Alberta Hunter (April 1, 1895 – October 17, 1984) was an American jazz and blues singer and songwriter from the early 1920s to the late 1950s. After twenty years of working as a nurse, Hunter resumed her singing career in 1977.

Early life

Hunter was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to Laura Peterson, who worked as a maid in a Memphis brothel, and Charles Hunter, a Pullman porter. She attended school until around age 15.

Hunter had a difficult childhood. Her father left when she was a child, and to support the family her mother worked as a servant in a brothel in Memphis, although she married again in 1906. Hunter was not happy with her new family and left for Chicago, Illinois, around the age of 11, in the hopes of becoming a paid singer; she had heard that it paid 10 dollars per week. Instead of finding a job as a singer she had to earn money by working at a boardinghouse that paid six dollars a week as well as room and board. Hunter's mother left Memphis and moved in with her soon afterwards.

Career

Early years: 1910s–1940s

Hunter began her singing career in a bordello and soon moved to clubs that appealed to men, black and white alike. By 1914 she was receiving lessons from a prominent jazz pianist, Tony Jackson, who helped her to expand her repertoire and compose her own songs. Part of her early career was spent singing at Dago Frank's, a brothel. She then sang at Hugh Hoskin's saloon and, eventually, in many Chicago bars.

One of her first notable experiences as an artist was at the Panama Club, a white-owned club with a white-only clientele that had a chain in Chicago, New York and other large cities. Hunter's first act was in an upstairs room, far from the main event; thus, she began developing as an artist in front of a cabaret crowd. "The crowd wouldn't stay downstairs. They'd go upstairs to hear us sing the blues. That's where I would stand and make up verses and sing as I go along." Many claim her appeal was based on her gift for improvising lyrics to satisfy the audience. Her big break came when she was booked at Dreamland Cafe, singing with King Oliver and his band. In early 1923, she suggested that Columbia Records should record Oliver's band, but when she was not available to record with them, Columbia refused.

She worked peeling potatoes by day in her boarding house for $6 a week plus room and board, and hounded club owners by night, determined to land a singing job. Her persistence paid off, and Hunter began a climb from 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. The songs she wrote include the critically acclaimed "Downhearted Blues" (1922).

She recorded several records with Perry Bradford from 1922 to 1927.

Hunter recorded prolifically during the 1920s, starting with sessions for Black Swan in 1921, Paramount in 1922–1924, Gennett in 1924, OKeh in 1925–1926, Victor in 1927 and Columbia in 1929. While still working for Paramount, she also recorded for Harmograph Records under the pseudonym May Alix.

Hunter wrote "Downhearted Blues" with Lovie Austin and recorded the track for Ink Williams at Paramount Records. She received only $368 in royalties. Williams had secretly sold the recording rights to Columbia Records in a deal in which all royalties were paid to him. The song became a big hit for Columbia, with Bessie Smith as the vocalist. This record sold almost 1 million copies. Hunter learned what Williams had done and stopped recording for him.

While at the Dorchester, she made several His Master's Voice recordings with the orchestra and appeared in Radio Parade of 1935 (1934), She signed up with the U.S.O., an organization set up to entertain America's military troops, in 1944 and was put in charge of African American Unit 342—"The Rhythm Rascals". In October 1944, they became the first U.S.O. unit to visit the China-Burma-India theatre of war.

Also In 1944, she took her 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. She reduced her age, "invented" a high school diploma, and enrolled in nursing school, embarking on a career in health care, working first as a volunteer at the Joint Diseases Hospital in Harlem and then for 20 years at Roosevelt Island's Goldwater Memorial Hospital.

The hospital forced Hunter to retire because it believed she was 70 years old. Hunter—who was actually 82 years old—decided to return to singing.

In the summer of 1976, Hunter attended a party for her long-time friend Mabel Mercer, hosted by Bobby Short; music public relations agent Charles Bourgeois asked Hunter to sing and connected her with the owner of Cafe Society, Barney Josephson. Josephson offered Hunter a limited engagement at his Greenwich Village club, The Cookery. who later became a labor leader for baggage handlers via the International Brotherhood of Red Caps, but the marriage was short-lived. They separated within months, as Hunter did not want to quit her career. They were divorced in 1923.

