Unknown Singer

This photograph is from my Cleage photos and is unlabeled.  I do not know which one of the Cleage photographers took the photo. I would date it in the 1940s.

This photo may have been taken from the same event. The paper the same thick texture.  Unfortunately the people are also unidentified.

 

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15 thoughts on “Unknown Singer

  1. Unlabeled photos are so frustrating. She’s lovely, whoever she was. I love the expressions on the saxophone and (I think?) clarinet players faces as they ‘eye’ each other. You just have to wonder what song they were playing.

  2. Perhaps the “M” on the bandstand in the first photo could give you a clue to the name of the band, if not of the singer.

    I tried to enlarge the sign on the wall in the same photo, but the resolution of the scan is too low for me to make it out.

    I’ll show the photo to my friend Dr. Jiam Desjardins, the leading authority on Detroit’s mostly-Jewish and -“black” Paradise Valley, who also followed the “black” music scene thruout Detroit, including on the North End (mostly along Oakland) and on the Near West Side (including 12th [now Rosa Parks Boulevard) Linwood, Dexter and Livernois). He might recognize the singer or the band, or perhaps the club.

  3. I’m intrigued…there’s clearly chemistry here (between the couple AND the band members)…I hope you find out more!

  4. yes, one wonders at the song.Was a flash used ?If so ,it must have been used with intent and purpose (unlike today ,were photography is ten-a-penny)

    1. Wish I had gone through these photos with my uncle Henry when I had the chance. And I thought I knew what I was doing by that time.

  5. Posts like this one remind me of the importance of labeling pictures. As we’ve shifted to taking massive numbers of digital pictures, it becomes very challenging to figure which pictures to label and how to do it.

  6. Excellent photos of the mysterious people, whose lives certainly looked intriguing at least from the looks on their faces in these snaps! Yes, a glimpse into a feeling expressed with a glance!

  7. Very lively snapshots even if unidentified. Paul Lee has the right idea. The design on the back wall is a mythical reference, Diana the huntress with a stag maybe. Definitely a nightclub not a church.

  8. Oh I wish I could see that lovely singers face. I just want to move that microphone to the side. And I wonder what the musicians looking towards each other were thinking.

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