Hunter, Alberta (1895–1984)

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Hunter, Alberta (1895–1984)

American blues singer who bridged the gap between classic blues and cabaret pop, recorded extensively during her long career performing well into her 80s, and traveled throughout the world expanding jazz from an American to an international phenomenon. Name variations: Alberta Prime; Josephine Beatty. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 1, 1895; died on October 17, 1984 in New York City; daughter of Charles E. Hunter (a sleeping car porter) and Laura (Peterson) Hunter; married Willard Saxby Townsend, on January 27, 1919 (divorced 1923).

Alberta Hunter was a popular blues performer for over 40 years and, during World War II, traveled with the USO to China, Burma, India, Korea, and Europe. At age 62, with her star fading, she became a nurse; at age 82, forced to retire from nursing, she relaunched her singing career. Before long, she was singing at the White House.

Alberta Hunter was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1895, the second daughter of Charles E. Hunter, a sleeping car porter, and Laura Peterson Hunter . Alberta's father abandoned the family by the time she was five. To support her daughters, Laura took a job as a maid for two white women, known as the sporting ladies, who ran a bordello; she also moonlighted at the Memphis Steam Laundry. Laura Hunter was prudish about her daughters' upbringing, however, and Alberta and her sister La Tosca learned very little about their mother's employers—except for grammar. "I'd say, 'Those ladies is so funny,'" said Alberta. "And my mother would say, 'Not is. Ladies are more than one. So those

ladies are.' And you know where my mother got it from? The sporting ladies."

Around 1906 or 1907, Laura married Theodore Beatty. Alberta hated him, and he despised Alberta. "He hated my intestines because I'd hit him when he'd hit my mother," she said. She also claimed that other men on the periphery of her life sexually abused her. In the long run, Hunter did not know who walked out on whom, her mother or her stepfather, but as Hunter said, "There was some leaving done."

In July 1911, at age 16, with the help of an unsuspecting teacher, Hunter ran away from home to Chicago. Her first appearances as a singer were in flop joints and seedy saloons, but she gradually worked her way up. Jazz flourished in New Orleans, Memphis, New York, and Chicago in the 1920s where a variety of clubs provided work for black artists. In 1921, after success in Chicago, Hunter went to New York to launch her recording career. Her first songs appeared on the Black Swan label, but in 1922 she contracted with Paramount where she did some of her finest work.

In 1919, Hunter had married a soldier, Willard Saxby Townsend, to dispel rumors that she was a lesbian, but she never slept with her husband and divorced him in 1923. She never married again. Because of the prevailing attitudes towards homosexuality, Hunter tried to hide her predilection for women. One of her most enduring relationships was with Lottie Tyler , niece of the black comedian Bert Williams.

Hunter wrote many of the songs she sang, such as "Down Hearted Blues" which was a bigger hit for Bessie Smith than it was for her. By the late 1920s, her performances had helped define classic blues. She sang "Your Jelly Roll is Good," "Sugar," "Beale Street Blues," and "Take that Thing Away." In 1927, she left New York for London and the Continent. At home, she played the Cotton Club in Harlem with Louis Armstrong and the Teddy Hill Band. She continued to record on the Biltmore label as Alberta Prime, on the Gennett label as Josephine Beatty, and on Okeh, Victor, and Columbia under her own name.

Like many blues singers, Hunter's life followed a classical pattern. Her greatest revenues were in the heyday of the blues in the 1920s, though unlike some artists, she managed to continue earning a steady income. Black jazz artists often made huge sums of money for a brief period before declining into poverty and obscurity. Hunter, however, managed to escape the fate suffered by so many. She continued to appear in clubs in the 1930s and during World War II entertained extensively for the USO.

Back in New York following the war, Hunter was living with her mother; they had become quite close. Two years after Laura Hunter died in 1954, with her career on the decline, Hunter quit performing and enrolled in the YWCA's nursing program at 137th Street. "I wanted people to remember me as I was. On top," she said. Hunter had long been a volunteer at the Joint Diseased Hospital in Harlem. For the next 20 years, she was a practicing nurse, but in January 1977 she learned that she was to receive mandatory retirement on her birthday, April 1. She was 82; the hospital thought she was 70. "I loved nursing," she said. "I loved the thought of having to get up and go to work to serve my patients. That was my heartstring, and I had given my all."

On October 10, 1977, Hunter made a comeback at the Cookery in Greenwich Village. "At first she seemed insecure with some of the high notes," wrote Frank Taylor, "but after she was about half-way through it, she was the old pro, at home onstage again. She snapped her fingers, slapped her thighs as if they were tambourines, tossed back her head of gray-black hair tightly pulled into a small bun, and beamed her chocolate-brown eyes at each face in the audience." Her voice was huskier. "My God, I sang like a horse," she said later. Fellow nurses in the audience howled, and the critics were bowled over. Alberta Hunter was an enormous hit, doing television and magazine interviews, negotiating a recording contract with Columbia, making her debut at Carnegie Hall, appearing in Vogue, and singing at the Kennedy Center at a ceremony honoring Marian Anderson . Finally at age 89, in 1984, Hunter quit singing because of poor health. She died that October. "That's the truth," she'd say. "I've got it written down. I've got the photos to prove it."