The 1940s was a transformative decade for music, with African American singers making significant contributions to jazz, blues, and beyond. These artists not only entertained but also challenged social norms and paved the way for future generations. Here are some of the most influential African American singers from that era.
The Early Pioneers
Gertrude "Ma" Rainey
Noted as the “Mother of Blues,” Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was reportedly born in Alabama in either 1882 or 1886. She began her music career as a teenager performing in minstrel shows and signed a contract with Paramount Records in 1932, where she would record more than 100 songs over a five-year span. Throughout her career Rainey recorded with the likes of Louis Armstrong, became close friends with Bessie Smith, and toured with the Georgia Jazz Band until her retirement in 1935.
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith was the most popular and highest-paid singer of her day. Nicknamed the “Empress of the Blues,” Smith started out as a street performer and signed with Columbia Phonograph Company (the parent company of Columbia Records) in 1923. The singer-songwriter and composer released 160 recordings under Columbia, sold millions of records, performed on Broadway, and made her first and only silver screen appearance in the 1929 film, St. Louis Blues. Smith’s music touched on social issues like poverty, intra-racial conflict, female sexuality, and bisexuality. In 1937, Smith was fatally injured in a car accident in Mississippi that left her bleeding to death while awaiting an ambulance. Because of Jim Crow Laws, Smith was not allowed at the local white hospital, and therefore had to be transported to G.T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital, where she died.
Leading Ladies of Jazz
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday is one the most well-known jazz vocalists in history. “Lady Day” was born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia in 1915. Holiday began singing in Harlem nightclubs as a teenager and recorded her first song at age 18. She signed with Brunswick Records in 1935 and was hired and later fired as in Count Basie’s band in 1938. A month after her firing, Holiday was hired by Artie Shaw, making her one of the first black singers to lead an all-white orchestra. In 1939, Holiday recorded and performed “Strange Fruit,” which was based off a poem about lynching written two years earlier by Abel Meeropol. She recorded her most coveted hit “God Bless the Child (written by Holiday and Arthur Herzog in 1939) in 1941, and earned pop success with the 1942 song “Trav’lin Light” which she recorded with Capitol Records, under the name Lady Day due to her contract with Columbia. Over the next decade Holiday recorded several more notables including, “Lover Man” a top 20 pop hit and top 5 hit on the R&B charts. By the following year Holiday’s career had reached its commercial peak, but she was riddled with legal troubles, namely being arrested for narcotics possession. Holiday pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia. She earned an early release in 1948 for good behavior. In her latter years, drug and alcohol addiction crippled her ability to work. Holiday’s criminal conviction resulted in her New York City Cabaret Card being revoked which meant that she couldn’t perform in venues that served alcohol, though she did take the stage at the Ebony Club in 1948, which was technically illegal. In 1959, Holiday was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver brought on by alcohol addiction. Holiday died on July 17, 1959 of pulmonary edema and heart failure.
Billie Holiday: From STARDOM to Heartbreak - The Story of Her Life and Death
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Ella Fitzgerald
Around the same time that Billie Holiday was making a name for herself on the jazz scene, Ella Fitzgerald was moving along a similar path. Fitzgerald, a.k.a. “The First Lady of Song,” was born in Newport News, Virginia in 1917. Her mother and stepfather moved the family to Yonkers in the early 1920s. Tragically, Fitzgerald’s mother died when she was 15 leaving her in the care of an abusive stepfather until 1933, when she moved to Harlem to live with an aunt. She was later placed in a segregated girls orphanage in the Bronx after skipping school and allegedly working as a lookout for a numbers runner. Fitzgerald made her debut on the Apollo Theater in 1934 taking the top prize of a weeklong residency which was never awarded to her likely because of her disheveled look. Nonetheless, the performance would be the first in many milestones in Fitzgerald’s then budding singer career. After scoring a chance to perform with the band Harlem Opera House, Fitzgerald was signed by bandleader Chick Webb and was invited to join Webb’s orchestra with whom she recorded multiple hits including “A-Tisket, A-Tasket.” After Webb’s death in 1939, the band was renamed to Ella and Her Famous Orchestra. In 1942, Fitzgerald officially began a solo career that would span decades. She collaborated with fellow jazz greats and friends, Dizzy Gillespe, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington. By the mid 1980, Fitzgerald’s health began to decline due to a long battle with diabetes. She was hospitalized for respiratory issues and heart failure, and would become wheelchair bound after having both of her legs amputated in 1993.
Dinah Washington
The “most popular black recording artist of the 1950s” was Dinah Washington, who amassed more than two dozen R&B top 10 hits between 1948 and 1955. Washington was born Born Ruth Lee Jones in Tuscaloosa, Ala. She started out singing in gospel choirs and by 1941 Washington began playing Chicago night clubs and later the Garrick Stage Bar where Billie Holiday performed. In 1944 Washington recorded her first song for Keynote Records called “Evil Gal Blues,” which began a long streak of hits for the singer. Washington died in 1963 from an overdose of prescription pills.
