Wesla Whitfield

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Wesla Whitfield (actually Weslia Edwards , born September 15, 1947 in Santa Maria , Santa Barbara County ; † February 9, 2018 in St. Helena (California) ) was an American jazz and cabaret singer who mainly performed in the San Francisco Bay Area was active.

Live and act

Whitfield's early role models were singers Rosemary Clooney , Perry Como and Margaret Whiting , whom she heard on the radio and moved her to become a singer. After graduating from Santa Maria High School, she studied at Pasadena City College and music at San Francisco State University , which she graduated in 1971. She sang in the choir of the San Francisco Opera for three years . Whitfield had been paralyzed from the waist down and in a wheelchair since 1977 after being shot in the spine in a street robbery in San Francisco . In 1981 she met Mike Greensill, who became her musical partner and in 1986 her third husband. Her day job was a programmer at Bank of America ; she also appeared in nightclubs and cabarets such as the New York Algonquin Room and 25 years in the Plush Room in San Francisco. She also made appearances at Carnegie Hall , Davies Hall, and in 1996 at the White House before Hillary Clinton . Her repertoire consisted primarily of songs from the Great American Songbook . From 1987 onwards she presented a total of 22 albums under her own name, on which musicians such as Michael Moore , Gary Foster , John Goldsby , Tim Horner , Warren Vaché and the Kronos Quartet participated. After being diagnosed with cancer in 2017, she ended her career.

Discographic notes

  • Nobody Else But Me (Landmark, 1988)
  • Live in san Francicao (Landmark, 1991)
  • My Shinig Hour (Highnote, 1997)
  • The Best Thing for You Would Be Me: The Irving Berlin Songbook (Highnote, 2002)
  • September Songs: The Music of Wilder, Weill and Warren (Highnote, 2003)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Stephen Winn: Wesla Whitfield, elegant jazz and cabaret singer, dies at 70th San Francisco Chronicle, February 10, 2018, accessed on February 17, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Whitfield, Wesla
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Edwards, Weslia (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz and cabaret singer
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Santa Maria , Santa Barbara County
DATE OF DEATH February 9, 2018
Place of death St. Helena (California)