Dee Dee Bridgewater

“Time for a change: The ‘new’ Dee Dee Bridgewater headlines Isthums Jazz Festival,” published as the cover story in Rhythm (Capital Times, Madison), October 2002

Dee Dee Bridgewater, the incomparably versatile jazz vocalist and sometime stage actress who headlines this year’s Isthmus Jazz Festival, is preparing to close another chapter in the ever-evolving narrative of her 30-year career.

Having spent 15 painstaking years performing jazz and popular standards immortalized by icons of bygone eras — vocalists Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn and Betty Carter, pianist/composer Horace Silver — the 52-year-old Bridgewater has had enough.

“I’m leaving all these standards,” she declared buoyantly in a recent phone interview, from her home in Henderson, Nevada. “I’ve been singing standards for 15 years nonstop and I’ve had it. I need to do something that is musically challenging for me. I want to leave all these standards to all of these young jazz singers and go on and do something else.”

So then what is Dee Dee Bridgewater doing embarking on the U.S. leg of an international concert tour to promote a new disc honoring Kurt Weill, one of popular songs’ venerable standard bearers?

“It was a way for me to announce that I’m leaving the popular songbook,” she says. “It was kind of the forerunner to the fact that I do, on my next recording project, want to get into original material, that I do want to go more into an exploration of world music. That’s why I have these treatments that are more world-music influenced, with the bolero, with the samba, with the salsa, with the tango.”

Indeed, This Is New (Verve) conveys a smoldering cross-cultural élan rarely approached by singers performing the German composer’s music. “I tried to soften the music and make it more sensual,” Bridgewater explains, “because the music to me just smacks of sensuality. I just felt that that was an element that people hadn’t really dealt with [in interpreting] Kurt Weill. When we think of Kurt Weill, most people say: ‘Oh, dark, heavy, brooding,’ all these negative or very heavy images. I wanted to show a lighter side of him which most people don’t do.”

Mingling Hammond organ, Bandoneon and flute, interjecting a flamenco guitar flourish over the steady tread of a Latin-tinged rhythm, Bridgewater’s well-traveled nine-piece band sustains a seductive mood throughout the disc, furnishing the vocalist the musical latitude her dynamic interpretive style demands.

In approaching the material, Bridgewater felt it necessary to “go past the way the music is treated normally, which is very Germanic and very rigid. If you respect the way that it was written, rhythmically speaking, it has a kind of military feel to it. To hear past that, [to realize] that you can take it and turn it around and put it in another kind of musical format takes some imagination.”

For jazz critic Howard Reich, Weill’s songs “become virtually new works when she sings them — which, of course, is the point of jazz singing.”

After flirting with pop crossover success in the late '70s and early '80s, Bridgewater concluded that the point of jazz singing was to keep jazz singing alive. “I made a conscious decision to stay in jazz because there are so few jazz singers in the traditional sense of the word. I feel that I must try to keep that alive, or help to keep it alive. That tradition is part of our culture and heritage. It’s part of the black heritage. And someone’s got to remind people that we’ve got this going on as well as hip hop and rap, and rhythm & blues.”

In relocating to France during the mid-'80s, and shedding the influences and inhibitions that had determined the creative trajectory of her career, Bridgewater reinvented herself as the consummate female jazz singer.

“I felt completely free,” she recalls. “I felt completely uninhibited. I didn’t know what people were saying about me. I couldn’t read any reviews written about me. So I just went wild. I was always afraid to perform in the States because I was afraid of critics. When I got to France, I let my hair down and I just recreated myself. I became who I am today. The way that I perform and all that happened in France.”

And in France — throughout Europe, in fact — Bridgewater has acquired a stature she has yet to duplicate in the United States. “I only do theaters in Europe,” she asserts without a trace of vanity. “In the United States one has to do clubs. I don’t do any clubs in Europe. Never, never, never.”

“In the U.S.,” Howard Reich observes, “there seems to be respect for her work, but nothing yet quite commensurate with her talent or achievement. Over time, though, I think that will come.”

