23.2.19

"The Legendary Alberta Hunter The London Sessions" by Alberta Hunter (1934)


Famous blues mama Alberta Hunter had a music career that spanned almost the whole 20th century (with some breaks in between) and this might be the most unusual work in her recorded discography. Though she is best known as blues artist, she always considered herself a pop singer and the fact that she started as one of stars of "Black Swan Records" and "Paramount" now seems more as necessity and matter of race - back than, segregation kept artists pigeonholed and only people like Ethel Waters and Josephine Baker managed to cross over into wider market. Hunter might have wanted other things in life and she worked hard to widen her horizons - eventually she moved into elegant nightclubs and into theatre, where she famously performed in "Showboat" with Paul Robeson.


As expected, Europeans treated her differently than audiences back home - here, she wasn't just another black singer but a full-fledged star and this recordings give us a wonderful glimpse of Hunter as a dance band vocalist. Backed by Jack Jackson & His Orchestra, she performs songs by Cole Porter and Noël Coward that sounds light years away from risqué material of her former years - her joy and pleasure in this sophisticated music is very obvious and in fact even her style suits the material very well. Sure, this is not blues and perhaps life was unfair to constantly box her in that category, since Hunter was always perceived as blues artist (she ended her days singing risqué songs again) but this rare experiment shows Hunter in another universe, how her life could have been.

To fully understand the appeal of this music, one must check music popular in 1930s UK: artists like Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson, Adelaide Hall, Al Bowlly and Jessie Matthews were all the rage, often singing with a large dance band orchestras. It might have been just a chapter in her extremely long career but it sounds extremely interesting.

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