| Alberta Hunter |
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Born in Memphis, she left home while still in her early teens and settled in Chicago. There, she peeled potatoes by day and hounded club owners by night, determined to land a singing job. Her persistence paid off, and Alberta began a climb through some of the city's lowest dives to a headlining job at its most elegant night spot, the Dreamland Café. Her career flourished as both singer and writer (her songs include the memorable double-entendre number "(My Man is Such a) Handy Man") in the 1920s and 1930s, and she appeared in clubs and on stage in musicals in both New York and London. She was active as a volunteer during World War II . Following the War, her career lost momentum. By the early 1950s, the death of her mother and career frustrations caused Hunter to abandon the Music Industry . She prudently reduced her age, "invented" a high school diploma, and enrolled in nursing school, embarking on what was apparently a highly fulfilling career in health care. She was working at New York's Goldwater Memorial Hospital in 1961 when record producer Chris Albertson asked her to break an 11-year absence from the recording studio. The result was her participation (four songs) on a Prestige Bluesville album entitled "Songs We Taught Your Mother." The following month, Albertson recorded her again, this time for the Riverside label, reuniting her with Lil Armstrong and Lovie Austin, with whom she had performed in the 1920s. Ms. Hunter enjoyed these outings, but had no plans to return to singing. She was prepared to devote the rest of her life to nursing, but the hospital retired her in 1977 , when they believed her to have reached retirement age (she was in fact well over 80). In 1978 Alberta Hunter recorded an album entitled "The Amtrak Blues" (at the age of 83) and, bored by inactivity, decided to resume her singing career. She accepted a brief booking at The Cookery, a small Greenwich Village establishment owned by veteran restaurateur Barney Josephson. Her two-week gig proved a smash, people started flocking into The Cookery as never before, and the two weeks stretched into an open-ended engagement that made her a fixture in New York nightlife. Alberta Hunter became a star all over again. Columbia Records signed her to a contract, she made a memorable appearance on television's To Tell The Truth (in which panelist Kitty Carlisle had to recuse herself, the two having known each other in Hunter's heyday), director Robert Altman commissioned her to write music for a film, "Remember My Name," and concert offers came from Brazil to Berlin. There was an invitation for her to sing at the Carter White House, and she was visited by Jackie Onassis who wanted to sign her up for an autobiography. Alberta Hunter took it all in stride; she toured in Europe and South America, made more television appearances, and continued a recording career that had started on the Black Star label in 1921. Dressed in her trademark fringed shawls and sporting vast dangling earrings, she performed with a combination of sophistication and sly bawdiness (and without a trace of false nostalgia) that charmed audiences, some less than a quarter of her age. She continued to perform until shortly before her death on October 17, 1984. Her life and career is depicted in the biographical Musical , ''Cookin' in the Cookery''. External link:
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