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I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
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They called Atlantic Records "the house that Ruth
built" during the 1950s, and they weren't referring to the Sultan of
Swat. Ruth Brown's
regal hitmaking reign from 1949 to the close of the '50s helped
tremendously to establish the New York label's predominance in the
R&B field. Later, the business all but forgot her -- she was forced
to toil as domestic help for a time -- but she returned to the top, her
status as a postwar R&B pioneer (and tireless advocate for the
rights and royalties of her peers) recognized worldwide.
Young Ruth Weston was inspired initially by jazz chanteuses Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, and Dinah Washington. She ran away from her Portsmouth home in 1945 to hit the road with trumpeter Jimmy Brown, whom she soon married. A month with bandleader Lucky Millinder's
orchestra in 1947 ended abruptly in Washington, D.C., when she was
canned for delivering a round of drinks to members of the band. Cab Calloway's sister Blanche gave Ruth a gig at her Crystal Caverns nightclub and assumed a managerial role in the young singer's life. DJ Willis Conover dug Brown's act and recommended her to Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson, bosses of a fledgling imprint named Atlantic. Unfortunately, Brown's
debut session for the firm was delayed by a nine-month hospital stay
caused by a serious auto accident en route to New York that badly
injured her leg. When she finally made it to her first date in May 1949,
she made up for lost time by waxing the torch ballad "So Long" (backed
by guitarist Eddie Condon's band), which proved to be her first hit.
Brown's
seductive vocal delivery shone incandescently on her Atlantic smashes
"Teardrops in My Eyes" (an R&B chart-topper for 11 weeks in 1950),
"I'll Wait for You" and "I Know" in 1951, 1952's "5-10-15 Hours"
(another number one rocker), the seminal "(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter
Mean" in 1953, and a tender Chuck Willis-penned "Oh What a Dream," and the timely "Mambo Baby" the next year. Along the way, Frankie Laine tagged her "Miss Rhythm" during an engagement in Philly. Brown
belted a series of her hits on the groundbreaking TV program Showtime
at the Apollo in 1955, exhibiting delicious comic timing while trading
sly one-liners with MC Willie Bryant (ironically, ex-husband Jimmy Brown was a member of the show's house band).
After an even two-dozen R&B chart appearances
for Atlantic that ended in 1960 with "Don't Deceive Me" (many of them
featuring hell-raising tenor sax solos by Willis "Gator" Jackson, who many mistakenly believed to be Brown's husband), Brown faded from view. After raising her two sons and working a nine-to-five job, Brown
began to rebuild her musical career in the mid-'70s. Her comedic sense
served her well during a TV sitcom stint co-starring with MacLean Stevenson in Hello, Larry, in a meaty role in director John Waters'
1985 sock-hop satire film Hairspray, and her 1989 Broadway starring
turn in Black and Blue (which won her a Tony Award).
There were more records for Fantasy in the '80s and '90s (notably 1991's jumping Fine and Mellow), and a lengthy tenure as host of National Public Radio's Harlem Hit Parade and BluesStage. Brown's
nine-year ordeal to recoup her share of royalties from all those
Atlantic platters led to the formation of the nonprofit Rhythm &
Blues Foundation, an organization dedicated to helping others in the
same frustrating situation. In 1993 Brown was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and 1995 saw the release of her autobiography, Miss Rhythm. Brown
suffered a heart attack and stroke following surgery in October 2006
and never fully recovered, passing on November 17, 2006.
Years before Aretha Franklin was crowned
Queen of Soul, Ruth Brown reigned as the Original Queen of R&B. She
achieved a distinct style, sassy and streetwise, which made her one of
the more influential singers of her era. Ms. Brown sustained a career
for six decades: first as a bright, bluesy singer who was called “the
girl with a tear in her voice” and then, after some lean years, as the
embodiment of an earthy, indomitable black woman. She had a life of hard
work, hard luck, determination, audacity and style. Sometimes it was
said that R&B stood as much for Ruth Brown as it did for rhythm and
blues. Ruth Brown was born Ruth Weston in Portsmouth, Virginia on
January 12, 1928. Ruth began to sing at the local AME church where her
father was the choir director. Her influences were Billie Holiday, Sarah
Vaughan, and Dinah Washington. In 1945 she ran away with
singer/trumpeter Jimmy Brown and they wed soon after. The big-band
leader Lucky Millinder heard her in Detroit late in 1946, hired her for
his band and fired her in Washington, D.C. Stranded, she managed to
find a club engagement at the Crystal Caverns. There, the disc jockey
recommended her to friends at Atlantic Records. On the way to New York
City, however, she was seriously injured in an automobile accident and
hospitalized for most of a year; her legs, which were smashed, would be
painful for the rest of her life. She stood on crutches in 1949 to
record her first session for Atlantic, and the bluesy ballad “So Long”
became a hit.
Throughout the 1950s, Ruth Brown churned out dozens of
R&B hits, including her million-selling “Mama, He Treats Your
Daughter Mean,” “5-10-15 Hours,” “Mambo Baby,” and “Teardrops From My
Eyes.” Brown's two dozen hit records helped Atlantic Records secure its
footing in the record industry, a track record for which the label was
referred to as 'the House That Ruth Built'. She later crossed over into
rock'n'roll with “Lucky Lips” and “This Little Girl's Gone Rockin',” a
song she co-wrote with Bobby Darin. Her hits ended soon after the
1960s began, after two- dozen R&B chart appearances for Atlantic
that streak ended with “Don't Deceive Me.” She lived on Long Island,
raised her sons, worked as a teacher’s aide and a maid and was married
for three years to a police officer. On weekends she sang club dates in
the New York area, and she recorded an album in 1968 with the Thad
Jones- Mel Lewis Big Band. Although her hits had supported Atlantic
Records, she was unable at one point to afford a home telephone. She
decided to lay low and slipped into a dormant period. She was
invited to Los Angeles in 1975 to play the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson
in “Selma,” a musical about civil rights. She went on to sing in Las
Vegas and continued a comeback that never ended. The television producer
Norman Lear gave her a role in the sitcom “Hello, Larry.” She returned
to New York City in 1982, appearing in Off Broadway productions
including “StaggerLee,” and in 1985 she went to Paris to perform in the
revue “Black and Blue,” rejoining it later for its Broadway run.
Ms.
Brown began to speak out, onstage and in interviews, about the
exploitative contracts musicians of her generation had signed. Many
hit-making musicians had not recouped debts to their labels, according
to record company accounting, and so were not receiving royalties at
all. Shortly before Atlantic held a 40th-birthday concert at Madison
Square Garden in 1988, the label agreed to waive debts for Ms. Brown and
35 other musicians of her era and to pay 20 years of retroactive
royalties. Atlantic also contributed nearly $2 million to start
the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, which pushed other labels toward
royalty reform and distributed millions of dollars directly to musicians
in need, although it has struggled to sustain itself in recent years. “Black
and Blue” revitalized Ms. Brown’s recording career, on labels including
Fantasy and Bullseye Blues. Her 1989 album “Blues on Broadway” won a
Grammy Award for best jazz vocal performance, female. The albums theme
is on standards from the 1920s that predated Brown's rise as a star in
the '50s. For this date she is assisted by trumpeter Spanky Davis,
tenorman Red Holloway, trombonist Britt Woodman, a rhythm section led by
pianist/organist Bobby Forrester and alto sax man Hank Crawford. She
was a radio host on the public radio shows Harlem Hit Parade and
BluesStage. In 1995 she released her autobiography, “Miss Rhythm”
(Dutton), written with Andrew Yule; it won the Gleason Award for music
journalism. Ruth Brown remains, along with giants like Ray
Charles, Big Joe Turner, Amos Milburn and Wynonie Harris as one of the
undisputed architects of Rhythm & Blues. Her impressive credits
include several million-selling hits, induction into the Rock n' Roll
Hall of Fame (1993), a 1989 Grammy, 2 WC Handy Awards, a Tony Award
(Black and Blue-1989), the Ralph Gleason Award for Music Journalism
(1996 autobiography Miss Rhythm) and Pioneer Award from the Rhythm &
Blues Foundation. In 2002 Ruth Brown was inducted into the Blues
Foundation's Hall of Fame. Ruth Brown, “Miss Rhythm,” suffered a heart attack in October 2006 and never recovered, passing on November 17, 2006. Source: James Nadal
Courtesy of the Rock Hall Library and Archive Ruth Brown
Inducted: 1993
Category: Performers
The R&B singer who built Atlantic Records.
