She was born in Memphis, Tennessee, at a time when her divine elders (Ella, Sarah, Dinah) were at their triumphant best. Today, Denise Bridgewater is Dee Dee to everyone... She was still very young when she began singing along with her mother to records by Ella Fitzgerald; her father, Matthew Garrett, was a trumpeter who also taught music at Manassas High School in Memphis, and he numbered George Coleman, Booker Little and Charles Lloyd amongst his pupils... each summer, he also played in Dinah Washington's orchestra, and Dee Dee's interest in music comes mainly from her father.

She began her carreer singing in clubs at Clinton, Michigan, and at 16 she was a professional, part of a vocal trio singing rock and rhythm'n'blues. At 18, at Michigan State University, she was in saxophonist Andy Courtridge's group, and in 1969 she went to the University of Illinois, where she was noticed by John Garvey, the University's Jazz Band Director, who hired her for a tour. In November that year she visited the then Soviet Union, and the following year she met her first husband, Cecil Bridgewater. When he was hired by Horace Silver, the couple moved to New York.

In 1971 Dee Dee joined the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, where she was to stay for four years. But even then her talents were sollicited by others: Sonny Rollins, Pharoah Sanders, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Cecil McBee among them, and Max Roach, with whom she gave life to the Freedom Now Suite (she succeded Abbey Lincoln) at St.Peters's Church in New York. Dee Dee can also be heard on records by Stanley Clarke (Children of Forever), Roland Kirk (Prepare Thyself to Deal with a Miracle), alongside another singer, Jeanne Lee), Frank Foster (The Loud Minority), Buddy Terry (Lean on Him) and Norman Connors (Love from the Sum).

In 1974 she appeared in the musical The Wiz and made her first recording for Atlantic, Dee Dee Bridgewater, with guitarists Melvin Wah Wah Ragin and David T.Walker, drummer Ed Green etc. In 1978 there appeared the Just Family album (Elektra-Asylum), produced by Stanley Clarke, with Chick Corea & George Duke (pianos), Ray Gomez (guitar), Eddie Gomez & Alphonso Johnson (string and electric basses), Airto Moreira (percussion).

In 1984, thanks to another musical, Sophisticated Ladies, Dee Dee came to the attention of Paris, where she decided to settle. Two years later, she played the role of Billie Holiday in the show Lady Day, first in Paris, then in London and Hamburg.
Her first album to be made in France was Live in Paris , released in 1987, which opened a whole new carreer for her with a French public who quickly adopted her. Maybe she had paid her dues with a big band in the United States, but it was with a trio that she became popular throughout France.

In 1989 Polydor released the Victim of Love album containing a duet with Ray Charles, the song "Precious Thing"; it went to the top of the chart. In 1991, she co-starred with Archie Shepp in Black Ballad, directed by Frank Cassenti, and the same year saw the release of a live album recorded at the Montreaux Festival, also on the Polydor label. The next year, 1992, she was a guest star appearing with McCoy Tyner Big Band at the Antibes/Juean-les-Pins Festival.

James Barnel

DEE DEE BRIDGEWATER - DISCOGRAPHY

 

Afro Blues (Trio records)

Dee Dee Bridgewater (Atlantic)

Just Family (Elektra)

Bad for Me (Elektra)

Dee Dee Bridgewater (Elektra)

Live in Paris (Justine)

Victim of Love (Polydor) incl. "Precious Things" with R.Charles

Live in Montreux (Polydor)

Keeping Tradition (Polygram Jazz / Verve)