Making It in the Music Biz
"I don't know what took me so long," says Debbie Cunningham, 41, of Franklin, Tennessee, about her new career as a jazz singer -- though 20 years of raising a family might be the answer.
Cunningham had a music degree, but her singing had been limited to church and wedding gigs and composing lullabies for her two children. When they turned 8 and 11, she felt compelled to study singing seriously. She worried about diverting cash toward music school tuition, but her husband urged her to invest in her passion. In 2005 she began studies at the Nashville Jazz Workshop. There she took a master class with the singer Tierney Sutton, who encouraged her to make her own CD, a process that took nine months and more than $10,000 of the family savings.
Cunningham hired a talented college friend to produce and arrange the songs (including one she wrote herself ), hired musicians, and hit the studio. "I had to step out of 'mommy world' and focus," she says. "We whipped it out in a week, because with my schedule, that's all the time I could afford."
Last fall she released her first jazz/pop CD, fittingly titled The Rest of Your Life (debbiecunninghamjazz.com). Cunningham feels that her age brings something special to her work. "I have a wealth of life experience and understanding that I could not have had at 20," she says. "I know what lifelong love feels like and how it endures, and I sing differently because of that."
Cunningham hopes to make her music profitable but knows that no matter what, it's her calling. "When I sing, I feel as though I reach into a new part of me," she says. "I finally found that niche, the place that was made for me."