That recognition seems to be coming, if only gradually. The move back to the U.S. three years ago — she still maintains a home in France — has been eased by the critical and commercial success of her two previous recordings, the Grammy Award-winning Dear Ella and the Grammy-nominated Live at Yoshi’s. “I’m getting a nice reputation over here,” Bridgewater notes. “I’m getting a wonderful following of people. I would really like to move my career here [to] the United States.”

“Jazz Set,” the award-winning weekly radio series Bridgewater hosts for National Public Radio, has likewise increased her exposure to U.S. audiences. And Bridgewater is hoping with her current release to do the late-night television talk show circuit. “I’m trying to get to those shows because I realize it’s all about exposure over here,” she says.

The theatrical stage also beckons. The Tony award-winning actress is considering reviving one of Weill’s stage musicals “as a kind of limited run on Broadway. There’s a really strong feeling that I would be well-suited to do Lady in the Dark.”

But in bringing to the concert stage a batch of songs composed for the theater, the actress-jazz singer has discovered the perfect outlet for her prodigious creative energy. “Kurt Weill for me has bridged the gap between my theater and my music. So I’m ecstatic with the discovery of this man’s music. Just ecstatic.”

An interview with Dee Dee Bridgewater, October 2002

Q: I’d like to ask you, why Kurt Weill, and what drew you to his songs?

A: Kurt Weill was kind of a circumstantial situation. I was involved in a theatrical tribute to Kurt Weill in a city called Wroclaw in Poland. And that was in March 2000. 2000 was the 100th anniversary of his birth. It was actually from that experience and from hearing these four other women — there were five women doing this musical tribute, and the four other women were Polish and they sang either in Polish or German — and I was just blown away by these melodies and by the emotion and by the fact that this music transcended any musical settings. They were going from opera to punk rock to rock to pop to chanteuse and jazzy. I was just really, really flabbergasted by the fact that, number one, the melodies just kind of stuck with me and, number two, the whole dramatic sense of the material. I just was really taken by it all. So after that I started listening to some Kurt Weill CDs, the ones that we could find here in the States, my daughter and I. Different artists doing his music and started kind of getting into the material.

And then another circumstance happened in the same year. I was doing the Montreal Jazz Festival and they decided they wanted me to do a special creation for the festival that year. So I told them that I was listening to this Kurt Weill and they said that would be great. So I put together a program and we called it “Kurt Weill: A Work in Progress,” and we did it for the closing of the Festival 2000 in Montreal. And the public went crazy; they went absolutely bananas. And so I said, “Hmmm, maybe this would work as an album.” And that’s how it all started coming together.

Q: How do you approach the songs and how have the songs evolved during the two years?

A: Well, they’ve evolved quite a bit. How do I approach them, first of all? I just have to learn them, so I listen over and over and over until I got them — I don’t read music — or else I work with them with my pianist. So I get the melody down. And then the second big task of Kurt Weill is learning all these lyrics, because his songs are very, very wordy. After that it’s just about doing them, you have to do them. It’s the kind of material, I have found, this is my personal opinion, that you can only get it under your belt through performing it. So before we did the album we had only performed this material a total of seven times. To me when I listen to the album I just go, oh God, I wish I’d had more time to spend, before I went into the studio. But such is life.

Now that I’ve been doing the material — from April to August I toured it in Europe — it’s really hit or miss. You try different experiments, different ways of improvising; if it doesn’t work, you try something else. You’ve got to not be afraid of taking risks and having a little egg on your face. It’s very difficult I have found, however, for me to really improvise — I don’t do very much scat improvisation. Number one, it’s so wordy [that] I don’t feel that it’s really necessary for me to add my two cents on a solo. And secondly, it’s just not the easiest material.

