The Life and Legacy of Sissieretta Jones (Black Patti)
Mathilda Sissieretta Jones or more commonly known to the world as Black Patti was an American Soprano opera singer who in June of 1892 had become to first ever black women to be to perform live at Carnegie Hall. This performance would not only determine her position was one of the greatest singers of her time, but one of the greatest singer of all. She was born to the name Mathilda Sissieretta Joyner in January of 1869 from Portsmouth Virginia. After moving to Rhode Island with her family she had begun signing in local choirs which were directed by her father. It was not until she had become a prepubescent and began studying at the Providence Academy of Music that he talents had begun
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The two were often compared for their similar soprano structure. The name had remained for the 30 plus years of her lustrous career despite her distain for the name. She performed songs such as “Queen of Song” and “Jenny Lind of the Race” from this concert solely she was dubbed as “Probably the greatest living ballad singer . The advertising showcasing her work noted that this would be her first appearance and what kind of singer she was; from lowly local assistant to prima Donna soprano. The show would headline her career as one of longest for an African American artist. Her next show was in May of 1888 she performed at the Bergen Star Concert in Philadelphia she had performed in front of nearly eight thousand blacks and had done so well the crowded had insisted upon eleven encores. Her voice was described as " sweet sympathetic and clear and her enunciation a positive charm" . After these two successful performances in such big cities agents began looking at "the star that had no equal in race" . William Risen a musical director of the firm Abbey whose management firm happened to be in charge of the Metropolitan Opera Company had requested Black Patti for a tour of the West Indies , this would be her starting point in becoming and influential international …show more content…
Sissieretta would sign a two-year contract at twenty years old to singer professionally outside of the United States . The popularity of group tours had begun with the Fisk Jubilee Singers who had made a name for themselves through the pleather of music they sang and their travels around the world. Copycat bands would follow suit to try and achieve the same success. The Tennessee singers first stop would in Jamaica August 2nd, 1888, before the group had even arrived the country was ecstatic to be paid a visit from the Prima Donna that was setting the music world a blaze. She was met with many encores and her success had even made its way back to America. The New York Times wrote " Mathilda Jones whom Mr. Mathews advertise as his ' Black Patti' astonished the natives with her singing and she is being lionized wherever she appears. Before they had left the island several members of the group had been awarded gifts included Sissieretta who had been given a gold medal. After they had left the group went from Panama to Trinidad to Guyana, for all of which Sissieretta had receive glowing reviews she had become a phenomenon in many of these small countries. She was called "spell binding and noted that she received a rapture from the audience. After her success in the island she had returned home a more mature and refined singer,
In June of 1925, Florence received vaudeville's highest honor. She was the star attraction at the Palace Theatre. By heading the bill at the Palace, she became the first black performer to have that honor.
Quanah Parker was born in 1845, the exact date of his birth is not known due to the times and the lack of recording dates like birthdays back then. Also the exact place of his birth is unknown, it is thought to be somewhere along the Texas-Oklahoma border, but there are conflicting reports. Quanah himself said that he was born on Elk Creek south of the Wichita Mountains, but a marker by Cedar Lake in Gaines County, Texas says otherwise. There are still other places where he was supposedly born like Wichita Falls, Texas. “Though the date of his birth is recorded variously at 1845 and 1852, there is no mystery regarding his parentage. His mother was the celebrated captive of a Comanche raid on Parker's Fort (1836) and convert to the Indian way of life. His father
...ey choose to represent themselves. S ikivu Hutchinson writes that 20 Feet From Stardom is an example of how “women of color back-up singers are still treated like expendable objects, eye candy and soulful exotics while fighting tooth and nail for recognition and a shot at center stage.” None of the women in 20 Feet had exceptional solo careers because within the historical context they would never be respected as solo artist unless they asserted themselves in a sexual way that would be on the same level of Elvis. This would be harder for an African-American woman because they are already sexualized as back-up singers. There would be then a need for overt sexualization as displayed by Tina Turner. Although Tina Turner is an extraordinary performer her success is banked on that overt sexualization where’s the women of 20 Feet hoped to rely on their vocal talents.
