An apt locale for a book party for a famed pop singer, the Cutting Room filled with well – wishers for Freda Payne’s memoir, Band of Gold, last week. Co-writer Mark Bego flew in from Tucson, wearing the most outstanding jacket, a print of black & white with sparks of bold color. Yes, it was rock n’roll –without the music. And Payne, resplendent in red, greeted everyone with a kiss and hug. Of course, I knew Freda Payne’s most famous pop tune, “Band of Gold,” grew up with its sound in my ears, her great voice on the proto-feminist lyrics: Left on her wedding night, she laments, all that’s left is a band of gold—and memories of what “love could be.” It did seem like a turning point in 1970. For Freda Payne, a jazz vocalist of note, this was a breakout, flying high on the pop charts.

Up next for her is a new release, “Freda Payne: Let There Be Love,” featuring duets with Dee Dee Bridgewater, Kenny Lattimore, Kurt Elling. With Johnny Mathis, her rendition of the Gershwins’ “They Can’t Take That Way From Me” is an inspiration. She is set to perform at Birdland on November 22.

That Mary Wilson of the original Supremes wrote the Band of Gold’s introduction made me pause to reflect on the era, and her untimely passing this past year. Her friend’s death hit Payne like a mack truck, she said. Having run into Wilson last at the Ain’t Too Proud to Beg opening on Broadway, I was struck by the truths she did not share, commenting on the hit musical’s book and its way of creating a theatrical version portrait of the girl groups’ lives in those years.

While Freda Payne’s memoir limns the history of her stardom, the creation of the music, she too seemed to hold back on some details, pulling a journalist aside to say, “I told the truth, but only half the story.”