Dee Dee Bridgewater interview: “Being able to channel my energies into that music, bring it to reality, to perform it, saved me”

She may be beautiful, witty and erudite; charming, gracious and elegant, but don’t mess with Miss B.

She may have been presented to Presidents (the latest, Biden, in September last year) and Prime Ministers, captains of industry, of commerce and the great and good; she may be a three time Grammy Award-winning singer and a Tony Award-winning actress; a philanthropist, mentor and a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador; she may be an NEA Jazz Master, a Kennedy Center honouree, and a winner of the Maria Fisher Founder's Award from the Thelonious Monk/Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz and the recipient of Honorary Doctorates from Berklee College of Music and the University of Michigan, but do not mess with Miss B.

As the world catches up with Dee Dee Bridgewater’s astonishing 43-year career in music and showbusiness more widely, she suddenly realised she had not recorded a new album in seven years.

“You know, I hadn’t realised. I had been in mourning since my mother passed in 2017,” she reflects. “I was her caregiver; the last 10 years of her life were dedicated night and day to my mother, keeping her in the best facilities possible, but I knew I had to record, but I knew I had to keep monies coming in so that I could support my mother.”

Dee Dee Bridgewater (photo: Tim Dickeson)

With the emotional and financial toll of providing care mounting, Dee Dee needed a form of release – and found it in the music she grew up with.

In September 2016, she entered the Royal Studios in Memphis, Tennessee to record some of the great classics of Southern Soul and R&B.

“I did it because I figured it would be fun, and I was feeling depressed,” she continues. “So that’s the reason why I did that Yes, I’m Ready album, because I knew my mother was transitioning and would eventually pass, and when it happened, thank goodness I did that album, being able to channel my energies into that music, bring it to reality, to perform it, saved me.”

With numbers like BB King’s ‘The Thrill Is Gone’, and Big Mama Thornton’s ‘Hound Dog’, leavened with a little Gospel, ‘Take My Hand Precious Lord’, Yes, I’m Ready went to No.10 in the Billboard Jazz Album Chart on release in September 2017. She energetically toured the album both sides of the pandemic but as she did, she gradually came face to face with herself, acknowledging that away from the bright lights, the touring and performing, she had been in denial. “I had been in mourning over my mother’s passing,” she confesses. “I had been in a creative fog, then when the pandemic happened, I was seeing all these artists creating, I had no desire to do anything.”

But then it passed: “I was sitting on my sofa, and something just lifted, and I went, ‘Oh!’ And I have a voice, my spiritual voice, that said, ‘Bill Charlap,’ and I said, ‘What?’ And it said it again, and I have enough spiritual integrity to know when my voice speaks to me, I better follow what it says. When I haven’t, things have gone quite amiss. So I called my booking agent and said, ‘I am thinking of working with Bill Charlap,’ and he said, ‘Well that’s interesting Dee Dee, I represent him too.’ I went, ‘Oh! Would you call him and ask him if he would like to do some duo shows?’

"So we started with a few dates in 2019, maybe 20 or 30 concerts, and we always got an amazing response, and I said, ‘I want to record this,’ so I was back in the studio, first time in a while. We went into a studio called Clear Sound in New York City, where they have a nine-foot Steinway, and went in and recorded for two days. So we have this beautiful product, and we’re mastering it, and we’re in negotiations with a label in the US – the reawakening of Dee Dee!”

Since then the tour diary has been filling apace, and she will be headlining the Cheltenham Jazz Festival on 4 May – sandwiched between the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and the Tashkent Jazz Festival in Uzbekistan – an engagement that brings back memories of her previous appearance there: “I will never forget when I went there the first time, in 2017 with the Memphis band after Yes I’m Ready had come out, I just remember going out on stage at that concert, starting up, and in the front row were four gentlemen scowling at me because I wasn’t doing jazz. I remember stopping the band and saying, ‘Listen, I am sorry you have been misinformed about this show, and what the music is going to be, and if you want to leave, please leave, but what I will not allow is for you to try and harass me with your posturing. So, you four gentlemen in the front with your hands clasped, you can leave now.’ And they didn’t leave and at the end of the show they were standing, along with everybody else! So, it will be good to come back [laughs].”

So remember, Cheltenham, don’t mess with Miss B.

Born in 1950 in Memphis, Tennessee and raised in Flint, Michigan, Bridgewater's father introduced her to jazz, and while attending the University of Illinois she toured the Soviet Union in 1969 with the college jazz band. She made her name in jazz on the New York scene of the 1970s, and when she toured France with the musical Sophisticated Ladies in 1984, an Affaire de Cœur prompted a move to Paris in 1986. Then followed a highly successful career in France and Europe embracing the stage, garnering a Laurence Olivier Award nomination, performing pop and R&B before returning to jazz in 1990 and winning three Grammy Awards.

Following a divorce, Dee Dee moved back to the USA in 2010, and in 2014 she recorded Dee Dee’s Feathers with trumpeter Irvin Mayfield and the 18-piece New Orleans Jazz Orchestra to mark the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. It hit the eleventh spot on Billboard’s Jazz Album Chart, the online Allmusic Guide noting, “The album finds Bridgewater combining her love of New Orleans' musical past with the Crescent City's vibrant present… she has built a career out of combining her love of the tradition with her desire to push the boundaries of jazz style, and Dee Dee's Feathers is no exception."

In 2016, Dee Dee moved to New Orleans, where she now resides on the Gulf Coast.

