Lillyn Brown

With only four three-minute songs as her recorded legacy, Lillyn Brown’s career spanned six decades, beginning prior to the turn from the century. Given birth to in 1885 for an Afro-American mom and an Erie Iroquois dad in Atlanta, GA, she performed as “The Indian Princess” with an all-white woman string music group in 1894 and captivated attention like a man impersonator — promoted as “The World’s Youngest Interlocutor” — in 1896. Relating to Lillyn Dark brown, she was the 1st professional vocalist to sing the blues before the general public. This historic action was thought to have taken put on the stage of the tiny Strand Theater in Chicago back 1908. When New Orleans vaudevillian Esther Bigeou bowed from the Broadway Rastus display in 1918, she was changed using the energetic and boisterous Lillyn Dark brown. On March 29 and could 9, 1921, Dark brown made her just known gramophone recordings. Supported by cornetist Ed Cox, trombonists Bud Aiken and Plant Flemming, reedman Garvin Bushell, violinist Johnny Mullins, drummer Lutice Perkins, and an unidentified piano participant, she sang three topical ointment vaudeville-style blues-inflected figures and a spicy rendition of Tom Delaney’s “Jazz Me Blues.” These recordings had been released on numerous and sundry brands as by Lillyn Brownish & Her Jazzbo Syncopators, Maude Jones & Her Jazbo Syncopators, Fannie Baker & Her Jazz, or Mildred Fernandez & Her Syncopated Syncopators. Dark brown remained energetic until retiring from full-time carrying out during the middle-’30s. She resumed her stage profession in 1949, made an appearance within a 1952 creation of Kiss Me Kate, went her own college for aspiring vocalists and stars, and over the last many years of her lifestyle wrote, created, and directed has for the Abyssinian Baptist Cathedral. Her final open public performance occurred in 1964 at a tribute concert on her behalf modern Mamie Smith. After an extended and productive lifestyle in present business, Lillyn Dark brown passed on in 1969.