Herb Jeffries

Herb Jeffries (* September 24, 1913 in Detroit, Michigan, as Herbert Jeffrey ) is an American jazz musician and actor. Mid -1930s, he went with a series of musical Western as the first and only African-American Singing Cowboy in history.

Life and work

Herb Jeffries has Ethiopian, French Canadian, and Italian and Irish roots. He grew up in a multicultural neighborhood of Detroit, where he came in contact with various influences. He followed the example of his father, who was an itinerant musician, and sought early on a career as a singer at. So he went in 1932 to Chicago, was one of the singers Jobs in Erskine Tate's Vendome Orchestra and then in Earl Hines ' Grand Terrace Orchestra, with whom he recorded in 1934 two songs for Brunswick, "Just to Be in Caroline " and "Blue ( Because of You ) ".

He also took on with Sidney Bechet and then moved to New York; In 1940 he worked in the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and remained until 1943 in the band. You can hear Jeffries in the titles " You, You Darlin '", "Flamingo" (1940 ) and " Jump for Joy " ( 1941). Billy Strayhorn led him deep to sing when he wrote the arrangement for " Flamingo" for Duke Ellington; it led him to a deeper range; before, he had mostly sung falsetto. "Flamingo" was one million copies and brought Jeffries popularity during the white and the black audience and laid the foundation for his career as a soloist.

After his service in World War II, he worked as a soloist, after a car accident he had, however, only take a year off before he got the chance to create his hit "Flamingo" again for the label Exclusive Records. There followed a string of hits, such as " Angel Eyes ", " When I Write My Song" and " My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice". Duke Ellington got him small roles in B-movies and switched it to black and white night clubs. In the early 1950s earned Jeffries, more than any other black entertainers except Nat King Cole and Billy Eckstine; its Exclusive recordings now appeared as 10 - inch LPs with Mercury and Coral.

In addition to his work with jazz orchestras Jeffries obtained as the Singing Cowboy in a series of musical westerns, in which he sang his own western compositions since 1937 notoriety. While touring in Ohio, he met one evening a weeping black boy. When he tried to comfort him, telling him that boy, his friends would not let him play Tom Mix, as this is not a " negro". This incisive for Jeffries experience prompted him to bring to the audience a black -colored film along the lines of Cowboy Gene Autry in the movie theaters. He organized the financing of the first occupied only with African Americans Western film, " Harlem on the Prairie ", and eventually took over the lead role, as no other black actor could be found, the ride and could sing. Jeffries himself, however, had already learned to ride as a child on the farm of his uncle in Ohio, where he spent the holidays. The film was so successful that a total of four sequels followed, with Jeffries occurred as " Herbert Jeffrey " in the last three films. The white audience remained Jeffries in this role largely unknown, until the revival of Western Music since the late 1980s, he moved into the consciousness of a wider audience.

After he had the western genre for a long time turned his back, he, in 1995, at the age of 83 years, for the meantime set Warner Western label an album of original and traditional Western songs under the title The Bronze Buckaroo ( Rides Again ) on. Like the films it differs sometimes significantly from conventional Western material and is particularly appreciated by jazz fans, " Jeffries does thesis songs with all manner of jazz inflictions, in his singing as well as in the back -up arrangements - there 's nothing here that could not have fit well in any night club in the 1940s in any part of the country. " Jeffries even made ​​it a point to have taken no country album, but to stand in the tradition of the Singing Cowboys.

Awards

For his participation in the film industry Herb Jeffries received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2004, he was inducted into the " Western Performers Hall of Fame " in the " National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum " in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Filmography (selection)

Disco Graphical Notes

Albums as sawyers

  • Sidney Bechet: 1940-1941 ( Classics )
  • Duke Ellington: The Blanton Webster band ( RCA, 1940-42 )
  • Earl Hines: 1932-1934 ( Classics )

Albums under his own name

  • Say It Is not So (Bethlehem, 1957)
  • I've Got the World on a String ( Discovery, 1989)

Secondary literature

  • James Lincoln Collier Duke Ellington. Berlin, Ullstein, 1998
  • Bielefeld Catalog Jazz 2001
  • Richard Cook & Brian Morton: The Penguin Guide To Jazz on CD, 6th Edition, London, Penguin, 2002 ISBN 0-14-017949-6.
  • Will Friedwald: Swinging Voices of America - A compendium of great voices. Hannibal, St. Andrew - Woerdern, 1992. ISBN 3-85445-075-3
  • Douglas B. Green, Singing in the Saddle: The History of the Singing Cowboy, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002, ISBN 0 - 8265-1412 -X, pp. 177 ff
Italy Brunswick Records Coral Records Chronological Classics Bethlehem Records Discovery Records Richard Cook (journalist) Brian Morton (Scottish writer) Integrated Authority File
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