It was pure fate that I would meet this jazz singing socialite, as I had been hearing fantastic things aout her for months on end from friends who had seen her playing around town.  Eventually, I added her as a friend on Myspace and we got talking.  Months later, I was the guest DJ at a new lounge venue in Sydney, and had just stepped out onto the sidewalk while the band was playing, and who should come sashaying past but Sally Street.  I quickly launched into my patented Koop Kooper seduction technique number nine, and soon we were trading mai taise, and witty repartee, which I've reproduced here for you, dear reader.  One thing that was most apparent from the start, this platinum chanteuse's lips don't just canary a chi chi sambe, those same liips also earned her respectable coin as an attorney.

Kooper:  That's an incredible combination, a lawyer and a jazz musician.  I mean you don't have many lawyers become jazz musicians, do you?

Sally Street:  I know.  It's crazy.  It's much more fun being a jazz singer than it was being a lawyer, let me tell you.  It's not as lucrative, but it's a lot more fun.  But money's not everything.

Kooper:  Now you started off as a very, very young gal as a pianist and you went on to teach, and now you're Sydney's numero uno female lounge singer I would say.

Sally Street:  I'm having a ball.  I did start really youg.  I started playing piano when I was four, and ballet dancing, and tap and character and folk dancing.  And I did that right up until I left school.  And when I left school I did all my piano grades - I'm a classical pianist - and I taught for a few years while I put myself through unversity.  And then for some crazy reason, I kind of had something in my head where all I ever wanted to do was sing professionally, but I went off and did something that I thought was sensible, not really what I had my heart in, although I did really well at it.  I was a senior associate in one of Asia Pacific's top tier law firms, Mallesons Stephen Jaques, and I was doing mergers and acquisitions, and it was terribly dry, and all I'd do all day was work really hard until all hours of the morning, but in my heart I was thinking about jazz songs the whole day.  I used to often work with my iPod in my ears dreaming about what I really wanted to do.  And then a few years ago I thought, you only live once, this is just crazy and so I hung up my briefcase, but I kept my stilettos on, and I haven't looked back.  I'm having a ball.

Kooper:  I would imagine with your lawyering skills, if somebody decides not to pay you for a gig, you can always threaten to sue them very easily, you know.

Sally Street:  That hasn't happened yet.

Kooper:  And very confidently.

Sally Street:  You do hear about that, it happens a lot though but it has never happened to me.

Kooper:  Yeah, I can tell you some stories about what's happened to me recently.  But anyway, that's a different story.

Sally Street:  Talking about you, how sexy is your penthouse!

Kooper:  You like it?

Sally Street:   I want to come over and have a party!

Kooper:  Well, you know....

Sally Street:  I want to come and sit on that big couch of yours and purr like Eartha Kitt.

Kooper:  Well speaking of Eartha, she just passed away recently;  we did a show last week all about Eartha Kitt.  What an incredible voice and I know she's an influence of yours, isn't she?

Sally Street:  She is.  I love Eartha Kitt, she's fantastic and she's curious as well, because she has a really unusual voice, but once she hooks you it's, yeah, she's just so sexy.  I sing a lot of her songs and put one of her songs on my first album.  I don't think there's any Eartha Kitt songs on my latest album, but I love Eartha Kitt.  I sing Santa Baby a lot at Christmas time, everyone always loves that.

Kooper:  What about "I Want To Be Evil"?

Sally Street:  I did put "I Want To Be Evil" on my first album.

Kooper:  Yeah?

Sally Street:  It's hilarious  It's got the best words.  I actually called my first album Little Evil Me, which was a line from that song.

Kooper:  Now I haven't had a chance to hear that one, but I have heard your most recent album, One Bite At The Cherry, and I've got to tell you, as soon as I put it on, I was like wow, this is fantastic.  Sometimes musicians cover songs, and they just cover them just as they were, and that's all nice, but it's not always particularly exciting.  But what I love about the songs, that is that you really make them your own.  

Sally Street:  Otherwise there's no point.  I think that's the wonderful thing about jazz, isn't it, that you can still put out albums or standards and make them your own, and that's what I .... particularly with this one there's quite a lot of....well it's sort of half blues, half jazz.  But the blues I thought it would be fun to do them just in a cheeky, sassy, you know, Marilyn Monroe / Eartha Kitt kind of - if you wanted to call it something - style, which a lot of people - well I haven't really heard many people do with blues, so I thought it would be fun just to experiment really, and it worked!  So I was really thrilled with it. Those sort of cheeky, jazzy blues numbers that make you feel happy.

