Interview: Dee Dee Bridgewater / Baldwin “Smitty” Smith (~jazzmonthly.com)

"Jazz Monthly Feature Interview" 
Dee Dee Bridgewater, by Baldwin “Smitty” Smith

DDB: Dee Dee Bridgewater
Smitty: Baldwin “Smitty” Smith

Smitty: It is certainly a privilege and an honor to welcome my next guest to JazzMonthly.com; her voice is so strong yet so pleasingly harmonic; she has a stunning new CD called “J’ai Deux amours”; please welcome the gorgeous and so very talented, the incomparable Sovereign Artists recording artist, Ms. Dee Dee Bridgewater. Dee Dee, bon jour! Comment allez vous?

DDB: Comment allez vous? Bon jour, bon jour, Smitty. (Laughing). What a great introduction!

Smitty: And well deserved (laughing)!

DDB: Myyyy!

Smitty: Oh,.…I’m so happy to talk with you, and I feel as though I’m fulfilling a dream, so thank you very much.

DDB: You are very welcome.

Smitty: How’s everything going for you?

DDB: Oh, everything…everything is going well. I’m in L.A. visiting my eldest daughter, who is about four months pregnant. I thought I’d come and spend a few days with her and her husband and help out.


Smitty: That’s nice.

DDB: So that’s where I am. I am visiting my daughter.

Smitty: Well, this is certainly a happy time for you.

DDB: Yes, I’m going be a grandmother for the first time.

Smitty: Ohhhh!

DDB: I’m so excited. I’m stoked, stoked, stoked. I’m gonna be the hippest, sexiest grandma ya ever saw. Oh yeah. Okay. (Laughing.)

Smitty: I am so sure of that, and congratulations.

DDB: Thank you.

Smitty: Well, you are getting such rave reviews for this great new CD, and rightly so.

DDB: Well, thank you. I’m…I am ecstatic about the reviews, I’m ecstatic about the record air play, I am over the moon that the album received a Grammy nomination….stunned is more like it.

Smitty: (Laughing.)

DDB: But, you know, it was a very risky project for me, and it’s a project that I’d wanted to do since like ’95 and I put it in a drawer because when I actually thought about putting it together, it was at the same time that Ella Fitzgerald died, and then I kind of derailed my…all of my musical dreams and put ‘em on hold when I did the tribute to Ella. (Dear Ella)

Smitty: Yes, and what a beautiful tribute.

DDB: Thank you. So I’m just glad that I finally got back to it, you know, and thanks to the wonderful Derek Gordon, who was running the jazz program at the Kennedy Center, who’s now heading up jazz at the Lincoln Center, because he asked me to do two concerts last year at the Kennedy Center for Valentine’s Day as part of a three-month series at the Kennedy Center honoring French culture. So I literally flew the musicians who are on the album in to Washington, D.C. on February 11 and I selected songs that I thought an American public would know because most of the songs on the CD have been big hits in their English versions, and we came up with arrangements together, and literally two and a half days later, went downstairs from the rehearsal hall to back stage, changed clothes and went on stage. (Laughing.)

Smitty: Wow!

DDB: So the album has come out of that performance and the demand by the public from the two concerts to do an album of the music. I had no idea that it would get the response that it’s gotten, especially here in the United States. I’m over the moon.

Smitty: Well, I tell you, I put this CD on when I got it…

DDB: Mm-hmm.

Smitty: …and I felt like I was in France.

DDB: Oooh.

Smitty: I felt as though I was in love, and the music is just so all encompassing. It was just a great mix of music, and I just fell in love. I called Alisse [Kingsley] and just told her I was going nuts over this record. (Laughing.)

DDB: I’m so happy to hear that, I really am.

Smitty: Oh yes.

DDB: Well, you know, part of the goal that I had was the selection of the musicians, because this is the first time that I’m not working in a traditional jazz trio setting, because I was doing French songs and most of these are French love songs. I wanted to evoke the Parisian sound, so I had to have an accordion, and I figured since I had an accordion, which is a keyboard itself, that I wouldn’t use a regular piano, and to complement the accordion I would have guitar, and then bass, and instead of a regular drum kit I wanted to have more percussive instruments.

So the musicians that I have, three of them worked with me already on my Kurt Weill project as with this new project, and that’s Louis Winsberg on guitar, Ira Coleman on bass, and Minino Garay on drums and percussions……. and Marc Berthoumieux the accordionist is a dear and longtime friend of Louis Winsberg and my husband, Jean-Marie Durand. As I mentioned, I had to have the accordion, because I wanted the accordion to open up the album musically, because I did want to set the mood for the album and for the listener. And I just thought that if we used a composition of his, which is called “Joe in a Blues,” which he’d written for Josephine Baker, I thought that it was a perfect intro into the album. Also I wanted to start with J’ai Deux amours, the title of the album, which is also the first very big hit that Josephine Baker had in France. So I wanted to lead the listener into this musical excursion through Josephine.

