Alberta Hunter was born 119 years ago today. Hunter was blues singer, songwriter and nurse. Her career had started back in the early 1920s, and from there on, she became a successful jazz and blues recording artist, being critically acclaimed to the ranks of Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith. In the 1950s, she retired from performing and entered the medical field, only to successfully resume her singing career in her 80s. Born in Memphis, she left home while still in her early teens and settled in Chicago. There, she peeled potatoes by day and hounded club owners by night, determined to land a singing job. Her persistence paid off, and Hunter began a climb through some of the citys lowest dives to a headlining job at its most prestigious venue for black entertainers, the Dreamland ballroom. She had a five-year association with the Dreamland, beginning in 1917, and her salary rose to $35 a week. She first toured Europe in 1917, performing in Paris and London. The Europeans treated her as an artist, showing her respect and even reverence, which made a great impression on her. Her career as singer and songwriter flourished in the 1920s and 1930s, and she appeared in clubs and on stage in musicals in both New York and London. The songs she wrote include the critically acclaimed Downhearted Blues (1922). She recorded several records with Perry Bradford from 1922 to 1927. Hunter recorded prolifically during the 1920s, starting with sessions for Black Swan in 1921, Paramount in 1922–1924, Gennett in 1924, OKeh in 1925–1926, Victor in 1927 and Columbia in 1929. Hunter wrote Downhearted Blues while recording for Ink Williams at Paramount Records, but she received only $368 in royalties. Williams secretly sold the recording rights to Columbia Records, in a deal giving the royalties to Williams. The song became a big hit for Columbia, with Bessie Smith as the vocalist. Hunter learned what Williams had done and stopped recording for him. In 1928, Hunter played Queenie opposite Paul Robeson in the first London production of Show Boat at Drury Lane. She subsequently performed in nightclubs throughout Europe and appeared for the 1934 winter season with Jack Jacksons society orchestra at Londons Dorchester Hotel. One of her recordings with Jackson is Miss Otis Regrets (she is unable to Lunch Today). While at the Dorchester, she made several HMV recordings with the orchestra and appeared in Radio Parade of 1935 (1934), the first British theatrical film to feature the short-lived Dufaycolor, but only Hunters segment was in color. She spent the late 1930s fulfilling engagements on both sides of the Atlantic and the early 1940s performing at home. In 1944, she took a U.S.O. troupe to Casablanca and continued entertaining troops in both theatres of war for the duration of World War II and into the early postwar period. In the 1950s, she led U.S.O. troupes in Korea, but her mothers death in 1954 led her to her seek a radical career change. She prudently reduced her age, invented a high school diploma, and enrolled in nursing school, embarking on what was apparently a fulfilling career in healthcare. Hunter was working at New Yorks Goldwater Memorial Hospital in 1961 when record producer Chris Albertson asked her to break an 11-year absence from the recording studio. The result was her participation (four songs) on a Prestige Bluesville Records album, entitled Songs We Taught Your Mother. The following month, Albertson recorded her again, this time for the Riverside Records label, reuniting her with Lil Armstrong and Lovie Austin, both of whom she had performed with in the 1920s. Hunter enjoyed these outings, but had no plans to return to singing. She was prepared to devote the rest of her life to nursing, but the hospital retired her in 1977, when they believed her to have reached retirement age (she was aged over 80). Bored by inactivity, Hunter decided to resume her singing career, because she never felt better. In 1978, at the suggestion of Charles Bourgeois, restaurateur Barney Josephson offered Hunter a limited engagement at his Greenwich Village club, The Cookery. She accepted and a two-week gig proved a smash when the comeback garnered generous media attention and people started flocking into The Cookery. Impressed with the attention paid her by the press, John Hammond signed Hunter to Columbia Records. He had not previously shown interest in Hunter, but he had been a close associate of Barney Josephson decades earlier, when the latter ran the Café Society Uptown and Downtown clubs. Her Columbia albums, The Glory of Alberta Hunter, Amtrak Blues, (where she sang the jazz classic The Darktown Strutters Ball), and Look For the Silver Lining, did not do as well as expected, but sales were nevertheless healthy. There were also numerous television appearances, including on To Tell The Truth (in which panelist Kitty Carlisle had to recuse herself, the two having known each other in Hunters heyday). There was also a walk-on role in Remember My Name, a film produced by film director Robert Altman, for which he commissioned her to write and to perform the soundtrack music. As capacity audiences continued to fill The Cookery nightly, concert offers came from Brazil to Berlin, and there was an invitation for her to sing at the White House. At first, she turned it down, because, she explained, they wanted me there on my day off, but the White House amended its schedule to suit the veteran artist. During that time, there was also a visit from former First Lady turned book editor Jackie Onassis, who wanted to sign her up for an autobiography but was unhappy with the co-author assigned to the project. The book was eventually done for another publisher, with the help of writer Frank Taylor. The comeback lasted six years, and Hunter toured in Europe and South America, made more television appearances, and enjoyed her renewed recording career as well as the fact that record catalogs now once again contained her old recordings, going back to her 1921 debut on the Black Swan label. Hunters life was documented in Alberta Hunter: My Castles Rockin (1998), a documentary written by Chris Albertson and narrated by pianist Billy Taylor, and in Cookin at the Cookery, a biographical musical by Marion J. Caffey that has toured the United States in recent years with Ernestine Jackson as Hunter. Hunter was inducted to the Blues Hall of Fame in 2011, while her album Amtrak Blues had been previously honored in 2009. Hunter died on Oct. 17, 1984, at age 89. Here, Hunter performs “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” at age 83.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 05:19:22 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015