FLORENCE MILLS "LITTLE BLACKBIRD"

FLORENCE MILLS was born on January 25, 1895, in either Washington, D.C., or Virginia. The facts about her early life are uncertain. She was considered to be a child prodigy and was winning dance contests when she was virtually a toddler. At the age of 4 she was specially featured in "A Trip to Coontown." She made her first stage appearance at the age of eight in Williams and Walker's "Sons of Ham" in Washington, D.C. She was billed as "Baby Florence Mills" and sang "Miss Hannah from Savannah," a song she learned from Aida Overton Walker. Her family moved to New York where she and her two sisters worked in vaudeville as the Mills Trio. Florence played vaudeville until she was 25 years old, teaming up with people like Ada "Bricktop" Smith and Cora Green.

Sadly there are no existent audio or film recordings of Florence Mills, but from the numerous playbills, and sheet music portfolios it is clear that she was a sensational performer.

Ethel Waters : Jazz Baby Great

Ethel Waters was a major singing and acting star during the Harlem Renaissance period, and was the second African American to be nominated for an Academy Award. At a time when opportunities in entertainment were few for blacks, Ethel made the most of every opportunity she was offered. She performed regularly on Broadway beginning with the show "Hello 1919", and then in Hollywood films including "Rufus Jones for President", "Cotton Club", and Director Vincente Minelli's "Cabin in the Sky". Her classic phrasing as a singer on such songs as "Stormy Weather" and her best-known recording of the spiritual "His Eye is on the Sparrow" cemented her legacy, earning her a Grammy Hall of Fame Award.

Josephine Baker : Jazz Baby Number One

Is it any wonder that this vivacious force-of-nature captured hearts around the globe? Famous for her wild dancing and later for the beauty of her singing, style and sophistication; the likes of Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway were adoring fans. Josephine is the embodiment of a Jazz Baby, watching the instrument that is her body move those syncopated hips, I have the sense that she was a living cubist portrait. Sadly, America, was the one place where this Saint Louis, Missouri native failed to receive her just accolades. The French adopted her and she returned the favor by taking up citizenship there...

1920s Berlin Project Sim

One quiet Sunday afternoon I found myself rooted to a spot on Alexanderplatz in 1920s Berlin Project Sim, that's in Second Life (SL) for those who don't know, feeding peanuts to a small monkey wearing a fez who danced atop an organ grinder's cart to the Kurt Weill's "3 Penny Opera".

From the beginning I felt right a home there, and the more I learned about the Weimar Era in German history, the more passionate I became....

STARLIT HOUR

In order to escape the pressures of Twenty-First Century life I enjoy returning to the Jazz Age, and the beginning of what we know of as Modern Times. Why then? It's the period in which I feel most at home. It's the time when women in the western world were first liberated. A time when both my grandmothers and my great aunts were young women. The choices they made in their lives wouldn't have previously been possible, and I'm standing firmly on their shoulders.



Women first voted, and bobbed their hair then; they worked outside the home, in large numbers in jobs and careers that enabled then to earn their own incomes, but more importantly they experienced the power of their own creativity and sexuality more openly than before. The period after World War One (WWI), ending with the rumblings of World War Two (WWII) - roughly 1920 to 1939, established the cultural foundation for our times.