Jeannie Cheatham born 14 August 1927

Jeannie Cheatham (born August 14, 1927) is a living legend in jazz and blues. A pianist, singer, songwriter, and co-leader of the Sweet Baby Blues Band, she has played and sung with many of the greats in blues and jazz. She toured with Big Mama Thornton off and on for ten years and was featured with Thornton and Sippie Wallace in the award-winning PBS documentary "Three Generations of the Blues". Her music, which has garnered national and international acclaim, has been described as unrestrained, exuberant, soulful, rollicking, wicked, virtuous, wild, and truthful. Cheatham's signature song, "Meet Me With Your Black Drawers On" is a staple in jazz and blues clubs across America and in Europe, Africa, and Japan. 

Jean E. Evans was born and grew up in Akron, Ohio, the first child of Elizabeth (née Smart) and Ernest Evans. At the age of five, she started having lessons on her aunt's newly-acquired piano, which was soon moved to Cheatham's home when it transpired that she had a talent for music her aunt lacked. Not long after, she began playing for services at the church her family attended. Throughout her school years, Cheatham's piano teacher also took her to play at weddings and social events, as well as to give recitals. As she told Living Blues magazine in a profile in 2022, “I would get a dime for playing in church at age four, and if you get paid, you’re expected to be professional. I’ve been playing 90 years. A playing, paid musician. I have an electric piano in my apartment, and I still play in case I get an offer I want to take.” 

Cheatham first played jazz music when, aged 14, she was asked to join a local 15-piece rehearsal orchestra. While still in high school, she began playing in smaller groups, and found herself in demand professionally as most younger musicians were drafted into the US Army during World War II. In 1944, she was accepted as a student at the University of Akron, but was unable to complete more than one year for financial reasons. 

She performed with a variety of top blues greats, including T-Bone Walker, Dinah Washington, Jimmy Witherspoon and Joe Williams. The Cheathams, who met and married in the 1950s, worked with Chico Hamilton (Jimmy was Hamilton's musical director for a time) in the '60s, and they both taught at the University of Wisconsin before moving to San Diego in 1978. Jimmy taught at the University of California at San Diego for many years. Since forming their Sweet Baby Blues Band, the Cheathams recorded regularly for Concord (starting in 1984). That same year she toured with Cab Calloway. Jimmy Cheatham through the years has played bass trombone with Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Thad Jones and in a backup group with Ornette Coleman. 

                          

In addition to her accolades for her piano playing, singing, and composing, she’s also known as a tough taskmaster who demands the best of the players in her band as well as a shrewd businesswoman, who always gets paid for her gigs. And while nobody can last in business for 90 years (almost 91!) without a few knock-downs, Jeannie is mostly as beloved by her fellow musicians as she is by her fans. Part of the reason why—despite her willingness to defend both her art and her financial interests—is the respect she feels and exhibits for others, something illustrated by  stories she likes to tell of the times she was interrupted in the middle of a performance. 

She and her late husband and musical partner, Jimmy, were performing in Paris in 1968, as the Soviets were crushing a democratic tide in Czechoslovakia. While Jeannie was leading her band through an old blues song, suddenly a group of refugees in the back of the club stood up and began singing a folk song from their homeland. Jeannie said she directed the band to hold up and let the refugees finish. “The blues touches everyone,” she said. “Our music had touched these people who would likely never be able to go home again, and it caused them to want to share their music with us.” She took the interruption as a compliment of the highest order. 

The Cheathams and their Sweet Baby Blues Band helped prove that musicians from San Diego could get national record deals without having to move to L.A. or New York.  In 2006, Jeannie and Jimmy Cheatham received a lifetime achievement award at the San Diego Music Awards. Jimmy passed away in January 2007 and Jeannie kept the band together for a few more months until after the band did the Mary Lou Williams Festival at the Kennedy Center. She got a blodd clot from sitting on an airplane seat flying from Washington DC to San Diego. “That’s when I said it’s time to hang it up.” 

In November 2022, the Cheathams were inducted into the San Diego Music Hall of Fame. Given the role she and Jimmy played in helping cultivate jazz with their Sunday night jam sessions in the 1970s and ’80s at the airport Sheraton and, later, the Bahia resort, and all the young musicians they mentored, encouraged and taught, it is a well-deserved recognition. Jeannie has continued to perform as a solo artist and recently recorded background music for her daughters Zoom classes. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, Jeannie Cheathams website, The San Diego Troubadour & The Digital Living Blues)

Please note the mp3 is the album version and not the single.