Interviewed by Bill Reed (Los Angeles)

Last summer on a jazz radio outlet, I heard a singing voice that I couldn’t place, no matter how intently I listened. Lorez Alexandria? Gloria Lynne? I didn’t think so. A little too wild for either of them. And as the blistering-tempo side spun on, I came no closer to identifying this mystery singer. Was this some new, hip jazzette on campus? Probably not; this lady knew too many secrets of the rarified art of jazz singing. As she got down to the finish line I turned the volume up hoping that the deejay might reveal her true identity. For once the radio guy didn’t let me down; he actually announced the record just played: If I Were a Bell, from the new release by Francine Griffin, out of Chicago, on the Delmark label."

Francine who?

This year marks the 46th anniversary of the Chicago jazz label Denmark Records, its now-massive catalog marked by a binary tendency to record mostly avant-garde artists, e.g. Sun Ra, the Art Ensemble of Chicago; and blues musicians, Magic Sam, Jimmy Dawkins, and Big Joe Williams. Thus, until recently, its list has never been darkened with the addition of a single album by a jazz vocalist. It’s a position based on both economic and aesthetic underpinnings:

"We've long noticed that most jazz fans have one or two favorite vocalists but are more open to artists on axes other than the human voice. Lots of trumpet or tenor or piano or what-have-you but I haven't met many collectors who had large libraries of vocalists," observes Delmark owner-founder, Robert Koester. "We get besieged with tapes from vocalists, sometimes terrible, sometimes good."

But no one so promising as to cause Delmark to abandon its anti-singer bias. That is, until last year when Koester heard Chicago-based singer Francine Griffin at the city’s Green Mill, and learned that in 1991 she had begun recording an album at the old P.S. Studio but had not completed it. Delmark picked up her master, arranged for additional recordings, and brought it up to full CD time.

Francine Griffin’s career arc is the familiar one of, just as things start getting good, hanging it all up in favor of marriage and motherhood. But the singer had kept her hand in, working with jazz musicians passing through her home town of Cincinnati, where she resettled in the 1960s: "I wasn’t getting paid when I sang with cats like Wynton Kelly, Sonny Stitt, Miles, Dizzy, or Coltrane," she told a writer for Jazz Times recently, but that’s how I kept up with what’s going on. Dizzy always told me to come to New York, but I couldn’t go because my kids were too small and I didn’t want to raise them there." Thus, I wrote in my eventual review of her CD, The Song Bird: "Francine Griffin is making her solo recording debut at an age when most undiscovered singers are filing away their 8" by 10" glossies for good."

I first spoke with Griffin a bit later on (July 4, 1999), when I phoned her for some background to include in my Songbirds magazine review of her CD. Fortunately, I recorded our conversation.

Songbirds: The first time I heard you sing was a few months ago on radio I thought you must be someone new, someone young that I’d had never heard of before.

Griffin: I’m a senior citizen. Betty Carter and I were coming along at the same time. She got the breaks and I didn’t. That’s how it happens sometimes.

Songbirds: She didn’t really get that many breaks.

Griffin: She had a hard time. But I remember when we were out there at the same time trying to get established. I went underground. She stayed out there and struggled with the system and finally made it. We were not really close but we knew each other. [Jazz singer] Jimmy Scott was the one who really helped everyone. I keep in touch with him.

Songbirds: Your daughter is your manager?

Griffin: Sometimes. The freelancing, the hustling, that’s over with. If they don’t know what I can do by now, I’ll go undercover again. Underground. When they announce me at club, sometimes they’ll say that I’m one of the last great jazz singers of that era. When I think about it, it’s the truth, because most of the people who sing in the style that I do, they’re just not with us anymore. I try to sing like a horn. I was always listening to saxophone players, mostly Sonny Rollins. I love Sonny Rollins.

Songbirds: What turned you on to jazz when you were a youngster?