They called Atlantic “the house that Ruth built” for good reason—her
two dozen hits put the budding company on the map. She was both a diva
and a fighter, a glamorous R&B singer and a tireless advocate for
musicians’ rights.
In the Fifties, Ruth Brown was known as “Miss
Rhythm,” a testament to her stature as a female rhythm & blues
singer whose only serious competition was Dinah Washington.
Signed to Atlantic Records in 1948 by label founders Ahmet
Ertegun and Herb Abramson, Brown gave the fledgling company its
third-ever hit with “So Long,” a simple, bluesy showcase for her torchy,
church- and jazz-schooled voice that entered the Billboard R&B chart in September of 1949.
“Teardrops in My Eyes,” her second R&B hit (and seventh single
release), brought out her more swaggering, aggressive side, and she was
rewarded with her first Number One R&B hit. For the duration of the
Fifties, Brown dominated the R&B charts and even crossed over into
rock and roll with some success with “Lucky Lips” (written by Jerry
Leiber and Mike Stoller) and “This Little Girl’s Gone Rockin’” (written
for Brown by Bobby Darin). But her best work was to be found on such
red-hot mid-Fifties R&B sides as “5-10-15 Hours” and “(Mama) He
Treats Your Daughter Mean.” No less a rock and roll pioneer than Little
Richard has credited Brown with influencing his vocal style. Brown’s two
dozen hit records helped Atlantic secure its footing in the record
industry, a track record for which the young label was referred to as
“the House That Ruth Built.”
Born in Portsmouth, Virginia on January 30, 1928, Ruth Brown sang in
the church choir and then joined Lucky Millinder’s big band after
winning a talent contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. While performing at
a Washington, D.C. nightclub, Brown was noticed by a local deejay who
contacted the top brass at Atlantic. They were duly impressed and
offered her a contract. However, while en route to New York to sign it,
Brown was involved in a serious car accident, which landed her in a
Philadelphia hospital for a year. After recovering she began her amazing
tenure at Atlantic with the 1949 recording of “So Long.” It was a
relationship that would last until 1961, at which point she jumped to
another label with middling success and then retired.
The story might have ended there, but Brown enjoyed a career
renaissance in the mid-Seventies. She began recording blues and jazz for
a variety of labels, and also conquered the worlds of theater (winning a
Tony award for her role in the Broadway revue Black and Blue) and film (appearing as a feisty deejay in the John Waters-directed Hairspray).
She also became a popular host on two National Public Radio shows
("Harlem Hit Parade” and “Blues Stage"). Finally, she continued to
perform and record, exhibiting the same electrifying energy that lit a
fire under Atlantic Records and the world of rhythm & blues back in
the Fifties.
Ruth Brown passed away on November 17, 2006 in Henderson, Nevada after a stroke and heart attack.
Inductee: Ruth Brown (vocals; born January 30, 1928, died November 17, 2006)
Ruth Brown's music laid the foundation for generations of artists who would come after her
Paul Bergen/Redferns
This essay is one in a series celebrating women whose major
contributions in recording occurred before the time frame of NPR Music's
list of 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women.
Ruth
Brown was R&B's first major star; in fact, rhythm and blues as a
genre was born at almost the same moment Brown released her first
single. It was 1949 when Billboard changed the name of its "Race Music"
category to "Rhythm and Blues" — the same year Brown released her first
single, "So Long." Her early musical legacy isn't as well-known as her
later accomplishments, but Brown's 1950s music laid the foundation for
generations of artists who would come after her.
Brown's life
story is the stuff that soapy Hollywood biopics are made of (so much so
that it's a shame it hasn't been picked up for the silver screen yet).
She started singing at four years old in her father's church choir in
Portsmouth, Va. But she preferred pop tunes to choral arrangements, and
she pointedly refused to learn to read music. At 17, she started
sneaking out to sing to the soldiers at the USO clubs, where she met her
first husband, a trumpeter. After running away to Detroit with her
husband (and landing a gig with bandleader Lucky Millinder), she scored a
job in Washington, D.C. at Blanche Calloway's nightclub, the Crystal
Caverns. Soon after, Atlantic Records offered her contract and a debut
concert at the Apollo in New York City
A serious auto accident kept her from performing that show, and she
spent a year in the hospital — during which her husband abandoned her.
But all this merely delayed Brown's eventual triumph. In 1949 she
recorded "So Long" for Atlantic, which went to No. 4 on the R&B
chart. Her second hit, 1950's "Teardrops From My Eyes," went to No. 1.
It became her signature song, and soon she was known as "the girl with
the tear in her voice," a reference to the "squeak" she made on her high
notes, as if her voice was breaking with emotion. (Little Richard would
soon affect a similar break.)
Soon she was the best-selling
black singer of the 1950s, landing dozens of singles on the R&B
charts, including "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean" and "This Little
Girl's Gone Rockin'." She toured ceaselessly throughout the South, and
her popularity was surely helped by her vibrant stage presence. Her big
eyes, expressive body language and joyful smile easily sold hits like
"Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean." Atlantic soon became known as "The
House that Ruth Built."
Ruth may have built Atlantic Records, but Atlantic didn't pass the
wealth on down to Brown. She was required to pay for touring and
recording costs out of pocket. When Atlantic ended their professional
relationship in the early 1960s, Brown had no savings to fall back on.
She moved to Long Island, New York, and spent a decade and a half
working a series of low-paying jobs, often as a single mother. Her
recordings fell into obscurity.
But in 1976, her career was revitalized when she performed the role of Mahalia Jackson in a production of the musical Selma backed
by legendary comedian Redd Foxx. From there, she began appearing
regularly on stage, on television and in film — including her beloved
role as DJ Motormouth Maybelle in John Waters' 1988 Hairspray; a Tony-award winning performance in Black And Blue; and a Grammy-winning 1990 album, Blues on Broadway.
Most people who know of Brown's music encountered it in this later era,
when she was recognized belatedly as a true musical diva with a bawdy
sense of humor, as exemplified in her performance of "If I Can't Sell
It, I'll Keep Sittin' On It." She also hosted the NPR show Blues Stage.
Brown then used her new fame to leverage Atlantic Records into
paying her back royalties — and she didn't stop there. The deal she cut
with the label also allowed dozens of other musicians to recoup their
earnings as well. In 1988 she helped found the Rhythm & Blues Foundation
to preserve the legacy of R&B music, recognize its unique
contributions to American music and provide support to its artists. In
1996, she wrote her autobiography, Miss Rhythm, which won the Ralph Gleason Award for Music Journalism. She died in 2006, at the age of 78.
Brown
was a musical pioneer — so why is her early R&B work not better
known? Much of this has to do with the racial and genre segregation and
sexist double-standards of the music industry. Before Billboard renamed
its "Rhythm and Blues" chart, its name, "Race Music," denoted songs by
and for black people. So while today, Brown's music might sound
indistinguishable from early rock 'n' roll, white audiences of her era
didn't see it that way. Brown even said
herself that R&B became rock 'n' roll "when the white kids started
to dance to it." And while Brown's singles repeatedly hit the top of the
R&B charts, they rarely crossed over onto the pop chart — but when
white performers covered her songs, they often scored the pop chart
successes in her stead. Patti Page's version of "What A Dream," for
example, made it to No. 10 on the pop charts, while Brown's version,
though it reached No. 1 in R&B, never made a mark elsewhere on the
charts. The early stars of rock 'n' roll, too, were all men. It wasn't
until 1962 that a solo black woman artist — Motown's Mary Wells — would
break into the Billboard top ten with a recognizably rock 'n' roll tune.
