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Cabaret Vocalists

Hazel Payne

Hazel Payne

Vocal Entertainer

After travelling across country by car with her family and listening to some of her mother's favourite artists like Mongo Santamaria, Ray Charles, and Kenny Burrell, Hazel decided she wanted to stop taking piano lessons and learn guitar. "My mother was an aspiring opera singer in her youth and she always encouraged my brothers and me to embrace music, if only as a hobby", Hazel maintains. "It was just recently my father told me he had a band with Duke Ellington's nephew. I think the 'force was with me' to pursue music." It was a year after Hazel joined A Taste Of Honey that the group scored a recording contract with Capitol Records. ATOH recorded four (then called) albums for the label. It was quite a coincidence, Hazel thought that she would end up on the same label that the vocalists she had previously backed, The Sylvers, were on. As a member of A Taste Of Honey, Hazel wrote and arranged a number of songs alone and with other members of the group. "Simply put: I love what I do. I'm quite fortunate and I'm happy!" Grammy award- winning Hazel smiles. "People tell me all the time 'you've got so much energy!' What can I say I feel that if I've got a choice, Don't Walk…Boogie!"