[JPL] Rene Marie breaks out

[Doug Crane]

Rene Marie breaks out
Jazz songbird's fans know the sound of one heart singing
By By Bill Gallo, Special to the Rocky Mountain News

Saturday, January 12, 2008

One of the most fluent and original jazz singers 
in the world lives on a quiet street in suburban Broomfield.

Rene Marie doesn't have the name recognition of 
Diana Krall, who does credit-card commercials on 
TV, or the high profile of Denver native Dianne 
Reeves, who's won a Grammy and appeared in movies 
like Good Night, and Good Luck.

Not yet, anyway.

But top jazz musicians everywhere know Marie. So 
do a growing number of fervent jazz listeners. 
They're knocked out by her voice's suppleness and 
range, impeccable pitch and all-out way of living every lyric.

They also know about her penchant for risk - for 
defying authoritarian club owners, for liberating 
standard tunes from their ancient cocoons, for 
launching her socially provocative originals, 
with scant rehearsal, in packed concert halls. 
They know how she reinvents material from 
unlikely sources - Bonnie Raitt, Bob Seger, The Beatles.

In 2002, JazzTimes magazine chose Vertigo, 
Marie's second disc on the St. Louis-based 
MaxJazz label, as the best jazz vocal CD of the 
year. The Academie du Jazz, in Paris, has given 
her its prestigious Billie Holiday Award. She's 
performed duet concerts with Kevin Mahogany at 
the Kennedy Center and essayed the songs of 
Josephine Baker at the fabled Apollo Theater in Harlem.

Closer to home, Denver pianist Jeff Jenkins says: 
"She has the most complete vision of anyone I've 
ever worked with. She creates her own universe, 
and it's never the same twice. She's really into 
the give-and-take with other musicians, and once 
you enter that universe, there's complete freedom."

Singer Lannie Garrett admits to being intimidated 
just sharing the same room with Marie and pays 
her friend the ultimate jazz insider's 
compliment: "Rene's not just a singer. She's a musician."

Transformation

With a few different turns in the road, Rene 
Marie might have wound up completely off the 
radar. She might still be working part time at a 
Roanoke, Va., bank, putting up with her first 
husband, who never supported her singing career, 
and slipping away to some quiet corner of the 
house to secretly sing jazz into a tape recorder. 
She might still be ringing doorbells for the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Instead, Marie embraced the unknown. Ten years 
ago, at age 42, she broke her chains. She left 
Brion Croan, the man she'd married at age 18, 
after he delivered an ultimatum to give up her 
crazy notion of a professional singing career or get out.

She left her husband's (and her) religion, to 
which she'd devoted 24 years of crusading and acres of shoe leather.

She left her name. Rene Stevens Croan transformed 
herself into "Rene Marie" - a woman renewed, an artist who thinks for herself.

In essence, she left behind the husk of a 
conventional life - compliant spouse, selfless 
mother (her two sons are now almost 30 and 
undertaking artistic careers of their own) and 
unfinished dreamer. She did the most difficult 
thing any American can do: She wrote her own second act.

What compelled her? For one thing, she was fed 
up. For another, she had memories of past trauma. 
Alcoholism runs deep in her family, and her 
brother Eric, a talented painter whose work hangs 
in her home, is currently alcoholic and homeless. 
She couldn't forget the beatings her late father, 
a Roanoke teacher, inflicted on her mother.

But her breakout also was fueled by joy.

"There was always music inside me and all around 
me," says the singer, whose name in French means 
"reborn." "I finally found a way to live up to my name."

The prodigy

As a child, she'd heard her father singing in the 
house. She taught herself to read music at age 9 
by watching an older brother practice at the piano.

"I matched up those little black dots on the 
paper with what he was doing with his hands on the keyboard."

At 10, the prodigy was winning talent contests. 
At 15, she was writing songs, at 17 singing in local clubs.

Her teenage marriage stopped all that cold. For 
more than 20 years, Rene Stevens Croan sang only 
to herself and her sons. After the babies were 
asleep, she absorbed her great predecessors, 
Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald - their 
breathing, phrasing and improvisational flights. 
Like a painter sketching from the masters, she 
took in their art so she could change it.

