By David "Chet" Williamson Sneade
She was
born Freda Lipschitz in Worcester on August 17, 1919, and before
dying in New York City at 87 on December 9, 2006, the singer would try on a
closet full of names before wearing Georgia Gibbs to
fame.
She is
largely remembered as a white singer who was
afforded the fortunes denied people of color. Gibbs is accused of
building a career out of tunes first recorded by R&B greats like LaVern Baker and Etta James. It’s all true.
She did hit the charts with covers of “Tweedle Dee” and “Dance with me Henry,”
but Gibbs was
so much more than a pale version of these great American R&B artists.
As
the Encyclopedia of Music (UK
Gibbs
first recorded for Brunswick
Records in 1936 and would later record with Bing
Crosby as well as with the bands of Frankie Trumbauer, Artie Shaw and Tommy Dorsey.
Gibbs was
the product of Russian Jewish immigrants and the youngest of four children. Her
father died when she was only six months old and young Freda was sent to the
former Jewish Home for Aged and Orphans at 25 Coral Street 1029 Pleasant Street
It was
owned by John and Charlotte Beller, who ran it for nearly 25 years before
closing the orphanage in 1946. They converted the institution into a home for
the elderly and operated that until the couple retired in 1962.
In a 1993
interview about the orphanage, Georgia
Though he
didn’t mention them by name, Lipson noted that another sister who grew up to be
an artist and a brother also played music and toured with big bands. Lipson was
a noted sculptor himself. An example of his work, a bust of a rabbi, had been
on display in the entrance way of the Jewish Home for Aged,
In an
interview in the November 3, 1957 edition of the Worcester Sunday Telegram, Gibbs told
writer James Lee that she began singing in variety shows held by the
orphanage. He said, “Many Worcesterites recall her as a small child appearing
in their annual revues at the Auditorium.”
Gibbs would later
reveal that being sent to the orphanage as a young child was a living
nightmare. Evidently, in an unidentified New York July 19, 1952 letter to the editor of The Evening Gazette, Ethel
Rosenberg of Worcester Rosenberg
The
Jewish Home for Aged and Orphans housed some 200 orphans between 1914 and 1946.
Gibbs said that she was separated from her siblings at the home and because of
her working schedule her mother could only visit once a month. The young singer
is said to have been left with only a radio for company.
“Some
can’t get over they came out of an orphanage,” her brother Lipson told the Telegram. “But I’m a better man
because of it.” Stating that he and two sisters also grew up in the home, he
added, “All of us who’ve come out of the home have done well. I think it was
the home that did it.”
Gibbs says she earned
her first money singing at 11. “She got $1.50 for appearing with a Worcester High School of Commerce noon at 1 to make the first show.
Three times a day she sang a number with Don Dudley’s orchestra on
the stage. She was Fredda Lipson then.”
 |
| Gibbs billed as Miss Hot Lips |
Gibbs, nee Lipson, also
sang in the area with the Dol Brissette Orchestra at
the Bancroft Hotel. At the Plymouth
In a December
10, 1952
issue of The Evening Gazette,
she told writer Bob Thomas that she started her singing career at 13
years-old. “I had to go to work, so I lied about my age and toured with small
bands,” Gibbs said. “It was back breaking work, traveling 400 miles between one
night stands. I was singing 50 or 60 songs a night. If your voice can stand
that, it can stand anything.”
Gibbs also said, “It’s
the best possible training for a singer. You find your range, you find out what
songs you can sing and what songs you can’t.”
By the
time she was in the eighth grade she was taking home $20 a week to help support
the family. In addition to working local ballrooms and theaters, Gibbs was
venturing out as far as the Raymor
Ballroom in Boston
In an
interview with the singer at the Marguery Hotel in New York Worcester Boston midnight to three. It was a rugged
existence for such a little girl.”
