Brown, Ruth (1928—)

views updated

Brown, Ruth (1928—)

African-American jazz and rhythm-and-blues singer who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Born Ruth Weston in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1928; grew up in North Carolina; married three times; children: two sons.

Ruth Brown was a small child when she started singing in the church where her father was choir director. She recalled it as the most natural place to begin training: "You had to sing in church. That was required learning. If you could carry a tune, it would start in the church and then, naturally, in the school groups." Brown grew into a somewhat more rebellious teenager, often skipping music class and occasionally sneaking out of the house to sing the so-called devil's music at the USO shows on the local army bases. An early marriage was her ticket out of Portsmouth, Virginia, but Brown knew music was her gift. After singing around Detroit and a stint on the road with the Lucky Millinder band, she met Blanche Calloway , a bandleader and sister of Cab Calloway, who hired her to sing at her club, the Crystal Caverns; later, Blanche would become her manager. When Duke Ellington and disc jockey Willis Conover (from radio's Voice of America) heard her sing one night, they arranged an audition at Atlantic records. On her way to sign a contract and make an appearance at the famed Apollo theater, Brown was involved in an auto accident that sidelined her for an entire year.

Her first release on Atlantic Records was "So Long" (with "It's Raining" on the flip side), which reached number six on the R&B charts in 1949 and led to such a string of hits that Atlantic became known as "The House that Ruth Built." "Teardrops From My Eyes" (1950) put her number one on the charts and was followed by "5-10-15 Hours," "(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean," "Mend Your Ways," "Miss Rhythm," "Oh What a Dream," and "Mambo Baby." In 1957, Brown crossed over to the pop charts with "Lucky Lips," which reached number 25.

When Ruth Brown toured the segregated South during the 1950s, she was banned from the "better" hotels and restaurants. She recalled, however, that there was always a white audience, who was "either upstairs or separated on the main floor because of the rules of the South." But it was a more subtle kind of segregation that gnawed away at Brown's career. Once rock and roll's commercial viability had been established (as Brown put it, "When the white kids started to dance to it"), white artists began recording material, known as cover versions, initially popularized by black performers. With the lyrics sanitized from the more earthy originals, record companies could circumvent the potential controversy of rock and roll while exploiting the genre's commercial potential. Although the sanitized cover versions often lacked the fire of the originals (Pat Boone's renditions of Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" and Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame" are examples), they had the edge in distribution. Brown, who was shut out of the pop charts when her songs were covered by white artists such as Georgia Gibbs and Patti Page , left Atlantic Records in 1960 and stumbled around on other labels with little success. She eventually quit the business completely, working as a domestic and driving a bus, until she attempted to get her career on track again in 1976.

With the help of Howell Begle, an avid music fan and attorney, Brown recovered some lost record royalties and started up the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, which established an R&B archive based in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. The foundation has awarded money and recognition to R&B artists through its Pioneer Awards Program and, since its inception, has also offered grants to R&B performers who are in need of financial assistance. A number of recording stars have subsequently joined the board of trustees of the foundation, including Bonnie Raitt who has been particularly active.

In the 1980s, Brown's career took off again with a role in a workshop production of Allen Toussaint's Staggerlee; this led to a part in the hit Black and Blue, which ran for eight months in Paris in 1984. Returning to the U.S., Brown rejoined Staggerlee off-Broadway and also became the host of the national radio program Harlem Hit Parade (later known as BluesStage). In 1988, she won a role in John Waters' film Hairspray, playing the part of Motormouth Mabel, an R&B record-store owner and DJ. When Black and Blue opened on Broadway in 1989, she rejoined the cast, winning a Tony for her performance. She subsequently won a Grammy for her album Blues on Broadway. On her 65th birthday, in 1993, Brown was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. To celebrate the event, she and longtime friend Bonnie Raitt sang Brown's 1953 hit "(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean."

While aware of the changes in the music industry over the years, Brown knew that the business still had a way to go; even with her newfound recognition, there were still venues that would not invite her to appear because of her skin color. Nonetheless, Brown noted that singers like herself "went out front and kind of took the blows a little bit," and in so doing paved the way for the new generation of black performers, like Whitney Houston, Anita Baker , and Janet Jackson .