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FRANKYE KELLY |
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Frankye Kelly is one of the San Francisco Bay area's top jazz vocalists. Kelly puts a lot of honest feeling into her singing. It was obvious from an early age that she would be a singer. At 3, she performed in her first play, in Jackson, Mississippi. Her father was in the Air Force, so she spent her childhood in many locations, including California, Minnesota, Germany and Delaware. Although her early singing was in church, a capella groups and choirs, she was drawn to the music of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Fats Domino and Little Richard. After marrying, Frankye moved to Detroit and became a professional singing R&B. She had a hit with Johnnie Mae Matthews' "I Have No Choice". She sang backup with Marlena Shaw and Roslyn Ashford, formerly of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. Her own group, Flyght, matched her voice with that of four male singers., until she dropped out of the music scene to raise her family. In the eighties, she returned to singing in San Francisco, performing Jazz. Frankye was guided by her cousin, the late Blues master Albert Collins who told her to concentrate on pleasing and reaching her audience and to sing what she felt. At his concerts, he showed her what it was like to be a musician and what the life was like. His hard worked inspired inspired her to be a good entertainer. Since 1989, Frankye Kelly has fulfilled her dream as a Jazz singer, performing at Yoshi's, Top of the Mark at the Mark Hopkins Hotel with pop superstar Ricardo Scales, Jazz at Pearl's, Kimball's East, Kimball's West and at the Ritz Carlton Hotels in Half Moon Bay and San Francisco. She's sung at San Francisco Jazz Festival, San Jose Jazz Festival and Fillmore Jazz Festival, in France, Mexico Japan and China. In 2006, Frankye Kelly sings at CJW Clubs, in Shanghai, China, for several months. Frankye has three CDs: The Night is Young recorded at Kimball's West, My Life, More Than It Is: Not Just the Blues, a mixture of Pop, Blues, R&B and Jazz, and Live at Yoshi's, Frankye Kelly Sings Songs For My Father, a collection of some of her favorite jazz songs that is dedicated to her late father who was at all of the sessions. Visit her website: http://www.frankyekelly.com/index.html |
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