On a recent Wednesday night, the Chicago Jazz Soul Collective played one of their frequent gigs at the Jazz Showcase. A few songs in, guest vocalist Yvonne Gage sauntered onstage, smiled, and shifted their dynamic. She sang for a few numbers, filling in for regular vocalist Dee Alexander, and her subtle performances underpinned her polished phrasing with determination. As the sextet put new twists on grooves rooted in the 1960s and ’70s, Gage personalized the music, whispering or shouting as the mood required. The applause meant more to her than most of the audience likely realized.
Gage has been singing for more than five decades, and today she’s living her ideal life. This spring a remix of her song “Feel Love” (from the 2022 album Feel Love) became popular in Europe. Her silken but steely tone on the up-tempo track might remind you of her early-1980s R&B tunes that got played in dance clubs. Meanwhile, she now has a platform to sing the jazz standards she’s always adored. For decades, most of her performances were as a backup singer or as the faceless voice of a commercial jingle, so the gigs she’s been booking lately give her a sense of personal empowerment—the focus is finally on her talent again. When she fronts a new group of longtime colleagues at the Promontory this weekend, everyone in the room will see who she really is.
Yvonne Gage
Featuring the Abney Effect and hosted by DJ Sam Chatman. Fri 10/6, 6:45 PM, the Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. W., promontorychicago.com, $25, $35 seated, $45 VIP, $150 six-guest couch section, 21+
“The best performance that I can do is what is natural to me, where I don’t have to contrive,” Gage says, sitting in a restaurant near her home in the West Loop. To her, jazz singing is an act of radical transparency. “I just am; I just do it. That’s not to say I’m not R&B, because I’m that too. If I had a choice, if I had to pick one to be, it would be a jazz artist. So I’m going to keep doing what I do and keep combining the two, because I like the sound of the two of them together.”
Offstage, Gage exudes the same sunny personality she did at the Jazz Showcase. Her signature black-and-gold ensemble includes elaborate yet tasteful jewelry designed by her romantic partner Undra Heard. She also projects an assertiveness that undoubtedly helped her through many setbacks, including an unfortunate episode in the mid-80s when she ran afoul of a bunch of suits protecting their rights to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
Gage grew up in Lawndale in the 1960s and 1970s, west and a little south of where she lives today. In 1975, the New York Times declared of the west side that “many consider it among the worst slum areas in the nation.” But that’s not Gage’s lasting memory. “Lawndale was good,” she says. “A lot of families on the block. A lot of community, happiness. I lived a trouble-free life in that area. It was wholesome. Unfortunately, it’s not like that now.”
Presentation Catholic Church (3908 W. Lexington) was one of the community’s cornerstones, and Gage began singing there as a girl. When gospel came to Presentation, Gage says she “learned to throw away that light, pure, angelic voice” and build a rougher sound, closer to what soul singers had created by bringing the shouts and moans of Baptist and Pentecostal services into R&B. She also noticed how her slightly older neighbors were harmonizing, and she’d soon join them.
Gage began attending Holy Name Cathedral High School, but it didn’t do anything to foster her love of singing. “I picked Cathedral because it was not an all-girls school,” she says. “The disconnect was, I went to this school and I realized they had nothing for me: no music at all, no gym. Every day when I got out of school—when everyone else was going to whatever the extracurricular activities were—I went to rehearsals with my girls. My training came from spending the day, all day, listening to Aretha Franklin, Sarah Vaughan, people who I loved. That’s where my training came from: in my living room.”
In the mid-1970s, Gage joined a vocal group called the Soulettes—they’d been together for a few years already and had released a single in 1970. Small clubs and bars lined the major streets in their neighborhood, and rules were lax enough that an underage singer could perform in them. At one such venue they met an early champion, DJ Sam Chatman, who may be best known for codifying stepping.
“The Safari club was a dive, kind of down in the basement on Madison and Pulaski,” Gage says. “People just partied everywhere. And there I was, I’m 14 years old, I’m not supposed to be there. Sam agreed that if my parents chaperoned, he’d let me perform, and that was my first performance. A little scary, but more fun than scary—and the girls are my sisters to this day.”
Producer Donald Burnside began working with the Soulettes, and while he admired all their voices, he saw Gage as a standout. The group went through a few transformations, changed their name to Love, and then recorded an album as First Love in 1982—but by then, Gage had left to pursue her own opportunities. These jobs included singing background for another Burnside client, Daryl “Captain Sky” Cameron, on the 1979 album Pop Goes the Captain. Cameron has remained a steadfast collaborator.
“Yvonne had the kind of voice that lent itself to recording—not only lead but backgrounds,” Burnside says. “Not every lead singer sounds good on backgrounds. You never heard Whitney Houston singing a lot of backgrounds. But Yvonne is multifaceted when it comes to that. She has a wonderful lead voice and lead presence, while to this day her voice just sounds great backing up other artists.”
