How an old song forced jazz legend Dee Dee Bridgewater to confront past regrets

For more than five decades, Dee Dee Bridgewater has been one of jazz's most distinctive voices.

She began her career with the legendary Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra and has shared stages with jazz greats including Max Roach, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins and Dizzy Gillespie.

A multiple Grammy and Tony Award winner, her career has spanned not only music but also acting, broadcasting and founding her own record label.

Bridgewater returns to Australia this October for her first tour in almost 12 years.

She reflects on unforgettable encounters with Sonny Rollins and Dizzy Gillespie, shares the songs closest to her heart, and offers advice for the next generation of musicians.

What is it about jazz that sustains you and gives you lifelong pleasure?

It's a music that is free.

Jazz is freedom of speech, is freedom of expression. It's just complete freedom.

I don't have to be any one particular way.

I can improvise and change the music nightly and find new ways to interpret a song in different kinds of musical settings.

Then, to watch other jazz artists take the music and go places that I wouldn't think of going.

I don't know any other music [where] everyone is able to create their own world.

What was it like working with jazz legends like Sonny Rollins and Dizzy Gillespie?

When I first moved to New York with my first husband, Cecil Bridgewater, sometimes the phone would ring and it would be Sonny.

He'd say: "Dee Dee, this is Sonny Rollins … would you come and sing with me?"

And I was like, "Of course I'll sing with Sonny Rollins! Are you kidding?"

So, I would do these afternoon shows with Sonny for some jazz society in New York.

As my career developed, we would occasionally see each other at festivals or awards ceremonies.

I just knew him as a person. He was a really nice man and not at all pretentious.

Dizzy Gillespie … oh, I loved working with Dizzy.

Dizzy loved to make people laugh. He would blow those cheeks up and he'd look like a puffer fish. And then all those notes would come out.

We had so much fun together and he was a jokester offstage.

What are your three favourite jazz standards?

Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life

I have always been astounded that someone in their teen years could write such a deep song.

It appeals to my dramatic senses and it's a challenging song to sing musically.

George David Weiss and Bob Thiele: What a Wonderful World

Singing that song always brings about a sense of peace and calm.

The clouds, the rain, the children, seeing people; it just reminds us of the beauty of humanity in the world. And it's just a beautiful melody.

Johnny Burke: Here's That Rainy Day

It's a ballad I have sung since I began singing professionally with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, [but] I've just started doing that song again recently.

I was about to sing it for one of my shows and got news that someone who I was very close to had passed.

[Years ago], he had asked me to marry him, and I was afraid to do it because he was Jewish and I was Black in the 70s.

I thought it would have been very difficult for us.

I was terrified when I was young of what that kind of a relationship could entail.

So, I said no, [even though] he was someone that I really did love.

Maybe I could have saved those leftover dreams. 

Funny. 

Here's that rainy day.

I realized that I had not been brave enough to go with this love that we both felt, [which fills me with] a very big tinge of regret.

It's still hard to sing, but I do like singing it because it has a totally different meaning for me now. 

What advice would you give aspiring musicians, especially young women?

I say to all young women, no matter which area of jazz they want to work in, whether they're instrumentalists or vocalists or even sound engineers behind the scenes, the most important thing when you are young is to gather as much knowledge about what it is you want to do.

You [need to be] well-armed to go into the profession, to know as much about the business side of whatever it is that you want to do.

Know how to take care of yourself, know your rights as a musician when you're coming out, know how to read contracts.

And I always say to young musicians: create safe spaces so that they can create their music.

Then whatever your music is going to be, you've got to do it to the best that you can possibly do.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Dee Dee Bridgewater will perform at the Sydney International Women's Jazz Festival on October 22, Melbourne International Jazz Festival on October 24 and Perth International Jazz Festival on October 27.

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