'Big Maybelle' gets her due at Bay Street

When Lillias White was sent the script to a musical about Maybelle Smith, she had her doubts.

First, although she knew more about the late blues singer than did most of the world, that isn't saying much. "I really didn't know a lot about her," says the Tony-winning Broadway mainstay, adding with a little wince, "Honestly, my first reaction was, 'Another show about a singer who's a downtrodden drug addict'?"

But here she is, enthusiastic star of "Big Maybelle: Soul of the Blues," the one-woman (plus two minor characters) semi-biographical musical that has its world premiere Tuesday at the Bay Street Theatre with an ambitious production and the inevitable hopes for a Broadway afterlife.

"I was familiar with her music," says White, pausing for a quick lunch during a recent rehearsal in a bustling studio on 42nd Street. "Why didn't she get famous like Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughn and Ella Fitzgerald? Maybe it was because she was a dark-skinned singer, maybe because she came up at a time before everybody had a TV in their homes. She had health issues, self-esteem problems, troubles with her weight. She just never got the exposure to become as popular as she deserved to be."

If writer-director Paul Levine has his way, she will get her due now. Maybelle, the rhythm and blues artist who peaked in the '50s and died at 47 in a diabetic coma in 1972, had one crossover hit single, "Candy," and recorded "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" two years before anybody heard Jerry Lee Lewis do it.

Levine, who grew up in Setauket but works now in film and theater in Los Angeles, remembers a day, "maybe 10, 12 years ago," when a friend in the music business brought over a stack of LPs and cassettes. "He said, 'You've got to listen to this.' And I was blown away by her sound. But -- this was before the Internet -- I couldn't find out anything about her."

Years later, as he fondly recalls, he woke up one morning with "Maybelle's voice in my head. There was still a paucity of information on her, a paragraph here and there, but nothing about her whole life." What he had were her records. Ten days later, he had written her show and, by the fall of 2010, he had Lillias White starring in the workshop.

"Based on Maybelle's discography, I did what I used to do as a little boy in my basement with The Beatles. I put it in dramatic order and created a narrative based on the music and the lyrics. And I used whatever information I could gather about her life. She was singing blues-roots stuff on the road, what they called the Chitlin' Circuit. A core of people knew she was a gifted, very special talent."

His agent called Murphy Davis, Bay Street's artistic director, who says, "I didn't have a clue who Maybelle was. But, growing up, I always loved this kind of music." Incidentally, when he phoned Levine, they discovered they graduated one year apart from Ward Melville High.

The result is this big show, with 31 songs, a six-piece band, sets by Tony-winner John Arnone ("The Who's Tommy"), costumes by fashionista-turned-theater-designer Emilio Sosa and archival footage assembled by Joe Lauro.

And, of course, it has White, who, for starters, won her featured-actress Tony for belting the wry sorrows of a weary-wise hooker in "The Life" and another nomination as the mother in "Fela!"

"I am not doing an impersonation, but I want to sound like Maybelle as much as possible," says White, who narrates her story as well as sings her blues. "She had this earthy, gutsy, gutbucket sound. She had a very low-pitched voice -- lower than mine -- with a huskiness that was different from Ella, Dinah or Sarah."

She appreciates the chance to create a whole character, rather than repeat the cliche of the big black woman who gets to stop the show -- and, she says with a knowing wink, "sometimes save the show" -- in so many Broadway musicals. "You'll have to ask white producers on Broadway why they don't make shows for the plethora of black creative talent."

Meanwhile, she not only gets to introduce the world to Maybelle, but, she acknowledges with obvious pleasure, "This is a great vehicle for me."

Her life

Highlights from the life of Maybelle Smith, born Mabel Louise Smith, who sang gospel as a child in Jackson, Tenn.

1952: Signed by Okeh Records and renamed Big Maybelle.

1955: Recorded "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," produced by Quincy Jones.

1956: Her only crossover hit, "Candy."

1960: Filmed "Jazz on a Summer's Day" along with Mahalia Jackson and Dinah Washington.

1972: Died while in a diabetic coma.

1973: Her last album, "Last of Big Maybelle," released posthumously.

2011: Inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.