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Ruth Brown
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Ruth Brown was born in 1928 in Portsmouth, Virginia, and died in 2006. She was a singer, songwriter and actress, and was called the Queen of R&B. Her father was a dock worker and led the church choir, but Ruth preferred to sing at USO shows and in nightclubs. Her role models were Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington. In 1945, at the age of seventeen, she ran away from home with the trumpeter Jimmy Brown, whom she married, to sing in bars.
Music and breakthrough
Blanche Calloway arranged bookings and became her manager. Through Willis Conover, later a radio presenter, she ended up at Atlantic Records, where Ahmet Ertegun persuaded her to switch from popular ballads to rhythm and blues. Her first hit was So Long, in 1949. In 1950 came Teardrops from My Eyes, which spent eleven weeks at the top of the Billboard R&B chart. Later hits included 5-10-15 Hours and (Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean in 1953 and Mambo Baby in 1954. She brought a pop style into R&B, and Atlantic came to be called the house that Ruth built.
Influence
From the mid-1970s she made a comeback, which peaked in the 1980s. She campaigned for musicians' rights to royalties and fair contracts, which led to the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. For her role in the Broadway musical Black and Blue she received a Tony Award. In 2016 she posthumously received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Listening
Discography
Studio albums
- 1957Ruth Brown
- 1959Ruth Brown
- 1959Miss Rhythm
- 1962Gospel Time
- 1965'65
- 1968The Big Band Sound of Thad Jones · Mel Lewis
- 1969Black Is Brown and Brown Is Beautiful
- 1985Brown Sugar
- 1989Blues on Broadway
- 1990Brown, Black & Beautiful
- 1991Fine and Mellow
- 1993Songs of My Life
- 1993What Color Is the Blues
- 1997Ruth Brown
- 1997You Don't Know Me / Touch Me in the Morning
- 1999A Good Day for the Blues