Alberta Hunter Downhearted Blues Classic Revisited
. Musicologist Bill Dahl contributed liner notes. (The title was previously available on CD, but has been re-mastered and will now be available on CD and 180-gram vinyl for the first time.) Here is the backstory: It's difficult to decide which was the most remarkable facet of pioneering blues chanteuse Alberta Hunter's incredible career. Was it her role in the vanguard of the "classic blues" movement of the early 1920s, when she recorded prolifically for Paramount and other labels during the industry's first foray into the idiom? Her entertainment of grateful U.S. troops during not one war, but two? Or her heartwarming late 1970s/early 1980s comeback on the New York cabaret circuit after more than two decades away from singing professionally, when she was well into her 80s? One fact is inescapable: when she died on October 17, 1984 in New York at age 89, Hunter was a genuine star once more. Born on April 1, 1895 in Memphis, Hunter was weaned on W.C. Handy's pioneering blues. By 16 she was in Chicago in the midst of a celebrated five-year residence at the city's Dreamland club, singing in front of King Oliver & His Creole Jazz Band with Louis Armstrong. Hunter made her recording debut in 1921 for Black Swan Records, one of the first black-owned labels, with "How Long, Sweet Daddy, How Long" b/w "Bring Back the Joys." From there she went to Paramount Records, cutting half a dozen sides including the original "Down Hearted Blues," which she wrote with piano accompanist Lovie Austin and forcefully revisited on the 1981 live album. (Bessie Smith, the immortal Empress of the Blues, ended up scoring a bigger hit with the song in 1923.) Hunter continued to record prolifically for Paramount, backed by Fletcher Henderson and, on 1923's "Stingaree Blues," Fats Waller.
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