Jazz vocalist and actress Adelaide Louisa Hall (Adelaide Hall) was born in Brooklyn, New York, on October 20, 1901.Introduction She was the daughter of African American woman Elizabeth Gerrard and Pennsylvanian-German William Hall.
Her father was a music professor at the Pratt Institute in New York City, which she and her sister Evelyn attended as children. Until Evelyn sadly passed away during the influenza outbreak, at which time their father had also passed away, the sisters played as a piano and singing duo at local gatherings like church or school festivals.
Her Broadway début was in 1921 as a chorus member in the groundbreaking African American musical “Shuffle Along.”As a star in the musical Chocolate Kiddies, she toured portions of Europe in 1926, including Austria, Scandinavia, Berlin, and the Soviet Union.When she first met renowned jazz pianist Duke Ellington in 1927, he saw her potential right away. She recorded numerous songs with Ellington and his band later on, the most well-known of them being Creole Love Call. One of the early jazz pioneers, She performed at the illustrious Cotton Club. When she joined the 1928 musical Blackbirds (the Blackbirds theatre team visited Hull in 1937; click here to read about them), she became even more well-known.
Adelaide Hall married Trinidadian merchant seaman Bert Hicks sometime between 1926 and 1936.[5] After enduring racist harassment in an all-white suburb in Larchmont, Westchester County, New York, the couple was compelled to go to Paris in the early 1930s. She starred in Moulin Rouge and Lido during their three-year stay in Paris, then they relocated to England and became British citizens.
She performed in a number of Broadway plays, including Brown Buddies, toured as a solo performer, and appeared in films like All Coloured Vaudeville Show throughout the 1930s.[8] 1938 saw her launch her own radio show and appear in The Sun Never Sets in London. Songs she recorded until the 1970s were played on regional radio stations in Hull and East Yorkshire.
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Hull Visit 1948
Adelaide hall visited fighting areas to amuse the troops during World War II. She travelled Britain once the war was over, landing in Hull in the spring of 1948. The Hull Daily Mail announced in April that the jazz singer who had “brightened many a West End show” will be performing at the Tivoli theatre.[10] The thrilling programme of gifted performers she brought with her thrilled onlookers.They were the Lamonte and Julie Trio, comedian Jack E. Raymond, acrobats Keefe Brothers and Annette, ventriloquist Tattersall, dancers Jimmy Kidd and June, and Len Clifford and Freda, also known as “the bright spark and his flame.” [12] While modern analyses of this incident are few, it is likely that local audiences had a great evening of entertainment. She went home to the capital after the tour.
Despite living in London, Shemade frequent trips back to the US to perform on Broadway and as a solo artist. Together with well-known performer Lena Horne, she starred in the 1957 theatre musical Jamaica. While her husband was unwell, she temporarily quit performing, but a few years after his death in 1963, she made a comeback.
She made guest appearances on various TV shows, recorded the soundtracks to multiple movies, and gave some characters in movies—like a character in the 1940 British film The Thief of Bagdad—her unique singing voice. Sophisticated Lady was a 1989 documentary about her life, produced near the conclusion of her life. A few of years later, she gave her final performance, singing two nights at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Adelaide Hall, then ninety-two, passed away on November 7, 1993, following a brief illness. Her career ran seventy years in all, from the 1920s to the 1990s.
