Life is a cabaret, old chum. At least it is for Jazzin’ Jeanne Brei (rhymes with sky), a nostalgia entertainer who brings new life to the timeless standards of the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s’ American songbook, a time before rock and roll began to dominate the music scene (and later Las Vegas). As effervescent as fine champagne, she sings, dances, writes, directs and really does it all, all in a much appreciated move to keep the music of the good ol’ days right where it belongs – in front of appreciative audiences for whom, as the song goes - ”Everything old is new again.”

 Jazzin' with

Jazzin' Jeanne Brei

Arthur Bloberger: Let’s start with your roots. You come from a musical family. Tell me about growing up.

Jeanne Brie: My mother married her tap teacher and the dance studio was in the basement. I was born in Chicago, LaGrange Park. Left when I was three. We moved out to Colorado Springs, Colorado, which is God’s Country, USA, nestled in the base of Pike’s Peak. When we moved out there, they had hardly anybody there. It was just a tiny little town. By the time we left – it had been the fastest growing city in the nation for most of the ‘70s, right up until the gasoline crisis thing.

Arthur: So you’re used to a boomtown. But that's not us anymore.

Jeanne: But that’s how I fell in love with Vegas, because I recognized instantly in ’94 that this was another fellow boomtown just like C Springs was. We moved out to C Springs and lived in the same little area – we only moved two blocks every couple years, so I knew all the same kids from second grade through 12th. After high school, I took off for Northwestern in Evansville, IL, right outside of Chicago. Froze my ass off with 83 below with wind chill and said, “No more of that stuff.”

Arthur: So where did you go next?

Jeanne: Got in my car after college. I had interned as a newspaper reporter at the Macon Telegraphic News in Georgia and then decided I didn’t want to be a newspaper reporter, which was surprising because I thought I’d want to get into something on the air or as a reporter, but I didn’t like the kind of editing they did - painting the slant of it as opposed to the writing of it. So I headed my car down to Florida to work at Disney and my car blew up in Virginia. So I spent a summer and a fall there. It took me about 15, 20 minutes to get a job, and I found a room to rent for $25 dollars a week, a block off the beach. Granted it was a walk-in closet, but it had a bed, and the dresser was in the hall. I didn’t see much of it, because I literally was at work waitressing from 6 o’clock in the morning until two.

Arthur: A lot of great talents have waited tables.

Jeanne: From there I would go to Tidewater Dinner Theatre where I was doing the show Applause, and I’d be there from like 5 until 10. Then I would go to Philip’s Waterside and sing at a piano bar until about 2 in the morning. I was one of those nutty Rat Pack types that burns the candle at every end. I ended up working at a harbor cruise ship, which was great, because that was just luncheon, so I didn’t have to get up at 6 a.m. anymore. I could sleep in until 9. I did that for like 6 months and I went home to go to Christmas and my car died again in Colorado. So I spent a year there and readied myself for New York.

Arthur: If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere.

Jeanne: But first I thought I’d go to New Orleans, and be a Dixieland singer with a band there, but as much as New Orleans is a fun town to party in, I thought it was no place to live. I didn’t like someplace where the cops are more crooked than the crooks. And the sales tax and the entertainment tax and the liquor tax – hardly any bands were working back in those days. They had lost so much money because there was so much corruption and graft during the World’s Fair that there was no work at all. It was very depressed.

Arthur: Kind of like Vegas now.

Jeanne: But it was a great town and I love the history and I love the architecture and I love the music. When I was down there, there was hardly any Dixieland music at all, period. It was all rock ‘n roll and it was very disheartening. When you get off the plane in Vegas, the energy is… okay, I can misbehave. I can be like Frank and Dean and Sammy and stay out all night and drink and carouse. When you get off the plane in N’awlins, it was, oh good, I can break the law. I can piss in the street and I can flash my boobs. It’s a completely different feel. They just go that extra mile. I sort of like decorum. I was there the month after Mardi Gras. I don’t think I could have survived Mardi Gras. I was there for the three festivals after though, and that was plenty for me. I was like, this isn’t my style. I’m not that kind of party hearty kind of girl.

