SING- SATIONAL!
Woonsocket natives Brian Duprey and Emily Luther are making their voices heard around the world Autumnfest headliner Brian Duprey is reviving the sounds of Frank Sinatra
WOONSOCKET – Long before he fooled Nancy Sinatra, before the critical acclaim of “The Rat Pack is Back,” and before he began traveling the world as the leading vocal tribute to Ol’ Blue Eyes, Brian Duprey sold cookies.
Born and raised here, Duprey comes home this weekend as the Autumnfest headliner with a 12piece swing band and his show, “Sinatra: The Concert,” for the biggest festival of the year.
He’s won wide critical acclaim for his uncanny soundalike renditions of the old chestnuts of the Sinatra songbook, but Duprey was a late bloomer to show business.
“I graduated from Fairfield University with a business degree in marketing and I pursued a regular job just like everybody else,” Duprey said in a phone interview from his home in Las Vegas a few days ago.
After college, Duprey worked for Nabisco. He had another job with Hormel, selling processed meat products, including – you guessed it – SPAM. “People didn’t know exactly what that was,” says Duprey.
He sensed the corporate gig wasn’t for him. When he moved to New Jersey some two decades
ago to work as a pharmaceutical salesman, he hired a voice coach. Every afternoon, during his lunch break, he’d sneak back to his apartment and practice singing Sinatra tracks.
He was single-mindedly committed to perfecting Sinatra – the phrasing and inflection of the star’s singing voice, the way he talked, even the way he moved on stage.
“I had a boom box where I’d sing over Sinatra for 45 minutes,” says Duprey. “This was something I did regularly. I really wanted to pursue it. This corporate world was really stressful for me and I didn’t see myself continuing with it.”
Eventually he started sitting in with big bands and he was buoyed by the positive feedback from audiences. He cut a CD that did well. It probably helped that his voice coach was a Sinatraholic.
“She just happened to be a super fan of Sinatra,” says Duprey.
DUPREY GREW UP
on Summer Street and went to public schools in the city until he moved to Lincoln around the time he entered middle school. His mother, Marilyn Renaud, still lives on Summer Street says Duprey, “and she always will.” Duprey also has a grandmother, Lucille Bessette, of Cumberland, who just turned 90.
One of his first tastes of stage life came during a student variety show at Lincoln High School – he did a little singing, told a few jokes and threw in some impersonations of his teachers. Duprey says he liked singing as a sort of hobby from the time he was very young and grew up admiring the vocal styles of latter-generation swing artists like Harry Connick Jr., but he never considered the performing arts a serious career path until years after college.
Now in his early 40s, Duprey appears to have hit his stride. He lives in Las Vegas, where he polished his Sinatra chops as a member of the tribute ensemble show, “The Rat Pack is Back.” Also featuring “Sammy Davis Jr.” and “Dean Martin” as the Sinatra pals of yesteryear, the show ran for 10 years at the Rio in Las Vegas, leading to a 48-state tour, repeat bookings and the 2014 title of Best Tribute Show of Las Vegas.
He’s booked solid the world over for appearances in performing arts venues, casinos and corporate gatherings, generating reviews from critics who seem dumbstruck by Duprey’s unparalleled gift for bringing Sinatra back to life with clone-like simulation.
“Duprey’s baritone is a dead-ringer for Ol’ Blue Eyes,” crowed the Winnipeg Free Press.
“With one song, Brian establishes that he not only has Sinatra’s sound, but his gift for phrasing,” observed the Duluth News Tribune.
But Duprey’s most satisfying critique probably came from Sinatra’s daughter, Nancy, about a decade ago, during an appearance on celebrity rock jock Howard Stern’s Sirius radio show. Apparently impressed with Duprey’s carbon-copy vocalizations of the ’50s icon, Stern thought he’d have a little fun with Nancy and played her a recording of Duprey singing one of her father’s classics.
Who was it? Stern wanted to know.
“Dad,” of course, Sinatra assured him.
Stern assured her in no uncertain terms that the singer was, in fact, Brian Duprey.
“Brian Duprey’s got it down!,” Nancy later proclaimed.
Duprey says he’s never met any of the Sinatras and seems hurt that the keepers of the singer’s legacy have never officially endorsed him as a Sinatra tribute performer – the way the Presleys have for Elvis. Even on his blog, Duprey expresses dismay at the family’s reluctance to recognize his efforts in preserving Sinatra’s musical lineage.
“The family doesn’t want to get involved in doing what I do even if it’s at a very high level,” Duprey says. “I think it’s a mistake.”
For all his finely-tuned attention to swing-era Sinatra detail, Duprey soft-sells the notion that he is a vocalist.
“I’m just an actor,” he says. “I train for a role just as anyone would on ‘Seinfeld.’ I’m creating an illusion that you’re seeing Frank Sinatra and I’m kind of morphing into that person.”
Autumnfest Entertainment Chairman Jeffrey Gamache thinks Duprey protests a bit too much.
“He is the most humble, down-to-earth guy you’ve ever met in your life,” he says.
A wearer of many hats, Gamache is a radio host on radio station WNRI and also sings as frontman for a country and roots band, “Runaway Train.” He first heard Duprey perform on television many years ago and later met him while he, Gamache, was performing at River Island Park.
Duprey was in town visiting his mother, who brought him by the park to hear Gamache sing. Duprey later approached him and complimented Gamache. “It’s still the best compliment I’ve ever gotten considering where it came from,” says the Autumnfest volunteer.
As entertainment chairman, Gamache is responsible for landing Duprey as Autumnfest headliner. He says it would have happened sooner were it not for Duprey’s heavily booked calendar.
For Duprey, appearing at Autumnfest will not only be a homecoming – he last performed in the city about a decade ago – it will be a welcome respite from the pall of Las Vegas, still reeling from the worst mass shooting in U.S. history Sunday. The toll now stands at 58 dead after Stephen Paddock sprayed an outdoor concert audience with gunfire for nearly 15 minutes from his perch on the 32nd floor for the Mandalay Bay Resort.
Duprey and his wife Jami – a Marilyn Munroe impersonator who will appear with Duprey at Autumnfest – live about a quarter mile from the Mandalay Bay Resort and they were downtown when the massacre occurred.
“We hear all these sirens…suddenly we’re getting texts from people: ‘Are you okay?’” recalled Duprey.
A day after the rampage, Las Vegas was eerily quiet, said Duprey. “Everybody just seemed to be in a different place in their minds. We just can’t get out of our minds how these things happen and what we can do about it. What happened is the opposite of what we do as performers. Our job is to make people happy no matter the circumstances. As they say, the show must go on.”
And it will, on the main stage in World War II Veterans Park, at 7 Saturday night.
“I can’t wait,” says Duprey. “It’s going to be fantastic.”