Freda Payne at Blues Alley

Freda Payne
Blues Alley
Freda Payne
Washington, DC
January 26, 2025

Blues Alley kicked off its 60th anniversary celebration with a special treat: multi-gold-record performing artist Freda Payne, the "Band of Gold" gal who captivated the pop charts back in the early '70s with her soulful serenade to lost love. Good news to report: Payne looks great, sounds better and makes the transition from pop songstress to American songbook chanteuse with equal measures of style and aplomb. And did I mention she scats?

Yep, having toured the country with her own Ella Fitzgerald show, directed by the late great Maurice Hines, Payne hit all the notes and then some in this foray into vocal improvisation. From the opening strains of Cole Porter's soothing "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To," Payne sang and scatted her way thru a delightful evening, ably accompanied by pianist Chris Grasso, Amy Shook on bass and Lenny Robinson on drums.

Decked out in fetching grey sequins, Payne channeled Fitzgerald all night long, adding a scat solo to just about every up-tempo tune in her repertoire. Trading licks with Grasso on Kenny Rankin's "Haven't We Met," which segued smoothly into another rainy day tune, the John Williams-Marilyn & Alan Bergman movie theme "Make Me Rainbows." Things got funky when the band turned to the title track from Payne's compilation album Lost In Love (Universal Special Products, 2000), proving she still had her R&B chops. Next up, the bittersweet "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" showed off Payne's melancholy ballad side, like a worldly-wise reflection back to the heartbreak rendered in "Band of Gold."

The ghost of Fitzgerald took a front row on two Fitzgerald standards: "(If You Can't Sing It) You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)" and "Give Me the Simple Life," scat decathlons that Payne moved through with ease. She cooled the room down with a brace of blues numbers: Nancy Wilson's "Save Your Love For Me" and the W.C. Handy chestnut "St. Louis Blues." Equally earthy and soulful was the touching "Fifty Percent," from the Broadway musical Ballroom (1978), which rounded out the slow dance portion of the evening.

Things got back up to speed with Payne's happy covers of Alberta Hunter's "Two Fisted Double Jointed Rough and Ready Man" and the ragtime treat "Sweet Georgia Brown." Reminiscing on her Motor City roots with the Holland-Dozier-Holland team of hit makers, Payne offered up a medley of Detroit hits, culminating in her two gold records on the Invictus label: the Vietnam War protest song "Bring the Boys Home" and, before that, the aforementioned chart-topper "Band Of Gold."

At an age when many pop vocalists have hung up their Shure SM57s and settled back into retirement reverie, Payne is still out there, delivering a song with heart and soul. "Now that you're gone," she may have intoned to begin her chart-topping career some sixty years ago. Lucky for us, Payne is most assuredly not.

Comments