THE INDEFATIGABLE RUTH BROWN

A great voice has gone. A quote from her in the Independent's obituary:

"Rhythm 'n 'blues was getting ready to be called rock'n'roll. It had become interesting enough; white kids were starting to pay attention to it...And then on the scene came [the disc-jockey] Alan Freed, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis. But we already had Jackie Wilson, Bo Diddley, B.B. King. We had it all in place but it was not feasible for us as black artists to be the innovators... I never got to do The Ed Sullivan Show and I had never, ever, been on The Tonight Show, until September 1990!"

Before that unlikely comeback, Brown struggled for over a decade. Having left Atlantic in 1961, she eventually stopped performing altogether. She drove a school bus, she washed dishes, she worked as a domestic, a cleaner, a cook and a teacher's assistant and she suffered at the hands of her third husband, a policeman. "I could pick a good song but I sure couldn't pick a man," she said.

The obit doesn't mention all the serious illnesses she overcame, or the fact that she soldiered on after her home was destroyed in the LA earthquake of 1994. She sang in London soon afterwards, and was just mesmerising, performing straight R&B and some wonderfully rude Bessie Smith-style doubles-entendres.  Some time this morning, I'll have to dig out my copy of Blues on Broadway. R.I.P.