Valaida Snow, Jazz Trumpeter (1920's-1950's)

Good morning!!

Man alive, it has been way too long, kiddos! How in the heck are you? I'm still slinging books with greater accuracy and speed than ever--I'll tell you, this new job breaks down into 100% less transient men catcalling me at a public desk, but also 100% less free time than I had at my old government employ. So don't think I've forgotten you! I'm still to be seen each and every Saturday morning out at the better Davidson County estate sale offerings (meaning, the ones with the dustiest atics and highest density of fur coats per square foot) and I'm still hounding down "things you'd think Lisa would be interested in" both in print and the wide world of the web.... I EVEN still find time in my idle moments to dig up the best in vintage dirt for you. Being as this is one of those moments, I thought I'd dial you up and give you the run-down on this doll-eyed vintage vixen. Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Valaida Snow:

Doesn't she remind you of Clara Bow? I wish someone would say that JUST ONCE about me!

A couple weeks ago I broke down and got the paid membership version of Spotify, mainly because my father-in-law and his wife were coming over for dinner and since my aged, much abused iPod finally bit the dust, I didn't want my early jazz playlist constantly interrupted by messages about Square Space and Audible.com. Don't think it didn't pain my penurious little heart, but I realized that for $7.99/month, I WOULD GLADLY pay to listen to an uninterrupted feed of my francophone swing music and obscure David Bowie recordings (I would like to report that Baal is on Spotify in its entirety, and isn't the world a better place for it). So far it's served me very well! (End unsponsored rant). The wonder of what all is out there in the world these days for you to just pull up with the click of a button. Speaking of....

I recreated a playlist of a Smithsonian Folkways jazz series compilation from the early fifties' (the music on it was vintage THEN, as it came from the twenties' and thirties'), and while I was listening, came across a song I really liked on a Doxy records compilation of work by a pretty girl singer named Valaida Snow. "What a cute little voice, she reminds me of Ethel Waters a little bit..." ((tapping toes)) "CHECK OUT THAT TRUMPET THOUGH. Wow! I wonder if it's King Oliver or Louis Armstrong or some other linear-descendant of that too-hot-to-touch trumpet tradition?"  

                            

Oh...so it turns out, the singer, the gal on the cover, and the trumpet player, are all one gorgeous multi-talented package: Valaida Snow. 

Give me just one occasion in my life in which I get to wear a tulle ruff like this...if I'm very, very good?

Valaida Snow was born around the turn of the century in Chattanooga, Tennessee, though the exact date seems to jump around a little from source to source. A multi-instrumentalist, singer, and dancer, Valaida began her professional career at fifteen, touring in America and abroad throughout the twenties' and thirties' in a number of all-black musical revues, culminating professionally in 1931's Rhapsody in Black. The star and top billed attraction of Rhapsody was none other than the aforementioned soundalike Ethel Waters, against whom a cash strapped Lew Leslie, as producer, pitted Valaida in a professional and personal rivalry that he hoped would cause the better known (and more expensively salaried) Waters to quit. Neither quit, but neither was it the congenial, all us gals together backstage atmosphere of other productions they'd appeared in together. According this book excerpt, Waters and Snow's rivalry extended to the point that New Yorkers eager to fete the women and the rest of the cast in an after party would have to throw two separate soirees, one to which Valaida was invited and Ethel wasn't; and one to which Ethel was invited and Valaida wasn't. I care less about the diva arms race and more about this passage:

At the time of Rhapsody in Black

In 1934, a thirtysomething year old Snow married one half of the Berry Brothers, a dance act. Ananais Berry was handsome, talented, and young. Emphasis on the young, as the fifteen plus year age gap between nineteen year old Berry and his bride was a serious sticking point in the media and caused controversy even within the entertainment community. I was able to find a couple articles from the time in the Afro-American newspaper, adding to the mix charges of bigamy (she may or may not have been legally separated from a teenage marriage to her first husband) along with everything else:

                      

