Deborah Stafford & The Night Stalkers

Deborah Stafford was born in Iowa in 1962. The family moved often when she was young because of her father's aerospace engineering job, but eventually they landed in Littleton CO. Her musical genes seem to come from her father's side of the family. Her father sang, played the guitar, loved John Denver, and had a varied record collection. Her mother couldn't carry a tune in a basket (as her uncles put it). But Deborah and her sister loved to sing and put on many shows, mostly for themselves.  She will always remember the first time she heard Ella Fitzgerald sing "Midnight Sun" on one of her dad's albums. It was a revelation. Deborah devoured the music she heard and realized she had a talent for remembering lyrics. She dreamed of Broadway stardom from the suburbs of Littleton - about as far away from Broadway as you could get.  She sang in the high school choir and their musicals and finally got the chance to study voice at CU Boulder when she attended college there. Unfortunately, the music school at CU specialized in opera and classical music and when one day she came to her voice lesson with the music for "Stormy Weather" her teacher didn't really know what to do with her. But she kept on singing, and eventually she got her chance, at a local jazz jam she danced with a man who said he had a Big Band that needed a singer.  All the jazz repertoire she had been saving up, came pouring out. She created a Jazz Quartet, and learned more. She started going to a jazz jam that was jazz one week and blues the next. The blues was a new world to conquer, and she dove right in. Soon a blues band asked her to be their singer. When that band folded she created one of her own, The State of Affairs. She was writing songs, learning the history of the blues and singing her heart out. The pandemic sidelined her for a bit, but she now has her dream Blues band, Deborah Stafford & The Night Stalkers, she is on the board of the Colorado Blues Society and has represented Colorado at the International Blues Challenge 3 times. She is still singing Jazz with the Big Band, writing blues songs with the Night Stalkers, performing on bigger and bigger stages and living the dream.