The world may already have had a Lady Day by the time Alice Vergerie Day began singing jazz on Liberty City street corners as a child. Billie “Lady Day” Holiday is, of course, a hard act to follow.
But this Day, born the second of seven children on March 9, 1946, in Alachua County and raised in Miami, has been called “South Florida’s First Lady of Jazz” so often by music scribes and fans she’s earned her place in the musical firmament.
After battling heart disease, Day died on July 10 at age 74, according to her niece Christina Alexander.
The Billie Holiday connection
Day did have a special early connection to the music with Billie Holiday. The first song Day learned as a jazz singer was Holiday’s rendition of “God Bless the Child,” her family said.
Day never had a formal singing lesson “but learned by listening to the records of Holiday, learning her every inflection and sound. She considers Billie her first teacher,” her family wrote in her obituary.
Day, who graduated from Miami Northwestern Senior High School in 1963, never forgot these “lessons.” She was regarded among the premier song stylists in South Florida and named Best Female Jazz Vocalist at the South Florida Music Awards in 1984. Not long after, she opened her own jazz space — Alice’s Place — tucked inside Fort Lauderdale’s former Musicians Exchange in 1989.
“I should have been born 20 years earlier,” Day told a Miami Herald pop and jazz critic in 1984. “A quick scan of her influences bears this out,” he wrote. “There is a touch of the tormented phrasing of Billie Holiday, the tight-lipped delivery of Nancy Wilson, and the spirit of Ernestine Anderson in Day’s work.”
Said Day at the time, “It’s what I’m supposed to be doing. I can’t imagine what will happen if people are allowed to forget about this music. I have a duty to keep it alive.”
Going professional at 15
According to a 1989 Herald feature, when Day was 15, she faked her age to get her first professional job at the former Rockland Palace in Overtown. The high school student, who aced business classes, made $5 a night working in the kitchen and singing with the band.
Her aunt, Shirley Crawford, loaned her clothes, fixed her makeup and drove her to the club. She told Day’s mother she was baby-sitting.
“She was too young to be in the club, but she had the voice of a woman,” Crawford told the Herald in 1989.
In 1955, Day’s family relocated to Miami and she joined the Metropolitan AME Church. She began singing there and remained a member until the day she died, her family said. For a time, she was the church’s choir director.
Day’s jazz travels
Day spent about eight years living in Chicago and New York, tapping into their more competitive jazz communities, but returned to South Florida in the 1970s because she didn’t want her son Rory educated in the urban schools of the North, her family said.
Here, Day helped form the Sunshine Jazz Organization along with China Valles, hosted a jazz program on WLRN, and she founded the South Florida Jazz Hall of Fame. She wanted to help recognize local talent in a genre that still struggles to gain traction.
Day played multiple sets at clubs and lounges from Miami-Dade to Palm Beach counties, often in the wee hours. The setting suited the subtle rasp in her voice.
“I consider myself a saloon singer. I like smoky joints,” she told the Sun Sentinel in 1988.
A mentor to many
“She’s done an awful lot to keep the music going when work gets slim,” Valles said in the 1980s. “When there was nothing happening, Alice was out there hustling. She helps a lot of people.”
“She was one of the first people in South Florida to embrace me when I was just starting out,” said Nicole Yarling, one of South Florida’s current premier jazz talents, on a Facebook post.
“Alice Day, Mel Dancy, Pete Minger, Ira Sullivan, and China Valles saw something in me that I had not yet realized. They were my mentors,” Yarling wrote.
DJ Tracy Fields, host of WLRN’s “Evenin’ Jazz” program, aired a tribute to Day on Monday.
“Alice was one of the first jazz artists to perform upstairs at the small Musicians Exchange Cafe,” listener Sheldon Voss posted on Fields’ program notice. “I’ll never forget how she commanded the stage and literally held us all in a trance. She was beautiful. Classy. And a 100% dedicated to jazz.”
Added listener Stuart King: “When everyone would go sit in with piano great Jimmy Crawford (including me) circa ‘79 at Brothers 2, she came in after midnight and sang ‘The Shadow of Your Smile’ as a slow, slow, super slow ballad and just brought the house down. Impeccable!”
‘Music is like breathing’
For Day, the goal was to embody the music, to be believable.
“If you don’t feel it, something’s wrong with either me or you,” she told the Sentinel in 1988. “One of us has got a hole in our soul somewhere. Music is so much a part of me, it’s like breathing in and breathing out.”
Day’s survivors include her son Rory Kelley; brothers Johnny, Arthur and Jesse; sisters Annist Brown, Barbara Pryor and Joyce Reid; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
A memorial and jam session will be held from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, July 17, at The Family Funeral Home, 10115 NW 27th Ave., Miami. The funeral is at 3 p.m. Saturday, July 18, at the same location. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic there will be restrictions on how many people can gather.
This story was originally published July 17, 2020 2:08 PM.
