Helen Humes
b. 23 June 1913, Louisville, Kentucky, USA, d. 13 September 1981. Coming from a happy, close-knit, musical family, Humes learned to play trumpet and piano. As a child she sang with the local Sunday School band, which boasted future jazz stars such as Dicky Wells and Jonah Jones. In 1927 she made her first records, for the OKeh label in St. Louis. Humes then went to New York where she recorded again, this time accompanied by James P. Johnson and worked for several years with the orchestra led by Vernon Andrade, star of Harlem's Renaissance Ballroom. She also recorded with Harry James. In 1937 she was offered a job by Count Basie but turned it down because the pay was too little. The following year she changed her mind and signed up, replacing Billie Holiday. Her recordings with Basie mixed attractive performances of poor-quality songs and marvellous versions of the better material she was given. She left Basie in 1941 to freelance, and by 1944 was working on the west coast; she had moved into the then popular R&B field. Humes had a big hit with Be-Baba-Leba, recorded with Bill Doggett. On a 1947 session in New York, supervized by John Hammond, she made some excellent mainstream jazz records with Buck Clayton and Teddy Wilson. By the '50s, despite another big hit with Million Dollar Secret, her career was in the doldrums as the R&B tag she had acquired proved somewhat limiting. This hiatus continued into the late '60s, at which time she retired to care for ailing members of her family. In 1973 the writer and record producer Stanley Dance persuaded her out of retirement and into an appearance with Basie at the Newport Jazz Festival. This date was a great success and Humes returned to full-time singing. Equally at home with ballads, to which she brought faultless jazz phrasing, blues shouting and R&B rockers, Humes was one of the outstanding singers of her day. Her light, clear voice retained its youthful sound even into her '60s, and late-period recordings were among the best she ever made.