Dianne REEVES (Jazz Hot 623)
Taking the Winding Road Home

By Josef Woodard


There was a time, not so long ago, when Dianne Reeves was a singer adrift between musical worlds. The native of Detroit (born 1956), who grew up in Denver, was weaned on jazz, pop, gospel and even classical music. She headed west to Los Angeles in the '70s, a time and place not very friendly to any form of jazz without a hyphen attached (i.e. pop-jazz, Latin-jazz, soul-jazz, etc.). She was also the cousin of George Duke, with whom she worked and no doubt gleaned ideas about watering down jazz for larger public consumption.
Over the years and the projects and shifts in commercial jazz trends, Reeves steered away from the straightahead jazz, and has earned a reputation as a singer without a center. Still, there was never any doubt that Reeves possessed a powerful, flexible and beautiful controlled voice, or that her list of heroines includes Sarah Vaughan as much as Flora Purim.
To her credit, Reeves has come home to her jazz roots in the new century, at the same time other jazz vocalists have drifted away from the pure jazz muse. Since 2000, Reeves has released the albums In the Moment: Live in Concert (suitably titled), the orchestra-lined The Calling: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan (2002), the subtle reinvention of standards on A Little Moonlight (2003) and even an agreeable jazz Christmas album, Christmas Time is Here (2004). She has heeded the calling
Fittingly, especially in her newer, jazzier temperament, Reeves was involved an active role in the Ellington centennial year, singing with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony, conducted by Daniel Barenboim. A tour with orchestra backing for The Calling drew her closer to the orchestral tradition, and she was granted the position of Creative Chair for Jazz by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a new position which gives her power over programming and policy in an organization interested in expanding its jazz connection.
But the real test still comes onstage, on any given night in performance. In concert in California this spring, Reeves came to the job with an ideal blend of abandon and just enough preparation to hang an aesthetic on. Trumpeter Terrence Blanchard, a regular collaborator with Reeves, was a special guest, an added voice atop the rhythm section of pianist Peter Martin, bassist Reginald Veal and drummer Gregory Hutchinson. Martin and Hutchinson are regulars in her working band, and Veal has played with her in the past: all onstage rose to the occasion, giving fresh heat to standards and keeping collectively loose on Reeves' African-flavored inventions, often conjured up on the spot.
Dogmatically loose and naturally in command, Reeves gave burnished treatment to the band's re-harmonized versions of "Skylark" and "You Go To My Head," and leapt fearlessly into the light-footed bop rush of "That's All." She glided with ease from an extended version of "Twelfth of Never" into a nameless Afro-groove, with Blanchard's tasteful riffs interlacing with Reeves' own wordless forays. A listener couldn't help but conclude that a great jazz singer had arrived back home.

Jazz Hot : How long have you been in Denver?
Dianne Reeves : I grew up here and returned here in the early '90s, after living in Los Angeles for a long time, and also in New York.

Do you think this is your landing spot, your home from here on out?
Oh yeah. I love it here. I loved Los Angeles, but I spent my life in my career. I get back there quite often.

Your career has been an amazing ride, and quite diverse. I assume that's all part of your general plan to keep up a multi-faceted musical life?
Well, I think it's just a matter of staying true to myself. I love music. For me, I always say that jazz has always been my foundation. That's where I started. But it has also been the thing that has allowed me to do all kinds of things. I don't break it up into genres. I just look at it as music. I really enjoy doing all kinds of things.

I've talked to many jazz musicians who say that, as a stylistic center, it's a great launching point into other styles, for going in different directions-more than other disciplines. Do you feel that way?
Yes. I think jazz helps you to understand and respect other kinds of music. You start to feel the terrain or the place that you're in, and you react accordingly. That's the thing I love about improvisation. I think that's what brings out that kind of spirit in you. You wouldn't necessarily sing a jazz riff through a gospel tune, and vice versa. Of if you're dealing with Brazilian music, you feel the music and where it is and what it is, and address it accordingly, over the rhythms and so forth.
That's what I love about jazz musicians always wanting to climb into different places and become a part of what that is, to experience that.

I like that term "reacting accordingly," which is the essence of jazz. You have been working with your trio on a regular basis. Is that intimate format something that allows for the freest expression on your part, compared to, say, an orchestral context?
Absolutely. I love it. I always have to return to the trio setting at different times in my career, because it's always a place to find out what you have and also as a launching point into something else. I love the musicians that I'm working with, because they're really creative. The music has a real rich spirit. I love it because we trust each other and there's a kind of intimacy that allows for us to feel each other without knowing where we're going. There's this intuition there.
That's what happens when you have a band, but when you have a band this small, it's really like that. People are coming up with ideas and things change from night to night, so I'm always anxious to get onstage, because I never know what it's going to be like.

