Herb Jeffries, who sang with Duke Ellington and starred in early black westerns as a singing cowboy known as “the Bronze Buckaroo” — a nickname that evoked his malleable racial identity — died on Sunday in West Hills, Calif. He was believed to be 100.
The cause was heart failure, said Raymond Strait, a writer who had worked on Mr. Jeffries’s autobiography with him.
Mr. Jeffries used to say: “I’m a chameleon.” The label applied on many levels.
Over the course of his century, he changed his name, altered his age, married five women and stretched his vocal range from near falsetto to something closer to a Bing Crosby baritone. He shifted from jazz to country and back again, and from concert stages to movie theaters to television sets and back again.
He sang with Earl Hines and his orchestra in the early 1930s. He starred in “Harlem on the Prairie,” a black western released in 1937, and its several sequels. By 1940, he was singing with the Ellington orchestra and soon had a hit single, “Flamingo,” released in 1941, which sold more than 14 million copies. (His name had been Herbert Jeffrey, but the credits on the record mistakenly called him Jeffries, so he renamed himself to match the typo.)
He moved to Europe and performed there for many years, including at nightclubs he owned. He was back in America by the 1950s, recording jazz records again, including “Say It Isn’t So,” a highly regarded 1957 collection of ballads. In the 1970s he picked up roles on “Hawaii Five-O” and “I Dream of Jeannie.” In the 1990s he performed at the Village Vanguard. In the 2000s he performed regularly at Cafe Aroma in Idyllwild, Calif.
Deep into his 90s, he was still swinging.
“He called me over once and said, ‘Is this your place, kid?’ ” recalled Frank Ferro, who runs the cafe. “He said, ‘I’ve had two nightclubs in Paris, and let me tell you, kid, you’re doing it all just right.’ ”
Mr. Ferro also recalled Mr. Jeffries saying: “You know, I’m colored. I’m just not the color you think I am.”
Mr. Jeffries’s racial and ethnic identity was itself something of a performance — and a moving target. His mother was white, his father more of a mystery. He told some people that his father was African-American, others that he was mixed race and still others that he was Ethiopian or Sicilian.
In the crude social math of his era, many people told Mr. Jeffries he could have “passed” for white. He told people he chose to be black — to the extent that a mixed-race person had a choice at the time.
“He told me he had to make this decision about whether he should try to pass as white,” the jazz critic Gary Giddins recalled in an interview for this obituary. “He said: ‘I just knew that my life would be more interesting as a black guy. If I’d chosen to live my life passing as white, I’d have never been able to sing with Duke Ellington.’ ”
In 1951, Life magazine published an extensive feature on Mr. Jeffries that dwelled heavily on his racial heritage.
“Jeffries’s refusal to ‘pass’ and his somewhat ambiguous facial appearance have let him in for so many cases of prejudice and mistaken identity that he is practically a one-man minority group,” the article said. It described his “smoky blue eyes” and noted that he was frequently mistaken for Mexican, Argentine, Portuguese “and occasionally a Jew,” but that he had chosen to be “what he is — a light-skinned Negro.”
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Mr. Jeffries cited his race as Caucasian on marriage licenses. (All five of his wives were white; his second wife was the stripper Tempest Storm.)
Late in life he said that his father, Howard Jeffrey, was actually his stepfather, and that his biological father was Domenico Balentino, a Sicilian who died in World War I.
In a 2007 documentary about him, “A Colored Life,” Mr. Jeffries said that the name on his birth certificate was Umberto Alejandro Balentino, and that he was born on Sept. 24, 1913, two years later than he had sometimes told people. The documentary included a mock birth certificate bearing that name.
Firm evidence of Mr. Jeffries’s race and age is hard to come by, but census documents from 1920 described him as “mulatto” and listed his father as a black man named Howard Jeffrey. They give his birth year as 1914, which matches what he told Life in 1951.
“It’s always been the big question, you know — where do we really come from?” Romi West, one of Mr. Jeffries’s daughters from his first marriage, said in an interview.
Herbert Jeffrey was born in Detroit on Sept. 24, in either 1913 or 1914. In addition to his wife, Savannah, and his daughter, Mrs. West, his survivors include two sons, Robert and Michael; two daughters, Ferne Aycock and Patricia Jeffries; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Mr. Giddins, the jazz critic, noted that people tend to think of Mr. Jeffries primarily as a black cowboy star or as a man with a complicated racial story. But what was most remarkable about Mr. Jeffries, he said, was his voice.
