Valley Singer Took Her Cues Early From Jazz Legends

Since singer Yevette Stewart and I have the same last name, we joke about being brother and sister. We also share a love of music, in general, and jazz, in particular. We both know that once you get hooked, you’re in for the duration.

Stewart, who offers standards, Brazilian tunes and jazz classics when she appears Friday at Ca’ del Sole in North Hollywood, says she’ll keep singing “as long as they’ll let me up on stage, because music, to me, is life.”

It always has been. The singer, who’s from Sacramento, grew up in San Francisco, the daughter of jazz bass player Eddie Hammond. Hammond worked regularly in the city’s Fillmore district in the bustling 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s.

“When my dad took me to see Basie in the early ‘60s at a ballroom on the [San Francisco] peninsula, he went up to him and introduced me. I was blown away,” said Stewart.

Stewart did her first professional job at age 13, worked regularly in Denver, where she lived in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and has appeared intermittently in Los Angeles, where she’s lived for the last 13 years. The Granada Hills resident, who is married to acclaimed bassist Jim Hughart (her last name is the result of a previous marriage), sings in a robust alto voice, and works with the kind of spirit and drive that she heard in her idols: Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Nancy Wilson. Which leads to more memories.

“On my first date, I went out with a musician’s son, and he took me to a big jazz concert at the Masonic Temple,” she said. “Ella sang, Oscar Peterson played. We had to sit way in the back. Ella looked like an ant, but she was actually singing the songs I had been hearing on record. That was a thrill.”

One of Stewart’s specialties is her fluid, authentic scat singing, an art form of which Fitzgerald was the acknowledged master.

Stewart also loves words. And delivering lyrics is another strong suit for the artist.

“You relate a lyric to your life choices, the good things or the bad things that have happened,” she said. “If it’s a beautifully written lyric, then it’s very easy to want to tell the story.”

* Yevette Stewart sings Friday, 8 p.m. to midnight, Ca’ del Sole, 4100 N. Cahuenga Blvd., North Hollywood. No cover, no minimum. Call: (818) 985-4669.

Bang Them Bells: The ringing timbre of the vibraphone has an enchanting quality, and few play the resonant percussion instrument as well as Dave Pike. He performs Saturday, 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., at Chadney’s, 3000 W. Olive St., Burbank; no cover, one-drink minimum; (818) 843-5333.