Singer Voices Her Love of Jazz as a Means of Communication

“You’re listening to who ?”

That’s what singer Yvette Stewart’s teen-age friends used to ask her in the ‘60s when she told them she was checking out jazz artists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Nancy Wilson instead of the popular vocal groups of the day, such as the Temptations and the Four Tops.

“I’ve always been a jazz person,” said Stewart, who was born in Sacramento but grew up in San Francisco. “I was inundated with it from the time I was born. My father was a bass player in a house band at a jazz club in San Francisco, where he backed people like Billie Holiday and Teddy Edwards. And he and my stepmother played a lot of records.”

It was something that Stewart, who possesses a rich and resonant alto voice and works with considerable feeling and emotion, heard in those renditions by Wilson, Fitzgerald and others that prompted her to become a professional. “I loved the way Ella scatted, the way Nancy took her blues and gospel influences and used them to make a tune her own. I wanted to do that,” said the vocalist who performs tonight at Drake’s in Glendale with pianist Rob Mullins and bassist Jim Hughart.

Stewart said the freedom and breadth of the jazz approach appeals to her because she can constantly evolve and make her renditions personal.

“I like to improvise on my melody; I love taking chances. Those are facets of what I try to put into a song to make it my own,” said the artist, who lived and worked in Denver for more than a decade before moving to Los Angeles in 1983. “Technically, I might bend certain notes, or scat, or mix in a little pop, blues and gospel into my style. It’s all part of getting a particular song across, of letting people know what I’m feeling about the music.”

Although she performs a wide array of tunes, Stewart said she feels most at home on songs that are either heartbeat slow or taken at a finger-snapping medium clip.

“I love something that grooves, that you can pat your foot to,” said the singer, who has worked with Mullins since her days in Denver and considers him her favorite partner at the piano. “Rob and I have been having a lot of fun doing that in duo situations, getting into the ‘pocket,’ as musicians say, and having a ball.”

Stewart is drawn to oozingly slow ballads because of their capacity for communication. “Here you have the time, and the musical space to think about a tune, about the way you want to put a lyric across, to really tell a story,” she said.

The singer--who sang on Mullins’ debut album, “Dancing Through the Day” on Flying Piano Records, but who has yet to record on her own--also has a fondness for scat singing, in which she can drop the lyrics and make up the syllable sounds herself “like an instrumentalist,” she said.

Although Stewart made a living singing jazz in Denver, she hasn’t been as fortunate in Los Angeles, despite regular appearances with Mullins, saxophonist Pete Christlieb and others, occasional studio session calls and a trip to Japan last year. She makes ends meet by working part-time in secretarial positions. “Los Angeles is a buyer’s market. What sells is what’s currently hip, and jazz is always struggling. Still I’ve committed myself to jazz,” she said.

And she has no real regrets, Stewart added. “Singing is something I enjoy, and if I make money, too, then that’s great,” she said. “It allows me to open myself up to people, to give them my feelings or needs or whatever, to put out what I’m thinking, what I hear in the music. Music’s a good communication device, and since I like people, it’s my way of being involved with them.”