Gibbs
quit school in 1936 and joined the Hudson-DeLange
Orchestra, a great regional band led by Eddie DeLange and Will Hudson. Both leaders
were also extraordinary songwriters. DeLange penned such
hits as “A String of Pearls,” “Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans,”
“Darn that Dream,” and “Solitude,” and Hudson is the author
of “Deep in a Dream,” (w/Delange) “Moonglow,” (w/Delange) and “Organ Grinder
Swing.”
 |
| Eddie DeLange |
In her book Great Pretenders: My Strange Love Affair with ‘50s Pop Music, Gibbs told author Karen Schoemer that she did the gig for “about six months, and it was the most unbelievably hard work in my life. Every night was 200, 300 miles. We didn’t have a bus. It was a broken-down car with the shift between my legs and bleeding, chapped thighs because there was no heater. It was marvelously horrible.”
Talking
about her one-night stands on the road, Gibbs once told a writer for TIME
magazine, “It was hell, honey: 18 men and me.”
Gibbs
made her first recordings with the band as Fredda Lipson for the Brunswick
She would
later reveal that a record company executive assaulted her after she refused
his advances. Frustrated, he then tried to kill her career. Trying to shed that
horrible memory, Gibbs once again changed her identity. Writing her obituary
for the Washington Post, Adam
Bernstein wrote: “Recording periodically as Fredda Gibbons or Gibson, Ms.
Gibbs had changed her name by the early 1940s because a music industry
executive had raped her and threatened to ban her from the airwaves, according
to Rochelle Mancini, the executor of Ms. Gibbs’s estate.”
Though
the recording was a bad experience it led to more work. TIME magazine
picks up the story: “One night in Ithaca, at a Cornell prom, Fredda got a call
from Orchestra Leader Richard
Himber: He had heard her recording of “I’ll Never Tell You I Love
You,” and wanted to try her out in a radio show. Fredda borrowed $10 from the
band manager and lit out for Manhattan
“Himber
took one look at her plain little face and groaned. But she got the job, sang
on Himber’s ‘Studebaker Champions’ program for 13 weeks. Then a song-plugger
told her about a big audition at NBC. Like the songstress in Frederic
Wakeman’s The Hucksters, she was cautioned to sing “loud and fast. . . and on
the beat.” About 150 other girls were trying out, too (“An acre of mink and
silver fox, honey, and me in a little old suit”). But Lucky Strike’s late
George Washington Hill liked Fredda’s hep style, and she got the contract. For
the next two years she was the unsung singer for the ‘Lucky Strike Hit Parade.’”
In 1937
she first appeared on “Your Hit
Parade,” then “Melody Puzzles” and “The Tim and Irene Show.” In 1940
she hooked up with the Frankie Trumbauer band. She was also heard with Joe Venuti and Hal
Kemp.
In May of
1942, bandleader Artie Shaw caught Gibbs singing in the Music at
Work show at the Alvin Theater New York William Morris Agency
In
October of ‘42, while still answering to the name of Fredda Gibson, Gibbs was called upon
to fill in for Connee
Boswell on the “Camel Caravan” program with hosts Jimmy
Durante-Gary Moore. It was Moore who her tagged her with her famous nickname
“Her Nibs.” The moniker is derived from her size. It means “important or
self-important person.” Gibbs stood a whisper over five feet tall in stocking
feet and weighed 99 pounds fresh out of the shower.
The rest
of the Gibbs story is well-documented history -- including how she became
Georgia Gibbs. Go online, punch in any one of her many names and look it up. It
should be noted that she was married to journalist Frank Gervasi,
who was a WWII correspondent for United Press and the official biographer of
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
He died in 1990. Gibbs’ later years
were spent working with her lawyer, Mark Sendroff successfully
collecting royalty payments owed to her from reissues of her master recordings.
At the time of her death in New York Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
It should
also be noted that after leaving Worcester
“It was
Georgia Gibbs in her first appearance in Worcester Bell
“And when
she threw back her head and lost herself in her best-known hit, “Kiss of Fire,”
several teenage girls in the crowd -- with dreams of their own -- smiled softly
and lifted their heads, too.
“Looking
out over the crowd at White City Park Commerce High School
This piece was originally published on May 1, 2008.
Note: This
is a work in progress. Comments, corrections, and suggestions are always
welcome at: walnutharmonicas@gmail.com. Also see: www.worcestersongs.blogspot.com Thank you.
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