Arthur: So where to next?

Jeanne: I went off to Boston, then down to the Catskills and kind of wandered around during six weeks off and got invited to a party in Long Island. This was in about 1986.  It had a boat in the backyard. It was mostly I would say stockbrokers and stuff. The next thing I know they whip out the pot. Like, okay, if I’m in another room I don’t have to smell it. And then they whip out the Cocaine and it’s like, you know what, my first night in New York and I’m going to get arrested (laughing). But I didn’t. Again it took me about 20 minutes to find a waitressing gig, but I did have to work the Fourth of July, and it was the Statue of Liberty Centennial, a terrible time to have to work. It was pretty exciting there. I positively love New York. I love the energy. I love being around the best and the best brings out the best in me. I was fortunate to see a show pretty much every week. If I had a really good week, I’d see a Broadway show. If it was not such a great week, I’d go se a cabaret show for 10 or 20 dollars. But I always saw stuff all the time.

Arthur: And soon you were in them instead of seeing them.

Jeanne: I was in the American Tap Dance Orchestra, which was the premier tap company at the time. I got to work with Honi Cole and Cookie Cook and Bunny Briggs and others, just amazing, amazing tap dancers, most of whom were in the movie Tap, as was I, as an extra. I got to work with Sammy Davis, Jr. in that show. I got to work with Gregory Hines two or three times. I was on the same bill with Fabian. I actually got to meet Ginger Rogers. We took her picture with the company. She wasn’t dancing at the time. She had two very beefy guys on either arm and she glided in and she glided out. I got to rub shoulders with some pretty wonderful people.

Arthur: Sometimes it’s not what you know, but who you know.

Jeanne: It came in handy later when I was in Vegas and Maceo Anderson, who was a founding member of the Step Brothers, a tap act from ’25 to ’65, had died, and a PBS guy was at the funeral, and I told him I’d introduce him to the tap community and he asked me to do a TV show. So I ended up writing it, narrating it, editing it, typing the cover graphics – I did everything on the show – for nothing. But I did. I wanted to learn how and I wanted to do it. And they loved it, so they hired me for more. It was really fun doing it.

Arthur: Let’s stay in New York for a moment. What else?

Jeanne: With White Opera of Manhattan, I did Give My Regards to Broadway, and that musical director recommended me to the national tour of No, No Nanette with Phil Ford and Mimi Hines, and I went out on the road with that. I started doing cabaret shows around that time. And I had studied at the Eugene O’Neil Cabaret Symposium with the most amazing instructors you’d ever want to meet in your life and all the top musical directors in New York. I was so incredibly fortunate. And later I went to the Yale Cabaret Camp. I started doing cabaret shows. I did one way up at Adelade’s Soho Supper Club, one was at Don’t Tell Mama’s, and I fell in love with cabaret. I love doing that.

Arthur: When did you decide to bring your talents to Las Vegas?

Jeanne: I moved out to Vegas in ’95. Debbie Reynolds Casino was going great then, and Tom Gallagher and John Merrin with the Nevada Performing Arts Society were doing Brown Bag Cabarets Monday at lunch, and they heard I was from New York and a cabaret artist, and they called me and said they’d like a New York cabaret show. I said, “Great; book me a date.” And that’s when I realized that New York cabaret audiences listen with their heads and they’re the most well-informed cabaret audience you’ll ever meet - at least one person in that audience either knows the composer of the 12 songs you’re singing or was there when it was introduced. But in Vegas, the opposite is true. It’s 12 songs, 10 of which everyone knows every word to or they shut down and quit listening. They listen with their gut; they listen with their heart. It’s a completely different medium here, which is ironic since so many come from New York and California, but when they get to these borders – I don’t have to think anymore – I’m in Vegas, baby. I mean I would do cabaret shows and half the audience would be New Yorkers but they still wanted the songs that everybody knew every word to. I had started my cabaret act and it was called ’30s Jazz – Sweet and Hot, and I was doing all these songs that I call gems – people don’t really know them, but they’re written by fabulous composers from the day, they’re like the B sides of the A songs, and about three songs in, I’d say to Charlie, “Stormy Weather in C, let’s just get ‘em back.” And that’s the way it is.

