Gini Dustin (March 30, 1940–March 4, 2021) was a beloved cabaret singer and graphic artist. She fooled everyone at The Lambs into thinking she was fluent in French with her signature song, “La Vie en Rose,” made popular by Édith Piaf.
She was elected to The Lambs in 2002 as a theatrical member. Gini was a regular performer at Low Jinks, always counted on for a ballad or standard. She also volunteered her time as Club Librarian, on Council, and as designer for The Lambs’ Script.
She was born Virginia Loranne Sheeley on March 30, 1940, to Loran L. Sheeley and Erma Cleo Champlain in Miami, Florida. Gini wrote that the night she was born, “the peacocks in an adjoining garden keened and sang to the moon. Baby Gini joined in the chorus and has been singing ever since.” Her father was a schoolteacher for the Dade County School Board. She graduated from Andrew Jackson High School in the Allapattah neighborhood of Miami. Her father was the principal.
Gini traded Florida for New York. In 1957 the Miami News reported she was the first girl from Dade County to win a scholarship to Vassar College. She studied Russian and took voice training with Catherine Aspinall and later in New York with Judith Farris. In 1961, right after college, she married Donald Robert Dustin, an IBM engineer. The couple had two children, Michael and Sarah. They divorced in 1982.
Gini relocated to the West Village and worked in graphic arts. Among the companies she worked for were American Express, Inkwell Promotions, and as a graphic artist at Scholastic Inc. She also pursued a passion for singing in public. She recorded and released two CDs on her own: “Two For the Road” (2005) and “My Favorite Year” (2006). She worked with Lamb Woody Regan on the recordings.
She wrote that her most important influence in cabaret was her first director, Semina DiLaurentis. She also got a great deal of directorial input from playwright and good friend Victor Bumbalo. Marc Malamed led her to the songs “Where is the Tribe for Me,” “Niagara,” and “Other People.” She collaborated with David Lahm on high-energy swing music such as “Bojangles of Harlem” (Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields). For several years she took classes with Andy Gayle and Mark Janus at Acting the Song.
In the early 1980s, on a stoop in Gramercy Park, Gini sang a chorus of “Stormy Weather” and soon was working with the classical pianist Frank Daykin at The Duplex on Grove Street, at Don’t Tell Mama on Restaurant Row, and at Rose’s Turn, a piano bar on Grove Street that closed in 2007. Gini sang in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut for private parties and corporate events.
In the late 1990s, working with David Lahm at Judy’s Cabaret on West 44th Street, Gini moved from Broadway tunes and old ballads into the world of swing and stride music and the songs sung by Édith Piaf. Gini performed at the Sunday Cabaret Brunch at Regent’s and at Caterina’s on East 53rd Street. She adored the Great American Songbook.
Stu Hamstra of “Cabaret Hotline” called Gini “the poor man’s Barbara Cook” in an early review. And most French visitors were surprised that she was not herself a native speaker.
At The Lambs she met Terry Wells, a member who had joined in 1969, moved away for many years, and returned in 2007. The couple worked on the catalogue of Lambs artwork together and numerous history projects for the Club. Gini and Terry were longtime regulars of Low Jinx.
Gini Dustin died on March 4, 2021, at Lenox Hill Hospital. She was 80.