanied Bridgewater, didn't show up, but Bridgewater sang tunes such as "Filthy McNasty," "Opus de Funk" and "Sister Sadie" with an exuberance and naturalness that established her as the definitive vocal interpreter of Silver's music today.
The sellout concert was aired nationally on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation a few days later, and shortly after that Bridgewater's all-Silver "Love and Peace" CD was nominated for a Grammy in the States she lost out this year to Lena Horne. Having conquered Montreal, Bridgewater obviously would be heading south of the border next, but as soon as she began appearing here, she says, "I was scared. I found out from doing just the first few gigs that I'm psychologically still very fragile about performing in America.
Lauderdale that should not even be allowed as a building. It's a dump. I don't get it. This number, according to Mr. When Dee Dee Bridgewater walked out on the stage, first of all she asked the audience to applaud to Nikolay Levinovsky, the author of the arrangement who was in the hall that evening.
The vocal of Dee Dee Bridgewater stroke the public with not only the range of voice and its abundant passion. The singer gave a priceless example of cooperation with partners, solo musicians and with the orchestra as a whole.
She was not a diva on the proscenium in the ray of a spotlight. She was an instrument of an orchestra with which she played not everyday. The singer, that worked with Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon and other classics of genre, managed to fit in with the Russian orchestra so, as if in reality, like on the stage, she usually walks up and down arm in arm with Igor Butman, dropping equivocal hints.
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