Award winning Detroit Jazz drummer and bandleader, Gayelynn

McKinney at the Dirty Dog Jazz Cafe. Photo by John Osler

Ms. McKinney has been quite busy the past year or two starting when she became a mentor and a member of Aretha Franklin’s band where she got to go on world-wide tours and play with a great group led by the legendary musical genius Aretha Franklin, not long before her untimely death.

Aretha Franklin and Gayelynn McKinney

These tours included entertaining our troupes in Germany and Italy and elsewhere.
Gayelynn said that traveling and performing with Miss Franklin was a deeply gratifying and inspirational experience she will never forget. These experiences eventually began influencing her music in many ways.

Gayelynn with her late father, Harold McKinney , who was an award-winning  composer, pianist, and mentor and co-founder of the musician-run-collective “Tribe” which was a internationally respected Detroit Jazz band,  magazine, concert venue,  and record label all in one!

At home she not only received a coveted Kresge Arts Fellowship which allowed her to release her McKinfolk album, which is a tribute to her late father’s musical legacy which preserved and reflected the  Detroit Jazz sound and style,  but she was also honored with a Detroit Black Music Award as well.  The musical McKinney family is legendary in Detroit. In fact, a road in downtown Detroit’s Harmonie Park is named after her father, “Harold McKinney”.

For this return run to the Dirty Dog, Gayelynn, as always, has brought together some great musicians in her new multigenerational band – a perfect eclectic mix for a night of eclectic Jazz, including John Douglas on trumpet, Jeffrey Trent on saxophone, Jonathan Muir-Cotton on bass, Gerard Gibbs on keyboards (on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, and pianist Ian Finkelstein on Friday.

Gayelynn will also be treating us to some new compositions from a soon to be released “McKinney-Zone” CD which should be out soon. They’re all played by some of the best musicians playing in Detroit at this time. It’s all happening at the Dirty Dog, Wednesday, March 11 through Saturday March 14.  Hope to see you there!

For reservations and information, all the Dirty Dog at 313-882-5299 or go to DirtyDogJazz.com.