When Dianne Reeves was a teenager, she subbed in for Ella Fitzgerald at the last minute – a claim to fame that not many high schoolers can boast.
Reeves was working at a jazz club in Denver, and Fitzgerald was playing the club’s upstairs room reserved for the larger acts that came through the city. Reeves was able to see Fitzgerald perform and was absolutely blown away by her talent. But, according to Reeves, Fitzgerald didn’t take too well to the altitude change in Colorado. When the jazz legend couldn’t perform the next day, Reeves took the stage in her stead – quite literally, stepping into Ella Fitzgerald’s shoes.
“Her wardrobe was still up in the club in the dressing room,” Reeves said. “I just remember seeing these little shoes that she had with a short heel. I always remember, because they were periwinkle blue. So I put the shoes on [laughs].”
Reeves has come a long way from that teenager wearing Ella Fitzgerald’s shoes to become a jazz legend in her own right. She has won five Grammy Awards, received honorary doctorates from Berklee College of Music and the Juilliard School, and even appeared in George Clooney’s 2005 film “Good Night, and Good Luck.”
From May 24-26, she’ll appear at the Atlanta Jazz Festival, joining the likes of Derrick Hodge, Ravi Coltrane, Joe Gransden, and more.
Reeves was born into a multi-generational, musical family in Detroit – a family which includes her uncle, the classical and jazz bassist Charles Burrell, who will celebrate his 105th birthday in October. Even the members of her family who weren’t musicians had impeccable musical taste, so Reeves was always listening and learning.
“I had great aunts and all of that around, all celebrating the music that they loved,” she said. “I got the history of how the music that I liked came to be, just from listening to their music.”
While attending George Washington High School in Denver, she sang in a choir where the conductor would allow the students to sing contemporary songs, which further amplified Reeves’ love for jazz and singing. For a while, she studied classical voice at the University of Chicago, but eventually she moved to Los Angeles in 1976 to pursue a career in music.
While most of her career has been spent on the stage, Reeves has periodically gotten the chance to work in other artistic mediums, like film. In 2005, she appeared as a jazz singer in the film “Good Night, and Good Luck,” directed and co-written by George Clooney.
“He wanted the music to be performed live in the film, which was really exciting to me,” she said. “He said, ‘This music is best served live, so just like the actors will be delivering their lines, you will be delivering the songs.’ It was incredible.”
Reeves was excited to take the job, but curious about how she came across Clooney’s radar in the first place. The answer? Clooney’s aunt Rosemary Clooney. Years before, Reeves had shared a dressing room with the 1950s singer and actress at a show at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion in Los Angeles. Reeves made quite the impression.
“We sat up and laughed and talked the whole time,” Reeves remembered. “They had to come and get us to do our parts onstage. It was this short, very powerful, wonderful experience that stayed with me, but I didn’t ever think that it would stay with her.”
Reeves describes herself as learning in the “living schools” of jazz, meaning that she learned by being on the stage. There was, of course, Burrell, who was extremely influential in introducing her to jazz in the first place. One of her other favorite mentors was the trumpeter Clark Terry.
“He invited all kinds of young people to be a part of his band and surrounded them in the most fertile soil they could ever be in by using masterful jazz musicians in his band,” she said about Terry. “That part was really wonderful.”
Now that she’s so established, Reeves has started taking on the mentor role herself. Recently, she took part in Rolex’s mentoring program, working for two years with the South Korean jazz composer and singer Song Yi Jeon. She said she enjoys being a sounding board for young singers just starting in their careers.
The biggest question she gets, she said, is how to make a song uniquely your own.
“Everybody can have an incredible instrument,” Reeves said. “But it’s your voice, that part of you that interprets the song, that sees the world in a certain way, that is the most important.”
