By
Whitney Balliett
The singer Alberta Hunter was waiting in a studio to rehearse with her accompanist Jimmy Rowles. A contemporary of Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters and an immediate descendant of Ma Rainey and Sophie Tucker, she was about to resume a career she forsook for practical nursing after her mother's death in the mid-fifties. She had the time to sing again because she had recently been retired by the Goldwater Memorial Hospital, on Roosevelt Island, where she had worked for twenty years. But her return was largely accidental, and she explained it this way: "A while ago, Bobby Short had a party at his house for Mabel Mercer, before she went to sing in England, and he invited me--Lord, I've known Mabel nearly fifty years. Mr. Charles Bourgeois was there, and I saw him sizing me up. Pretty soon he asked me to sing something, which I did, real soft. He, told me, ‘You should be out working again, with that voice and all your experience," and right away the next morning Mr. Barney Josephson of The Cookery called and asked was I interested in singing for him, and I was so nervous 1 dropped the phone. I never appeared at the Cafe Societys, but I always knew his reputation. I went down there a few days later and sang, and he said, 'I want you to go to work for me right away.'"
Head-on, Alberta Hunter is egg-shaped, and sideways she is Egyptian. Her face is lean and tight and handsome, and her gray-black hair is swept back into finger-size braids. Her brown eyes are clear, and she talks in a staccato, near- stuttering fashion, often tapping a listener's hand for emphasis with a sharp, woodpecker finger. She was wearing a fitted dark-khaki dress with military pockets, and she declared that she loves to dress casually. Chris Albertson, the author of a biography of Bessie Smith, arrived, and was followed by Rowles. Rowles came up to Alberta Hunter, and she smiled and asked him how he was. Sleepy and emery-voiced, he said, “Fine, baby doll."
"I was just saying how I hate to dress up, how I love to be casual. When I was entertaining, I spent a lot of money on clothes, but after my mother passed I gave them away, all those pretty gowns and slippers. I could die, because they're back in fashion. But how was I to know I'd start singing again and need them? I'll just get myself a smart cocktail dress, and I'll be all right."
Rowles riffled through a pile of sheet music, and Alberta Hunter said, “I'm going to sing songs in six languages-- Italian, French, Danish, Yiddish, and German. And English. I've got the music here for the Yiddish song and the French song, but I want to start today with a blues--my 'Downhearted Blues.' I want to make it a real slow blues so there’s plenty of time to get the story out."
"I used to work for an arranger on the coast named Marty Paich," Rowles said, "and he'd always tell me, he wanted me to play real ‘fonky.’”
Alberta Hunter picked up her music and put it on the piano. She stood in the crook, next to a microphone. Rowles applied some Tacky-Finger, a non-slipping ointment, and Alberta Hunter folded her hands in front of her, raised her head, and scanned the room as if she were about to address a packed house. "Ladies and gentlemen," she said in an even contralto, "I'm going to sing a song I wrote in 1922, when most of you children weren't born; I recorded it on the Paramount label, and Bessie Smith used it for her very first Paramount recording, which sold a million copies. It’s called ‘Downhearted Blues.”
Jimmy Rowles played a four-bar introduction, and Alberta Hunter began the famous lyrics: "Got the world in a jug, stopper right here in my hand. Next man I get, he's got to come under my command. Her voice was steady and rich, and her vibrato betrayed none of the quaveriness that often besets older singers. Her phrasing was legato, and once in a while she used a high, almost falsetto cluster of notes which recalled Ethel Waters. There is a burnished, accreted assurance and depth and color in Alberta Hunter's singing. At first, she stood nearly motionless. She moved one knee on the beat, and occasionally she raised her right arm and smoothed the air with her hand. Then she went into a fast "When You're Smiling.” She began rocking from side to side, and slapped one thigh on the afterbeat. She bounced up and down, her slightly bowed legs moving like springs, her long arms walking at her sides A slow "He's Funny That Way" was next, and was followed by another blues, "Handy Man" which starts, “That man of mine has a scheme. That man of mine has a scheme...It's amazing the way he handles my machine." Rowles was brilliant. He paralleled her melodic lines, echoed them, cushioned them. He gave her rhythmic nudges when her time faltered, and he played rich and dense chords behind her, But he used this complexity sparingly, and it set off the purity and simpleness of her voice—a jungle framing a smooth clearing. Rowles suggested a break after a swinging "My Blue Heaven," and they sat down. He asked Alberta Hunter when she first came to New York.
