Eric Horlyck in the LeMars Daily Sentinel (September 2007)

"Miles came through. Coltrane came too/Where?/Down in Birdland/Basie blew. Bird did too/Yeah!/Down in Birdland!"

Like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Count Basie, and Charlie "Birdman" Parker did before her, Champian Fulton is taking on the legendary New York jazz club, Birdland, with a wing and a prayer.

And just like her idol, Billie Holiday, this sassy chanteuse is swingin' the blues world with a whole lotta soul.

According to the 22-year-old Fulton, she credits her Le Mars upbringing for giving her "all that jazz."

"Birdland's like a second home for me," says the now New York-based singer, "but it was in Le Mars that I learned how to swing!"

Growing up in a family that loved music, Fulton moved to Le Mars at the age of nine when her father, Stephen, became the director of the Clark Terry Institute for Jazz Studies on the campus of Westmar College.

"I made my public singing debut at Ice Cream Days," she remembers with a smile. "I was probably ten years old at the time. I sang a cover of Sarah Vaughan's 'You Stepped Out of a Dream' at the gazebo in Foster Park."

"Not the type of a song you'd imagine coming out of the fifth grader," the vivacious songstress laughs, "is it?"

By the ripe old age of twelve, Fulton was fronting her own band, "The Little Jazz Quintet."

"We played quite a few gigs," she recalls. "Most notably, we played for Clark Terry's 75th birthday."

Returning with her family to her hometown of Norman, Oklahoma shortly thereafter, Fulton kept her musical career swingin'.

"I couldn't help it," she admits. "My mom said I developed my taste for jazz when I was still in her womb. She said that because my dad kept playing 'Charlie Parker and Strings' when my mom was pregnant and had a pair of earphones strapped to her belly."

"Dad wasn't taking any chances," Fulton laughs. "Any child of his was gonna love jazz!"

Fulton credits her trumpet playing father with infusing her with a love of music and her piano-playing grandmother for tutoring her into the intricacies of hot piano jazz.

"Dad would invite guys like Clark Terry and Major Holley to the house," she remembers. "All of his musician-friends would be speaking this foreign language ... the language of music."

"I wanted to learn that language," Fulton says decisively.

And soon she did.

By the time she was in her early teens, the precocious Fulton hit the festival circuit with the her own jazz trio.

"We played the Kemah Boardwalk Festival, the Corpus Christi Jazz Festival, and the Jazz in June Festival right in Norman," she recalls.

It was in 2001 when the Champian Fulton Trio became the house band at Oklahoma City's famed Maker's Cigar and Piano Bar.

"We played there every weekend for two years," she smiles. "The only reason I left was because I was graduating from high school."

After graduating as valedictorian from Norman's North High School in 2004, Fulton made the leap to the Big Apple.

"I wanted to pursue a degree by attending the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music," she mentions. "Plus I wanted to be in the middle of the jazz world and New York was where it was happening."

Starting in 2003, Fulton began playing piano and singing with a newly reconstituted Champian Fulton Trio. In addition to that, she began playing sets along side such jazzy stalwarts as Louis Hayes, Jimmy Cobb, Frank Weiss, and Lou Donaldson at Birdland.

It was at one of these gigs that she met David Berger.

Berger, the former conductor and arranger for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and, current conductor and arranger of the popular "Dave Berger & the Sultans of Swing," was currently in the market for a girl singer who could "swing with the big boys."

He found an unusual girl with an unusual name.

"She told me her name was Champian," he recalls. "That's not a name you're likely to forget."

"Uh ... I think my dad wanted a boy," Fulton jokingly interjects.

"Champian said she was playing every Thursday night at Birdland," Berger remembers, "and that I should check her out sometime."

Intrigued by the young woman whom he compares to a young Dinah Washington or Ella Fitzgerald, Berger was blown away by her performance and quickly hired her to front his band.

"Champian was a perfect fit for the Sultans of Swing," Berger marvels. "Here was a woman who was amazingly young yet had the soul of jazz singer. That's something that can't be taught. She just had it!"

"I instinctively knew how to write for her," he continues, "and, in turn, she immediately knew how to fit what she did into the arrangements. After the initial three arrangements, we planned an entire album around her and designed each song specifically to feature her."

The album, entitled "Champian," hit the stores on Sept. 18, just six days after Fulton's 22nd birthday.

"In the back of my mind, I thought it would be cool to graduate from college and record a CD in the same year," Fulton laughs. "I guess that was the 'overachiever' in me rearing its head."

"But when my dream turned out to be a reality," she smiles as she pauses. "Wow! It just feels unbelievable!"

As Fulton prepares for the press party to coincide with the release of her album, it will be with her two big supporters by her side: mom and dad.

"My dad is, without a doubt, my biggest musical influence," she laughs. "But my mom? She's my biggest groupie!"

In fact, her mom bought Fulton two dresses, especially for the release party.

"They were both so gorgeous that we couldn't decide which one I should wear," Fulton says with a giggle. "Mom suggested that I take both of them with me and do a mid-party costume change."

"My mom said it worked for Doris Day in all of those old movies," she laughs, "so it'll probably work for me too."

Fulton knows she isn't Doris Day but whenever she walks into Birdland, she says she feels like she's walking into a soundstage of an old movie.

Only it's not a set out of the 40s ... this is her life.

"I'm living out my dream," she smiles. "I couldn't be more grateful or any happier!"

If anyone can do a jazzy, swinging arrangement of "Que Sera Sera," Fulton will definitely be its "Champian."