{"id":6441,"date":"2015-02-23T17:55:35","date_gmt":"2015-02-24T01:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=6441"},"modified":"2015-02-23T22:16:52","modified_gmt":"2015-02-24T06:16:52","slug":"freda-payne-at-jimmy-maks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2015\/02\/freda-payne-at-jimmy-maks\/","title":{"rendered":"Freda Payne At Jimmy Mak’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

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At the Portland Jazz Festival, Freda Payne reached into her jazz, pop and soul background for the ingredients of an eclectic evening. Her performance summarized a career that began in the 1950s when she was a Detroit teenager. Payne appeared at Jimmy Mak\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, a club near downtown that serves as an official festival venue. Playing to an audience overflowing with standing listeners, she worked with a \"Payne,<\/a>quintet led by the veteran Portland drummer Mel Brown. Payne opened her late set with Cole Porter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s classic standard \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d Be So Nice to Come Home To\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (1943) moved to Kenny Rankin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 1991 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t We Met?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d then Hampton and Burke\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Midnight Sun\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (1947). Her intonation tended toward flatness early in the proceeding, but settled as the concert progressed.<\/p>\n

Buoyed by the Brown rhythm section\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s drive, Payne intensified the feeling as she moved on to Merle Haggard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Whatever Happened to Me?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and Styne and Cahn’s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I Guess I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll Hang My Tears Out To Dry”. Bassist Ed Bennett and pianist Clay Giberson were Brown\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rhythm accomplices. Tenor saxophonist Rob Davis and trumpeter Derek Sims rounded out the band. Davis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s solo on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Midnight Sun\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was a high point. <\/p>\n

A welcome touch: Payne made it a point to credit the composers and lyricists of all the songs she sang, a nicety that Frank Sinatra also practiced in his concerts. She skillfully managed the rhythmic subtleties required to be convincing in the Ivan Lins Latin standard \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Island.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Possibly encouraged by the fellow SRO standee who yelled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Woo-woo\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in my ear following every song, she called on her immersion in soul and blues in a closing tryptich of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d Rather Drink Muddy Water,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Save Your Love For Me\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153St. Louis Blues.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Payne’s passion and authenticity in the idiom have earned her the respect of several generations of jazz musicians. One of them is bassist Christian McBride, who invited her to sing two songs in his band’s concert two nights later. In Payne’s gig at Jimmy Mak’s, Sims\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flugelhorn solo on the blues all but brought down the house. It was so—well, so bluesy—that I was tempted to join in with the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Woo-woo\u00e2\u20ac\u009d guy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”sV2F4GLfaSN7Jbm7LWt4SpIIM6yemqqC”] At the Portland Jazz Festival, Freda Payne reached into her jazz, pop and soul background for the ingredients of an eclectic evening. Her performance summarized a career that began in the 1950s when she was a Detroit teenager. Payne appeared at Jimmy Mak\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, a club near downtown that serves as an official festival […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}