⬇️ ALBERTA ADAMS ⬇️
(Roberta Louise Osborn)
(4CDs)
BIOGRAPHY
Raised in Detroit, Michigan, she began performing as a tap dancer and
nightclub singer in the 1930s. In 1952, she signed a recording
contract with Chess Records and recorded with Red Saunders for the
label. She toured with Duke Ellington, Eddie Vinson, Louis Jordan,
Lionel Hampton, and T-Bone Walker, among others.
In her solo career, she secured a recording contract with the
now-defunct Cannonball Records and recorded two albums for them: Born
with the Blues (1999) and Say Baby Say (2000). Her 2004 album, I'm on
the Move, was released by Eastlawn Records. In 2006 she released the
EP Detroit's Queen of the Blues, which was named Outstanding
Blues/R&B Recording at the 2006 Detroit Music Awards. At age 91
she recorded Detroit Is My Home, with Ann Rabson and Thornetta
Davis.
Adams was born as Roberta Louise Osborn on July 26, 1917, in
Indianapolis, Indiana. She was raised in Detroit by family members,
initially an aunt. From an early age she wanted to be an
entertainer. Escaping a difficult home life at age fourteen, she
began living on her own, getting a small apartment near Woodward,
where she stayed for five or six years.
She began performing as a tap dancer in Detroit's Hastings Street
clubs in Detroit and began singing shortly after. In the 1940s, she
appeared at the B&C club as a tap dancer, among artists such as
John Lee Hooker. When headliner Kitty Stevenson was too ill to
perform one night, Adams gave an impromptu two-song performance, as
a result of which the club hired her as a vocalist for a five-year
stint. Among her contemporaries and musical teachers on Hastings
Street were Hooker, Big Maceo Merriweather, Eddie Burns, and Eddie
Kirkland ....
(Wikipedia)