Adelaide Louise Hall (20 October 1901 – 7 November 1993) was an American-born UK-based jazz singer and entertainer. Her career spanned more than 70 years from 1921 until her death. Early in her career, she was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance; she became based in the UK after 1938. Hall entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2003 as the world's most enduring recording artist, having released material over eight consecutive decades. She performed with major artists such as Art Tatum, Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Cab Calloway, Fela Sowande, Rudy Vallee, and Jools Holland, and recorded as a jazz singer with Duke Ellington (with whom she made her most famous recording, "Creole Love Call" in 1927) and with Fats Waller.
Adelaide Hall was born in Brooklyn, New York City, United States, to Elizabeth and William Hall in 1901. Adelaide and her sister Evelyn attended the Pratt Institute, where William Hall taught piano. Her father died on March 23, 1917. Three years later, Evelyn died of pneumonia on March 25, 1920, leaving Adelaide to support herself and her mother.
In 1924, Hall married the British sailor Bertram Errol Hicks, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago. Soon after their marriage he opened a club in Harlem, New York, called "The Big Apple" and became her official business manager.
Hall began her stage career in 1921 on Broadway in the chorus line of Noble Sissle's and Eubie Blake's musical Shuffle Along. Shuffle Along became a huge hit and propelled Hall's career. She went on to appear in a number of similar black musical shows, including Runnin' Wild on Broadway in 1923, in which she sang James P. Johnson's hit song "Old-Fashioned Love".
Chocolate Kiddies European tour, 1925
In 1925, Hall toured Europe with the Chocolate Kiddies revue. The show included songs written by Duke Ellington. Hall was hired to join the cast of the Chocolate Kiddies revue in New York, where they rehearsed before setting sail for Europe. The initial tour started at Hamburg, Germany, on 17 May 1925, and ended in Paris, France, in December 1925, visiting many major cities in-between. The revue was designed to give Europeans a sampling of black entertainment from New York. Included in the cast were The Three Eddies, Lottie Gee, Rufus Greenlee and Thaddeus Drayton, Bobbie and Babe Goins, Charles Davis and Sam Wooding and his Orchestra. After the initial tour disbanded, Sam Wooding and his Orchestra continued touring the Chocolate Kiddies revue for several years later. During Hall's visit to Germany she also sang at Berlin's renowned transvestite club, the Eldorado Café. The venue is immortalised in Christopher Isherwood's 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin, as well as in the 1972 film Cabaret and the musical of the same name.
In 1926, Hall appeared in the short-lived Broadway musical My Magnolia, which had a score written by Luckey Roberts and Alex C. Rogers, after which she appeared in Tan Town Topics with songs written by Fats Waller. Hall then starred in Desires of 1927 (with a score written by Andy Razaf and J. C. Johnson), which toured America from October 1926 through to September 1927.
Tan Town Topics, Small's Paradise and Desires of 1927
In 1926, upon Hall's return to New York after touring Europe with the Chocolate Kiddies, she was featured in Tan Town Topics, a revue containing songs written by Fats Waller and Spencer Williams. The cast included Fats Waller, Eddie Rector and Ralph Cooper, Hall, Maude Mills, Arthur Gaines, Leondus Simmons and a dance troupe called the Tan Town Topics Vamps. The show opened at Harlem's Lafayette Theatre on 5 April followed by a short road tour on the eastern Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA) circuit taking in Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia.
During July 1926, Hall appeared in residency with Lottie Gee and the Southern Syncopated Orchestra at Small's Paradise, New York. On Tuesday, 5 October, Hall appeared again at Small's Paradise at a special party, "Handy Night", hosted by the venue to honour W. C. Handy and to celebrate the release of his newly published book Blues: An Anthology—Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs. For entertainment, Hall, Lottie Gee, Maude White and Chic Collins provided a selection of jazz and blues numbers. From October 1926, Hall toured America playing the TOBA circuit until September 1927 in the highly praised show Desires of 1927, conceived by J. Homer Tutt and produced by impresario Irvin C. Miller. As the Pittsburgh Courier noted: "Adelaide Hall and assistants have some show. Speed, pretty girls, catchy music, a touch of art, which touches the border line of nudity – the names of such well-known stage celebrities as Adelaide Hall, J. Homer Tutt, Henry 'Gang' Jones, the Harmony Trio, Charles Hawkins, Arthur Porter, 'Billy' McKelvey and Clarence Nance." Billed as the star "soubrette" of the show, Hall's performance included several songs (most notably "Sweet Virginia Bliss"), flat-foot dancing and accompanying herself on the ukulele while singing.