“Why, it was in 1923," she answered, hooking a cardigan sweater around her shoulders. I got to thinking that I should look for higher ground, that I'd gone as far as I could in Chicago. So I left there on a Saturday, and by the following Wednesday I’d replaced Bessie Smith in New York in a show called How Come? I'd never been on a stage, but I was young and .I just walked out there and had no fear. After, I wasn't sure whether I had cut a hog--messed up--but I knew I was all right when the audience yelled and stomped and Sophie Tucker and all them who were out there gave me a standing ovation. I was How Come? about a year, and then went into a show called Change Your Luck, at the George M. Cohan. I went back to Chicago for a while and worked at the Royal Garden and at the Phoenix and the Sunset Cafe with Earl Hines. I also worked in Cincinnati, at Michaelson's, and I met a waiter there named Willard Saxbe Townshend. He was handsome. He had beautiful eyes. He’d been in the Army, and I don’t think he owned anything except that uniform. I married Willard and we went back to Chicago. I had a little apartment and my mother was staying with me. I was too embarrassed to sleep with my husband with my mother there, so I slept with my mother. Willard wanted to be a waiter where I was working; but I didn't want any part of that, so I took a vacation and Went to Monte Carlo, where I got a job in the Knickerbocker Cafe. I never got back with Willard, and eventually it made a man of him. He got a degree, and when he died he was head of the redcaps' union in Chicago and the only Negro on the executive board of the C.I.O. I've never given getting married again a thought. I stayed abroad four years, and there wasn't any place I didn't go. Noble SissIe helped me get into England, and I lived in London in the same house as Marian Anderson, at 17 Regent's Park Road. She was there getting her middle register straightened out with Miss Amanda Aldridge. Marian was always a mama’s girl, but she was completely unspoiled--and talk about a lady! We always got along, and she used to say God made me and threw the pattern away. But she didn't have any soul then, and we used to say things purposely to hurt her so that she’d feel things and get soul, and she did. I auditioned for the English company of Show Boat, and got the part over a white woman named Maisie Ayling. I played Queenie. Edith Day was the star and Sir Cedric Hardwicke was Cap'n Andy and Paul Robeson was Joe. My old friend Mabel Mercer was in the chorus. Paul was unassuming, like people used to be to each other in the South. When he sang 'O1' Man River,' his voice was like a bell in the distance, and people would scream. The night King George and Queen Mary came to see us, Paul got off pitch, and he never got himself back on, and afterward he cried like a child. I stayed with Show Boat eleven months, and then I went to the Grande Carte in Paris. I learned French at Berlitz and got a part in a show called Vive Paris! where there was a scene with a huge birdcage filled with women dressed like birds, and I sang 'Les Oiseaux.' Then I went on the road--to the Natural Scholar in Copenhagen, the Excelsior and the Continental in Cairo, and the Femina in Athens. I worked Les Jardins des where Hitler used to drink beer; I came back to England in 1935, and I used to sing 'Time on My Hands' to the Prince of Wales at the Dorchester. I also did some broadcasts from London to New York, and when I came home I was on WEAF and WJZ and on the 'Lower Basin Street' show, before Dinah, Shore took over. I was in a lot of vaudeville in the thirties, with people like Seymour and Jeanette, and Ada Brown, who was like a chubby baby. I worked at the Hot Feet Club down here, and in 1939 I took part in Mamba's Daughters at the Empire, at Fortieth and Broadway. It was Ethel Waters' show, and since she's gone, and can't speak for herself, l shouldn't say a word, but she sure gave me a hard time. I guess l outsang her, because she put everything but the kitchen stove on me. But I forgave, her a long time ago, and a year before she died she sent me a message: ‘Tell old Flossie'—which is what she called me—to take care of herself.' I joined the USO in 1944, and was with them off and on until the day my mother died. I took the first Negro unit overseas during; the war, and when Marshal Zhukov gave General Eisenhower a medal, Eisenhower sent for me to come and sing. I worked the E.T.O. and the South Pacific and the C.B.I. and Korea. The last club I was in in New York was the Bon Soir, when I was studying nursing."
Alberta Hunter stood and smoothed her dress. "Come on, Jimmy. It's time to work again." Rowles applied more Tacky-Finger, and sat at the piano, and they went into a rousing “Sunny Side of the Street. Alberta Hunter’s springs went up and down, her arms walked, and every eight bars or so she snapped her head. Another Hunter blues, "Working Man," followed. "My man is old, and very thin. But there is plenty of good tunes left, on an old violin. A slow “Pennies from Heaven" came next, then an even slower "A Hundred Years from Today," and she finished the rehearsal with a rocking "A Good Man Is Hard To Find." Rowles jumped up and shook her hand and laughed,
'We got to pick some of those tempos up, Jimmy," she said. “They drag."