He doesn’t follow regular eight-bar measures, Kurt Weill; he likes to play around with the structure of his material, at least on the material that I’ve selected. He’ll do seven bars, and he’ll jump to 10 bars, and fill in a two-bar measure. It’s very interesting and it’s very challenging musically, even for the musicians. His harmonic structures are not what we’re accustomed to. It’s very challenging, very intelligently written music. I really enjoy doing this music. This is a shot in the arm for me.

Q: And because of the challenge that is involved in singing these songs and recording these songs, would you say that’s perhaps the reason that there hasn’t been the full-length treatment given to his songbook in the past, in the jazz idiom?

A: Yeah, maybe so. Maybe that is part of it. And then maybe another part of it is the fact that the songs really smack of theater, because they were written for the theater. If you don’t change up the form at all, then a song like “The Saga of Jenny,” that’s so theatrical, you just hear it. For me, I can see it being enacted on a stage. So maybe that was a little daunting for people listening to it. And then the other thing is to go past the way the music is treated normally, which is very Germanic and very rigid. If you respect the way that it was written, rhythmically speaking, it has a kind of military feel to it. To hear past that, that you can take it and turn it around and put it in another kind of musical format takes some imagination.

I’ve done “Mack the Knife” (it’s a hidden track on the album). It’s on my tribute to Ella [Fitzgerald], the Dear Ella album. So I’ve lived with “Mack the Knife” for quite a long time. I don’t know how Ella could keep doing it.

It’s very interesting: People become interested in a music or a composer if they hear someone else do it. So maybe now that I’ve done it, maybe now some other singers will turn and look at his material and start doing his material. When I did the Horace Silver album, Love and Peace, people were not singing Horace, and now a lot of young singers are including Horace Silver in their repertoire. A lot of people are afraid to be that person that puts themselves out on the line, and they wait for somebody like me to come along who will do it and take the rap for it and they get to do a follow up after all of the problems have been worked out or it’s become music that people become more accustomed to hearing.

Q: You had mentioned earlier the theatrical elements that are found in these songs. I’m curious to know if you think your own experience on the stage has enabled you to approach these songs in a unique way. And I’d also like to ask you how these recordings of Weill’s songs are uniquely your own.

A: Well, how they’re uniquely my own — the way that I put them and changed them up, rhythmically speaking. I tried to soften the music and make it more sensual because the music to me just smacks of sensuality, the melody. I just felt that that was an element that people hadn’t really dealt with with Kurt Weill. When you think of Kurt Weill, most people say, “Oh, dark, heavy, brooding,” all these kinds of negative or very heavy images that people conjure up of Kurt Weill. I wanted to show a lighter side of him which most people don’t do. The arrangements, the way that I wanted the arrangements to be done, I wanted them to carry this. They’ve become unusual in my treatment because I did opt to do them the way that I’ve done. And to take them out of the norm that everyone is accustomed to, to hearing his music, to take them out of that setting and give them a new life.

If you’re a Kurt Weill diehard fan you may not like it. I’ve noticed in a lot of the reviews on the album, for example in Europe, where his music is, of course, very, very well known — there is a huge, huge, huge, huge following of Kurt Weill in Europe. And there were tunes like “Alabama Song,” people were just like: “How could she do that? Who does she think she is to change it up and make it a blues? [Laughs.] How could she do that to this music?” So for some people what I did was sacrilegious. But when you do something that goes away from the norm, to take this German composer and put him into the jazz vocal idiom — that’s taking him away from the norm; and then to change up the arrangements, or to change up the way that I interpreted the tunes and make them lighter and have fun with them, some people don’t like that.

Q: Well, the reverse of those expectations is that for many audiences some of these songs won’t be familiar at all.

A: Certainly most of the jazz public doesn’t know most of these tunes, with the exception of “My Ship,” “September Song,” “Speak Low,” and “Mack the Knife.” I’d say that those are the songs that in the jazz world that have been dealt with the most; maybe a song like “Here I’ll Stay.” Chick Corea is the man who turned me on to “This is New,” because he had done it on his very first album. Maybe some of the material is familiar, but the rest of the material is not, hardly at all.

