“I’m the soft touch that you need / the balm in your Gilead / the whisper of love in your chaos / the only hope, boy, that you ever had”
“Soft Touch” – Torch Life
Gwen Hughes, RedWarbler Music

“A great makeout CD…upright bass, hepcat kind of stuff.”
Steve Craig, WNNX-FM, Atlanta 

“The South’s Sexiest Songstress and her killer band are as irresistible as gravity.”
Borders Books & Music, Atlanta 

“Hughes eschews what she calls ‘safe jazz.’ There is definitely nothing in her performance that would sound at home on a Kenny G album.”
The Studio 

She is the most professional musician I’ve ever worked with. And she has this amazing quality to her voice, this very, very pretty quality…like Billie Holiday.”
Joe Gransden, trumpeter & vocalist
The Studio

As mentioned in the “Retro Jazz Kats” pages the original live band that toured in support of Torch Life was 14 members strong, a huge collection of the city’s best players, from cellists to saxophone, djembe to violin. Gwen wrote and produced the wildly successful “Kool Kat Lounge-a-Go-Go,” featuring jugglers, cigarette girls and throngs of adoring swing dancers.

The exhaustion of running the large band for Torch Life, however, resulted in her stripped-down sound on most of her second CD’s tracks. Where there had previously been a full horn section, now there was merely guitar, bass and drums on many of the tunes.
Lost and Found, released in 2001, is a “journey” album. During the trip, Gwen & her band have twice been voted “Favorite Jazz Artist” by Creative Loafing in Atlanta. Additionally, Gwen’s song “Lights of the City” was a finalist out of 100,000 songs in the Just Plain Folks/CD Baby “Best Jazz Songwriting” category. Both Lost and Found and Torch Life made their way into initial consideration for a Grammy by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.

Lost And Found
“All this pretty paradise is really just passing through / and if you don’t believe me, you better look inside of you”
“Stranger’s Kiss” – Lost and Found
Gwen Hughes, RedWarbler Music
“It’s hard to be holy and passionate.”
John Eldredge
The Journey of Desire 

“The perfect landscape of your life / the rolling hills of mine / the sweetest curves of a night well spent in the safest part of my troubled heart”
“This Fire” – Lost and Found
Gwen Hughes, RedWarbler Music

“She’s found for herself a medium through which a woman torn can exorcise the effects of reckoning the conscious with the libido.”
The Brunswick News 

“You ain’t been blue / no, no, no / you ain’t been blue / ‘til you get that mood indigo”
Duke Ellington
recorded for The Misplaced Martini in the Cosmetics section of Parisian department store

“So, I told him,’ Gwen was explaining to Dally, “when you find somebody alive today who can write a song as good as Strayhorn or Ellington or Fats Waller, then we’ll do more original material. Until then, shut the hell up. Besides, this stuff gets everybody dancing.”
The character “Gwen Hughes” as she appears in Phillip DePoy’s
Dancing Made Easy (Dell Books)

Gwen Hughes & The Retro Jazz Kats are the “Ambassadors of Jazz” to listeners all over the Southeast, as well as on national and international stages. The late-2001 album, The Misplaced Martini highlights the humor, humanity and chutzpah of their live performance. It received general airplay nationally in 2002, and her rendition of “Fever” charted in the Top Ten of the 2001-2002 Swing Top 40. Gwen began touring overseas in 2003 to support all her CDs on Fairfield Records and continues to charm her way across continents.

“Absolutely the best way to experience jazz is to put us on the spot and see if we crash and burn. Sometimes we do, and the fun is getting out it!”
Gwen Hughes
The Gainesville Times 

“We surely did enjoy playing The Misplaced Martini.”
Eric Cohen, Program Director
WAER-FM, Syracuse, New York 

“There is no denying the people’s love for this golden-throated chanteuse.”
Creative Loafing 

“Some may know of Gwen Hughes, some may not…but they will.”
WRFG-FM, Atlanta 

Creative Loafing Reader's pick for Favorite Jazz Artist.