As their marriage fell apart, Valaida decamped back to Europe, where she toured successfully and enjoyed the freedom of a beautiful, brilliant, expatriate black woman abroad. She appeared in a French film, worked with Maurice Chevalier on stage, and performed for heads of state in places as far flung as Shanghai and Luxemborg, before Nazi occupation of the hexagon seemed imminent. Old friend and Broadway costar Josephine Baker encouraged her to leave France for the states-- Valaida got as far as Denmark. As this clip points out, that would be THE FIRST of three countries to fall into German occupation. Valaida spent a harrowing 18 months in a German occupation camp, which she described in the following clippings from a 1943 issue of Afro-American (right click "open image in new window" or save the photo for a full sized version):

Could you even believe that twist? Released in a prisoner exchange, a sixty-some odd pound Valaida, down from her usual petite 100, returned to America sans the gold trumpet the queen of the Netherlands had given her or any of her glamorous possessions, but nevertheless began to rebuild her career with characteristic grit and determination. Here she is in 1946 singing and playing trumpet in a brief musical clip, looking as gorgeous and sounding as fabulous as ever:

         

Valaida's star waned into the fifties' as she accepted Catskills dates and continued working and playing concerts throughout the northeast, before passing away of a brain hemorrage in 1956. Nevertheless! THIS gal at least, in 2015, is more than impressed with the talent and fantastic backstory behind a haphazard Spotify click. Wouldn't it make a riveting movie? I'm looking forward to tracking down a copy of her biography, but 'til then, you can check out her music on Spotify or Youtube. You won't be disappointed.

So! What have you been listening to lately? Found anything completely by accident that you've fallen head over heels in love with? What little known musical gem would you recommend digging up in this marvelous age of technology we live in? I'd love to hear from you, it's been ages!

Back with more vintage tangents and tchotckes soon-- I'll try not to go so long between posting! Have a fabulous Tuesday and we'll talk soon. Til next time!

Standard Textbook of Cosmetology (1938, 1954, 1959, 1962)

Good afternoon!

I hope you had a great weekend-- ours was busy, busy, busy! Friday, Dad and I hit the flea market; Saturday, we went to a couple estate sales and watched some Jimmy Stewart westerns, and Sunday, Matthew and I lounged as hard as we could possibly lounge on a rare, shared day off. Six hours of season one of the Real Housewives of Atlanta and delivery General Tso's tofu yesterday is making me feel a little bad for my gluttonous indulgence of high calorie food and low quality (BEST POSSIBLE QUALITY)  reality tv...but you're only young once, right?

Speaking of being young, I'm thinking of cutting my hair to sync up with big changes on the not-so-distant horizon (don't worry, it's good news!). It's down to my elbows right now, but as you can tell from blog pictures, I always wear it up, and I think I'm ready for a bob for the first time in six years. As far as short hair styles, do we consult Celebrity Hair Now or similar shiny tabloid hair makeover rags? Nope-- you know us better than that! I dug up this Standard Textbook of Cosmetology, originally published in 1938 but updated as recently as 1962, to take a look at what was good in the world of coiffures. I didn't find my new hairstyle, but I did find some pretty neat stuff! Wanna take a look?

Mr. Lee's State Beauty College was a cosmetology school in Yakima, Washington...while I couldn't find much information on the institution, I like to think it was like that episode of Tabatha's Salon Takeover where she updates a beauty school that was started by the suave and then-eighty-some-odd year old proprietor named Flavio in the fifties'. Imagine the kind of Warren Beatty in Shampoo like hot guy hair stylist, and these are the dreams I'm projecting on Mr. Lee. The book, from page one, is a hoot-- it combines all the different editions of the book (1938-1962....quite a wide swath of beauty trends there) as one semi-cohesive textbook for the would be beautician.

