Syncopated Times readers all agree: when it comes to music, the oldies are the best. Singing sensation Cate Cody takes this mantra to extremes, with a mission to revive and revitalize some of the oldest jazz classics alongside the popular standards. The Gloucestershire-based English songbird knows the Great American Songbook inside out—“because that’s what a lot of people want to hear, and there are a lot of good songs in there”—but avoids much of the regular repertoire.
“I think some of the most often-sung numbers are just awful—like Fly Me to the Moon,” she said. “And then you have some singers who are sorely undervalued. I think Anita O’Day is one of the finest singers ever. Blossom Dearie has a bit of a Marmite voice [an English idiom, alluding to the bitter yeast spread one either loves or hates], but I love her. She did some amazing stuff with Ray Brown. I think that it's important to pursue the salvage of these rare tunes, as some are almost lost to history.”
Cate has appeared at clubs and festivals the length and breadth of Britain since 2003—Upton, Dorchester, Hatton Garden, Pershore and more—as well as during the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall, three times in Denmark and once in New York City.
Raised on classical music, she did not discover jazz until adulthood. “We didn’t really have p
