Post by LS on Jun 8, 2004 15:19:46 GMT -5
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By JERE HESTER
I've been sloughed way down,
But I'll slow drag up again.
When that big day arrives,
Remember my name.
From the moment frail old Alberta Hunter stepped onto the stage of the Cookery on Oct. 10, 1977, and saw that the small Greenwich Village jazz club was packed, it was clear that no one had forgotten her name.
Still, there was room for worry. It had been nearly a quarter-century since she had quit show business cold and become a practical nurse, bathing and feeding the infirm and dying in a hospital on the dank human dumping ground called Welfare Island.
And it had been some 50 years since her heyday as the toast of Broadway, London's Drury Lane and the Folies Bergère in Paris, where she strutted the streets, clad in diamonds, with pals Josephine Baker and Mabel Mercer. Now, her fanciest accoutrement was a pair of oversize gold hoop earrings that loomed even larger on her 82-year-old frame. But as the band began to play, she reached back and found the powerful voice.
It's hard to love someone,
When that someone don't love you.
I'm so disgusted, heartbroken, too,
I've got the down hearted blues.
She smiled, snapped her long fingers and slapped her hips as grown men brushed away tears, knowing they were witness to what Cookery owner Barney Josephson called the greatest comeback in the history of music. The audience wouldn't let her leave the stage. From here on, all of Alberta Hunter's days would be big days.
She was born in April 1895 and reared in Memphis on legendary Beale St., brimming with prostitutes, gamblers and blues musicians. Her mother, a brothel maid, strived to shield her from the seedier elements. But at 16, the spirited girl ran away from home, hopping a train for Chicago, where, she had been told, one could make $10 a week singing.
By day, she peeled potatoes for $6 a week, sending $2 home to her mother. By night, she haunted the honky-tonks, begging for a chance to entertain the customers. She finally notched a $5-a-week job, soon won a following as the South Side's Sweetheart and went on to the famed Dreamland Ballroom, where her fans included Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson and Sophie Tucker, who made her piano player write down every note Hunter sang.
She worked with Fats Waller, Eubie Blake and Louis Armstrong. She wrote "Down Hearted Blues," which was Bessie Smith's first big hit.
In 1923, Hunter decided it was time to blow out of the Windy City and head for New York, where she fast became a hot act, bouncing from clubs to vaudeville theaters to Broadway and then to Europe. She played opposite Paul Robeson in the London production of "Show Boat." She replaced Josephine Baker at the Casino de Paris. Cole Porter wrote the ballad "I Travel Alone" for her.
"There is a real class to this girl," The New York Times observed in 1929.
Even through the Depression, Hunter, who lived clean and was tight with a buck, made a decent living, cutting records and doing radio. She went on to join the USO, entertaining overseas troops during World War II and the Korean War. As she approached 60, it seemed like Alberta Hunter would go on singing forever.
But in January 1954, Hunter's elderly mother died — and suddenly, performing was no longer important. The day after her mother was buried, Alberta Hunter marched into the Harlem YWCA and signed up for nursing school.
For years and years at Goldwater Memorial Hospital on grim Welfare Island, she seldom breathed a word of her past and never opened her mouth to sing. In the mid-1970s, Goldwater bosses broke her heart when they decided it was time to put old Nurse Hunter out to pasture.
Just a few months later, though, Hunter attended a party for her old friend Mabel Mercer at Bobby Short's apartment — and, prodded by guests, belted out "Down Hearted Blues." At this point she was introduced to Barney Josephson, who invited her to the Cookery — where she was an instant hit and played three shows a night, six days a week.
She sang some ballads and gospel, but her trademark was bawdy blues — mostly her own compositions — full of sly double entendres delivered with a wink.
I got a man,
He's kinda old and thin.
But there are many good tunes left
In an old violin ...
Not only was she once again a formidable star, she was a big story. She did "Today," "Good Morning America," "60 Minutes." In 1979, she sang for President Jimmy Carter, not troubling to spare the religious First Family her most risque material:
I want him to grab me
And tear off all my clothes
Just to let me know who's boss ...
First Lady Rosalynn Carter dropped her jaw in amazement. The President, for his part, insisted on a half-hour of encores.
She toured the U.S., played Europe and South America, recorded several albums. But in the summer of 1984, ailing, she had to cut short a performance in Denver. She was 89, and her comeback was over.
That Oct. 17, she died in her Riverside Drive apartment. Three months later, the city renamed the building where she had toiled as a nurse, on what had been renamed Roosevelt Island, the Alberta Hunter Memorial Building. Her name would be remembered after all.
