Fast facts
- Billing
- Freda Payne
- Discipline
- Vocalist — jazz, soul, Broadway
- Honors
- Two-time Grammy nominee
- Signature record
- “Band of Gold,” 1970
- Memoir
- Band of Gold: A Memoir, with Mark Bego; introduction by Mary Wilson of The Supremes
- Broadway
- Jelly's Last Jam · Sophisticated Ladies · Blues in the Night
- Current show
- Legendary Ladies of Jazz
Biography
Freda Payne was identified as a talent at thirteen by Berry Gordy, years before Motown became shorthand for an era. Quincy Jones produced her first jazz album in 1963, when she was barely out of her teens. She spent her formative years on the road with Duke Ellington, Pearl Bailey and Lionel Hampton — an apprenticeship no conservatory has ever managed to replicate.
She is not interpreting a tradition she studied. She is singing songs she learned in the rooms where they were made.
In 1970 she recorded Band of Gold, one of the defining vocal performances of its decade and a Grammy-nominated record. What the hit tends to obscure is that the jazz career came first and never stopped. Her Broadway credits include Jelly's Last Jam, Sophisticated Ladies and Blues in the Night, and she has continued to work steadily on record, on stage and on television.
Her memoir, written with Mark Bego and introduced by the late Mary Wilson of The Supremes, runs from Detroit through Motown, Europe, Invictus Records and Broadway — alongside Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Bob Hope, Pearl Bailey and Sarah Vaughan.
Her current show, Legendary Ladies of Jazz, is built from the catalogs of Sarah Vaughan, Nancy Wilson, Dinah Washington, Peggy Lee, Dakota Staton, Gloria Lynne, Lena Horne and Ella Fitzgerald — women she shared stages, studios and mentors with.
