All her jazz

Catherine Russell comes from another time.

Her voice, smoky, sexy and smooth, is perfect for old-time swing and jazz tunes. She's got the affection – and the pedigree – for the music.

Russell, 51 (and "proud of it – I'm happy that I made it this far"), is the daughter of the late Luis Russell, a pioneering pianist, composer, bandleader and longtime musical director for Louis Armstrong; and Carline Ray, a graduate of Juilliard and an outstanding bassist and vocalist who was a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, a 1940s all-woman jazz band.

It's not unexpected that Russell, who performs Sunday at Harlow's, would become a singer. And since some of her earliest memories include going with her parents to Louis Armstrong's house, maybe her choice of music isn't unexpected, either.

"My taste is vintage," Russell said recently in a telephone interview from her New York home.

"I really start from the pre-1920s and come forward … not too far."

She laughs in an easy, playful way.

"Early jazz is the first music I heard. I grew up looking at my mother's degrees from Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music on the walls, listening to my dad's music and going to the studio to watch him record with Louis Armstrong.

"I was a music major all through school (she graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts)," she said. "I always knew I would be a musician but I just didn't know how it was going to manifest in me. I never thought I would be a solo vocalist."

After she graduated from college, she went to Europe for a year, then came back "and didn't really know what I wanted to do. I looked in the want ads and took a series of jobs, but I was never good at 9-to-5.

"I got a job at Catch a Rising Star, singing between the comedy acts in the mid-'80s," she said, "and recorded demos for songwriters. Demos paid me – nothing else really did.

"It was a living," she said, but challenging.

"The real challenge was personalizing something that wasn't really my kind of music."

Her kind of music (as demonstrated on her debut album, "Cat," released in 2006, and "Sentimental Streak," which came out early this year) is jazz all the way – classics or should-have-been classics.

"What's really exciting to me is to do research and find gems that were better known in their day than (they are) today. A lot of people might find the earlier forms of jazz kind of corny. I think it's wonderful."

Russell's "Sentimental Streak" begins on a sentimental note. It opens with "So Little Time (So Much To Do)," which was recorded by Armstrong in 1938, directed and arranged by her father. Luis Russell's original big-band swing chart is used. Other songs on the set include "I'm Lazy, That's All," recorded by Pearl Bailey; "Kitchen Man," originally sung by Bessie Smith; and "South to a Warmer Place," popularized by Frank Sinatra.

"I'm really happy that I had the childhood that I had and was able to grow up on Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Louis … " she said.

"I still think of the '40s as 20 years ago. I'm still back there. And I'm happy about that."

Catherine Russell

WITH: The Little Charlie Caravan

WHEN: 7 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Harlow's, 2708 J St., Sacramento

TICKETS: $18 advance, $20 day of show

INFORMATION: (916) 457-7553, www.harlows.com, www.swell-productions.com

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Jim Carnes, (916) 321-1130.