“ ‘Flamingo’ was a really important recording,” Mr. Giddins said. “Partly because of that, RCA gave Ellington carte blanche in the 1940s. I don’t think he would have had that kind of complete authority in the studio if ‘Flamingo’ wasn’t making so much money for them.”
Mr. Giddins said Mr. Jeffries never seemed consumed with being successful. He noted that even as he became a star while singing with Ellington, Mr. Jeffries chose to leave to pursue other endeavors.
“He has these gorgeous tones, and he really knows how to phrase a ballad,” Mr. Giddins said. “The mystery is why that didn’t lead to a bigger career.”
***
Herbert "Herb" Jeffries, born Umberto Alexander Valentino (September 24, 1913 – May 25, 2014), was an American jazz and popular singer and actor.
In the 1940s and 1950s Jeffries recorded for a number of labels, including RCA Victor, Exclusive, Coral, Decca,Bethlehem, Columbia, Mercury and Trend. His album Jamaica, recorded by RKO, is a concept album of self-composed calypso songs.
Biography[edit]
Jeffries was born Umberto Alexander Valentino in Detroit to an Irish mother who ran a rooming house, and a father, whom he never knew, of mixed Sicilian, Ethiopian, French, Italian and Moorish roots, on September 24, 1913.[2][3][4][5] He once characterized himself in an interview as "three-eighths Negro", claiming pride in his racial heritage during a period when many other light-skinned black performers were attempting "to pass" as all-white in an effort to broaden their commercial appeal. In marked contrast, Jeffries used make-up to darken his skin—in order to pursue a career in jazz and to be seen as employable by the leading all-black musical ensembles of the day.[3] Yet, much later in his career, Jeffries would assume the identify of a white citizen for economic or highly personal reasons. Jet reported that Jeffries identified himself as White and stated his "real" name as "Herbert Jeffrey Ball" on an application in order to marry Tempest Storm in 1959.[6] Jeffries told the reporter for Jet:
"... I'm not passing, I never have, I never will. For all these years I've been wavering about the color question on the blanks. Suddenly I decided to fill in the blank the way I look and feel.
Look at my blue eyes, look at my brown hair, look at my color. What color do you see?" he demand to know. "My mother was 100 per cent white," Jeffries said, his blue eyes glinting in the New York sun. "My father is Portuguese, Spanish, American Indian, and Negro. How in the hell can I identify myself as one race or another?"[6]
A 2007 documentary short describes Jeffries as "assuming the identity of a man of color" early in his career.[7] He is shown inBlack/White & All That Jazz explaining that he was inspired by New Orleans-born musician Louis Armstrong to say falsely, at a job interview in Chicago, that he was "a creole from Louisiana" when he was of Irish and Sicilian heritage, among other ethnic backgrounds.[7]
In 2007, while assembling material for the producers of a documentary film about him (A Colored Life), Jeffries found his birth certificate; this reminded him that he actually was born in 1913 and that he had misrepresented his age after he left home to look for a job. His four marriages (including one to exotic dancer Tempest Storm) produced five children. He appeared at jazz festivals and events benefiting autism and other developmental problems and lectured at colleges and universities. He supported music education in schools. In June 2010, aged 96, Jeffries performed to raise funds for the Oceanside (California) Unified School District's music program, accompanied by the Big Band Jazz Hall of Fame Orchestra under the direction of clarinetist Tad Calcara. This benefit concert was his second (the previous concert was in 2001).[citation needed]
A jazz and popular singer, he starred as a singing cowboy in several all-black Western films, in which he sang his ownwestern compositions. Jeffries obtained financing for the first black western film and hired Spencer Williams to appear with him. In addition to starring in the film, he sang and performed his own stunts as cowboy "Bob Blake". He began his career working with Erskine Tate and his Vendome Orchestra when he moved to Chicago from Detroit at the urging of Louis Armstrong. His break came during the 1933 Chicago World's Fair—Century of Progress Exposition singing with the Earl Hines Orchestra on Hines’ national broadcasts live from the Grand Terrace Cafe. His first recordings were with Hines in 1934, including "Just to be in Carolina". He then recorded with Duke Ellington from 1940 to 1942. His recording of "Flamingo" (1940) with Ellington was a best seller in its day. He was replaced in the Ellington band by Al Hibbler in 1943.[citation needed]
Playing a singing cowboy in low-budget films, Jeffries became known as the "Bronze Buckaroo" by his fans. In a time of American racial segregation, such "race movies" played mostly in theaters catering to African-American audiences.[8] The films, now available on video, include Harlem on the Prairie, The Bronze Buckaroo,Harlem Rides the Range and Two-Gun Man from Harlem. Jeffries went on to make other films, starring with Angie Dickinson in Calypso Joe (1957). He later directed and produced Mundo depravados, a cult film starring his wife, Tempest Storm. In 1968, Jeffries appeared in the long-running western TV series The Virginian playing a gunslinger who intimidated the town. At the age of 81, he recorded a Nashville album of songs on the Warner Western label[9] in 1995 entitled The Bronze Buckaroo (Rides Again).