Then as now, Gage mainly sticks to a soprano register, though she can perform the Chicago Soul Jazz Collective’s songs in Alexander’s alto range. It just takes more effort these days.
“I wish I had the range that I had when I was in my 20s, when it was effortless to flow between one octave and another,” Gage says. “It’s more of a struggle now, but I do have range. You can’t stay in the same spot with a song. I don’t care how sweet, somber, or whatever, you got to take it someplace.”
Powered by this versatility, Gage began releasing records under her own name. The first was a Burnside composition and production, 1981’s “Garden of Eve,” released by RFC Records and distributed through Atlantic. A video clip of an enthusiastic Gage, decked out in her signature black and gold and lip-synching this irresistibly joyful invitation to dance, appears on the 2015 Numero Group DVD and album set Ultra-High Frequencies: The Chicago Party, which documents a short-lived 1982 television show shot at south-side venue CopHerBox II.
“Garden of Eve” made a dent on the Billboard dance charts—climbing to number 36 in early 1982—but it defies easy categorization. Popular in European clubs, the song rides on a rhythm that elides disco’s more insistent four-on-the-floor and foreshadows what became known as house music; meanwhile her singing style is old-school R&B. Gage feels that since the track didn’t easily fit into any one realm, it wasn’t fully embraced at home.
“What would you call that?” Gage asks. “It’s dance music, but it’s not house, but it kind of is. It’s huge overseas, but here they don’t know what it is. It predated house, and I think for house people, house is house and that’s it.”
Burnside also produced, arranged, and composed most of the tracks on Gage’s 1984 LP debut, Virginity, released by local label Chycago International Music and distributed through CBS. The album combines solid string and horn arrangements with electronic keyboards and the insistent programmed dance beats of the era. Gage was most comfortable singing the ballads, and she recalls being most uncomfortable posing for the cover photo. She’s wearing white lingerie, standing awkwardly with a white fur coat held in front of her legs.
“I remember the day we shot the cover like it was yesterday,” Gage says. “I was so embarrassed. They had people there from CBS who were overseeing it—it was their idea. They were all there, and I felt that I was naked. That part was weird to me. The album was a good idea that didn’t land well. There are things I liked, but they made a lot of mistakes with me, down to the mastering.”
The album’s biggest liability was its intended novelty hit, “Doin’ It in a Haunted House.” Because it was an answer song to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” it adapted the original’s squared-off beat and synth-bass licks, tweaked its famous horn sting, and even used some similar melodic phrases. Thriller had come out on Epic Records, a CBS label, and though it had already become the best-selling album of all time by 1984, the folks at CBS (and presumably “Thriller” songwriter Rod Temperton) turned out to be pretty invested in demonstrating that they would still protect their turf.
“I was so mad at Don,” Gage says. “I asked him, ‘Is it OK for us to do this? Do we have to give him credit for this?’ He said, ‘Oh, no.’ He swore up and down that it’s not the same thing. But it is, though. ‘Haunted House’ was all the rage—they booked me to do a TV show in the UK. The day before I was scheduled to go, we get a call—the show was canceled. Rod Temperton, I guess we should be grateful he wasn’t interested in suing us. Just slapped us on the hand, and that killed the record, killed the album.”
Burnside likewise claims that CBS pressured independent promo people to bury the record, but he tells the tale differently.
“Me being young and frisky at the time, our team asked me if I could do the song and not create copyright infringement,” he says. “We did that all the time with commercials. I knew exactly how to do it, even though I said, ‘Let’s give Rod Temperton credit for the song and put it out there.’ But then, ultimately, Rod Temperton’s publishing company called, were very laid-back and were like, ‘We don’t know if we have a copyright claim, but we’re calling if maybe we do.’ Their attitude was: ‘Let’s just see how the record does, and if it’s a big pie, we want to have our piece.’ But CBS Records had a totally different approach. CBS said, ‘Let’s just kill this.’ And they did. Pow, out of there. Over with. That was CBS just turning off the faucet.”
Gage continued to work, primarily as a backing singer, where she expanded her musical vision even as she remained in the shadows. These gigs include a 1984 tour with Ministry in support of their early synth-pop album With Sympathy. (She’d later appear on the band’s 1999 record, Dark Side of the Spoon.) Gage also accompanied older R&B and blues artists, including Tyrone Davis and Willie Clayton, both of whom helped her improve her stage presence.
During the late 90s and early 2000s, Gage also sang on R. Kelly recordings. She remembers the sessions as conducted professionally. Now that she knows about his crimes away from the studio, her thoughts are with the young women he hurt. “It’s shameful and especially sad that he’s from Chicago,” she says.
