Afro Blue

Afro Blue – Dee Dee Bridgewater

Trio Records – 1974

Dee Dee Bridgewater is an American Jazz singer. She is a two-time Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter, as well as a Tony Award -winning stage actress and host of National Public Radio’s syndicated radio show “JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater.”

Born Denise Eileen Garrett in Memphis, Tennessee, she grew up in Flint, Michigan. Her father, Matthew Garrett, was a jazz trumpeter and teacher at Manassas High School, and through his play, Denise was exposed to jazz early on. At the age of sixteen, she was a member of a rock and rhythm’n’blues trio, singing in clubs in Michigan. At 18, she studied at the Michigan State University before she went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. With their jazz band, she toured the Soviet Union in 1969. The next year, she met trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater, and after their marriage, they moved to New York City, where Cecil played in Horace Silver’s band.

In the early 1970s, Bridgewater joined the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra as the lead vocalist.  She performed with many of the great jazz musicians of the time, such as Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Max Roach, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and others. Performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1973. In 1974, her first very own album, entitled “Afro Blue”, appeared…

 To my knowledge, this is her first outing as a solo artist. “Afro Blue”  has a very minimalist sound to this fine collection of melodies. Dee Dee certainly doesn’t want in the vocal stakes as can be highlighted by the seven minute title track (sampled to perfection by Pete Rock for Slum Village’s “Once Upon A Time”.)

I know that “Little B’s Poem” is a particular favourite of D.J. Gilles Peterson and I can only concur with that opinion, with this track being as fine a piece of jazz as anyone could ever want to hear. “Love From The Sun” is another personal favourite, along with her mellow version of the evergreen “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head”. The whole show finishes off nicely with a drop dead slow version of ‘People Make The World Go Round’ that will maybe change your mind as to which version is better.

In the same year as her first album was released she also performed on Broadway in the musical “The Wiz”. For her role as “Glinda the Good Witch” she won a Tony Award in 1975 as “best featured actress”, and the musical also won the 1976 Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album.

Discovering a new found love for stage acting she subsequently appeared in several other stage productions. After touring France in 1984 with the musicalSophisticated Ladies, she moved to Paris in 1986. The same year saw her in Lady Day as Billie Holiday, for which role she was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she returned from the world of musical to jazz. She performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1990, and four years later, she finally collaborated with Horace Silver, whom she had long admired, and released the album Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver.

Her 1997 tribute album “Dear Ella” won her the 1998 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album, and the 1998 album “Live at Yoshi’s” was also worth a Grammy nomination. She has also explored on This is New (2002) the songs of Kurt Weill, and, on her next album J’ai Deux Amours (2005), the French Classics.

Her album Red Earth, released in 2007, features Africa-inspired themes and contributions by numerous musicians from the West African nation of Mali. Which she  performed as a headliner at the San Francisco Jazz Festival .

On December 8, 2007  Dee Dee performed with the Terence Blanchard Quintet at the prestigious John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

 She still tours frequently, including overseas gigs around the world.  2009 found her opening the Shanghai JZ Jazz Festival, in which Dee Dee covered a good deal of tunes associated with Ella Fitzgerald, along with Ellington compositions and other jazz standards.

Bridgewater is mother to three children, the oldest of which serves as her manager and runs her record label. Her youngest daughter China Moses (from her second marriage) is also a fantastic singer and occasionally shares the bill with her mother.

This album is a classic. Buy it if you can afford it, Right here.

or

HERE

@320

Enjoy.