First, please color me thrilled about this forecast for your success or failure as a working beauty professional:

That pert, swept-updo gal Friday is SO. CUTE. And I whole heartedly agree with the Goofus and Gallant like juxtaposition of how you should do and how you shouldn't. Could someone please needlepoint "TO BE SUCCESSFUL-- you must learn to do the little things that will make people like you" for me to hang up in my home and place of business?

Two pages later, we've jumped from the late forties' to the early fifties' (but still not au courant with the 1962 publication of the book) and what your own personal hygiene as a beautician should entail.

Do you ever notice in hair salons (or maybe the hair salons I would go to in college that specialize in $10 haircuts), there will be two or three girls with perfect, asymmetrical bobs streaked in cute highlights, wearing skinny jeans and a nice top, and they are never the person who comes to cut my hair? I am 9 times out of 10 stuck with a mountainous woman with over, over, OVER processed hair the color of  nothing found in nature, and styled (herself! After all, she's a beautician!) in the fashion of Kate Gosselin or somebody's-trying-too-hard-mom. This woman unwaveringly would look at my photo of Mia Farrow or Jean Seberg or whatever waif-like style icon I was going for at the time, and say "Yeah, I can do that," and proceed to give me a shorter version of her own hair cut. What I wouldn't give to see someone like this smiling brightly at me over the counter-- she would understand how I want hair um exactly like hers and what's more, know how to do it!

Each and every time I brush out my curled hair, I manage to look like one of the Mandrell sisters-- not-that-that's-a-bad-thing, but I can't not do bouncy, 70's prom curls even when I specifically wanted short, forties' defined waves. My hair has a natural wave to it, but is by no means curly, and I have the hardest time figuring out what kind of potions or potents I need to put on it to make the curls stay curled! I know a lot of it is in the comb out... vis à vis the chart below. SO MANY CUTE CURLS. So little that have actually appeared on my head:

I can just see myself with a pen and paper trying to remember if I was doing C curls or CC curls:

Oh, look! The exact marcelled wave from the 20's and 30's I want, but here in this 1962 textbook! Do you think it would be super, unbelievably difficult to recreate this style in the 21st century? Also, would I look like a fruit damn cake? I'm going to do research in the text of the book, but chime in if you know anything about these hair dids. Can I look like La Swanson with the basic, limited hair skills I already possess?

I love thinking of the illustrator going, ok, I need to show how this would work in the theoretical. Also, I need a poster of this crazy figure for my house.

Pin curls! Another thing I will be able to do once I hack off about a foot of this hair. Make me look like Carole Lombard, pin curls!

 This one reminds me of Norma Shearer-- doesn't it you?

Poor, dopey looking "convex" and Disney villainess looking "low forehead, sharp chin"-- I feel like I have a straight pointed profile? Can I vote none of these?

Ok, now that you've seen some of the actually helpful portions of the book, I present to you the truly weird and wackadoodle illustrations from the second half:

Jim! Jim, what happened to your FAAAAACE?! I love how nonplussed he looks even without skin.

It's a rake...for your scalp...wired for electricity...soooo....

With and without protective goggles.

A quartet of horrors. 1) Pattymelt face, 2) I'll worry about my foot bones, you worry about keeping me in Louboutins, 3)Why does Simone Signoret have such a hairy face, 4) Why does this diagram have a face at all! Disturbing! 

I've got to get going, but let me know what you think! Should I cut my hair? What vintage styling tips have you found helpful? Seen any weird textbook illustrations lately? Spill, spill!

Have a great Monday, and hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with some weekend finds! Take care; talk to you then.

Charles Gerhardt Conducts (Classic Hollywood Film Scores on Freegal/Spotify)

Good morning!

I hope you had a good Monday. It's quiet as the grave this morning at the library-- a welcome change of pace from the clattering and clamouring of yesterday's shift on the nonfiction desk. Renovation waits for no man! Or woman, hoping to squeeze by on a non-eventful hour in the library. Too bad! Speaking of sound though, I made the best discovery online while trying to redeem my seven free downloads from the library's subscription to Freegal, a legal music download site. Folks, have you heard the good word about Charles Gerhardt's Hollywood film score records?

