Whitfield has played large concert halls, cabarets and jazz clubs, including New York’s Carnegie Hall and Oak Room, but she’s just as excited about working a little room with a capacity of about 50 in Meadville, PA.

   In the Bay Area, she’s worked just about every room available, “Until they all closed,” she says. But her “home” room has been San Francisco’s York Hotel Plush Room, where last December she celebrated her 25th anniversary.

“I’m happiest when I’m home,” she says.

   What’s impressive is that she’s managed to build her career while working from a wheelchair. In 1977 she was the victim of a seemingly random street shooting that left her paralyzed from the waist down. “A couple of kids had a gun. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she says. “It’s been so long that it’s long past the point of where it has any meaning. I preferred sitting down to sing anyway. It helps me concentrate.”

   Whitfield had an interesting “handicapped” experience recently. “I played Le Jazz Au Bar right after Shirley Horn, [who’s also in a wheelchair],”she says. “They built a ramp for her and simply left it up for me. It may have been the first time in the history of jazz that two disabled people have been booked back-to-back.”

   Helping her along he way has been her husband, Michael Greensill, who also happens to be her pianist. She and Greensill have been a team for about 23 years, the last 18 as spouses. Whitfield says they rarely have musical disagreements, but when they do it usually has to do with tempo. “More likely, I’ll want it faster than Michael,” Whitfield says.

   Whitfield’s discography is equal or even superior to many more famous vocalists, both in quantity and quality. In June, she recorded her 17th album since 1980. She’s excited that for this album – on HighNote – she was able to use French horns.

   Her recordings generally reflect the composers and lyricists from the Great American Songbook. Whitfield has devoted entire albums to the music of Jimmy McHugh, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, and others. Hart is her favorite.

   Born in rural California, Whitfield was the youngest of three girls, who formed their version of the Andrew Sisters when Whitfield was but 5. Whitfield was even ore precocious. “I knew at two-and-a-half that I was going to be a singer. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents watching TV, and I remember when a singer named Molly Bee opened her mouth and I said, “That’s what I’m going to do.”

   Whitfield lists some of the usual suspects as her influences: Sarah Vaughan, Carman McRae, Anita O’Day.” And I don’t sound anything like any of them,” she says. And despite this jazz influence, Whitfield does not consider herself a jazz singer.

   “I don’t think I’m a jazz singer so much as an interpreter of lyrics, which in jazz is secondary, although jazz singers do care about lyrics,” she says. “But with them, it’s more about exploring a song melodically and harmonically, rather than dealing with the story of a song.”

- Bob Protzman