Ruth Brown who made her debut at the Apollo Theater during an amateur night performance, has died at the of 78. Brown is a rhythm and blues legend who’s won Grammys, Tonys and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Known both as “the girl with a tear in her voice” and “Miss Rhythm,” Brown was born in Portsmouth, Virginia in 1928; like many of her background, her first public performances were in church, and then around local army bases. It was her military fan bases who scraped together the railfare to allow her to attend a talent show in Harlem, and that win at the Harlem Apollo led to a role in Lucky Millinder’s big band.
A backstage meeting with Billie Holiday persuaded Brown to develop something beyond her original half-Holiday approach:
“She was standing there and I went to go by her and she could tell my eyes were just welled up,” Brown recalls. “She said, ‘Let me tell you something. You’ve got a good voice. Find out who you are, because as long as you go out and sound like that, they’re going to call my name,and they’ll never remember yours.’”
Posted on November 20, 2006 by D. Bell