Jazz legend avoids home foreclosure, for now

updated 9:31 a.m. ET July 1, 2008

SEATTLE - Jazz vocalist Ernestine Anderson’s home has been saved from foreclosure — for now. Thanks, in part, to music legend Quincy Jones and contemporary jazz artist Diane Schuur.

More than $43,000 poured in — including donations from Jones and Schuur — after recent news stories about the Seattle jazz legend’s financial woes, said Carmen Gayton, a friend of Anderson’s family.

The money to stop the foreclosure was delivered Monday, Gayton added. She declined to say how much Jones and Schuur had donated.

But Gayton said Anderson, 79, needs more money in order to be able to decrease the monthly payments on her principal loan balance of nearly $460,000. Gayton added that a financial manager is working pro-bono to look for ways to restructure Anderson’s loan, which has monthly payments of more than $4,400.

Gayton also said Anderson will try to sell a second house next door to the home she’s trying to save.

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Anderson, who once sang with the likes of Jones and Ray Charles, was more than $30,000 in arrears in payments and penalties last week.

Gayton has said Anderson’s monthly income is $1,000 from Social Security, and at her age, her performances are limited.

After 30 albums and four Grammy nominations, Anderson is one of Seattle’s most respected names in music, part of a jazz scene the flourished in the city well before grunge and alternative rock took the stage.

Donations ranging from $5 to $5,000 streamed in after her story broke, Gayton said.

“We’re incredibly grateful for all the people who went to the bank or mailed a check,” she said.

Anderson is one of dozens of people facing foreclosure in her Central District neighborhood. More than 200 houses face foreclosure in Anderson’s zip code, according to Realty Trac, a Web site that tracks foreclosures.

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