Sheila Smith is one of Bermuda's most enduring singers. In his continuing series on Bermudian musicians, Ron Lightbourne catches up with her.

Sheila Smith's mother Marion, herself a singer, often would call her friends' attention to her three-year-old daughter's precocious ability to sing harmony. To demonstrate, Marion would have them start off in unison and, then at a signal to young Sheila, have the little girl branch out into a second part.

"I could sing hear and sing two, three, four part harmony," she says.

She says this feat never failed to astonish Marion's friends. And Marion knew singing because she herself often sang at the club at Kindley Air Force Base.

Young Sheila studied piano with Prof. Geoffrey Tankard for years, successfully taking the Royal School of Music's Grade VII examination.

Tragically, her teacher died on the very day she sat the examination.

Death is very much on the singer's mind.

"Last year on the 14th of February, my father died. This year on the 14th of February, my cat died," she says.

Two weeks ago, her mother Marion also passed away.

"It's hard," she says. "But I know she's out of her suffering. She's in a better place."

Although as a girl she harboured a desire to sing, she first ventured onstage as a limbo dancer, joining a Berkeley Institute schoolmate at The Clayhouse Inn.

It didn't take long for her to notice that the audience frequently would request songs originally recorded by female singers and she grasped the opportunity.

She would dash back stage, change out of her limbo dancer costume into something more suitable for a singer. Then she would fill the requests of the audience, and to her great delight, they loved her performances.

So Sheila the singer was launched.

Her musical talents do not end there, though.

"I play the organ in church. The Hammond organ. Some people like to sit when they can see my feet, heels and all playing the pedals," she smiles.

For her there is no conflict playing clubs and churches as well, although some folk have tried to create one.

"I tell them I'm a musician," she says. "This is what we do."

She takes it as a mark of her success that she in known as a performer throughout Bermuda, and credits her appeal to what she describes as her honesty.

"When I sing, I like to sing from my soul, with honesty," she says.

"You wouldn't believe it but I am extremely shy. Every time I have to perform, I almost get sick before I go on. But once I'm singing and make eye contact with members of the audience ..." she trails off. Communicating the story in the lyric is what she understands her mission to be.

Her musical heroes?

"Ella Fitzgerald, of course. And Aretha Franklin!"

Like Ella, Sheila delights in singing scat, and acknowledges that her musical training is a great resource in this regard,

She's no scatter shot sprayer of cacophony, but places her notes with exquisite precision, as anyone will attest who heard her in the Bermuda Festival Fringe at Daylesford last year, when she came on for a brief but electrifying set.

She recalls an episode that illustrates a special quality in her voice: "I was working in a bank a while ago, and I saw a lady with a cane enter. She was blind, and I gave her special service. That evening while I was singing in Gene Steede's Night Life cabaret show, I noticed the very same woman come in. After the show I went to speak to her, and she told me she thought she could recognise a special voice from among the singers, as that of someone who had served her at the bank. I told her that it was me. She had recognised my voice!"

A highlight of her career so far was her appearance in The Gilbert & Sullivan Society's production of "Dream Girls". That was a lot of fun, I played one of the three stepsisters who thought they still had it going on …"

Her recording "Inside My Mind", with American pianist Vic Glazer is often requested, and is available at 'The Music Box".

As she looks back she remembers the female Bermuda legends, Violetta Carmichael, and Celeste Robinson.

"Oh Celeste! That woman had a wonderful voice. I was only about six or seven when I knew her, but I remember her voice, she used to let me push her in her wheelchair."

She doesn't see anyone preparing to carry on the tradition.

She has little time for gadgetry and technological props that some singers hide behind. For her, the voice is the thing.

And should she be forced to choose just on song to sing, it would be Charlie Chaplin's "Smile".

Perhaps she's speaking to her own current sorrow, as she begins to speak the lyrics of the song.

"Smile, though your heart is aching

Smile though your heart is breaking,…

Although a tear may be ever so near …"

Sheila has had some time away from performing in public, what with one thing and another, but she's planning a comeback.

"I'm preparing to come out. So watch out!"

Watch out indeed, for this smooth songstress; Ms Sheila Smith.