Dee Dee Bridgewater


Denise Garret was born in Memphis, Tennessee to a trumpet-playing father and a mother whose passion was centred on Ella Fitzgerald. At 16, she joined an R’n’B trio who performed in Michigan, where she later completed her university studies. In 1969, she embarked on a breakthrough tour of the Soviet Union with the University of Illinois Big Band. 1970 marked her meeting with her first husband, trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater, and her New York debut with one of the city’s top jazz orchestras.
   
In the years that followed Dee Dee Bridgewater, as she was now called, played with the likes of Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon and Max Roach, blazing her way into the top circles of the jazz world. Her first eponymous album in 1974 arrived the same year she sang in the Broadway musical “The Wizz”. A year later she grabbed a Tony Award for her interpretation of the good witch Glinda in “The Wizard of Oz”.
   
Dissatisfied with life in the Big Apple, Bridgewater moved to France in 1986. Her professional career did not slow down, however. She gave a prize winning performance as Billie Holiday and, in 1989, gained further plaudits for her duo with Ray Charles “Precious Things”. Eight years later, she fulfilled a life-long dream with a homage to Ella Fitzgerald, “Dear Ella”, an album which took a Grammy Award.
   
Always looking for new challenges in her life, Bridgewater released another homage, this time to Kurt Weill in 2002. In 2005, she brought out “J’ai Deux Amours”, devoted to the classic French repertoire. Her interest in humanitarian causes has also led her to becoming Honorary Ambassador to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation. In 2006, she embarked on a project to help underprivileged women musicians in Mali. This led to a show she called “Jazz Meets Africa” which was first presented in November at the Music dei Popoli Festival in Florence, Italy. A year later the album Red Earth was released on the DDB Records label, to a mixed reception. In May 2007, the 57-year-old was awarded the prestigious French title Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Bridgewater is the mother of three children, one of whom, China Moses, has established herself as a rapper.

March 5th 2008

Daniel Brown

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