Freda Payne
In a world where you can bet your last money that everything must change, one thing that hasn’t is that lovers of serious singing in any genre still love to come home to the voice and the visage of Ms. Freda Payne. As iconic in 2014 for her timeless beauty and sex appeal as she is her artistic versatility as an all around entertainer, she remains among the industry’s brightest shining star survivors. Better still, when she is singing her heartbeat music, jazz, love, awe and yearning only grow stronger. Her latest album, Come Back To Me Love – her first for Mack Avenue Records – marks not only a return to the brassy big band and sumptuous strings-laden classics from the very beginning of her recording career on Impulse! Records in 1963, indeed, it marks a return to her beginnings period as the company is based in her hometown of Detroit. That makes this knockout 14-song CD of Grammy-winning arranger Bill Cunliffe’s amazing music – from the breezy vibeskissed Kenny Rankin waltz “Haven’t We Met” to the lonely evening fireplace musings of “Lately” - the most beautiful of homecomings.
“It’s a dream come true,” Ms. Payne enthuses with a smile as bright as the smile The Temptations’ chirped about on “The Way You Do The Things You Do” in `64. “Just like back in 1968 when I was living in New York seeking my fame and fortune, and ran into Brian Holland of Holland-Dozier-Holland who told me they had just left Motown and started their own company, Invictus Records. I flew back to Detroit, signed with them and a year later had a Top 5 record, ‘Band of Gold.’
So signing to Mack Avenue Records with Gretchen Valade and Tom Robinson today is truly serendipitous – a flashback to something really good happening for me at home in Detroit, my good luck charm. It’s the springboard I can always come to replenish like a phenix rising.”
Thinking back on how this sweet opportunity arose, Freda continues, “I don’t get back to Detroit as often as I used to when my sister Scherrie and I were coming back and forth to look after our stepfather, Sam Farley, and his bar Farley’s Collingwood Lounge on Rosa Parks Blvd. He passed in 2001. Many years later while bassist Ralphe Armstrong and were on a local big band gig together, he told me about an intimate jazz club in Grosse Point, MI, with great food saying, ‘You should work there.’ I made the contact and that’s when I met Gretchen and Tom. Six months later I did a return engagement and they asked me to sing a song for a documentary on Gretchen – ‘When I Have To Smile.’ Then they asked if I’d like to record an album for their label, Mack Avenue. That made me feel very special.”
That album became Come Back To Me Love featuring six selections penned by Gretchen and Tom (including the title track, “You Don’t Know” and “I Should Have Told Him”) paired with eight selections of golden favorites such as the torchy “I Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out To Dry” and the blues boiler “I’d Rather Drink Muddy Water.” When asked who she would like to be her right hand she called upon a more recent associate of hers, Los Angeles-based Bill Cunliffe.
She’d first hired him to accompany her in her acclaimed “Ella: The First Lady of Song” engagement at Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood followed by another in Palm Springs at the Annenberg Theater. “I told them Bill was at the top of my list,” Freda insists. “They along with A&R man Al Pryor vetted him out and agreed. Bill is an excellent musician, easy to get along with and respects my ideas. We work things out very well together.”
Though best known for her 1970 R&B crossover smash “Band of Gold” (it spent 20 weeks on Billboard’s “Top 100 Singles” chart, peaking at #3, and was #1 for 6 weeks in the U.K.), Freda Payne has always first and foremost been a jazz singer dating back to The Jimmy Wilkins Big Band at 14. Her debut album After The Lights Go Down Low And More (Impulse – 1963) was arranged by Manny Albam while a more pop-oriented follow-up entitled How Do You Say I Don’t Love You Anymore (MGM – 1966) was helmed by saxophonist/arranger Benny Golson. Ms. Payne performed at the Apollo Theater up in Harlem alongside Billy Eckstine backed by Quincy Jones and His Orchestra, comedian Redd Foxx and the dance team Coles & Atkins. She also graced the stage with Duke Ellington for two nights in Pittsburgh, shortly after which he composed “Blue Piano” just for her. Freda Payne’s training, experience and caliber across the decades have rendered her a rare vocal artist that is stylistically beyond category. This is brilliantly showcased within the repertoire of Come Back To Me Love.