“You pick ‘em up,’ he said. “I’ll be there.”
."An old lady shouldn't drag her tempos," she said.
"Old lady!" Rowles shouted. "You know what you are, Alberta. You’re a sprinter.”
She laughed and slapped him on the chest, and Rowles put on his jacket and told her he’d call her in a day or two. Chris Albertson joined her, and she 1ooked at him. "Do you know when I started singing? I started singing when I was about twelve years old. But I had to be born first, and that was in Memphis, around 1895...1 had two sisters. One was older and called La Tosca', and one was younger and a half sister, and her name, was Josephine Beatty. I used her name when I recorded in 1924 with Louis Armstrong for. Gennett, because I was still under contract to Paramount" -- Josephine Beatty, accompanied by the Red Onion Jazz Babies, My mother was born in Knoxville. She was tall and slender and very strict, but she did everything she could for her girls. She used to carry me on a pillow when I was little, because I was so sickly. She was a very tidy person, and she scrubbed the paint off when she cleaned. 'Get away from me, you’re filthy dirty,' she'd say to me when I came in off the street. Which is where I got my nickname-Pig. My mother worked as a chambermaid for Miss Myrtle and Miss Emma in a sporting house on Gayoso Street. My father, Cyrus Hunter, was a Pullman porter, but he died before I ever knew him. We girls stayed most of the time with my grandmother Nancy Peterson, who also looked after all my cousins. She was a dainty little lady, who wore a shirt- waist with a velvet front. Her rent was five dollars a month, and when they threatened to raise it a quarter she said she would move and they backed down. She used to tell me over and over, 'Keep busy, be a lady, keep your clothes clean even if they're raggedy, stay away from whiskey, and never put a cigarette in your mouth; And do your work the best you can.”
"I went to Chicago when I was eleven, thereabouts. My mother had sent me to the store with a dime and a nickel to buy bread. I ran into my teacher, Miss Florida Cummings, She said she was going to Chicago, had a pass for the train, and would I like: to go. Just like that. Well, I used to sing in little school concerts and my music teacher had told me 1 could sing. I had heard you could make ten dollars a week in Chicago singing, and I had been building that up in me. So l thought I better go to Chicago and get some of that ten. I told her wait and I'll ask my mother; I ran and hid a little and came back and said yes. I knew my mother would think I was over at my friend Irma's house when she missed me because I stayed there a lot. In Chicago, I knew enough to find the daughter of a friend of my mother's, Helen Winston. She was so surprised when she saw me. ’Sit down, Pig,' she said. 'What in the" world are you doing here? You hungry? Miss Florida should have known better than to bring you here like this,' and on and on like that. When she quieted down, she took me out to Hyde Park, where she worked, and got me a job as second cook for six dollars a week, room and board. She took the braids out of my hair and put me in dresses to make me look older.
Right away, I sent my mother two dollars so she'd know where I was. I hadn't been there very long when I started sneaking out to a place called Dago Frank's, at Archer and State. It was a sporting bar, and when I tried to sing they told me to get out. But they finally gave me a chance, and I worked there a year and ten months. The hours were eight to twelve, for five dollars, a week. I learned songs from the piano player, like ‘Melancholy,' which became known as ‘Melancholy Baby,' and I also sang' All Night Long' and 'Where the River Shannon Flows.' The next place I sang was Hugh Hoskins’. The dangerous element, like Give-a- Damn Jones, hung out there, but so did the pickpocket women, and they did everything in their power to show me how to live a clean life. Tack Annie was considered the cleverest pickpocket anywhere. She was a master. She had some sort of hook concealed in a front tooth, and by leaning over near a gentleman she could pick a diamond stickpin right out of his tie. But she was an ugly girl. Fact, she looked like a mule with a summer hat on. When I wrote 'Reap What You Sow,' I was thinking of some of those rough types.
