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."Devotees – Honours and Tributes" (researched and compiled by Stephen Bourne), Devotional. Adelaide Hall enters Guinness Book of World Records as the World's most enduring recording artiste. 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)Adelaide Hall singing "Creole Love Call" with Duke Ellington and his Orchestra recorded in 1927. YouTube. and with Fats Waller.
Early life and marriage 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."New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949", database, FamilySearch(https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2WBM-Z2D : 3 June 2020), William F. Hall, 1917" William Hall death notice Three years later, Evelyn died of pneumonia on March 25, 1920,"New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949", database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2WBL-GNJ : 3 June 2020), Evelyn Hall, 1920.Adair, Zakiya. "Adelaide Hall (1901–1993)", BlackPast.org, 18 January 2024. 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.Bratkovich, Colin, Just Remember This, publ. Xlibris 2014, , p. 84 – Big Apple, 135th and Seventh Avenue, Uptown Harlem, NYC, associated with Adelaide Hall, 1924. The term "Big Apple" became associated with the whole of NYC.
American career 1921–1935 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". "Aubrey Lyles' $18,000 Pierce Draws Eyes of All Washington", The Appeal (Saint Paul, Minnesota), 1 September 1923, front page. Retrieved 10 August 2020). Report on Runnin' Wild: "...Adelaide Hall, Ina Duncan, and Arthur Porter took the crowd off its feet, with '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.Article about Sam Wooding and the Chocolate Kiddies, Keep (It) Swinging, 11 May 2006. 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.Colin Bratkovich, Just Remember This, Xlibris, 2014, p. 148, . Retrieved 17 August 2018. 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."The Eldorado", The 1920s Berlin Project. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
In 1926, Hall appeared in the short-lived Broadway musical My Magnolia, which had a score written by Luckey Roberts and Alex C. Rogers,Todd Decker, Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical by Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 107 (), mentions the musical My Magnolia. 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),Desires of 1927 musical, p. 106, A Century of Musicals in Black and White: An Encyclopedia of Musical Stage by Bernard L. Peterson, Greenwood Publishing Group. which toured America from October 1926 through to September 1927.Henry Louis Gates, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (eds), Harlem Renaissance Lives from the African American National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 233., The Pittsburgh Courier, 27 November 1926.
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.12 – 17 April 1926, Royal Theatre, Baltimore City. 10 April 1926, The Afro-American, p. 10, half-page advertisement for Tan Town Topics.Review of Tan Town Topics at the Royal Theatre, Baltimore.
During July 1926, Hall appeared in residency with Lottie Gee and the Southern Syncopated Orchestra at Small's Paradise, New York.Howard Rye, "Southern Syncopated Orchestra: The Roster", Black Music Research Journal, Volume 30, Number 1, Spring 2010. Reference to Smalls Paradise revue under "Gee, Lottie (Charlotte M.)". 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."'Handy Night' at Small's Paradise", The Pittsburgh Courier, Saturday, 16 October 1926, p. 10. 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'.Did Adelaide Hall invent a new style of singing? article, Syncopated Times, 21 October 2023. One account of the effect Hall had on audiences when she 'squageled' was written up in the Exhibitors Herald in August 1927.Exhibitors Herald, August 6, 1927, page 47 – Chicago, (Granada Theatre) week-ending 31 July 1927 (review of Hall's performance at the Granada Theatre, Chicago).
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.The Pittsburgh Courier, 19 November 1927, front page: "'They Always Come Back For More,' says Adelaide" – report & photograph. 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.Dance Mania dates listed on Ellingtonweb. 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."David Bradbury, Duke Ellington, Haus Publishing Ltd, 2005 (), p. 19. 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).USA song chart entry for "Creole Love Call" (1928). On 7 January 1933, Hall and Duke Ellington and his Famous Orchestra recorded "I Must Have That Man" and "Baby".
Blackbirds of 1928