Kooper:  I really think they're pretty sexy albums.  I mean, you know.

Sally Street:  It's penthouse playboy music.

Kooper:  It is.  You sound like quite the seductress in your albums.  I must say, I do love your voice, but you are...you're an international artist I mean.  We know you in Sydney and I got to meet you recently at a gig that I was DJ-ing at here in Sydney, and I was actually.....I was sitting outside and I saw you walk past and I thought gee-whizz that gal looks really familiar, and then suddenly hit me, oh that's Sally Street.  So I went up and said hello and we'd exchanged messages on the Myspace earlier but you.....

Sally Street:  And how gorgeous did you look in your hat.

Kooper:  Oh thank you.

Sally Street:  And listen to your radio show.  You don't know how funky and sexy you are!

Kooper:  Oh you're too kind.

Sally Street:  With your funky outfit, playing all that funky music in that club, you had everyone bopping.  It was fantastic.

Kooper:  Well it was a really fun night, there was no doubt about that and hopefully I get to do anohter one soon.  But you, like I was going to say, you're an international artist.  I mean you've even played in places like Macau.

Sally Street:  I know, I did go there a few months back and I performed as a headline act at the Venetian and Sands Casinos.

Kooper:  Those places are incredible, the money and the style.

Sally Street:  Yeah, I was there for just over six weeks.

Kooper:  Those places are dripping with money.  Could you smell the green stuff?

Sally Street:  Actually, it was really interesting.  When I was there, I found out one high roller table alone brings in on any night the same amount of money as the whole main normal gaming room floor.  Couple with all lthe money they bring in from the bars, drinks, all the room tariffs ...just wrapping your mind around the millions of dollars that's just pouring into those places per minute.  It was incredible.  The Chinese as well, they love to gamble;  they're just really fun.  They just get really excited by it.

Kooper:  I was in Macau a little while ago.  And the thing that I noticed, particularly with a lot of the high rollers too, a lot of the Chinese, I mean they do believe in aspects of luck.  It's very much part of their culture.  These particular guys that were gambling, they really believed they had a lot of luck - from the dollars they were putting down on the table.

Sally Street:  They're so opulent there as well, and it was a bit surreal, because just like Vegas, there's fake sky everywhere in the casinos and it's just light all day and all night, and so you kind of get confused about the time.....I was doing shows until three in the morning and coming home and going to bed at five most nights, and I felt a bit like a vampire by the time I got back.  I had a really warped sense of day and night.  But it was a really amazing experience;  you wouldn't be able to do it all year round.

Kooper:  That is true.

Sally Street:  You'd have no tan.

Kooper:  Well I tell you what, I was very very keen to introduce you to the Cocktail Nation audience and it's been a pleasure to talk to you.  We will talk again, I am sure.  The website, sallystreet.com, that's where you can go to find out what you're doing, where you're playing throughout Sydney and the world, to book you.  Also, to grab the CD as well;  you can do that via the website.  Sally, it is so great to talk to you and we'll look forward to catching up with you soon.

Sally Street:  It was great to talk to you.

Kooper:  Indeed.

Sally Street:  I'm giong to have to come and see another Koop show and boogie to your amazing lounge music.

Kooper: Good to talk to you Sally.

Sally Street:  You too.  Thanks Koop.

The full version of Koop Kooper's entertaining e-book:  "Cocktail Nation - The Interviews" can be purchased at:  http://www.amazon.com/Cocktail-Nation-the-Interviews-ebook/dp/B0062Z15TM

About Koop Kooper:

KOOP KOOPER, the cocktail universe's high priest of all things hep swingin and swank, and cyber disc jockey of his radio show the 'Cocktail Nation', has unleashed the definitive guide to the Lounge universe, with his new eponymous tome now available as an eBook.

Replete with gassin interviews and cool pixeramas, Koop Kooper reveals the incredible diorama of Cocktail culture, lifestyle and music.

Koop mixes it up with cool luminaries and pioneers of the Cocktail soundtrack, such as hepster Jack Constanzo, the bongo player of the 50s…shakes a martini with the leaders of the revival Combustible Edison; trades smart lip with comedian satirist Shelley Berman and twenty first century hit makers Martini Kings; heads down the dark streets of Cocktail noir, muscling it up with croonoir Jimmy Vargas; then it's off to the Vegas pool, where he conducts an underwater interview with gorgeous fire eating mermaid Marina.

KOOP KOOPERS ‘COCKTAIL NATION’ book is a glorious panorama of all things Lounge, created by the swank meister of uber cool himself.