ADELAIDE LOUISE HALL , was born in Brooklyn, New York on October 20, 1901. Her family moved across the East river to live in Harlem, which is where Adelaide spent her childhood. It was here, amongst the rich and fertile Renaissance of black culture that she nurtured her dreams of becoming a star.
In 1921, Adelaide secured her first role (in the chorus line) of the Broadway musical Shuffle Along. This revue legitimized the African-American musical, proving to producers and managers that audiences would pay to see black talent on Broadway. The show ran for 504 performances, then toured the American black theatre circuit. In 1923, Adelaide was featured in the Broadway musical Runnin Wild. Variety wrote in their review ... "Picked from the chorus, is Adelaide Hall, who can be termed a real find. She jazzes a number as Paul Whiteman would have it done, and her singing of 'Old Fashinoed Love' is a knockout". In 1925, Adelaide's first leading role, in Chocolate Kiddies, took her to Europe where she introduced the Charleston dance, which she performed to Duke Ellington's song, 'Jig Walk'. The show toured Germany and Scandinavia. Upon her return to New York, she starred in the revue Desires of 1927. At the end of the year she recorded 'Creole Love Call' with Duke Ellington and his Orchestra. The recording was a worldwide hit and catapulted both Adelaide's and Ellington's careers into the mainstream.
In 1928, Adelaide starred on Broadway in the musical revue Blackbirds of 1928 with Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson. The show became the longest running all-black revue ever to appear on Broadway and procured a string of hit songs for Adelaide, including, 'I Can't Give You Anything but Love', 'Baby', 'Diga Diga Do' and 'I Must Have That Man'. Adelaide and Bojangles' dance duets had the press label them the black equivalent to Fred & Adele Astaire. International fame followed. The show transferred to Paris, France, where it appeared for four months at the Moulin Rouge. In bold headline's, the New Amsterdam News reported on its front page, "Adelaide Hall takes Paris by storm". The French jazz magazine, Documents, claimed that Blackbirds performance at the Moulin Rouge was the only place, “where the spirit of the music is currently saved in Paris.†... In 1930, Adelaide returned to Broadway to star with Bojangles in the musical, Brown Buddies.
A change of direction in 1931 saw Adelaide commence a world tour that lasted almost two years. It took her to two continents and played to over 1 million people. The financial rewards made her into one of America's wealthiest black woman. It was during this tour that Adelaide discovered the blind pianist Art Tatum, who she empolyed as one of her stage pianists. During 1934, Adelaide starred in an eight-month residency at Harlem's Cotton Club. On stage, she introduced the timeless classic 'Ill Wind', which Harold Arlen wrote especially for her.
In 1936, Adelaide's restless spirit encouraged her to move to Paris to live, and for the next 3 years she toured extensively across Europe. Her husband and manager, Bert Hicks, opened a nightclub for her in Montmartre called La Grosse Pomme. It became a mecca for the rich and famous bohemians. Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli, with their Quintette du Hot Club de France, were the resident band and Adelaide would perform nightly at the club. Maurice Chevalier, Marlene Dietrich and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were regular patrons.
In 1938, Adelaide was offered a starring role in The Sun Never Sets at London's Theatre Royal Drury Lane alongside Tod Duncan. The show had music written by Cole Porter. In 1939 she made her home permanently in Britain. During WW2 Adelaide joined ENSA and entertained the troops both at home and across the war-torn battlefields of Europe and was one of the first entertainers to enter Germany at the end of the war. For the next 20 years she was one of Britain's most successful and highest earning entertainers. She had numerous shows on BBC Television including: Harlem In Mayfair, 1939, Dark Sophistication, 1939, Starlight, 1947, Variety in Sepia, 1947, Rooftop Rendevous, 1949, Black Magic, 1949 and Old Songs for New, 1949. She also made over 50 recordings for the DECCA Record label. In 1951, she co-starred in Cole Porter's musical Kiss Me Kate at London's Coliseum Theatre. The show ran for one year, then toured Britain. In 1952, she co-starred in a lengthy run of Love from Judy at London's Saville Theatre. In 1957, Adelaide returned to Broadway and was featured in the musical Jamaica, which starred her friend Lena Horne.