I think when people come to hear me perform this material there’s always an element of surprise, and they just don’t know. It’s almost like I’m doing all original material. And it’s a lot of fun because then it does become about the song itself. How strong is the melody, how strong is the lyric and then how can I get the public to connect to the story, the interpretation of it? All of that becomes super important when you are dealing with material that people don’t know. And for me it was kind of the forerunner to the fact that I do, on my next recording project, I do want to get into original material; I do want to go more into an exploration of world music. So that’s why I have these treatments that are more world-music influenced, with the bolero, with the samba, with the salsa, with the tango. It was a way for me to announce that I’m leaving the American songbook; I’m leaving all these standards. I cannot take it anymore.

I’ve been singing standards for 15 years nonstop, since the whole period that I was in France, and I’ve had it. I need to do something that is musically challenging for me. So I want to do something else. And I want to leave all these jazz standards to all of these young jazz singers, so-called jazz singers that the record companies are giving us, and go on and do something else. I like to write. I do lyric writing. And I would like to work with the musicians and actually have them composed according to melodies I might be hearing.

Ray Brown told me when I had asked if he thought it would be a good idea to do this album, the Dear Ella album, Ray said: “Well, Dee Dee, you know, if anybody’s going to do it, I would really, really rather it be you. But if you do do it, I want you to know you’re going to be married to Ella for at least three years, if not four. As a matter of fact,” he said, “you will be with her for the rest of your life, if you do this. So you’ve got to decide if you want to do that.” And he was right. He was right. It took me four years [laughs] before I could get away from her. I constantly have concerts doing the Ella material. I have a series of concerts next year in Asia that are the Ella concerts. And I will be with Ella for the rest of my life. And it’s not a bad thing. I love it. I’m honored; I’m flattered that people feel that I’m capable of putting her music across. So that’s wonderful.

But at the same time, for the Kurt Weill, I thought, it was kind of like I’m still giving a nod to Ella, because on the album I sing “My Ship,” which she sang constantly with Joe Pass in her due. I’ve got “Mack the Knife” on there again, and I’m doing a songbook like she did. So I figure so I don’t anger my fan base and the people that I gained when I was doing the Ella tribute, I figured they could maybe accept this. [Laughs.]

I also know from being in and out of the recording industry for 30 years that the public, sometimes they don’t like for their artists to change. And you have to be very gentle if you’re trying to move away, that if you do an abrupt change you can lose your public. I don’t want to lose my public. I don’t want to lose all of these wonderful people who buy the records and come and see me perform. I really labored for a long time trying to figure out what the next step would be after Ella.

Q: The show that you’re bringing to Madison: Is this a “production” or would you label it more of a standard concert?

A: It’s a concert. I did want to do a production, but it was just too cost-prohibitive. Unfortunately, in jazz, and with a lot of promoters that do jazz, they just don’t have the money that I would have needed if I’d wanted to do it as a production. But I did actually seek out a director; I talked with a couple directors, and I did want to do it more theatrically. And I did want to call it “a jazz theatrical evening.” And I even entertained having a couple of dances and having a minimal set, some sort of decor. But what I found from having already done the music in Europe is that we’ve turned it into kind of a show anyway. It’s just the way that we change up from song to song in terms of the instrumentation that’s actually on the stage; that in itself adds a kind of theatricality to it and we had a whole light show — I will not have my light show, unfortunately. But in terms of the way that we actually do the material, people feel that it is theatrical.

And it’s very interesting [that] all of the reviews of the actual performances, most of the reviewers say “the actress and jazz singer [Dee Dee Bridgewater].” I’ve never had the two sides put together. I was always the very dramatic jazz singer, but they never could put together the fact that I’m actually an actress. With this material, without even saying anything, now everyone refers to me as “the actress and jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater,” which is a wonderful thing. In the jazz world, they didn’t know my theatrical side. It was surprising to a lot of people the theatrics that I would put into my material. So I’ve always had to say, “But I’m an actress!” And this is what I love to do. It’s boring to me to just stand still and sing a song. If I’m not moving and gesticulating, how boring is that? I’d rather slit my wrists. I’m not that chanteuse kind of singer, I have a lot of energy. The Kurt Weill [repertoire] for me has bridged the gap between my theater and my music. So I’m ecstatic with the discovery of this man’s music. Just ecstatic.

