Saturday, March 30, 2019

Ruth Brown (1928-2006): Legendary, iconic, and innovative singer, songwriter, song stylst, ensemble leader, producer, and teacher

SOUND PROJECTIONS



AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE



EDITOR:  KOFI NATAMBU



SPRING, 2019



VOLUME SEVEN    NUMBER ONE

WADADA LEO SMITH

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

CINDY BLACKMAN
(March 23-29)

RUTH BROWN
(March 30-April 6)

JOHN LEWIS
(April 7-13)

KOKO TAYLOR
(April 14-20)

PUBLIC ENEMY
(April 21-27)

BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON
(April 28-May 4)

MODERN JAZZ QUARTET
(May 5-11)

DE LA SOUL
(May 12-18)

KATHLEEN BATTLE
(May 19-25)

JULIA PERRY
(May 26-June 1)

HALE SMITH
(June 2-8)

BIG BOY CRUDUP
(June 9-15)


 

Ruth Brown

(1928-2006)

Artist Biography by Bill Dahl






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). 


Fine and Mellow

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. 


https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/ruthbrown

Ruth Brown



“Miss Rhythm”

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





https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/ruth-brown

ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME
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.

Biography

To the top



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)




NPR logo



Review


Forebears: Ruth Brown, The Fabulous Miss Rhythm

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.

Music


Ruth Brown, 78, a Queen of R&B, Dies




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.



Ruth Brown (1928-2006)

 



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.
Subjects: African American History: PeopleAfrican American History

Home Music Music News

Q&A: Ruth Brown


“R&B became rock & roll when the white kids danced to it”

April 19, 1990  
Rolling Stone

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.”


In This Article: Coverwall, Ruth Brown


https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6530894

Ruth Brown: Remembering Miss Rhythm




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.


AUDIO:  <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/6530894/6530895" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"></iframe>

https://www.rockhall.com/digital-classroom-ruth-brown-mama-he-treats-your-daughter-mean

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.”

https://www.richmond.com/special-section/black-history/ruthbrown/article_8c146a2a6b0d11e2-8071-001a4bcf6878.html 




Ruth Brown



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

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

https://www.biography.com/people/ruth-brown-17172326

BIOGRAPHY

Ruth Brown



Ruth Brown Biography


Singer, Theater Actress, Actress (1928–2006)

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."


http://panafricannews.blogspot.com/2006/11/legendary-rhythm-blues-artist-and.html

Legendary Rhythm & Blues Artist and Actress, Ruth Brown, Joins the Ancestors


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 78 by 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.”