
Dee Dee Bridgewater
Dee Dee Bridgewater (née Denise Garrett, May 27, 1950) is an American jazz singer and actress. She is a three-time Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, as well as a Tony Award-winning stage actress. For 23 years, she was the host of National Public Radio's syndicated radio show JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater. She is a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization.
Born Denise Eileen Garrett in Memphis, Tennessee, she was raised Catholic in Flint, Michigan. Her father, Matthew Garrett, was a jazz trumpeter and teacher at Manassas High School, and through his playing, she was exposed to jazz early on. At the age of sixteen, she was a member of a Rock and R&B trio, singing in clubs in Michigan. At 18, she studied at Michigan State University before she went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. With the school's jazz band, she toured the Soviet Union in 1969.
The next year, she met trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater, and after their marriage, they moved to New York City, where Cecil played in Horace Silver's band. In the early 1970s, Bridgewater joined the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra as lead vocalist. This marked the beginning of her jazz career, and she performed with many of the great jazz musicians of the time, such as Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Max Roach, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Wayne Garfield, and others. She performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1973. In 1974, her first solo album, entitled Afro Blue, appeared, and she performed on Broadway in the musical The Wiz. For her role as Glinda the Good Witch she won a Tony Award in 1975 as "Best Featured Actress", and the musical also won the 1976 Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album.
She subsequently appeared in several other stage productions. After touring France in 1984 with the musical Sophisticated Ladies, she moved to Paris in 1986. The same year saw her in Lady Day, as Billie Holiday, for which role she was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award, as well as recording the song "Precious Thing" with Ray Charles, featured on her album Victim of Love.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she returned from the world of Pop and Contemporary R&B to Jazz. She performed at the Sanremo Music Festival in Italy and the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1990, and four years later, she finally collaborated with Horace Silver, whom she had long admired, and released the album Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver. Performed also at the San Francisco Jazz Festival (1996). Her 1997 tribute album Dear Ella won her the 1998 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album, and the 1998 album Live at Yoshi's was also worth a Grammy nomination. Performed again at the Monterey Jazz Festival (1998). She has also explored on This Is New (2002) the songs of Kurt Weill, and, on her next album J'ai deux amours (2005), the French Classics. ...
Source: Article "Dee Dee Bridgewater" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Known For | Acting |
---|---|
Most Rating | 0.437 |
Birthday | 1950-05-27 |
Place of Birth | Memphis, Tennessee, USA |
Also Known As | Denise Eileen Garrett, |

2015

Billie Holiday: A Sensation
8/2
A documentary about the legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915-1959). There exist many myths and legends about the Jazz Singer Billie Holiday — o...
Watch Now
Billie Holiday: A Sensation

2007

Go West: A Lucky Luke Adventure
6.2/100
The Daltons have escaped to New York, where their accumulated loot is hidden in the carts of Monsieur Pierre's group of honest, naive European immigra...
Watch Now
Go West: A Lucky Luke Adventure

2007

Dee Dee Bridgewater "Motherland"
0/0
Watch Now
Dee Dee Bridgewater "Motherland"

2004

Dee Dee Bridgewater Sings Kurt Weill Live At North Sea Jazz Festival
6.5/1
This program features a live concert performance by jazz vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater including such songs as This Is New and Lost in the Stars.
Watch Now
Dee Dee Bridgewater Sings Kurt Weill Live At North Sea Jazz Festival

2013

Dee Dee Bridgewater - Jazz Open Stuttgart
4.8/2
Watch Now
Dee Dee Bridgewater - Jazz Open Stuttgart

2023

Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes
0/0
The Drum Waltzes explores the life and music of legendary drummer, activist Max Roach, his creative peaks, personal struggles and re-inventions from t...
Watch Now
Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes

1975

Everybody Rides the Carousel
5.8/5
Everybody Rides The Carousel invites the viewer along on eight "rides" through the different stages of life. Based on the work by Erik Erikson, one o...
Watch Now
Everybody Rides the Carousel

2014

Dee Dee Bridgewater - Jazz in Marciac
4.5/2
Watch Now
Dee Dee Bridgewater - Jazz in Marciac

2016

Jazz at the White House
0/0
This All-Star Global Concert at the White House features performances by Joey Alexander, Terence Blanchard, Kris Bowers, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Terri Ly...
Watch Now
Jazz at the White House

2002

Im Herzen des Lichts – Die Nacht der Primadonnen
0/0
Watch Now
Im Herzen des Lichts – Die Nacht der Primadonnen

2017

Pure Love: The Voice of Ella Fitzgerald
8/2
Ella Fitzgerald's voice is a phenomenon and unrivalled to this day. She had the perfect pitch and perfect intonation. Ella's voice spanned three octav...
Watch Now
Pure Love: The Voice of Ella Fitzgerald

2010

Dee Dee Bridgewater - Live in Antibes & Juan-Les-Pins
5.8/2
Watch Now
Dee Dee Bridgewater - Live in Antibes & Juan-Les-Pins

1998

It's Not About Love
0/0
Raoul Peck directed this French-German-Haitian drama set in Manhattan where medical examiner Chase Dellal (Geno Lechner) isn't happy with the diminish...
Watch Now
It's Not About Love

2006

Play Your Own Thing: A Story of Jazz in Europe
0/0
A comprehensive history of European Jazz, exploring the origins of the US-influenced Jazz clubs after the Second World War, the first steps independen...
Watch Now
Play Your Own Thing: A Story of Jazz in Europe

1979

The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh
5.6/13
The Pittsburgh basketball team is hopeless. Maybe with the aid of an astrologer, and some new astrologically compatible players, they can become winne...
Watch Now
The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh

1984

The Brother from Another Planet
6.7/86
An alien slave crash-lands in New York City while being pursued by two Men in Black bounty hunters. His attempt to find a place for himself on Earth p...
Watch Now
The Brother from Another Planet

1983

Night Partners
7/1
Elizabeth and Lauren are two Bakersfield housewives who volunteer to help the local police by working with crime victims to help catch criminals.
Watch Now
Night Partners

2017

Jazz Open Stuttgart 2017 - Festival of World Stars and Child Prodigies
0/0
Watch Now
Jazz Open Stuttgart 2017 - Festival of World Stars and Child Prodigies

2017

Quincy Jones & Friends - Live at Jazz Open Stuttgart
0/0
Back in 2017, at the Jazzopen Stuttgart Festival, the great Quincy Jones put on a show that elicited many rapturous standing ovations from the capacit...
Watch Now