In
some ways, it seems that Brown's later career — more focused on blues,
jazz and show tunes — has eclipsed her early career. But those
chart-topping contributions to the canon of American popular music
should not be forgotten. With her backbeat-heavy sound and saucy vocal
style, the fabulous Miss Rhythm broke new ground as a truly exceptional
artist.
Ruth Brown performing at Rainbow and Stars in New York in 1997.
Ruth
Brown, the gutsy rhythm and blues singer whose career extended to
acting and crusading for musicians’ rights, died on Friday in Las Vegas.
She was 78 and lived in Las Vegas.
The
cause was complications following a heart attack and a stroke she
suffered after surgery, and Ms. Brown had been on life support since
Oct. 29, said her friend, lawyer and executor, Howell Begle.
“She
was one of the original divas,” said the singer Bonnie Raitt, who
worked with Ms. Brown and Mr. Begle to improve royalties for rhythm and
blues performers. “I can’t really say that I’ve heard anyone that sounds
like Ruth, before or after. She was a combination of sass and
innocence, and she was extremely funky. She could really put it right on
the beat, and the tone of her voice was just mighty. And she had a
great heart.”
“What
I loved about her,” Ms. Raitt added, “was her combination of
vulnerability and resilience and fighting spirit. It was not arrogance,
but she was just really not going to lay down and roll over for anyone.”
Ms.
Brown sustained a career for six decades: first as a bright, bluesy
singer who was called “the girl with a tear in her voice” and then,
after some lean years, as the embodiment of an earthy, indomitable black
woman. She had a life of hard work, hard luck, determination, audacity
and style. Sometimes it was said that R&B stood as much for Ruth
Brown as it did for rhythm and blues.
As
the 1950s began, Ms. Brown’s singles for the fledgling Atlantic Records
— like “(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean” and “5-10-15 Hours” —
became both the label’s bankroll and templates for all of rock ’n’ roll.
She could sound as if she were hurting, or joyfully lusty, or both at
once. Her voice was forthright, feisty and ready for anything.
After
Ms. Brown’s string of hits ended, she kept singing but also went on to a
career in television, radio and movies ( including a memorable role as
the disc jockey Motormouth Maybelle in John Waters’s “Hairspray”) and
on Broadway, where she won a Tony Award for her part in “Black and
Blue.” She worked clubs, concerts and festivals into the 21st century.
“Whatever
I have to say, I get it said,” she said in an interview with The New
York Times in 1995. “Like the old spirituals say, ‘I’ve gone too far to
turn me ’round now.’ ”
Ms.
Brown was born Ruth Weston on Jan. 12, 1928, in Portsmouth, Va., the
oldest of seven children. She made her debut when she was 4, and her
father, the choir director at the local Emmanuel African Methodist
Episcopal Church, lifted her onto the church piano. In summers, she and
her siblings picked cotton at her grandmother’s farm in North Carolina.
“That made me the strong woman I am,” she said in 1995.
As
a teenager, she would tell her family she was going to choir practice
and perform instead at U.S.O. clubs at nearby naval stations. She ran
away from home at 17, working with a trumpeter named Jimmy Brown and
using his last name onstage. She married him, or thought she did; he was
already married. But she was making a reputation as Ruth Brown, and the
name stuck.
The
big-band leader Lucky Millinder heard her in Detroit late in 1946,
hired her for his band and fired her in Washington, D.C. . Stranded, she
managed to find a club engagement at the Crystal Caverns. There, the
disc jockey Willis Conover, who broadcast jazz internationally on Voice
of America radio, heard Ms. Brown and recommended her to friends at
Atlantic Records.
On
the way to New York City, however, she was seriously injured in an
automobile accident and hospitalized for most of a year; her legs, which
were smashed, would be painful for the rest of her life. She stood on
crutches in 1949 to record her first session for Atlantic, and the
bluesy ballad “So Long” became a hit.
Ruth Brown performing at the 15th Annual Chicago Blues Festival in 1998.Credit
Jack Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos
She
wanted to keep singing ballads, but Atlantic pushed her to try upbeat
songs, and she tore into them. During the sessions for “Teardrops From
My Eyes,” her voice cracked upward to a squeal. Herb Abramson of
Atlantic Records liked it, called it a “tear,” and after “Teardrops”
reached No. 1 on the rhythm and blues chart, the sound became her
trademark for a string of hits.
“If I was getting ready to go and record and I had a bad throat, they’d say, ‘Good!’,” she once recalled.
Ms.
Brown was the best-selling black female performer of the early 1950s,
even though, in that segregated era, many of her songs were picked up
and redone by white singers, like Patti Page and Georgia Gibbs, in tamer
versions that became pop hits. The pop singer Frankie Laine gave her a
lasting nickname: Miss Rhythm.
Working
the rhythm and blues circuit in the 1950s, when dozens of her singles
reached the R&B Top 10, Ms. Brown drove a Cadillac and had romances
with stars like the saxophonist Willis (Gator Tail) Jackson and the
singer Clyde McPhatter of the Drifters. (Her first son, Ronald, was
given the last name Jackson; decades later, she told him he was actually
Mr. McPhatter’s son, and he now sings with a latter-day lineup of the
Drifters.)
In
1955 Ms. Brown married Earl Swanson, a saxophonist, and had a second
son, Earl; the marriage ended in divorce. Her two sons survive her: Mr.
Jackson, who has three children, of Los Angeles, and Mr. Swanson of Las
Vegas. She is also survived by four siblings: Delia Weston of Las Vegas,
Leonard Weston of Long Island and Alvin and Benjamin Weston of
Portsmouth.
Her
streak of hits ended soon after the 1960s began. She lived on Long
Island, raised her sons, worked as a teacher’s aide and a maid and was
married for three years to a police officer, Bill Blunt. On weekends she
sang club dates in the New York area, and she recorded an album in 1968
with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band. Although her hits had supported
Atlantic Records — sometimes called the House That Ruth Built — she
was unable at one point to afford a home telephone.
The
comedian Redd Foxx, whom she had once helped out of a financial jam,
invited her to Los Angeles in 1975 to play the gospel singer Mahalia
Jackson in “Selma,” a musical about civil rights he was producing.
She
went on to sing in Las Vegas and continued a comeback that never ended.
The television producer Norman Lear gave her a role in the sitcom
“Hello, Larry.” She returned to New York City in 1982, appearing in Off
Broadway productions including “Stagger Lee,” and in 1985 she went to
Paris to perform in the revue “Black and Blue,” rejoining it later for
its Broadway run.
Ms.
Brown began to speak out, onstage and in interviews, about the
exploitative contracts musicians of her generation had signed. Many
hit-making musicians had not recouped debts to their labels, according
to record company accounting, and so were not receiving royalties at
all. Shortly before Atlantic held a 40th-birthday concert at Madison
Square Garden in 1988, the label agreed to waive unrecouped debts for
Ms. Brown and 35 other musicians of her era and to pay 20 years of
retroactive royalties.
Atlantic
also contributed nearly $2 million to start the Rhythm and Blues
Foundation, which pushed other labels toward royalty reform and
distributed millions of dollars directly to musicians in need, although
it has struggled to sustain itself in recent years.
“Black
and Blue” revitalized Ms. Brown’s recording career, on labels including
Fantasy and Bullseye Blues. Her 1989 album “Blues on Broadway” won a
Grammy Award for best jazz vocal performance, female. She was a radio
host on the public radio shows “Harlem Hit Parade” and “BluesStage.” In
1995 she released her autobiography, “Miss Rhythm” (Dutton), written
with Andrew Yule; it won the Gleason Award for music journalism. She was
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
She
toured steadily, working concert halls, festivals and cabarets. This
year she recorded songs for the coming movie by John Sayles,
“Honeydripper,” and was about to fly to Alabama to act in it when she
became ill.
