Julie Budd in "Gershwin & More"

Vocalist Julie Budd is obsessed with the Gershwin brothers. One of America’s great interpreters of popular song, Budd’s Lyric program is called “Gershwin and More.” She’s excited to bring what she considers the ultimate American standards – George’s melodies and Ira’s lyrics – to the Treasure Coast audience. “All roads lead back to George and Ira,” Budd enthuses. “In all of his quotes, George Gershwin’s the first one to say that the work would be incomplete without the sensibilities of Ira. And I don’t think he was just being generous. “I think the two of these guys together were really the springboard. If you’re listening to anything that’s good today, musical that’s theatrical and dramatic and will have any kind of legs, it tips the hat to these two fellas. They were the quintessential voice for the 20th Century.” Her concert, she explains, encompasses much more than the Gershwin-penned classics we all know and love (“Someone to Watch Over Me,” “Summertime,” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” the list goes on and on). “It talks about George’s relationship with Duke Ellington, and all the other aspects that were around him, in terms of his influences,” Budd says. “That’s where the ‘More’ comes in, because in the show we do not just his songs, we do some things that might have been there when he was influenced in terms of writing pieces. It’s a little more comprehensive, musically.” George, she adds, “really loved the Duke, and there were a lot of things in their writing that sort of cross-matched, if you will.” Budd’s own storied career began in the 1960s, several decades after the Gershwins’ heyday. As a child, she was an old soul, singing the standards with a hairbrush microphone into her bedroom mirror. “When I was 12 years old, I entered a talent show in the Catskills,” says the Brooklyn native. “The emcee introduced me to a man by the name of Herb Bernstein, who at the time was recording Laura Nyro and the Four Seasons. Herbie had been recording Merv Griffin, too, and before you knew it I was on Merv’s show – then on Johnny Carson’s show, and Ed Sullivan. That’s the way it happens in our business – it happens fast if it’s gonna happen.” Still in her teens, Budd became a regular on the Griffin program, where she became affectionately known as “The Mini Girl With the Maxi Voice.” “I remember how kind (Merv’s sidekick) Arthur Treacher was to me,” she recalls. “And I wasn’t the only kid act that he know – remember, he’d started with Shirley Temple way back in the ‘30s. So this was a man that had a lot of experience with young performers. And he was great to me.” She became a television fixture, and got used to the camera – which happens to love her – before she knew the meaning of self-consciousness. “You know what was good about it? I grew up with it,” Budd says. “It was a way of life for me, it was what I knew. “It’s like being one of the old vaudevillians – they grew up with it and it was in their blood. None of this pretentious stuff that you see with these kids today. It was the thing that defined us, and we would have done it even if they hadn’t paid us.” The invaluable Griffin exposure led her to nightclubs and the concert stage, where she shared the bill with Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Bill Cosby and other greats. Along with her vast CD catalogue, Budd has acted on Broadway, on TV and in film. And she continues to draw record crowds and rave reviews for her country-wide appearances singing with symphony orchestras. And it all started with a brassy kid from Brooklyn who simply ached to be in show business. At first, Griffin always introduced her as “A young Barbra Streisand.” “That was sort of the point of reference when I was a little girl,” Budd laughs. “I mean, what are they gonna do – you have no track record and there’s two Jewish girls from the same neighborhood who have long ranges. “The whole thing with me was, I just wanted to be a working act. I wanted to be in this business. The first response is they can’t believe it’s coming out of a kid. I was really a very sophisticated voice at 12. I was not doing bubblegum stuff. I was a sophisticated kid who dressed well and thought clearly. “And I think that’s why, right off the top, the industry and the audience took me seriously. Because the whole point of view was very different from other kids out there who were doing rock and all the other things, and they were into drugs … I didn’t have time for that, I was busy being in show business. I was a very focused kid. I was a serious cookie.”