As early as July 1927, newspapers were reporting that Hall had invented a new style of singing, which she termed 'squagel'. One account of the effect Hall had on audiences when she 'squageled' was written up in the Exhibitors Herald in August 1927.
Recordings with Duke Ellington
In New York in October 1927, Hall recorded her wordless vocals on "Creole Love Call" and "The Blues I Love To Sing" with Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, and on November 3, 1927, Hall recorded "Chicago Stomp Down" with Duke Ellington and The Chicago Footwarmers for Okeh Records. "Creole Love Call" became a worldwide hit and catapulted both Hall's and Ellington's careers into the mainstream. In 1927, Hall and Duke Ellington were touring in the same show, Dance Mania. The show played several large cities before reaching New York City. In mid-November, Hall travelled from Chicago (where she had been performing at the Sunset Café) to New York City in her Packard automobile with her husband Bert. When they arrived in New York, Hall was approached in 7th Avenue by a reporter, who enquired about her career plans. Hall and Ellington appeared together in Dance Mania at the Lafayette Theatre, Harlem, from 14 November for one week, before heading off with the show to play in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the Standard Theatre. In Dance Mania, Hall closed the first half of the bill and Duke and his orchestra performed in the second half. Duke had a new number "Creole Love Call", which he included in his set. When Hall first heard the number back in October, she recounted:
I was standing in the wings behind the piano when Duke first played it ("Creole Love Call"). I started humming along with the band. He stopped the number and came over to me and said, "That's just what I was looking for. Can you do it again?" I said, "I can't, because I don't know what I was doing." He begged me to try. Anyway, I did, and sang this counter melody, and he was delighted and said "Addie, you're going to record this with the band." A couple of days later I did.
When Duke was recounting the incident to a reporter he explained, "We had to do something to employ Adelaide Hall," and then added, "I always say we are primitive artists, we only employ the materials at hand ... the band is an accumulation of personalities, tonal devices." On 4 December 1927, Ellington and his Orchestra commenced their residency at Harlem's Cotton Club in a revue called Rhythmania. The show featured Hall singing "Creole Love Call". In 1928, "Creole Love Call" entered the Billboard song charts at No. 29 (USA). On 7 January 1933, Hall and Duke Ellington and his Famous Orchestra recorded "I Must Have That Man" and "Baby".
In 1928, Hall starred on Broadway with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Tim Moore and Aida Ward in Blackbirds of 1928. The show became the most successful all-black show ever staged on Broadway at that time and made Hall and Bojangles into household names. Blackbirds of 1928 was the idea of impresario Lew Leslie, who planned to build the show around Florence Mills in New York after her success in the successful Blackbirds of 1926 revue in Paris and London, but Mills died of tuberculosis in 1927 before rehearsals commenced. Hall was chosen to replace her. The revue opened at Les Ambassadeurs Club in New York in January 1928, under the name Blackbird Revue, but it was renamed Blackbirds of 1928 and in May 1928 transferred to Broadway's Liberty Theatre, where it ran for 518 performances. After a slow start, the show became the hit of the season. Hall's performance of "Diga Diga Do", created a sensation. Her mother was so incensed when she went to see the show by her daughter performing what she termed 'risqué dance moves', she tried to stop the show during Hall's performance and banned her from appearing in any future performances. The ban only remained for one performance, and Hall returned triumphantly to her role the following day. It was reported in the press of the day that the show's producer Lew Leslie was so concerned about race violence connected with the controversy surrounding Hall's performance that he took out a hefty insurance policy to cover the cast; the most heavily insured were the principals, Hall and "Bojangles" Robinson.