Interview | Ranee Lee @ Centaur Theatre – Viva la Diva!

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Any town with a decent jazz scene has at least one good diva of popular song. In Montreal few, if any, would dispute Ranee Lee’s claim to that title. For this ’vocal musician” (her term), the year now ending marks two milestones in her life—the first being her 80th birthday this past Oct. 26, the other marking her arrival in the city half a century ago for her local debut at Hotel Bonaventure.

In the years since she took up residence in Montreal, the American jazz singer and musician built a career that also included acting, teaching and being a television host. Not one to sit back idly for too long, Lee returns to the stage in the weeks to come for two performances at the Centaur Theatre in Old Montreal on Dec. 16 and 17. Rather than indulging in the usual holiday fare, she will reprise her highly acclaimed stage performance/musical play Dark Divas, first presented in 1999.

When asked how she will present this work anew, Lee first recounts the backstory: “In the beginning, it was conceived as a play, the subject being the lives of seven jazz vocalists as told through some of their signature songs—for instance, Stormy Weather, a Lena Horne evergreen. The initial idea dawned on me just like that, early one morning in 1994, at a time when I was not doing too much, but looking to do something of a theatrical nature again.”

Known to all as a class-act songstress, the Brooklyn-born Lee was once a musical polymath who played saxophone and drums in her pre-Montreal days, danced on stage, then turned to acting in plays. In the 1980s, she landed her first big theatrical break by starring in the stage production of Lady Day at the Emerson Grill, a tribute to the great Billie Holiday she claims really kickstarted her career.

“At the time of the Divas première,” recalls Lee, “the title was a bit unsettling for some, given that reference to colour, but to me it was more than an issue of complexion, but of identification and perception of African American female vocalists of that era. In developing the story, I first put a long list of names together before whittling it down to seven, each one represented on the program by three of their staple tunes.” In addition to Horne, Lee’s final choices were Josephine Baker, Billie Holiday, Pearl Bailey, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald.

Photo: M. Slobodian

For her upcoming engagement, Lee will present the show as a musical tribute rather than in its original theatrical form, but will provide spoken-word interludes between numbers. While being front and centre of this production, the singer will be ably assisted by a seven-piece band of Montreal stalwarts. “Rick Wilkins, a Toronto arranger, wrote the original score,” says Lee. “It’s so much fun to play, and well written, too.“ Over the years, the personnel has varied considerably, but its musical director, trumpeter Ron Di Lauro, has been on board since Day 1. Rounding out the rest are André Leroux (sax), Mohammed Abdul al Khabyyr (trombone), John Sadoway (piano), Dave Watts (bass) and Guillaume Pilote (drums) —plus Carlos Jiménez (guitar), standing in for the singer’s late husband Richard Ring.

Because Lee has no intention of making her curtain call any time soon, these two shows are but another chapter in an ongoing musical journey she wishes to pursue as long as she can.

Now in its second century, jazz sports so many important historical figures that cast a large shadow over every aspect of the music, including for female vocalists who have to reckon with a Holy Trinity of sorts in the persons of Lady Day, Ella (Fitzgerald) and Sassy (Sarah Vaughan).

When put on the spot and asked if she could pick one over the other two as a sentimental favourite, Lee tries to deflect at first, before finally casting her vote for Vaughan.

“Of the three, I only saw Sarah live, just once in New York and when I was very young,” she says. “Many years later, I found out she could actually cover three octaves, from the lower mezzo range right up into that of a natural soprano. Yet there was more to it for me than her vocal prowess; it was her way of telling a story so expressively and with plenty of nuance and shadings in her voice. Mind you, it would have been tempting to just follow in her footsteps and become a clone, but I had to be me, and I think I reached that, not only on my own wits and abilities, but by drawing on so many more influences, some of whom were Carmen McRae, Abbey Lincoln, even Nina Simone, to name only a few.”