In a season of family and angels, St. Louis radio legend Bernie Hayes knows he has found his angel – and she is the closest member of his family: his wife, the singer Uvee Hayes.
“She was a young girl, and she wanted to record,” Bernie said of meeting Uvee 33 years ago. “She was an angelic find. It’s been a wonderful ride so far.”
They met when a mutual friend brought Uvee to Bernie’s studio, where he had been producing music. They are making beautiful music together still.
Her latest album, Play Something Pretty, released in June, has been nominated in four categories for the 2009 Blues Critic awards, including Best Performance by a Duo, Best Slow Jam, Best Female Vocal Performance and Best Down Home Blues Song.
“They are voting all around the country, we’ll see what happens,” Uvee said.
The hit single on her album, “Play Something Pretty,” is Uvee’s duet with Otis Clay. The song led to making the album because the people wanted more, she said. CDS Records out of California picked up the album, and it was also released in England.
Some of the CD was recorded in St. Louis and some in New Orleans. People involved in making the album – celebrity friends from Bernie’s radio years – include Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin’s keyboard player, The Dells’ drummer, the horn section from Earth Wind and Fire, and The Emotions on background vocals.
John May, a founder of the St. Louis Blues Society, helped to produce the record. “It was an honor to be involved in it,” May said.
An old, dear friend of the couple, May considers Uvee and Bernie to be music legends of St. Louis.
“They came from that, and everything they knew was about that,” May said. “I was absorbed into it by them, thankfully, because it actually became my life. It’s been over 30 years and still being friends, that means that music is a magical thing.”
The blues on Play Something Pretty takes Uvee back to where she came from.
Singing came from her mother, Uvee says without hesitating. But the depth of her song comes from the Delta blues. And when she sings the blues, she paints a picture of her family and Macon, Mississippi, where she came from.
“I love all music, but blues is what I heard growing up,” Hayes said. “Everyone in my family – blues, blues, blues. It’s how I got started, and I love it.”
Jim Dolan, of The Presenters Dolan, met the Hayes two years ago when he produced a series called “Cabaret in Blue.” Blues and R&B singers from St. Louis did cabaret shows with both song and story, using a grand piano and less-amplified cabaret instrumentation. Uvee recently did an all-new show last month at the Kranzberg.
“Uvee does a wonderful cabaret show, with a mix of blues standards that she uses to tell stories about coming up,” Dolan said.
“Uvee has a gentleness, humor and familiarity as she addresses the audience while talking to them, and then turns up the force and the power in the songs.”
‘The talk of the high school’
Being a performing artist since 1962, Uvee has mastered several other genres of music.
“She’s not a blues artist,” said May, who also owns BB’s Jazz, Blues and Soups. “She’s not a soul artist. She’s not a rhythm and blues artist. She’s all of those things.”
Uvee has recorded more than nine albums, cassettes and CDs, with some of the world’s finest musicians, including Tom Tom Washington, Otis Clay, The Emotions, Theresa Davis, Stevie Wonder and Luther Ingram. She has recorded in Chicago, New Orleans, Cleveland, Memphis and Detroit.
The moment she’s been most proud was producing one of her first 45 rpm records called Testify with the late, great St. Louis producer and songwriter Oliver Sain.
“I still have it. I cherish it,” she said. “I loved him for the time and effort he took with me. That’s what started me in St. Louis was Oliver.”
St. Louis has been a rich base to work and build a foundation. Yet, she finds herself playing and singing in California and throughout the country more than locally. “The different dynamics is the cause of that,” she said.
For Uvee, all this musical globetrotting started with a talent show in high school, when she was in the ninth grade.
“When I did the talent show, I will not forget, the name of the song was ‘The Man is Down on Me.’ I don’t even remember who sang the song,” she said.
Mitty Collier sang that song, Bernie told her.
“I was the talk of the high school,” she said. “It got back to my church. They said, ‘If you can do it in a talent show, you can do it in a choir.’ But most of my high school teachers wanted to know how I picked such a grownup song.”
She went off to college and sang in a choir, which performed more opera music. And again she tried her hand at a talent show. However, the number that she picked wasn’t opera, it was blues.
“So I kind of got kicked out of the choir, but they brought me back,” she said.
From there, she began singing with bands, and the rest has been history, she said.
Her mother never missed any of my performances and was a strong supporter. Now her husband is her number one supporter, she said.
“It’s been easy with the talent she has,” Bernie said. “She can sing any genre, opera, soul and blues and gospel. The hardest thing is finding material for her. I’m proud of her.”
“I want to be thought of the person who never truly really did give up,” Uvee said. “Just always tried to do what I set out to do.”