Griffin: I grew up with it. My father played fantastic piano. He also had a fantastic ear for the people who were the roots of and the best of the people in jazz. We had albums by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Billie Holiday. This was in Cincinnati, Ohio. I didn’t even know who I was listening to at the time. I just liked the beat that was under the music. It was different than the blues, which was also always around. When I was fifteen I bought my first ticket to a show, to go and hear Duke Ellington. At the Taft Auditorium where a lot of the major acts played. I was the only one out of my group, the crowd of girls that I hung around with, that went to hear Ellington. I enjoyed it so much. I just kept listening and listening to music and getting on amateur shows. By the time I was seventeen-and-a-half, I put my age up a little and became a [chorus singer and] dancer at a famous club in Cincinnati called the Cotton Club. A lot of groups out of New York used to come there and play. People like Billy Eckstine, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie. Frank Foster had a band, and I used to go up and ask him if I could sing. He was local, won a scholarship and went out-of-town, and later I learned he joined Basie. I would sing at the Cotton Club… see, the Cotton Club… the musicians would hear me on some of the songs. I didn’t particularly try to sound like anyone else. Just singing the songs I was learning. I was learning all of the Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald tunes. Or a song I knew that the band was playing.

Songbirds: This was in the final days of that kind of entertainment, wasn’t it? Nightclub with a floor show, a comedian? When people like Billy Eckstine came in, he would kind of fill a slot around which the rest of you had a regular thing going?

Griffin: Then I went on the road with a package: comedian, tap dancer, shake dancer [a highly energetic, scantily-clad dancer that was de rigeur on most African-American variety bills, circa 1930-1960], blues singer, jazz singer, emcee. We would play theaters and clubs. It was supposedly for segregated audiences, but there where whites who would come there anyway. It was so long ago I can’t even remember the names of any of the places. But I can tell you who was in them. Brother Jack McDuff, Little Jimmy Scott, shake dancer Caldonia, Big Maybelle. I wasn’t really out there, but I was out there. I remarried. By then I had kids and my family cared for them. My aunt used to take care of my kids. They’re not going to keep the kids but just so long. That makes it hard to get a grip in the entertainment field. You have to be out there all the time.

Songbirds: Was your husband involved in music?

Griffin: My second one was a baritone player. His name was Don Harris. Griffin is my maiden name. Incidentally, he’s the one that picked out some of the tunes for the October ‘98 recording date on my album. He passed the day I went into the recording studio. That was really hard. I was trying to get out so I could get to Cincinnati to see him. We weren’t together anymore, but we were real good friends. I was going to finish the record then go over to Cincinnati to the hospital where he was dying of lung cancer. But I couldn’t make it in time. He’s the one who picked out some of the songs. Inside a Silent Tear, You Won’t Forget Me. I’ve got a picture of [legendary jazz reed player] Eric Dolphy and him at the house. I sat in with Dolphy. Coltrane. There’s also a picture of Dolphy and me on my album.

Songbirds: There’s also a photo of you and [jazz vocalese pioneer] King Pleasure. You worked with him.

Griffin: When he would be in Cincinnati he would look for the best vocalist to handle those [female] parts that he had on some of his recordings. He had tried out a couple of other ladies that came to the club. I was in retirement then. I had gone underground again and wasn’t taking any gigs. Babe Baker’s Jazz Corner. I came in and they introduced me to him. I sang for him, he hired me and that’s how it got started. Anytime there’d be gigs. I do all those things like Red Top. Then I’d do other songs. I worked with him about three months on and off. He was born in North Carolina but moved to Cincinnati. He was kind of spacy. Real weird sometimes, the way he would talk and act. He had his own ways about himself. Sometimes he was nice; at other times very cranky.

Songbirds: Do you know what motivated that behavior? Bitterness?

Griffin: I don’t know. He would never talk about that. He just had a strange way about himself. Like he wanted people to stay away from him.

Songbirds: He had this supposed religion called Planetism. Did you ever hear about that?

Griffin: That was something he made up himself.

Songbirds: Was it a put-on? Was he serious?

Griffin: He said he was a scientist. After he did Parker’s Mood, they said he predicted Bird’s death. After that, he took off on that.

