Ann Hampton Callaway has the “Fever” t <<

by Gregg Shapiro

M ore than 30 years since the release of her debut album, jazz vocalist, songwriter, and Winnetka-native Ann Hampton Callaway shows no sign of slowing down. With well over a dozen albums to her name, including live and holiday recordings, as well as collaborations with her sister Liz Callaway, Ann is a prolific recording artist.

Additionally, her songs have appeared on movie soundtracks, and more significantly on albums by Barbra Streisand. She’s even comfortable joking about what may be her most famous tune, the theme song to the popular ’90s sitcom, “The Nanny.”

As if that wasn’t enough, Callaway is known as a dynamic live performer who regularly tours with themed concerts. Her latest album, “Fever: A Peggy Lee Celebration!” (Palmetto), a musical love letter to Peggy Lee, was released, fittingly enough, on Valentine’s Day 2023.

Gregg Shapiro: Ann, your artist legacy series has featured your musical tributes to Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Linda Ronstadt…

Ann Hampton Callaway: …and Barbra Streisand. My (artist legacy series) recordings have been Ella and Sarah. Then I did a CD called “Signature” where it was a compilation of tributes to my favorite male and female jazz singers. I like saying thank you and I like studying people and finding out how to do a portrait of them musically that still allows me to be myself as a singer.

From page 15 radical history of drag” she came to appreciate what the art form means, and set out to create a drag persona for herself.

Winning “Drag Race” was a big step forward for the artist.

“I had already started to make a name for myself in the drag scene before appearing on TV,” she said.

“Just a little success thanks to my Brooklyn show, ‘NightGowns’ and self-published magazine Velour, but being cast on ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ introduced me to a much bigger world. It really changed my life.”

RuPaul remains a hero of Velour’s.

“One of the smartest people I’ve ever met,” she said. “I knew I couldn’t do drag exactly like her, that I needed

Did Peggy Lee’s centennial, as well as the 20th anniversary of her passing, have anything to do with why she’s the focus of your new album?

Yes. The centennial was very much a time when I thought I could finally do a serious portrait of her in the way that I gave the artistic atten- to find my own path. But I’ve always followed Ru’s example in making a big splash with whatever you’ve got.”

Drag rights

According to Velour, laws against drag shows, such as the one just passed in Tennessee, as well as laws against trans health care, are hate crimes. She calls it “shameful” that the far right is making headway in legislating LGBTQ people out of existence.

“Drag is artistic expression,” she said. “It is a right, and it helps people. It has saved my life many times, and connected me deeper with my history and my community. The world needs drag.”

The backlash against drag has not affected Velour’s career. In fact, she is busier than ever. Though the backlash against drag and trans people reminds tion to these other wonderful artists that I have covered. Since I’ve been a friend of the Peggy Lee family for so long – I met them in 2003. I had performed symphony concerts honoring her. her of the importance of being visible and loud. She has used her celebrity to raise money for those who are most affected by these laws.

I’ve learned so much about her over the years. She’s been a lifelong influence for me.

“In just two nights of my monthly ‘NightGowns’ show, this year we raised over $6,000 for shelters and food organizations that support the community,” she said.

She wrote her book “The Big Reveal” because she wanted to publish the drag book she had always been looking for. She spent more than a decade researching histories from around the world to find out how widespread, creative and political drag really is. But she knew that she also had to share her own story about how she was naturally drawn to drag when she was a child, and how drag has helped her.

“So I wove my story and the history together,” she said. “Plus there’s lots of imagery, drawings, and photos. I did most of the visual design for this book too, which felt very full circle, because book layout was my day job when I started doing drag.”

The San Francisco show promises to offer a lot of “big reveals.’ Velour

<<

One of the things that makes the record special is that because I’m friends with Peggy’s granddaughter Holly Foster Wells, I had access to so many wonderful things, such as getting an unpublished poem by Peggy Lee and getting to write music for it and singing a song that had never been released as a recording before.

Things like that that make it not just a bunch of Peggy Lee songs, but something that tells a story about her life and shows the uniqueness of her contribution as a songwriter, which I think has been really a neglected part of her career in terms of people understanding what a huge difference she made in the industry.

Do you remember the first Peggy Lee song you ever heard?