On October 12, 1988, Adelaide returned to New York to headline at Carnegie Hall. In 1989, Sophisticated Lady, Adelaide's film documentary was premiered at the london Film Festival. The film was shown on national TV the following year. In 1990, Adelaide released 3 albums, 'I Touched A Star', 'Hall of Memories' and 'Live at the Riverside'. In 1991, A Tribute to Adelaide Hall concert was staged at The Queen Elizabeth Hall in London to commemerate her 90th birthday. On March 4, 1992, Adelaide returned to New York to headline at Carnegie Hall for two nights. They were her last performances in America.
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CREOLE LOVE CALL
Hall and Ellington
'Creole Love Call' was originally released in 1927 on Victor, VI 39379-1. ............The song is currently available on the CD: Adelaide Hall … A Centenary Celebration AVID AMSC720
When 'Creole Love Call' first wailed across the ubiquitous voice of the radio in the fall of 1927, the initial reaction it received from the American public created quite a buzz on the streets of Harlem. Some folk thought admiringly that the song was on a par with, say, some of George Gerswhin's more serious works, whilst others were so outraged by Adelaide Hall's vocal sexual innuendoes that they openly saw fit to vilify both her and the recording.
That Hall's sultry undulating vocal, should unsuspectingly provoke a certain element of American white society into believing that the world had tripped upon its axle and spun off into outer space, worked, curiously, to the records advantage. Reassuringly, for all those involved in its release, during the next few months sales of both the sheet music and the disc, rocketed. After listening to the recording repeatedly, respected New York Times columnist, Edmund Wilson, wrote in his diary of the subliminal effect it had upon him, "I'll never believe in God again, never believe in anything again."
Why a wordless 'scat' vocal should provoke such an outcry of hostility and tension seems unfathomable today, but it did … with far-reaching consequences. Perhaps the reasoning behind Wilson's profound response is indicative of the era in which the recording was released. In the southern States, lynch law was still constitutional, and across the length and breadth of America, theatres banned black entertainers from publicly embracing on stage in front of an audience. In a country where many restaurants and nightclubs defiantly refused Negroes entrance, the thought of freely promoting black lust across the airwaves in the face of staunch white bible-bashers was deemed to be reverently abhorrent. If the song's content was thought to be too sexually suggestive, it certainly did what no other song had done before in the history of recorded music; it melted the wax in the listener's ears.
'Creole Love Call' was born on stage (probably at Harlem's Lafayette Theatre) between two impulsive talents (Hall and Ellington) - both destined for independent stardom and international acclaim. From an historical point of view, Adelaide's account of how the song was originally conceived is an interesting story to relate and gives an insight as to how Ellington conducted his songwriting during this early period in his career.
By chance, Hall and Ellington were appearing on the same concert bill - Adelaide was starring in the first half of the show and Ellington's band was performing in the second. After her set, Adelaide returned to her backstage dressing room to change out of her stage outfit. During her performance, Ellington's band had accompanied her from the orchestra pit. For his own program, Duke had the band's instruments repositioned on the stage. Just before the second act commenced, Adelaide made a dash from her dressing room to catch Duke's set. Standing in the wings, obscured from the band by a wing drop, Adelaide got the best view in the house.
As the music hotted up, so did Adelaide, and the sound of her impromptu scat vocals carried effortlessly across the stage. Glancing around in bewilderment, Duke became more and more intrigued as to where the mystery voice was emanating from. When the band began playing 'Creole Love Call', Adelaide's vocal accompaniment knocked Duke off his piano stool. The counter-melody she improvised was the melody he'd been searching for to complete the song. Unable to contain his curiosity any longer, Duke rushed off stage into the wings and to his astonishment found Adelaide singing her heart out. He grabbed hold of her arm and immediately led her back on stage, insisting she repeat what she had been singing in the wings in front of the audience.
The songs structure focuses around a chord sequence taken from the song 'Camp Meeting Blues', which Ellington had borrowed from its writer, the bandleader and cornet player King Oliver. Adelaide's first impression of the tune in its raw state was that it lacked any memorable hook and this was why she instinctively began to sing her wordless vocal in response. Ellington was so impressed with Adelaide's counter-melody that at the end of her live unscripted performance he told her to remember what she had just sung as they would record it in the next couple of days ... and so, 'Creole Love Call' was born.
As well as regularly incorporating a scat vocal in her stage rendition of songs for many years prior to her recording of 'Creole Love Call' Adelaide had used the practise during show rehearsals, as a way of learning the melody to a new song if she hadn't memorised the lyrics. By coincidence, earlier in 1927, during her six-month residency starring at Chicago's Sunset Café, Adelaide had befriended and worked on stage with Louis Armstrong, who was the leader of the Sunset Café's resident band, Armstrong's Sunset Café Stompers. Armstrong was another aficionado of the scat art form and Adelaide is said to have expanded her scat vocal technique under his guidance.
