Everyone's photos, videos and docs, with the keywords: "Singer"

Busker

nobody@ipernity.com (Joe, Son of the Rock) — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 21:07:19 +0000

Glasgow

Arabella Fields: The Black Nightingale

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 15:39:42 +0000

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She was as huge as Josephine Baker was in France. Miss Fields gained her fame throughout Europe, learned their language, and became one of the first women to make a record. She also starred in two silent European films.

Arabella Fields came to be known in Europe as "The Black Nightingale." A contralto, she was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 31, 1879. She initially came to Europe as one half of a brother and sister singing act (James and Bella Fields) in 1889. From the 1890's to the 1920's she toured as a single act throughout Europe and became one of the most prolific African American entertainers outside the States.

Fields was one of several women to make records in the 1900s. Her first recording was for the Anker label in Berlin in 1907; reissued many times, her twenty year old original records were listed in a 1928 catalogue. In this respect, the only artist comparable to Fields is Enrico Caruso, whose acoustic pre-1914 recordings were available well into the 1920s era of electric recording.

To attract attention of her German audiences Fields often dressed in German style attire. She was also featured in many adverts in Europe (the photo is from an advert where she is dressed as an 'Alpine Cowgirl,' in 1910). In 1907 she was featured in two silent European films.

In the first two decades of the 20th century she toured widely singing German lieder and Swiss yodels as well as English language songs. During the 20s and 30s she appeared in various black musicals that toured Europe. Among them, Sam Woodings 'Chocolate Kiddies' and Louis Douglas's 'Black Follies Girls and Negro Revue.'

According to newspapers of that time she was in Amsterdam in 1915, 1916, and 1917. And made tours in the Netherlands in 1926, 1928, and 1931. It appears she was in at least one American film, Love in Morocco (1933) in which she portrayed a slave named Mabrouka.

The social climate encouraged many African American entertainers performing in Europe to remain there permanently. Miss Fields lived the rest of her life in Germany.

Sources: Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe by Neil A Wynn; 26 Oct. 1907, Berlin, Germany, Trau & Schwab, Dresden

Florence Mills

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 18:14:30 +0000

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Ms. Mills in costume when she performed in a skit called, 'Indian Habits' in the play Dixie to Broadway in London in 1926 ... and for those curious here is an FYI about the history of the swastika: The swastika is an ancient symbol that has been used for over 3,000 years. (That even predates the ancient Egyptian symbol, the Ankh!) Artifacts such as pottery and coins from ancient Troy show that the swastika was a commonly used symbol as far back as 1000 BC. During the following thousand years, the image of the swastika was used by many cultures around the world, including in China, Japan, India, and southern Europe. By the Middle Ages, the swastika was a well known, if not commonly used, symbol but was called by many different names: China (wan), England (fylfot), Germany (Hakenkreuz), Greece (tetraskelion and gammadion), India (swastika). Though it is not known for exactly how long, Native Americans also have long used the symbol of the swastika. The word "swastika" comes from the Sanskrit svastika - "su" meaning "good," "asti" meaning "to be," and "ka" as a suffix. Until the Nazis used this symbol, the swastika was used by many cultures throughout the past 3,000 years to represent life, sun, power, strength, and good luck.

Florence Mills (1896 - 1927), was never captured on film and her voice was never recorded. Just two of the factors why, with each successive generation, Florence Mills always remains on the verge of being forgotten. Yet, there's something in the collective consciousness of black America that refuses to totally forget her. In the 1920's, she was the biggest star, period! She conquered home and all of Europe, too! Famous authors like Evelyn Waugh included her as characters in some of their most well-known books! She was the first Negro woman to appear in the pages of Vogue and Vanity Fair! Her voice was high and birdlike. She was a small, petite woman with a winsome, wide-eyed beauty. Known as The Little Blackbird, she was most effervescent on stage with her high-kickin', tireless and high octane performances. Harlem was home to Mills, and there she reigned as The Queen. Imagine the horror, when after a grueling, whirlwind tour of England, Mills returned home gravely ill with appendicitis. Her death, a month later at the age of 31, set off an outpouring of love and grief, memory and flowers, affection and music that Harlem had ever seen. Her body lay in state for a week in the chapel of the Howell Undertaking Parlors at 137th & Seventh Ave., and her funeral at Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church attracted an estimated 5000 mourners. Numerous accounts suggest that at least 150,000 people lined the streets outside while hundreds of blackbirds were released by helicopter above.