Ms.
Brown never learned to read music. “In school we had music classes, but
I ducked them,” she said in 1995. “They were just a little too slow. I
didn’t want to learn to read no note. I knew I could sing it. I woke up
one morning and I could sing.”
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C10 of the New York edition with the headline: Ruth Brown, a Queen of Rhythm and Blues and a Fighter for Artist Royalties, Dies at 78.Order Reprints|Today's Paper
Known as the Queen of R&B, Ruth Brown was a rhythm and blues singer and actress who crusaded for musicians’ rights. Brown was born Portsmouth, Virginia, on January 12, 1928. After a string of unfortunate events, Brown ended up in Washington, D.C. There, important people backed her such as nightclub owner Blanche Calloway (sister of bandleader Cab Calloway)
and a Voice of America disc jockey, Willis Conover, who convinced Ahmet
Ertegun and Herb Abramson, founders of Atlantic Records, to sign Brown.
She made her recording debut in 1949. “Teardrops from My Eyes” was released in 1950. The song became a hit
and reached No. 1 on the rhythm and blues chart. Her sound on the single
gave her the description of “the girl with the tear in her voice.” This
sound came to be known as her signature sound. Brown was Atlantic
Record’s first star, and they marketed her as “Miss Rhythm.” She sang
the duet “Love Has Joined Us Together” with Clyde McPhatter and toured
on bills with him and others such as Ray Charles and Billy Eckstine. Brown left Atlantic Records in the early 1960s after she claimed the
label started cheating her. After leaving the record label, Brown
experienced more misfortune. She held a series of low-paying jobs as a
floor scrubber and bus driver. Soon, she was able to rise from her
misfortunes. She began singing club dates in the New York area in the mid-1960s. She recorded an album in 1968 with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band and continued her music career. Brown was invited to play the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson in the 1975 musical production of Selma in Los Angeles, California by comedian Redd Foxx. The musical was about civil rights, and Foxx was its producer. Later, she performed in Las Vegas, Nevada. The New York Times describes the rest of her entertainment career as being the “comeback that never ended.” Because of her exploitation by Atlantic Records, Brown became an
activist for musicians’ rights. She spoke out on stage and in interviews
on the unfair contracts that musicians in her generation had
experienced. Because she spoke out, Atlantic waived unrecouped debts
held by Brown and thirty-five other musicians of her era and agreed to
pay twenty years’ worth of retroactive royalties. Atlantic also
contributed almost $2 million to start the Rhythm and Blues Foundation,
which pushed for royalty reform and distributed millions of dollars to
musicians in need. Brown sustained many relationships throughout her life, having been
married three times. She had two sons, Ronnie McPhatter (given the last
name Jackson at birth) with Clyde McPhatter, and Earl Swanson with
saxophonist Earl Swanson. Her health started to decline near the end of
her life. She was able to overcome a stroke in 2000, but ultimately she
succumbed to a heart attack and stroke following a surgery at the age of
seventy-eight on November 17, 2006.
If popular music handed out comeback awards, R&B singer Ruth Brown would have one more trophy for her mantelpiece.
After decades of obscurity, Brown –who racked up so many hits in the
early Fifties for a fledgling Atlantic Records that the label was tagged
the House That Ruth Built – rebounded in the Eighties. She has stared
in Allen Toussaint’s off Broadway musical Staggerlee, appeared as the jive-talking disc jockey Motormouth Mabel in John Waters’s film Hairspray and hosted the National Public Radio series Harlem Hit Parade and BluesStage. Her current role in the Broadway play Black and Blue won her a Tony in 1989, and Brown’s latest album, Blues on Broadway,
earned her a Grammy Award. Her quest to recover back royalties from
Atlantic led to the formation of the nonprofit Rhythm & Blues
Foundation.
Born
Ruth Weston in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1928 (she became Ruth Brown
after a teenage marriage to trumpeter Jimmy Brown), she was an aspiring
jazz singer when she came to the attention of Atlantic Records in the
late Forties.
After a serious car accident sidelined her for a year, Brown recorded
in 1949 the ballad “So Long,” backed by a traditional jazz band led by
guitarist Eddie Condon. The song hit the R&B Top Ten, the first of
more than twenty of Brown’s singles to make the R&B charts during
the next decade. But it was “Teardrops From My Eyes,” in 1950, that set
the course for her career. The uptempo million-selling single – to be
followed by such monster hits as “5-10-15 Hours” and “(Mama) He Treats
Your Daughter Mean” – established Ruth Brown as a hard-rocking R&B
belter, one of the most successful and influential singers of the
Fifties.
Miss Rhythm, as she was nicknamed, finally crossed over to the pop
charts in 1957 with Leiber and Stoller’s “Lucky Lips.” That record, and
its follow-up, Bobby Darin and Mann Curtis’s “This Little Girl’s Gone
Rockin’,” moved her from the black tour circuit to Alan Freed’s early
rock & roll package shows.
Brown’s career tapered off in the late Fifties, and she and Atlantic Records parted ways in 1962.
When did you notice black music starting to solidify into rhythm & blues? I
guess in ’51 or ’52. You started hearing it from a radio show called
Randy’s Record Shop, in Gallatin, Tennessee. In the East and North, the
Top 100 stations weren’t playing it –— it was “race music.” But it was
coming out of Gallatin, Tennessee, on Randy’s Record Shop. What people
didn’t know was that Randy was a white man. [WLAC’s Randy’s Record Shop
Show, sponsored by a local record store, was hosted by Gene Nobles.] He
was the person who really started that whole thing when the turnabout
came for rhythm & blues. The station was strong: You could pick it
up in California and in Virginia. You could pick it up practically
everywhere.
Did you notice other stations jumping on the format? Yeah.
See, at that time in every major city there was a black-oriented radio
station. That was necessary. We didn’t get the coverage, but in every
local city there was always your favorite black DJ. I grew up listening
to Jack Holmes; he was the DJ who turned my ear. He had a program called
The Mail Bag. He played Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Lucky
Millinder, Buddy Johnson, the Charioteers, the Ink Spots. I could hardly
wait for my daddy to get out of the house in the morning, so I could
flip over to this station.
You began singing with Lucky Millinder’s big band. How did
you end up meeting Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson of Atlantic Records? I
had been fired by Lucky Millinder, and I was stranded in Washington,
D.C., without the price of a ticket to get back to Virginia. But because
I was in a business that my daddy didn’t want me in, I couldn’t call
home.
So I was introduced to Blanche Calloway, Cab’s sister, who was
running a club in Washington called the Crystal Caverns. She gave me a
job there singing, and I was supposed to work long enough to earn enough
money to go back home.
One night Duke Ellington was working at the Howard Theater, and he
came with Willis Conover, from the Voice of America, and Sonny Til of
the Orioles. I was singing Vaughn Monroe stuff, Andrews Sisters stuff,
Bing Crosby…. This is the kind of junk I was singing. Now, Sonny Til and the Orioles had this record called “It’s Too Soon
to Know.” And when I realized that that was Sonny Til –— ohhhh! I told
the bandleader I wanted to sing “It’s Too Soon to Know,” and I dedicated
it to him. I saw Duke Ellington’s expression, and without his saying a
word, I knew that he was pleased with what he was hearing.
Willis Conover was kind of fidgeting in his seat, and I thought he
was being disrespectful to me. When he got up from the table and went to
a pay phone, I was insulted. I thought, “That’s how bad I am.” But what
he was doing was calling Ahmet Ertegun. Ahmet sent Herb Abramson [an
original partner in Atlantic] and a fellow named Blackie Sales, who
worked for him; they were the ones that heard me. By then Blanche
Calloway had taught me some Ethel Waters things, and I was doing Billie
Holiday’s “Gloomy Sunday.” I think they saw my versatility. I wasn’t
doing any real swinging, grooving things –— I had a taste for torch
ballads. I was doing everything except what I would end up doing.
