#NEW JAZZ SKAT FEMALE ARTIST FULL#
Even as she turns 91 this month, Bazzle shows no sign of letting up, and the physical energy she emits from the stage is still there in full force. Still performing today, she is a frequent headliner with her own backup band at Snug Harbor in the heart of the Frenchmen Street. She is also a supporter and faculty member of the annual Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong Jazz Camp held every summer for aspiring young musicians. She retired from teaching in 2008 but continued her musical career, singing regularly with the Saint LouisĬatholic Choir and the New World Ensemble, as well as in nightclubs throughout the city. Her earliest musical influences included Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billy Eckstine.Īfter graduating from Xavier University of Louisiana, Bazzle worked as a teacher, including many years as choir director and music appreciation instructor at Xavier Prep. Her formal musical education began when she was 12 and enrolled at Xavier University's Junior School of Music.
Coming from a musical family, she began playing the piano by ear at a young age. Yet another recent honor came her way on March 5, 2020, when city officials proclaimed it "Germaine Bazzle Day."īazzle was born in New Orleans and grew up in the city's culturally rich 7th Ward. In 2015, Bazzle received OffBeat's prestigious Lifetime Achievement in Music Education Award. Over the past 30 years, Bazzle has reaped multiple honors, including four Big Easy Awards from Gambit for Best Female Performer and two Best of the Beat Awards from OffBeat magazine for Best Contemporary Jazz Vocalist and Best Female Vocalist in 19, respectively. She has recorded two albums of her own in 19 and has been credited as a collaborator on more than a dozen other albums between 19. A few of them include Lee Dorsey, Charles Brown, Red Tyler, Johnny Adams, Ellis and Wynton Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, and DeeDee Bridgewater. "Swinging at Snug" Album Ī long-time educator with over a 50-year teaching career, Bazzle has shared the stage as a featured performer with more luminaries than it is possible to list. From that moment until the present, she knew that the word "retirement" was not in her vocabulary. However, when asked to come up and perform at a Father's Day event at which an old friend was playing piano, she didn't hesitate. In an article written by Keith Spera for the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate in April of last year, Bazzle said that the pandemic was forcing her to retire, and she wasn't envisioning making a comeback. She has been a regularly scheduled performer at nearly every Jazz Fest since it began in the early 1970s.Īt ninety-plus years old and still singing, Germaine, for a brief time, thought she might have been over and done, according to other sources.
She will very likely be the oldest (or one of the oldest) performers among the hundreds scheduled to appear at the seven-day music and cultural event. Germaine Bazzle will be one of the headliners for opening day of this year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival at the Fair Grounds Race Course on Friday, April 28. Her repertoire of other songs that she also performs live appears to be limitless. Born in 1932, ironically the same year the song was first performed and recorded, Germaine has sung the song hundreds-perhaps even thousands-of times over a very long career.Īnd whenever she does, as she will very likely do at her upcoming Jazz Fest gig, she will give it her own distinct interpretation, further jazzing up the lyrics and the scat portions and sometimes even mimicking the sounds of horns with her unique vocal dexterity. Local jazz fans, however, will recognize it as the signature song of the woman known as "The First Lady of New Orleans Jazz," Germaine Bazzle. It premiered in January 1932 with the Ellington big band accompanying singer Ivie Anderson and, soon afterward, it was made famous by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.
Jazz fans will recognize this catchy phrase and the scat style in which it is sung as a Duke Ellington composition from the early 1930s. Live at Jazz Fest on Friday, April 28, WWOZ Jazz Tent | 2:50-3:50 p.m.
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