House of the Rising Sun

Dee Dee Bridgewater was born Denise Garrett in Memphis TN in 1950 and raised in Flint Michigan.Her father was a teacher and trumpeter which meant Dee Dee was always around music as a child and so not surprisingly she made this her career. She sang with a rock group at school and in 1969 she toured the USSR with her school singing group. In 1970 she married Cecil Bridgewater and became lead singer with the Thad Jones Lewis Jazz Orchestra. Over a career of more than four decades she has produced a large number of albums mainly in the Jazz genre. She is also an accomplished actress and played the role of Billie Holiday in the biopic of that very talented but troubled lady ( Lady Day.) For this she was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award. She won a Tony Award for the musical The Wiz. Her awards for music are many, including 6 Grammy nominations (two awards) and two Honorary Doctorates, one at University of Michigan and one at Berklee College of Music. She is a goodwill ambassador for the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation which aims to reduce world hunger with its programs worldwide. She runs a mentorship program for young singers at Berklee. Other notable awards include Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettre, NEA Jazz Masters, German Jazz Trophy and induction into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame. Married three times she has three children. One daughter serves as her company manager and another is an accomplished Jazz singer who sometimes appears with her on stage. Dee Dee has a very mellow and warm voice which however can reach down into Soul And Deep Soul with ease. She is still active today and tours widely in relation to music and philanthropy. I only discovered her recently and I'm wondering why it took so long to wake up to a person of such high Quality. House of the Rising Sun