You made a verbal agreement with Abramson to record for
Atlantic and were on your way to New York City to sign the contract and
perform at the Apollo Theater when you were in a serious car accident. Yes, in Chester, Pennsylvania. Atlantic Records actually signed me to a contract in the hospital bed.
Had you met Ahmet Ertegun before this? No.
And you hadn’t even recorded a demo? Never.
And Atlantic paid for your hospitalization? Yes.
I was in the hospital for a year. I’ll never forget that: On my
twenty-first birthday, Ahmet came down to Chester to see me in that
hospital. And he brought me a book on how to sightread, a pitch pipe and
a big tablet to write on, because I had a knack for writing lyrics.
So you hadn’t even recorded a note for them, and here they were treating you pretty nicely. I
loved them. I didn’t know anything different to do except to love them.
I felt like I was part of the family. After I got out of the hospital,
Ahmet, Herb Abramson and Miriam Bienstock [Bienstock was Abramson’s
former wife, as well as a partner in and the comptroller for Atlantic],
when they would go somewhere to eat, they would come and take me. We
were like family. They took care of me.
Who else was on the label? Stick McGhee, Tiny
Grimes and Ivory Joe Hunter. Ivory Joe used to sit at the piano –— in
the same room where Miriam had her desk, and cartons were stacked on one
wall –— and play his material.
The kind of material you were singing in Washington was not exactly the kind of material you became known for on Atlantic. They
really didn’t know what I was going to do, what kind of singer I was
going to become. They knew I was a good singer, but they didn’t know
what to do with me. I was recording with the Delta Rhythm Boys, I was
recording ballads, they even had me singing some Yiddish songs in
English. They really didn’t know what to do with me, and my problem was I
could sing any of it.
But eventually Rudy Toombs came in with “Teardrops From My Eyes.”
That was the first one that really turned Ruth Brown in the direction of
being an R&B singer.
In 1950, when you recorded it, did you have any idea that this was a change in direction? I
had no idea which way it was going to go, it was just one of the songs.
I had come to New York, and I had been playing theaters and working
with the big bands. I was working with Count Basie, Charlie Ventura –—
they didn’t know where the hell to put me. I opened for Oscar Peterson, I
worked with Charlie Parker, I was down at the Earle Theater with
Frankie Laine on his show.
“Teardrops” turned it all around. “Teardrops”
went to the top of the charts and stayed some twenty weeks up there.
That song moved Atlantic up as a record company. And with that song, I
started to be boxed over there, in R&B. You had Roy Brown, Charles
Brown, Larry Darnell, the Dominoes, the Drifters – all of these people
were sort of in that. Rhythm & blues was becoming popular. Rhythm
& blues was a hot item, and that’s when I started headlining a lot
of package shows. We worked in barns and warehouses in the South.
You had three huge R&B hits in the early Fifties:
“Teardrops,” “5-10-15 Hours” and “(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean.”
But I gather that it was still black radio playing them for a
predominantly black audience. Well, it couldn’t basically be
an all-black audience, because by that time the concerts were
integrated, but separately. You had white spectators who had to be
listening to the black radio stations. That’s why eventually you had to
get rock & roll.
Did each tour seem to attract more whites? Yeah,
yeah. And there would be promoters who had sense enough to work
together; one would be white and one would be black. And the concerts
would be – downstairs where the dancers were – jampacked black. Upstairs
balcony, all the way around, white spectators. Then a lot of times when
the building didn’t allow for that —– if you had a warehouse or
something like that, where there wasn’t two layers – they had a dividing
line on the floor. That was the rope; sometimes it was just a
clothesline with a sign hung on one side to separate them. Or there
would be some big, burly white cops standing on one side to make sure
that the rope stayed in position, which a lot of times it didn’t,
because people got to go dancing, and they didn’t give a damn about the
rope.
Were you making a lot of money at this point? On my one-nighters, no. But we thought we were.
How about from the records? I wasn’t getting any
royalties at the time. You would go in and record singles, either two
sides or four, and you’d get $69 or $70 a side, so you’re talking maybe
$150 for the session. I think the highest was when you got up to about
$250.
And there were no royalties at all? At that time
they were charging you for everything. You paid for the studio, you
paid for the musicians, you paid for the charts, you paid for all the
records that were given out for PR purposes, you paid for the manuscript
paper, you paid for everything. If you needed something, you could
always go to the record company and get a couple of hundred bucks.
But you were making money on the road. What you thought was
money. Like if I made $750 a night, that’s a lot of money. Out of that
$750, you had to pay for your hotel bill and everything, but my father
made $35 a week on his job, with eight children. That was the danger
point for many of us: to have come from an existence where you learned
to live on a man’s salary of $35 a week. That’s a big shift.
At what point did rhythm & blues start becoming rock & roll? When
the white kids started to dance to it. It was the same music, just
different people doing it, that’s all it was. We went to Cleveland a
couple of times and met this guy called Moondog, who later became Alan
Freed. But by this time the white kids had took to this music. They
loved it. They had bought it, they didn’t give a damn who played it –—
if your face was green. And Alan Freed was smart enough to see that.
Was Alan Freed unique among white DJs? There
started to be quite a few of them; all the cities had somebody in a
little corner doing something. He just got the prominence because he was
smart enough to start putting shows together. He out-extravaganza’d the
extravaganzas. He was smart enough to mix the acts.
And cover versions of black tunes done by white artists started to proliferate. Do you remember some Ruth Brown covers? Patti Page covered me. Tony Bennett covered me. Georgia Gibbs covered me. Kay Starr covered me.
Was this in any perverse way flattering? Well,
some people might have thought it was flattering. But for me, it didn’t
do a damn thing except stop me from getting on the top TV shows. I never
got to do The Ed Sullivan Show. Patti Page did; Georgia Gibbs did.
Your first crossover hit didn’t come until 1957, when “Lucky
Lips,” a pretty silly Leiber and Stoller song, made it to the pop Top
Forty. Leiber and Stoller were coming up with things for
the Coasters, and they came up with this song for me. Atlantic was kind
of fighting then to see what direction I was going to go in. This was
the only song that got me on the Dick Clark show. So I did American Bandstand
—– big deal! Because of “Lucky Lips.” What about all the other ones I
had? I felt kind of ridiculous singing, “When I was just a little girl,
with long and silky curls.” Never had no long and silky curls in all my
life.
Did you notice any payola going on? Uh-huh,
uh-huh. Yeah, it was obvious that some record companies were taken care
of better than others. And that was when you started to notice that the
business itself was really a business. You know, there were people
collecting tickets and not tearing up the tickets and taking them back
to the people that were selling the tickets, and they would resell the
tickets again. And you look up sometimes, and the valets and whatnot are
looking better then you are.
Did the business begin to turn sour for you? Well,
with the packaging of the big shows it started to become sort of like a
rat race. Performances ceased being experiences and started being like
“Here’s twenty-one people, each singing one song.” I did the Alan Freed
show and sang “Lucky Lips” seven times a day, every day. Fiasco is what
it started to be. It became so huge, it was like circus time. We’d just
meet each other running. I’d bump into the Platters, they’d run up there
– [sings] “Only yo-o-o-ou” – and before they could get to the chorus,
they were off, they’re gone, and somebody else, Buddy Knox, is up and
does “Party Doll,” one song. Then Teddy Randazzo, one song; the Turbans,
one song. “Hi, how are you, here we go again.” There ceased to be
fulfillment.
