Scaling Old Heights : Pamala Feener’s singing career started at the top. Now, after hitting the skids, she’s climbing back into the spotlight.

Funny how things turn out.

In 1965, singer Pamala Feener had just graduated from high school in San Leandro and, with three girlfriends, was in Lake Tahoe, planning to work the summer as a hotel maid.

Then something happened.

Vocalist Jim Burgett, with whom Feener had sung in Tahoe the previous year while on vacation with her parents, offered her a summer job singing pop and rock tunes with his band at teen dances. Thrilled, Feener, who had been singing onstage since she was 4, took the job.

Two weeks later, something bigger happened. Burgett landed an engagement in one of the lounges at Harrah’s, the area’s biggest resort, and he wanted to take Feener with him.

“I told him I couldn’t, I wasn’t a professional,” said Feener, who appears Saturday at Chadney’s in Burbank.

“He said, ‘What do you think a professional is?’

“ ‘Someone with more experience,’ I answered.

“ ‘Trust me, a professional is simply someone who gets paid for singing,’ he said, and that was my first lesson in the music business.”

Feener’s debut with Burgett at Harrah’s was opposite Billy Eckstine--”That was great”--and she was on her way to a topsy-turvy, 21-year run as a singer. She worked with Burgett for two years, then with such groups as the Doodle Town Pipers and Westwood, with singer Jeal Paul Vignon, and, ultimately, as a straight-ahead jazz soloist, mostly at Playboy Clubs, in the United States and the Orient.

Then, suddenly, in the early ‘80s, her career came to a halt.

“I was living in Los Angeles, and I didn’t have a lot of business finesse,” she said. “When I went to look for agents or managers, I found myself tongue-tied, even though I had a legitimate resume. I’d say, ‘Just get me a job, and I’ll show you what I can do,’ and they’d just look at me. I couldn’t convince anyone because I’d get nervous. So I decided to take a job as a receptionist and think it over for a while.”

Feener still has that job, but, since 1987, she’s been working an average of two nights a month in such clubs as Chadney’s, and Lunaria in West Los Angeles. “I’ve grown up a little bit,” she said. “Now I can ask for jobs. But I don’t feel, in my heart, that I ever left music, I just gave up performing for five years. My neighbors used to say I gave a great concert in the shower.”

One motivation for Feener’s return has been the recognition of her responsibility to utilize her talent, a phrase Martha Graham once used in a letter to Agnes De Mille.

“I’ve realized what a gift music is when it’s given to anyone, in any form, whether it’s jazz or opera or whatever,” she said. “Music is an expression of feelings; it’s a language in itself. I feel privileged that I’m a part of it, whatever level it is on.”

Feener quickly acknowledged the help she’s received in getting her career in the groove again. She cited singer-pianist Howlett Smith, the first person she sat in with upon deciding to step out in public again in 1987. “He was a great catalyst,” she said. “When he heard me, he said, ‘Why aren’t you doing this every night?’ Now he calls me almost every day with a joke.”

And there’s Lorez Alexandria, the masterful ballad and blues singer who has been a mainstay of the Los Angeles vocal jazz scene for 30 years. “She’s my mentor. Her encouragement has been wonderful to me,” Feener said. “She’s made me a little bit tougher, helping me to present myself. And her feelings about music, that it’s her expression of life, have been very influential to me.”

Feener can now look back at her roller-coaster career and laugh. “I like to say that I started at the top, at Harrah’s, so I could work my way down, so that I could work my way back up again.”

Where and When

What: Pamala Feener, backed by pianist George Gaffney, bassist Richard Simon and drummer Roy McCurdy.

Location: Chadney’s, 3000 W. Olive Ave., Burbank, across from NBC Studios.

Hours: 9 p.m. Saturday.

Price: No cover or minimum.

Call: (818) 843-5333.