Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Gwen Hughes is the city’s busiest genre-busting singer. With her bands, The Retro Jazz Kats and The Continental Dance Orchestra, 4 CDs to her credit, and voted Atlanta’s favorite jazz artist on multiple occasions, Hughes prods and provokes in every performance.

Jazz? Pop? Post-modern melodic posturing? Bluegrass? Funkified low-carb song styling? Well, you won’t find her in the sale bin with Perry Como, that’s for sure. The self-monikered “love child of Muddy Waters and Peggy Lee” is, in the end, best described as a fusion artist - a fusion of blues, rock and jazz.

Her first CD, Torch Life, birthed her wildly successful “Kool Kat Lounge A-Go-Go” show, replete with cigarette girls, jugglers, comedians and a 14-piece band. Next came two more CDs in a single year: the introspective studio recording Lost and Found and a spontaneous, live release, The Misplaced Martini. Both of her original offerings have had Grammy entry, and individual tracks have been recognized by National Public Radio and featured on MTV, The Discovery Channel and in films. She's a Governor for the Atlanta Chapter of NARAS; an Artist in Residence with The Georgia Music Hall of Fame and, as a three-time winner of Creative Loafing's BEST JAZZ ARTIST, a popular ambassador of the genre.

Her most recent CD, Instead of Light, was produced by Blue Note’s Danny Kopelson and Drew Young (most recently of Putumayo Records). Gwen also released a children’s EP in 2009, Big Kids Jazz.

Along the way, she has crooned from Paris to Prague, collaborated on a film about Elvis impersonators, and appeared as a character in a detective novel (Dancing Made Easy, Dell Paperbacks). In 2010, Gwen returned from her 9th tour of Europe with her renowned European band, THE GLOBAL JAZZ GANG, led by Tomi Puric (Portoroz, Slovenia). A live album of their tours is due out in early 2011.


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	DISCOGRAPHY

	The Gwen Hughes Catalogue on Fairfield Records

Global education and working with children is a passion: past trips abroad have taken her (and her music) into the slums of Nairobi, Kenya; the immigrant areas of Paris, France; Istanbul, Turkey; and Casablanca, Morocco.