Abbey Lincoln was an actor, a civil rights activist and a jazz singer in the mould of her idol Billie Holiday.
Not being a jazzman, I was unfamiliar with the name Abbey Lincoln, who was as well known as a civil rights activist as a singer. I mean, I can barely distinguish my Billie Holiday from my Ella Fitzgerald or my John Coltrane from my Charlie Parker.
But I love this song, a collaboration with sax man Stan Getz, and have since investigated her career, which encompasses deeply personalised interpretations of jazz standards in addition to her own material.
Born in Chicago in 1930, Anna Marie Wooldridge performed professionally under several other names – Anna Marie, Gaby Lee, and Gaby Woolridge – before settling on Abbey Lincoln… until she adopted the name Aminata Moseka after a tour of Africa.
She might have begun as a supper-club singer but in 1960 she sang on Max Roach’s landmark civil rights-themed recording We Insist! (subtitled Freedom Now Suite and regarded as the earliest full-scale protest record in jazz,. Two years later she married him.
I guess I would have first heard her when her song For All We Know was featured in Gus Van Sant’s 1989 film Drugstore Cowboy, though I can’t say I remember it.
Nor do I immediately remember her appearance singing Spread The Word, Spread The Gospel in The Girl Can’t Help It (1958), wearing the very same dress that Marilyn Monroe had worn in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
But she wasn’t just a singer making cameos – she was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1968, co-starring with Sidney Poitier and Beau Bridges in For The Love Of Ivy, and her many screen credits include Spike Lee’s 1990 film Mo’ Better Blues.
Her lyrics often reflected the ideals of the civil rights movement and helped in generating passion for the cause. In the late ’80s she recorded a pair of albums covering songs popularised by her idol Billie Holiday, and went on to record for Verve.
She kept performing into her 70s and remained a regular at NYC’s Blue Note club up to her death in 2010 at the age of 80.