Nothing to get your heart pumping first thing in the morning like an Errol Flynn movie poster! (source)

Trying to recover from the disappointment of finding that Cameo's "Word Up" was only available in a weird, aftermarket 1990's re-recording of the song, I searched Freegal this weekend "Hollywood" to see if I could pull up any oddball stars-who-sing recordings (more on that later, because THE THINGS I FOUND, PEOPLE). In doing so, I came across a series of records with "Charles Gerhardt" listed as the artist, and with a few of my favorite movie titles splashed across the covers. Captain Blood (above) was the first that caught my eye, but twelve more entries in total appeared under Gerhardt's listings. People! I had struck Freegal paydirt. Bette Davis! Errol Flynn! Humphrey Bogart! Many names that are writ bold across my movie collection and my little movie loving heart, were definitely present and accounted for in Gerhardt's movie score collections, and danged if I didn't spend the rest of a productive/unproductive evening to the sounds and scores of some of my favorite movies.

Turns out, I actually had borrowed the album on the left (reissued as the album on the right) from the library in high school, having duped it on a cassette which was played when I got ready in the morning. You try choosing an outfit to the strains of the theme from Now, Voyager, and see if you don't go for an ensemble a little more dramatic than mere silence or early morning radio would encourage. It was checked out and never returned by a later patron (booooo, hisssss), and I would have just figured I'd never see it again were it not for this chance run-in with it on the Freegal site. Thanks, Freegal! Along with the aforementioned title track, there are themes on that record from Oscar winning films like Jezebel and All About Eve, as well as less well-known pictures like In This Our Life (a favorite of mine) and even the noir flop Beyond the Forest (which provided Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of the Virgina Woolf and drag impersonators everywhere the classic Bette line "What a dump..."). And Iiiiiiiiii love it. Expect me to be pinning up my hair tomorrow for work and adopting a cer-TAIN diction whilst I do so, in a fit of love for the divine Miss D. Nostalgia! It floods over me!

One of my all time favorite Bette coiffures from Now, Voyager (wikipedia)

Scanning Wikipedia, I was able to find out that Charles Gerhardt was a record producer for RCA and Reader's Digest in the sixties' and seventies'. Yep, he's the one responsible for those multi-record set Treasury of Music album folders you often find at estate sales (because everyone's grandmother had a copy of one of the other of these). Between 1972 and 1976, Gerhardt directed the National Philharmonic Orchestra through a popular series of twelve movie score albums, aimed at forties' nostalgia audiences and cinephiles alike. Those titles include:

• The Sea Hawk: The Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold 
• Now Voyager: The Classic Film Scores of Max Steiner
• Classic Film Scores for Bette Davis 
• Captain from Castile: The Classic Film Scores of Alfred Newman
• Elizabeth and Essex: The Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold
• Casablanca: Classic Film Scores for Humphrey Bogart
• Gone with the Wind
• Citizen Kane: The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Hermann
• Sunset Boulevard: The Classic Film Scores of Franz Waxman
• Spellbound: The Classic Film Scores of Miklós Rózsa
• Captain Blood: Classic Film Scores for Errol Flynn
• Lost Horizon: The Classic Film Scores of Dimitri Tiomkin

And guess what? Each and every one of those is on Freegal and Spotify! I die. The film composers listed on these records represent some of thethe most influential movie score makers of the 20th century. Hermann, Steiner, and Tiomkin in particular are responsible for themes that will not leave your head after watching a movie-- Adventures of Don Juan and Spellbound stick out to me as ones I could hum on command. The music is as much a part of the movie as the stars in most of these cases! 