When did you notice things turning bad for you at Atlantic, the House That Ruth Built? When
I sat in the office one time for four hours before they paid any
attention to me. I went over to see them, and by that time the
secretaries had secretaries who had secretaries. And I had to stop at
the desk and leave my name. “Oh, do they know what this is in reference
to?” I said, “I’d like to speak to Mr. Ertegun if possible; if not, his
secretary.” And I was told to take a seat. And four hours after that,
I’m still sitting there. I was hurt. The receptionist would look at me
like I was something that she smelled. And I had gone there to ask for a
loan. I was in a little difficulty. But I went rather than called,
because I didn’t want to be passed from one secretary to the other. And I
went hoping to talk to Ahmet on a one-to-one basis.
You were with Atlantic until 1961. Did you have much contact with Ahmet Ertegun in those last couple of years? No.
You had some difficult years after that. I got
myself a day job. A nine to five. Things were just not going well. I was
trying to carry on a house out on Long Island with my children, so I
became a domestic. And worked in schools —– in Head Start, day care,
drove school buses. I did that up until 1976. By that time I had gotten
both of my children in college, and I started to climb back up by my
fingernails again.
Did you at any point think, “I made an awful lot of money for somebody once. Where’s all my money”? That came along in the Seventies. I started seeing records coming out of Europe and different places.
Reissues of your Atlantic albums. Yeah, and I
kept looking in the mailbox and wondering. So I got a lawyer on Long
Island to contact Atlantic about my royalties. Three lawyers, in fact.
And each time there would be a lapse of about a month or so, and then
they’d write back and say it was a dead issue: “Well, we wrote to
Atlantic, and here is a photostatic copy of the response we got.” And
each time it would say that Ruth Brown’s account is so far in arrears
that she owes us so many thousands of dollars. Each attorney would come
back and say the same thing: “Don’t bother with this.”
At what point did you make peace with Atlantic? Through
an attorney named Howell Begle. He was a Ruth Brown fan; his mother had
taken him to see an Alan Freed show. He came to see me perform, and he
had about eight or nine albums for me to autograph. And I said, “Where
did you get all these records?” And he said, “I paid dearly for them,
but they’re very precious to me.” And I said, “Well, I don’t know who
got the money that you paid for these, but I didn’t.” And I went on to
tell him that I hadn’t gotten a royalty statement in over twenty-five
years. He couldn’t believe it. I said, “Well, not only me. There are a
whole lot of us.” He said, “Let’s have lunch and talk.”
When was that? About ten years ago. He said, “I want to try and help you.”
When did you know Howell Begle was getting some results? When
he called me to come to Washington in front of the Senate Investigative
Committee. Then one day I got a statement from Atlantic. Whoa! I hadn’t
seen a statement since I don’t know when. They said they didn’t know
how to find me, that they’d been sending statements to Portsmouth,
Virginia, where I hadn’t lived in 450 years.
I was doing a little off-Broadway show called Staggerlee.
And the doorman came and said, “There’s a man out here from a record
company who wants to see you.” I thought perhaps somebody was coming to
talk about recording me, because indeed I could use it. And so I said,
“Who is it? What record company?” And a voice said, “It’s Ahmet from
Atlantic.” And there he was. He had seen the show, and he stood in the
door – I just looked at him, he looked at me, and I think his eyes got
watery, and I got watery. Before I knew it, the tears were running. And
he just walked over to me, and I embraced him, and he said in my ear,
“Let’s don’t talk now, but everything’s going to be all right. I’d never
let anything happen to you.”
But he did turn and say, “You know, Ruth, you got a good lawyer.”
Rhythm-and-blues singer Ruth Brown died last week at the age of
78 from complications following a heart attack. Brown got her start in
the 1940s and influenced an entire generation of singers including
Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Little Richard and Bonnie Raitt. Her
hits include "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean" and "Teardrops From My
Eyes." Later, she appeared in John Waters' film Hairspray and in the Broadway hit Black and Blue. She published an autobiography, Miss Rhythm, in 1996. Rhythm." This interview originally aired on Dec. 22, 1997.
Digital Classroom: Ruth Brown, "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean"
"Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean" (1953)
Ruth Brown’s
“Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean” was a smash hit on the R&B
charts in early 1953. The song encapsulates the energy and excitement of
African-American music in the first half of the 1950s. This was the
type of R&B that Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed played on his
“Moondog” radio show, which exposed African-American music to a broad
audience of young people. Ruth Brown (inducted 1993) was the biggest
female star of the “Big Bang” era of rock and roll, when the music
exploded across America. Her popularity helped propel the success of
Atlantic Records, the independent record label co-founded by Ahmet
Ertegun. Ertegun loved R&B, and recognized the potential of the
music to captivate an audience. Brown took elements from gospel and
blues to create her own distinctive sound, and Atlantic Records became
“The House That Ruth Built.”
Ruth Weston left her hometown of Portsmouth more than 50 years ago as a young woman, yearning to sing and see the world.
At 72, the singer known around
the world as Ruth Brown, or "Miss Rhythm," is still traveling and is
celebrated for her career in rhythm and blues, jazz and rock 'n' roll.
She is a Grammy Award nominee this year. "I'm still working," said
Brown, who lives in Nevada. In recent years she has been keeping busy
with appearances at events such as the Hampton Jazz Festival, the
Monterey Jazz Festival in California, and gigs from Broadway to Europe.
She was born on Jan. 12, 1928, and
her music career started at Emanel AME Church in Portsmouth, where her
father was pastor and where she sang in the choir. Eventually, she was
performing at New York City's Apollo Theater and overseas. Her start in
the recording industry came in 1948 when she sang under the Atlantic
Records label, turning out hits such as "So Long" and "Teardrops in My
Eyes."
During
the 1950s Brown kept a hard-driving schedule on the nightclub circuit
that earned her the nickname "Queen of One-Nighters."
She won a Tony award for her 1989
role in Broadway's "Black and Blue," and won a Grammy for the release
that year of the album "Blues on Broadway." She was inducted into the
Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Her Grammy nomination this year is
for her album, "A Good Day for the Blues."
One of her most requested hits
these days is the golden oldie "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean."
Many a teen-ager and housewife rocked to the sassy song released in
1953.
No matter how far Brown's soulful sounds spread, she treasures her roots in Virginia.
"One thing is she's never forgotten where she came from," said Benjamin Weston, Brown's brother who lives in Portsmouth.
And Portsmouth hasn't forgotten
her. The city has honored her with a Ruth Brown Day and a street named
Ruth Brown Drive near the new I.C. Norcom High School there.
She has performed at the city's
annual Umoja Festival, held the third weekend in September, sponsored by
the Portsmouth Parks, Recreation and General Services Department.
"She's a dynamic performer," said Aldora Hatcher, a parks department
spokeswoman. "In her hometown, there's a niche of people that she draws.
And she puts Portsmouth on the map having her as a native. Having the
street named after her shows the gratitude the city feels."
Music lovers of all ages treasure the
songs Brown has recorded throughout her career, and her tunes have
contributed to efforts to advance the role of blacks in rock 'n' roll,
rhythm and blues and jazz.
Blacks faced many challenges in
the music world during her heyday. Many white-only mainstream hotels and
eating places would not accept the business of black entertainers after
performances. Some record companies exploited black artists, never
paying them a fair share of the revenue their recordings generated.
Brown is considered among female
pioneers in rock 'n' roll, and her songs have endured across
generations, races and music styles.
Asked to assess the impact of her
music, she said, "A lot of people grew up and were nourished by this
music. It is definitely one of the spokes in the wheel of American
music. I think it's an honor to be here and see it all come full circle.
"We've come a long way."
Learn more
"Heart & Soul: A Celebration of Black Music Style in America, 1930-1975" by Bob Merlis and David Seay, 1997. "Miss Rhythm: The Autobiography of Ruth Brown, Rhythm and Blues Legend" by Ruth Brown, with Andrew Yale
Rhythm
and blues singer Ruth Brown signed with Atlantic Records at a young
age and recorded a number of hit songs throughout the 1950s.
