June Ventzos is currently the Island's highest-paid entertainer. Since the night Prince Fahd, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and part-owner of the Elbow Beach Hotel, was mesmerised by her voice the very first time he heard her, Ventzos has worked with the musicians of her choice at Spazzizi's, the Pub downstairs at the hotel.

An album mixing jazz standards with her own compositions is in the works, a Christmas album under her supervision not far behind. It looks as if the velvet-voiced singer was right to pursue her muse at the expense of the legal career her family would have preferred for her.

"Everything I've wanted in life has come reasonably easily, when I've put in the right level of effort,'' says Ventzos. "Singing was the exception to that rule.'' Following the traditional concerts in the living room for family and friends when she was just a little girl, Ventzos started singing professionally at 16.

"I was working on the Sizzling Hot album,'' she says, "which sold 15,000 copies in Bermuda alone. I remember I was in the studio, having all kinds of problems biting into the track.'' Ian Marshall, the former owner of Great Sound Studios, took the teenager to the archives at ZBM studios, and subjected her to some Billy Holiday, the definitive `torch' singer. The music Marshall chose was taken from the sad end of the great singer's career.

"He told me that's what I sounded like,'' recalls Ventzos. "I thought she sounded drunk, hoarse, out of tune. How could he say I sounded like that?'' Today, Ventzos' phrasing and style recall no one as much as Holiday, this time at the peak of her powers. That transformation is a story of many years of hard work, and a rash of outrageous good fortune attended by dark personal circumstance.

Ventzos had bounced back and forth between New York and Bermuda before she and musical partner Grant Williams went back to the Big Apple together, intent on making a name for themselves. Work proved hard to find. "We were just basically starving,'' says Ventzos, "and to kill time, I was visiting an old man in hospital during the daytime. He'd ask me to sing for him, and if it made him happy, it was fine with me.'' In the next bed, recuperating from an attack of diabetes, was the Commodores' manager, Benny Ashburne. "The Commodores were hot at this time,'' explains Ventzos, "and Benny could do no wrong with the record companies.'' Ashburne was so taken with the sounds filtering through to where he lay that he took the steps which would eventually lead to record executive Gabe Vigorito signing the duet to CBS Records. "We were the first black group signed by their pop department,'' says Ventzos.

Ventzos and Williams called themselves Voyeur. The album they released under that contract was Boulevard, which climbed to Number 18 on the Billboard charts. During the recording of the album, Ventzos had herself been hospitalised for six months, and once the album had run its course, she returned to Bermuda.

She turned her back on music for a while to complete her degree in international business and marketing studies. "I could still be a lawyer,'' she says, "and later, I might, but I've always believed that my voice had a special quality, a unique texture. Once I made the connection with what Billy Holiday had been doing, it just blew me. At first, I couldn't see it, and now I can't get rid of it.'' Ventzos returned to the club scene in Bermuda with a residency at Loquats.

Auditioning at Elbow Beach for one night only, with no further engagements on her calendar, Ventzos was surprised by Prince Fahd's presence, and stunned when he offered to sign her to an open-ended residency at the hotel's Pub.

"He told me to find whichever musicians I'd like to work with, set and control my own budget, and to make the place my own.'' Ventzos has never looked back. She uses her new-found position of strength to introduce newcomers to the public at the Pub, and has helped other local performers land a number of gigs and contracts.

"You share your good luck with your friends,'' says the singer. "One night, there were 26 local musicians on stage with me. You had to wear something red, anything, even panties, but if so you had to prove it. It was a local We Are The World,'' she says, referring to the all-star recordings for charity under Bob Geldof's direction back in 1986.

The new album, under the working title of Just June, will be produced by Leland (The Wizard) Hicks. "It will focus on my spiritual side,'' says Ventzos, "my passionate side, and what I call my `In the Hood' style, which is a reaching out to hardcore music fans, and gives me the chance to fulfil all those artistic aspects I have within me.'' Ventzos has no idea what her future holds. "I'm not just a jazz artist,'' she says, "I can work with other styles, but jazz seems to be in my blood.'' Anyone who has heard her soar would readily attest to that statement.

RG MAGAZINE JUNE 1993