“I live here in New Orleans, I’m here in the South! I’m in the South! What the heck! How did this happen! I call it the Blue island in the Red Sea. When people say, ‘Why did you move to New Orleans?’ I’ll say, I had made myself colourless when I am in situations with white people, because I have grown up in a predominantly white world. And the reason why I had moved here was because I wanted to have the black experience: I wanted to see myself when I get off a plane, I want to see myself when I come out of my door, I want to see myself when I went to a restaurant, or a club or to whatever kind of events I do, that’s part of why I moved here.”

Immersing herself in the musical life of New Orleans, she soon became a part of it, “I like being around it, even though I am not of it, I love it, I just love being here.” After 30 years in the City of Light, she says she likes New Orleans’ historical connection with France.

“I like the streets with French names, I live out in the Gulf community, I have always lived in gated communities since I have been back in the United States, because I am single and I have always felt that the safest place for me is a place where it is guarded so I can relax without fear of robberies or anything. Our world is becoming a very ugly place with guns running rampant in this country and New Orleans is called the murder capital of the world right now – go outside the city limits and baby, if you’re black, you gotta be careful.”

Racism, particularly in America’s South, is something that lurks uncomfortably close to the surface. But even in the South you don’t mess with Miss B.

“I have had very interesting racial experiences down here. It is interesting to observe the interaction between the black and the white here. There is a divide and I have watched the black people I am with be subjugated when they are in a situation where they are with white people. And these are prominent African-American people. Monied African-American people, I have seen them subjugate themselves in a situation with white people. But am I here, and what I refuse to do is subjugate myself to anyone, anyone. I don’t care what colour you are. You will respect me, I have no fear.” So don’t mess with Miss B.

While acknowledging her celebrity, even she speaks of experiencing what has come to be known as 'Everyday Racism', both conscious and unconscious, that is as insidious as it is commonplace: “I tend to walk some imaginary line of acceptance, not only because I am from the north but because I am a celebrity who lived in France and speaks a foreign language and has been at the table of Presidents and Prime Ministers and all of that stuff, so I have another kind of acceptance here.”

Even so, she says, “I have gone to dinners with friends of mine where they have invited other white friends of theirs who refuse to shake my hand. Refuse to acknowledge me and want to talk about my dog! I take my dog with me everywhere because she is an emotional support dog, and she is the rest of me. But they will have a conversation with my dog before they will speak to me! And yes, I have also had some experiences where I felt I had to respond to these racist MFs – 'I am a black bitch from the North, I am not a Southern negro, and I will cut you every which but loose, so get out of my fucking way!' It always takes them aback. Racism? Just treble it here.”

There are also unspoken conventions, she says, “Since I have moved down here I DO NOT travel at night if I can help it. I remember during the pandemic I wanted to drive to the southernmost tip of Louisiana, and my daughter (China Moses), who was living in London, had come over, and they shut down England! So she stayed with me for three months, and we would take these drives.

"But I hadn’t calculated how far the southernmost tip was. So we get down there and started to come back and it began to get dark, and then it was dark, and we were going through these no-go areas. I was fearful, and I was alert, I am very aware, and they still have what they call ‘Sundown Cities’ where black people have to be indoors after dark, in their neighbourhood. It is an unspoken thing where black people could not be in white neighbourhoods or they could be killed. It’s the underbelly of the United States, it’s a sick place and Trump has played into this – he has allowed people with racist ideas and attitudes to have a party. He has emboldened people. I was on the freeway one day while he was still president, and there was a white guy in a pickup truck who got behind me and I am going like 70 miles per hour, and he started to bump my car from the rear. I had to manoeuvre to the side of the road so this crazy motherfucker would not run me off the road – and thank goodness I am a good driver, I passed a driving test in Paris, France right next to these crazy French drivers, so I know how to manoeuvre. It’s real, it’s real.

“So I am always on guard when I go out, I am always aware, but I love this city! I can’t think of another city that I could be in. My eldest daughter lives in Los Angeles and she and my son-in-law, they want me to move to LA, they are ready to build a wing onto their home so I can live with them. I ain’t ready for that shit! I’m still an individual, I have my life to live and I want to live it my way! And they are like, ‘We’re worried about you being on your own,’ and I said, ‘Listen, I am a grown woman and if I am meant to die down here, and die at the hands of some crazy motherfucker, so be it.’ I am not going to change my life and my spirit and walk in fear – especially after all that I went through, and was part of in the 1960s, supporting the Panthers and all of that, NO!”

Turning her attention to jazz today, she observes: “The music seems to be all over the place, an extension of what is going on in the world. A number of younger musicians are blending their music with other musical forms, I look to the trumpet player who I mentored, Theo Crocker, who now has a wonderful career, who hitherto was into hip hop and electronica, all these other musics that he is blending into his music, or I look at a Robert Glasper who is now being nominated for Grammys [and winning them – Ed] in the R&B contemporary music arena, as well as jazz.

"Our legends are dying, we lost Chick, we lost Wayne, Herbie is 84, the legends are of a certain age, and you see music in general is turning into other things. It’s difficult to categorise where the music is heading, I think that’s in all genres – look, we’ve got the Country and Western arena that has had to open up to African-American artists because Country and Western is based on the blues, so we’ve got all this stuff going on and I’m excited that I am alive to witness it, and even be a small part of it! When I come on the stage at Cheltenham they’re going to see Dee Dee Bridgewater with an American pianist and two Italian musicians.

"When America is one of the stronger jazz countries, that makes quite a statement!”

This article originally appeared in the May 2024 issue of Jazzwise. Never miss an issue – subscribe today