Rebecca Kilgore
Rebecca Kilgore is one of my favorite singers. She’s a great interpreter of the American Songbook and jazz standards. Along with the great sax player, Harry Allen, Rebecca has been making waves doing jazz versions of great Broadway scores.
Now, she and Harry, along with an all-star band, are coming to the Palladium with their new project – Some Like It Hot – The Songs of Marilyn Monroe. The albums that grew from this partnerships were recorded and released by Clearwater’s Arbors Records label.
I spoke with Rebecca recently about the collaboration.
“Through Arbors, Harry got the idea of doing some Broadway musicals in the jazz format. He hired me and Eddie Erickson (Kilgore’s partner in the group BED) and we did Guys and Dolls, South Pacific and the Sound of Music.
Kilgore plays New York’s best cabarets every year and for her week-long stay in 2010 at Feinstein’s at the Regency, they put together a show based on the music of Billie Holiday and Lester Young.
The next season, they needed another theme. They came up with the idea of doing songs made famous by Marilyn Monroe or standards she sang in films.
“It turns out that Harry and I both liked her singing and we’d both been listening to it for years,” she said.
The show isn’t a tribute in the sense that anybody on stage tries to look or act like Marilyn.
Rebecca with Harry
Instead, Rebecca sings Harry’s arrangements of songs like “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend,” “My Heart Belongs To Daddy,” “Heat Wave,” and “Do It Again.”
“We include some of the more familiar tunes and some that are more obscure,” she says. “And I talk about the things that were going on in her personal life and where the songs came from.”
For this show, Harry and Rebecca will be joined by St. Pete’s own Nate Najar on guitar.
I’ve met Nate but I’m really looking forward to playing with him,” she said.
The show starts on Friday at 8 p. m. For tickets and information visit www.mypalladium.org, or call our box office at 727 822-3590.
Leave a Reply