Betty Dorsey

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Betty Joyce Dorsey (* 1945 in Baltimore ; † March 21, 2020 in Timonium , Baltimore County , Maryland ) was an American pop singer who worked in West Germany in the 1960s and 70s.

Live and act

Dorsey was born into a working-class musical family of singers and musicians. She and her twin brother Gordon were the youngest of ten children of Roger and Catherine Dorsey. When she was four, Betty was a member of the Children's Choir at the Union Memorial Methodist Church in Baltimore. At the age of 12 she was a soloist and appeared on local television. Betty, two brothers and a family friend began touring as The Fourmost , a modern jazz vocal quartet. She graduated with honors from Gwynn Falls Park Jr. High School and Eastern High School with honors, and received honors from Morgan State College (now University), where she began studying history and German studies at Harvard -University continued. In 1967 she was named best entertainer in a competition in Maryland. In 1968 she received a Fulbright scholarship to study in Germany.

There she first performed in local jazz clubs and broke off her studies. In Germany she initially performed with a musical spectrum from classical to pop music to spirituals ; In 1969 Max Greger made his first television appearances on ZDF . In the role of Bess, she took part in a production of the Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess at the Mainz City Theater .

As a result, Dorsey appeared all over Europe and recorded albums in the CSSR ("Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", with Gustav Brom ), Germany, Spain, Italy and Bulgaria. In the 1970s she appeared in dozens of radio and television shows such as Die Drehscheibe (1964), Drei Mal Neun and Musik aus Studio B , including in 1975 as the presenter of her own TV show and in the TV series Butler Parker (1972) and MS Franziska (1977). Under her own name, she released two albums and a number of hit singles such as "Mach's gut", "Schenke mich ein little love", "Sing Silverqueen" and "Stay". Dorsey was married to the visual artist Jürgen Möbius (* 1939) in the 1970s , then for 20 years to Arthur Prechtl, a German real estate manager, with whom she lived in Trier , where she also worked for the German American Society . After the death of her husband, she returned to Baltimore in 2013. Dorsey died of complications from Parkinson's disease in March 2020 .

Discographic notes

  • Two people (Aronda, 1971)
  • Cry Out (Comma Records, 1979)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Betty J. Dorsey obituary. Legacy.com, March 31, 2020, accessed March 31, 2020 .
  2. ^ A b Siegmund Helms (Ed.): Schlager in Deutschland 1972, p. 186.
  3. ↑ Tom Lord : The Jazz Discography (online, accessed March 31, 2020)
  4. ↑ Betty Dorsey in the Internet Movie Database (English)Template: IMDb / Maintenance / "imported from" is missing
  5. ^ Note in Art , Volume 19, 1979, p. 168
personal data
SURNAME Dorsey, Betty
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dorsey-Prechtl, Betty Joyce (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American pop singer
DATE OF BIRTH 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Baltimore
DATE OF DEATH March 21, 2020
Place of death Timonium , Baltimore County , Maryland