Source: www.florencemills.com/

Sissieretta Joyner Jones

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 18:28:19 +0000

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Born Matilda Joyner (1869 - 1933), in Portsmouth, Virginia, Jones moved to Providence, Rhode Island at an early age. Her father was the pastor and choir director of the Portsmouth, Virginia African Methodist Episcopal Church and her mother was a soprano in the choir. It is believed that Sissieretta Jones inherited her voice from her mother. She showed her talent as a singer as early as five years old.

Married at age 14, she started voice training in Providence. Although it is a matter of conjecture, most sources state that she continued her studies at the New England Conservatory in Boston. She made her professional debut in Providence, which led to a tour of Europe, South America, and the West Indies with the famous Tennessee Jubilee Singers.

James Weldon Johnson observed that she possessed "the natural voice, the physical figure, the grand air and the engaging personality," characteristic of a great singer. The Washington Post described her voice as: "A phenomenal attraction ... the upper notes of her voice are clear and bell-like...and her low notes are rich and sensuous with a tropical contralto quality...In fact, the compass and quality of her registers surpass the usual limitations and seem to combine the height and depth of both soprano and contralto." Critics concurred that Sissieretta coerced the "musical and theatrical worlds in the United States to accept the Negro in a new image."

Compared to the Italian soprano at the time, Adelina Patti, Jones was pejoratively dubbed the "Black Patti". She vehemently disapproved of the name, yet it stuck and it was used in the name of her vaudeville act. Black Patti's Troubadours was composed of singers and dancers, featuring Sissieretta, which toured the United States and abroad for 20 years. The company's repertoire included minstrel performances. Although Patti considered this aspect of the show demeaning, she sought to improve its overall quality and simultaneously extend her repertoire by including spirituals and arias in her finale.

She performed for several presidents of the United States, the Prince of Wales and the Kaiser and at places like the Chicago World's Fair and Madison Square Garden. She was barred from performing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Despite this, she had many successes, some of which qualify as breakthroughs. (It was not until 1955 that the color bar was lifted at the Metropolitan Opera with a performance by the contralto Marian Anderson.)

Performing for totally white audiences who viewed her as an anomaly, she was heralded as the premier African-American singer of her time. Despite the inequities and indignities she experienced, she forced whites to see blacks as capable, dignified, and talented. She paved the way for black opera singers such as Marian Anderson, Leontyne Price, Jessye Norman, and Kathleen Battle.

Symptomatic of black performers in the past, she had to deal with mismanagement and died penniless in 1933.

Sources: Dictionary of American Negro Biography, edited by Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston; Seattle Republican (Nov. 22, 1901) edition

Aiden Driver

nobody@ipernity.com (Joe, Son of the Rock) — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 13:39:42 +0000

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Glasgow

Aida Overton Walker

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 01:17:36 +0000

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Aida Overton Walker is a name that should be more familiar to vaudeville and theater lovers than it is for she was the foremost African-American star of her generation which comprised the early years of the 20th century. Her national and even international fame was such that she was a living legend of black show business and in fact her vision of a world with dignified and respected black show business artists who did not have to demean themselves onstage was years ahead of reality. Her work helping young black artists and especially black women to become super-achievers and her own remarkable talents as singer, dancer, actress, comedienne and choreographer caused her to be one of the most admired and respected black women in America.

She was born in 1880 in New York City and became known quickly for her talent as a dancer and singer as well as her great natural beauty. By 1895 she was a member of the famous black touring company disparagingly known as John Isham’s Octoroons and then joined the Black Patti Troubadours. This famous group was headed by Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones, known as Sissieretta Jones, who became a famous soprano. She was called the “Black Patti” after the famous white soprano Adelina Patti, who was one of the foremost superstars of opera of her time. Her troupe, the Troubadours, consisted of a whole show that entertained black and sometimes also white audiences throughout the country. The show had some 40 performers but Adelina emerged as one of its leading stars.

In 1898 she joined the rapidly rising comedy team of Bert Williams and George Walker, being featured in all of their landmark black performances including The Policy Players (1899), The Sons of Ham (1900), the very famous In Dahomey (1902), Abyssinia (1905) and Bandanna Land (1907). Walker and Overton married soon after they began performing together.

Her performance of Miss Hannah from Savannah in Sons of Ham caused a national sensation and furthermore Aida did the choreography for all of these big shows and emerged as the glue or catalyst that made the Walker-Williams shows work so well, as she worked behind the scenes with her husband supplying the themes and basic ideas for the shows, which then featured the great humor of Bert Williams. Although forgotten today, whereas Williams and Walker are more remembered, the three of them formed the most popular trio of “colored” entertainers in the world in the early years of the 20th century. Aida was also in demand as a choreographer for other shows such as Bob Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson’s The Red Moon (1909).

