Jazz singer Chloe McFadden lives her life, not anyone else’s
Chloe McFadden. // photo credit Thad Bell
“Dad, Chloe wasn’t listening all night. And she was doing things she wasn’t supposed to,” her sibling sitters would report when dad Lonnie McFadden would arrive home. Perhaps a punishment would ensue. Perhaps a coddling of the youngest of six. Either way, later that night as Dad would be practicing the trumpet, Chloe McFadden would sneak into the practice room and soon fade to sleep.
She calls it sassiness, this Aries. The two even wrote an illustrative blues song called “Don’t Tell Me What to Do Blues” to celebrate her unique spirit. Invoking her competitive nature, she says, “In my family, there are a lot of entertainers. I’ve always wanted to stand on my own. I try to challenge myself to get better. I want to be a leader.’”
At age 11, the youngest McFadden took first place in Kansas City’s “Radio Disney 2004.” Performances with Dad and her Uncle Ronnie at famed Kansas City jazz venues like The Blue Room, The Majestic, Chaz, and The Phoenix came soon thereafter. As a teenager, she sang backup for the rock band Shooting Star.
Some 20-plus years on from Radio Disney, Dad is still her “best friend,” but McFadden has had her own journey.
“I’ve seen different aspects of life,” she says after a recent show at The Phoenix. “I’m going to take a little of what Dad does, but I want to inject my perspective too.”
“I lived my life, not anyone else’s.”
We all make choices throughout life in pursuit of fulfillment. Thus, despite many successes in her singing career through age 24, McFadden stopped singing to be a stay-at-home mom, eventually leaving Kansas City for Houston, Texas, in April of 2019 at age 26. The idyllic—perhaps “no fear” vision of life in Houston—if it ever came to fruition, was fleeting.
“I reached rock bottom when I was in Houston. I went through a divorce. I was a single mom. I was in a job that I knew I was not meant to be in,” McFadden says. “At that point, I was just sitting in this little studio apartment with my two daughters. And I was praying, ‘God, where am I going?’”
Greg Richter. // photo credit Thad Bell
As McFadden begins her third set of the night at The Phoenix, the joint is buzzing. During Prince’s “Kiss,” McFadden appropriately reaches her upper register. Yet, when she slides down to her throaty, bassy register, the vibe sends shockwaves.
“She is really good at being a jazz singer, the jazz side,” says her up-and-coming-drummer, Tyree Johnson. “Even though she just doesn’t do jazz standards, having that background and having that edge and that spontaneity, she can sing a song a few different ways.”
McFadden saunters into the crowd during the set. Her natural grace and sincere warmth ooze forth, partially inspiring the exuberance of her keyboardist, the renowned Greg Richter. “It’s really fun because she’s started doing some of the old Billie Holiday tunes, and in the same set she’s doing Bruno Mars,” he says. “So, you never know what is next.”
In that moment, that questioning moment of supplication while surrounded by her daughters (then four and five years old), McFadden gained a direction.
“I felt like he said, ‘Just go back to Kansas City,’” she explains. “That same day, I just drove to Kansas City. ‘I’m just going to drive to Kansas City, wherever it takes me. I’m just going to go.’”
That was June of 2021. She has not been back to Houston since. But a change of location is not always a salve for emotional state. Seven months after arriving back in Kansas City, she was waiting tables at The Peanut on 64th Street.
“My spirit was lost. I wasn’t singing. I was a waitress, but I wasn’t a good waitress,” confesses McFadden. “That wasn’t my purpose. When you fall off track, you just become like a blank space. I wasn’t happy. My dad saw it. And he said, ‘Chloe, if you want to sing, the stage is here for you.’”
Chloe McFadden. // photo credit Thad Bell
Sweet spot
McFadden’s vocal inflections, even early in her first set at The Phoenix, convey subtle, yet powerful emotions during a version of Wayne Newton’s “L-O-V-E.”
During a version of The Commodores’ “Easy,” McFadden uses her sure experience and expression to extract more meaning, more feeling from the lyrics, her higher range coming out in the slower, almost spoken phrases.
“When it gets moody up there, it’s because we are all feeling the song, the lyrics, the soul of the song,” McFadden says. Her long, dark hair dances, almost frolics, around her shoulders as her swaying accentuates the mood and pulls in the listener. During Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie,” McFadden’s voice continually hits her vocal sweet spot. And it charges the room.
During Etta James’ “At Last,” an audience member exalts, “It don’t get no better!”
“The windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror…”
Working in healthcare. Working at Dollar General in Houston. Waitressing back in Kansas City. All worthy jobs. But they only bring out one’s worth if personal expression is present.
McFadden wondered, “How do I express myself?”
“Some people know how to do that, some people are made for healthcare. But I didn’t know how to do that,” she says. “Growing up, all I knew about how to express myself was through music.”
Grandfather Jimmy McFadden had performed with greats. Uncle Ronnie McFadden was a staple on the Kansas City jazz scene before his passing in February of 2023. Father Lonnie McFadden was part of a duo with Ronnie and is a legendary trumpet player, tap dancer, singer, and songwriter.
