A Talent for Taking Liberties : Singer Lorez Alexandria Interprets Music Into Her Own Jazz-Influenced Language

For years, singer Lorez Alexandria has received rave notices touting her jazz-influenced interpretations. Despite close to a dozen albums for various labels, that acclaim has never translated into upper echelon financial status for the Chicago native.

Alexandria, who appears Sunday at Maxwell’s in Huntington Beach with the Gildo Mahones trio, is quick to admit she’d love to work more. On the other hand, she said, these days she has “a lot of company” in that area. In any case, she’s not complaining.

“I’ve been fortunate to take my whole adult life and do what I really love to do,” she said. “It’s been a roller-coaster ride, but when I can hang on to those peak moments, as when someone takes my hand after the show and says, ‘God bless you, I’ve been a fan of yours for years,’ it buoys you to go into the fray once again.”

Sometimes a job won’t be profitable, but she’ll take it just to have the exposure, Alexandria admitted. But even if she’s shortchanged on the money end, she insisted that won’t happen to her audience.

“I don’t walk through anything,” said the singer emphatically, speaking by phone from her home in Los Angeles, where she moved in the early ‘60s. “When people pull so hard for you, they deserve to see you at your best. Besides, I’m happiest when I’m on stage in front of people. That’s when I come 100% alive.”

The vocalist with the warm, creamy voice has a distinctive approach marked by a spontaneous, improvised quality, particularly in her way of taking liberties with the rhythm of a song.

“I phrase more like a horn than a singer,” she said. “That’s the way I hear things. It’s nothing I tried to develop. I can sing a song as straight as anybody--I just don’t feel them that way.”

Take her version of “Midnight Sun.” Alexandria does that tune, usually done as a ballad, as a bossa nova. In contrast, she often takes a fast tune and does it “downtown,” the musician’s argot for a slow tempo. “Sometimes the words get lost when you sing too fast,” she said.

Alexandria, who came from a musical family whose members all sang in an a cappella choir, wasn’t always such an individual performer. As did many African-American vocalists, she did some of her earliest singing in church. Later she found herself influenced by such greats as Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae. To find her own style, she had to divest herself of those sources.

“It’s hard to get a reputation singing like someone else,” she said. “So, to approach material my own way, I had to make an incision and break from all of that.”

The artist arrived on the jazz scene in the late ‘50s, when she began making albums, first for the King label, then for Argo and Impulse!, for which she recorded two of her finest efforts, “Lorez the Great” and “More of Lorez the Great,” both available on a compilation reissue CD. Her latest release is “May I Come In” on Muse Records.

Asked what her strength is, Alexandria replied: “My feeling for a lyric. I’m a storyteller, and I try to have excellent diction, so you won’t have to guess what I’m saying. Some people listen to a song for years and not know what the lyric is.”

Reflecting on her career, she said: “Music gave me my life; it gave me Lorez; it made me me. It made me able to relate to people on more than one level. And while sometimes I have not been accepted, (other times) I have been so totally accepted that it makes the times I wasn’t diminished by comparison.”

Lorez Alexandria performs Sunday at 4 and 6 p.m., at Maxwell’s by the Sea, 317 Pacific Coast Highway, Huntington Beach. $5 cover, plus $7 food or drink charge, per person per show. (714) 536-2555.