Arthur: I know you’ve also performed at our New York, New York, as well as Fitzgeralds, the Union Plaza and the Westward Ho, even the Moulin Rouge. How long were you at Debbie Reynold’s?

Jeanne: I did a show with her about every six to eight weeks for almost two years. Then we took ‘em out to Sun City, and the first time I saw the Starbright Theatre, I was just enamored and I said, “Oh my gosh, let me bring in a cast!” I had a cast of 10 and I had a band. What was really fun is that I knew going in that I would totally sell out. They provided the marketing, they give you a little ad in the newsletter, plus everybody knew me from Debbie’s. They were bussing those people in from Sun City, Summerlin, to see us every week at Debbie Reynolds’. It was a different cabaret artist every week on like a six to eight week rotation, which is what I hope that the Smith Center will do, because it really is magical to see performers do something completely different from their ongoing shows, where they get someplace to spread their wings and do their own act. Keith Thompson, who’s brilliant and is the musical director of Jersey Boys, has been bringing cabaret to Vegas, slowly but surely. He’s even done his own cabaret show here, Kooky Tunes, at the Flamingo Library. I’m hoping that with the Smith Center opening that maybe there’ll be room for a few more people – like yours truly.

Arthur: I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. It would be perfect for you.

Jeanne: I love cabaret. I’m not the kind of person that likes to do Jersey Boys for six months or a year. I don’t like the same thing over and over again. I love variety. I’m a typical Gemini. If I can do a different show every week, I’m in heaven. Yeah, it’s a lot of stress, because I do like to write it, and I like to direct it, and I’d like to produce it. And star in it.

Arthur: So many hats…

Jeanne: I need to start like delegating, which is the way we’ve been doing it at the Italian American Club. We do a different variety show every month. I bring in guest stars. In January, we had Sonny Charles from the Checkmates sitting in with Don Hill from the Treniers, legends in this town, playing the good life. And we had the Stepping Kings with Van Porter, a fabulous Broadway tap dancer who I’ve known for probably 20 years from my days in New York, and they came and did a tap dance. And like the old variety shows, I challenged them and joined them in a dance.

Arthur: I know you’re staying busy, but what does the future hold for you?

What I’d really like is to do a show called Time Traveling With You and go to all the places across the country where you can time travel, whether it’s Christmas at the Hearst Castle in City in San Simeon, California, or Fourth of July in Williamsburg, Virginia, or Mars 2112 in New York at 49th and Broadway. We used to have something like that here called SpaceQuest Casino in the Hilton, but they got rid of it. There’s a lot of different ways you can time travel across this country.

Arthur: It does sound like you really get around.

Jeanne: I’ve been fortunate enough to have actually been in all 50 states, most of the Canadian provinces, all of Europe and most of the Mediterranean. I’ve ridden a camel up to the pyramids of Egypt, driven a race car 139 mph, I’ve gone barnstorming in a ’41 German biplane. On New Year’s I was swimming with the dolphins in the Bahamas – I definitely live life to its fullest.

And that she does! But right now Jazzin’ Jeanne Brei is bringing life and song, along with her band, The Speakeasy Swingers (together they won the 2011 Excellence in Entertainment award for Jazz Ensemble of the Year), to the Sorrento Room at the Las Vegas Italian American Club (702) 457-3866). It’s located on Sahara Ave. just east of Eastern, one of this town’s most historic venues, and it all takes place on the first Thursday of every month. Entitled “Throwback Thursdays,” it’s a return to a kinder, gentler, more melodic era. Catch her while you can, because there’s no telling what this bundle of energy will be up to next.

For more info about Jazzin’ Jeanne Brei, visit http://www.jazzinwithjeanne.com/.