Dee Dee Bridgewater

Dee Dee Bridgewater
Dee Dee Bridgewater in concert with the Big Band of the Kölner Musikhochschule on July 7, 2006 in Cologne, Germany.
Background information
Birth name	Denise Eileen Garrett
Born	May 27, 1950 (1950-05-27) (age 61) Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Origin	Flint, Michigan, USA
Genres	Jazz, R&B, Hip hop
Occupations	Singer, Actress
Instruments	Vocals
Years active	1966–present
Labels	Verve
Website	DeeDeeBridgewater.com

Dee Dee Bridgewater (born May 27, 1950) is an American Jazz singer. She is a three-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. She is a United Nations Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Biography

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.^[1] This marked the beginning of her jazz career, and 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. She performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1973. In 1974, her first own album, entitled Afro Blue, appeared, and 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.

In concert in 1990

She subsequently appeared in several other stage productions. After touring France in 1984 with the musical Sophisticated 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. Performed also at the San Francisco Jazz Festival (1996). 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. Performed again at the Monterey Jazz Festival (1998). 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. Performed at the San Francisco Jazz Festival (2007).

December 8, 2007 performed with the Terence Blanchard Quintet at the prestigious John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C..^[2] She tours frequently, including overseas gigs around the world. October 16, 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.

Family life

Bridgewater is mother to three children, Tulani Bridgewater (from her marriage to Cecil Bridgewater), China Moses (from her marriage to theater, film and television director Gilbert Moses) and Gabriel Durand (from her last marriage to French concert promoter Jean-Marie Durand). Her eldest daughter, Tulani Bridgewater attended The Mirman School for the Gifted in Los Angeles, CA. She went on to graduate from the Ecole Active Bilingue in Paris, France at age 16, going on to graduate from Vassar College. She serves as Bridgewater's manager and runs Bridgewater's production company and record label (DDB Productions, Inc. And DDB Records). Daughter China Moses is an accomplished singer and MTV VJ (France). Her critically acclaimed albums have earned her an international reputation as heir to Bridgewater's legacy. Moses tours worldwide occasionally sharing the bill with Bridgewater.

Selective awards and recognitions

Grammy history

• Career Wins: 3^[3]
• Career Nominations: 7

Year	Category	Title	Genre	Label	Result
1989	Best Jazz Vocal Performance - Female	Live in Paris	Jazz	MCA	Nominee
1994	Best Jazz Vocal Performance	Keeping Tradition	Jazz	Polygram	Nominee
1996	Best Jazz Vocal Performance	Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver	Jazz	Verve	Nominee
1998	Best Jazz Vocal Performance	Dear Ella	Jazz	Verve	Winner
1998	Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s)	"Cotton Tail" from Dear Ella	Jazz	Verve	Winner
2001	Best Jazz Vocal Album	Live at Yoshi's	Jazz	Verve	Nominee
2005	Jazz Vocal Album	J'ai Deux Amours	Jazz	DDB	Nominee
2007	Jazz Vocal Album	Red Earth	Jazz	DDB	Nominee
2010	Jazz Vocal Album	Eleanora Fagan (1915-1959): To Billie with Love from Dee Dee Bridgewater	Jazz	EmArcy	Winner

Awards

Bridgewater is the first American to be inducted to the Haut Conseil de la Francophonie. She has received the Award of Arts and Letters in France. She also won the 1975 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance in The Wiz.

Selective discography

Year	Title	Genre	Label	Billboard[4]
1974	Afro Blue	Jazz	Trio
1976	Dee Dee Bridgewater	Disco	Atlantic
1977	Just Family	Disco	WSM
1979	Bad for Me	Disco	Elektra
1989	Live in Paris	Jazz	EmArcy
1992	In Montreux	Jazz	Verve
1993	Keeping Tradition	Jazz	Verve
1995	Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver	Jazz	Verve	13
1997	Dear Ella	Jazz	Verve	5
2000	Live at Yoshi's	Jazz	Verve	20
2002	This Is New	Jazz	Verve	7
2005	J'ai Deux Amours	Jazz	DDB	16
2007	Red Earth	Jazz	DDB	23
2010	Eleanora Fagan (1915-1959): To Billie with Love from Dee Dee Bridgewater	Jazz	EmArcy

Guest Vocalist

• "Love From the Sun": with Norman Connors (1974, Buddah Records).

References

1. ^ Larkin, Colin. The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Guinness, page 547, (1995) - ISBN 1561591769
2. ^ Kennedy Center: The Movie Music of Spike Lee and Terence Blanchard
3. ^ Album Awards List
4. ^ Billboard Artist Chart History: Dee Dee Bridgewater

External links

• Dee Dee Bridgewater at the Internet Movie Database
• Dee Dee Bridgewater at the Internet Broadway Database
• The official Dee Dee Bridgewater site
• A recent interview
• Biography
• Another biography

Persondata
Name	Bridgewater, Dee Dee
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	May 27, 1950
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death