At 81, Glenside resident Freyda Thomas may well lay claim to Northwest Philadelphia's longest running career in show business. She's been performing since she first stepped on a stage at 12 and belted out, “They can't take that away from me.”

On Feb. 27, 7 p.m., decades after that debut at a Montgomery County country club, Thomas will once again take a turn in the spotlight. She will perform a compilation of songs by George Gershwin with her musical partner Frank Ewing in a show called "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" at the Normandy Farms auditorium in Blue Bell.

"This year is the 100th anniversary of 'Rhapsody in Blue,'" said Thomas last week, "and we want to honor him because he was one of the greatest American composers ever. We have lots of stories about him and his music in the show."

When Thomas takes the stage to perform the music of the brilliant composer who died of brain cancer when he was just 38, she will do it with Ewing, a singer, saxophonist, guitarist and accordionist who worked in Los Angeles as a musician and producer. Most weekends, Ewing works gigs including weddings. He also teaches and is a master gardener.

"Some music angel dropped him in my life just as I was about to retire and gave my career an extension," Thomas said of Ewing, who was raised in a musical family with three siblings who all played various instruments.

Thomas also comes from a family for which music was a priority. Her father, Eddie Shaw, was a very well known bandleader in the 1950s and '60s. "I still remember the chills up and down my spine," Thomas said, "as the trumpets, saxes and trombones blared behind me."

Freyda's brother, Marc, started with his own band. "He gave me my start in my career, and without the mentorship of my father, we would not have been able to spend our entire adult lives in show business," Thomas said. "The gene pool was extensive; my mother also sang and played the piano but not professionally, so we couldn't miss inheriting the talent. My brother, Marc, started on trumpet and switched to drums, and he was the best drummer I ever worked with!"

Another brother, Eric Spiegel, was a brilliant jazz pianist who died after 44 years of substance abuse, according to Thomas. He and his singing partner, Wendy Simon, made one album, which is still played on jazz stations all across the country. Freyda's grandmother was Jenny Chess, who had been an actress in Russia and on the American Yiddish stage, but gave it up to raise her children. She used to take Freyda to see plays of all kinds but died in October 1962, with theater tickets in her purse.

For many years Freyda performed a Broadway musical comedy act, mostly in retirement communities, insisting that she was never cut out for the 9-to-5 routine, but after the pandemic started in March 2020, she had 32 cancellations. Needless to say, she was devastated. "I did one Zoom lecture on 'The Diva Decade' (West Side Story to Cabaret) and sang two songs for a group in Florida," she said, "but I chose not to sing as much because the sound on Zoom is sub-par."

The Northeast High School graduate, who was in that school's first class that included girls, earned a bachelor's degree and master's degree in French and Linguistics at Penn State and a master of fine arts degree from California Institute of the Arts. She was the oldest student in the class at age 58.

Freyda also taught French at Penn State, Ursinus College and La Salle University as well as French and English at JFK High School in Willingboro, NJ. She wrote or transcribed French seven plays, all of which were published, and most were produced. One was Moliere's "Les Femmes Savantes," which spoofs academic pretension. It was performed in New York in 1991 as "Learned Ladies," with Jean Stapleton ('Edith Bunker' in TV's "All in the Family") in the starring role.

According to Tom Markus, former artistic director of the Virginia Museum Theatre, "Freyda Thomas is a dream to work with — flexible, quick and with a genuinely savvy sense for what works on stage. Her characters, situations and especially her crystalline dialogue are a joy to experience. It was an enormous privilege to premiere her play, 'The Mistress of the Inn.'"

In her personal life, Thomas had an early, unsuccessful marriage and two miscarriages during that time. "I don't regret any of it," she said.

The show at Normandy Farms (1401 Morris Road in Blue Bell) is at 7 p.m. For more information, visit freydathomas.com.

Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com