Dee Dee Bridgewater - Afro Blue
I'll interrupt watching this bizarre, borderline sci-fi news segment on California's wastewater-treatment program that's turning raw sewage into potable water to bring you a sizzler of a 40th anniversary bombshell, courtesy of a highly favored vocalist.
She should need little introduction, having begun all the way back in the late 1960s in a career that's been nine kinds of everywhere since.
At the start of the 1970s she married famed trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater, moved to NYC, and joined the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band as lead singer.
Stints singing with luminaries such as Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon and Max Roach soon followed, and before too long she was recording ever more prolifically on her own.
Then she branched out into musical theater and acting, first as the original Glenda in The Wiz and then in a variety of different roles, most notably as Billie Holiday in the Broadway production of Lady Day.
A multiple Grammy & Tony Award winner, Dee Dee Bridgewater has never really stopped making records and performing, and she now has dozens of albums to her credit as well as a whole slew of film and TV stuff.
Which arrives us at today's concert, coincidentally 40 years old today.
This was rebroadcast a while back on France Musique's weekend Jazz program, and I must say I've juiced it up real nice for y'all.
Dee Dee Bridgewater
New Morning
Paris, France
12.23.1983
01 Dee Dee speaks
02 I'm Beginning to See the Light
03 Song for My Father
04 A Child Is Born
05 A Night In Tunisia
06 Lush Life
07 Days of Wine and Roses
08 Little B's Poem
09 Afro Blue
10 I Didn't Know What Time It Was
11 Peace
12 There Is No Greater Love
13 How Insensitive
14 Straight, No Chaser
15 Cherokee
16 Sophisticated Lady
17 It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
Total time: 1:29:53
disc break goes after Track 10
Dee Dee Bridgewater - vocals
Alain Jean-Marie - piano
Alby Cullaz - bass
Charles Bellonzi - drums
digital, off air capture of a France Musique rebroadcast from May of 2021
edited, retracked & remastered by EN, December 2023
644 MB FLAC/direct link
644 MB FLAC/direct link
All of this begs the question I've asked myself many times, which is Where Would We All Be Without France Musique?
Anyway I have the rest of December all sussed, and to that end I will return Christmas Day to return your lost shaker of salt.
While you are awaiting Santa sliding down the chimney with margaritas and the shrimp that's beginning to boil, I'd advise pasting your ears and minds to this lovely 90 minutes in the company of Miss DDB... How Insensitive of you not to!--J.
