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

The Near, the Dear Jacqui Magno

How wonderful to listen to jazz, at last, in a cool, enclosed space. Because of a strict anti-smoking ordinance in Makati City, there was no cigarette smoke fogging up Merk’s Bar/Bistro in Greenbelt. Nor were there distractive customers chatting away while the performers of the caliber of Richard Merk and Jacqui Magno did their thing.

A great noblesse oblige gesture Richard did by being the front act of the still magnificent Jacqui. She was stalled by traffic caused by the on-and-off downpour Wednesday night. The audience of jazz aficionados waited for her and drank bottle after bottle of their favorite poison.

Richard, seated on a stool to forget the pain caused by a sprained toe, set the mood right away with songs I have not heard sung live for quite some time: “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” “A Foggy Day,” “It Had to Be You,” the even more rarely heard “It Could Happen to You,” the theme from the Nicholas Cage-Bridget Fonda romantic comedy of the same title, “Laura,” “Lullabye of Birdland,” “C’est si Bon” and “All of Me.”

I might’ve missed a song or two because my friend Anna Leah Sarabia and I came in a little past 9 p.m. Nevertheless, Richard’s unrehearsed asides about the songs were informative. The ballad “Laura” had been interpreted by Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennett before and Richard surmised that this mysterious woman must’ve been so special based on the lyrics alone: “the face in the misty light,” “she gave her very last kiss to me—that was Laura but she’s only a dream.” He found it ironic that one so special should turn out to be just a dream.

Anna looked around us and saw a couple of children. “You see,” she said, “jazz is now considered safe music. You can bring along your kids and dance.”

When Jacqui strode onstage in her fuchsia and black caftan, there was no taking our eyes off her. Talk about stage presence. And all those eight de-lovely songs she meltingly interpreted! I almost swatted away an old classmate from my St. Paul College days who suddenly re-introduced herself and was eager to chat—she got in the way of my fuller appreciation of Jacqui’s “Here’s That Rainy Day.” Some other day, Jojo Juan.

And on to “Gingie,” a snappy, danceable “Fool on the Hill” accompanied with scatting, her signature “Bridges,” which, according to Anna, the singer used to close her club gigs at Birds of the Same Feather, “Evergreen,” “Our Love is Here to Stay,” “The Very Thought of You” and “How High the Moon.”

In “Our Love is Here to Stay,” Jacqui improvised a couple of times to update the song a bit: “…every IPod and the movies that we know are just a passing fancy and in time they go…”

The weather that night was, as she accurately observed, great for "snuggling, spooning, crooning or just reading a book." Not for me though. I was infected with the second-to-the-last and the last song syndrome all the way home.

Jacqui returns to Merk's, Greenbelt 3, on June 17. It's Pat Castillo's night on June 10. Expect two middle-aged groupies to again sip their vodka while nodding their heads to the beat of jazz.