Gage had started singing television and radio advertising jingles in 1981. She did a lot of work for Chicago-based Herschel Commercial, which was founded in the mid-1970s and became a premier Black-owned production company in the industry. These jobs not only provided steady paychecks but also let her stay in Chicago to raise her son, instead of submitting herself to the rigors of touring. But she never stopped wanting to perform her own music.
“The jingle business was so phenomenal, but it kept me from doing what I was supposed to be doing for a long time,” Gage says. “It was just a whirlwind: Thirty-plus years in jingles and making top dollar. Ultra Curl, Coca-Cola, 7 Up, AT&T, Klondike bars: every product in your household, I did a commercial for it.”
Gage ultimately worked in advertising for more than 30 years, but jobs for artists like her began to dry up during her last decade or so in the industry. She says that the September 11 attacks caused a drop in business, and she also believes that performers were ultimately harmed by the side effects of a 2000 labor battle between advertising companies and SAG-AFTRA (a union representing actors, broadcasters, singers, and other media professionals).
“During the strike, they learned how to advertise without paying this money to talent,” Gage says. “They did needle drops, they did licensing, animation. Then they started doing buyouts. After they realized they didn’t have to pay this kind of money, it was over.”
In the 2010s, Gage stopped working in advertising, but she’d found other means of supporting herself. She taught vocal performance at Roosevelt University for six years, beginning in 2014, where she passed along what she’d learned about stage presence and reaching higher notes. In 2015 she performed as one of the backing singers on Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life tour. Though the closest she got to Stevie was during the concerts’ preshow prayers, Gage describes those gigs as “the highest of highs.” She sang on a few episodes of the TV show Empire, and she performed with Aretha Franklin not long before her death in 2018.
“The best show was the very first one, in Boston,” Gage says. “It was an ocean of people, and Aretha had just come back from illness. I can’t remember what song we did, and everyone fell apart—she started crying, the audience was crying. It was just a spiritual moment. It was hard working with her, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
With the help of industry friends, Gage was able to resume recording under her own name around 20 years ago. In 2004 she self-released a self-titled R&B album that showcased softer tunes. On tracks such as “Surrender” and an update of Sharon Ridley’s 70s ballad “Stay a While With Me,” Gage’s quiet phrasing contrasts with propulsive bass lines.
Yvonne Gage’s 2018 single for modern-funk label Star Creature Universal Vibrations
In 2018, Gage joined the band First Touch on the single “Tonight’s the Night” b/w “You Can Have It All,” released by young Chicago-born modern-funk label Star Creature Universal Vibrations—which hailed her as a “first generation soul and boogie artist.” Maurice White, an executive at Universal, financed Feel Love, which features more of her jazz inflections and includes keyboardist Mike Logan. Gage sees all these releases, taken together, as testifying to her resilience and endurance.
“You better have a straight head on in this business,” Gage says. “I’m going to record until I can’t record any more. What are my expectations? None. To make music. There was a time when I used to pine over where I wanted to go, how I wanted it to happen, and that it had to happen. But I’m grateful to be the age that I am and still viable.”
Saxophonist John Fournier, coleader of the Chicago Soul Jazz Collective, notes that Gage brings all of those life experiences to the ensemble.
Chicago Soul Jazz Collective featuring Yvonne Gage
Wed 10/4, 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth Ct., jazzshowcase.com, $20, $30 VIP, $15 student, 21+
Chicago Soul Jazz Collective featuring Yvonne Gage
Sat 11/4, 7:30 and 9:30 PM, Winter’s Jazz Club, 465 N. McClurg Ct., wintersjazzclub.com, $27.75, $32.75 VIP, 12+ with parent or guardian
“Yvonne can do whatever she wants with it and makes decisions quickly,” Fournier says. “A lot of jazz singers are wonderful, but they have a feel for jazz singing from the 1940s and ’50s. She has that in her wheelhouse, but also a lot that sounds modern. It’s just seamless—she never sounds like she’s searching.”
Ultimately, Gage yearns to lead her own group, and she’ll get a chance at the Promontory on Friday. She’s also singing again with the Chicago Soul Jazz Collective (this week at Jazz Showcase and next month at Winter’s), and she has a few spring concerts in France booked under her own name, where she’ll perform her dance hits. But whether she’s singing jazz or the light funk that’s now called boogie, Gage just wants to put the songs first.
“If you want to be an all-the-way-around performer, you have to think about every note you’re singing, and you have to go into a zone,” Gage says. “I’m standing here and all these people are looking at me, but I’m in another place. It’s important for you to convey not just vocally but physically in singing what you’re talking about and what it means to you. It’s how to have longevity in this business. People want to be moved.”
