About
Ms. Gregory hails from the Eastern Seaboard, having grown up in Washington, DC, and Atlantic City, New Jersey, during a fertile period of musical innovation in the Jazz, Rhythm & Blues and Blues fields. As such, she was surrounded and influenced by these rhythms, from a very early age. She specializes in the “Great American Songbook”, and her extensive repertoire of popular jazz standards bespeaks that upbringing. Her smooth and mellow timbre reflects an amalgam of influences that she attributes to the vocalists and instrumentalists who were the seminal innovators of jazzmusic, during its formative period. Some say her voice reminds them of warm honey. She considers some of her greatest influences to be Gloria Lynne, Dakota Staton, Billie Holiday, Jimmy Scott, Nat “King” Cole, Betty Carter, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Etta Jones, Carmen McRae, Dinah Washington, Johnny Mathis, Nancy Wilson, and Louis Jordan. A former member and soloist with the Oakland Jazz Choir, Ms Gregory has performed in many Bay Area venues over the years, both with that aggregation, and as a solo performer, with her own, very fine, rhythm section. These include the San Francisco Jazz & Wine Festival, the Stanislaus Jazz Festival, the Dunsmuir Jazz & Blues Festival, the Fillmore Street Jazz Festival, The Pleasant Hill Art, Jazz & Wine Festival, New Orleans by the Bay, the Kabuki Theatre, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Great American Music Hall, Kimball’s East, Anna's Jazz Island and smaller clubs, restaurants, and outside music venues throughout the Bay Area. Melanie Berzon, of KCMS radio has called her a Bay Area treasure. Both “Honeysuckle Rose”, and "Something to Live For", Ms Gregory’s CD releases on the Wildbird Records label, are available on CD Baby.com.