Synopsis
Born
in Portsmouth, Virginia, on January 12, 1928, singer Ruth Brown signed
with Atlantic Records at a young age and recorded a number of hit
R&B songs throughout the 1950s, including "I'll Wait for You," "I
Know," "5-10-15 Hours," and "Mambo Baby." She went on to have a
successful theater career later in life.
Early Life
The
singer known as "Miss Rhythm," Ruth Brown, was born Ruth Weston on
January 12, 1928, in Portsmouth, Virginia. The oldest of seven
children, her father was the choir director at the local Emmanuel
African Methodist Episcopal Church. Brown made her debut in the church
choir at the age of 4. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact
that her father was a choral instructor, Brown rebelled against church
music and all formal musical training. She preferred the pop songs she
heard on the radio to the music she sang at church, and stubbornly
refused to learn to read music. "In school we had music classes, but I
ducked them," Brown later recalled. "They were just a little too slow. I
didn't want to learn to read no note. I knew I could sing it. I woke
up one morning and I could sing." During her childhood, Brown and her siblings spent their summers at
their grandmother's farm in North Carolina, where they worked all
summer picking cotton in the fields. "That made me the strong woman I
am," she said. Brown was a mischievous teenager, telling her parents
she was going to choir practice but actually sneaking out to sing for
soldiers at USO clubs. It was through her clandestine singing career
that she met and fell in love with a sailor and trumpeter named Jimmy
Brown. Knowing that her parents would disapprove of their relationship,
not to mention her secret USO performances, Brown (just 17) and her
new boyfriend ran away to Detroit, Michigan, in 1945 with hopes of
making it together as performers. They married shortly thereafter, but
Brown would later discover that Jimmy was already married. Their
marriage was legally void. (By the time Brown learned of her husband's
previous marriage, she had already developed a reputation under his
surname, so she kept the name Ruth Brown as a stage name for the rest
of her life.) In Detroit, Brown landed a gig singing at
the Frolic Bar and it was there that she was spotted by the famous
bandleader and talent scout Lucky Millinder, who recruited her as a
vocalist for his orchestra. "I could hardly believe my luck," Brown
remembered. "I was joining a group with a bunch of hit records to its
name. I really felt the big time was beckoning." However, after a
performance one night at a Washington, D.C. nightclub, Millinder
spotted Brown carrying a tray of Cokes to her fellow band members.
Furious that his star singer would degrade herself—and by association,
him—by acting like a waitress, Millinder fired her on the spot and
refused to give her a ride back to Detroit.
Record Deal
Stranded
in D.C., Brown had a chance encounter with Blanche Calloway, the
sister of the famous bandleader Cab Calloway and the owner of Crystal
Caverns nightclub. Calloway offered Brown a regular gig performing at
her nightclub, where in 1948 the famous DJ Willis Conover saw Brown
perform and recommended her to his friends at Atlantic Records. Brown
signed a recording deal with Atlantic shortly after in October 1948,
and the record label booked her a debut concert at the famous Apollo
Theater in New York City. However, making the drive from
Washington to New York City on the morning of her big show at the
Apollo, Brown was involved in a terrible car crash in which she broke
both her legs. Brown spent the next 11 months recovering at a hospital
in Chester, Pennsylvania, during which time her supposed husband,
Jimmy, left her because he thought she'd never walk again. In the end,
Brown made a full recovery; in the spring of 1949 she finally recorded
her first song for Atlantic, a blues ballad called "So Long" that
proved an instant hit and cracked the Top 10 on the R&B charts. Her
next hit single, 1950's "Teardrops From My Eyes," reached No. 1 on the
R&B charts and stayed there for three months. This song also
earned Brown her two most enduring nicknames. The first was "The Girl
With a Tear in Her Voice," after the passionate squeal-like sound she
produced when singing "Teardrops." Her most famous moniker, "Miss
Rhythm," was given to her by the pop star Frankie Laine after he heard
the track. Throughout the 1950s, Ruth Brown offered up a slew of
hit R&B songs that boosted her career (and along with it Atlantic
Records and the still relatively new genre of rhythm and blues). Her
greatest hits included "I'll Wait for You," "I Know," "5-10-15 Hours,"
"(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean," "Oh What a Dream," "Mambo Baby"
and "Don't Deceive Me." In particular, "(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter
Mean" and "5-10-15 Hours" achieved enormous popularity with black and
white audiences alike, providing a template for much of the rock 'n'
roll music that followed in their wake. Brown's records were so consistently
popular that Atlantic Records was sometimes referred to as "The House
That Ruth Built." Nevertheless, Brown's enormous popularity and the
success of her records did not translate into personal financial
wealth. Due to a practice known as "whitewashing," in which white
singers covered black artists' songs without permission, Brown's
records never sold nearly their full potential. Furthermore, Atlantic
Records forced Brown to pay recording and touring expenses out of
pocket—costs that nearly equaled her cut of the sales. As a
result of whitewashing and the predatory financial policies of Atlantic
Records, by the early 1960s—when her popularity waned and the record
company let her go—Brown had almost no savings. She moved to Long
Island, New York, where she resorted to working various part-time jobs
as a teacher's aide, school bus driver and maid just to make ends meet.
It was a precipitous fall for a woman who had been one of the nation's
most popular singers just a few years earlier. Brown had been briefly
married to a saxophonist named Earl Swanson during the mid-1950s, and
in 1963, she married a police officer named Bill Blunt, but they too
divorced in 1966. "I could pick a good song, but I sure couldn't pick a
man," Brown wrote in her autobiography.
Acting Career
Then in 1975, with the help of her friend Redd Foxx, a prominent comedian, Brown moved to Los Angeles to star in the musical Selma. The role proved the beginning of a miraculous comeback. From 1979-80, Brown starred in Norman Lear's sitcom Hello, Larry,
before returning to New York in the early 1980s to enjoy a successful
run in several off-Broadway musicals. The peak of Brown's comeback came
in 1989 when she won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for
her role in the Broadway production of Black and Blue as well as a Grammy Award for her album Blues on Broadway. In
addition to her renewed success as a performer, during the 1980s Brown
waged a relentless and ultimately successful campaign to reform the
music industry's royalty system. Her efforts resulted in the creation
of the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in Philadelphia in 1988 to help
emerging as well as aging R&B musicians. The nonprofit was financed
by a settlement with Atlantic Records. In 1993, Brown was
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She spent the rest of her
life giving occasional tribute concerts and working with the Rhythm and
Blues Foundation. On November 17, 2006, Brown died due to
complications from a heart condition. She was 78 years old. During
the 1950s, Brown was one of America's leading R&B singers. Her
name was so synonymous with the genre that many commentators quipped
that R&B actually stood for Ruth and Brown. One of the first great
divas of modern American popular music, her songs provided a blueprint
for much of the rock 'n' roll that followed in her wake. In addition to
the musical legacy she left to the artists who came after her, Brown
also left future artists a more artist-friendly environment, thanks to
her tireless work to reform the royalty system. Brown's friend Bonnie Raitt summarized the traits that underpinned
Brown's success: "What I loved about her was her combination of
vulnerability and resilience, and fighting spirit. It was not
arrogance, but she was just really not going to lay down and roll over
for anyone."
Singer Ruth Brown dies at age 78 To view the Fan Page for Ruth Brown just click on the link in the right column One of the pioneering rhythm and blues singers, Ruth Brown, has died aged 78. Known
as "the girl with a tear in her voice" for emotion-laden singing, Brown
died on Friday after a stroke and heart attack in Las Vegas. She
was a best-selling black female artist of the early 1950s with songs
including (Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean, So Long, and Mambo Lips. Despite a career slump in the 1960s, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Her hits for Atlantic Records were so huge that the record company became known as "The House that Ruth Built." 'Important and beloved' But her work with Atlantic Records ended in 1961 as her gutsy, belting style fell out of favour. When her career revived, she led a battle for artists to receive royalties from record companies. Singer Bonnie Raitt said: "Ruth was one of the most important and beloved figures in modern music. "You
can hear her influence in everyone from Little Richard to Etta (James),
Aretha (Franklin), Janis (Joplin) and divas like Christina Aguilera
today." Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr//2/hi/entertainment/6160900.stm Ruth Brown, R&B Singer and Actress, Dies at 78by JON PARELES November 17, 2006 New York Times Ruth
Brown, the gutsy rhythm-and-blues singer whose career extended to
acting and crusading for musicians’ rights, died on Friday in Las Vegas.
