Herb Jeffries

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Herb Jeffries (* September 24, 1913 in Detroit as Umberto Alexander Valentino , † May 25, 2014 in Los Angeles ) was an American jazz musician and actor. In the mid-1930s he went down in history as the first and so far only African-American singing cowboy with a series of musical westerns .

Live and act

Herb Jeffries had Ethiopian , French-Canadian , Italian and Irish roots. He grew up in a multicultural neighborhood of Detroit, where he came into contact with various influences. Following the example of his father, who was a wandering musician, he aspired to a career as a singer from an early age. So he went to Chicago in 1932 ; there he got one of the singing jobs in " Erskine Tate 's Vendome Orchestra" and then in Earl Hines ' "Grand Terrace Orchestra", with which he recorded two songs for Brunswick in 1934 , Just to Be in Caroline and Blue (Because of You) .

He also recorded music with Sidney Bechet and then moved to New York . In 1940 he worked in the Duke Ellington Orchestra and stayed in the band until 1943. Jeffries can be heard on the tracks You, You Darlin ', Flamingo (1940) and Jump for Joy (1941). Billy Strayhorn got him to sing low when he wrote the arrangement for Flamingo for Duke Ellington . It brought him to a wider range; before that he had mostly sung falsetto . Flamingo sold a million copies and brought Jeffrie's popularity to both white and black audiences and laid the foundation for his career as a soloist.

After serving in World War II , he worked as a soloist. After a car accident, however, he had to take a year off before he was given the opportunity to record his hit Flamingo again for the label "Exclusive Records" . A number of hits followed, such as Angel Eyes, When I Write My Song and My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice . Duke Ellington got him minor roles in B-Movies and referred him to black and white run nightclubs. In the early 1950s, Jeffries earned more than any other black entertainer, except for Nat King Cole and Billy Eckstine ; his "Exclusive" recordings have now been released as 10-inch LPs by Mercury and Coral .

In addition to his work with jazz orchestras, Jeffries gained fame since 1937 as "Singing Cowboy" in a series of musical westerns in which he sang his own western compositions. While on tour in Ohio one evening he met a weeping black boy. When he wanted to comfort him, the boy told him that his friends didn't want him to play Tom Mix because he wasn't a "negro". This dramatic experience is said to have moved Jeffries to bring a black film cowboy modeled on Gene Autry to the cinemas for the colored audience . He organized the funding of the first all-African-American western film Harlem on the Prairie and eventually took on the lead role as there was no other black actor who could ride and sing. Jeffries himself had learned to ride a horse as a child on his uncle's farm in Ohio, where he spent the holidays. The film was so successful that four sequels followed, with Jeffries starring as "Herbert Jeffrey" in the last three films. He remained largely unknown to the white public in this role, it was not until the revival of western music from the late 1980s that he became more widely recognized.

After he had long since turned his back on the western genre, in 1995, at the age of 83, he recorded an album with his own and traditional western songs for the now-discontinued label "Warner Western", The Bronze Buckaroo (Rides Again ) . Like his films, it differs significantly from conventional Western material and was particularly appreciated by jazz fans: “Jeffries does these songs with all manner of jazz inflictions, in his singing as well as in the back-up arrangements - there's nothing here that couldn't have fit well in any night club in the 1940s in any part of the country. ”Jeffries himself made it a point not to have recorded a country album, but to stand in the tradition of the“ singing cowboys ”.

Jeffries lived in Wichita, Kansas. He died of heart failure on May 25, 2014 in a West Hills, Los Angeles hospital .

He was married to the burlesque dancer Tempest Storm for 10 years and had a daughter, Patricia, with her.

Awards

Herb Jeffries received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contribution to the film industry . In 2004 he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City .

Filmography (selection)

  • 1937: Harlem on the Prairie
  • 1938: Two-Gun Man from Harlem
  • 1939: Harlem Rides the Range
  • 1939: The Bronze Buckaroo

Discographic notes

Albums as a band singer

  • Sidney Bechet: 1940–1941 ( Classics )
  • Duke Ellington: The Blanton Webster Band (RCA, 1940-42)
  • Earl Hines: 1932-1934 (Classics)

Albums under your own name

Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary in Los Angeles Times
  2. ↑ Bogdanov, Vladimir; Woodstra, Chris; Erlewine, Stephen Thomas, All Music Guide to Jazz, San Francisco: Backbeat Bocks, 2002, ISBN 9780879307172 , p. 667.
  3. ↑ Mary A. Dempsey: The Bronze Buckaroo rides again - Herb Jeffries is still keepin 'on , in: Bruce A. Glasrud, Michael N. Searles (Eds.): Black Cowboys in the American West: On the Range, on the Stage , Behind the Badge , University of Oklahoma Press, 2016, ISBN 9780806156507 , pp. 131 - 134, here: p. 134.
personal data
SURNAME Jeffries, Herb
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jeffreys, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American singer and actor
DATE OF BIRTH September 24, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Detroit
DATE OF DEATH May 25, 2014
Place of death los Angeles