Old Violins
Alberta Hunter
Alberta Hunter
By JERE HESTER
I've been sloughed way down,
But I'll slow drag up again.
When that big day arrives,
Remember my name.
From the moment frail old Alberta Hunter stepped onto the stage of the Cookery on Oct. 10, 1977, and saw that the small Greenwich Village jazz club was packed, it was clear that no one had forgotten her name.
Still, there was room for worry. It had been nearly a quarter-century since she had quit show business cold and become a practical nurse, bathing and feeding the infirm and dying in a hospital on the dank human dumping ground called Welfare Island.
And it had been some 50 years since her heyday as the toast of Broadway, London's Drury Lane and the Folies Bergère in Paris, where she strutted the streets, clad in diamonds, with pals Josephine Baker and Mabel Mercer. Now, her fanciest accoutrement was a pair of oversize gold hoop earrings that loomed even larger on her 82-year-old frame. But as the band began to play, she reached back and found the powerful voice.
It's hard to love someone,
When that someone don't love you.
I'm so disgusted, heartbroken, too,
I've got the down hearted blues.
She smiled, snapped her long fingers and slapped her hips as grown men brushed away tears, knowing they were witness to what Cookery owner Barney Josephson called the greatest comeback in the history of music. The audience wouldn't let her leave the stage. From here on, all of Alberta Hunter's days would be big days.
She was born in April 1895 and reared in Memphis on legendary Beale St., brimming with prostitutes, gamblers and blues musicians. Her mother, a brothel maid, strived to shield her from the seedier elements. But at 16, the spirited girl ran away from home, hopping a train for Chicago, where, she had been told, one could make $10 a week singing.
By day, she peeled potatoes for $6 a week, sending $2 home to her mother. By night, she haunted the honky-tonks, begging for a chance to entertain the customers. She finally notched a $5-a-week job, soon won a following as the South Side's Sweetheart and went on to the famed Dreamland Ballroom, where her fans included Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson and Sophie Tucker, who made her piano player write down every note Hunter sang.
She worked with Fats Waller, Eubie Blake and Louis Armstrong. She wrote "Down Hearted Blues," which was Bessie Smith's first big hit.
In 1923, Hunter decided it was time to blow out of the Windy City and head for New York, where she fast became a hot act, bouncing from clubs to vaudeville theaters to Broadway and then to Europe. She played opposite Paul Robeson in the London production of "Show Boat." She replaced Josephine Baker at the Casino de Paris. Cole Porter wrote the ballad "I Travel Alone" for her.
"There is a real class to this girl," The New York Times observed in 1929.
Even through the Depression, Hunter, who lived clean and was tight with a buck, made a decent living, cutting records and doing radio. She went on to join the USO, entertaining overseas troops during World War II and the Korean War. As she approached 60, it seemed like Alberta Hunter would go on singing forever.
But in January 1954, Hunter's elderly mother died — and suddenly, performing was no longer important. The day after her mother was buried, Alberta Hunter marched into the Harlem YWCA and signed up for nursing school.
For years and years at Goldwater Memorial Hospital on grim Welfare Island, she seldom breathed a word of her past and never opened her mouth to sing. In the mid-1970s, Goldwater bosses broke her heart when they decided it was time to put old Nurse Hunter out to pasture.
Just a few months later, though, Hunter attended a party for her old friend Mabel Mercer at Bobby Short's apartment — and, prodded by guests, belted out "Down Hearted Blues." At this point she was introduced to Barney Josephson, who invited her to the Cookery — where she was an instant hit and played three shows a night, six days a week.
She sang some ballads and gospel, but her trademark was bawdy blues — mostly her own compositions — full of sly double entendres delivered with a wink.
I got a man,
He's kinda old and thin.
But there are many good tunes left
In an old violin ...
Not only was she once again a formidable star, she was a big story. She did "Today," "Good Morning America," "60 Minutes." In 1979, she sang for President Jimmy Carter, not troubling to spare the religious First Family her most risque material:
I want him to grab me
And tear off all my clothes
Just to let me know who's boss ...
First Lady Rosalynn Carter dropped her jaw in amazement. The President, for his part, insisted on a half-hour of encores.
She toured the U.S., played Europe and South America, recorded several albums. But in the summer of 1984, ailing, she had to cut short a performance in Denver. She was 89, and her comeback was over.
That Oct. 17, she died in her Riverside Drive apartment. Three months later, the city renamed the building where she had toiled as a nurse, on what had been renamed Roosevelt Island, the Alberta Hunter Memorial Building. Her name would be remembered after all.