Marion Harris - After You've Gone (1918)

Marion Harris (1896 - April 23, 1944) was an American popular singer 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". 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[10]. 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.

In 1931 she moved to London, and performed at the Café de Paris and 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 - After You've Gone (1918) Victor-18509

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Marion
• Harris
• 1918
• 20's

[rapperchileno]

how old are you, dear sir or madam?

110 years old?

[renzomartinsgu]

@dianamaryflorence Are you still alive?

[charlesnorte]

Genial y vigente!

[spchevy]

Since 1925 recordings were made in the electric process. Previously,they were recorded mechanical. Big difference in sound quality. I personally like the Marion Harris recording. Just my opinion.

[rocknpirates]

@L4Denny I agree, personally I believe Bessie´s version is more powerful, don´t know who made the original version and I don´t care... I just listen and feel...

[L4Denny]

@rocknpirates Yeah the voices are different and great in their own way. Bessie's version is better, the way she sang it brings more passion to the song thus making it a better recording.

Bessie's version of ain't nobodies buisness is better than billie holliday's version. Both are great recordings but bessie's is better.

Original lays are different than tomato basil lays. Both taste pretty good for what they are but original tastes better.

See where I'm going here.

[rocknpirates]

@L4Denny But how can you say that when both voices are so different that they cannot even be compared... no ones version is better they are just different... sweet voice and a strong blues woman voice... both beautiful in different ways...

[carliarago]

I remember those days, 1918, 1919.... Corsets, big heavy hats with feathers, long long skirts and dresses with bots... Makes me remember when I was a 16 year-old and things were all rose for me. Mrs. Betty P.

[spchevy]

This is the original and the best version of this song. There is also a version by Leigh Harris that is also very good.

[L4Denny]

@missdeebates Yes I know this, bessies still shits on this one whats your point of telling me which one came out when?

[missdeebates]

@L4Denny Bessie Smiths version was recorded 9 years after this version .

[spchevy]

Great version.