StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Dee Dee Bridgewater goes back to Memphis

This week, StLJN's video spotlight shines on singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, who will be in St. Louis to perform next Saturday, November 17 at the Sheldon Concert Hall.

Long known as one of the top female jazz singers of her generation, Bridgewater went in a different musical direction for her most recent album, Memphis... Yes, I'm Ready, which came out last year and features her takes on famous soul and blues tunes associated with her hometown.

On the album and on tour, she's accompanied by a eight-piece band dubbed the Memphis Soulphony, configured like a vintage show band with rhythm section, horns, and background singers. Though Bridgewater's interpretations of the material mostly are faithful to the spirit of the originals, she and the band add some of their own touches to both update and personalize the material.

You can see and hear what that's like starting with the first clip up above, which features Bridgewater and the Soulphony performing two tunes, "Giving Up" and "Going Down Slow," recorded June 22, 2018 at the Royal Theatre in Victoria, BC, Canada.

After the jump, you can see Bridgewater's recent appearance on NPR's "Tiny Desk Concert," recorded April 2, 2018 at NPR studios in Washington, DC. The three-song set includes "Hound Dog," "Why (Am I Treated So Bad)?" and "B.A.B.Y.".

Next, you can check out Bridgewater and company doing an extended version of "The Thrill Is Gone," as recorded in March of this year by an audience member at the Blue Note Hawaii.

If those samples have whetted your appetite for more, you then can check out two full sets of Bridgewater's Memphis show, as performed in May 2018 at Ronnie Scott's in London, and an earlier iteration of the show from August 2017 at the Montclair Jazz Festival in New Jersey.

The final video is a short biography of Bridgewater, produced by the National Endowment for the Arts last year when she was named an NEA Jazz Master.

For more about Dee Dee Bridgewater and her tribute to Memphis music, read her interviews from last year with DownBeat and with Jazz Times.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...