By Brian Wise. Photos by Peter Rodger.
Judith Owen will return to Australian shores for the first time since March 2020 with a new live album and her fabulous ensemble, The Gentlemen Callers.
Talk to Judith Owen about music and you are in for a long conversation. Born into a musically inclined Welsh family Owen grew up in London surrounded by music, ballet, theatre and the fine arts and was also exposed to many jazz icons and Broadway musicals that her parents loved. Her voice retains some of the lilt of her Welsh heritage but has been modified perhaps by decades living in New Orleans.
When we meet up by Zoom it is immediately apparent from the background that she is somewhere near the French Quarter in New Orleans, where she lives with her partner Harry Shearer (you might recognize the name). If you are lucky, you might see Shearer wandering around at JazzFest soaking up the music. This year you will probably see him in the audience there for Owen and her ensemble. In fact, the very first time Owen visited New Orleans was with Shearer for JazzFest.
“I remember the first thought that I had was why don’t we live here?” she recalls. “That was seriously the first thought I had when we actually got to the French Quarter. I fell in love immediately. It’s very hard not to just because of the music, because of the people. It’s the people, the culture, the history, the look of it, the food. But mostly the community, the musicians and the scene that there is here – music of all types. At that time, it was prior to me going down my little jazz journey.”
More than a quarter of a century later Owen is still in New Orleans and the ensemble she is bringing to Australia contains some of the city’s finest musicians, including the great David Torkanowsky on piano and Australian David Blenkhorn on guitar. Rounding out the group is Kevin Louis on cornet, Ricardo Pascal on saxophone (he has played with The Modern Jazz Generation and Dee Dee Bridgewater), Jamison Ross on drums, a Grammy Award winner with Snarky Puppy and Lex Warshawsky on double bass.
While Owen thought at first that she might only be able to bring a basic trio with her to Australia a gig at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival was added, then James Morrison joined the bill for an Opera House show and the group was able to be expanded.
As Owen explains, “I thought, no, I haven’t played Australia since 2020 and dang it, I am not coming back without really doing something special and bringing the real guys – and we’re talking about New Orleans and how much we love it. It’s important for people who can’t come here to see the real thing, not an imitation, not somebody copying.”
Owen’s new live album was recorded during a one-week residency at Marian’s Jazzroom in Bern, Switzerland it contains songs from her 2022 studio album Come On & Get It and rousing versions of some classics such as ‘Lady Be Good’, ‘Teach Me Tonight’, ‘Down With Love’, ‘Skylark’, and ‘Fever’, to name a few tracks.
“I’ve been to Bern many times in my life, but I didn’t know about this place,” she laughs in describing the legendary club. “On the walls are photographs of all the people that played there from Oscar Peterson to Ella Fitzgerald, to Sarah Vaughan, to BB King. You name it, they all played there. I count myself very fortunate to be part of that extraordinary legacy.
The album is built on Owen’s childhood fascination with some of the pioneering but often forgotten women of jazz and blues, including Julia Lee, Blossom Dearie and Nellie Lutcher.
“One of the things I had wanted to do was to actually do an album based upon the woman that I grew up listening to from the age of five,” explains Owen. “My opera singer father, who was an extraordinarily unique person because his love of jazz, blues and everything else for that matter. That’s the reason that music was so just all encompassing.
“So, at age five, that was my first experience of listening to this amazing woman called Nellie Lutcher, who nobody knows anymore. No one knows her name and she was on Capitol Records. She was one of those women at the piano who was big and bold and funny. She was post-Ma Rainey. In fact, she was from Louisiana and when she was 12 years old and Ma Rainey’s piano player had gone on a bender and been lost in Lake Charles, Nellie Lutcher was playing in the church. Next thing they got her playing in the nightclub at night with Ma Rainey’s bump and grind. So, there’s a little girl playing piano. She was an extraordinary musician, an extraordinary person, and she had some serious success. And with Nat King Cole, she did some duets. She had a huge hit in Britain with ‘Fine Brown Frame’, that’s being covered by an awful lot of people, and ‘Real Gone Guy’. The reason my father knew about her was because when he was a kid, and she was coming into Britain, and she was being mobbed by audiences and so beloved.
“So, he played me this song, ‘Fine Brown Frame’, and I just thought that it’s just like a light switched on in me. I was already in love with the piano and there’s not a day where I didn’t want to be a singer or wasn’t singing or wasn’t at the piano and playing. Then there are other women like Julia Lee and Pearl Bailey and Dinah Washington and Blossom Dear – the list goes on and on and on.”
“They were the woman who had this confidence, and they were really sassy” continues Owen, “and they really could play their instruments, and their singing was extraordinary. They were true entertainers. They just had this amazing explosive energy that came off them and that’s what I wanted to be.
“I really wanted to do an album that was honouring that music and to bring attention to these women who no one knows their name. These are extraordinary women, and they paved the path. They did the groundwork, they opened the doors for people that then came afterwards who I was also obsessed with: Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone.”
“So, during the Pandemic, I got to make that dream come true, go in the studio with David Torkanowsky, who is an extraordinary band leader and also, he’s a great arranger. He’s a great musical director. We chose everything that came from my childhood, everything that I knew and loved and had grown up wanting to do myself one day.”
These favourite songs of Owen’s sound great in the live setting in a venue that looks a little like it has the coziness of Preservation Hall in New Orleans. It’s one thing going into the studio but in a live setting the repertoire is even more dynamic.
“These were the popular songs of their time,” explains Owen “This is dance music. Remember, this was for a black audience, so this was all on black radio. This was not for fragile white ears. That’s why in Britain it was a different experience because there wasn’t this civil rights situation. They hit white people listening to black radio, but they knew that’s where all the great stuff was happening.”
“I’ve learned a lot since coming to America, since seeing everything,” continues Owen who adds that she has befriended Nellie Lutcher’s granddaughter and, in fact, saw Nellie before she died. Ut didn’t realise it at the time.
“She was still in her eighties when I went to LA for the first time and saw her in a tiny half-filled room where she sang all the songs,” she recalls. “You would’ve thought, if you closed your eyes, she sounded like she was twenty-one and was exactly that person with that voice, with that dexterity of piano playing the thing. Same thing with Blossom Dearie. I got to see her in her eighties playing and she was just magical, absolutely magical.
“So, I want to talk about these women and these songs are classics. They reflect life so beautifully and it is not only a testament to the art of great songwriting but joyful. There’s a real joy in there. There’s a real desire to entertain and have the audience be just swept up in this electricity. I think it’s thrilling to perform, and it’s truly thrilling to watch the audience get swept up and be just alive. When you’re singing you can feel it back. It’s just coming straight back at you and the joy you feel, the joy you are giving off is the joy you’re getting straight back from the audience.”
You can also hear her podcast Unapologetically Judith Owen at all the usual outlets.
JUDITH OWEN TOURING DATES:
Fri, JUN 13 @ 7:00 PM
Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2025
Sat, JUN 14 @ 7:00 PM
Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2025
Tue, JUN 17 @ 7:00 PM
Paris Cat Jazz Club, Melbourne
Wed, JUN 18 @ 7:00 PM
Paris Cat Jazz Club, Melbourne
Sat, JUN 21 @ 8:00 PM
Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace, Cremorne, NSW