The album is split between powerful big band jazz and classy contemporary pop with strings. “Gretchen and Tom’s material was offered as part of the project,” Freda explains. “They sent me a few CDs of about20 songs and asked Bill and I to pick. I’d go to Bill’s - sit and listen – and we got them down to the six best for us. It was the combination of the musicality and the lyrics that got me…all about love in all its dimensions: falling in love, falling out of love, needing to be loved and coming back to love: ‘I just have to know do you really want and love me or should I just stop wasting my time!’ ‘Whatever Happened To Me’ deals with the insecurity. All of these reflect what people go through in life, including me. Their songs are the most commercial of the album. A couple could even go pop.”
For the remaining eight selections, Freda picked longtime favorites that she’d always wanted to do, all but one of which she’d never recorded or performed before. That exception was “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most,” done here in a breathtaking piano and vocals-only pairing. It’s just the tip of a heartpiercing iceberg. “I remember ‘Midnight Sun’ from Lionel Hampton,” she says. “I was once a band singer with him and got to know him and his wife Gladys. I’ve heard everyone from Sarah Vaughan to Natalie Cole do it as well as instrumentals. When I first went to Oslo, Norway in the `60s, I experienced the midnight sun - in the land where it actually happens! And I remember ‘Save Your Love For Me’ from when I first went to New York City and heard Cannonball Adderley’s version with Nancy Wilson. That song always stayed with me because it talks about somebody truly in love confessing their love.”
Asked if much has changed since those first 1963 jazz recordings in her birthday week in September and the lady marvels, “Wow…in `63 I was nervous as hell - uptight and pushing too hard to be perfect. This time I felt like I was in Heaven. I was in Capitol Records Studio A (another company she recorded pop and disco for in the mid-`70s) with 40 musicians - strings, horns, vibes and harp – singing over impeccable arrangements. I was much more relaxed and secure within myself. One of my favorite vocal performances is ‘The Island’(from the musical pens of Brazil’s Ivan Lins and Vitor Martins with English lyrics by husband and wife team Alan & Marilyn Bergman). The song is so intimate, sexual and spiritual all at the same time. The sound of Bill Cunliffe’s orchestration just enveloped and transfixed me... I was taken to another place and just went with it in my vocal.”
Throughout the CD, the undeniable influence of Freda’s inspiration, Ella Fitzgerald, is adoringly audible. “Ella’s voice is one I have admired since I was 12 years-old.” she shares, “pristinely precise, pure and perfect. When she sang something as written, she had a dreamy easy listening voice. But when she scatted and improvised, it was like listening to a seasoned horn player.” Musing on the singers she admires today, Freda enthuses, “Adele stands on her songwriting and vocals alone - no gimmicks, no selling sex or wild dancing. She just stands there with a nice cocktail dress – knee-length – and sings. And she’s a great writer. I also like this young girl Ledisi who can sing out into the stratosphere…like a combo of Patti Labelle & Chaka Khan all wrapped into one. She’s a strong talent who has not even reached her peak. Kurt Elling is an excellent jazz artist. And, of course, I love the voice and writing of Gregory Porter who I’m just getting to know.”
An avowed advocate since 1973 of yoga master Bikram Choudhury who swears by her alkaline water, Equinox Gym and sensible eating (but with wiggle room to enjoy her favorite meals), Freda Payne remains one of the most beautiful women in music as well as the world. “The length of time and suffering I’ve occasionally gone through could get pretty rigorous,” she laughs, “but Bikram calls it ‘paying dividends into the insurance policy of your longevity!’” The payoff is that on any given night, Freda Payne can be found out on the hippest of scenes for all the finest philanthropy events, theatre, concerts and happenings – still eliciting fawning and awe from several generations of fans. In 2008, longtime friend Quincy Jones invited her to perform at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Soaking it all in, Ms. Payne surmises, “I see my legacy in show business as being one of survival, having a profound love for the art of performing, and maintaining a consistent air of class about myself.”
Further inspired by dynamic individuals such as President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and “queen of all media” Oprah Winfrey, Freda’s “bucket list” consists of starring in a Broadway musical about Ella and finally winning that elusive Grammy. With her Mack Avenue Records debut, Come Back to Me Love – an album on which every instrumental solo seems played as if by someone who had a crush on her at some point across the years - Ms. Freda Charcelia Payne won’t just be swinging on a star…she’ll be clutching that golden Victrola for this finest of her jazz releases – with more of the best still yet to come.