“He has told me he likes men as well as he likes women, which seems only natural, he says, since he is the offspring of two sexes as well as two races. No one is surprised he is biracial; why should they be surprised he is bisexual? This is an explanation I have never heard and cannot entirely grasp; it seems too logical for my brain.” – Alice Walker, from Possessing the Secret of Joy

I really don’t think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don’t mind the failure but I can’t imagine that I’d forgive myself if I didn’t try.

~ Nikki Giovanni

Delores LaVern Baker (b. 11/11/29; d. 3/10/97), popularly known as LaVern Baker for much of her professional career, came from a musical lineage of strong women that included Memphis Minnie and Merline Johnson.

After starting her career as a singer in Chicago-area clubs in the 1940s, LaVern (then known as Little Miss Sharecropper and later as Bea Baker) began her recoding career with Okeh Records in 1951, later switching to Atlantic in 1953.

It was during her Atlantic years, which lasted until 1964, that some of her best-known R&B hits were made, including “Tweedle Dee”, “Jim Dandy”, “I Cried A Tear”, “Play It Fair”, and her version of Gertrude ‘Ma’ Rainey’s “See See Rider”.

Though LaVern had many R&B hits during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as work with Alan Freed and Ed Sullivan in movies and television, wider success still eluded her, in part due to Mercury Records’ hiring of non-black Georgia Gibbs to cover her songs (as well as those of other black artists) for the middle-of-the-road world of pop music. Baker was deeply angered by the record company’s move, and a legendary public assertion that Gibbs would have no career if not for the work of others followed, along with LaVern’s petitions to Congress to give musical arrangements the same legal status afforded original musical compositions. Though LaVern lost her legal fight, it touched off subsequent social and legal controversies still being studied today.

In the late 1960s LaVern, like a lot of popular American artists at the time, toured with the USO to entertain US troops serving in the Vietnam War. After a trip to Vietnam, LaVern became ill with pneumonia, causing a lengthy stay at Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines.

Upon her recovery, a friend suggested her as the Entertainment Director for the USMC Staff NCO Club in the Philippines, a position she held for 22 years before returning to the USA, where she spent the remainder of her life working on film soundtracks, appearing on Broadway, and releasing compilations of her earlier hits.

In 1991, Baker was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In a further show of strength after her return to the USA, she continued performing even after diabetes took her legs, and her last recording was “Jump Into the Fire”, which was featured on a tribute CD to Harry Nilsson.

LaVern Baker passed away in 1997, and after originally being placed in an unmarked grave, local historians fundraised for a headstone. She is buried at Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens, NY.