So you're never just going through the motions?
Never.

You do seem to have a real rapport with this group (pianist Peter Martin, bassist Ruben Rodgers, and drummer Gregory Hutchinson). What is your history with them?
Probably going on four years now. And it works.

You have also included Terrence Blanchard in the mix of your band, as an added voice, and have worked on his project as well. There must be a strong musical connection there.
Oh yes. Terrence and I have worked together many, many times, and it's always magic. I've worked with a lot of musicians from New Orleans, and they have that kind of sprit, being in the moment and creating. They're very respectful and responsive to one another. It's always exciting to work with another voice, and we feed off of one another.
The most important thing before we hit the stage is that I like to have dinner with my band. That's when everybody gets crazy, around the dinner table. We talk and we're easy with each other. And that whole attitude goes right onstage.

So life feeds into art and back and forth?
That's right. It should.

I've been listening to A Little Moonlight. What a beautiful album. Obviously, we've heard these tunes cou9ntless times in the past, but you deliver a fresh take on them. I assume that's what you were aiming for when you launched into that project?
Yeah, at least my take on them. Hopefully, that will be fresh. They're all songs that I like.

I was driving along listening to Thelonious Monk's "Reflections," and suddenly there was that disorienting sense of "where are we," as you slip into an unexpected modulation towards the end.
Yeah (laughs), a little bebop change in there.

This album came out in 2003, right around the time when the whole question of jazz versus pop vocalists was starting to percolate. But this album definitely makes the statement "I am a jazz singer."
Oh yeah. I've been accused of so many other things-things that now are really cool (laughs). You just do your thing.

So you avoid the static in the margins?
Yeah, really.

But it does seem that you've really come home to jazz in recent years.
I think so. I think I've come full circle. That's not to say I won't venture into other things. I love where I am, because I love celebrating the trio.

Speaking of which, your most recent project with them as the core group was a Christmas album. It may, in fact, be one of the finest jazz Christmas albums in memory. How do you view that project?
I think is probably my favorite record. We had so much fun in the studio. Christmas music only has a short shelf life, but I thought of it as a record that could last throughout the year. I have to tell you, I thought about changing some of the lyrics to some of those songs, because it just feels so good. It's the first record in a long time that I actually produced.
We went in and, once again, we had a very short amount of time to do it, but we did it and it was exciting. There were all different kinds of elements on it. We expanded on the trio in a way. We had a couple of guests-(guitarist) Romero Lubambo, and (vibist) Joe Locke. We took some Christmas songs and swung them into a whole other place. It was just fun.
For the next record, I'm writing some and arranging things and just trying out stuff. But I think it will have that traditional jazz element there, although we will expand upon that.

Do you feel like that traditional jazz approach is your milieu at the moment?
Yeah, right now, it feels really good. One thing about it is that it's not something you can just walk in and decide to do. It's something that takes time and conviction. It's like anything else. You can sing Brazilian music, but you can't really be into it unless you commit to it. That's the same way I feel about jazz. I just really like where I am right now, with the music.

Did you always have big ears growing up, checking out a lot of different musical directions?
Oh yeah, always. There were a lot of musicians I my family. Growing up, there was all this amazing music being played in the house. My sister is ten years older than me, so I got all the music she was into, as well as what I liked as a kid. And then there was my father, who played amazing records. There was this maturity in music that I got a chance to hear. I had aunts and great aunts who were performers and pianists, and of course, George Duke (a cousin). I have an uncle, Charles Burrell, who was a bassist with the Symphony.
I hung out in all of these different places with them. My great aunts were singing all that music from the early 1900s, with all those double entendres. In retrospect, I realized that some of it was the raunchiest music I ever heard (laughs). I didn't know then. In listening to all of those things and the approaches informed my music. And then, growing up here in Denver, Colorado, I remember when the first black radio station came on the air, playing the music of Motown. That was really powerful.
Then I would listen to people like Smokey Robinson and the Temptations talking about jazz musicians. At that time, the lines between the music was so blurred. People respected and stepped into each others' places. It was wonderful, because it was done with respect. You could tell that the roots were strong and where it all came from. There was none of this division of music.
Then Miles Davis came out with Bitches Brew. My father was a big Miles Davis fan, and he loved Blue Mitchell. He loved trumpet players. Blue Mitchell ended up living in Denver for awhile, and I worked with him. One of my first club dates in high school was with Gene Harris in a club. I worked on the weekends. I've been working in clubs for a long time, experiencing music. My uncle is a classical bassist, and also a very fine jazz bassist, who was in the Navy with Al Grey and Clark Terry. They all knew each other.
I grew up in Detroit, part of the Burrell family, and right down the street from Kenny Burrell, who always says that we're cousins. There are a couple of Burrell families in Detroit.
There was just this rich community of places to go and people to be with, and so it felt really comfortable here in Colorado, a place where people don't really think there was a jazz community, but there was. A lot of musicians came through here.
When I decided to move on, I went to California, and there was a very strong jazz community there. I worked a lot. I knew Louie Bellson and would go do gigs with him and Jimmy Rowles. The music at the time was this fusion-oriented, this mixture of Brazilian music and L.A. at the time had a very strong Latin thing. I was in all of it, and that was in order to survive.
I just loved it. I loved that it was all open to me. It was open to me and I loved the idea that I wasn't inhibited. I recorded with this group called Caldera, very Latin-oriented music. I had never really sung it. The only albums I'd heard in that style was Sarah's and Flora (Purim's) Stories to Tell. So the approach was there, to just feel it and do it. It opened up my life. I just believe in music without boundaries.

