Freda Payne, the celebrated R&B and jazz vocalist, who shot to fame with her #1 Hit, “Band of Gold,” and “Bring the Boys Home,” also pays tribute to the legendary Ella Fitzgerald, as no one else can!
When one singer pays tribute to another, you often learn as much about the object of veneration as about the performer carrying the torch. So it is with Freda Payne’s celebration of Ella Fitzgerald. That Ms. Payne can even begin to duplicate Fitzgerald’s scat-singing interludes attests to her formidable technique and swing roots. (In the half-decade before the pre-disco “Band of Gold” Ms. Payne recorded jazz albums and understudied Leslie Uggams in the Broadway show “Hallelujah, Baby!”)
Payne, the star of such Broadway shows as Jelly’s Last Jam, Sophisticated Ladies and Blues in the Night, “recreates the spirit of Ella” with her renditions of “A Tisket, a-Tasket,” “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “It Don’t Mean A Thing.” and “Mack the Knife,” as well as many other of Fitzgerald's classic signature songs, concentrating on the numbers that lean more toward jazz than toward the standards on Ella's songbook albums.
That Ms. Payne can even begin to duplicate Fitzgerald’s scat-singing interludes attests to her formidable technique and swing roots. But for all their similarities of tone and phrasing, you rarely feel that Ms. Payne is channeling Fitzgerald or consciously trying to imitate her. Her touch is heavier, and her personality and singing earthier. Where Fitzgerald planted herself on the stage like a monument and snapped her fingers as the rhythm jetted from her like water from a stone fountain, Ms. Payne never seems detached from the physicality of singing, which owes much to her extensive Broadway show experience
When one singer pays tribute to another, you often learn as much about the object of veneration as about the performer carrying the torch. So it is with Freda Payne’s celebration of Ella Fitzgerald. That Ms. Payne can even begin to duplicate Fitzgerald’s scat-singing interludes attests to her formidable technique and swing roots. (In the half-decade before the pre-disco “Band of Gold” Ms. Payne recorded jazz albums and understudied Leslie Uggams in the Broadway show “Hallelujah, Baby!”)
Payne, the star of such Broadway shows as Jelly’s Last Jam, Sophisticated Ladies and Blues in the Night, “recreates the spirit of Ella” with her renditions of “A Tisket, a-Tasket,” “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “It Don’t Mean A Thing.” and “Mack the Knife,” as well as many other of Fitzgerald's classic signature songs, concentrating on the numbers that lean more toward jazz than toward the standards on Ella's songbook albums.
That Ms. Payne can even begin to duplicate Fitzgerald’s scat-singing interludes attests to her formidable technique and swing roots. But for all their similarities of tone and phrasing, you rarely feel that Ms. Payne is channeling Fitzgerald or consciously trying to imitate her. Her touch is heavier, and her personality and singing earthier. Where Fitzgerald planted herself on the stage like a monument and snapped her fingers as the rhythm jetted from her like water from a stone fountain, Ms. Payne never seems detached from the physicality of singing, which owes much to her extensive Broadway show experience