Episode 269. Alberta Hunter
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Please join me today for this overview of the roller coaster career of Alberta Hunter (01 April 1895 – 17 October 1984), a jazz legend whose surprising and extraordinary life was shaped by a voice that simply personified the Blues. Early in her life, around the time she was 15, she fled her native Memphis for Chicago, where, with tenacity, grit, and ambition, she became the darling of the night club circuit, performing sometimes under tommy-gun-adjacent circumstances. She soon made her way to Broadway and, following the lead of her compatriots, Joséphine Baker, Adelaide Hall, Florence Mills, and Elisabeth Welch, to Paris and London, where she was the toast of the town and appeared as Queenie opposite Paul Robeson in the original London production of Show Boat. Later during and after World War II she became a fixture of the USO circuit. Following the death of her mother, she abandoned her performing career and took up nursing in her sixties. After her enforced retirement twenty years later, through a set of freaky coincidences, she made a miraculous return to live performing at the age of 82 and became an overnight sensation, the toast of three continents. She always returned to her ongoing residency at a club in the Village called The Cookery, the venue where the final chapter of her career began. She continued to perform and record until shortly before her death just before her 90th birthday. Though she lived her life discreetly and never came out overtly, she nevertheless was involved with women throughout her life and formed her strongest emotional and romantic bonds with them. Sassy, raunchy, and gritty on the surface, Hunter possessed a voice and ingratiating style of such honesty, humor, and character, that masked a modesty hidden beneath that brash exterior, and a musical sensibility that dazzles with its ease, subtlety, and complexity. Featured musical excerpts, both studio and live, extend over more than 60 years and include collaborations with such jazz giants as Eubie Blake, Fats Waller, Lovie Austin, Charlie Shavers, and producer John Hammond and includes a clip from her appearance in the British film Radio Parade of 1935.
RECORDINGS HEARD IN THIS EPISODE
Alberta Hunter: My Castle’s Rockin’. Alberta Hunter, Gerald Cook, Jimmy Lewis [live at The Cookery, NYC, 1981]
Richard Jones: Jazzin’ Baby Blues. Alberta Hunter, Eubie Blake [1922]
Lovie Austin, Alberta Hunter: Downhearted Blues. Bessie Smith, Clarence Williams [1923]
Lovie Austin, Alberta Hunter: Downhearted Blues. Alberta Hunter, Gerald Cook, Vishnu Wood [live Paris 1983]
W.C. Handy: St. Louis Blues. Alberta Hunter, Lovie Austin and Her Blues Serenaders [Lovie Austin, Jimmy Archey, Darnell Howard, Pops Foster, Jasper Taylor] [1961]
James P. Johnson, Allie Moore: You Can’t Do What My Last Man Did. Alberta Hunter, Fats Waller [1923]
Alberta Hunter: I’m Gonna Lose Myself ‘way Down in Louisville. Alberta Hunter, Mike Jackson [1927]
J.C. Johnson: My Particular Man. Alberta Hunter, unknown instrumentalists [1929]
Vincent Scotto, Henri Varna: J’ai deux amours. Alberta Hunter, Gerald Cook [1983]
Carl Falck, James Bunting: Black Shadows (Radio Parade of 1935). Alberta Hunter, Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Frankel [1934]
Lew Pollack, Paul Francis Webster: Two Cigarettes in the Dark. Alberta Hunter, Jack Jackson and His Orchestra [1934]
Noël Coward: I Travel Alone. Alberta Hunter, Jack Jackson and His Orchestra [1934]
Alberta Hunter: Chirpin’ the Blues. Alberta Hunter, Charlie Shavers, Buster Bailey, Lil Armstrong, Wellman Braud [1939]
Alberta Hunter: The Love I Have for You. Alberta Hunter, Eddie Heywood, Jr. [1940]
Alberta Hunter: Your Bread May Be Good But It Ain’t as Good as Mine. Alberta Hunter, Sam Clanton, Al Matthews, Al Casey, Leroy Jones [1946]
Alberta Hunter: I Got Myself a Workin’ Man. Alberta Hunter, Buster Bailey, J.C. Higginbotham, Cliff Jackson, Sidney de Paris, Zutty Singleton [1961]
Ralph Rainger, Howard Dietz: Moanin’ Low. Alberta Hunter, Lovie Austin and Her Blues Serenaders [Lovie Austin, Jimmy Archey, Darnell Howard, Pops Foster, Jasper Taylor] [1961]
Alberta Hunter: Remember My Name. Alberta Hunter, Gerald Cook, Al Hall, Connie Kay, Wally Richardson, Vic Dickenson, Doc Cheatham, Budd Johnson [1978]
Alberta Hunter: Amtrak Blues. Alberta Hunter, Gerald Cook, Billy Butler, Aaron Bell, Jackie Williams, Doc Cheatham, Vic Dickenson, Frank Wess, Norris Turney, produced by John Hammond [1980]
Alberta Hunter: Two-Fisted Double-Jointed Rough and Ready Man. Alberta Hunter, Gerald Cook, Jimmy Lewis [live at The Cookery, NYC 1981]
Alberta Hunter, Gerald Cook: I’ve Had Enough (Alberta’s Blues). Alberta Hunter, Gerald Cook, Jimmy Lewis, Billy Butler, Butch Miles, Vic Dickenson, Doc Cheatham, Budd Johnson [1982]
Alberta Hunter: Now I’m Satisfied. Alberta Hunter, arranged and conducted by Gerald Cook [1983]
Irving Berlin: How Deep Is the Ocean. Alberta Hunter, Gerald Cook [live Jazzfest Berlin 06.XI.82]
Rudolf Sieczyński: Wien, du Stadt meiner Träume. Alberta Hunter, Gerald Cook, Vishnu Wood [live Jazzfest Berlin 06.XI.82]