In a mellow tone

"I prefer singing songs I can identify with in real life," Joplin said. "Otherwise, you don´t really have it down on the inside of you."

Joplin, 72, is a popular choice for this year´s Jazz Alliance of Mid-Michigan honors. She´s a singer´s singer who counts Aretha Franklin among her fans. Nearly every jazz singer of note in the mid-Michigan area will be on hand to pay tribute at Sunday´s award party.

Veteran drummer Randy Gelispie has worked with jazz legends Dinah Washington, Nancy Wilson and Etta Jones. He puts Joplin "right there at the top of the list."

Gelispie and Joplin worked countless gigs together, going back to the 1970s. "She has a gospel way of doing it," Gelispie said. "She is a very soulful singer."

They´ve been through a few rough spots together. On one date, Detroit organ player Lyman Woodard showed up the worse for drink. "Betty was singing ´When I Fall in Love´ and Lyman was playing ´Misty,´" Gelispie said, laughing. "She just kept singing on and singing on." On another date, when Woodard was too impaired to play the organ, Joplin took over the keyboard and did double duty.

Joplin grew up in Jackson listening to church music, singing and playing piano with the choir from age 7. She started drumming on flat surfaces, with vocal accompaniment, at age 3 or 4. There were no musicians in the family.

"I give God credit for it," she said.

"She´s self-taught," Gelispie said. "She has her own way of presenting a tune."

Although her mother considered jazz "the devil´s music" and banned it from the house, Joplin listened to jazz and pop LPs at her older sister´s place. She found that she could sit down at the piano and play almost anything she heard.

She dreamed of singing in nightclubs, but "a lot of life" got in the way. She was married at 17. Two years later, she was divorced, with three kids to take care of. Another child came along 11 years later.

"I didn´t want to roam around singing," she said. "I threw that completely out of my mind." It´s a decision she never regretted. In 1982, her oldest son, Robert, was killed  in a car accident at 20.

"It would have been horrible if I´d been away from home and lost that precious time with him," she said.

Her singing career started in 1972, when two longtime friends, drummer Rueben Upchurch and saxophonist Bob Cotton, talked her into going with them to a gig at the Beachcomber nightclub on the shore of Lake James, Indiana.

Despite stage fright and a total lack of club experience, she was an instant hit with the audience. The owner offered her a weekend gig through the summer. It was a nice supplement to Joplin´s job at the telephone company.

"I was hooked on the crowd and the music," she said. "It was a great feeling."

Gigs in Hillsdale, Coldwater and other towns followed. Joplin bought a cheap stand-up organ and added her keyboard skills to the newly christened Betty Joplin Trio.

With no formal education and limited exposure to jazz, Joplin learned the standards on stage by picking up the tunes from her bandmates. When she protested at an unfamiliar tune, they would tell her, "You can do it, girl, you´ve got big ears."

"I´d lay back some, listen, and get through it," she said. "I didn´t have a clue what I was playing but I was able to follow them."

After Aretha Franklin heard Joplin at a Detroit club, she hired Joplin several times to sing at her home for birthday parties and other celebrations. "It was scary at first," Joplin said. "I thought, ´Oh, my God, how do I sing in front of the Queen of Soul?´"

Joplin marvels at the string of unexpected turns in her life.

"Whenever I tried to get somewhere in my career, it never came about," Joplin said. "It only happened when I wasn´t looking for it."

At one of Franklin´s parties, Joplin met Duke Ellington´s son, Mercer Ellington, who had assumed the leadership of his late father’s legendary orchestra. He hired Joplin for a gig in Cincinnati, her first in front of a big band.

"It was like they were going to blow me off the stage," she said. She asked Ellington if she could stand next to the piano, on the dance floor. "No, you go up on the stage," he told her.

She conquered her fear and was rewarded with dozens of gigs with Ellington´s big band, including a tour of Japan in the early 1980s.

Joplin didn´t know it, but she was headed for her career high when a friend of New York-based R&B crooner Arthur Prysock heard her sing at a political fundraiser at Jimmy´s Place in Detroit in the mid-80s.

Some time later, Prysock sang a gig at a Detroit jazz club, Mrs. Morgan´s Boarding House, with Joplin in the audience. Toward the end of the evening, he pulled Joplin onto the stage and introduced her. She sang two songs.

"My knees were knocking," she said.

Before she could head back to her seat, Prysock came back and announced a duet: "When I Fall in Love." She could hardly believe she was singing with one of her idols.

After that, Prysock and Joplin worked together whenever he was in the area. By then, Joplin had moved to Lansing and was working for the state government.

Joplin´s longstanding engagement at the Garage, a nightclub in downtown Lansing, was an after-work ritual throughout the 1980s.

"Talk about some fun times," Joplin said.

In 1986, Joplin invited Prysock to do a show at the Wayside on Kalamazoo Street in Lansing. At the end of the gig, Prysock dropped another bomb. "I am taking Betty into the studio to record with me this summer," he announced.

A year later, Joplin strolled to the Quality Dairy from her south Lansing home, picked up a Detroit Free Press and scanned a list of Grammy nominations. She was stunned to see the names "Arthur Prysock and Betty Joplin" nominated for "Jazz Vocal Performance, Duet or Group." (The track was "Teach Me Tonight" from the album "A Rockin´ Good Way.) She made a phone call to Prysock´s office, confirmed that it was real, and then went back to Quality Dairy and bought the rest of the newspapers.

"I wasn´t trying for anything," she said. "I had never been in the studio and it was the farthest thing from my mind."

The same goes for Sunday´s lifetime achievement award from JAMM. She is delighted about the tribute, and she´ll happily join the all-star lineup of singers at Troppo Sunday, but she has one caveat.

"Don´t get it twisted," she said. "I´m not retiring. No way am I ready to quit."

Past honorees

2010: Sandy Izenson 2011: Patty Richards 2012: Gene and Sue Rebeck 2013: Randy Gelispie 2014: Sunny Wilkinson and Ron Newman

Every March, JAMM solicits nominations from its 100 members to honor a "person or persons who have made a significant impact and/or contribution to jazz in mid- Michigan." A seven-member board narrows the nominees to three and the entire membership votes for the honoree by email.

Betty Joplin Tribute

Jazz Alliance of Mid-Michigan (JAMM) 6 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 8 Performers: Betty Joplin, Betty Baxter, Twyla Birdsong, Randy Gelispie, Ramona Collins, Mardra Thomas, Sunny Wilkinson and more SOLD OUT Troppo 111 E. Michigan Ave. facebook.com/jazzjamm