Bee Palmer

Bee Palmer (* as Beatrice C. Palmer September 11, 1894 in Chicago , † December 22, 1967 ) was an American vaudeville singer and dancer. She was nicknamed Shimmy Queen for the early popularization of the Shimmy dance.

Bee Palmer, Chicago 1918

Life

Bee Palmer was one of four children of Swedish immigrants in Chicago. Described as a spirited and attractive blonde with a magnetic stage presence, she was successful as a vaudeville artist popularizing the shimmy dance, which was then considered daring. Sometimes she accompanied herself on the piano while singing. She appeared in New York City in 1918 in the Midnight Frolics of the Ziegfeld Follies , where she sang the song I want to learn to Jazz Dance (I want to Shimmie). She also appeared on other Broadway shows. In 1920 she went with her own revue Oh Bee! (written by Herman Timberg) on ​​tour in which she sang, danced the shimmy and was accompanied by her own jazz band. They performed in New Orleans in December 1920, where some of the musicians of the later New Orleans Rhythm Kings (NORK) joined them, such as Leon Rappolo , Emmett Hardy and other jazz musicians such as the trombonist Santo Pecora . She continued to keep her pianist Al Siegel , whom she secretly married in March 1921. The band called them Bee Palmer and the New Orleans Rhythm King’s and the name was later carried over to NORK. On January 1st, 1921, her manager sued her for outstanding payments and she was temporarily prevented from performing in Chicago because the stage equipment and cloakroom had been confiscated. From February 27 to March 2, 1921, they played in Davenport, Iowa , where the young Bix Beiderbecke heard them and their band of jazz musicians. Soon after, the tour in Peoria, Illinois was broken up after clerics complained about the supposedly daring dances and the managers of Palmer became nervous. Many of the backing band's jazz musicians such as Rappolo, Pecora and Hardy went back to Davenport to join Carlisle Evans' band on the Mississippi paddle steamer Capitol.

In October 1921, her husband Al Siegel sued boxer Jack Dempsey over an alleged affair, which he denied - the process failed. Siegel and Palmer then filed for divorce, but remained married for seven years until their divorce in 1928. Bee Palmer continued to perform in Chicago and Broadway. Several times she planned to perform with well-known jazz musicians such as Fletcher Henderson and Eddie Condons Chicagoans, but this did not materialize for various reasons. In late 1928 she made film recordings with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, but they did not appear in Whiteman's 1930 film King of Jazz . She was a well-known figure in New York social life in the late 1920s.

She made some test recordings for Columbia and Victor from 1918 to 1924, and in 1929 for Columbia with Frankie Trumbauer and musicians of the Whiteman Orchestra. The recordings were not released until the CD era, and Singin the Blues is considered an early example of vocalese (based on the solos of Frankie Trumbauer and Bix Beiderbecke). In 1930 she co-wrote the song Please don't talk about me when I'm gone (with composer Sam H. Stept and lyricist Sidney Clare).

In 1933 she married her then accompanying pianist Jack Finna (or Pinna). She was living in Chicago at the time and soon gave up her artistic career.

Web links

• Bee Palmer at Redhotjazz