Sarah Vaughan
A native of Newark, N.J., Sarah Vaughan is credited as one of the first jazz vocalists to introduce bebop into her singing. The singer and pianist acquired a love for music at a young age. As a teen, Vaughan and friends would cross over into New York City to watch jazz bands perform at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. At age 19, Vaughan took the Apollo stage as an amateur performer. She won the top prize of $10, and opened for Ella Fitzgerald in 1942, and later toured with jazz pianist and band leader, Earl Hines. Vaughan went on to join another band, this time led by jazz and pop singer Billy Eckstine. In 1947 Vaughan landed a surprise pop hit with “Tenderly.” The following year, she signed with Columbia, her label home until 1953. Over the next five years, Vaughan would divorce Treadwell and married her second husband Clyde Atkins with whom she adopted a daughter, Paris Vaughan (a.k.a. Debra Lois). Vaughan remained active on the performing and recording circuit until the 1989 when she began to experience health problems and was subsequently diagnosed with lung cancer.
Other Notable Figures
Hazel Scott
A talent from a very young age on the piano (and other instruments), Hazel’s career started to really take off at the age of 16 when she began to perform for various radio programs and various other engagements. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Scott performed jazz, blues, ballads, Broadway and boogie-woogie songs, and classical music in various nightclubs. From 1939 to 1943 she was a leading attraction at both the downtown and uptown branches of Café Society (A club that treated black & White customers equally). Her performances created national prestige for the practice of “swinging the classics.” By 1945, Scott was earning $75,000 ($1,043,762 today) a year. In addition to Lena Horne, Scott was also one of the first Afro-Caribbean women (she was originally born in Trinidad in 1920s but moved to Harlem in 1924) to garner respectable roles in major Hollywood pictures (playing herself). July 3, 1950 , Scott became the first black woman to host her own, 15 minute 3 X’s a week television show. She would play piano and vocals and often sang tunes in one of the 7 languages she spoke. A review in Variety stated, “Hazel Scott has a neat little show in this modest package. The show would only be on air for a few short months, but that did not diminish the accomplishment she had achieved. Hazel Scott’s FULL story is fascinating and a must read for everyone (including her commitment to Civil Rights).
Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou was a child prodigy, who taught herself to play the piano by ear. She was playing in public by the age of six and was a professional musician by her early teens. As a pianist, composer and arranger, Mary Lou mastered blues, boogie-woogie, swing, bebop and even free jazz with remarkable facility. In 1927, Mary Lou married saxophonist John Williams who went on to join ‘Andy Kirk and his Twelve Clouds of Joy‘ a short while later. Williams herself also signed up with the group and by the 1930s was a regular member of Kirk’s band. At a time when there were very few women instrumentalists in jazz, she was soon recognized as Kirk’s top soloist, and the band’s success in the 1930s was due in large part to Williams’ distinctive arrangements, compositions, and solo performances. Many bandleaders, including Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, even tried to sign her up to write exclusively for them, but she valued her freedom too much. Mary also helped spawn an entire generation of young musicians during the 1940s that would precipitate the birth of one of the world’s most influential musical styles, known as bebop.
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Marie Bryant
By 1939 she was a featured attraction at the famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem, NY and even toured nationally with Duke Ellington. Her career took a more active turn in the 1940s appearing in various movies and touring musical revues. Not content to just be okay with those roles Marie also began working as a teacher at a dance school run by the famous Katherine Dunham where she worked with Debbie Reynolds, Cyd Charisse, Betty Grable, Ava Gardner and others. It appears that the word “rest” was never in Marie’s vocabulary. Duke Ellington once referred to Marie as “one of the world’s greatest dancers.”
Mildred Bailey
Mildred Bailey was a Native American jazz singer during the 1930s, nicknamed “The Queen of Swing”, “The Rockin’ Chair Lady” and “Mrs. Swing”. She is known for her light soprano voice, clear articulation, and jazz phrasing. Her career really took off after Bing Crosby (who was partners with her brother) introduced her to Paul Whiteman (an American Bandleader) who invited her to sing with his band. She would be the front woman from 1929-1933. Whiteman also had a popular radio program for Old Gold Cigarettes, and when Bailey debuted on it with her version of “Moanin’ Low” on August 6, 1929, favorable public reaction was immediate. However, Bailey’s first recording with Whiteman did not take place until October 6, 1931 when she recorded a song called “My Goodbye to You”. After Mildred left Whitemans band in 1933, she would go on to record with various popular big bands (like Benny Goodman and the Dorsey Brothers). In 1933, Mildred met her third husband Red Norvo (a vibraphonist, improviser, and band leader). A dynamic couple, they were married until 1942, and were known as “Mr. and Mrs. Swing”. They lived and worked much of the time in New York City. They remained friends after their divorce. Thereafter, she worked as a solo act, singing in New York clubs, such as the Café Society and the Blue Angel. In 1944 she had her own radio show on CBS which aired from September 1944 until February 1945. Her last major engagement was with Joe Marsala in Chicago in 1950.
Impact and Legacy
These singers not only left behind a rich musical catalog but also played a crucial role in breaking down racial barriers and challenging social norms. Their influence continues to be felt in contemporary music, inspiring artists across genres.
| Singer | Genre | Key Achievements |
|---|---|---|
| Billie Holiday | Jazz | Recorded "Strange Fruit," broke racial barriers |
| Ella Fitzgerald | Jazz | "First Lady of Song," collaborated with jazz greats |
| Dinah Washington | R&B, Blues | Achieved multiple R&B top 10 hits |
| Sarah Vaughan | Jazz | Introduced bebop into jazz singing |
| Hazel Scott | Jazz, Classical | First black woman to host her own TV show |
| Mary Lou Williams | Jazz | Mastered various jazz styles, influenced bebop |
| Mildred Bailey | Jazz, Swing | "Queen of Swing," popular radio show host |
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