He lived in Wichita, Kansas and turned 100 on September 24, 2013.[4] He died of heart failure at a California hospital on May 25, 2014.[10]
For his contributions to the motion-picture industry, Jeffries has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6672 Hollywood Boulevard. In 2004 he was inducted into theWestern Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. A restaurant in Idyllwild, Cafe Aroma, has a room named for him. In 1998 a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him.[11]
Filmography[edit]
- Harlem on the Prairie (1937)
- Two-Gun Man from Harlem (1938)
- Harlem Rides the Range (1939)
- The Bronze Buckaroo (1939)
- Calypso Joe (1957)
- Chrome and Hot Leather (1971)
- Portrait of a Hitman (1977)
Discography[edit]
- Sidney Bechet: "1940-1941" (Classics)
- Earl Hines: "1932-1934" (Classics)
- Duke Ellington:"The Blanton–Webster Band" (RCA, 1940–42)
- Michael Martin Murphey: "Sagebrush Symphony"
- "Jamaica" (RKO Records ULP - 128) all songs composed by Jeffries
- "Passion" (Brunswick, BL 54028) Coral singles compiled on 12" LP
- "Say it Isn't So" (Bethlehem BCP 72) with the Russ Garcia Orchestra
- "Herb Jeffries" (Harmony HL 7048) Columbia singles LP
- "Magenta Moods" (Mercury 2589 10") LP transfer of Exclusive label album
- "Herb Jeffries Sings" (Mercury 2590 10") more Exclusive singles with the Buddy Baker Orchestra
- "Herb Jeffries and his Orchestra" (Mercury 2591 10") Exclusive label singles
- "Songs by Herb Jeffries" (Mercury 2592 10") Exclusive label singles
- "I Remember the Bing" (Dobre Records 1047)
- "Play and Sing the Duke" (Dobre Records 1053)
- "The King and Me" (Dobre Records 1059)
*****
HERB JEFFRIES
2 FILMS - FRIDAY, JULY 29
The screen's first black cowboy, Herb Jeffries (billed Herbert Jeffrey) was a pioneer in many ways and still is. As a young singer in his twenties, he pitched the idea for an all-black Western to producer Jed Buell, leading to one of the most enduring favorites of the race movie movement. In later years, he would flourish as a popular jazz singer, and even in retirement continues to devote his time to music and the charities that are closest to his heart.
Herbert Jeffrey was born in Detroit in 1913 to an Irish mother and mixed-race father. Growing up in a racially mixed neighborhood, he rarely experienced racism growing up. Instead, he lived many a child's dream, watching silent screen cowboy stars at local movie theatres and learning to ride on his grandfather's dairy farm in Northern Michigan. He also started hanging around local musical groups, adding two years to his age so he could land singing jobs. While performing at the Savoy Dance Hall in Chicago, he was spotted by Earl "Fatha" Hines in 1931. Hines featured him in concerts and recordings, and on a national radio broadcast from the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1933 that brought him national attention. It wasn't until he toured the South with Hines, that Jeffries realized how deeply seated racism was in certain parts of the U.S. He then settled in Los Angeles, with an engagement at the Club Alabam.
While singing in Los Angeles, he caught a screening of The Terror of Tiny Town (1938), a Western produced by Beull featuring a cast entirely made up of little people. That inspired his idea for an all-black Western, a film that would give young African-Americans heroes to emulate just as he had idolized Tom Mix as a child. Jeffries traveled to Buell's offices in Gower Gulch, California, and convinced him to take a chance on Harlem on the Prairie (1937), the first sound Western with an all-black cast. Jeffrey wrote his own songs for the film and helped Buell with the casting, which included Spencer Williams as comic relief and The Four Tones to provide musical backup.
