In this lively KGNU interview, host Joanne Cole welcomes jazz and blues vocalist Deborah Stafford to discuss her upcoming July 16th performance at Dazzle, Denver’s premier jazz club. Stafford shares her journey from a lifelong love of singing to launching a professional music career 25 years ago. She reflects on discovering blues through local jam sessions and her deep admiration for Etta James, whose music forms the heart of her upcoming tribute show. The conversation touches on the history of jazz in Denver, the significance of Dazzle’s new location, and the enduring power of James’ songs—from soulful ballads to funky horn-driven hits. (Interview: 7/2/25)
Joanne Cole: My good friend Deborah Stafford is in the house. Welcome back to KGNU, Deb.
Deborah Stafford: Nice to be here!
Joanne Cole: We’re here to talk about your gig on July 16th.
Deborah Stafford: Yes—not the 20th, like I Dazzle…
Joanne Cole: I misspoke! The 16th at Dazzle. And I urge people to go out and not only hear this show, but get to Dazzle. It’s the new location—it’s certainly been there for over a year.
Deborah Stafford: We’re about to have our second anniversary!
Joanne Cole: Wonderful.
Deborah Stafford: August 1st and 2nd, we’ll have René Marie come for our big anniversary party. She’s awesome.
Joanne Cole: Are you a partner in that endeavor?
Deborah Stafford: I work there—I do marketing for them.
Joanne Cole: Oh great, I didn’t know that! Yeah, it is the best jazz club in Denver. I say that because it’s the only one I go to. I know there are others, and everybody’s trying—right? Because this is a jazz town. Historically amazing.
Deborah Stafford: Yeah. And, you know, we got some new ownership a couple of years ago, and he tasked our booker with bringing in amazing talent from all over the world. We’ve had Christian McBride, we’ve had Stanley Jordan lately, and Jamison Ross is coming. I mean, you can’t even imagine.
Joanne Cole: Love her! Heard the harp—yeah, Brandy Younger?
Deborah Stafford: She’s coming back, and it was exquisite. It really was. And there’s not a bad seat in the house.
Joanne Cole: Right, right. And it’s a lovely jazz club—very intimate. So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a singer, and your history here in Colorado.
Deborah Stafford: So basically, I was always a singer. I was born in Iowa, but grew up in Colorado. I’ve always loved to sing. About 25 years ago, I decided I wanted to do it professionally. It was one of those stories where I saw somebody up there singing and thought, “Why is she living my dream?”
So I decided to do it. My kids had gotten a little older and I finally had some time to get out there and make it happen.
Joanne Cole: I recollect—we had you in here with a big band one time. You also sing classical?
Deborah Stafford: I sing jazz standards and big band music. I started with the big band, then sort of made a jazz quintet out of that and started doing more of the music I wanted to do. Then I discovered the blues—I blame Mark Diamond! He used to have this jam at the Outlook—jazz one week, blues the next.
I started going to the blues jam, too, and discovered that I really loved to sing the blues.
Joanne Cole: I find they walk hand in hand.
Deborah Stafford: They do.
Joanne Cole: Particularly when I do a blues show—you’re going to hear the perimeters or the influencers of blues, and that it all comes from blues.
Deborah Stafford: You know…
Joanne Cole: It includes jazz and gospel. I can’t see pulling them apart myself.
Deborah Stafford: Yeah, yeah. Right.
Joanne Cole: While I’ve got you here—what were the two songs you wanted us to play by Etta?
Deborah Stafford: I was trying to find this one—it’s just so funny to me. I don’t know if you know who Randy Newman is…
Joanne Cole: I was so glad you brought that up, because I was going to mention that earlier. Well, we might as well just jump into it now. I’m not an authority on Etta James by any stretch, but I did see her when I was in high school—either 1973 or 1974 at The Quiet Night in Chicago.
Deborah Stafford: Oh, wow.
Joanne Cole: I had been turned on to her music, and the early stuff from the sixties. She was—I don’t want to say raunchy—but she had her shtick, her thing on stage. I was a young teenager…
Deborah Stafford: Wasn’t quite ready for that?
Joanne Cole: And she was a big girl. I was like, holy cow, what is all this sugar in my bowl?
Deborah Stafford: Yeah, yeah, yeah—all that good stuff.
Joanne Cole: But I’ve noticed now that I’m a DJ—she does a lot of covers.
Deborah Stafford: Mm-hmm.
Joanne Cole: Particularly Randy Newman.
Deborah Stafford: I love her version of God’s Song.
Joanne Cole: Yeah.
Deborah Stafford: I know, and I love it. I was looking to see if you had it…
Joanne Cole: Oh, I’ve got it.
Deborah Stafford: You’ve got it?
Joanne Cole: I got the internet, baby—so I got it all! It’s one of my favorite songs.
Deborah Stafford: Yeah.
Joanne Cole: You Can Leave Your Hat On, I believe, is Randy…
Deborah Stafford: Randy Newman also—which is an odd…
Joanne Cole: …song for Randy to write, but whatever.
Deborah Stafford: Yeah, he loves to do quirky stuff.
Joanne Cole: So, how do you go about choosing your songs for the show on July 16th at Dazzle?
Deborah Stafford: We’re going to do, of course, the great ballads—At Last, Sunday Kind of Love, I’d Rather Go Blind. We like the funky ones—Blues Is My Business, and we’re going to do Damn Your Eyes, of course, Something’s Got a Hold on Me, You Don’t Have to Say…
Joanne Cole: The first time I heard I’d Rather Go Blind, I was very young, in high school. And I thought, oh my God—it hit me, you know?
Deborah Stafford: Right. It’s fun as a singer to be able to go there, you know?
Oh—we do Tell Mama, which is one of her great horn songs. We have a horn section—fabulous. We do a lot of her horn tunes.
Joanne Cole: And why did you pick Etta James to do this?
Deborah Stafford: She’s just… she’s got such a huge discography, and her music just gets you. I was actually listening to her Mystery Lady CD this morning. You know, the one where she talked about her mother—she used to call her “the mystery lady.”
Joanne Cole: Because her mother was 14 when she had her and disappeared, right?
Deborah Stafford: Exactly. So she always called her “the mystery lady.”
Joanne Cole: We should play that one, too.
Deborah Stafford: Yeah, that’d be great. I mean, any of these are great.
Joanne Cole: All right—let’s do God’s Song.
But first I’ll play the two early ones that I like, and then I’ll pull up that other one.
So this is early Etta James. Again, I was turned on to a lot of music when I was in high school by a dear friend—or a couple of them—who just said, “You know that crap you’re listening to on AM radio? That’s not music. That’s somebody selling you something.”
Deborah Stafford: Right.
Joanne Cole: Etta James was one of the ones I got turned onto early, and these were the two songs I remember the most. Those of you who listen to me on KGNU—you’ve heard me play these because they’re my favorites. Whenever anybody asks for Etta James, I don’t play I’d Rather Go Blind. I play these two songs.
Here she is in a duet—it’s called The Wallflower.
Deborah Stafford: Henry.
Joanne Cole: The refrain is “Roll with Me, Henry”—because it’s so funky and so good.
Deborah Stafford: Yeah—and it’s sad that, you know, when that came out, a white artist covered it and called it Dance with Me, Henry, and then got a big hit with it.
Joanne Cole: For those of you not in the know, that’s called—what is it called? I can’t think of the word…
Deborah Stafford: Where white people take Black people’s music and make money on it?
Joanne Cole: Yeah. And here we go—The Wallflower by Etta James.