In these shows, although she performed in blackface, Aida refused to play black plantation stereotypes and an essential part of her political activism was to make the black woman stand tall and be an object of dignity and respect, even though she would attempt to make this statement through comedy and song. She became a huge hit in England from 1902 to 1904 with In Dahomey and was frequently hired for major society parties because she became known as the Queen of the Cakewalk from her dancing in the show and the British wanted to learn this remarkable dance so-named because originally those black dancers who did it well might receive a cake for a prize. In 1903 she played a command performance at Buckingham Palace for King Edward VII which added to her international reputation.

In the midst of this success her husband allegedly contracted syphilis through his affairs with other women and he collapsed during the run of Bandanna Land in 1908. She was able to fill in for her ailing husband, performing his part in drag and managing to save the company, but eventually he grew more ill and died in 1911 as the disease, which had symptoms of stuttering and memory loss was incurable at this time. Bert Williams went on to solo success with the Ziegfeld Follies and Aida was forced to develop into a solo artist as well, leading to her work as choreographer and featured star in Red Moon and she joined the famous African-American Smart Set Company in 1910 while her husband was still gravely ill. What she must have thought of her husband’s behavior is not recorded but her indomitable will to survive and continue her art and her work even despite his situation is clear. Ten days after her husband’s death she signed a contract to star with S. H. Dudley in an all-black traveling show. Walker was buried in his home town of Lawrence, Kansas, one of many black superstars of the time to die of syphilis which almost reached epidemic proportions in the black theatrical community around this time.

Her post-Walker career was also distinctive as she emerged as a female superstar and was often invited to prominent white social gatherings to demonstrate the latest dances suitable for such events. Only Bert Williams among other black performers was able to do this and to work with white performers. For example she played the lead in Oscar Hammerstein’s 1912 revival of Salome at the Victoria Theater in New York, a role she had essayed in the black theater since the initial Salome craze of the early years of the century.

Aida was also an activist for black causes years and years before this was something that was popularly accepted. She raised significant funds for the Industrial Home for Colored Working Girls and worked to promote opportunities for young black women in the entertainment business through her connections. She hoped to promote a new generation of refined and elegant black performers free of the hamstringing stereotypes of the previous decades. To this end in 1913 and 1914 she promoted the Porto Rico Girls and the Happy Girls and produced shows for these troupes to show black women as original creative talent. This she did despite suffering from a number of disabling illnesses that beset her after the death of her husband.

In the 1910s she was described by critics as “the best Negro comedienne today” and “the most fascinating and vivacious female comedy actress the Negro race has ever produced”. Her ability to mesmerize an audience and her standard numbers performed in drag which she perfected while filling in for her ailing husband were legendary. Indeed each of her performances in shows or in vaudeville featured one of her famous drag numbers.

And then just as suddenly it was all over. Just 34 years of age, Aida died quickly on October 1, 1914 from kidney failure and hundreds of people came to her house to honor her and to grieve. A true legend of black vaudeville and theater had passed. Every black female entertainer of note in this world owes a great debt to this pioneering entertainer who envisioned a world which honored and respected black talent and who died at the height of her fame.

University of Arizona School of Anthropology Vaudeville Collection; Royal Magazine v. 10 (May - Oct. 1903), photographed by White Studio (NY)

Singer

nobody@ipernity.com (Joe, Son of the Rock) — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 14:55:07 +0000

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Glasgow

Reggae Singer

nobody@ipernity.com (Joe, Son of the Rock) — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 13:49:08 +0000

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Glasgow

Guitarist

nobody@ipernity.com (Joe, Son of the Rock) — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 14:54:44 +0000

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Glasgow

C&W Singer

nobody@ipernity.com (Joe, Son of the Rock) — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 19:40:23 +0000

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Argyle Street, Glasgow

Buskers

nobody@ipernity.com (Joe, Son of the Rock) — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 16:06:02 +0000

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Buchanan Street, Glasgow

Dalmuir Train approaching Platform 2, Singer Railway Station

nobody@ipernity.com (Joe, Son of the Rock) — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 16:24:01 +0000

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Clydebank

May Terra

nobody@ipernity.com (Joe, Son of the Rock) — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 17:35:39 +0000

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May Terri Singing a Request from me: 'Sweet Little Mystery' originally by John Martyn. Argyle Street, Glasgow,

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John Martyn’s “Sweet Little Mystery” is a soulful, melancholic track first released in 1980 on his album Grace & Danger. It reflects the emotional turmoil of his breakup with his wife, blending folk, jazz, and rock influences into a deeply personal ballad.

