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SPEAKER_05: Hello, I'm Alison Russell. I'm a Grammy nominated singer, songwriter, poet, and activist. I've been inspired by artists like Nina Simone and Tracy Chapman, who turned their faces into the blade of storm and roared back dignity and hope. This month, I'm your guest host on Wamanica. Today, we're talking about a singer with one of the longest and most famous songs in music. By the time she was in her 30s, she'd played Broadway, toured countless European cabarets, and sold thousands of records. Then at the age of 62, she took a 20-year long break before staging a massively successful comeback in her 80s. Please welcome Alberta Hunter. I'm singing another pretty song. They don't write songs like this anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna sing it. They don't write songs like this anymore. I love these beautiful songs. They don't write them like this anymore. ["Without a Song"] Without a song
SPEAKER_05: Alberta was born on April 1st, 1895, in Memphis, Tennessee. She was nicknamed Pig growing up, a name Alberta attributes to being very messy when she was younger. Her father, Charles, was a Pullman sleeping car porter that died before she met him. Alberta and her mother, Laura, a chambermaid, moved around often to try and make ends meet. When Alberta was in elementary school, she set out on her own to Chicago. Stories vary on just how she got there, but as Alberta once told it, a teacher with an extra train ticket to Chicago invited her along on the condition Alberta asked for her mother's permission. Instead, Alberta told her mother she was staying over at a friend's house and made the break for Chicago. The city spelled a new beginning for young Alberta. When she arrived, she got a job peeling potatoes for $6 a week and a place to stay. She would send money back home to her mother. One night, she entered a small club and began singing. Though she was thrown out that night, she soon got a job singing for a weekly stipend. From there, Alberta began a singing career that took her to the best clubs Chicago had to offer. She sang at the Panama Cafe with Florence Mills and the Dreamland Cafe with King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band featuring Louis Armstrong. She became well known for her talent and energy while performing. Alberta was small, but her voice was explosive. She would add improvised rhythm to her songs by slapping her thighs, clapping, and snapping along. Her repertoire included blues, gospel, folk, and show tunes, as well as languages ranging from French and Italian to Yiddish, German, and Danish. In 1921, Alberta wrote and recorded her first songs. Among them was Downhearted Blues, which fellow womannequin Bessie Smith would record a year later on her album to great success.
SPEAKER_05: In 1919, Alberta married a man named Willard Saxby Townsend, but they separated within months. Multiple sources speculate that Alberta was a lesbian and kept her sexuality a secret so as not to negatively affect her career. Alberta moved to New York in 1923 and quickly made it to the theater. She took part in an all-black musical called How Come at the Apollo Theater. She spent the next few years between cities before making the move to Europe. She starred in Showboat in London for two years before moving through Paris, Denmark, Turkey, and Egypt with various acts. Alberta returned to the US in the 1930s, where she performed for US troops through the United Service Organization. In 1954, Alberta's mother died. Her death deeply affected Alberta. She decided to give up singing entirely and enrolled in a nursing course at the YWCA. For the next 20 years, she worked as a scrub nurse on Roosevelt Island in New York. She only stopped in 1977 because the hospital thought she'd reached the mandatory retirement age of 70. In fact, Alberta had registered herself as 12 years younger than her real age. When she retired, she was actually 82. That summer, Alberta sang at a friend's party. By chance, an agent attending the party heard her song and connected her to the owner of a Greenwich Village club called The Cookery. But, Alberta's singing career roared back to life. She performed at the club for a six-week program that was so successful, it was extended indefinitely, and she was given a recording contract with Columbia Records. She recorded four celebrated albums and was commissioned by movie director Robert Altman to record the soundtrack for his film, Remember My Name. At 83 years old, she performed at the White House for President Jimmy Carter. At the time, Alberta's holding the New York Times, I'm the happiest woman in this world. By the 1980s, Alberta was battling ill health. She died at her home on Roosevelt Island on October 17th, 1984, at 89 years old. All month long, we're highlighting black musicians. Wamanaka is a Wonder Media Network production. Special thanks to co-creators Jenny and Liz Kaplan, who invited me to guest host this month. As always, we're taking a break for the weekend. Talk to you on Monday.
