Biography
Lavay Smith hails from Southern California, and spent her teenage years in the Philippines. When she moved back to Southern California, Smith began singing in local cafés, performing rock, blues and even country music. After falling in love with the classic jazz and blues of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, Smith moved to San Francisco, CA and started performing in the city's night clubs in 1989.
Smith performs her own original compositions as well as songs made famous by the great women of Jazz and Blues, including Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Helen Humes, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Big Maybelle and Esther Phillips.
Smith has toured extensively since 1998. She has performed in 43 states, has toured to Japan 3 times, and has performed in Canada, Mexico, Finland and Greece. Lavay has performed at many large Jazz and Blues Festivals including The Chicago Jazz Festival, The Monterey Jazz Festival, The Montreal Jazz Festival, The Ottawa Jazz Festival, The Playboy Jazz Festival at The Hollywood Bowl, The Salt Lake City Jazz Festival, The San Francisco Blues Festival, The San Francisco Jazz Festival, The Toronto Jazz Festival, Jazz Aspen/Snowmass and Midsummer Night’s Swing at Lincoln Center in New York City.
Smith regularly appears at jazz and blues clubs around the country, including Dizzy's Coca Cola Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, Sculler's in Boston, The Green Mill in Chicago, The Dakota in Minneapolis, Jazz Alley in Seattle and The Jazz Kitchen in Indianapolis. When not on tour, she appears regularly at festivals and night clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Biscuits & Blues, The Cafe du Nord, Club DeLuxe, Enrico's, Ashkenaz, Rancho Nicasio and Moe's Alley.
Lavay Smith has won numerous awards, including the San Francisco Chronicle reader's choice poll for best band. American dance legend and Lindy Hop pioneer Frankie Manning chose Lavay Smith and her band to perform on a Caribbean cruise for his 90th birthday in May, 2004. Ms. Smith is an independent artist and owns her own record label, Fat Note Records
Read more about this topic: Lavay Smith
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)