Music of the Harlem Renaissance

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, 1899-1974: Band leader, composer, pianist, and perhaps one of the best-known and beloved figures of his time. Ellington was responsible for over one thousand compositions that surpassed the generic boundaries of blues, pop, and jazz. He is credited with having been instrumental in elevating jazz to an art form.

"Gladys Bentley [1907-1960] was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of American George L. Bentley and his wife, a Trinidadian, Mary Mote. She appeared at Harry Hansberry's "Clam House" on 133rd Street, one of New York City's most notorious gay speakeasies, in the 1920s, and headlined in the early thirties at Harlem's Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in men's clothes (including a signature tuxedo and top hat), played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting outrageously with women in the audience" (1).

 Billie ("Lady Day") Holiday (1915-1959): Known for her unique vocal style, Billie Holiday's name is synonymous with jazz diva. Many of the songs on which she collaborated have evolved as jazz standards, including "Don't Explain," and "God Bless the Child." Her song "Strange Fruit" is a haunting protest to lynchings that were prominent in the American South during her reign.

Ethel Waters (1896-1977): Waters' career took her from Baltimore, to Chicago, to Atlanta, where she worked with Bessie Smith. Smith's objection to Waters' "competition" relegated the singer to performing "ballads and popular songs" (2). Later Waters moved to Harlem, where she built a following as a premiere blues singer at a club called Edmond's Cellar. Her best known and most beloved recordings include "Stormy Weather," "Heat Wave," and "His Eye is on the Sparrow." Waters was also an Academy Award-winning actress, starring in Member of the Wedding, a film based on the novel by Carson McCullers.

Bessie Smith (1894-1937): By the age of nine, Bessie Smith had lost both her mother and father, and one older brother, leaving an older sister, Viola, to raise the impoverished young family. While still a child, Bessie and another brother earned money by "busking" on the streets of Chattanooga: performing musical numbers as a team. Bessie would sing and dance while her sibling accompanied her on guitar. Smith began recording in 1923, and by the time she relocated to Philadelphia, she had earned a national following. Her record label dubbed her "Queen of the Blues."

Josephine Baker (1906-1975): Known otherwise as "Creole Goddess," and "Bronze Venus," Josephine Baker began her singing and dancing career at an early age. By 15 she performed her first St. Louis vaudeville show in 1924, and the next year performed as a chorus girl in Harlem. Baker later performed in Paris at the Theatre des Champs Elysees to overwhelming success.
Jacob M. Appel describes Baker's legacy in his online biography of the dancer, writing that "[o]n stage, Josephine Baker epitomized the flamboyant and risqué entertainment of the Jazz Age. Her overtly erotic danse sauvage, her exotic costumes of feathers and bananas, and her ability to replicate the rhythms of jazz through contortions of her body made the young African American dancer one of the most original and controversial performers of the 1920s. From her Parisian debut in 1925, Baker rocked middle-class sensibilities and helped usher in a new era in popular culture. In the words of newspaperwoman and cultural critic Janet Flanner, Baker's 'magnificent dark body, a new model to the French, proved for the first time that black was beautiful.' Off stage, Baker's decadent antics and uncanny ability to market herself helped to transform her into one of the first popular celebrities to build an international, mass appeal which cut across classes and cultures" (3).


A recording of Bessie Smith's "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out":