The song is one of Martyn’s most poignant works, written during a period of heartbreak and introspection. Grace & Danger itself is often described as his most confessional album, with “Sweet Little Mystery” standing out for its raw vulnerability. The lyrics explore themes of longing, sadness, and the lingering pain of lost love, with Martyn’s distinctive slurred vocal style adding to its haunting quality.

Musically, the track combines Martyn’s signature guitar work with a smooth, almost jazz-inflected arrangement. It was produced with contributions from Phil Collins, who was a close friend of Martyn and also going through personal struggles at the time. Collins’ drumming and production support gave the album a polished yet emotionally charged sound. Quoted from the Genius website.

Read the lyrics of 'Sweet Little Mystery.

Link to John Martyn's amazing performance of • Sweet Little Mystery • Live on The Old Grey Whistle Test • 1980

May Terra on Facebook.

Opera Singer in the Rain

nobody@ipernity.com (Joe, Son of the Rock) — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 19:44:44 +0000

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Glasgow

Buchanan Street

nobody@ipernity.com (Joe, Son of the Rock) — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 19:44:15 +0000

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Glasgow

Singing in the Rain

nobody@ipernity.com (Joe, Son of the Rock) — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 19:44:09 +0000

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Buchanan Street, Glasgow

Buchanan Street

nobody@ipernity.com (Joe, Son of the Rock) — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 15:14:16 +0000

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Glasgow

May Terra singing John Martyn's 'Sweet Little Mystery'

nobody@ipernity.com (Joe, Son of the Rock) — Tue, 06 May 2025 11:43:40 +0000

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Buchanan Street, Glasgow

Link to John Martyn's amazing performance of • Sweet Little Mystery • Live on The Old Grey Whistle Test • 1980

Amy Height

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 14:22:54 +0000

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Amy Height (circa 1866 – 1913), was born in Boston, Massachusetts. No information has come to light about her arrival in Britain, but in July 1883 her name first appeared in The Stage newspaper, when she was credited as a member of the cast of a variety show at the Surrey Music Hall in Barnsley. Thereafter theatre critics often singled her out for praise. For example, when she appeared as Topsy, ‘Friday's Squaw’, in the pantomime Robinson Crusoe at the Grand Theatre in Islington in 1886, The Stage noted that she ‘displays considerable humorous power and command of expression, whilst in the vocalization of her songs she uses a clear and musical organ with considerable skill and effect’ (Dec. 31, 1886).

In 1888 Height joined the first provincial tour of the African-American Bohee Brothers, who were billed as ‘banjoists to the Prince and Princess of Wales’. When she appeared on the London variety stage in Hoxton in 1891, The Stage noted that she put ‘much vitality and go into her songs and actions, and scored a distinct success’ (Oct. 8, 1891). In 1894, at Hammersmith's Lyric Opera House, she made the first of several appearances as the slave Aunt Chloe in the melodrama Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Stage acknowledged her ‘original and clever reading’ (Dec. 6, 1894). Later that year she was praised for her role as the Princess in another pantomime, Dick Whittington and His Cat, staged at the Elephant and Castle in London. In 1895 she shared the bill with the music hall comedian George Robey at the Royal Standard in Pimlico. In 1898 an article in The Stage mentioned Height alongside two other music hall legends—Marie Lloyd and Vesta Tilley—when a female impressionist publicly thanked them for permitting her to impersonate them. In 1899 she enjoyed one of her biggest successes as Princess Lulu in ‘a bright and tuneful musical farce’ called The Gay Grisette in London and then on tour. The Stage described her as ‘the cleverest coloured lady we have seen. She is a born comedienne, can sing, and introduce patter and gag, and makes herself a general favourite on her first entrance’ (Aug. 17, 1899). In 1900 the New York Times published a report on an African-American who had made a successful transition from singer to ‘straight’ actress in London in the play Madame Delphine. The newspaper noted that Height, whom they described as ‘a colored actress from Boston’ had made a ‘hit’ with Londoners as ‘a negro mammy, which is quite new to the English stage, and proved the chief artistic success of the play’ (New York Times, July 22, 1900). In 1901, at London's Tivoli, she appeared in the same variety show as the African-American music hall artiste Belle Davis.