Bessie Smith was a rough, crude, violent woman. She was also the greatest of the classic Blues singers of the 1920s. Bessie started out as a street musician in Chattanooga. In 1912 Bessie joined a traveling show as a dancer and singer. The show featured Pa and Ma Rainey, and Smith developed a friendship with Ma. Ma Rainey was Bessie's mentor and she stayed with her show until 1915. Bessie then joined the T.O.B.A. vaudeville circuit and gradually built up her own following in the south and along the eastern seaboard. By the early 1920s she was one of the most popular Blues singers in vaudeville. In 1923 she made her recording debut on Columbia, accompanied by pianist Clarence Williams. They recorded "Gulf Coast Blues" and "Down Hearted Blues." The record sold more than 750,000 copies that same year, rivaling the success of Blues singer Mamie Smith (no relation). Throughout the 1920s Smith recorded with many of the great Jazz musicians of that era, including Fletcher Henderson, James P. Johnson, Coleman Hawkins, Don Redman and Louis Armstrong. Her rendition of "St. Louis Blues" with Armstrong is considered by most critics to be one of finest recordings of the 1920s. Bessie Smith was one of the biggest African-American stars of the 1920s and was popular with both Whites and African-Americans, but by 1931 the Classic Blues style of Bessie Smith was out of style and the Depression, radio, and sound movies had all damaged the record companies' ability to sell records so Columbia dropped Smith from its roster. In 1933 she recorded for the last time under the direction of John Hammond for Okeh. The session was released under the name of Bessie Smith accompanied by Buck and his Band. Despite having no record company Smith was still very po...
The movie, “Twenty Feet From Stardom,” was released in 2013. It focuses on the careers of backup singers, who have shared their voices to support some of the greatest artists of the past several decades. The film is an interview-based documentary. From the film, we meet a serious of amazing and talented vocalists, such as Darlene Love, the first black backup singer; Merry Clayton, a lead backup singer; Lisa Fisher, Tata Vega, and Judith Hill. They all share their stories of enjoyment, happiness, or even struggles in making music with others. There is no doubt on the fact that backup singers take very low credit, sometimes even no credit at all. They often just go there and make the thing sound great, and then go home quickly. It is even worse that sometimes people do not want to pay
Born Gertrude Pridgett in Georgia in 1886 to parents who had both performed in the minstrel shows, she was exposed to music at a very early age. At the age of fourteen, she performed in a local talent show called “The Bunch of Blackberries,” and by 1900 she was regularly singing in public.2 Over the next couple of decades, she worked in a variety of traveling minstrel shows, including Tolliver's Circus and Musical Extravaganza, and the Rabbit Foot Minstrels; she was one of the first women to incorporate the blues into minstrelsy. It was while working with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels that she met William Rainey, whom she married in 1904; together, they toured as “Ma and Pa Rainey: Assassinators of the Blues.” By the early 1920s, she was a star of the Theater Owners' Booking Agency (TOBA), which were white-...
According to Ruth Feldstein “Nina Simone recast black activism in the 1960’s.” Feldstein goes on to say that “Simone was known to have supported the struggle for black freedom in the United States much earlier, and in a more outspoken manner around the world than many other African American entertainers.” Her family ties to the south, her unique talent, her ability to travel and make money are similar to the Blues women movement that preceded her. It can be said that Nina Simone goes a step further the by directly attacking inequities pertaining to race and gender in her music. However, what distinguishes her is her unique musicianship and that is what ultimately garners her massive exposure and experiences over those of her past contemporaries.
Samuel Cornelius Phillips was born in 1923 in Florence, Alabama to a family of tenant farmers (Sam Phillips Obituary. 3) He grew up around the songs of his parent’s, primarily black, coworker’s songs as they were tending to the cotton fields. Phillips said that he “felt an awakening of [his] spirit when [he] heard the singing of African Americans who worked alongside him”. This early exposure to racial equality stuck with him for the rest of his years. When Phillips grew older, he took a job as a disc jockey for an “open format’ radio station (Sam Phillips Bio. 2). He experienced first-hand the reaction of the listeners to black rhythm and blues, and that led him to founding Sun Records. Sam Phillips founded Sun Records in 1952 in the heart of the Memphis black music scene. Sun Records was created in attempt to “develop new and different artists, get freedom in music, and tape people that weren’t getting tapped; despite the boundaries” (Sam Phillips Bio. 5)
They were performed by successors of black song and dance routine actors. The first Minstrel
After her divorce she began singing with Noble Sissie’s Society Orchestra. Through out their tour she had to endure harsh racism having to sleep in tenement boarding houses, the bus and even once in circus grounds. Soon after that, she toured with Charlie Barnet’s Outfit and became the first African American to tour with an all white band. She was their feature singer and considers this to be the beginning of her success.
