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• 1 2017-05-11T10:24:44-07:00 Germaine Potter Bazzle 3 plain 2017-05-11T10:27:42-07:00 Germaine Potter Bazzle was born in New Orleans on March 28th, 1932. Bazzle is the oldest of six children and she lived in the 7th ward until she was 10. The 7th ward may sound familiar because that is the part of New Orleans that received the most damage from Hurricane Katrina. Her father was a night watchman and her mother was a stay-at-home mom. Everyone in her family had an affinity for music and could play the piano. Her brother would bring home records of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker (to name a couple) and her family would listen to these jazz stars on their phonograph. She attended Valena C. Jones Elementary School and McDonough 35 High School. During elementary school, her family moved to the Lafitte Housing projects. Bazzle cherished her time spent living there for she could not fathom the stigmas behind the projects. She loved that all of the apartments looked the same and that they all had gardens in the backyard.
  
  As Bazzle got older, she became more influenced by Billy Eckstine, Buddy Johnson, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn. She and her friends in the projects would spend countless nights outside their houses singing and trying to sound like their idols. Bazzle remained in the projects until she was 21 and she graduated from Xavier University as a music major. Even though in college she learned to sing like Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms, she still held true to her roots and continued to listen to jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn. On top of being classically trained, Bazzle learned how to imitate the sounds of instruments with her voice. She could make her voice sound like a trumpet, saxophone, and even a bass. After graduating, Bazzle became a teacher and a singer on the side and has remained such presently.
  
  Germaine Bazzle is a highly respected choral teacher at Xavier Prep and when she is not at school, she is singing in clubs around New Orleans. When Bazzle sings in a band, she naturally becomes the leader of the group: while singing, she subconsciously conducts different players with different parts of her body and the players just follow along. Her movement comes from the music and the people she performs with just understand it. But when you ask Germaine, she will tell you that teaching is her top priority. Moreover, whenever she is asked why she never married and had kids or tried to pursue a singing career, she always says she never wanted to. She did not want to choose either of those life paths and she has never regretted it. "Teaching is really my strong suit, my big outlet. To me, the subject matter is just a vehicle. You're trying to reach for something inside that child—a sweetness, a kindness. I need teaching because it requires a certain kind of giving of myself. I'm passing on to those ladies some of the good things in life. But these gigs, I need them in a different sense. This is when I'm sharing on another level, with adults. It's my therapy. I get rid of all my hangups, all my frustrations. It whets my appetite."
  
  Sources:
  http://www.nathanielturner.com/germainebazzle.htm
  http://contentdm6.hamilton.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/jazz/id/638/rec/8