In her 1970s and '80s heyday, Tucson singer Dayna Wagner was the go-to gal for gala resort openings.
There were a lot of them: Tucson as a resort destination was in its infancy, and the operators of these shiny behemoths nestled in the foothills needed someone with Wagner's glamour and vocal chops to lead the celebrations.
After all the grand-opening gigs, the resorts then tapped the singer, a former New Yorker who began singing locally about 30 years ago, for regular runs.
In between it all, Wagner developed a pretty steady schedule and avid fan base for her appearances on the area's jazz nightclub circuit. Her career was booming so much that she formed her own band and booking agency to keep up with the demand throughout the 1980s and '90s. She also was a regular at private parties, from wedding receptions to bar and bat mitzvahs.
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That all changed in the late 1990s, when Wagner's lifestyle - too little sleep, too much caffeine, eating on the run - caught up with her. She suffered intestinal ailments that eventually required surgery and spelled the end of her singing career.
Wagner, who had taught middle school before becoming a full-time musician, returned to the classroom as a special-ed teacher. The single mom of a son who survived a near-fatal car accident was drawn to the kids, many whose lives had taken abrupt, tragic turns much in the way her son's almost did.
"I saw these kids, and I realized how lucky I was. I wanted to go into this field so I could help these kids and these parents, who weren't as fortunate as I was," she said early this week as she prepared for her return to the stage in a show next Friday at SaddleBrooke's DesertView Performing Arts Center.
Throughout this past decade, she has taught in the Tucson Unified School District; she is now at Townsend Middle School.
But Wagner never fully abandoned music. She occasionally sings at O'Shaughnessy's Steakhouse & Piano Bar on East Tanque Verde Road and has done small, private gigs in Green Valley.
Next Friday she'll star in "Hello Gorgeous - A Tribute to Barbra" (as in Streisand), which takes her back to the reason she got into music. Growing up in New York, she was a big fan of Streisand, who represented to Wagner everything she loved about her hometown and her passion for singing.
"The first time I saw her on 'The Judy Garland Show,' that was it. I bought all the albums," Wagner recalled.
Wagner left New York in her early teens for a small Pennsylvania town that was the polar opposite of the Big Apple both in size and culture.
"Barbra Streisand became my idol, and I had this emptiness in this little town. Singing through all her albums after school probably saved my life," she said. "It filled me with dreams. I wanted to be a singer more than anything."
Wagner, who earned an arts-education degree from Carnegie Mellon University, and her then-husband moved to Tucson in the 1970s. For a spell, they worked clubs as a duo - he played guitar, she played bass and sang, and they added a drum machine to flesh out the sound. After the pair split up when her son was an infant, she continued gigging.
The DesertView show reunites her with her longtime musical partner, bassist Gerry Ptak, and three other musicians. The group will perform original scores of Streisand's most famous tunes, reworked for Wagner's alto range.
And like the lady to whom she is tipping her hat, Wagner is expected to change into several glitzy costumes.
"It's easy to put my heart into this one. I'm not trying to impersonate her. I just happened to be brought up in New York, and the accent's still there," she said, with a hint of the New York brogue.
"But I always sang her very well in the band with Gerry. And the show is all the music people are familiar with."
If Wagner, 60, has her way, "Hello Gorgeous" will be the opening of Chapter 2 in her musical life.
"I'm just not balanced when I'm not doing music," she said.
Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@azstarnet.com or 573-4642.
