[78-L] Definitive Jazz Singers

[David Lewis]

>The definitive (but not necessarily the greatest) female jazz singer is
>Marie Bryant.
>
>       Julian Vein

 

and Earl:


She's the one in Jamming The Blues, isn't she.
I like her very much.
Strange, but I've never come across any records of her.

If we want to talk about DEFINITIVE Jazz singers, one needs to go 
back to the generation BEFORE Ella and Billie. Then you get to 
Adelaide Hall, a genuinely 'definitive' Jazz singer since, born in 
1901, she helped write the book!

Earl.

 

>>>

 

I have been listening to a LOT of Vaudeville Blues Artists in the past few months. I think to refer to just about any of them as "blues singers" (save Sippie Wallace and a very few others) in a sense misses the mark, although they were called that at the time and perhaps we should take that into consideration also.

 

However, a fair amount of these singers are actually very early jazz singers. One in particular who strikes me as such is Mary Straine, whose records -- particularly the ones where Fletcher Henderson's piano is the only accompaniment -- demonstrates that she did everything a jazz singer does; varying the relationship of the melodic line to the beat, singing both before and after the beat, reshaping the melodic line spontaneously, etc.

 

The only thing I see on the web about her is this from:

http://arts.ucsc.edu/igama/2%20-%20Encyclopedia/e-LEGAM%20Content%20Files/B%20-%20Articles/KEHaaa01%5EWomen-Music.html

 

"Mary Straine was the first African American woman to make a record when her legendary vaudeville routine (with celebrity Bert Williams) was produced in 1919." 

 

It appears that she is the female voice in the choir of Williams' Columbia record of "Elder Eatmore's Sermon on Generosity." Certainly there was an earlier recording of an African-American woman? Nevertheless, nothing else substantive about Straine out there.

 

Anyone have any observations/info/contact with/interest in Mary Straine? Please share.

 

 


Uncle Dave Lewis uncledavelewis at hotmail.com



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