Anna's Story

2007.  I had just finished doing my time as an executive in the automotive industry and I was ready to go back to my first love, singing.  Growing up, the one constant thing in my life was watching movies.  No matter who I was living with, no matter what my situation, I always had my movies on TV.  And my favorite movies were the musicals from the Golden Age.  By the time I was in the fourth grade, I knew the words to a hundred songs and who sang them in what movie.  My movies were my Second Life, a life where I was happy and beautiful and danced and sang into the sunset.  I sing songs today that I learned from Fred Astaire in "The Barclays On Broadway" or from Bing Crosby in "Holiday Inn".  I love that stuff.

Ella, Billie, Doris Day, Judy Garland, Margaret Whiting, Carmen MacRae, Ella Mae Morse, Dorothy Dandridge, Aretha Franklin, Nancy Wilson, June Christie, Anita O'Day, Helen Forrest, and Sarah Vaughn, among a host of others, are all women who got a shot at the one thing I wanted most - to sing with the best musicians, to sing the best songs, to wear the best clothes (not to mention shoes), to play to wonderful people, and to see the world in the process.  I knew I was asking a lot, but I was willing and able to make the effort.  I just needed to find the people who would and could give me my shot.