Runnin' Wild, Rose of the Rio Grande, St. Louis Blues, You've Got to See Mama Every Night, Tea For Two, I'll See You In My Dreams, A Good Man is Hard to Find, It Had to Be You, Haunting Blues, Somebody Loves Me, The Memphis Blues, Nashville Nightengale, I Ain't Got Nobody.After You’ve Gone (1918) is found at Season 1 episode 31.Master of the wisecrack "when I get my razor sharp you'll have wings and play a harp". Her Paradise Blues (included on our Spencer Williams show) in 1916 is an early blues reflecting the Bert Williams' songs commenting on music, "Play that Barbershop Chord" and "You Can't Get Away From It". Harris’s existence is so improbable that it is simply denied. One of a handful of the greatest popular singers she broke in I Ain’t Got Nobody in 1916 before anyone had words for what is Jazz singing. She invented jazz singing and it holds up today.Around the time women were fighting a war against men to get the vote, Harris expressed a young liberated urban life, Runnin’ Wild, but also personified the femininity of the newlywed New Yorker in Tea for Two. There doesn’t seem to be any published biography of Harris so facts are sketchy despite her being a superstar in vaudeville, and later a pioneer of the torchy lounge ballad. In 1929 she starred in a movie musical. But illness and a move to England took her out of circulation in the US and she died young in her forties.Rose of Rio Grande is here a generation before Ivy Anderson. WC Handy was the recipient of her relaxed ownership of his material. She introduced Spencer Williams’ first hit standard in 1916. She could float so relaxed in Gershwin’s Nashville Nightengale, Haunting Blues, See You in my Dreams and then go wild in Runnin’, See Mama. And launch hit standards It Had to Be You and Somebody Loves Me. The personality behind the singing stands out with Runnin’ Wild defining the image for jazz. She was not authentic in the rougher Bessie Smith blues and had no access to Ma Rainey’s mysticism. It’s not believable that she could seek to kill a rival and St. Louis Gal is omitted for that reason as a producer’s mistake. She was a month by month star personality for a long run of years. She was hip personified before Calloway wrote the dictionary. She was a counterpart to Charlie Chaplin as a compelling modernite. Handy’s melodic blues style was a perfect fit for her vulnerable stage presence, likely she was his most popular vocal interpreter. Her place in music as an original who helped start it all in jazz taking the baton from Bert Williams from the cakewalk and ragtime era is almost entirely erased by time and neglect. It is all too unbelievable so best forgotten. Plus that originator’s role is better chronicled with Ethel Waters whose career is studied and with good reason, alongside Alberta Hunter and others. Harris had a broad national and international popular song following that coincided with jazz for which she helped define the jazz age as very personally her own and where all women were welcome. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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