Blues snger ruth brown biography
Ruth brown dies...
January 12, 1928 – November 17, 2006
Born Ruth Alston Weston in Portsmouth, Virginia, she attended I. C. Norcom High School, a historically black high school.
Blues snger ruth brown biography
Brown’s father was a dockhand who directed the local church choir, but the young Ruth showed more of an interest in singing at USO shows and nightclubs. She was inspired by Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington.
In 1945, Brown ran away from her home in Portsmouth along with trumpeter, Jimmy Brown, whom she soon married, to sing in bars and clubs.
Blanche Calloway, Cab Calloway’s sister, also a bandleader, arranged a gig for Brown at a Washington, D.C.
nightclub called Crystal Caverns and soon became her manager. Willis Conover, a Voice of America disc jockey, caught her act and recommended her to Atlantic Records bosses, Ahmet Ertegün and Herb Abramson.
Brown was unable to audition as planned because of a serious car accident that resulted in a nine-month hospital stay.
In 1948, Ertegün and