The singer Elaine Dame has had an interesting life, so far.
She was telling me about its latest chapter earlier this month. It was a few days before her performance at Winter’s Jazz Club and she said, “There will be songs that I have performed for years, but also a great deal of material from my new CD. It’s called ‘Reminiscing’ and, well, it’s something different.”
Before we get to that, know that Dame grew up in Stevensville, Michigan, where she was introduced to music by her parents, especially her mother, who was a flutist and singer. Her grandparents were also influential, with one grandmother often taking her to concerts and plays and a grandfather who was a Protestant minister.
She took piano and flute lessons and was so talented that she earned a scholarship to Pepperdine University in California, where she studied classical flute, singing and theater. She moved to nearby California State University to participate in the school’s inaugural theater repertory program and then spent nearly a decade attempting to craft a life and career in theater in Los Angeles, which, I’ve heard, doesn’t have much of a theater scene. And so she came home in 1992.
The Chicago theater scene proved kinder and livelier than that of LA but after a few years she began feeling unfulfilled. And then she read a book titled “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron, who was once married to film director Martin Scorsese but also once wrote articles for the Tribune, before the unlikely success of her book — first distributed as photocopies in stores before selling millions in book form — took her to self-help superstardom.
Some of the book’s lessons and advice on “recovering your creative self” and unleashing “your own inner artist” convinced Dame it was music and not theater that was her calling.
“Her book is very powerful and put me in such a positive mood,” Dame says.
She dove boldly into music again and the local scene, finding, she says, “A very nurturing place and one filled with understanding people. The members of the jazz community support one another because we know how hard it is out there.”
She started working with a pianist, refining her skills and, in time, success began at a steady pace. She performed at jazz festivals, at New York City’s Rainbow Room and Michael Feinstein’s 54 Below, at most of the city’s clubs and others across the country. She recorded two acclaimed CDs, “Comes Love” (2005) and “You’re My Thrill” (2014).
Like many artists, notably musicians, she also taught, in her case classical flute, piano and singing at her home in the East Lakeview neighborhood, saying, “There are some students who have been with me for more than 10 years and they have run in age from 7 to 72.”
One of the advantages of the internet is that it enables one to view and listen to performers, though I feel it is always preferable to see them in person. You can hear some of her music at elainedame.com and also read what critics have had to say.
Few have written more about Dame than local critic Neil Tesser. He has written the liner notes for all of Dame’s CDs, and here is a bit of what he has written in the past: “The Dame stands straight up at a microphone, like she owns it — or rather, like she co-owns it with her onstage collaborators. She sings with confidence and craft, letting her upper register swell open with a cocky confidence, but she doesn’t overdo it; same thing with that vibrato, now slight, now thrilling, perched between jazz and Broadway — between Ella Fitzgerald and Ethel Merman.”
And now, comes Dame’s new chapter, featuring “Reminiscing.” It took some time to get here, tragically delayed by the death of her parents and the pains of the pandemic. But, released in February, it is a flat-out delight.
“It was not just my desire to do something new but, as much as my first two CDs are devoted to the American Songbook tradition, I love ‘70s music and this is it,” she said.
It is a gathering of nine songs, arranged by Dame and saxophonist Chris Madsen. Here’s Tesser again: “On ‘Reminiscing,’ Elaine does more than just cover her teenage soundtrack; with a blend of nostalgia and adventure, she claims these songs as her own and adds them to the ever-expanding American Songbook. She isn’t the first to do this, but on Reminiscing, she shows she’s among the best. And she comes at them with the perspective of a woman artist in an era of change.”
It is now, then, time for you to have a listen.
rkogan@chicagotribune.com
7 p.m. May 30 at CityGate Grille, 2020 Calamos Court, Naperville; www.citygategrille.com. Then 6 p.m. June 5 at The Chicago Firehouse,
1401 S. Michigan Ave.; www.chicagofirehouse.com.