Interestingly, seventy-six years after 'Creole Love Call' was first cut to disc, the song still courts controversy. In the days when the copyright act was wide open to abuse, Ellington's hard-nosed manager, Irving Mills, knew exactly how to take full advantage of the loopholes and subsequently had Adelaide's and King Oliver's names omitted from the writing credits. In contrast to the moral majority's opinion, soon after the record's release in 1927 the song became the vogue of a new generation of white middle-class hedonists. Charged on adrenaline and illicit alcohol, this spirited breed of partygoer perfected and revelled in the art of shocking those who decried their every move. For them, 'Creole Love Call' became an emblem of the Moderne times in which they moved and from that moment onwards, life for Hall and Ellington ceased to be the same.
Riding on the songs outstanding success, Ellington and his eponymous orchestra settled into a lengthy residency at Harlem's Cotton Club and in 1928, Adelaide became the toast of Broadway in the hit all-black musical revue Blackbirds of 1928, rivalling Mae West and Marilyn Miller for box-office receipts. Having previously been dubbed The Black Madonna, the media now saw fit to label her The Crooning Blackbird. Although the press mellowed in their opinion of Adelaide, at one evening's presentation of the show, enraged southern red-necks rioted in the aisles during her performance of 'Diga Diga Do', bringing 42nd Street to a temporary standstill.
Although there has been little documentation over the years about Hall's song writing ability, it wasn't just nourished under Ellington's baton. After the commercial success of 'Creole Love Call' and with encouragement from her husband, Bert Hicks, who was now acting as her personal manager, Adelaide began to take songwriting a little more seriously. It was reported in the press of the day that she co-wrote several songs with her co-star from Blackbirds of 1928, Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson. One of the songs from this collaboration titled 'Lazy Moon', impressed Blackbirds impresario Lew Leslie enough for him to have it immediately inserted into the Broadway production of the show.
Within a short space of time 'Creole Love Call' had become a benchmark recording, which future female jazz vocalists referred to when developing their own vocal style. Even Ella Fitzgerald, who was a mere gym-slip of a girl when Adelaide recorded 'Creole Love Call', acknowledged her 'big sister' Adelaide, as the trailblazer that paved the way for her and others to follow.
Throughout its lengthy history, 'Creole Love Call', in all its various formats, has collectively sold millions and is wholly accepted as being one of the great jazz standards to have emerged from the Roaring Twenties. Even today, the song still holds universal appeal and crops up occasionally in movie soundtracks and television commercials, and new cover versions appear regularly.
The song is used to evoke the mood in Blair Niles's novel Strange Brother, set in 1927, amongst Harlem's nightclub culture. Within its pages, Adelaide is immortalised as the jazz diva of the era. The book was first published in 1931 and gives the reader a kaleidoscopic look into the nocturnal habits of a city that thrives on self-indulgence. To add veracity to the plot, Niles cleverly serves 'Creole Love Call' to the reader as a sort of melodic theme and allows the song to reoccur throughout a large part of the story.
With a musical career spanning a remarkable eight decades, it comes as no surprise to hear that Adelaide Hall has recently been acknowledged by Guinness World Records as the 20th century's most enduring female recording artist for consistently releasing new recordings over eight consecutive decades. Though the longevity of her career saw her working in a variety of genre, encompassing jazz, music-hall, nightclubs, musical revue, dance, theatre, concert tours and film, it seems ironic that Adelaide will always be remembered for her vocal counter-melody on her classic 1927 recording of 'Creole Love Call', a melody that still to this day she is not officially credited for writing.
Copyright Iain Cameron Williams 2004
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MUSIC ... ADELAIDE HALL with the BLACKBIRDS ORCHESTRA 'I MUST HAVE THAT MAN' recorded in 1928, from the Broadway revue BLACKBIRDS OF 1928
MUSIC ... ADELAIDE HALL with DUKE ELLINGTON and his ORCHESTRA 'CREOLE LOVE CALL' recorded in 1927
MUSIC ... ADELAIDE HALL with DUKE ELLINGTON and his ORCHESTRA 'THE BLUES I LOVE TO SING' recorded in 1927