This card is from Bogart's fourth and last picture with wife Lauren Bacall, Key Largo (1948). The score is, as you would imagine, wonderful. source

I thought of something while I was listening to this film scores at home-- Matthew and I watched the movie Escape from Tomorrowland  in the last of our Netflix subscription days. I'd been excited to see the independent movie mainly based on the publicity surrounding its production-- the movie is set and largely filmed on location at Walt Disney World, shot guerilla-style on hand held digital cameras without the permission of the park itself. Fascinating, right? What really stayed with me after watching the movie, besides how surprisingly well done it was for a movie largely marketed on that anarchic quirk of its filming, was the jarring and evocative use of traditional, non-diegetic film scoring throughout the movie. You don't realize how much you miss a tender scene in a classic movie being scored to the "Love Theme From..." version of the movie theme until you see what a difference it can make in even a simple exchange on screen. 

source, source

There's a scene where the main character, a dad losing his grip on reality on the last day at the theme park's resort, is talking to a buxom parent on a park bench. The scene uses rear projection, an old Hollywood way of shooting on set but making it (kind of/sort of/not really) look like it was shot on location, and a swelling string score...and while it's not Hitchcock in the slightest, it immediately reminded me of a similar scene in Notorious, where Cary Grant talks to Ingrid Bergman on a park bench, among swelling strings, in a rear-projected setting of Rio de Janiero. The surrealness of the music, and suspension of disbelief that they are where the movie is telegraphing they are, are the same in either scene, and the music builds the tension in each way more than the actual acting could do. And reminded me of what we lose in movie magic when all movie are scored with these limp, unprepossessing ambient tracks. A bold, classic Hollywood score does a lot of the dramaturgical heavy lifting for the movie narrative! And adds, again, to the "magic" of old Hollywood studio films.

More rear projection, non-digetic sound, and Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound (source)

But I digress! You should hie thee hither and check out the recordings either through your local library's Freegal, if they have it (Nashvillians, here's ours), or Spotify if they don't! Most of these cds are available on Amazon as well. I'll get you started with Bette Davis's film scores here, but be sure to check out the rest, I promise it will make you want to watch or rewatch the pictures they represent. Also, you can read more about Gerhardt and his movie score series here.

                                             

Anyway, I've ranted and railed long enough, what do you think? What are your favorite movie scores? Do you have a soft spot for the movies of any particular classic Hollywood star (aHEM, why am I not seeing more Joan Crawford representation on this movie music series)? Have you seen any modern movies lately with aspects of classic movies that made you pine for the silver screen of old? Let's talk!

Well, I'm off to go raid the dvd collection downstairs for a few Bogart movies I need to see again. That's all for today, but I'll see you back here tomorrow (possibly with more old movie talk? You know once I get on a tear, I stay on a tear). Have a great Tuesday! Til then. :)

Tramp Art (1900's-1940's Americana Knickknacks)

Good morning!

How's your Monday? The day's moving by like molasses over here at the library, but the better to tell you about vintage stuff with, my dears. :) This weekend, I was looking at a local vintage shop's instagram when the following picture made my heart skip a little beat. Have you ever! Seen so beautiful! A lamp in your whole life! You may have, but I know I have not:

Savant Vintage...I'm coming for you. And this lamp. I hope it's not $1,000,000

UHHHM! What a sight for sore eyes! The color and the texture and the ordinary-turned-extraordinary of this marbles-and-Popsicle-sticks craft confection is making me want to throw caution to the wind and install it in my office, toute de suite. What are we looking at though, folks? I know from my obsessive thumbing through titles like Outsider Art and The Complete Book of Retro Crafts that this lamp has its roots in a collectibles genre called "tramp art". I immediately call to mind David Carradine in either Bound for Glory or Boxcar Bertha, a poetic rambler riding the rails, living outside of society, and taking time to whittle a cigar box here and there. In case I was wrong, I decided to look through the internet for more concrete examples and explanations of the the delightful art pieces.

From a website appropriately named Trampart.com:

What is Tramp Art?