“One day, I quit waitressing, and I was just going to try singing again. Even if I didn’t make a lot of money, I just wanted to have that peace,” says McFadden. “I have this gift that could maybe help someone else be like, I feel happy. God has a purpose for all of us. My purpose is to entertain.”
Beginning in April of 2023, her father “threw her a couple bones,” a few gigs, and told her, “You go from there.”
“Immediately everything just started to fall into place,” she states, replicating her bemusement. “I never thought I would sing again. To have someone who just believed. That’s all you need, just one person to see it in you.”
McFadden doesn’t sing just any song.
As a child, she gravitated towards the happiness her father radiated in his performances. But as a woman who has seen darker times, she uses the stage to explore those trials. “Flowers” conveys that loving oneself is not only a prerequisite, but a priority.
“Kansas City” reveals her passion for the city, its “good and bad”—an especially poignant choice, in that the Thursday night gig at The Phoenix came a day after the tragic events that unfolded at the Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade and rally.
However, it is “At Last” that brings her full circle.
“When Etta James made the song, I felt like she was coming from a place of being through a lot of hardship and a lot of pain and suffering. And she found either her love or whatever it was to her that made her feel like, at last, I’m at this place of heaven and peace,” McFadden says.
“I feel that song because I’ve been through pain. But when I get on stage, this is my happy place. That is true for my musicians, even. This is their happy place. We all go through things in life. And you have that one thing that is peace. Singing is my ‘At Last.’”
Just as James’ apparent triumph over adversity speaks to McFadden, she hopes to speak to her audience and thus onto infinity. As others opened her soul, her soul opens to others.
“I definitely use the hardships that I go through in my personal life to express myself in the songs that I sing and dance to in hopes that it could transfer over to someone else like me and touch them the way I have been touched,” she says. “Entertainment is truly who I am, and it has been such a positive outlet that it is the only thing I will probably do the rest of my life, regardless of the pay. It is lot deeper to me than that. I am still writing my story, but I know entertaining is definitely supposed to be a part of it.”
Chloe McFadden. // photo credit Thad Bell
A little bit of “Oooohhh” and a lot of fun
Gigs at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts with the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra. Guest spots at dad’s place: Lonnie’s Reno Club (Friday nights). Chaz on the Plaza (every 1st Monday from 6-10pm). The American Reserve at the Ambassador Hotel (every Friday 7-10pm). The Phoenix (every Thursday 7-11pm). The Shop Cigar Lounge (every 3rd Saturday 8-10pm). All have sent McFadden on her way.
“In the last year, she just wants it more,” says Richter. “She’s having a really good time. She’s focusing on material that other people aren’t doing, or if they are, they aren’t doing it like she does.”
In her vocal sweet spot or when emphasizing phrases that speak to her, McFadden’s voice not so much floats, but radiates out to the listener on waves of experience and ultimate joy, striking souls where feeling lives. That is where Chloe McFadden most comes alive for the audience.
Sometimes, that feeling is one of allure and coziness. An often deep, sultry delivery has its impact.
“Working can, confine people, they live these everyday lives. When they come to see me, I want them to feel excitement and love,” McFadden says.
“That’s why I sing Peggy Lee’s “Fever.” ‘Girls, I remember, even after you become a mom—I’m a mom, and I’d feel like, dang, I lost my touch, I lost that sexiness about me—then you hear certain songs, and you’re like, ohhh, as you look at your husband.’” McFadden says as she wiggles in her seat. “I try to ignite those little senses in people.”
Generosity and truth
The generosity venue owners and managers have shown McFadden is passed forward, not only to her audience, but also to her musicians.
She tells her crack quartet—Johnson, Richter, Zach Arias on bass, and Ernest Melton on sax—to “Be you. Speak the way you want to speak because that’s why I hired them,” even though she knows lending that freedom can possibly scatter the pieces of the musical puzzle. No, McFadden is not afraid of anything.
“In my music, no fear has helped me evolve because I have originality. Even if this isn’t being interpreted perfectly, I’m being me. I’m not afraid to be organic because I know there is somebody out there like me that may be like, ‘I’m kind of weird. But I don’t know how to interpret it.’
“‘No. that can make you special.’ I’ve felt weird. But a lot of people come up to me, ‘You have something special. It’s different, but it’s special.’”
Performers put themselves out there. As a performer, McFadden has found a platform for expression. As people, we strive to not only express, but for that expression to be understood. What, then, is McFadden’s hope?
“I hope that I reach success in a way that helps others feel at home when they come see me. That way I felt with my dad and how people felt with my grandfather,” she says. “I hope I can help people, to serve people. We are all here to serve in different ways, and I think this is the only way I can serve.”
“I come from three generations of entertainers that have come through a lot of adversity… I just hope that my message is ‘Don’t stop believing.’”
As she tap dances on the bar at The Phoenix, McFadden’s expression hearkens back to that sassiness she wore as a child, the sassiness that is now applied to improve other’s lives. Perhaps, as her father bent his knees to pick her up from her childhood safe place and the floor of his practice room to tuck her into bed, he knew Chloe would need her sassiness, her no-fear, competitive attitude.
