Jean Kaye Brings New Life To Old Standards

By Donald True Van Deusen (borrowed from "all about jazz" - http://www.allaboutjazz.com/articles/phil0401.htm)

Jeanie Kaye is the kind of singer who brings new life to old standards. She is also a charter member of "One Voice," a charming collaborative of top local female singers that devotes time and tunes to innumerable good deed efforts over the past 10 years. She will become the focus of one of those efforts in a celebration of her considerable skills at a benefit-tribute featuring some of this town's finest singers plus a jam session and refreshments for $15 March 22 from 4 to 8 P.M. at the 23rd Street Cafe, 233 N. 23rd Street.

Although still able to work various local gigs (such as every first and third Friday at the Hidden River Cafe, 3572 Indian Queen Lane, in East Falls) Ms Kaye has had enough medical problems lately to get her a starring role in ER. It is her singing, however, not her ailment s being recognized this Sunday.

She was a mainstay for 12 years at Carolina's (now closed) on 20th Street. I recall her sitting in the window singing encouragingly to a street person who happened by every night just for the little nod and smile she gave him while singing in the bar. I remember another night at the Hidden River Cafe with just a keyboard player behind her, she was singing, "There's a someone I'm longing to see, I hope that he, turns out to be, someone to watch over me." You wanted to hug her.

Ms Kaye's music sense comes naturally. Her dad was a dance band tenor sax player in the 1930-40 era and she took up the alto sax and played in the high school band later listening to Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. She was born in Norristown, reared in King of Prussia. She raised three daughters on her own after her husband left. She put her music dreams on hold until they were teenagers before starting singing with a local dance band in 1976. Ella, Sarah, Sinatra, the usual suspects, are her favorites.

Gradually she worked with bass player Bunch Hammond, who told her, "Philadelphia should hear you." So she came to town in 1984, working with him at Dirty Franks and Cafe Nola with a piano player named Larry LaBes. Rudy Jones, a tenor sax man, joined them and they became "a family" with her in the role of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" with her big brothers looking out for her. They worked at Liberties for some 10 years, developing that kind of instinctive rapport that comes from not merely playing together, but becoming one. When Hammond died in 1989, they called the group, Bunch Hammond's Friends. Larry LaBes still works various gigs with her as he has since 1984.

Ms Kaye picks songs she feels at home with, wants to decorate, live in and return to. The way she sings them, you want to live there too.