Hunter was a lesbian but kept her sexuality relatively private.

Hunter is buried in the Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum in Hartsdale, Westchester County, New York (Elmwood section, plot 1411), the location of many celebrity graves.

Hunter's life was documented in Alberta Hunter: My Castle's Rockin (1988 TV movie), a documentary written by Chris Albertson and narrated by the pianist Billy Taylor, and in Cookin' at the Cookery, a biographical musical by Marion J. Caffey, which has toured the United States in recent years with Ernestine Jackson as Hunter. Hunter's life and relationship with Lottie Tyler are represented in the play Leaving the Blues by Jewelle Gomez, produced by the TOSOS theatre company in New York City in 2020. Rosalind Brown (from the original cast of Footloose and One Mo' Time) plays the role of Alberta Hunter in Leaving the Blues.

Hunter was inducted to the Blues Hall of Fame in 2011 and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2015. Hunter's comeback album, Amtrak Blues, was honored by the Blues Hall of Fame in 2009.

Discography

  • 1921-23 - Complete Recorded Works Vol. 1 (1921-1923) (Document Records)
  • 1923-24 - Complete Recorded Works Vol. 2 (1923-1924) (Document Records)
  • 1924-27 - Complete Recorded Works Vol. 3 (1924-1927) (Document Records)
  • 1927-46 - Complete Recorded Works Vol. 4 (1927-1946) (Document Records)
  • 1921-24 - Complete Recorded Works Vol. 5 Alternate Takes (1921-1924) (Document Records)
  • 1921-40 - The Alberta Hunter Collection (Acrobat, 2017 4-CD box set)
  • 1934 - The Legendary Alberta Hunter: The London Sessions 1934 (DRG, 1991)
  • 1961 - Chicago: The Living Legends (with Lovie Austin's Blues Serenaders) (Riverside/OBC 1961)
  • 1962 - Songs We Taught Your Mother (with Lucille Hegamin and Victoria Spivey) (Prestige/Bluesville, 1962)
  • 1977 - Remember My Name (Columbia, 1978)
  • 1978 - Amtrak Blues (Columbia, 1980)
  • 1982 - The Glory of Alberta Hunter (Columbia, 1982)
  • 1983 - Look for the Silver Lining (Columbia, 1983)
  • 1988 - Downhearted Blues: Live at the Cookery (Varèse Sarabande, 2001)

Filmography

  • Goldman, Stuart A.; Albertson, Chris; Taylor, Billy; Hunter, Alberta; Churchill, Jack; Cohen, Robert M.; Alfier, Mary (2001). Alberta Hunter: My Castle's Rockin'. New York: View Video. 1988 performance documentary. . .
  • Santee, Clark; Santee, Delia Gravel; Conover, Willis; Hunter, Alberta; Allen, Gary (2005). Alberta Hunter Jazz at the Smithsonian. Shanachie Entertainment. Live performance at the Smithsonian Institution's Baird Auditorium on November 29, 1981. . .

References

Further reading

  • Carby, Hazel V. (1999). "Black Women's Blues, Motown and Rock and Roll". Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America. London: Verso. pp. 40–41. . .
  • Ewing, K. T. (2015). "What Kind of Woman? Alberta Hunter and Expressions of Black Female Sexuality in the Twentieth Century", in Trimiko Melancon and Joanne M Braxton. Black Female Sexualities. New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Rutgers University Press. pp. 100–112. . .*
  • Gilbert, Lynn; Moore, Gaylen (1981). "Alberta Hunter." Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Have Shaped Our Times. New York: C. N. Potter. p. 245. . .
  • Harrison, Daphne Duval (1990). "She's Got a Mind to Ramble: Alberta Hunter", in Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. pp. 199–218. . .
  • Scott, Michelle R. (2010). "Alberta Hunter (1895–1984): She Had the World in a Jug, with the Stopper in Her Hand", in Sarah Wilkerson Freeman, Beverly Greene Bond, and Laura Helper-Ferris. Tennessee Women Their Lives and Times. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press. p. 93. . .
  • Taylor, Frank C.; Cook, Gerald (1988). Alberta Hunter: A Celebration in Blues. New York: McGraw-Hill. . .