#jazz singer
30 Days of Pride Day 12- Alberta Hunter
Alberta Hunter was an American jazz and blues singer and songwriter from the early 1920s to the late 1950s. Hunter was a lesbian and mixed in the famously liberal and accepting circles of LGBTQ jazz singers during what became known as the “Harlem Renaissance.” In the 1920s, Hunter met Lottie Tyler, niece of comedian Bert Williams, in Chicago in the late 1910s and the two were in an on-again, off-again relationship for many years until Tyler’s death.
During World War II, Hunter took charge of a U.S.O. singing troupe, whom she took to Casablanca and entertained troops both during and after the war. They also performed for President Eisenhower, who invited them to a reception for British senior officer Bernard Montgomery. Her mother’s death soon after sparked a change in career choice, and she became a nurse.
Hunter resumed her singing career 20 years later in 1977, at the age of 82, and continued to perform until her death seven years later.
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30 Days of Pride Day 7- Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz and swing music singer, known for her distinctive phrasing and expressive, sometimes melancholy voice.
In 1939, after singing her song “Strange Fruit,” about the lynching of African-Americans, Holiday received a warning from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a government agency which lasted from 1930 to 1968, to never sing the song again. Holiday refused and kept singing the song. FBN commissioner Harry J. Anslinger thus pursued her for decades, going as far as to arrest and handcuff her for drug possession to her hospital bed while she was dying.
In her personal life, Holiday was openly bisexual throughout her career and was known to date prominent actresses of the time. Her posthumous awards include being inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame, and she is widely regarded as being one of the greatest singers in history.
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