Song from the past leads to breakthrough for Alyssa Graham

Alyssa Graham

During the golden age of jazz in the ’50s, Jack Reardon was one of the top tunesmiths around, the author of the standard “The Good Life” which was a favorite of such esteemed vocalists as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, and Bobby Darin.

In 1959, Reardon penned a new song, an aching, melancholy lament of obsessive love that Billie Holiday was scheduled to record before the legendary songstress died unexpectedly that summer at the age of 44. Heartbroken, Reardon shut the song away in a drawer, but he never forgot it.

Alyssa Graham

Flash forward 46 years and Reardon hears What Love Is, the 2005 debut CD from a young singer named Alyssa Graham, whose voice inspires him to take out that old song again.

“A neighbor of his gave him our first CD, and he contacted me,” says Graham, who lives in New York City, 1,000 miles away from Reardon’s home in Florida. “He said, ‘I put this song in a box for 50 years, and I never wanted any other singer else to sing it. But I heard your album and it’s time. I wonder if you’d be interested in bringing it to life?’ And of course I was freaking out.”

Recorded at last, that song, “Involved Again,” forms the emotional core of Graham’s sophomore effort, the acclaimed 2008 release Echo. The song represents an artistic breakthrough for the young Graham, whose relatively happy life — idyllic New Jersey childhood and a loving husband and collaborator in her guitarist, Douglas Graham — is day to the famous troubled Holliday’s night.

“It took several months for me to connect to it,” says Graham, who performs Friday at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre. “I realized after awhile that it doesn’t have to be something that happened to you or something that you experienced personally. You have to kind of get into a character just like an actor would and understand where the writer was coming from. It’s not that I relate directly to the lyrics in that song, but I can somehow pull from my own experience and relate to the story.”

Graham’s performance helped make Echo — an airy, pop meditation on relationships and travel with songs by Sting, Paul Simon and her husband, as well as fellow bandmate Jon Cowherd — one of the most acclaimed jazz albums of 2008. The record was embraced by critics at the New York Times and the New Yorker and wound up on year-end best-of lists at iTunes, Jazziz Magazine, and Jazz.com.

Graham came to music through her parents, who actively encouraged their children’s interest in the arts. That decision is now beginning to pay off. Graham’s brother, Andrew Altschul, last year published his debut novel, the rock-celebrity themed “Lady Lazarus”.

“(My parents) weren’t musicians, though my dad would like to think he’s a singer,” jokes Graham. “But when I was young, they got me guitar lessons and piano lessons and took me into New York City to see theater all the time. I think they both wanted in some way for us to become artists, and that’s what we both did.”

Taking her initial inspiration from her family’s extensive record collection — the Beatles, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell being favorites — Graham began to pursue music. She played in a successful rock band, Blindman’s Holiday for several years, even while studying jazz at the New England Conservatory of Music.

But it wasn’t until she discovered Brazilian jazz and artists like João Gilberto, Elis Regina, and Antônio Carlos Jobim that Graham found a musical direction that was right for her, a combination of pop music and light, Latin-inflected jazz that recalls the work of Mitchell.

“I was singing standards and jazz and something wasn’t quite right. I was kind of trying to hide and suppress this rock-and-roll girl,” she recalls. “There was something about Brazilian music that brought my two worlds together.”

Alyssa Graham

8:30 p.m. Friday at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre, 1801 Exeter Road. Tickets: $20, available at the box office or by phone at (901) 751-7500. For more information, visit gpacweb.com.

© 2009 Go Memphis. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.