{"id":5757,"date":"2014-05-27T21:28:05","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T04:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=5757"},"modified":"2014-05-27T21:30:41","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T04:30:41","slug":"herb-jeffries-singer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2014\/05\/herb-jeffries-singer\/","title":{"rendered":"Herb Jeffries, Singer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=&#8221;B1QBPBZ8YjVUMLjdV7AbzEFCJCaScgkh&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>After Herb Jeffries died on Sunday in Los Angeles, headlines around the world remembered him for his<a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Jeffries-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Jeffries-1.jpg\" alt=\"Jeffries 1\" width=\"173\" height=\"230\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-5758\" \/><\/a> career as a singing cowboy in a succession of low budget 1930s Hollywood movies.<\/p>\n<p><font size=\"5\"><strong>Herb Jeffries dies at 100; Hollywood&#8217;s first black singing cowboy<\/strong><\/font>&#151;<em>The Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"5\"><strong>Herb Jeffries, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBronze Buckaroo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 of Song and Screen, Dies at 100 (or So)<\/strong><\/font>&#151;<em>The New York Times<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Appreciative listeners are more likely to recall Jeffries as the singer who worked with the Earl Hines Orchestra, then joined Duke Ellington when the classic Blanton-Webster edition of the band was taking shape. With Ellington, he recorded \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Flamingo.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The record, with its remarkable Billy Strayhorn arrangement and a lovely Johnny Hodges interlude, became a hit in 1941. It remained on juke boxes and radio play lists for decades. <\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QPclJvyF_70?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Flamingo\u00e2\u20ac\u009d became a trademark and calling card for Jeffries. Over the years, he was prevailed upon to remake the piece in film shorts, including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ORaSnWF2SX4\"target=\"_blank\">this one<\/a> with the Ellington band and decoration by a couple of pseudo-Caribbean dancers. Subsequent performances did not match the seductive power of the original recording.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Jeffries-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Jeffries-2.jpg\" alt=\"Jeffries 2\" width=\"150\" height=\"143\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5759\" \/><\/a>Jeffries led a full and varied life in the United States and in the 1940s in France, where he owned night clubs in Paris. From the well-balanced <em>New York Times<\/em> obituary:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>To read the whole thing, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/05\/27\/arts\/music\/herb-jeffries-singing-star-of-black-cowboy-films-dies-at-100.html?_r=0\"target=\"_blank\">go here<\/a>. For the <em>L.A. Times<\/em> obit, which concentrates on Jeffries\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 movie career, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/obituaries\/la-me-herb-jeffries-20140526-story.html#page=1\"target=\"_blank\">go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The matter of his ethnicity was a source of speculation throughout Jeffries&#8217; career. He most often claimed that his mother was Irish and his father was a mixture of Sicilian, Ethiopian, French, Italian and Moorish and that his birth name was Umberto Alexander Valentino. The question of his degree of blackness seemed to be a source of some amusement to him in an interview around the time of his 100th birthday last fall. It had to do with his role in the production of Ellington&#8217;s 1941 musical <em>Jump for Joy<\/em>. It takes the video a while to get to the interview and Jeffries a while to get through the story, but patience will be rewarded. <\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mNlaV5i6i88?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><p>Herb Jeffries, RIP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=&#8221;B1QBPBZ8YjVUMLjdV7AbzEFCJCaScgkh&#8221;] After Herb Jeffries died on Sunday in Los Angeles, headlines around the world remembered him for his career as a singing cowboy in a succession of low budget 1930s Hollywood movies. Herb Jeffries dies at 100; Hollywood&#8217;s first black singing cowboy&#151;The Los Angeles Times Herb Jeffries, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBronze Buckaroo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 of Song and Screen, Dies [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5757","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}