Alberta Hunter
Hunter sang with King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in Chicago, and later recorded with Louis Armstrong in New York.
Biography
Alberta Hunter was an American blues singer, songwriter, and nurse. Her career started back in the early 1920s, and from then on, she became a successful jazz and blues recording artist, as critically acclaimed as Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith. In the 1950s, she retired from performing and entered the medical field, only to successfully resume her singing career in her eighties.
In 1921, Alberta Hunter left Chicago to record with Black Swan records in New York, accompanied by Fletcher Henderson and his Novelty Orchestra. Henderson moved to Paramount records in 1922, and Hunter moved with him: he was to be her long-term accompanist on tours as well as in the recording studio.
The move to Paramount gained her an accompanist, but it lost Hunter a lot of money. Hunter wrote songs as well as singing them. Ink Williams of Paramount secretly sold the recording rights of her “Down Hearted Blues” to Columbia. Bessie Smith sang it as her first recording, and she and Columbia had a big hit. But not Hunter. She never recorded for Williams again.