Tramp art is an art movement found throughout the world where small pieces of wood, primarily from discarded cigar boxes and shipping crates, are whittled into layers of geometric patterns having the outside edges of each layer notch carved. The artists used simple tools such as a pocketknife to carve the recycled wood. It was popular in the years between the 1870s to the 1940s after which the art form started to decline. It was made in prodigious numbers. The most common forms were the box and the frame. Although there were no rules or patterns to lend commonality in the artists’ work there were objects made in every conceivable shape and size including full sized furniture and objects of whimsy.

So you don't actually have to be Oklahoma Red/Wallace Beery in Beggars of Life to make tramp art, but because of the easily obtained, discarded materials, it would be feasible that you could make this kind of stuff whatever your station in life. One of my chief gripes about modern day crafting is how much money you often have to lay out to get started in jewelry/felting/needlepoint/whatever. This stuff, if you have a pocket knife, a piece of an orange crate, and some artistic vision, you can make some pretty amazing stuff.

Check out what I was able to find online (ebay, Etsy wise, anyway). You'd better believe I'll be looking for similar pieces out in the wild:

Folk Tramp Art Cigar Band Glass Bowl

I love how packaging in the first half of the 20th century was just better. These are made from cigar bands, and you'd only have to smoke about 66 stogies to get a high quality piece of collage art like the piece above (for Al Swearingen, that's like half a day's worth of puffing). Another piece of tobaccoania this non-smoker is into are those tobacco silk quilts and filmland tobacco cards-- again, you're lucky if you can get a coupon towards future merchandise, much less beautiful, printed pieces of silk or cards of your favorite movie stars along with purchased item these days. Still, for pure, horror vacui loveliness, I am really into this bowl.

1930's Tramp Art Hand Mirror, Nice wood tramp art mirror.

Doesn't this hand mirror look like something they'd have at World Market right now? The woodburning process is also termed in some of these listings as "pyrography", which may sound like a mid 90's alternative cd, but is actually just any kind of wood decoration through controlled burning. 

Antique tramp art crucifix with hanging metal Christ suspended on carved wooden cross with emblems

I'm not much for collecting religious iconography, but this crucifix is beautiful.

1930s Vintage Tramp Art Pyrography Dresser Top Lamp, Primitive Folk Art Red Fringe Wood Lamp

Now we're talking! I just love looking at each of these and thinking of someone's grandfather being like, "You want a what! I can make you one of those! Gimme some time, I'll make you one up in the garage", and setting to the task of diligently creating whatever kind of decorative art the fairer sex saw as necessary for setting up housekeeping. "You wanted a lamp, here's you a lamp!" See how it comes complete with little drawers for keeping knickknacks in and built in picture frames?

Bottle Cap Lady Tramp Art Carmen Miranda Style

Now, this bottle cap lady I actually remember from the Retro Crafts book. However, if you can get a couple hundred thousand more bottle caps, you can dream big and think outside the house in terms of what to do with these discarded pop tops, à la this Russian woman and her bottle cap house. You heard me. HOUSE. It's amazing, too. How about this snaky basket made out of bottle caps? Start drinking now!

American TRAMP Folk ART Hand Made Bottle CAP Basket 

Vintage Folk Art Cigarette Wrapper Purse 

Remember when making purses out of Capri Sun pouches and Levi jeans and every other kind of thing was the latest fashion trend, circa 1998? Here's its non-PC precursor,  the cigarette wrapper purse. I've also seen wallets like this made out of Juicy Fruit and other gum wrappers. I should learn something like this to pass slow moving lunch hours at my desk (as if my desk needed to look more like a kitsch trash heap than it already does...).

More cigar band decoupaging. I'm telling you, I need one of these things in my life:

Decoupage CIGAR BAND LABEL Tray Tobacco Tramp Folk Art

I was particularly attracted to this heart shaped wooden shield with the name "Carmela" carved into it. I see so many things like this where someone's tried to make something look old and hand hewn like this, and it's a night and day difference between the imitated and the imitator.

TRAMP ART WOODEN BOX HEART SHAPED NAME CARMELA

AAAH! ANOTHER MARBLE LAMP! Maybe there's hope for me yet!!

