Marion Harris - A good man is hard to find (1919)

Marion Harris (1896 - April 23, 1944) was an American popular singer, most successful around 1920. She was the first widely known white singer to sing jazz and blues songs.

Born Mary Ellen Harrison, probably in Indiana, she first played vaudeville and movie theatres in Chicago around 1914. She was spotted by dancer Vernon Castle, who enabled her entrance into the New York theatre scene where she debuted in a 1915 Irving Berlin revue titled "Stop! Look! Listen!". In 1916 she began recording for Victor Records, singing a variety of songs such as "Everybody's Crazy 'Bout the Doggone Blues, But I'm Happy", "After You've Gone", "When I Hear that Jazz Band Play", her biggest success "I Ain't Got Nobody", and "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", later recorded by Bessie Smith.

In 1920, after the Victor label would not allow her to record W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues", she joined Columbia Records where she recorded the song successfully. Sometimes billed as "The Queen of the Blues", she tended to record blues- or jazz-flavoured tunes throughout her career. Handy wrote of Harris that "she sang blues so well that people hearing her records sometimes thought that the singer was colored"[8]. She herself said: "..you usually do best what comes naturally [and] so I just naturally started singing Southern dialect songs and the modern blues songs.."

In 1922 she moved to the Brunswick label. She also continued to appear in Broadway theatres throughout the 1920s. She regularly played the Palace Theatre, appeared in Florenz Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic, and toured the country with vaudeville shows. After a marriage which produced two children, and her subsequent divorce, she returned to the theatre in New York in 1927, and returned to the Victor label to make more recordings. Also that year, she appeared in an eight minute promotional film, Marion Harris, Songbird Of Jazz, and made a flop Hollywood movie, the early musical Devil-May-Care with Ramon Navarro. She then temporarily withdrew from performance, because of an undisclosed illness.

Between 1931 and 1933, when she performed on such NBC radio shows as The Ipana Troubadors and Rudy Vallee's The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour, she was billed by NBC as "The Little Girl with the Big Voice."

In early 1931 she performed in London, returning for long engagements at the Café de Paris. In London she appeared in the musical Ever Green and broadcast on BBC radio. She also recorded in England in the early 1930s, but retired soon afterwards and married an English theatrical agent. Their house was destroyed in a German rocket attack in 1941, and in 1944 she travelled to New York to seek treatment for a neurological disorder. Although she was discharged two months later, she died soon afterwards in a hotel fire that started when she fell asleep while smoking in bed.

Marion Harris - A good man is hard to find (1919) Victor-18535

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Marion
• Harris
• 1919
• 20's
• 30's

[fiercie23]

It must have been delightful to experience this era in music just as it was happening, wasn't it? I'm fourteen now and just discovering these songs ... and I wish there were things like this being produced today! Then again, maybe the element of bygone ephemera adds to the charm. :)

[VenusFlyDuck]

Tens of thousands of recordings were made without microphones, or indeed any electricity for either recording or playback. In the simplest explanation, a large horn was used as a pickup... like a megaphone operating in reverse.

[mrgw22]

@bettiep cool i love old stuff to forget aboat this ginarashon

[Squarerig]

It really does not take much imagination to recreate the true quality of this outstanding songstress.I revel in music of this time and this I am in your debt,Edmundusrex.

[aimeeaimeee]

@autoteck1 spot on.

[autoteck1]

Today the song would be a hard man is good to find

[bettiep]

This is from 1919??? This is awesome! I'm into old movies and such and I'm just getting into the music. Thank u so much!

[facecheek]

0:57 first rap music hhahaha

[tomitstube]

a real treasure. great voice.

[MrJackmelling]

my unlce Theo Melling Was doing Vaudeville in chiago about this time. Yes it is true no mics He always would tell me you have to sing form down deep in your stomach to make the volume. would love to kno wif there was any of his music anywhere. He also did Detroit with my dad. My dad went on to do minstrel music. He quit in 1964.