Singer/actress Lena Horne's primary occupation was nightclub entertaining, a profession she pursued successfully around the world for more than 60 years, from the 1930s to the 1990s. In conjunction with her club work, she also maintained a recording career that stretched from 1936 to 2000 and brought her three Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989; she appeared in 16 feature films and several shorts between 1938 and 1978; she performed occasionally on Broadway, including in her own Tony-winning one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music in 1981-1982; and she sang and acted on radio and television. Adding to the challenge of maintaining such a career was her position as an African-American facing discrimination personally and in her profession during a period of enormous social change in the U.S. Her first job in the 1930s was at the Cotton Club, where blacks could perform, but not be admitted as customers; by 1969, when she acted in the film Death of a Gunfighter, her character's marriage to a white man went unremarked in the script. Horne herself was a pivotal figure in the changing attitudes about race in the 20th century; her middle-class upbringing and musical training predisposed her to the popular music of her day, rather than the blues and jazz genres more commonly associated with African-Americans, and her photogenic looks were sufficiently close to Caucasian that frequently she was encouraged to try to "pass" for white, something she consistently refused to do. But her position in the middle of a social struggle enabled her to become a leader in that struggle, speaking out in favor of racial integration and raising money for civil rights causes. By the end of the century, she could look back at a life that was never short on conflict, but that could be seen ultimately as a triumph.
Josephine Baker Josephine Baker was an African American woman who had to overcome discrimination and abuse in achieving her dream of becoming a singer and dancer. She did this during the 1920s, when African Americans faced great discrimination. She had a hard childhood. Her personal life was not easy to handle. Furthermore, she overcame poverty and racism to achieve her career dream.
While Jim Crow laws were reeking havoc on the lives of African Americans in the South, a massed exodus of Southern musicians, particularly from New Orleans, spread the seeds of Jazz as far north as New York City. A new genre of music produced fissures in the walls of racial discrimination thought to be impenetrable. Musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, "King" Oliver and Fletcher Henderson performed to the first desegregated audiences. Duke Ellington starred in the first primetime radio program to feature an African American artist. And a quirky little girl from Missouri conquered an entire country enthralled by her dark skin, curvaceous body and dynamic personality. Josephine Baker was more than a Jazz musician. She embodied the freedom and expressiveness of that which is known as Jazz.
Known as the “Empress Of Blues”, Bessie Smith was said to have revolutionized the vocal end of Blues Music. She showed a lot of pride as an independent African-American woman. Her style in performance and lyrics often reflected her lifestyle. Bessie Smith was one of the first female jazz artists, and she paved the way for many musicians who followed.
Bessie Smith is the best blues singer of the twentieth century because the legacy she left behind still affects us today. Bessie Smith is known as the “Empress of Blues”, and this title is well deserved. Bessie Smith is the most influential and significant blues singer of the twentieth century. Bessie Smith's ability to have full control over the genre was amazing because it allowed her to have a soulful but powerful performance ("Bessie Smith Queen of the Blues"). Smith's work ethic that was drilled in by her older sister helped her launch and continue on with her successful career. Because of Smith's work ethic, she was able to rise out of poverty and into fame (Forman). Bessie Smith influenced many other singers like Billie Holiday, Janis Joplin, and more ("Bessie Smith"), and she also had role in changing the musical landscape for African American women (Machado). During her prime, Bessie Smith sold thousands of records and was well paid ("Bessie Smith Queen of the Blues"). She signed with Columbia Records and the focus of her songs were about a woman's control over her body and sexuality (Machado). Smith's success gave hope to