The black proto-feminist Nina Simone had already 
changed her in ways she didn't completely 
understand until later. It was the authenticity 
of Mississippi Goddam and Young, Gifted and Black 
that filled her sails. Simone was instrumental in 
giving her the courage to rebel.

Almost 40 years later, Marie speaks emotionally 
about hearing her first Simone record at age 15: 
"It's almost incalculable, what she means to me."

Marie's new CD, a self-produced collection of 
originals called Experiment in Truth, features a 
moving tribute to her muse, O Nina, that combines 
lyrics from Simone's uncompromising anthems, 
reinterpreted by her musical descendant.

After returning to clubs 10 years ago, Marie 
moved to Richmond, Va., in 1998 and financed a 
debut CD, Renaissance, out of her own pocket. Two 
years later, her first MaxJazz CD featured a 
steamy reinvention of The Very Thought of You and 
an expansively beautiful Afro Blue.

But it was the title tune, Marie's own How Can I 
Keep From Singing?, that announced the arrival of 
her newfound assertion, as she sang: "No storm 
can shake my inmost calm/How can I keep from singing?"

It was clear that she couldn't. Nor did she care to heed the old order.

On the road, the middle-aged "newcomer" ignored 
the owner of Chicago's famous Jazz Showcase when 
he ordered her to stop "insulting jazz" with her 
originals and revert to standards. At the end of 
the week she was still singing her own work, and 
the club was sold out. She promptly wrote a tune 
gently chiding the owner - and sang that, too.

A daring medley

Marie calls herself a "GRITS" ("a Girl Raised in 
the South") but no one below the Mason-Dixon 
Line, or anywhere else, knows what to think the 
first time he hears the most daring medley in her repertoire.

When she first sang it in Mississippi, every jaw 
in the place dropped. When she called the tune, 
using its short name, in early rehearsal at the 
recording studio, drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, who 
came up with New Orleans-born trumpeter Wynton 
Marsalis, dropped his sticks and said, "I'm not playing that."

Not playing what?

Marie, who relishes the drama of the unexpected, 
had thought to pair the traditional white anthem 
Dixie with the heartbreaking meditation on 
lynching Strange Fruit. She brought off the 
collision of opposites as an ironic comment on the way the world still works.

In Mississippi, black and white audience members 
approached her afterward with tears in their eyes 
and tragic stories to tell. The same thing 
happened everywhere else, too. Born in 
controversy, Dixie/Strange Fruit became the 
emotional centerpiece of Marie's much- praised CD Vertigo.

Anyone shopping for symbols can find one right 
there, illustrating the purposes of Marie's 
unblinking, semiautobiographical work.

"I want to make you laugh and cry," she says. "I 
want you to squirm uncomfortably in your chair, 
think of a loved one, get angry, hang your head 
in shame and raise your hand in protest. . . . I 
want you to take that leap, make that change, turn that corner."

That's just what she's done herself for the past decade, of course.

Moving on

After recording her fourth CD for MaxJazz - aptly 
called Serene Renegade - the singer cut ties with 
the label ("I never saw a penny from sales"), 
pulled up stakes from an unhappy stay in Atlanta 
and in 2005 moved to Denver - a city she didn't 
know, steeped in a culture she didn't understand.

Was she looking to turn another corner? Was she drawn again to risk?

"That could be. I don't know. I do know that I 
wanted to live someplace where no one knew me and 
I didn't know anyone," she says.

She had once performed at the now-defunct Jazz in 
the Sangres festival, in Westcliffe, and had a 
friend with an attractive property in Aurora. And 
there the story might end, at least for now, were 
it not for a beautiful accident of fate.

Soon after coming here, Marie volunteered to take 
phone calls during one of jazz radio station 
KUVO's periodic pledge drives. By chance, the man 
sitting next to her was software designer Jesse 
Johnson, who'd seen Marie's picture, heard her 
music and told friends he'd like to meet her someday.

Talk about a love song: Rene and Jesse were 
married a year later. Five months ago, they moved 
into their sparkling new house in Broomfield, 
where the singer-songwriter took a break from the 
strain of the road, recovered from recent bouts 
with strep throat and continued work on a 
one-woman show that incorporates songs with narrative.

