Born to an
African-American family in
Memphis, Tennessee, Bridgewater was raised
Catholic in
Flint, Michigan. Her father, Matthew Garrett, was a jazz trumpeter and teacher at Manassas High School, and through his playing, she was exposed to jazz early on. At the age of 16, she was a member of a Rock and
R&B trio, singing in clubs in
Michigan. At 18, she studied at
Michigan State University, before attending the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. With the school's jazz band, she toured the
Soviet Union in 1969. The next year, she met trumpeter
Cecil Bridgewater, and after their marriage, they moved to
New York City, where Cecil played in
Horace Silver's band. In the early 1970s, Bridgewater joined the
Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra as lead vocalist. This marked the beginning of her jazz career, and she performed with many of the jazz musicians of the time, such as
Sonny Rollins,
Dizzy Gillespie,
Dexter Gordon,
Max Roach,
Rahsaan Roland Kirk,
Wayne Garfield, and others. She performed at the
Monterey Jazz Festival in 1973. In 1974, her first solo album, entitled
Afro Blue, appeared, and she performed on Broadway in the
musical The Wiz. For her role as
Glinda the Good Witch she won a
Tony Award in 1975 as "Best Featured Actress", and the musical also won the 1976
Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album. She subsequently appeared in several other stage productions. After touring France in 1984 with the musical
Sophisticated Ladies, she moved to
Paris in 1986. The same year saw her in
Lady Day, as
Billie Holiday, She tours frequently, including overseas gigs around the world. October 16, 2009, found her opening the Shanghai JZ Jazz Festival, in which she sang tunes associated with
Ella Fitzgerald, along with Ellington compositions and other jazz standards. As a Goodwill Ambassador to the
United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, Bridgewater continues to appeal for international solidarity to finance global grassroots projects in the fight against world hunger. She has also been given honorary doctorates from the
University of Michigan and the
Berklee College of Music. In April 2017, Bridgewater was the recipient of an
NEA Jazz Masters Award with honors bestowed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and in 2018 was awarded the 2018 Maria Fisher Founder's Award by the
Thelonious Monk/Hancock Institute of Jazz. Bridgewater was also, in November 2019, inducted into the
Memphis Music Hall of Fame. ==Philanthropy==