In the 1891 census Height described herself as a thirty-year-old ‘Theatrical Singer’, born in New York. She was living in Lambeth. In the 1901 census she described herself as a singer, again aged thirty. By then she was living in theatrical digs in Swansea. She entered her place of birth as America. When she appeared in the 1911 census, she described herself as a music hall artist from Boston, America, now aged twenty-nine. She was then living in Farnham, Surrey. Her last recorded appearance in The Stage was in January 1913 when she appeared at the Royal in Smethwick in Aladdin. She was still captivating audiences: she ‘sings and dances herself into favour as Smut-Tee, the servant’, the paper reported (The Stage, Jan. 16, 1913). By now living at 90 St George's Road, Southwark, she died from pneumonia on March 21, 1913 in the Southwark Infirmary in Camberwell. Her age was entered on the death certificate as forty-six, but this is likely to have been an underestimate.

In the late Victorian era, and throughout the Edwardian era, Height was a popular entertainer in music halls, but she also made a number of appearances in pantomime, and there is evidence of a successful transition to ‘straight’ theatre. Her success was unusual for a black woman in Britain at that time. The public's contact with black women in the world of theatre was minimal in the Victorian era, but the versatile Height helped open doors for others, including her fellow American Belle Davis.

Sources: Stephen Bourne Collection; The Stage (1883–1913); New York Times (July 22, 1900)

Myrtle Watkins

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 14:33:58 +0000

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In 1928 Myrtle Watkins from Baltimore, Maryland was a member of the cast of Blackbirds. By 1930, she was a dancer in Paris, one of the scores of African-American performers who had moved to Europe to escape the racism of the US and to trade on the French fascination for “negro” culture.

Through the 1930s, African-American newspapers such as the Defender and the Afro-American reported Myrtle Watkins’ movements through Europe. She was in France, Belgium and Romania, among other places. In 1934, for instance, the Chicago Defender reported from Paris that the colourful African-American hostess Ada “Bricktop” Smith had postponed the opening of her new cabaret on rue Pigalle pending the arrival from Spain of Watkins, who “is appropriately publicized on this continent…as the world’s most fascinating entertainer."

One report in the Afro-American described her as the Josephine Baker of Spain. “Miss Watkins, who is a very good dancer, with plenty of pep, is pretty and has a shapely figure,” it said. “She has been making conquests in high society and on her string is the marquis of one of Spain’s bluest blue bloods. She lives at the Florida, one of the best hotels in the city, has a fine roadster, records for Spanish gramophone and radio, and entertains at one of the leading cabarets.” That experience, perhaps, provided her with material to help her metamorphose from Myrtle into Paquita.

Sometime in the late 1930s she started performing Latin American music under the name Paquita, along with her husband, a Mexican violinist Samuel Zarate.

Between November 1941 and December 1942, Paquita and Zarate cut more than a dozen discs in India, backed by African American pianist Teddy Weatherford.

Advertisement in 1958 boasts that Zarate and Paquita were “widely known as concert artists and nightclub entertainers [and] are also known as composers and recording artists”. They had evidently released a religious album “containing hymns and prayers embracing the faith of all people”. The ad said that the record was “receiving favorable comment from all who have heard it and those who already have it in their homes say it should be in all homes." Other Billboard articles suggest that they spent the 1950s as performers at variety shows in the U.S that featured jugglers and magicians, in addition to musicians.

The Times of India place them in Bombay in the winter of 1941, performing at the Taj Mahal. They also made recordings in Calcutta later that year.

It seems she switched from Myrtle Watkins and Paquita during her career and finally settling on going by Paquita. Myrtle and her husband later resided in Portland, Oregon.

In 1959, after buying property in Lincoln Beach, Oregon, Myrtle and Zarate opened a Fine Arts Institution under the name ‘The Happy Village’. There local children were given lessons in Piano, Drums, Violin and Guitar by Zarate. Myrtle taught her Spanish and Latin American dances and lessons in French and Spanish song. There was also an adjoining restaurant, ‘The Gingerbread House’ providing traditional Spanish and Indian cuisine.

During the winter of 1968, Myrtle passed away on November 10th.

Samuel Zarate continued performing across Oregon and Mexico until his death in 1997.

South American Way performed by Paquita and Zarate:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnR-iyotqHI

Sources: blackjazzartists.blogspot.com; Black Jazz Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay's Jazz Age, by Naresh Fernandes