Rebecca Kilgore Talks About Her Influences, Critics, and Challenges

Vocalist Rebecca Kilgore (1949-2026) was interviewed by Monk Rowe on September 3, 1997, at the Allegheny Jazz Party, Chautauqua, NY, (Interview courtesy Fillius Jazz Archive, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY)

MR: When you were, let’s say 15, did you ever think that you would be making a career as a musician?

RK: Not until age 30 did I ever think that I would make a career as a musician. It was a complete surprise to me. Because I was very shy and I used to sing in my car and in my living room, but the thought of singing in front of people was mortifying. So when it happened it just—

MR: So you weren’t one of those kind of high school people that everyone knew as—oh she’s the musician, she’s the singer, she gets the lead in the plays.

RK: No, gosh, I was a closet musician. I always marvel at these people who know from an early age, just always knew they wanted to sing or whatever, and they just pursued that goal all their lives.

MR: But some of them don’t make it.

RK: Some of them don’t make it, but the ones that do say that that was the reason. But I’ve never been that focused. I’ve always loved music on the side.

MR: Why the music of the ’30s and ’40s?

RK: It’s the music that speaks to me. I love melodies and I guess we tend to romanticize the generation before us. I used to like the clothes and everything from my parents’ era. So the music just speaks to me. It’s very romantic and kind of naive and simple—but not simple musically, just in the messages that it conveys. It’s just always appealed to me because of its beauty.

Influences

MR: Was this music played in your house when you were a kid?

RK: Oddly enough I don’t think it was. My dad was a classical musician and he was the choir director at the church where we grew up in, that was the Unitarian Church in Waltham, Massachusetts, and he used to write choral music. Granted he did write a few arrangements for big bands in that area, but I don’t recall hearing it. I think I discovered Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra in high school somehow. And that’s another thing. Times have changed so much. I remember spending many, many hours in used record stores trying to find this old music. It was so hard to find. And when you had found an old Ella Fitzgerald record it was like striking gold. And nowadays, everything is reissued and it’s at our fingertips. It’s such a different era.

MR: It seems to make it more valuable when you have to go search it out. And when you finally get it, by God, you’re going to listen to that record.

RK: Yeah. And wear it out.

MR: Who from that era are favorites of yours? Anybody in particular?

RK: Well my highest ideal is Ella Fitzgerald because she was just everything in a jazz singer, to me. She can sing the melodies straight and make it beautiful and break your heart, and yet she can be very swingy and jazzy and scat sing and improvise. So she just covers it all to my way of thinking. She’s a very classy person, she has a classy delivery. There’s just no one who can equal her I think. She just does it all. Other singers that I got into are Anita O’Day, June Christie, Julie London, Doris Day, Chris Connor, Peggy Lee, Maxine Sullivan—it’s a long list.

Trials and Tribulations

MR: Can you think of one of the worst gigs you ever had?

RK: Well I can probably think of several but there was one where we were playing at a club at kind of an early hour and there was going to be—I don’t know how this person got this gig, it was piano, bass, fiddle, me on guitar or something. And well first of all the bass player arrived and laid down his bass and the neck broke off. And that was a disaster. And then he had to run home and get another bass. And we played and I remember the owner of the establishment asked us if we could stop early because they wanted to start the Karaoke. That was an insult.

MR: Good morale builder right there.

RK: And people weren’t into the music at all. So that was one place where they should not have had our music at all. And then there was a gig with Dave Frishberg where they didn’t have a regular piano they had an electronic keyboard and he didn’t know how to use it and he kept playing with all these dials and getting all these weird sounds and we just never knew what was going to happen next.

Critics

MR: Speaking of Arbors Records, this s an excerpt from a Jazz Times review, about your album with Dave Frishberg, and reads, “Kilgore sings with a happy voice filled of erudition and charm, turning every number into a sweet explication of the American song.”

RK: Wow.

MR: Not bad, huh?

RK: What does “erudition” mean?

MR: I wish I knew. I wish I knew how to pronounce it.

In retrospect

MR: Do you have definite career goals for yourself?

RK: No. I want to be able to sing the music that I love, this old music, and I have a stack that I want to learn. This is my goal in life is to learn all this music. And it seems like every time I take something off the top and learn it, more things go on the bottom, so I’ll never run out of music that I want to learn. I keep unearthing gems from that era by listening to old records and I want to keep that music alive in some small way. That’s my goal. But as far as my career, I just want to be able to continue to do that, and I consider myself very fortunate to play with great musicians like here this weekend. I can hardly believe it. It’s just an incredible dream. And record, and just continue doing what I’m doing. I feel very, very fortunate.