Vintage Folk Tramp Art Popsicle Sticks Marbles Table Lamp

There were lots, and lots, and LOTS of boxes, as you could imagine, but this one was the prettiest to me (and has one of the most intense price tags..YEEKS, people). I love how the texture of the wood plays of the shape of the box and the little velvet and brass inlays.

Exquisite Tramp Art Ornately Decorated Box

This is probably something more like I could actually make, minus the lettering. Doesn't it make you want to scrabble through your junk drawer at home and just paint everything gilt? I know I have geometrical whatnots every which way but loose in my house...now, to formulate them into a plan...

San Francisco Exposition 1915-Folk Art -Tramp Art

This one looks more like a birdhouse to me, if said bird lived in an Indonesian temple:

Antique American TRAMP Art Wood BOX

And last but not least, this just may be some folk art, but I loved the display of it on black velvet, with a red velvet matte, with the gold frame. So turn of the century and so ornate and so something I need to have in my house. Now, the same thing, but with the rosettes in the shape of a bird or a tiger or a human face. Let's get on this!

Victorian Antique Paper Tramp Art Cross Folk Art Naïve Flower Frame

You can see more examples of tramp art here, and here, but the one I really want to see is that marble lamp in next to my computer at home. The lovely glow it would give off! How happy I would be!

How about you? Have you had your interest piqued by any collectibles lately? Which of these tramp art pieces are your favorite? Have any hand-hewn heirlooms in your family or in your personal collection? Tell me all about it!

That's all for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with more vintage tips and quips. Have a great Monday! See you then!

What Does Billie Holiday Wear? (Newspaper Article,1937)

Good morning!

How was your weekend? We had a pretty lazy one hanging around the house, drinking mimosas, and saving a snapping turtle from imminent danger (also, I may or may not be too into Instagram right now). And here I am back at work today to deliver the good word in vintage goings on. Heads up this Monday for a new vintage timewaster on the internet-- Google has a newspaper archive some hundreds of titles strong, and yours truly just last week figured out how to search the database proper, rather than occasionally stumbling across the odd article here and there. I was looking up something or other and came up with this amazing article from a 1937 issue of The Afro-American, a black interest newspaper published out of Baltimore since 1892. Reporter Lillian Johnson sat down with Lady Day herself in her dressing room of the Royal Theater, and dished something delightful over the personal wardrobe and habits of the iconic vocalist.

Take a look:

(source)

What a lead, already, by the way-- "I like ugly men...I've always had the idea that good looking men are conceited, that they think they're cute." The Coasters would agree with you! Billie Holiday, born Eleanora Fagan in 1915, would have been twenty-two at the time of this article's publication, and spent 1937 on a difficult tour with Count Basie. I lo-o-o-ove the dishy tone of Johnson's column, and want to rifle through the other issues of The Afro-American from the time to see if I can dig up anything else on the swing/big band era stars of the time. I'm still honing my Google newspaper search skills, and haven't quite figured out how to search one newspaper's run, but somewhere in these 465 issues of the paper from the 1930's, I'm sure I'll find something else good!

Here's a photo of Holiday on stage around the time the article would have run.

Billie Holiday at the Apollo with Count Basie's band, 1937 (source)

If you're more of a visual than a text-based learner, I went through the article and tried to recreate some of the outfits from each of the lavish descriptions for you, in case you wanted to swagger out of the ball room in style like Billie did back in her heyday. I didn't always hit the nail on the head etsy-wise, but I hope I came kinda close? Here's the singer's dressing room ensemble, comprised of:

• "A peach colored dressing gown, trimmed in turquoise blue"
• "with satin turquoise mules," and
• "a ring set with nineteen diamonds".

