A Chanteuse Who Can’t Quite Have It All in France : Jazz: Singer Dee Dee Bridgewater left the U.S. and found fans overseas. But she reluctantly admits that to have a continuing impact here, she might have to give up her happy lifestyle.

Want to know how to make a successful living as a jazz singer? Dee Dee Bridgewater has an answer:

Live in France.

The vivacious Bridgewater, identified by the Village Voice’s Gary Giddins as “the most capable jazz singer of her generation,” has been living near Paris for a decade and recently bought a small villa in the town of Chantilly.

“I’m finally able,” she says in a phone conversation, “to live off my jazz singing.”

Earlier this year, that singing was on full display at the JVC Jazz Festival in New York City as well as the Montreal Jazz Festival. The reviews described a slim and elegant performer with the sensual moves of a dancer and the ability to improvise with the soaring imagination of an instrumentalist.

Tonight, Bridgewater, 45, makes a rare L.A. appearance in the opening night of a six-night run at Catalina Bar & Grill as part of a national tour that is her first significant U.S. exposure in more than 10 years. Her new Verve album, “Love and Peace,” a collection of Horace Silver tunes, is currently in the top 20 on the Billboard jazz charts.

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She has not always had such visibility. Born in Memphis on May 27, 1950, Bridgewater began singing as a teen-ager. In 1969, she toured the Soviet Union with the University of Illinois jazz band. Her first national attention came in the early ‘70s, when Bridgewater was critically applauded for her superb jazz vocalizing with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis big band.

When she concluded that jazz “was not going to pay my bills,” her career roller-coastered from a role in the original cast of the Broadway show “The Wiz” in 1975 to a series of tepid pop and disco outings. And the jazz promise of her early years--the potential to become one of the important post-Sarah Vaughan, post-Carmen McRae voices--was never quite fulfilled.

In the ‘80s, while touring Europe, Bridgewater discovered her audience. Like many other singers, dancers and performers who now have replaced the traditional expatriate writers and artists, she decided to remain in France.

Why did she stay?

“At first, it was for personal reasons,” Bridgewater says. “I was in the middle of a nasty divorce, and I needed to put some distance between myself and my ex-husband. In part, it was because I could work a lot more regularly.

“But there was one more reason that was inescapable. In the United States, I was a black artist. In Europe, I’m an artist.”

As if in confirmation of her point, Bridgewater recently portrayed the Sally Bowles role in a French-speaking production of “Cabaret.” She also has become a regular at most of the European jazz festivals and performs at a variety of clubs and municipal arts events.

“I get called a lot to do TV, too,” she says, “because I can sing in French. So I’ve developed a kind of special niche for myself--because I’m this interesting oddity, a French-speaking, African American singer--that allows me to sort of cross all boundaries and basically do what I want. It gives me a lot of magazine, press and media attention, and helps me reach out to an audience that is not necessarily a jazz audience.”

Her success in Europe may best be demonstrated by the performance of “Love and Peace.” Released at the end of May, it sold 41,000 copies in France alone in the first four months and rose to No. 16 on the pop music charts--a remarkable accomplishment for a jazz album, not just in France, but anywhere in the world.

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But ask Bridgewater if the achievements, the acceptance and the delightful lifestyle are enough to make her stay permanently, and she hesitates for a beat before letting out a long, equivocating, “Hmmm.”

“For the moment, yeah,” she says. “I’m really in France. I’m married to a Frenchman and I’m invested in France. My house is 30 miles northwest of Paris, and I can look out my windows at huge evergreens and chestnut trees, with so many different kinds of birds.

“It’s my dream house. . . . And I have another landmark house in a small city on the English Channel that I spent three years renovating. So to leave them? That’s a painful thought.”

Yet Bridgewater is aware that--despite her present successes--she still has not yet attained the jazz stardom that once eluded her. Nor are there any guarantees that jazz singing today represents any more viable a career than it did in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Either way, it’s unlikely that she can have any continuing U.S. impact from a permanent base in Europe.

“I know, I know,” she says, with a sigh of resignation. “And I think what I have to do is stick my feet in the water gradually, work with a trio for the first tour, and see how that goes.”

She already has agreed to sing at next year’s Playboy Jazz Festival here, will return to New York for the JVC event and will make a record fourth appearance at Montreal.

A recording with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and John Mauceri is in the works, opening the possibility for another Southland performance later in the summer. All of which will demand a great deal of time away from France.

“I’m going to have to do something,” Bridgewater says. “And the only solution I can come up with is Montreal, which I love. . . .” Whether or not a part-time home in Quebec will supply Bridgewater with the foundation she needs to re-establish her status as a major jazz singer remains to be seen. But the other elements in her creative arsenal have lined up nicely.

“I’m happy with what’s happening with my music,” she says. “I like the way my scatting is developing, for example. And I feel I’m becoming a real artist. I manage my own affairs, I produce my own records and I won’t hesitate to act like a witch--as I had to do once or twice during the production of ‘Love and Peace’--to get the kind of support I feel I need from a record company.

“Still, there’s no denying that it’s difficult to be a jazz singer in the United States, no matter how much you’ve got going for you.

“But,” Bridgewater adds, with another deep breath, “I think I just might do it.”

* Dee Dee Bridgewater at Catalina Bar & Grill through Sunday, 1640 N. Cahuenga Blvd., (213) 466-2210. Cover: $15 tonight through Thursday and on Sunday; $18, Friday and Saturday. Two shows nightly at 8:30 and 10:30.