kPARA cPAR@ ` ╗TEXT ` ¡Hunter, Alberta1895╨1984singer, songwriter, nurseBorn in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 1, 1895, Alberta Hunter╒s life was full of contradiction and dramatic turns. She was the second daughter of Charles Hunter, a sleeping-car porter, and Laura Peterson Hunter. Her father abandoned the family soon after Alberta╒s birth. Her mother, who worked as a domestic in a brothel, refused to discuss her job with the children. Laura Hunter remarried in about 1906, but Alberta did not get along with her new step-father, her step-sister or her older sister, La Tosca. Although the reports of dates and age vary, she ran away at about the age of 11, accompanying a teacher who was eloping and had a free child pass for the train to Chicago. She borrowed a dime to make the trip and once there looked up another friend from Memphis, who got her a job cleaning and peeling potatoes in a boardinghouse for $6 a week, plus room and board. Hunter soon began to look for other work; by dressing up to look older was able to sneak into clubs where she persisted in asking for a chance as a singer. She started out at Dago Frank╒s, a semi-discreet brothel, and soon moved to Hugh Hoskins╒ club where she met many of the leading pickpockets and con men of Chicago. In 1915 she moved to the Panama CafÄ, home to many leading blues singers of the day. The headline performers sang downstairs and Hunter was the mainstay ╥upstairs.╙ Sometime between 1913 and 1915, her mother moved to live with her. The two women shared a home for most of the rest of her mother╒s life. Her mother never discussed the break-up of her second marriage and Hunter never discussed with her mother her numerous romantic liaisons with women. After one such affair, threats from an angry boyfriend forced Hunter to relocate quickly to New York. Unlike other women performers such as Ethel Waters, Hunter was discreet about her lesbian relationships, including her two long term lovers, one in Chicago and one in New York. Although Hunter bought several homes in New York and was based there for most of the rest of her life, the town always represented a constant struggle for work. Upon her initial arrival she played club dates and recorded for several labels using the name of her half-sister, Josephine Beatty, to by-pass exclusive contracts. She traveled on the Keith vaudeville circuit because it provided steady work; it was especially hard, however, on African-American performers, who were forced to perform in raggedy, country-clothes, assigned the early acts (played to half-empty houses), and pressured constantly not to upstage the white performers whom these shows featured.Hunter╒s original song ╥Downhearted Blues╙ brought her recognition in 1923 when it was recorded by Bessie Smith, and in 1926 she replaced Smith in the leading role of How Come? on Broadway. In 1927, Hunter began her legendary travels between New York, Europe and Chicago, performing in nightclubs and theatre productions, most successfully in Europe, including the 1928 London production of Showboat with Paul Robeson. She returned to the U.S. in 1929, but the depression eroded even the dubious security of vaudeville; in 1933 she headed back to Europe where work was more plentiful and racism less acute. She traveled between Paris, London and Amsterdam. In 1935 she played a role in the English film Radio Parade and was part of the final sequence shot in color. In 1937 she caught the attention of NBC executives while taking part in a radio show broadcast from Europe for an audience in the U.S. (That broadcast was also the first time her mother had heard her perform.) She returned briefly to New York for a job with NBC radio and permanently, in late 1938, when the State Department warned U.S. citizens that war in Europe was imminent. War in Europe meant hard times for older black performers who had found work there. Hunter toured extensively for the USO during World War II, including the battlefields of both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and again later during the Korean War. After World War II she performed in England with Snub Mosley, toured Canada and played long residences in Chicago. During the 1954-55 season, she understudied for a Broadway role in Mrs. Patterson but never came on stage. She retired from active performing in 1954. Against the advice of friends, Hunter then began a second career as a practical nurse. Lying about her age, she enrolled in a three-year YWCA training program. She was offered a job before her training ended, and she completed twenty years of service before reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70. (She was actually 82.) By all accounts she was an excellent practical nurse and had particularly good rapport with her patients. Unbeknownst to her nursing colleagues, she was coaxed into making two recordings during that period, with Lovie Austin in 1961 and Jimmy Archey in 1962. In 1977 when completing a form requesting welfare, she indicated that she was actively looking for work and had only left nursing because she had been forced to retire. Five months after her retirement party, she returned to performing at The Cookery, a nightclub in Greenwich Village, New York. Her comeback led to greater fame than she had ever experienced during her earlier singing career. Hunter continued performing actively and recording, granting interviews and appearing in videos and on television until a few months before her death at home, on Roosevelt Island, New York, on October 17, 1984. fstyl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ 5 !I 8 5¬ 9 !I ö 5¬ ò !I E !I ▐ Q !I ╥ 5¬ ╙ !I