At the time, all-black productions, called "race movies," provided the only alternative to the marginalized, stereotyped roles available to African-American actors in Hollywood films. Pictures like Harlem on the Prairieprovided black audiences the rare chance to see African-Americans doing more than cleaning, cooking and serving meals to white movie stars. Many, like Oscar Micheaux's pioneering films, captured a sense of life in the thriving black communities of America's largest cities. Most of the race films were confined to about 500 all-black theatres around the nation. Harlem on the Prairie was a rarity in that it also secured bookings in white theatres on both East and West Coasts, thanks largely to Gene Autry, who helped Jeffries and Buell get a distribution deal with Dallas-based Sack Amusement.
With the film's success, producer Richard C. Kahn approached Jeffries about making some follow-ups. Since Buell owned the first film, they needed a new name. With Two-Gun Man from Harlem (1938), Jeffries introduced the character of Bob Blake, whom he would play in two other films. Unlike his other Westerns,Two-Gun Man from Harlem only started in the West. Partway through the action, Blake moves to Harlem, where he gets mixed up with organized crime. That did well enough to merit two more films, The Bronze Buckaroo (1939), which provided Jeffries with his nickname as a Western star, and Harlem Rides the Range(1939).
Because of his mixed racial heritage, Jeffries had to use makeup to darken his complexion. He also rarely took off his white Stetson, the top of an otherwise all-black outfit, so as not to reveal his lighter brown hair. The Four Tones continued as Jeffries' back-up group, with Williams along as the comic relief. With the Kahn films, Jeffries also acquired the horse Stardusk.
The success of Jeffries' Westerns did not escape Hollywood's notice, but he turned down offers to join the major studios, not wanting to play stereotyped domestic roles. He also turned down an offer from cowboy star Buck Jones, who wanted to send him to South America to learn Spanish. On his return, Jones wanted to star him in a series of Westerns, passing him as a white man. Jeffries had more Westerns planned when he decided instead to accept a prestigious singing engagement with Duke Ellington, which led to his greatest recording success. Ellington's arranger, Billy Strayhorn, convinced Jeffries to switch from tenor to baritone, giving him a mellower sound that increased his popularity. In 1941, when another singer was unavailable, Jeffries stepped into the studio at the last minute to record "Flamingo," which would become his signature song. Although the recording did not impress RCA Victor executives, they finally released it in 1943, by which time Jeffries had left Ellington for military service in World War II. When it sold over 14-million records, he came out of the service a major singing star. Other hit recordings released during his Ellington days included "In My Solitude" and "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good."
In the '50s, Jeffries headlined in Europe and ran his own nightclub in Paris. He also starred in one more film,Calypso Joe (1957), playing a singing star who helps Angie Dickinson in choosing the ideal mate. He also made television guest appearances, playing a black cowboy on The Virginian, and wrote and directed the nudie classic Mundo Depravados (1967), starring his wife at the time, stripper Tempest Storm.
With the returning popularity of the Western in the '90s, Jeffreys recorded a comeback album of Western songs, The Bronze Buckaroo Rides Again. In 1999, at 88, he released The Duke and I, a CD of songs he performed with Ellington in tribute to the man's 100th birthday.
Jeffries currently lives in Idyllwild, California, with his fifth wife, Sarah Lee Shippen. He remains active on the lecture circuit and also performs benefits for autism and music education, singing as recently as June 2010 to help raise money for music education in Oceanside, California. He has also been feted as the last surviving member of both Earl "Fatha" Hines' Orchestra and The Great Duke Ellington Orchestra. He was inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2003.
*****
Herbert "Herb" Jeffries, born Umberto Alexander Valentino (September 24, 1913 – May 25, 2014), was an American jazz and popular singer and actor. Herb Jeffries sang with Duke Ellington and starred in early black westerns as a singing cowboy known as “the Bronze Buckaroo” — a nickname that evoked his malleable racial identity.
In the 1940s and 1950s Jeffries recorded for a number of labels, including RCA Victor, Exclusive, Coral, Decca, Bethlehem, Columbia, Mercury and Trend. His album Jamaica, recorded by RKO, is a concept album of self-composed calypso songs.
