Singer Dee Daniels' creativity is reborn after a bout with cancer, and a brush with the divine
She went into the operating room as a leading interpreter of the Great American Songbook, and emerged as a songwriter
The TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival presents Dee Daniels at Performance Works on Saturday (July 3) at 8 pm; the limited in-person concert is sold out, but tickets are available to watch it streamed.
FOLLOW YOUR DREAM, they say. But if you do, be prepared for that dream to lead you down some strange or even inexplicable paths, with many a curve and setback, and no promise of happiness at the end of the road.
Then again, all can be well.
Right now, all is well with Dee Daniels. Reached on her cellphone during a brief vacation on the Sunshine Coast, she sounds focused and happy and eager to talk. But be prepared: the tale she has to tell is a strange one.
Now, many people probably thought that Daniels was already living the dream. The longtime Vancouver resident might have sometimes flown under the radar at home, making just a few concert appearances per year, but she wasn’t exactly taking it easy. In locales where there’s more of an audience for jazz singing, she was a star—recording with Clark Terry, Kenny Barron, and fellow Vancouver International Jazz Festival luminary Helen Sung; making acclaimed records for an international array of labels; and teaching around the world.
Relocating to New York City, she thought, would be the next logical step. Turns out it was—and it wasn’t.
“It was just a temporary move,” she explains. “I didn’t know how long I was going to be there, but I wanted to accomplish some things that couldn’t be done it you’re not resident there. I thought being there would fulfill this… Oh, how can I describe it? I was feeling like there was something more that I was to be doing with my life. And being there kind of amplified that, in that here I was in Mecca—you know, Mecca for jazz and creative arts and so forth—and I still felt, like, a hole in my soul. And I couldn’t figure out what it was. I was doing all kinds of things: I was travelling to countries that I’d never been to before, and working in the A-list clubs, working with jazz legends, teaching… Living the life, you know! But there was something missing.”
There was also something seriously wrong. Just as she was struggling with this creative malaise—and facing it alone, away from her husband and Vancouver support network—she was given a breast-cancer diagnosis and put on a crippling drug regimen prior to surgery. And yet somehow, even after rejecting her doctors’ recommendation of post-op radiation treatment, Daniels came out of it not only alive, but more creatively vital than ever before.
She went into the operating room as a leading interpreter of the Great American Songbook—the canon of show tunes and jazz ballads compiled from the 1930s into the early 1960s—and emerged as a songwriter, having discovered this missing piece of her personal puzzle through what, to many, will seem a miracle.
“After the surgery, that’s when the journey really began,” she says. “I had some of the most fascinating adventures via meditation….And I would say half of it people would not believe. They’d probably want to lock me up somewhere, or at least look at me sideways,” she says. “But they were incredible experiences of various kinds of healing, not only physically but emotionally. It was deep. really, really deep.”
Out of that came the songs that can be heard on Daniels’ new album The Promise, which only hints at that depth, More adventures, she suggests, will be heard on the “three or four” further CDs that’s she’s already written, along with a memoir that she’s also working on. And while her first batch of tunes is couched in the kind of religious language that is second nature to any preacher’s step-daughter, her evolving spirituality seems more like a blend of Baptist, Buddhist, and New Age, with a dash of the uncanny.
At one point, the late gospel star Andrae Crouch appeared to help her fine-tune an as yet unreleased song called “God’s Will, Not Mine”. At another, she met her spirit guide—who she won’t name, but seems to have been a significant figure from her past. And elsewhere she was given a glimpse of the structure of the universe—a “go into the light” moment that left her with an unshakable belief that all is one.
Have we mentioned that her cancer has not returned?
Daniels credits guided meditation and what she calls “fervent prayer” with giving her first-hand experience of the divine—which in turn has given her back her health, her strength, and even her freakishly youthful vocal range. Those of us more skeptical of God, Allah, or the All One can still marvel at her rebirth; the power of belief is hard to deny.
“I wouldn’t change anything,” she says now. “I don’t want to have breast cancer again, but I wouldn’t change anything, because of what I’ve gotten out of it—the understanding, the knowledge, the wisdom—and the opportunity to share it with others.
“I know this music is supposed to be out there,” she adds. “And I just feel blessed, because my greatest desire—and this has been going on for years—is [to be] a catalyst for 'source’. Anybody else can call source whatever they want. Call it God, love, the universe, all that is, your higher self, or nothing—it doesn’t matter. But I am a catalyst—and it continues!”
To hear more from Alexander Varty’s interview with Dee Daniels, check out the Stir it up Podcast Episode 4 at the Jazz Fest Guide here.
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