Jazz crooner Butler travels the globe to sing for her supper

Emmy Fitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Jazz music is not the be all and end all of life for singer La Verne Butler, but she acknowledges that it has done much to shape who she is.

That is inevitable from her experiences as an artist in what is an exclusive musical genre, one in which the true stars are few and far between.

Fame, riches, all the trappings of the glamorous life would be nice, but Butler says she is more interested in perfecting her craft.

"I don't want to be a superstar -- I just want to be a damn good singer," said Butler, a native of Shreveport, Louisiana.

She has always strived to do her best, but sometimes, she still finds it tough to deal with the competitiveness of the music industry.

"It's a way of life. I also can't enjoy all that dog-eat-dog, back-stabbing and the hustling in the business."

She spent several years in the birthplace of jazz, New Orleans, where she became a fixture in the city's Dixieland and be-bop venues, but, again, what concerned her most was how to present her music properly.

A singer must be able to present the music in the right way -- the setting, the audience and the musicians, said Butler, who is in Jakarta for three months performing at B.A.T.S. at the Shangri-La hotel in Central Jakarta.

"I can't just throw it away to the audience. Once Diane Krall said that there has to be integrity in music, and if there isn't ... she did not want to do it. I go along with her," said Butler, who calls herself a pure jazz singer.

"Jazz has such a limited market, and there are not billions of dollars being invested in the industry," said Butler.

This Jakarta stint is her fourth since others in 1997, 1998, and July 2001. During those years, Butler also performed in other Asian cities like Kyoto, Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong.

While there are many places that journeymen jazz artists can work and make a steady living, the big bucks, she says, are to be had in pop and rock music.

Being a jazz singer is a job.

"It's really hard -- especially for me, as I've decided to keep myself out of the more stressful parts of the music business," Butler said.

"I don't expect to be a billionaire for what I am doing -- I do what I do because I enjoy it, and I try to do it best."

Butler started to sing at an early age, and grew up listening to jazz and R&B, while receiving plenty of encouragement from her father, saxophonist Scott Butler, who was also a music teacher.

She listened to jazz greats Billie Holiday and Nancy Wilson -- the latter being such a profound influence that Butler calls her a "true mentor."

She began to perform professionally, but it was many years before she made her recording debut. That was in 1994 with Chesky record company, turning out No Looking Back and Day Dreamin' in the same year.

Almost five years later, she worked with another record company, Maxjazz, to launch Blues in the City, and her latest, moving to a bit of popular jazz A Foolish Thing To Do in 2001.

Butler said that the recordings reflected her true identity as a jazz singer, and were not based on commercial calculations of what would sell.

Yet, she also knows that, at the end of the day, it makes sense to think about dollars and cents.

"I have to be practical, at least I listen to what they're telling me if they think my songs are not marketable and give suggestions for changes," she said.

"I'm not too crazy about what I want to do because I realize it is not only about the art, but also about business. It takes time to learn that ... It's hard."

After decades of travel and gigs around the world, Butler, who manages her own business affairs, said that she has started to miss home.

She added that she would like to do more writing, and hopes that a full-length work she has been working on over the years could be published.

"That," she said, "is my challenge."