Marion Harris - St.Louis Blues (1920)

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 - St.Louis Blues (1920) Columbia-2944 (79124)

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Marion
• Harris
• 1920
• 20's
• 30's

[cannoir]

the little cracks of the records add a little something to this song.can you believe this song is over 90 years old.

[KawhackitaRag]

This is a nice version. It is not the same as Bessie Smith's version, but then again, Marion Harris was not Bessie Smith. They are two different vocalists with two different styles. They also led two different lives.

I have always thought that trying to rank music and musicians on a scale, or say who is "better" than who, is an exercise in futility. What people should be doing is listening to a lot of music and deciding for themselves who they personally like and dislike.

[flipyPro]

Didnt Minnie Mouse sing this song?? :'D

Almost 100 years old, but this song is still so nice to me 

[country12able]

thank you ! Gaby  De Paris !

[broverKeyes]

The woman in the picture looks like Angela in Boardwalk Empire, you know, Jimmy's wife? anyone see it?

[MrChromonica64]

I can't describe what I am feeling here...but I'am feeling a lot.

[MisterBeaucoup]

@cannoir There's nothing like the sizzle and pop of an old recording. Really takes you back in time :)

[DeeLovesSushi]

It's insane when you think about it: This was recorded almost 100 years ago?

[CreamyMacarooney]

@Rayne4mdaLv Oh, that's ok... Looks like your grandma has had an fun and exciting long life :)

[Rayne4mdaLv]

@CreamyMacarooney Sorry, I guess I should have been clear. She lived during both eras and took up both styles but she loved music like this..

[CreamyMacarooney]

@Rayne4mdaLv I'm sorry, hon, flapper girls and pinup girls are from two separate eras :(