She was 78 and lived in Las Vegas. The cause was complications
following a heart attack and stroke she suffered after surgery, and Ms.
Brown had been on life support since Oct. 29, said her friend, lawyer
and executor, Howell Begle. “She was one of the original divas,”
said the singer Bonnie Raitt, who worked with Ms. Brown and Mr. Begle
to improve royalties for rhythm-and-blues performers. “I can’t really
say that I’ve heard anyone that sounds like Ruth, before or after. She
was a combination of sass and innocence, and she was extremely funky.
She could really put it right on the beat, and the tone of her voice was
just mighty. And she had a great heart. “What I loved about
her,” Ms. Raitt added, “was her combination of vulnerability and
resilience and fighting spirit. It was not arrogance, but she was just
really not going to lay down and roll over for anyone.” Ms.
Brown sustained a career for six decades: first as a bright, bluesy
singer who was called “the girl with a tear in her voice” and then,
after some lean years, as the embodiment of an earthy, indomitable black
woman. She had a life of hard work, hard luck, determination, audacity
and style. Sometimes it was said that R & B stood for Ruth Brown as
much as for rhythm-and-blues.
As the 1950s began, Ms. Brown’s
singles for the fledgling Atlantic Records — like “(Mama) He Treats Your
Daughter Mean” and “5-10-15 Hours” — became both the label’s bankroll
and templates for rock ‘n’ roll. She could sound as if she were hurting,
or joyfully lusty, or both at once. Her voice was forthright, feisty
and ready for anything.
After Ms. Brown’s string of hits ended,
she kept singing but also went on to a career in television, radio and
movies — including a memorable role as the disc jockey Motormouth
Maybelle in John Waters’s “Hairspray” — and on Broadway, where she won a
Tony Award for her part in “Black and Blue.” She worked clubs, concerts
and festivals into the 21st century. “Whatever I have to say, I get it
said,” she told an interviewer in 1995. “Like the old spirituals say,
‘I’ve gone too far to turn me ‘round now.’ "
Ms. Brown was born
Ruth Weston on Jan. 12, 1928, in Portsmouth, Va., the oldest of seven
children. She made her vocal debut when she was 4, and her father, the
choir director at the local Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church,
lifted her onto the church piano. In summers, she and her siblings
picked cotton at her grandmother’s farm in North Carolina. “That made me
the strong woman I am,” she said in 1995.
As a teenager, she
would tell her family she was going to choir practice and perform
instead at U.S.O. clubs at nearby naval stations. She ran away from home
at 17, working with a trumpeter named Jimmy Brown and using his last
name onstage. She married him, or thought she did; he was already
married. But she was making a reputation as Ruth Brown, and the name
stuck.
The big-band leader Lucky Millinder heard her in Detroit
late in 1946, hired her for his band and fired her in Washington.
Stranded, she managed to find a club engagement at the Crystal Caverns.
There, the disc jockey Willis Conover, who broadcast jazz
internationally on Voice of America radio, heard Ms. Brown and
recommended her to friends at Atlantic Records.
On the way to
New York City, however, she was seriously injured in an automobile
accident and hospitalized for most of a year; her smashed legs would be
painful for the rest of her life. She stood on crutches in 1949 to
record her first session for Atlantic, and the bluesy ballad “So Long”
became a hit.
She wanted to keep singing ballads, but Atlantic
pushed her to try upbeat songs, and she tore into them. During the
sessions for “Teardrops From My Eyes,” her voice cracked upward to a
squeal. Herb Abramson of Atlantic Records liked it, called it a “tear,”
and after ”Teardrops From My Eyes” reached No. 1 on the rhythm-and-blues
chart, the sound became her trademark for a string of hits. “If I was getting ready to go and record and I had a bad throat, they’d say, ‘Good!’,” she once recalled. Ms.
Brown was the best-selling black female performer of the early 1950s,
even though, in that segregated era, many of her songs were picked up
and redone by white singers, like Patti Page and Georgia Gibbs, in tamer
versions that became pop hits. The pop singer Frankie Laine gave her a
lasting nickname: Miss Rhythm. Working the rhythm-and-blues
circuit in the 1950s, when dozens of her singles reached the R and B Top
10, Ms. Brown drove a Cadillac and had romances with stars like the
saxophonist Willis (Gator Tail) Jackson and the singer Clyde McPhatter
of the Drifters. (Her first son, Ronald, was given the last name
Jackson; decades later, she told him he was actually Mr. McPhatter’s
son, and he now sings with a latter-day lineup of the Drifters.) In
1955, Ms. Brown married Earl Swanson, a saxophonist, and had a second
son, Earl; the marriage ended in divorce. Her two sons survive her: Mr.
Jackson in Los Angeles, who has three children, and Mr. Swanson in Las
Vegas. She is also survived by four siblings: Delia Weston in Las Vegas,
Leonard Weston in Long Island, and Alvin and Benjamin Weston in
Portsmouth, Va.
Her streak of hits ended soon after the 1960s
began. She lived on Long Island, raised her sons, worked as a teacher’s
aide and a maid, and was married for three years to a police officer,
Bill Blunt. On weekends, she sang club dates in the New York area, and
she recorded an album in 1968 with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band.
Although her hits had launched Atlantic Records — sometimes called the
House that Ruth Built —she was unable at one point to afford a home
telephone. The comedian Redd Foxx, whom she had once helped out
of a financial jam, brought her to Los Angeles in 1976 to play Mahalia
Jackson in “Selma,” a musical about civil rights he was producing. She
moved on to sing in Las Vegas and continued a comeback that never ended.
The television producer Norman Lear gave her a role in the sitcom
“Hello, Larry.” She returned to New York City in 1982, appearing in Off
Broadway productions including “Stagger Lee,” and in 1985, she went to
Paris to perform in the revue “Black and Blue,” rejoining it later for
its Broadway run. Ms. Brown began to speak out, onstage and in
interviews, about the exploitative contracts musicians of her generation
had signed. Many hit-making musicians had not recouped debts to their
labels, according to record-company accounting, and so were not
receiving royalties at all. Shortly before Atlantic Records held a
40th-birthday concert at Madison Square Garden in 1988, the label agreed
to waive unrecouped debts for Ms. Brown and 35 other musicians of her
era and to pay 20 years of retroactive royalties. Atlantic also
contributed nearly $2 million to start the Rhythm and Blues Foundation,
which pushed other labels toward royalty reform and distributed millions
of dollars directly to musicians in need, although it has struggled to
sustain itself in recent years. “Black and Blue” revitalized Ms.
Brown’s recording career, on labels including Fantasy and Bullseye
Blues. Her 1989 album “Blues on Broadway” won a Grammy Award for Best
Jazz Vocal Performance, Female. She was a radio host on the public-radio
shows “Harlem Hit Parade” and “BluesStage.” In 1995, she released her
autobiography, “Miss Rhythm” (Dutton), written with Andrew Yule; it won
the Gleason Award for music journalism. She was inducted into the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. She toured steadily, working
concert halls, festivals and cabarets. This year, she recorded songs for
the coming movie by John Sayles, “Honeydripper,” and was about to fly
to Alabama to act in it when she became ill. She never learned
to read music. “In school, we had music classes, but I ducked them,” she
said in 1995. “They were just a little too slow. I didn’t want to learn
to read no note. I knew I could sing it. I woke up one morning and I
could sing.”
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
Ruth Brown 
