Ruth Etting

Perhaps one of the most popular performers from the later-’20s/early-’30s period, Ruth Etting had not been a really jazz vocalist (unlike her modern, Annette Hanshaw) but an excellent middle-of-the-road pop vocalist who was simply often accompanied by best jazz music artists. She documented over 200 music between 1926-1937, made an appearance on-stage, is at 35 film pants and three full-length films, and was a fixture on radio before her poor marriage cut brief her profession. She made a return in the past due ’40s and was still performing on an intermittent basis in the middle-’50s whenever a semi-fictional Hollywood film on her existence (Like Me or Keep Me) premiered. An excellent torch singer having a cry in her tone of voice even though she smiled, Etting documented the definitive variations of “Ten Cents a Dance” and “Like Me or Keep Me.”