I’m pretty sure it was “Fever.” That came out the year that I was born. My father, I think, had a little bit of a crush on Peggy. I just remember seeing that beautiful blonde lady with her pretty voice and thinking, “Wow, she seems really magical.”

As I became a mature person and a person who loved jazz and great music, then I got to know who she was and what she was about. But “Fever,” and that whole time period, was some of her best records, and my parents had a hefty collection of Peggy Lee albums, including that one.

When you approach Lee’s covers of songs that were written by others, did you feel pulled towards honoring her rendition or trying to leave your own mark, or maybe a combination of both?

It was definitely a combination of both, on “Fever,” and a few other pieces. Most of the record has my own stamp on things, but “Fever” is so iconic I didn’t really feel like I could do much. I’ve heard many recordings of people singing “Fever” that did not come near what I think of as the sultry, sexy power of what Peggy Lee did. www.annhamptoncallaway.com tion with a special guest star. A book signing will follow. Velour “revealed” who the special guest star will be.

How I made that my own was I wrote a verse. She wrote new verses and a bridge to “Fever” to make it a hit song. I wrote about her and her relationship with Dave Barbour. We put piano in it that was not something she had in her rendition.

Have you started thinking about who’s next in the Artist Legacy series?

Right now, my legacy series is taking a little turn in the new year. After honoring one of the people who helped me have a road ahead to be a singer/ songwriter, I’m going to be releasing a record later in 2023 called “Finding Beauty” of all my original songs.

I’ve written some of these songs with great people like Alan Bergman. Melissa Manchester and I are working on the last song right now.

But there will be other people that I want to portray. I did a lovely show about Judy Garland. This year is her actual centennial, and I would have loved to have done something on her, as well, in a recording. What I’d love to do is do all my divas and have a box set of these shows. I think that would be a really exciting project.

Read the full interview, with music clips, on www.ebar.com.

“Papa Velour, a.k.a. Professor Mark Steinberg,” she said. “We’ve never appeared together on stage. We will talk about drag and especially queer and trans rights from a family perspective, as well as a historical one. He’s a professor of history.”

The evening will be a reunion, as Velour’s family is from the Bay Area. The audience will be filled with her relatives (Velour was born in Berkeley and raised in Connecticut).

“Please come,” she said. “I always try to surprise my audiences, even ones who have seen me before. But as they can attest, a Sasha Velour show is always an intricately well-planned and ferociously gorgeous night filled with beauty, gags, and maybe some headscratchers too.”t

From page 15

Jiménez has said that, after feeling somewhat bored by Mart Crowley’s inarguably dated “The Boys In The Band,” he wanted to put a fantastic spin on that play’s scenario. And there’s no doubt audiences will sense a Virginia Woolf at the apartment door.

Mosqueda said that both he and Jiménez were raised Catholic and, as gay men, “have very complex and conflicted relationships with the church.”

Similar feelings are apparent in all four of the play’s characters who, while officially closeted from parishioners, are open to each other about their sexuality, sometimes with a venomous flamboyance that points to desperation.

At the heart of the play lies the question of whether the church offers these deeply conflicted men a refuge or a hiding place. Jiménez also poses will be reading passages from the book, but she promises that the show will be mostly performance, with new video and costume gags that she’s been developing. There will also be an audience Q & A, and an intimate conversa- www.palaceoffinearts.org www.sashavelour.com when he goes to bars in order to get free drinks). challenging meta-theatrical questions.

Sasha Velour’s ‘The Big Reveal Live Show’ April 6, 8pm, Palace of Fine Arts Theater, 3301 Lyon St, $45-$100.

What exactly can a Modern Priesthood be, the play asks us? Once homosexuality enters the picture, are there new rules about infidelity? If blow jobs and bong hits are a part of the church’s patriarchy, does the church exist at all?

One needn’t be Catholic to feel shaken by these provocations. Jiménez pries the institutional apart from the spiritual, and the light that comes between them illuminates more questions than answers.

To what extent is the role of a priest inherently performative? When the collar comes off, must the man remain collared? (One of the play’s four fathers speaks of keeping his collar on

Whether you’re a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence, a devout Saint Ignatius alum or merely an acolyte of Thespis, you’ll find a prickly, ticklish sense of communion at this fascinating plague within a play.t

‘Locusts Have No King,’ through May 14. $25-$65. New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness Ave. (415) 861-8972. www.nctcsf.org