Dee Dee Bridgewater enjoys ‘kind of a homecoming’

At the age of 7, Dee Dee Bridgewater announced to her parents that she “was going to take care of them — buy them a house and car — because I planned to be a very well-known and very well-respected jazz singer.”

Mission accomplished. And still in progress.

Now 66, Bridgewater is the definition a very well-known and very well-respected jazz singer, with three Grammy Awards (and a Tony) to her credit.

And she’s still taking care of her mother, moving to New Orleans to be with her after almost two decades in Las Vegas.

But Bridgewater’s phone still bears a Vegas-centric 702 area code.

And this weekend, she’s returning to the Vegas spotlight with a two-night stand at The Smith Center’s Cabaret Jazz that she calls “kind of a homecoming.”

It’s not Bridgewater’s Smith Center debut. (That came a few years ago during a “Jazz Roots” concert in Reynolds Hall.)

Although she hasn’t played Cabaret Jazz before, she’s been in the audience — notably for former resident headliner Clint Holmes, now at the Palazzo with his “Between the Lines” show. “I would go to see him all the time,” Bridgewater says.

Her own upcoming Cabaret Jazz performances will enable Bridgewater to perform her repertoire “in a more intimate setting,” she explains. “If anything, for me, being in a smaller, more intimate venue, I feel like I can be a bit freer, a bit more (conversational) with the audience.”

Clearly, Bridgewater has come a long way from the days when she was “painfully shy as a little girl.”

She still has her shy side, citing a recent jazz cruise that found her in her private quarters when she wasn’t performing.

“When I’m on stage and when I have to be on, I am,” she notes. “Being a performer, being an entertainer — all the time, you have people look at you and expect things of you.”

Of course, after 46 years — Bridgewater first started performing professionally at 20 — “it’s kind of like second nature,” she adds. “I know what I have to do and I do it. When it’s time to turn it on, I turn it on.”

As for what Bridgewater plans to sing, Cabaret Jazz audiences may be in for an eclectic evening.

There’ll be classics from Bridgewater’s Grammy-winning Billie Holiday tribute album “Eleanora Fagan (1915-1959): To Billie With Love From Dee Dee.”

Bridgewater also plans to revisit tunes from “Red Earth — A Malian Journey,” a blend of jazz and West African music.

In her latest recording, “Dee Dee’s Feathers,” Bridgewater collaborates for the first time with fellow Grammy winners the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra — led by trumpeter Irvin Mayfield — on favorites old (“St. James Infirmary,” “What a Wonderful World”) and new (“Congo Square”).

The album’s 2015 launch coincided with the debut of the New Orleans Jazz Market, where the main stage was named for Bridgewater.

That seems fitting for someone who grew up listening to jazz. (Hardly a surprise, considering her father was a jazz trumpeter and high school teacher.)

“My parents listened to jazz music all the time,” remembers Bridgewater, who also loved Top 40 radio — which inspired her to form an R&B trio, the Iridescents, with two friends.

Even so, “I thought everyone listened to jazz,” she says. No wonder Bridgewater was surprised, after enthusiastically telling her friends about legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis’ latest album, that they replied, “ ‘Miles who?’ ”

The Iridescents fell apart when Bridgewater’s friends opted to spend time with their boyfriends rather than perform. By contrast, she decided, “what’s first is music.”

Since then, Bridgewater’s sung with a variety of fellow jazz greats — as the lead vocalist for the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra and as a guest with luminaries from Dizzy Gillespie and Dexter Gordon to Sonny Rollins and Max Roach.

But she also extended her talent range from music to musical theater, winning a Tony for her performance as Glinda the Good Witch in the original Broadway production of “The Wiz.” (She also played Billie Holiday in the biographical “Lady Day,” which was staged in Paris and London.)

Those and other theatrical experiences have “taught me about being in a space,” Bridgewater reflects, as well as “how to project an emotion to the farthest rafters.”

She considers those theatrical lessons “part of the reason why I have the longevity that I do,” adding that “people who come to see me know they’re going to get a good show. As Tony Bennett said, ‘I’m a showman.’ I’m a jazz entertainer.”

Beyond that, “I’m just excited to be coming back to Las Vegas,” Bridgewater admits. “Singing is healing, as many people have said. I am very grateful to be singing and to have the opportunity to bring joy to other people.”

Read more from Carol Cling at reviewjournal.com. Contact her at ccling@reviewjournal.com and follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.