Hugh Hoskins' was a small place, which was enlarged because so many people came to hear me sing the blues. Then I was offered twelve dollars a week at the Panama Cafe, at Thirty-sixth and State. It was owned by Izzy Levine and Mr. Shaw. It was a long place, and there was an upstairs and a downstairs. There were five girls upstairs with a piano player and five girls downstairs with a piano player. Nettie Compton, Bricktop, Florence Mills, Cora Green, and Mattie Hite were downstairs, and Glover Compton, who was marvelous, was their piano player. Each one did her own thing, and the downstairs was swank, dicty. Upstairs, we had Nellie Carr, Goldie Crosby, Twinkle Davis, Mamie Carter and me, and George Hall was the piano player. Nellie Carr did the splits, and Mamie Carter had a cute little dance. Twinkle Davis had legs like Marlene Dietrich, and Goldie Crosby had her jazzy little way. And I sang the blues. People would pass on by Bricktop and them to come up and hear us, I worked next door at the De Luxe Cafe, too, Freddie Keppard played the trumpet there, He was something--a big; fellow. He had an old derby, and he put it over the bell of that trumpet and he'd make the hair stand up on your head. He could play loud and he could play so soft you could barely hear him. Then I went across the street, to the Dreamland Cafe, which was owned by Bill Bottoms, who later became Joe Louis's dietitian. He paid me seventeen dollars and fifty cents a week. Joe Oliver had just come up from New Orleans--this was around the First World War—and he had Sidney Bechet and Lil Hardin and Minor Hall. Oliver was big and dark, and I don't think he had any sight in his left eye. Leastwise, he sometimes wore a patch over it. But he was a lovely fellow. Later, after he brought Louis Armstrong up from New Orleans, I recall them playing 'Jerusalem' in harmony with their mutes and without any rhythm section, just the two of them floating along, and it was unbelievable. I think a little chill grew up between them when Louis began to be recognized. The Dreamland was a big square place, and the musicians played on a balcony. I'd sing down on the dance floor, and when I'd finish a song I'd throw up my hands so the musicians would know. All I'd have to do was hum a new song for them to get it. The dance floor was large, and the center was made of glass and had a light under it. There was no segregation, and every sort of person came in--the pick- pockets and society Negroes and politicians and gamblers. The gamblers were kings, and they were allowed to raise a fog, which is letting people go as far as they like. Al Jolson came to hear me do ‘St. Louis Blues' and 'Mammy's Little Coal Black Rose.' Sophie Tucker came to hear me do ‘Someday Sweetheart' and 'A Good Man Is Hard To Find.' Later, she'd send her maid Belle for me to come to her dressing room and teach her the songs, but I never would go, so her piano player would come over and listen and get everything down: But I was crazy about her as a singer, and she influenced me. I was at the Dreamland about five years, and while I was there I started recording for Paramount, through Mr. Frank Williams. Fletcher Henderson accompanied me, and so did Eubie Blake and Armstrong and the Original Memphis Five, with Phil Napoleon and Miff Mole. I remember the thick brown wax discs they recorded on, and the wax shavings falling on the floor as I sang. The Memphis Five was white, and they could go! I was the first black singer to record with a white band... I recorded my 'Downhearted Blues' about a year before Bessie. I never so much as said good morning to her, but I heard her sing. That voice carried from here to downtown. She was crude, raucous, and her clothes were a little clowny, a little extravagant. She just stood there, and when she started 'Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out, you could hear her big heart going. When Bessie opened her mouth, it was the end of a perfect day. Of course, Florence Mills became just as big a star as Bessie, but she was the opposite. She was a hummingbird, and dainty and lovely. Her little voice was as sweet as Bessie's was rough, and it was like a cello.
Alberta Hunter buttoned her sweater and looked around. Her expression was serene and bemused. "I better think about getting along, go home and finish the song I'm working on. It's a blues, which means to me what milk does to a baby. Blues is what the spirit is to a minister. We sing the blues because our hearts have been hurt, our souls have been disturbed. But when you sing the blues, let it be classy. Singing a ballad, the meaning of the words runs in my mind all the time. In 'Sunny Side of the Street," I see that sunshine and I'm really as rich as Rockefeller. I'm always trying to tell a story, and I want my words to be understood. I've been writing blues and songs all my life. A new song will often come to me at three or four in the morning. I’ll hold it in my head and later that day dash downtown and get somebody to set it down on paper, because I don’t know a note of music. Eddy Arnold sang my “I Want to Thank You, Lord.’ Dinah Washington did ‘What’s the Matter, Baby?’ and Ella Fitzgerald did ‘Downhearted Blues’ and so did Mildred Bailey, who made a crackerjack record of it. My new song is called ’I Want a Two-Fisted, Double- Jointed Rough-and-Ready Man.'" She sang, "I want a man who won't let his children play with neither dog nor cat, but will bring in a skunk or a lion and say, 'Here, kids, play with that.' I just got the melody to it this morning."