Alberta Hunter

Alberta Hunter (April 1, 1895 – October 17, 1984) was an American blues singer,

songwriter, and nurse. Her career had started back in the early 1920s, and from there on,

she became a successful jazz and blues recording artist, being critically acclaimed to the

ranks of Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith. In the 1950s, she retired from performing and

entered the medical field, only to successfully resume her singing career in her eighties.

Born in Memphis, she left home while still in her early teens and settled in Chicago,

Illinois. There, she peeled potatoes by day and hounded club owners by night, determined

to land a singing job. Her persistence paid off, and Hunter began a climb through some of

the city's lowest dives to a headlining job at its most prestigious venue for black

entertainers, the Dreamland ballroom. She had a five-year association with the

Dreamland, beginning in 1917, and her salary rose to $35 a week.

She first toured Europe in 1917, performing in Paris and London. The Europeans treated

her as an artist, showing her respect and even reverence, which made a great impression

on her.

Her career as singer and songwriter flourished in the 1920s and 1930s, and she appeared

in clubs and on stage in musicals in both New York and London. The songs she wrote

include the critically acclaimed "Downhearted Blues" (1922). She recorded several records

with Perry Bradford from 1922 to 1927.

Hunter wrote "Downhearted Blues" while recording for Ink Williams at Paramount Records, but she received only $368 in royalties. Williams

secretly sold the recording rights to Columbia Records, in a deal giving the royalties to Williams. The song became a big hit for Columbia, with

Bessie Smith as the vocalist. Hunter learned what Williams had done and stopped recording for him.

In 1928, Hunter played "Queenie" opposite Paul Robeson in the first London production of Show Boat at Drury Lane. She subsequently performed in

nightclubs throughout Europe and appeared for the 1934 winter season with Jack Jackson's society orchestra at London's Dorchester Hotel. While at

the Dorchester, she made several HMV recordings with the orchestra and appeared in Radio Parade of 1935 (1934), the first British theatrical film

to feature the short-lived Dufaycolor, but only Hunter's segment was in color. She spent the late 1930s fulfilling engagements on both sides of the

Atlantic and the early 1940s performing at home. In 1944, she took a U.S.O. troupe to Casablanca and continued entertaining troops in both

theatres of war for the duration of World War II and into the early postwar period. In the 1950s, she led U.S.O. troupes in Korea, but her mother's

death in 1954 led her to her seek a radical career change. She prudently reduced her age, "invented" a high school diploma, and enrolled in nursing

school, embarking on what was apparently a fulfilling career in healthcare.

Hunter was working at New York's Goldwater Memorial Hospital in 1961 when record producer Chris Albertson asked her to break an 11-year

absence from the recording studio. The result was her participation (four songs) on a Prestige Bluesville Records album, entitled Songs We Taught

Your Mother. The following month, Albertson recorded her again, this time for the Riverside Records label, reuniting her with Lil Armstrong and

Lovie Austin, both of whom she had performed with in the 1920s. Hunter enjoyed these outings, but had no plans to return to singing. She was

prepared to devote the rest of her life to nursing, but the hospital retired her in 1977, when they believed her to have reached retirement age (she

was in fact well over 80).

Bored by inactivity, Hunter decided to resume her singing career, because she "never felt better." In 1978, at the suggestion of Charles Bourgeois,

restaurateur Barney Josephson offered Hunter a limited engagement at his Greenwich Village club, The Cookery. She accepted and a two-week gig

proved a smash when the comeback garnered generous media attention and people started flocking into The Cookery. Two weeks stretched into an

open-ended engagement that made Hunter a star reborn and a fixture of New York nightlife.

Impressed with the attention paid her by the press, John Hammond signed Hunter to Columbia Records. He had not previously shown interest in

Hunter, but he had been a close associate of Barney Josephson decades earlier, when the latter ran the Café Society Uptown and Downtown clubs.

Her Columbia albums, The Glory of Alberta Hunter, Amtrak Blues, (where she sang the Jazz classic "The Darktown Strutters' Ball"), and Look For

the Silver Lining, did not do as well as expected, but sales were nevertheless healthy. There were also numerous television appearances, including

on To Tell The Truth (in which panelist Kitty Carlisle had to recuse herself, the two having known each other in Hunter's heyday). There was also a

walk-on role in Remember My Name, a film produced by film director Robert Altman, for which he commissioned her to write and to perform the

soundtrack music. As capacity audiences continued to fill The Cookery nightly, concert offers came from Brazil to Berlin, and there was an

invitation for her to sing at the White House. At first, she turned it down, because, she explained, "they wanted me there on my day off," but the

White House amended its schedule to suit the veteran artist. During that time, there was also a visit from former First Lady turned book editor

Jackie Onassis, who wanted to sign her up for an autobiography. Unhappy with the co-author assigned to the project, the book was eventually done

for another publisher, with the help of writer Frank Taylor.

The comeback lasted six years, and Hunter toured in Europe and South America, made more television appearances, and enjoyed her renewed

recording career as well as the fact that record catalogs now once again contained her old recordings, going back to her 1921 debut on the Black

Swan label. Dressed in her trademark fringed shawls and sporting vast dangling earrings, she performed and charmed audiences.

She continued to perform until shortly before her death in October 1984. She is buried in the Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum, Hartsdale,

Westchester County, New York (Elmwood section; plot 1411).

Alberta Hunter's life is documented in Alberta Hunter: My Castle's Rockin' (1998), a documentary written by Chris Albertson and narrated by pianist

Billy Taylor, and in Cookin' at the Cookery, a biographical musical by Marion J. Caffey that has toured the United States in recent years with

Ernestine Jackson as Hunter.

Alberta Hunter came from a difficult background. Her father left when she was little more than a child and to support the family Hunter’s mother

worked as a servant to a whorehouse in Memphis. Although she married again in 1906 Hunter was not happy with her new family. Hunter left for

Chicago around the age of eleven in the hopes of becoming a paid singer; she had heard that it paid ten dollars an hour. Instead of finding a job as

a singer she had to earn money by working at a boardinghouse that paid 6 dollars a week as well as room and board. Hunter's mother left Memphis

and moved in with her soon afterward.

Hunter finally got her break when she moved to New York City. She performed with such famous jazz names as Bricktop and Louis Armstrong. She

made her home in the city and bought more than one house there, but it was a constant reminder of the struggle for work. Hunter felt more

comfortable in Europe where the work was more readily available. Equally important to Alberta was the fact that racism was not as strong a factor

outside of the United States as it was inside.

Alberta Hunter sings the Blues!

www.youtube.com

The legendary Alberta Hunter was truly one of a kind! Here she sings some great blues numbers. 1. "Gimme All the Love You Got" 2. "My Particular Man" 3. "Take Your Big Hands Off"