I met Juanita Dixon at Heidi's Jazz Club headlining on a Saturday night. She's a fierce down and dirty blues singer and a passionate jazz stylist. Born in Nassau Bahamas, Dixon  has been living in the South Florida area since 1950. She started performing when she was nine years old after her mother noted her gift and nurtured it by having her sing in the church choir. When Juanita was in her teens she heard R&B for the first time and made the decision to be a professional Rhythm and Blues singer. Her mother entered her in talent shows in the South Florida area at the now defunct Cafe Society where she won more than a few of them. 

Dixon attended University of Toronto for a little over a year, but the good times began to roll and she packed up her books and traded them in for road experience as a singer. She met the Jackson 5 in Indiana, lived and performed in New York for 3 years and then settled down in South Florida when a DJ friend pushed her to sing jazz at Sweets Lounge in Dania Beach. She almost didn't go after the gig, thinking she couldn't sing jazz, but she was hired and found she loved singing jazz, and ended up staying for 3 years.

Ms Dixon is inspired by Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan and Lou Rawls. You can often hear her performing her spicy blues with the Jeff Prine Group in South Florida. Miss Dixon's mixture of sauce and sass shouldn't be missed. She tells it like it is, staking her claim, putting her money where her mouth is, and flashing that grin that says "ain't I just somethin'". You can't help but love her. I do and you will too. 

You can see Juanita Dixon perform live at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood Florida; The Village Pump in Lauderdale By The Sea, and  she is bluesin it at Village Grill in Lauderdale By the Sea. Her CD is called Bluuze Mama and you can pick it up at her live shows~ autographed.

OOOhhh what a night on the Stormy Monday Show. We're back from a month's absence. I've been touring in New York, headlined at the spectacular New Smyrna Jazz Fest, and then a technical glitch that left us without a podcast for last week's show. 

So we made it up to you. This week we had an hour and a half solid blues and powerhouse Divas. And when I say Divas, I mean ones who truly deserve the title; those women that have been out there, been successful and  delved into other aspects of their talents aside from music. They have survived waning appeal, fickle audiences, public failures, and then rose up again and are still going strong. They're real people behind the music, real women, and that's why they're called Divas.