Q: Will you be mounting this full-scale production for special occasions?

A: I think what I’m going to try to do — it was suggested to me by the people at the Kurt Weill Foundation that I read some of the musicals that he wrote. There’s a really strong feeling by these same people that I would be very well suited to do Lady in the Dark. So I’m going to do that. So I think what I’m going to try to do, as opposed to creating something new, is to maybe see if I can revive one of these musicals and maybe do it as a kind of limited run on Broadway. That makes more sense to me that trying to create something on my own using materials just from the album. I don’t want to do that.

Q: Are there any other acting projects that you have in the works?

A: No, no. But I am actively starting to seek out an agent. My husband and I are looking into agents in Europe. I’m going to see about getting a theatrical agent here in the States. So I did have quite a few wonderful opportunities, but I couldn’t do the shows. I was cast in Thoroughly Modern Millie, but I had tours that I couldn’t break; contracts were signed, and I couldn’t do it. I would love to do some films. I would love to do that. Did a little bit in the late ‘70s and early '80s; did do a couple movies, dramatic, comedic. TV even. But it has to be quality. I am entertaining getting back into that.

Q: When you first came onto the scene [about 30 years ago] what approach did you take then and was it sort of molded during the subsequent years when you were working with Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, etc.?

A: I didn’t take any approach. I just sang. I grew up in a jazz environment. My father was a trumpet player, although he stopped playing when I was in high school. He taught music and played trumpet. In our house, when I’d come home from school, I was always listening to jazz music on the record player, then I’d go in my room and I’d turn on the radio and I’d listen to top 50 or R & B. So I had a very eclectic upbringing in that respect. But I felt always very, very comfortable in jazz. I just always did. Even when I would do the Motown stuff, people would say I sang funny. I didn’t do all that riffin’. I had a whole other thing going on that always kind of set me apart, even when I would be in competitions. I would always get second place because I didn’t do that churchy, hollering, riffin’ stuff that is always associated with being a black singer. I didn’t have enough soul. I did everything. I was always able to scat. I never learned to scat.

Some of my first gigs were with the college big bands; I sang with college big bands and then my first professional gig was with the Thad Jones-Mel Louis Orchestra – an amazing big band. When I moved to New York with my first husband, Cecil Bridgewater, I just became the little darling — I was going to be the next Ella and Sarah [Vaughan]. I just found myself in this whole jazz world. So I feel that this is what I was supposed to do. Then after I had been singing jazz and really started really making a great reputation for myself, and everybody had high hopes for me, then I went into theater. I got the role of Glenda the Good Witch of the South in The Wiz. So then that took me into a whole other ballgame. And then I started being deluged with recording contracts when I won my Tony Award® and so I went pop. [Laughs.]

I love doing it all. And I still love doing it all. But I have made a conscious decision to stay in jazz because there are so few jazz singers in the traditional sense of the word “jazz singing,” à la Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Carmen McRae, Betty Carter — you know, ladies like that. There are so few women out there that are capable of doing what these women did. I feel that I must try to keep that alive, or help to keep it alive; that tradition, it’s part of our culture and heritage; it’s part of the black heritage. And someone’s got to remind people that we’ve got this part going on as well as hip-hop and rap, rhythm and blues. Somebody’s got to do it.

Q: But as you say, you also want to be looking forward.

A: Now I’ve also got to satisfy my needs. I really feel I’ve got to start doing something that’s going to help Dee Dee feel inspired and wanting to move forward. I don’t want to feel stagnant, and that’s what I was feeling, completely stagnant.

Q: Is there a moment that you would identify as when you came into your own as a jazz singer?