Were there particular jazz singers you heard who pulled you in that direction? Obviously, Sarah Vaughan was one.
Oh, absolutely. Also, I loved Betty Carter. The first time I ever experienced her was at Hop Singh's. My band and I were always going around listening to people, and they said `man, you've got to come listen to this woman.' So I go down there and listen, and I had almost a religious experience. I was destroyed. At the same time, there was something about her that I recognized in myself. I'd never experienced that before. After that, I saw ever show that she did. I was right there.
It was the first time I had ever seen a singer stand in a band and have the band be co-creators. They'd be an extension of her sound and would accompany like they would a horn player. I loved that, and I immediately knew I had to have that. She used to do this thing with time. I would think `oh, she's not going to catch up. She's four bars back...' And I remember trying to do "The Man I Love" like that. I counted it off real slow. Shoot, by the time he came to me, I was lost.
She inspired me a great deal. I love that she had such a unique sound and she wanted to do it her way. With all the jazz singers, one of the things you really see when you hear them all sing the same songs is that you've got to have your own voice. She was really the best representation of that idea.
I listened to her, and I loved Carmen McRae. She was accessible, being in L.A. I would go listen to Blossom Dearie. There was a place on Washington, upstairs, around Culver City where I would hear her.
I also listened to all kinds of other vocalists. Growing up, I was listening to Chaka Kahn and Aretha. There were reasons why I liked all of them. I think a lot of that ability to listen to them in different ways came from listening to Sarah, because she was the one who opened me up to the idea that there are so many possibilities with voice, and that voice is beyond the instrument. It's like something inside. That's why everybody can express things in a different way.
So I really listened to a lot of music. And I listened to instrumentalists the same way. I was very much into Cannonball Adderley. I loved Nina Simone, who would come to Los Angeles. Any singer who would come to L.A., I was there. Joe Williams...

Betty Carter was such a strong person, artistically and otherwise. She wouldn't take any guff from the industry or anybody. Did she inspire you on that level, as well, beyond just music?
Oh yeah. It's all the things you just said, that you've got to dare to be yourself. Through her, I understood the power of people like Nina Simone, who was another one of those who created a legacy that you could really understand, and through that could understand who she was as a person. With Betty Carter, she was the one who was no-holds-barred-"this is how I do it, this is how I roll, and I will deal with the consequences that I have to deal with in order to have the freedom of my voice." She's self-made and I've always really respected that. I've always viewed myself the same way.

Are you an admirer of Abbey Lincoln's work?
I love her. I love her courage. I love that she's just so wise in her music and the things she talks about in her songs. They're so real. Certain artists create their own "a book according to..." She is definitely one of them. It's very clear who she is as an artist.

Do you feel that this is a strong period of your musical life?
I really do. I do because I'm in a period when I can actually make choices. I love it because I can create things that maybe, ordinarily, I couldn't have done in the past. For instance, I'm going to go on tour with two guitarists, which I'm excited about. That's with Russell Malone and Romero Lumbabo, two totally different people from totally different parts of the world. I have a great love and affinity for both of them. We've worked together before, and here we'll be on the stage together. I'm really looking forward to that.
I'll probably go into the studio in the fall and start working on another record, with originals and arrangements. I haven't decided. I'm in a place where it's like a sketch in my head. I'm just working on it.

You have managed to walk this line, where you're commercially accepted but also stay true to yourself, artistically. Was that always your highest goal?
Always, and I see that in retrospect. When I went out to Los Angeles, I was really young. I had a big voice that allowed me to do a lot of things. From the very beginning, I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I was very clear about what I didn't want to do. So, as I moved forward, I realized that I wanted to do it in a way that was really honest for me.
In a lot of ways, I haven't garnered the big commercial success of selling millions of records, but my life is good and I feel good about what I do.

You've got it all, then.
Yeah. Early on, I realized that you have to define success for yourself.