A 2007 documentary short describes Jeffries as "assuming the identity of a man of color" early in his career. He is shown in Black/White & All That Jazz explaining that he was inspired by New Orleans-born musician Louis Armstrong to say falsely, at a job interview in Chicago, that he was "a creole from Louisiana" when he was of Irish and Sicilian heritage, among other ethnic backgrounds.
In 2007, while assembling material for the producers of a documentary film about him (A Colored Life), Jeffries found his birth certificate; this reminded him that he actually was born in 1913 and that he had misrepresented his age after he left home to look for a job. His four marriages (including one to exotic dancer Tempest Storm) produced five children. He appeared at jazz festivals and events benefiting autism and other developmental problems and lectured at colleges and universities. He supported music education in schools. In June 2010, aged 96, Jeffries performed to raise funds for the Oceanside (California) Unified School District's music program, accompanied by the Big Band Jazz Hall of Fame Orchestra under the direction of clarinetist Tad Calcara.
A jazz and popular singer, he starred as a singing cowboy in several all-black Western films, in which he sang his own western compositions. Jeffries obtained financing for the first black western film and hired Spencer Williams to appear with him. In addition to starring in the film, he sang and performed his own stunts as cowboy "Bob Blake". He began his career working with Erskine Tate and his Vendome Orchestra when he moved to Chicago from Detroit at the urging of Louis Armstrong. His break came during the 1933 Chicago World's Fair—Century of Progress Exposition singing with the Earl Hines Orchestra on Hines’ national broadcasts live from the Grand Terrace Cafe. His first recordings were with Hines in 1934, including "Just to be in Carolina". He then recorded with Duke Ellington from 1940 to 1942. His recording of "Flamingo" (1940) with Ellington was a best seller in its day. He was replaced in the Ellington band by Al Hibbler in 1943.
Playing a singing cowboy in low-budget films, Jeffries became known as the "Bronze Buckaroo" by his fans. In a time of American racial segregation, such "race movies" played mostly in theaters catering to African-American audiences. The films, now available on video, include Harlem on the Prairie, The Bronze Buckaroo, Harlem Rides the Range and Two-Gun Man from Harlem. Jeffries went on to make other films, starring with Angie Dickinson in Calypso Joe (1957). He later directed and produced Mundo depravados, a cult film starring his wife, Tempest Storm. In 1968, Jeffries appeared in the long-running western TV series The Virginian playing a gunslinger who intimidated the town. At the age of 81, he recorded a Nashville album of songs on the Warner Western label in 1995 entitled The Bronze Buckaroo (Rides Again).
ned 100 on September 24, 2013. He died of heart failure at a California hospital on May 25, 2014.
For his contributions to the motion-picture industry, Jeffries has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6672 Hollywood Boulevard. In 2004 he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. A restaurant in Idyllwild, Cafe Aroma, has a room named for him. In 1998, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him.
The filmography of Herb Jeffries includes the following:
The filmography of Herb Jeffries includes the following:
- Harlem on the Prairie (1937)
- Two-Gun Man from Harlem (1938)
- Harlem Rides the Range (1939)
- The Bronze Buckaroo (1939)
- Calypso Joe (1957)
- Chrome and Hot Leather (1971)
- Portrait of a Hitman (1977)
The discography of Herb Jeffries includes the following:
- Sidney Bechet: "1940-1941" (Classics)
- Earl Hines: "1932-1934" (Classics)
- Duke Ellington: "The Blanton-Webster Band" (RCA, 1940–42)
- Michael Martin Murphrey: "Sagebrush Symphony"
- "Jamaica" (RKO Records ULP - 128) all songs composed by Jeffries
- "Passion" (Brunswick, BL 54028) Coral singles compiled on 12" LP
- "Say it Isn't So" (Bethlehem BCP 72) with the Russ Garcia Orchestra
- "Herb Jeffries" (Harmony HL 7048) Columbia singles LP
- "Magenta Moods" (Mercury 2589 10") LP transfer of Exclusive label album
- "Herb Jeffries Sings" (Mercury 2590 10") more Exclusive singles with the Buddy Baker Orchestra
- "Herb Jeffries and his Orchestra" (Mercury 2591 10") Exclusive label singles
- "Songs by Herb Jeffries" (Mercury 2592 10") Exclusive label singles
- "I Remember the Bing" (Dobre Records 1047)
- "Play and Sing the Duke" (Dobre Records 1053)
- "The King and Me" (Dobre Records 1059)
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