Wonder who she was engaged to at the time? BH doesn't spill on who the lucky guy was, other to say he's "tall, sharp, and tailor made, though he isn't handsome"...while Billie married her first husband, Jimmy Monroe, in 1941, who's to say who this former beau was. Whoever he was, don't mistake him for cute, Billie seems to be insisting!

dressing gown, shoes, ring

The rest of the article continues to describe her clothes and demeanor here (click for a closeup):

Billie is described as "neat and dainty" and as doing her own hair. I second her sentiment of "I didn't take a course in hair dressing, but I kept trying until I got it just right." Preach! Her favorite colors for her wardrobe include "black, white, and green", but none of those are represented in the streetclothes described as hanging from behind the door of her dressing room. Those items include

• "A soft fleece sport coat in dark gray with a blue fox collar"
• "a gray skirt" and
• "a short woolen jacket of brick". She also wears
• "a long, slender wristwatch, lavishly set in [diamonds].

Doesn't this ensemble sound chic, chic, chic? Here's what it might look like in person, with apologies for the early fifties' suit...you wouldn't believe the time I had trying to find the right fox fur and grey suit, to boot! In the late thirties', the sleeves would have been fuller, the jacket longer and maybe belted, and the skirt a little looser/more flowy. See this image for an example.

suit, wristwatch, bolero

On to what we would have been more familiar with her wearing-- Billie's on stage clothes! I noticed the copy mentioned three gardenias in her hair, and while that sounded like about two too many, here she is rocking the triad of floral hair pieces like it was no big deal, looking gorgeous in the meantime. Again, her stage attire is described as:

• "a black chiffon, fitted evening gown with a black satin underslip, trimmed in rhinestones at the neck" and 
• "with it she wore three gardenias".

Two of my favorite songs of hers were recorded in 1937: "A Sailboat in the Moonlight" and "Me, Myself, and I". Though they're all my favorite, this period of her recording history, at least, boasts some of her best numbers. If you're a beginner Billie fan, I would heartily recommend the Lady Day box set, which covers her Columbia recordings from 1933-1944. While later albums are poignant in their own way for her raspier, deeper voice in the late forties' and early fifties', the lilting prettiness and insouciant song stylings of this period are classic Holiday at her best.

dress, gardenias, sheet music (one and two)

How about the reporter outs Billie as having plenty of tearose silk underwear around her dressing room? The article asserts she doesn't keep a maid and tidies up well after herself...yet, how is the reporter privy to the contents of her unmentionables drawer if she didn't have pairs strewn about the place? Inquiring minds want to know. Favorite perfumes and makeup?

• "Max Factor makeup blender" and
• "Emeraud and Evening in Paris perfumes".

Max Factor face powder, Emeraud, Evening in Paris, tap pants

Last but not least, the reporter describes Billie as intending to buy a Persian lamb coat and hat...these two in the photo below are from a 1937 catalog advertising the self same! Can you beat that? Billie also goes on to describe her house and being all done up in white furniture and blonde wood-- while I had several Hollywood mansions of the time period pegged to show you what this would look like (I'm almost positive Jean Harlow's bedroom was made up in all white, but maybe I'm thinking of a movie?) I wasn't able to lay hands on any from the time in color. Here's a pretty reasonable facsimile, along with what a 1930's white telephone might look like in its factory version, along with the original model black phone Holiday ruined when she tried to paint it to match the decor (see the article for details)!

coat and hat, bedroom, rare 1930's white phone

You can see the original article as it appeared in the Afro American here (right click then "open link in a new tab" for the full size version):

So! Are you a Holiday fan? What was the most exciting detail of this Baltimore write-up for you? If someone wrote a similar write-up about you, what do you think your fans would be surprised to know about your personal habits or wardrobe? Let's talk!

                                

That's all today, but go have fun looking at all these old newspapers, and I'll be back tomorrow to tell you a little bit about my weekend finds! Be good; til then.

Bonus: Have you seen Carl Van Vechten's 1949 photographs of Billie Holiday in color? They're breathtaking! Here's my favorite, but check out all Van Vechten's work over at his Yale Libraries page: