Ruth Brown’s recordings of Teardrops in My Eyes and (Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean dominated the R&B charts in the 1950s and earned her the nickname ”Miss Rhythm”.
But her other nickname might as well be ”Miss Survivor” for persevering through the highs and lows of a career spanning six decades.
Brown died on November 17 of complications from a stroke and heart attack at a Las Vegas-area hospital, said Lindajo Loftus, a publicist for the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, which Brown helped establish. She was 78.
”Ruth was one of the most important and beloved figures in modern music,” Bonnie Raitt said in a statement. ”You can hear her influence in everyone from Little Richard to Etta [James], Aretha [Franklin], Janis [Joplin] and divas like Christina Aguilera today.”
”She was my dear friend and I will miss her terribly,” Raitt said.
Brown shot to stardom in 1949 when her recording of the ballad So Long became a hit. Her soulful voice produced dozens of hits for Atlantic Records, cementing the then fledgling label’s reputation as an R&B powerhouse.
Trained in a church choir in her hometown of Portsmouth, Virginia, Brown sang a range of style from jazz to gospel blues in such hits as 5-10-15 Hours and Teardrops in My Eyes.
But as R&B fell out of style in the late 1950s and other artists took over the charts, Brown was forced to find other work. She worked as a maid, school-bus driver and teacher to support herself and her two sons for the next decade and a half.
Brown enjoyed a career renaissance in the mid-1970s when she began recording blues and jazz tunes for a variety of labels and found success on the stage and in movies.
She won acclaim in the R&B musical Staggerlee and won a Tony Award for best actress in the Broadway revue Black and Blue.
She also played a feisty DJ in the 1988 cult movie Hairspray. A year later, she won a Grammy for best jazz vocal performance for the album Blues on Broadway.
Brown continued to perform and record in her later years, becoming a popular host of National Public Radio’s Harlem Hit Parade and BluesStage.
She was inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
She became a prominent advocate for the rights of ageing R&B musicians during her long struggle to recoup her share of royalties from Atlantic. Her effort led to the formation of the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit organisation dedicated to providing financial and medical assistance, as well as historical and cultural preservation of the musical genre. — Sapa-AP