After several wrong connections (culminating in the Hotel Harbour Plaza’s pastry chef assuring me, “Dee Dee? Yeah, he’s not in right now, wanna leave him a message?”), when I finally get through to jazz legend Dee Dee Bridgewater, she is in cheerful spirits and raring to talk. You’d expect nothing less from a lady who is not only one of the most esteemed names in the business, but also the eponymous host of NPR’s JazzSet With Dee Dee Bridgewater; reserved and hesitant just ain’t on the cards. She will soon be touring Down Under with Irvin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, promoting an album steeped in the soul of her adoptive city, and honouring a community still left reeling ten years since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
“What is happening in New Orleans now,” says Bridgewater, her velvet voice entirely bewitching, “is that it’s a type of renaissance city. The people there are very, very proud that the city has come as far as it has in ten years. There are a lot of people who have not and will not come back. Irvin himself lost his father in Katrina. Just working with him and knowing that is a kind of humbling experience, to see this young man who himself lost so much in Katrina, and who believes so wholeheartedly in this city and wants to do so much for his community. I am a person who feels very strongly about family, about close friends and community, and this here is the birthplace of jazz. So to come here and work, to be embraced like I have been – not just by the band, but by the city itself – is quite unusual, and I’m very moved by it. It made me feel like I belong.”
From this acceptance has come Dee Dee’s Feathers, a collection of classic jazz favourites steeped in the history of The Big Easy. As it transpires, we’re actually quite lucky to have this record in the first place. It developed simply as a small project between Bridgewater and Mayfield that was never intended for commercial release, but as soon as the finished product was before them, sending the album off into the world seemed inevitable.
“Well, it was originally conceived to be a CD that would be sold only at the new New Orleans Jazz Market. Irvin and I have been collaborating for four years now; he’s such an exciting young man, and this was a great way for us to have a business partnership, if you will. To show our musical collaborative efforts. And after we recorded it and listened to the final product, I thought, ‘This is much better than I had anticipated.’ So then my ‘daughtager’ – who is my daughter who is my manager – got in touch with my Sony, who said, ‘Absolutely!’ So that’s how that happened.
“Then it was kind of trying to chase our own tail, because they wanted it by such-and-such a date, but we’d never intended it to be released; we didn’t have the machinery in place! So we had to plan a photo shoot, get the graphic artists involved, all of the things that involve giving a finished product to a label. There are always going to be a few errors that slip by. We forgot to put my label on the outside of the CD. Little things – we don’t have an album listing of who’s playing what, no word of who is doing which solo.” She laughs, and then suddenly drops back into a more serious, reflective tone.
“I was in a particular space at the time, having had to move cities, get settled in, touring at the same time. It was crazy. I said to my daughter, ‘I just can’t do this.’ So I’m very pleased with the result, because usually I’m listening, I’m critiquing. I have nothing but wonderful things to say about this album. It has this live element to it, this rawness, so it doesn’t sound too polished. All I said to Irvin was that I wanted it to have that real feeling of New Orleans, and I wanted to make sure everyone involved in the project was from New Orleans. And this is what we ended with! I’m really, really proud of it.”
With a career spanning four decades, and highlights as varied as leaves in a gale, it must be incredibly difficult for Bridgewater to isolate the musical moments that have truly stood out to her. One which is most certain never to fade, however, is her 1989 duet with the late, remarkable Ray Charles.
“Oh, it was so very surreal. To find myself in an actual studio and to have him standing across from me with headphones on, singing. And when Ray says my name in that song, ‘Oh Dee Dee, take your ring…’ I cried. I couldn’t sing and I just started crying. And then he says, ‘What’s the matter, baby girl?’ And we went into the control room, sat down and listened to it, and I thought I sounded like a little girl next to him. And Ray said, ‘I haven’t been inspired by a voice like yours since Betty Carter. Let’s go back in and do the take.’ So we went back in and did the take. So it was quite something.”
Dee Dee’s Feathers Is now through Sony. Catch Dee Dee, along with Ivin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, at theCity Recital Hall Angel Place onSaturday June 6.