Smitty: Yes, a very nice concept.

DDB: Yeah, so I’m very happy that you like it and that people like it. I’m really surprised that the language doesn’t seem to bother anyone.

Smitty: It’s interesting that you say that because I thought about that as I was listening. I said, you know, ‘even though I do not understand the words, I just love the whole vibe’. It just put me in such a mood of love.

DDB: I’m so glad.

Smitty: It’s beautiful, I tell ya. And it speaks volumes for your talent and your career and what you’ve done, because I know this project has been long in the making.

DDB: Well, I’m glad.

Smitty: At what point did this come together in your mind and heart where you definitively said to yourself, “I think I have something here” or “This is something I definitely want do.”

DDB: After we did these two concerts at the Kennedy Center, with the response of the people, I was stunned. People were…I mean, we got standing ovations that went on and on, and people were…the emotions that the music brought out of people was just amazing. I saw men crying and people were smiling, they were screaming. The elation was like, incredible. I had a CD signing after the second concert and people were coming up to me and saying “Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. You took me away from everything. I thought I was in France,” and so that was really when I said, “Wow, maybe I’ve got something here and maybe…I don’t know…the timing is right, maybe this is the moment that I should do this,” you know?

Smitty: Yeah.

DDB: I have to admit that I was also a bit leery about the reaction that I would receive in the United States due to current administration, and during the first term when the war in Iraq broke out. The big stink that was made about France especially, but France and Germany not being…in agreement with the administration about the war, you know, and then the subsequent boycotting of France. I know that during the second administration that the President did admit that France and Germany were correct, and that he should’ve waited and gotten more information, and I know that that created an immediate turnaround in the United States for all things French. So there’s…I thought maybe it’s a kind of subconscious thing that is going on for Americans. I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure it out. But I made it because I have spent almost the last twenty years of my life in France, and it was a way for me to say thank you to the country.

I have a tremendous career in France and in Europe that Americans don’t even know about. I also made it because I thought it was time that I embraced these almost twenty years, and not be in the closet about the fact that I really did adopt this second culture and I do speak French and, you know, I thought it was a way to just really embrace my life, and it was made with a lot of love, you know. It’s the first project that I did where I did not hire an arranger or arrangers, and I really put my confidence in the four musicians that I did the project with, to come up with these wonderful musical ideas. I said to them that I wanted it to have more of a world music flavor because France and Paris especially, is such a metropol. You’ve got so many different cultures, so many people from different countries that live there. When you turn on your radio in France and you go up and down the dial, you can come across African music, Arab music, country and western music from the United States…

Smitty: (Laughing.)

DDB: …jazz, French, pop, you know, a multi-section of pop music from all around the world….you can find Asian stations, you can find stations from little countries that we’ve not even heard of or we don’t know about here in the United States, and when you are out in France, you see these people in these different cultures.

Smitty: Wow! Sounds very cool!

DDB: And it’s just an incredible melting pot, so I wanted to show that, and I think that music today also is going more towards a world music mix. I am currently trying to explore world music rhythms. I’m interested in the drum, I’m interested in all the different rhythms that we have. Of course when you talk about the drum you could go to the mother land of Africa, so I wanted to have little snippets of all these different rhythms, and through these musicians we were able to accomplish that, so…Oh I am a wordy woman, aren’t I? (Both laughing)

Smitty: Well, you hooked up with the right guy because I can be so wordy but, you know, I just love people, I love talking to people and learning from them and especially when we share so much in common. I just love music, period, but I do have a special love for jazz, and I have listened to you for years and I’ve listened to your career, you might say…

DDB: Mm-hmm

Smitty: …over the years and you mentioned the word “stoked”….I have been stoked for the last few days knowing that you and I were going to talk, so this is like a dream come true for me. (Laughing.)

DDB: Thank you, thank you.

Smitty: Yes. So tell me, you’re a two-time Grammy winner…

DDB: Yeah.

Smitty: …and you’ve won a Tony Award.

DDB: Yep.

Smitty: So, you know, I think of you as not just a musician and a singer, but I think of you more as an entertainer because you’re so multi-talented that your voice.…it fits everywhere, you know?

DDB: Yeah, well, I think of myself as an entertainer and I read an interview by Tony Bennett that he did maybe three or four years ago and he called himself a jazz entertainer and I said “Oh, that’s perfect.”

