How to become a jazz singer with the Amy Winehouse effect

Amy Winehouse was a worldwide phenomenum that has touched millions of lives. Understanding how to become a jazz singer with the Amy Winehouse effect could help you understand what to do, what to avoid and what to be aware of along the way.

Obviously one of the pitfalls along the way is that of drink and drugs. The awarenes and understanding the consequences of not avoiding them can be an important part in anyones career and life.

Mitch Winehouse opens up about his daughter’s alcohol and drug abuse in a bid to help others break free of the same trap his daughter sadly fell into.

NICK WATT and Lauren Effron of ABC news had this to report:

Amy Winehouse’s father blames his daughter’s downward spiral on her ex-husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, the muse for the late British singer’s breakthrough album, “Back to Black.”

“I blame Blake for her drug addiction,” Mitch Winehouse said in an interview with ABC News. “He (Blake) stood up and said ‘I switched Amy onto Class A drugs.’ But not for her death. He loved Amy. He would never, ever in a million years have wanted this for Amy.”

Mitch recounts how Blake stated that he ‘switched Amy to class-A drugs and that she took to it like a duck to water.’ In Mitches own words he says that not something that any husband should be proud of.

Amy Winehouse, whose “Back to Black” album earned her five Grammys in 2008, died of alcohol poisoning last July — an accidental end to a brutal road of heroin and alcohol addiction. She was 27.

How to become a jazz singer that touches lives like Amy Winehouse

It might be helpful to understand some of the latter parts of Amy’s life to understand how such a tragic end to a life still left a legacy that still touches hearts today.

In the wake of her death, Mitch Winehouse wrote a memoir, “Amy, My Daughter,” which he said was a way to “set the record straight from my point of view” about his daughter’s substance abuse. He insists Amy had been clean of drugs for three years and was well on the way to controlling her alcoholism. She was a sweet, funny daughter, he said, with a wild side.

“But of course there is no smoke without fire and I reflect on those stories that were true too,” Mitch said. “I’m not trying to re-invent Amy. Amy was what Amy was.”

With a handful of songs and a whole lot of attitude, Amy Winehouse became a star at just 20 years old, singing about her bruised love life with Fielder-Civil on “Back to Black,” and singing about refusing to go to “Rehab” on her smash hit single.

So it appears that the painful parts of Amy’s life inspired some of her most successful music. Do we as a public connect with peoples pain and anguish more than we do their joy?

But how did Amy start her career off? Will that let us understand more of how she became such an influencial jazz singer with international impact. Amy’s father is a jazz style singer, her mothers side of the family were all musicians so Amy grew up in a very musical family.

Amy Winehouse first cut her teeth at Jazz After Dark in London’s Soho neighborhood, performing impromptu with the house band.

And Mitch said the noticable turning point for the start of her downward turn was…

“The problems that Amy had started with my mother passing away,” Mitch said. “My mother and Amy were like sisters.”

So grief played a part with the loss of someone very very close and dear to her.

That was 2006, the same year that Winehouse first released “Back in Black” and her ex, Blake Fielder-Civil, reemerged. Amy had his name tattooed on her left breast. The couple were divorced in 2009, but through the years, Amy couldn’t escape Fielder-Civil’s black thrall.

A lot of girls are attracted to the bad boy and Amy was one of them.

“She didn’t have a massive catalogue of songs,” Mitch Winehouse said. “So when she goes on tour everyone wants to hear her sing ‘Some Unholy War,’ certainly everyone wants her to sing ‘Tears Dry on Their Own.’ Well all those songs were about Blake, well Blake is in the past, but here she is having to relive those songs again, and to sing them properly she’s got to feel them emotionally.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jw_MWq6T9M

So she suffered the loss of her granmother, she’s had a turbulant relationship with a bad boy that had turned her on to class A drugs. And even though she is trying to shake it off, the success of her songs that are all about her ex-Blake are the one’s everyone is requesting her to sing. As she puts 100% of herself into her music she can’t leave the pain behind, she’s reliving it with every rendition of those songs.

Mitch say that in the ABC interview that Amy suffered with stage fright, not from the fear of the audience but from the songs she’s singing about Blake. And a less than useful coping mechanism was the use of alcohol.

Before her death, Amy Winehouse seemed to have her life back on track. She had a new boyfriend, Reg Traviss, she had gained some weight, was healthy and even sang a duet with Tony Bennett. But she was still on again, off again with the booze.

Winehouse’s final performance, in Belgrade, Serbia, was one of her worst. She was drunk and chaotic on stage — an emblem of demise, and not what could have been.

Then, in the final two days before she died, the singer drank a fatal amount of alcohol, something that puzzles her father to this day.

“Who knows what makes anyone do anything to the extreme. I have no idea,” Mitch Winehouse said. “There would obviously have been more music, and she would have married Reg, and there would have been children, just like any other normal couple. But it wasn’t to be.”

Mitch has written a book about his daughter life and all the proceeds go to a foundation in her honor.

So what can we learn from Amy on how to become a jazz singer with the Amy Winehouse effect?

– Surround yourself with musical influences – Amy’s family were music through and through, yours might not be but if music and singing is your love surround yourself with musical influences.

– Don’t be scared to sing about your deepest and most darkest woes – but be awake and prepared – make sure you have a coping mechanism that is not drink or drugs. It’s important to recognise the need to deal with the emotions that keep arising when you ‘sing your heart out’.

– Try to not get swept away with the ‘bad boys’.

There is no set formula but the work Mitch is doing to help those that need it with the Amy Winehouse Foundation is something to admire. A father’s loss of his daughter can never be replaced but it’s good to see he is trying to turn his loss into a new horizon for others.

Here’s a way you can help.

Please click the like and share buttons below and to the left of this post if you feel more support is needed for those that gettrapped in the cycle of drin and drugs.