When Sybil Gage took the mic at Vero’s Patio restaurant last week, feather boas draped around the restaurant’s rustic interior, her impish charm, vintage flair and smoky soprano filled the space far beyond her frame: 5-foot-3, and pushing 110 pounds.
It’s a plus that her music suits the era of her outfits: the sassy, swooning tunes she heard growing up in New Orleans. Behind the silly props, though, is a woman on a serious mission. Preserving and embodying that musical heritage is the driving force behind the colorful blues singer’s busy performance schedule, including a roster of dates on the Treasure Coast in coming weeks.
Growing up in New Orleans, Gage was taught the importance and value of music from a young age. Through music classes, piano lessons, family sing-alongs and school field trips to places like Preservation Hall in the French Quarter, Gage became a young and eager witness to the living tradition that is New Orleans jazz.
Gage’s father, a librarian, etymologist and arts aficionado, exposed her to the world of words and music, always reading aloud to her, reciting Langston Hughes or playing her his favorite records.
“When I was very young, I was hooked on my father’s music, which was like the R&B of New Orleans: Fats Domino, Bobby Marchand and then later on Nancy Wilson, Nina Simone, Lou Rawls. Back in the day, we would listen to these songs over and over and over again,” Gage says.
As much as she was influenced by her father’s music though, once she could choose music for herself, she turned to soul. “The first 45 I ever bought on my own was Aretha Franklin,” she says. “I loved all of the soul greats – James Brown, Al Green. I bought those records like crazy.”
Coming of age in the French Quarter, Gage lived on Esplanade and worked at Houlihan’s which had live music every night. On the nights she wasn’t working she would get her daily dose of jazz, funk or soul at places called the Dream Palace or Lou and Charlie’s.
It was on one of these nights that Gage had the good fortune to meet James Booker, the wickedly talented New Orleans piano player who combined rhythm-and-blues styles with jazz standards. Gage and Booker formed a friendship and she sat in to sing with him occasionally at his shows at the Toulouse Theatre.
Gage left her beloved New Orleans to attend New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts where she studied broadcast journalism, television and film. While earning her degree in film production, she continued to cultivate her vocal gifts, enlisting the expertise of renowned vocal coach Mary Small.
Small had been a child star with NBC radio, going on to perform with major big band orchestras. Small would take Gage to see the musicians and singers at New York’s cabarets and jazz clubs.
Gage recalls her vocal workshops with Small. “She was this great New York type and she’d sit at the piano with the smoke from her cigarette circling up in the air, and she’s talking loudly over her playing and my singing, in her gravelly voice, shouting, ‘That’s it! That’s the way! I like the way you hold that note right there! Now lift up your head, drop your shoulders, tighten your gut! Now, smile!’”
Gage’s hard work and Small’s coaching paid off when Gage was hired for a weekly gig with the Hank Edmonds Trio, performing at the Village Door and Carmichael’s.
Today, decked out in beads, long gloves, and jaunty hats, Gage makes a colorful appearance that, combined with her warm stage presence, beguiles her audience. Listeners drift back in time as she sings pre-war blues, hokum and traditional New Orleans-inspired Jazz.
“I call it ‘Sugar Mama Blues’ because I’m not hard blues and I don’t sing be-bop jazz,” Gage clarified. “I sing more good-time girl tunes. It’s really my effort to preserve the sounds of the music and singers I love – Laverne Baker, Dinah Washington, Etta James, Della Reese, Pearl Bailey, a little Sugar Pie DeSanto. I sing their after-hours songs,” she laughed.
Whether singing with a band or just playing ukulele or washboard, accompanied by her pianist of nine years, Leon Olguin, Gage has a vast repertoire. Professor Longhair, James Booker and Smiley Lewis are represented, along with blues tunes from Elmore James and Mississippi John Hurt.
She entertains with originals as well, tunes she has written and recorded on her two albums: “Red” and “NOLA Calling.” Her unique sound and wide musical range has given her the chance to open for such acts as John Waite, Zydeco Queen Rosie Ledet, and Dave Mason. She has shared the stage with Glen David Andrews and Marc Stone, and appeared at New Orleans’ Old U.S. Mint Theatre and the Funky Pirate on Bourbon Street. In New York City she has appeared at the Triad Theater and the Metropolitan Room and has been a featured performer at jazz festivals along the East Coast.
It wasn’t long after her move to the Treasure Coast in the early 2000s that Gage was sharing her talents with Florida audiences. Her first gig was at the Melbourne library, of all places; she continues to enjoy the intimate settings of her library gigs in Ormond Beach, Cocoa, New Smyrna and Port Orange.
“Those are shorter performances than my club shows but they give me the opportunity to interact with an attentive crowd, provide some musical backstories and do Q&A between songs.”
Gage also performs regularly at Heidi’s Jazz Club in Cocoa Beach and the Galaxy Grill in Indialantic. In Vero, she was a longtime regular at Bodega Blue until it closed. Now, besides the Patio, she sometimes plays Havana Nights.
At one venue, Palm Bay’s Northside Lounge at Ozzie’s, the owners redesigned the room to accommodate the crowd Gage draws – removing two pool tables, reconfiguring the seating and lighting and even drawing a mural featuring Sybil singing in costume.
“She’s been playing the first Sunday of every month here for five years,” boasts Alex Ashrapov, Ozzie’s owner. “She just packs the place.”
With licensing in the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and South Africa, her efforts to recreate and preserve the music she adores have truly gone global. Beyond Florida, this summer will take her to venues in North Carolina, New York, and Cape Cod. Then in late September, she’ll make her eighth consecutive appearance at the New Smyrna Jazz Festival.
Meanwhile, she’s finishing production of her next CD: “Sybil Gage: Live from The Metropolitan Room in New York City,” to be released this fall.