Smitty: Yeah.

DDB: “Oh, that’s absolutely perfect.” And that’s what I am. I believe that it’s really important to entertain people, and I grew up, you could say, with the Sammy Davis School of Music. That’s what I used to…. you know, with the school of entertainment, because Sammy Davis was such a versatile performer, and when I was growing up, I thought that in order to be a singer you had to know how to sing, how to dance, how to act.

Smitty: Yes, that’s very important and a great attitude to have.

DDB: Because I grew up watching all the movies from the Ziegfield Follies, when my parents would go to bed…. all these musicals from the thirties and forties, and I wanted to be like that when I grew up. So I think it behooves an artist not to put on a show, and I feel that people take time out of their lives to buy tickets, to arrange, you know, two or three hours of their time to come and sit and spend an evening with an artist, and it is the artist’s responsibility to give them a good show.

Smitty: Yes, I agree.

DDB: Which means good music, good arrangements, good singing, and entertainment. I want to make them laugh, I want to bring them into my music, I want them to forget about their problems, and I try to do the same thing when I do my albums. I want someone to be able to sit down for an hour and just go on a little musical voyage with me and forget about stuff, and I want them to be inspired at the end of it and get energy so that they can get up and confront their lives and deal with things.

Smitty: Yes, and trust me, you’ve accomplished that.

DDB: Oh, thank you.

Smitty: Yes. Tell me, what inspires Dee Dee Bridgewater?

DDB: My children, my family, my mother, my husband, people that I meet.

Smitty: Very cool!

DDB: I don’t want to sound cliché, but I’m a very spiritual person, I pray a lot, I believe in God and the Trinity…..the Father God, the Son God, the Holy Ghost. I was raised Catholic. I still believe in the power of prayer. I believe that I’m here (laughs) only by the grace of God. I think otherwise I would’ve been gone a long time ago.

Smitty: (Laughing.)

DDB: But I believe that I have things that I’m supposed to do. I’m trying…I know that my voice and my talents were a gift because I never studied to do anything that I do today. So I’m just trying to give back this incredible gift that I was given and to share it with people. So it’s talking with people like you…

Smitty: Well, thank you.

DDB: …that gives me inspiration, knowing that you were moved by my music, that it did something for you. It’s people that send me letters to thank me for my concerts or send me an e-mail on my Web site or that I run into on the street and tell me what my music has done for them. That’s what keeps me going and that’s what has inspired me.

Smitty: Yes, you have such a wonderful outlook on life.

DDB: But Lord knows, physically I’m exhausted. I would like to sit down and I would like, you know, nothing more than stay home, you know, and not be on the road. I like to say I’m an artist who records, I’m not a recording artist. I make my living by my concert work. But I don’t know, once I get on the stage and once the music starts, I’m gone…I’m gone and I just like to take people with me on these magical trips, so….life is an inspiration.

Smitty: Yes, it is, and that’s a wonderful way of putting it, too. Well, Dee Dee, I know you have to run.

DDB: Yes.

Smitty: I know you’re so popular, and let me say for the record….that you are very inspirational for thousands, literally thousands around the world. And we appreciate you very much and all that you do in your humanitarian efforts that we didn’t get to talk about….maybe next time….

DDB: Well, we can certainly do another chat. I would love that.

Smitty: Yes, let’s do that, perhaps later on in the year, let’s get back together, all right?

DDB: Okay, that sounds like a plan, sounds like a promise.

Smitty: Great.

DDB: And I accept it…

Smitty: Yes.

DDB: …for all of your listeners and readers.

Smitty: We love you for that. (Laughing.)

DDB: We’ve got a date. Thank you so much for your interest and thank you so much for all the wonderful compliments that you bestowed on “J’ai Deux amours” and thank you very much for following my career. I appreciate it. I am an artist who cares. So I appreciate it very, very much. I wish you continued success with everything that you’re doing.

Smitty: Thank you very much. I’ll have to come…I’ll have to come find you. I have your tour schedule, so I will find you.

DDB: Okay.

Smitty: How’s that? And I’ll let you know that I’m in the house.

DDB: Yes! Smitty’s in the house! (both laughing) Okay, my darling. Take care of yourself.

Smitty: We’ve been chatting with the mellifluous and effervescent Ms Dee Dee Bridgewater. She has release a wonderful new CD called J’ai Deux amours. I highly recommend this CD, and don’t miss her live performance! Dee Dee thanks again, and congratulations again on being a grandma.

DDB: Aw, thanks so much, Smitty.