In 1912, another one of Bessie’s brother, Clarence, who was traveling with the Moses Stokes’ Traveling Show, asked the show’s managers to allow his sister to audition. She started as a singer, but as time progressed, joined the chorus, and then became a featured singer. At this show, Bessie met Ma Rainey, one of the most recognized blues singer during that time and one of the biggest influences in Bessie’s life. For the next few years, Bessie worked at various tent shows. While on tour, Bessie met Earl Love, who would soon be her husband.
Later, he was introduced to dance teacher Lester Horton. Horton had a dance school in Hollywood and his style was more straightforward and what Ailey was looking for. When Ailey saw a school performance of fellow Jefferson High School student and Horton protégé, Carmen de Lavallade, he signed on with Horton. Lester Horton welcomed him to his company as part of the chorus. Soon after, Alvin had choreographed his first formal concert dance, Afternoon Blues, set to music from the Broadway show, On The Town.
Hammond was instrumental in getting Holiday recording work with an up-and-coming clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman. With Goodman, she sang vocals for several tracks, including her first commercial release "Your Mother's Son-In-Law" and the 1934 top ten hit "Riffin' the Scotch.” Known for her distinctive phrasing and expressive, sometimes melancholy voice, Holiday went on to record with jazz pianist Teddy Wilson and others in 1935. She made several singles, including "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" and "Miss Brown to You." That same year, Holiday appeared with Duke Ellington in the film Symphony in Black. In 1936, Billie Holiday releases “Summertime” from “Porgy and Bess”.
She was very much a tomboy in her younger years. To tone down her liveliness, when she was 11, her mother enrolled her in the Jones-Hayward School of Ballet. When Conchita was 15, a teacher from George Balanchine's School of American Ballet visited their studio and she was picked along with two other students to audition in New York. Education Chita got into the school, but shortly after began her career in Broadway for the audition for the national tour of Call Me Madam. She was only supposed to be supporting her friend but gained the role instead.
A Man of Mixture Lester Horton, American dancer, choreographer, and teacher was born on January 23 1906, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Horton’s fascination with the arts, ballet, and Native American dance led him to participate in local theatre productions. In 1928 Mr. Horton made a shocking decision to move to Los Angeles, California and began dancing in Michio Ito’s company and eventually ended up founding his own company. Moving to Los Angeles was a big step for Horton, since at that time New York was the main headquarters for American dance. Mr. Horton’s ability to translate ethnic dances into commercially acceptable formats led him to choreographing musical numbers for films from the 1940s through the early 1950s.
French producers came to New York looking to cast an all-black musical revue in Paris. They saw Josephine performing at the Plantation club and offered her a part in their production La Revue Negré. In 1925 she went to Paris to appear in in the show. The show opened on October 2, 1925 in Paris at the Théâtre Champs-Elysées. Josephine had two numbers in La Revue Negré.
• The same year, Basie organized a new, smaller group of nine musicians, with Buster Smith and several other former members of Moten's orchestra, which included Jo Jones and later Lester Young, and the Barons of Rhythm began a long engagement at the Reno Club in Kansas City. • The group's radio broadcasts in 1936 led to contracts with a national booking agency and the Decca Record Company. The contract expanded and within a year the Count Basie Orchestra was one of the leading big bands of the swing era. • By the end of the
(How many of know that God always have a ram in the bush). Many of her family members where entertainers this musical influence lead Mahalia towards singing. She grew up singing gospel at Plymouth Rock Baptist Church where her father preached. At 16 she moved to Chicago for better opportunities as many African Americans did during that time to support herself. While in Chicago Mahalia never stopped singing gospel, she joined Greater Salem Baptist Church and began touring with a gospel quintet.
Her first album for the label, Blossom Dearie Sings, was followed by a two-record set entitled My New Celebrity Is You, which contained eight of her own compositions. The album's title song was especially written for her by Johnny Mercer, and is said to be the last piece he wrote before his death in 1976. During the 70s, Dearie performed at Carnegie Hall with former Count Basie blues singer Joe Williams and jazz vocalist Anita O'Day in a show called The Jazz Singers. In 1981 Blossom appeared with Dave Frishberg for three weeks at Michael's Pub in Manhattan. Frishberg, besides being a songwriter, also sang and played the piano, and Dearie frequently performed his songs, such as “Peel Me A Grape”, “I'm Hip” and “My Attorney Bernie”.
Gladys Baker Mortensen, her twenty-four-year-old mother, and Charles Stanley Gifford her biological father met working at a Hollywood film lab. Gladys had already been married once to her first husband Jasper Baker, and was legally separated from her second husband Ed Mortensen. Gifford refused to marry Gladys and moved away, neither Norma Jeane nor her mother ever saw him again. Gladys could not afford her daughter or take care of her while trying to find a job, so she began to send her infant daughter to a nearby family for five dollars a week. Norma Jeane spent most of her childhood living in as many as twelve different foster homes and even at one point in an orphanage while her mother was in and out of the hospital suffering from mental illness.