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Alberta Hunter (1895 - 1984)
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 Young
Alberta Hunter: Songs From The 1920s & 1930s
Alberta Hunter
As 82-years old blues survivor Alberta Hunter
was artist with a heart big as the world (check her "Amtrak
blues" CD) - however, as a young woman she was closer to
Vaudeville/Cabaret music that made rich customers of the night
clubs giggle, than to real passionate blues that Ma Rainey and
Bessie Smith recorded at the same time. Closer in spirit to
"whitened" and forgotten Ethel Waters than to famous
black blues mama's Hunter used heavy vibrato and her half-spoken
ditties made her sound like old woman when she just started her
career! This compilation is showcase of her early successes
but although she wrote "Downhearted Blues" and sang
"Nobody Knows The Way I Feel This Morning", Bessie
Smith and later Dinah Washington mopped the floor with her.
If you like irresistible work of older Alberta Hunter, this CD is
just curiosity that shows how much she progressed in the
meantime. Of all the blues diva's from 20-es I still haven't
found anybody who can match Ma Rainey and great Bessie Smith, all
others were just imitation. -- Anonymous Review (Amazon.com)
 Songs
We Taught Your Mother Lucille Hegamin,
Victoria Spivey, Alberta Hunter
In 1961 jazz-backed
blues seemed slack, almost nonexistent. Bebop, hard bop, tenor sax
& organ combos, and the avant-garde were more relevant in the
jazz world. And blues was veering toward an electrified,
altogether different realm. So when Chris Albertson brought
Alberta Hunter, Victoria Spivey, and Lucille Hegamin to the
acclaimed Rudy Van Gelder's studio to capture songs from the era
when jazz and blues melded together, the result could've easily
sounded thinly nostalgic. But with a backing band that included
pianist Willie "the Lion" Smith (on Hegamin's four
tunes) and trombonist J.C. Higginbotham and clarinetist Buster
Bailey (on the four tracks from both Hunter and Spivey), this
session came out topnotch. It's redolent of an earlier era
(specifically the early 1920s, when the three singers got their
starts), but each of the tracks is potent with a deep, slow swing
accentuating the peerless vocals. Spivey's grainy voice is
impassioned and powerful, in the same way that Hunter's is
unmistakable in its slight waver, carrying her sometimes
near-spoken lines to the stars (especially as she delivers jewels
like this: "I don't like those hepster
lovers / They've got larceny in their
eyes / They got a handful of gimme / And a
mouthful of much obliged"). The acoustics are as sharp as any
of Van Gelder's sessions, and the music is majestic. --Andrew
Bartlett (Amazon.com)
Also available:
Alberta Hunter- My Castle's
Rockin' (1992)
This award-winning concert film portrays the
life of the legendary singer/ songwriter and Broadway icon,
known for her legendary spirit and naughty lyrics. Alberta
shares her personal archives, rare footage, and her last
filmed interview before her death in 1984.
A live performance at the Cookery nightspot
in New York captures Hunter at her best. She knocks out
numbers such as "Two-Fisted Double-Jointed Rough &
Ready Man," "Downhearted Blues," "Handy
Man," and many more.
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From redhotjazz.com
At age twelve Alberta Hunter ran away from her
hometown of Memphis to go to Chicago to become a Blues singer. She
had a somewhat hard time at first but gradually, achieved her goal
and became one of the most popular African American entertainers
of the 1920s. She got her professional start in 1911 at a
Southside club called Dago Frank's, a tough bordello frequented by
pimps and criminals. She stayed there until 1913, when the place
was closed after a murder in the club. She then moved on to a
small night club and managed to save enough money to bring her
mother north to Chicago and support her for the rest of her life.
Alberta was married briefly, but never consummated the union,
using the excuse that she didn't want to have sex in the same
house where her mother lived, but the real story was that Hunter
was a lesbian...
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From blueflamecafe.com
In the the 1920s singer Alberta Hunter helped
bridge the gap between classic blues and cabaret-flavored pop
music. In the process, she and other singers like Lucille
Hegamin, Ethel
Waters, and Edith
Wilson introduced white audiences to the emotional vigor of
the blues. Thanks to her vocal versatility and her urbane
delivery, which accented her warm, engaging vibrato, Hunter's
career extended far beyond the classic blues era of the 1920s. She
continued to record and perform as a blues-based cabaret singer
until her self-imposed retirement in the 1950s. But then in 1977,
at the ripe age of eighty-two, she began a comeback of sorts,
mostly performing in New York clubs like the Cookery in Greenwich
Village until her death in 1984 at the age of eighty-eight...
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From encarta.msn.com
American blues
and cabaret singer, an early and enduring black recording star.
Hunter adapted her large and supple voice to a variety of musical
styles and had one of the longest careers of any of the early
female blues singers...
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From island.net
Excerpt:
Alberta Hunter was a self confident youngster
who loved to sing and received encouraging comments from family
and friends. She learned the songs her grandmother sang, or those
she heard on the popular piano rolls found in many stores. One day
on her way to the store with 15 cents to purchase bread, she meet
her school teacher, Mrs. Florida Cummings-Elgerton. As they walked
and talked the older woman invited Alberta to go with her to
Chicago, Hunter's eyes lit up and the wheels began spinning in her
head...
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Names Index:
A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P
Q R
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| Authors
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