By Donald True Van Deusen
Jeanie Kaye is the kind of singer who brings new life to old standards. She
is also a charter member of "One Voice," a charming collaborative of top
local female singers that devotes time and tunes to innumerable good deed
efforts over the past 10 years. She will become the focus of one of those
efforts in a celebration of her considerable skills at a benefit-tribute
featuring some of this town's finest singers plus a jam session and
refreshments for $15 March 22 from 4 to 8 P.M. at the 23rd Street Cafe, 233
N. 23rd Street.
Although still able to work various local gigs (such as every first and
third Friday at the Hidden River Cafe, 3572 Indian Queen Lane, in East Falls)
Ms Kaye has had enough medical problems lately to get her a starring role in
ER. It is her singing, however, not her ailment s being recognized this
Sunday.
She was a mainstay for 12 years at Carolina's (now closed) on 20th
Street. I recall her sitting in the window singing encouragingly to a street
person who happened by every night just for the little nod and smile she gave
him while singing in the bar. I remember another night at the Hidden River
Cafe with just a keyboard player behind her, she was singing, "There's a
someone I'm longing to see, I hope that he, turns out to be, someone to watch
over me." You wanted to hug her.
Ms Kaye's music sense comes naturally. Her dad was a dance band tenor sax
player in the 1930-40 era and she took up the alto sax and played in the high
school band later listening to Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and Louis
Armstrong. She was born in Norristown, reared in King of Prussia. She raised
three daughters on her own after her husband left. She put her music dreams
on hold until they were teenagers before starting singing with a local dance
band in 1976. Ella, Sarah, Sinatra, the usual suspects, are her favorites.
Gradually she worked with bass player Bunch Hammond, who told her,
"Philadelphia should hear you." So she came to town in 1984, working with
him at Dirty Franks and Cafe Nola with a piano player named Larry LaBes. Rudy
Jones, a tenor sax man, joined them and they became "a family" with her in
the role of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" with her big brothers looking out
for her. They worked at Liberties for some 10 years, developing that kind of
instinctive rapport that comes from not merely playing together, but becoming
one. When Hammond died in 1989, they called the group, Bunch Hammond's
Friends. Larry LaBes still works various gigs with her as he has since 1984.
Ms Kaye picks songs she feels at home with, wants to decorate, live in
and return to. The way she sings them, you want to live there too.
