Queen Annie and her Prince Richard

Richard Merk, jazz singer, comic singing host and owner of Merk’s Bar and Bistro at Greenbelt 3, Ayala Center, Makati City, regards his diminutive mother,Annie Brazil, as still the undisputed Asian queen of jazz at age 77.

Known as the prince of jazz, Richard describes himself as Annie’s “huge son, huge fan.” He can’t believe that “out of millions of mothers out there, she became mine.”

While his approach to singing has been described by retired music reviewer Anna Leah Sarabia as “violent” in its attack with his inclination to belt out the lyrics, Annie’s is the opposite, “like a muted horn in Gershwin’s ‘It’s Wonderful,’ understated, free and easy with the melodies, almost like Ella Fitzgerald, except that Annie is almost coy, somehow demurely flirting with each song.”

At her second in a series of homecoming gigs at Merk’s (her last performance is on Oct. 20 with 9 p.m. show time), the deceivingly frail-looking septuagenarian can turn coquettish as she dished out, while seated, cross-legged, on a high stool, “Our Love Is Here to Stay,” “That’s All,” and “Boy from Ipanema.” She even gave old Tagalog ballads “Ikaw” and “Buhat” a jazzy treatment.

Unlike her 55-year-old son, she remembers the lyrics of each song and does not require a codigo (lyric sheet) to guide her.

That free and breezy interpretation of jazz favorites belies the pain of several losses in her life. Five of her eight children died in infancy, two from doctors’ negligence. She lost those five babies while detailed in different countries like Hong Kong and Thailand.

Those who survived were Richard, Rachel Anne, Ronnel and Ralph. She adopted Ralph when he was four days old and struck a deal with the Almighty to give her 20 more years of life so she could see him grow into adulthood and able to stand on his feet. He was able to finish his nursing course and vowed to take care of her in her old age.

Annie herself almost lost her life twice. The first was in 2005 when she couldn’t breathe nor take a step while playing mahjong in New Jersey (she used to average two to three packs of cigarettes a day until that stroke). In 2006, she suffered from pneumonia while in San Francisco, California. She then totally quit smoking.

Full of gratitude for her extended life, she said: “I have to be active. We all have to work our minds. What keeps me alive are God, Mama Mary, singing, my children, mahjong, my grandchildren in that order. They’re my therapy.”

In New York City, she built up a reputation as a regular jazz vocalist at Stagionale, an Italian restaurant-jazz joint on Bleecker Street in The Village. She was the only singer who sang there steadily for 12 years, she said.

“And in New York, that’s something,” she added. “Other musicians travel from place to place.”
Out-of-town customers sent her admiring notes. They told friends and family to visit the Big Apple to “look upAnnie and say hello for me.”

She never missed a performance because she discovered an effective remedy when she felt that she was coming down with a cold: hot coffee with brandy. Now she drinks that before and during a show because “it opens up my throat.”

Singing since age six, she went on to jam with such greats as Duke Ellington, Ellis Marsalis and Sarah Vaughan, sometimes serving as their front act. She called them all “excellent musicians, good jazz people” who taught herhow “to sing from the heart.”

She said Richard may have gotten his passion for songs from her, but lamented that he doesn’t listen when she gives him advice.

She has no favorite or signature song: “I like every song I sing. Singing is all about love and feeling what you sing as though it’s happening.”

There is one song, though, that she would rather hear than sing — “Windmills of Your Mind,” a roundabout composition whose lyrics can confuse even a professional.

Richard is unabashedly proud of his mom and has no compunction about rebuking audience members who continued to chat without lowering their voices while she sang.

At last week’s homecoming gig at Merk’s, which coincided with Richard’s birthday, he introduced Annie’s set the way a worthy son should: “Listen to my mother’s singing, my mother’s voice, my mother’s heart.”

In the middle of her crooning and scatting, he would tap a customer on the shoulder, point to her and whisper: “Ganda ng Mommy ko (My mother is beautiful)!”

When midnight struck and Richard officially turned 55, Annie changed the lyrics of the Birthday Song to “May Almighty bless you.”

After the applause died down, she sat with her admirers and shared the key to jazz singing. “Learn the song, memorize the lyrics, then sing it the way you want it,” Annie Brazil said.--Originally published by VERA Files

Photo by Kimi Fernandez