Dee Dee Bridgewater

Dee Dee Bridgewater, born Denise Eileen Garrett on May 27, 1950, in Memphis, Tennessee, is an American jazz singer, actress, and songwriter. Raised Catholic in Flint, Michigan, she was introduced to jazz through her father, Matthew Garrett, a jazz trumpeter who taught at Manassas High School. By age sixteen she was singing with a Rock and R&B trio in Michigan clubs, and at eighteen she enrolled at Michigan State University before transferring to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she toured the Soviet Union in 1969 with the school's jazz band.

Her marriage to trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater brought her to New York City, where she became lead vocalist for the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra in the early 1970s. During that period she performed alongside musicians including Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Max Roach, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1973. Her debut solo album, Afro Blue, was released in 1974.

Bridgewater's Broadway career spanned 1975 to 1983. Her stage work in New York included The Wiz, The 1940's Radio Hour, and Sophisticated Ladies. In The Wiz she originated the role of Glinda the Good Witch, earning the 1975 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. The production additionally won the 1976 Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album. A television version of The Wiz, in which Bridgewater reprised her role as Glinda the Good Witch of the South, aired in 1983.

Following her Broadway years, Bridgewater toured France in 1984 with Sophisticated Ladies and relocated to Paris in 1986. That same year she portrayed Billie Holiday in Lady Day, a performance that earned her a Laurence Olivier Award nomination. Also in 1986 she recorded the song "Precious Thing" with Ray Charles, featured on her album Victim of Love. In the late 1980s and early 1990s she returned to jazz from pop and contemporary R&B, performing at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1990 and the San Francisco Jazz Festival in 1996. Her 1994 album Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver marked a long-anticipated collaboration with Horace Silver. Her 1997 tribute album Dear Ella won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album in 1998, and the 1998 album Live at Yoshi's received an additional Grammy nomination. She performed again at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1998. Subsequent albums included This Is New (2002), devoted to the songs of Kurt Weill; J'ai deux amours (2005), exploring French classics; and Red Earth (2007), featuring Africa-inspired themes and contributions from musicians from Mali.

On December 8, 2007, Bridgewater performed with the Terence Blanchard Quintet at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. In October 2009 she opened the Shanghai JZ Jazz Festival, performing material associated with Ella Fitzgerald alongside Ellington compositions and other jazz standards. In April 2017 she received the NEA Jazz Masters Award at the Kennedy Center, and in 2018 she was awarded the Maria Fisher Founder's Award by the Thelonious Monk/Hancock Institute of Jazz. In November 2019 she was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

For twenty-three years Bridgewater hosted JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater, a syndicated radio program on National Public Radio. She serves as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization, advocating for international financing of grassroots projects addressing world hunger. She has received honorary doctorates from the University of Michigan and the Berklee College of Music, and holds the distinction of being the first American inducted into the Haut Conseil de la Francophonie. France has recognized her with both the Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and, on April 25, 2025, the Officier dans l'ordre de la Légion d'Honneur, awarded aboard the French warship Mistral in New Orleans.

In 2019 Bridgewater founded The Woodshed Network, a program for Women in Jazz providing mentorship, knowledge sharing, and professional support. The initiative was developed in collaboration with her daughter Tulani Bridgewater-Kowalski as Co-Artistic Director and Program Curator, and with 651 ARTS, with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Bridgewater is the mother of three children: Tulani Bridgewater, from her marriage to Cecil Bridgewater; China Moses, from her marriage to director Gilbert Moses; and Gabriel Durand, from her marriage to French concert promoter Jean-Marie Durand. Tulani serves as Bridgewater's manager through Bridgewater Artists Management and oversees DDB Productions and DDB Records. China Moses is a singer, songwriter, producer, and radio host who tours internationally, occasionally sharing the bill with her mother.