Songbirds: A goof.

Griffin: Yes!

Songbirds: You said Don Harris was your second husband. Who was your first marriage to?

Griffin: His name was Ishaq Hameed. He was the one who brought [composer, arranger, bandleader] Tadd Dameron to the house. He knew all the hip people. Everybody said, "Tadd is in town. Tadd is in town." He didn’t mean anything to me one way or the other except that I knew that he had written If You Could See Me Now. Jack McDuff used to say, "This little girl sings the hardest songs I have seen in my life." I would keep singing Gloomy Sunday, Body and Soul with all those chord changes and the musicians would be struggling with it to try and play that stuff. I worked throughout the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties in my home town of Cincinnati. There were a lot of musicians coming through those jazz clubs. I was considered that city’s top jazz vocalist. That’s how I got to meet [pianist] Wynton Kelly, I sang with him and [bassist] Paul Chambers. About half the time I was a paid performer, the rest of the time I sat in. There would be a bill like [alto saxophonist] Sonny Stitt, he was the star attraction and I would be featured. Sonny would teach me things. Tell me what I was doing wrong. There was [tenor saxophonist] Gene Ammons with whom I sat in a lot. I would sit in with Dizzy a lot. I would hang out backstage when Ella would be performing so I could learn how to swing. My school was on the stage. All of these famous giants that I used to go up to and say, "Let me sit in, let me sit in." And they would look at me and say, "How old are you, girl?" I was about 17. I would say, "I’m 22." "Well, okay, what you gonna sing?" "I’m going to sing Body and Soul." "Well, what key you gonna sing it in?" I’d give ‘em a key and they would look at each other. "Uh… well, let her come on up. She knows her key." There were some people they would stop in the middle of a song on. Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt would do that. When they got ready to close her down they’d go [sings "Shave and a haircut, two bits"]. Right in the middle of a song. They never did that to me. I was so bold. I did the same thing with Charlie Parker in Cleveland. He let me sing because the night that I asked could I sit in, Tadd Dameron’s brother was with him, his name was Caesar. He told Bird, "She’s a really good singer." That’s all I needed. The man in the club didn’t want me to sing. "Bird, I don’t want no more singers." When he told Bird that, Bird just called me up to sit in all that much more. I sang one tune, The Nearness of You. I came off and we were standing around talking. The man walked over. It was a gangster club. I don’t know why they thought they could run a segregated club… at first. I don’t know how they thought they could have a segregated club with people like Miles Davis coming in there and no black clientele. They bossed ‘em around really bad. They would let you know they were the owners. They’d strut around in their three-piece suits. That guy walked up and told Bird, "I don’t want no more singin’, Bird." After I did the first number. Bird called me back up for several nights running all the sets. He was so defiant. If I hadn’t known what I was doing, the owners of the place would probably have shot me in the middle of the tune.

Songbirds: Did you have regular sidemen that you liked to work with regularly?

Griffin: There were people that I worked with regularly like Woody Evans, and Samuel Jackson, not the movie star. All Cincinnati people.

Songbirds: You don’t sound like any other singer. Maybe I hear a lick or two that you’ve "stolen" from a horn player…

Griffin: That’s great. That’s great. I don’t want to sound like anybody. But it’s not exactly true that I don’t copy anybody. On the new album I purposely ended It’s Crazy like Ella’s version. But I did it as a tribute. It’s note for note.

Songbirds: She’s a totally different kind of singer from you.

Griffin: When I was a little girl I listened to her all the time. When she and Ray Brown were still married I went backstage to listen to her and got just as close as I could get to them on the stage. A friend of mine was a writer who had a press pass. Standing behind the curtains at the Taft Auditorium. Ten feet away and I could hear the bass real good and Oscar Peterson. I could always hear the different things that I could hear in my head but I wanted to swing over the rhythm and under the rhythm. And I learned it in one night by listening to her. Everything she did. But I have never tried to sing like her. But the rhythm patterns and the bass patterns… Like the guy [tenor saxophonist] Dexter Gordon played in the movie Round Midnight… "You’re never going to swing unless you listen to the bass. Listen to the bass!" I think music all the time throughout the day. I was never fortunate like Betty Carter to have a regular group of musicians that I could play with. Ones that I could tell to be quiet, lay back and listen and let me do the driving. This opportunity with Delmark is the first opportunity I’ve had to be left alone. I’m highly critical of my singing.

