Skip to content
Chittlin Circuit

Java Code Module

Wide screen resolution  Default screen resolution  Increase font size  Decrease font size  Default font size 
You are here:  Home
Ruth Brown, R&B legend dies at 78 PDF Print E-mail
Ruth Brown, the pioneering singer whose 1950s hits such as Teardrops From My Eyes and (Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean helped establish both the rhythm-and-blues form and Atlantic Records as the genre's pre- eminent record label, died Friday, November 17, 2006 in a Las Vegas area hospital from complications following a heart attack and stroke last week. She was 78.
Brown, a Grammy and Tony award winner, was working recently with director John Sayles on a film about black musicians of the South.

Much of her work in the past two decades had been as a driving force of efforts to get unpaid royalties and musical credit for R&B and blues musicians, many of whom had failed to be adequately compensated early in their careers.

To that end, she had helped create the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in Philadelphia in 1988, which was financed by a settlement with Atlantic Records, not just over Brown's back royalties but also for those of almost three dozen other R&B performers.
She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Despite being one of the top-selling R&B singers of the early 1950s, Brown had to support herself and her two children through a variety of menial jobs in the 1960s and 1970s, after musical tastes changed and other artists took over the charts.

Feisty, joyful and possessing the perfect balance of sugar and salt, Brown's voice took black pop into the rhythmically expressive, emotionally direct rhythm-and-blues era.

Her nickname, in fact, was "Miss Rhythm," though she could turn a jazz phrase or give life to a Broadway song with as much grace as she showed shimmying through R&B hits like Lucky Lips or her most famous song, (Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean. Her trademark squeal in that No1 hit brought female sauciness to the fore in pop.

"Little Richard once told me he got his squeal from Ruth Brown," said Jerry Wexler, who produced dozens of her Atlantic recordings, mostly with label founder Ahmet Ertegun.

Later, she would come to symbolize other qualities, especially perseverance in the face of hardship.

"What always hit me about Ruth was her sass and the force of her spirit," singer Bonnie Raitt said.
 
< Prev   Next >
[ Back ]

Current Issue

 Click Here to Subscribe Now


To listen to Interviews get Real Audio

Artist Showcase


Click CD to Listen

Gospel Spotlight

Syndicate