Rita Coolidge, two-time Grammy-winner best known for pop songs such as “Higher and Higher” and “We’re All Alone,” has returned to her first love.
And it might surprise you, because her first love is jazz.
In the 1970s, she recorded a jazz record, “Out of the Blues,” with Barbara Carroll. Then came the drought from “Blues” to 2005’s jazz record, “And So Is Love.”
“It wasn’t me,” Coolidge said. “There were 100 record companies saying, ‘I don’t think so. Jazz doesn’t sell very much. After you’re established, we’ll talk about it.’”
Her role models had been Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Nancy Wilson and Billie Holiday.
“It was the intimacy of their voices and how well-matched the music was for their voices and their interpretations of the songs. It wasn’t just the tone. It was that different spark of life in their interpretation,” Coolidge said.
After college, Coolidge sang commercial jingles, toured as a backup singer with Delaney &Bonnie and recorded with Eric Clapton and Stephen Stills. Then she married actor-singer Kris Kristofferson, and their album “Full Moon” became a country chart-topper. (The couple divorced 25 years ago.)
“I’m not a country singer. I just married country by recording records with Kris … but jazz really draws me in and I’ve got to find my place in there for it to be credible,” she said. “I have to really trust in the process and that I know what I’m doing by now.”
So she’s made the record she always wanted to make, and included two Peggy Lee songs.
“Peggy was my first influence. I came from a tiny town in Tennessee, and her music was the first music other than church music and mountain music that I heard. I had an aunt who brought a Peggy Lee album back from a trip to Nashville. I think I was 3. It changed my world.
“It’s still such a vivid memory. All of a sudden I knew what I wanted to do. It just felt familiar to me. The tone of her voice resonated with me.
“Now I think, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing to make people feel that way? The way I felt when I listened to Peggy Lee?’”
| 4 and 7 p.m. Sunday, The Skagit, I-5 exit 236, Bow; $30; 877-275-2448. on |
In the past, Coolidge has performed with her sister and niece as Walela, exploring their Cherokee roots. She hopes to do that again.
“It was a powerful form of expression for a lot of people, especially native people, and was so well embraced,” she said.
In the Cherokee nation, older women are revered, an unexpected link to the jazz world. Female jazz singers seem to get better with age, and jazz audiences are willing to let them age with grace.
“Maybe that’s why they make jazz records! I don’t ever plan to stop,” said Coolidge, 60. “The jazz world is extremely kind to singers. It doesn’t think there is a (maximum) age like pop and other forms of music.
“There’s actually a consciousness in the jazz world that you can always grow and it’s not about a visual image, it’s about the music.”
Rita Coolidge performs two shows Sunday at The Skagit in Bow.
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