OPEN POST: Manor Music Monday With The Awesome Alberta Hunter!
Welcome music-loving hors to DJ Li'l Scratch's favorite place to jam, the Manor's exclusive "Jenny Talia Lounge." Tonight, Li'l Scratch will be spinning tunes from a jazz master who's always made me smile, and who's the very model of perseverance and sass.
She sang for thirty long years...stopped...worked as a nurse...then twenty years later, in a jaw-dropping comeback, sang again. In a nutshell, that was the career trajectory of Alberta Hunter, whose career spanned from 1921 to the year she died, 1984, at age eighty-nine. As a child, she worked as a servant girl in a brothel. As a teenager, she took off for Chicago to make it as a singer. Her first gig? At a mob-owned bordello and speakeasy. I kid you not. Legend has it that when a mobster was shot dead one night, his body landed right on the stage before her. And she kept on singing.
Word spread fast. No more bordellos for Miss Alberta. She was soon playing the best clubs, touring Europe, conquering the stage, vaudeville and recording records. When her beloved mother died in the 1950s, she abruptly gave up showbiz to become a nurse - to "help humanity," she said at the time - and enjoy her private life. The emphasis was on "private," since she was a hush-hush lesbian at a time when being hush-hush was more than necessary. In the 1970s, she made a stunning comeback and never looked back.
What makes her so vital today (besides the fact that she was pioneering jazz and blues performer)? Her ageless, supple voice, for one, her sharp, sometimes hard-hitting rhythms, and her compelling emotional delivery founded on a bedrock of blues. You can hear it all in 1934's "Two Cigarettes in the Dark."
Want to listen to more from "Two Cigarettes in the Dark?" Click HERE.
Now get ready for Alberta in the late-1970's in "Amtrak Blues," where she slays at age 83 in what was called "one of the greatest comebacks in music history." This is not an understatement.
Till next time...purr, bitches, purr! 🐾