[On the subject of another singer, Griffin was quoted in the August, 1989 issue of the Jazzgram, published by the Jazz Institute of Chicago, as saying: "I met Billie Holiday about a year before she died, at a birthday party they had for her in New York. There were a lot of entertainers there. I was so glad to meet her that I almost went to kiss her. And it seemed like she knew it; it seemed like she… melted like the way I was looking at her. She really didn't believe that other people thought so much of her. Then somebody said to Billie, ‘This little girl is one of your daughters,’ meaning that I was someone that had followed in her style. Although she must have known that there were other people who had followed in her style, I don't think she quite… believed the impact she had. At the time, there were people out there like Anita O'Day and Peggy Lee and Doris Day who later confessed that they tried to sing like her. I'm so emotional sometimes that I guess it just comes out. And she was just astounded. I talked to her as if I'd known her for a long time."]

Songbirds: For back-up on The Song Bird you’ve called upon the services of some of the Second City’s finest musicians: the rapidly emerging pianist, Willie Pickens, arranger-trombonist Paul Schmidt; and tenor and alto saxophonists Hank Ford and Mike Smith. I noticed that the dates on the tracks are pretty far apart: 1991 and 1998. Is there a story there?

Griffin: Yes, there is a story there. I didn’t have the money to finish it after I came back from Israel in 1991. I was over there doing a jazz festival with Wilbur Campbell, the drummer on the ‘91 sessions. When I came back I started out on the album, doing a few tracks at a time, paying for it myself. The older tracks I tried to sell to record labels but nobody was interested. I was told that nobody listened to jazz singers unless it’s Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae. Delmark wasn’t interested the first time. Until ‘95, ‘96 after so many people kept telling them about me. Also [prior to the release of The Song Bird] I recorded a few guest tracks with Jodie Christian, who’s on Delmark. Those [1991 tracks] were in the can until I picked it up again. I produced the early tracks myself. Robert Koester and Paul Seranno did the later ones. Finally I finished it in October ‘98. Delmark is interested in doing a second album. I hope I have a little more time on the next one. But I’m right at the stage where I’m not really interested in whether things go one way or the other. I’m kind of in between. You don’t get disappointed. I’ve retired four times and every time I’ve done that somebody has come and pulled me back out again.

Songbirds: What have you done for day gigs over the years?

Griffin: I was with the Chicago Jazz Institute until three or four years ago. We did programs for the school teaching youngsters jazz appreciation. You catch a few but the majority were into hip-hop and rap, a few into rhythm and blues. Jazz was foreign to them. When my family was growing up I was driving the big buses for the CTA, running department stores, working for the city, working with the handicapped. I’m a well-rounded type lady.

*****

Several months later I called Griffin to tell her that an online pen-pal of mine had spotted her CD in a rather far-flung locale. He had bought it on instinct, which was repaid a thousand times over. He wrote, in part, "She seems to have been around for quite some time but hasn’t recorded much. She can swing like crazy and appears to have had a really good time making this album."

When I read this to her, she almost yelped: "Wow! My CDs are available in South Africa!" After talking with her this second time, I believe my first instincts were correct: I think it's going to "happen" for Francine Griffin. Little by little, to paraphrase the a Greek platitude, the sack is being filled. She just turned down an overly strenuous, to someone of a certain age (hell, mid-to-late sixties), overseas tour. And it’s definite: She's just signed to do that second album for Delmark. Griffin revealed to me that the 1998 sessions for her album The Song Bird were cut with no rehearsal, no charts, almost in real time. "Just think what I could've accomplished with time and money." She wants the next one to be perfect. My suspicion is that it will be.

Review of Francine Griffin’s The Song Bird