Last year's frantic pace had propelled her from 
Europe to Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola at New York's 
Lincoln Center and to the Josephine Baker show at 
the Apollo. Now she plans to work closer to her 
new home, at least for the moment.

She's recorded an original single called Three 
Nooses Hanging, a pointed meditation on the Jena 
Six student race incident in Louisiana. On Jan. 
21, she'll sing at the annual Dr. Martin Luther 
King Jr. Dinner for Those Who Hunger at Sunset Park.

She's booked at Dazzle, Donald Rossa's top-drawer 
club on Lincoln Street, Feb. 29 and March 1, with 
her regular working group, High Maintenance. And 
in March she'll open in the lead role of a show 
called Dinah Was, about the tragic singer Dinah 
Washington, at Capitol Hill's Shadow Theatre.

"I needed stillness," she says. "I needed a quiet 
time to regroup. When I'm singing and the set 
ends, there are little pieces of me scattered all 
over the bandstand that someone could come and 
sweep up. Sometimes you need relief from that. I was completely exhausted."

Now the old spirit is back. Given her voice and 
the contents of her back pages, she should make 
an ideal Dinah Washington. Meanwhile, the 
one-woman show she's writing, ironically titled 
Slut Energy Theory, comes to grips with the 
quandary of young women in a male-dominated 
world: how they regard their bodies, deploy their 
heat and, if they can, gain self- awareness.

It's the work of a woman who knows "what it's 
like to be trapped in an unhappy marriage;" who 
says she's now "reclaiming my face" from makeup 
artists and the expectations of others; who fulfilled her dreams late.

It's the work of an artist who's reinvented the 
songs of others and now sings none but her own. 
Just for starters, 13 unreleased tracks remain 
from last year's Experiment in Truth sessions - 
enough for another CD when the time comes, for another plunge into the unknown.

"There's always a new door in front of you," 
Marie says. "You find a way to open it and pass through."


Hear here

* Jan. 21: Rene Marie will sing at the Dr. Martin 
Luther King Jr. Dinner for Those Who Hunger, 
sponsored by Volunteers of America, from 3 to 6 
p.m. at Sunset Park, 1865 Larimer St. It's an 
event where people can "serve" about 1,000 meals 
and give away warm clothing to others. For more 
details, call the VOA's Jim White at 720-264- 3323 or check voacolorado.org.

* Feb. 29 and March 1: Marie and her group, High 
Maintenance, play at Dazzle, 930 Lincoln St.; 303-839-5100 or dazzlejazz.com.



On disc

Rene Marie's CDs can be difficult to find but are 
available by special order in stores, via the 
Internet and in downloadable digital format. 
Here's what Bill Gallo has to say about the releases:

* Renaissance (1998; as Rene Stevens Croan): This 
self-produced debut has long been out of print; the singer plans to reissue it.

* How Can I Keep From Singing? (2000, MaxJazz): 
Marie's breakout disc includes jazz standards 
such as The Very Thought of You and A Sleepin' 
Bee, as well as the heartfelt title tune, which 
announced her overdue arrival at age 44.

* Vertigo (2002, MaxJazz): A multiple prize 
winner (the French Academie du Jazz gave her its 
Billie Holiday Award), it features a brilliant 
Surrey With the Fringe on Top and Marie's 
controversial pairing of Dixie and Strange Fruit. 
That's the splendid Mulgrew Miller on piano.

* Live at the Jazz Standard (2004, MaxJazz): The 
intimacy of a celebrated New York club turns up 
the heat on standards and originals.

* Serene Renegade (2005, MaxJazz): includes 
originals like Autobiography and Ode to a Flower 
and the jazz chestnut Lover Man.

* Experiment in Truth (2007). Self-produced and 
recorded live in Charleston, S.C., the disc 
features Marie's ode to Nina Simone, O Nina, a 
new version of Vertigo and a disturbing 
story-song about domestic abuse called Weekend. 
With her regular working trio, High Maintenance. 
Available by direct order at renemarie.com.

* Three Nooses Hanging (2007, Sloan Publishing): 
a meditation on the Jena Six incident (sample 
lyric: "I close my eyes and all I can see are 
three nooses hanging from the 'white folks tree' 
"). The single, recorded in Denver, is also available from Marie's Web site.

© Rocky Mountain News