A: When I moved to France. Because I felt completely free. I felt completely uninhibited. I didn’t know what people were saying about me; I couldn’t read any reviews written about me. So I just went wild. I was always afraid to perform in the States because I was afraid of critics. So I wouldn’t perform that much in the States. I was a real nightmare for my last label, Elektra Records. I would not tour. When I would go out on tour, I would have jazz critics come to see me doing pop and they would slaughter my butt. So when I got to France I let my hair down and I just recreated myself. I became who I am today, actually; the way that I perform and all that happened in France.

I have a wonderful relationship with the audience. I feel that I owe everything to the public. I’m not going to worry about what a critic might think or what a record company might think I need to do. I totally gear myself to the public. I’m one of these rare artists in Europe who sells out two, three, four thousand seats. I’d like to think of myself as more of an artist who is on her personal explorations, and also that I can help people when they come to see me perform forget about their problems and come away feeling inspired about life and wanting to move forward in life and do things in life. And that’s really what I’m out there trying to do at the same time that I try to satisfy my personal musical needs.

I really try to gear everything I do toward the public that’s gonna come and see me and give them a good show. I’m from the Sammy Davis “School of Music” — good diction, good showmanship, good music. I used to be angry that critics would talk about what I wore and what I said, and not about the music and the musicianship. Today, I think, well, maybe that’s not so bad because the music is good; they must think it’s really easy. It seems like it’s so smooth and it’s so easy then they go onto something else and they start looking at other aspects of the show. I’ve learned to accept that and I try to look at it as something complimentary. But now reviewers do talk about the musicians in the band and the arrangements. It’s been an interesting search to try to find the balance on all the levels.

I have found that in Europe that there is a great amount of respect for jazz, for traditional jazz especially. There is not the same kind of interest, for example, in what we call here smooth jazz. That just doesn’t work in France, in Italy, in most parts of Europe; maybe in Germany it works a little better. Certainly when people go out to hear a concert they want to hear more traditional jazz music. In that respect, it’s better in Europe. And jazz is allowed; my jazz, I must say, is [welcome] without any question in the classics venues, because I’m doing what is considered classic jazz; it goes well with the classics programming, so I get programs on a lot of the classical seasons in Europe and I do a lot of opera houses and classical venues in Europe. I have been able to do it on occasion here in the United States, but it’s not a norm. There it’s become a kind of norm. I only do theaters in Europe. In the United States one has to do clubs; I don’t do any clubs in Europe — never, never, never. I just find that there is more knowledge about jazz, and the history of the music and the people know more about the musicians in Europe than they do in the United States. It’s just, I think, a healthier environment for the music over there. Over here it’s about marketing.

I’m getting a nice reputation over here. I’m getting a wonderful following of people. But it’s more difficult because of this whole marketing aspect. You have to really promote a show over here in order to sell it out. Or the person has to be someone who has sold millions of records. I don’t have that luxury of selling millions of records. I don’t even know what that’s like. I don’t even have a clue. My total international sales are 200,000, which for jazz is considered good, but it’s not a whole lot when you look at it. I know that you have to do other kinds of musical settings here in the United States. The more exposure you get, of course, the better your sales will be.

I would really like to move my career here in the United States. This is where I’m from and now that I’m back I’m going to have to stay [sighs] a few more years because of my mom; she’s a recent widow. I basically moved back to be near my mom and my step dad who’s retired here in Las Vegas. I think my sensibilities are just naturally more European, which is really weird. And now that I understand that, I can accept myself better. But for a long while, when I was younger, I was like, what is this? Why do I love going to Europe? Why aren’t I a normal black woman? Why aren’t I into Luther Vandross? I’m not, so I was always this kind of closet person. Outwardly I was trying to be like everybody else, but privately the stuff that turns me on is really European. Now that I’m older and I don’t care I just go about doing what I want to do.

Ms. Bridgewater spoke by phone from her home in Henderson, Nevada, October, 2002