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LINDA HOPKINS
Born in New Orleans on
December 14, 1924, Linda Hopkins grew up as
the second youngest of six children of a
Baptist preacher and, of course, she was
singing in church already as a little girl. It
was there that she delivered the first
irrefutable proof that she was a very special
child. At 11, she talk to Mahalia Jackson on
the telephone into doing a benefit concert at
her father's church. Mahalia agreed without
knowing she'd been booked by a decisive eleven
year old whom she loved to call “the kid”, a
nickname that has stuck to Linda to this day.
Quite the professional,
Linda announced Mahalia to the audience, after
singing “God Shall Wipe Your Tears Away”, one
of Mahalia's most popular songs Jackson
was deeply moved by this very mature rendition
and saw to it that Linda became a member of
the Southern Harp Spiritual Singers, where
stayed as first tenor for eleven years and did
her first recording sessions with this choir,
in New York, in 1947, for the King label.
One meeting with the immortal Bessie Smith
at the New Orleans Palace Theatre in 1936, and
Linda fell in love with the Blues. As long as
the music came from the heart, it was fit for
her to sing. A third meeting ignited her career as a recording artist also
in Jazz and Blues. In 1951, at the Slim
Jenkins Night Club in Oakland, California, she
met 13-year-old Little Esther, the
kid star of the Johnny Otis Revue,
who, a few nights later, returned with
Johnny Otis and the boss of Savoy Records
Herman Labinski. Esther was separating from Otis to
go solo with the King label. Linda joined
Johnny, making her first Blues
recordings with the Johnny Otis Orchestra for
Savoy. Also, Esther created a stage name for Linda
who had been performing under her birth name,
Helen Mathews. Little Esther deleted the
Helen, shortened Linda's middle name "Melinda" to Linda
and added Hopkins for her last name. "Linda
Hopkins, that's a hell of a name," said young
Esther. "That name
is you from now on“, she declared, and Linda
liked it.
Throughout
the fifties, Linda toured clubs in Hawaii and Japan.
A gig with Louis
Armstrong at The Brown Derby in Honolulu led the
club owner to take Linda to Japan for six weeks
and she stayed for two years. During this
decade, Linda recorded for the labels
Crystalette, Forecast, Federal and Atco and
appeared at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, with
Little Richard. She contributed to Keith
Wyatt's movie "Rockin' The Blues" and did a
US-Tour with the "Rock ‚n' Roll Cavalcade".
In
1959, Hopkins incorporated her great idol
Bessie Smith (†1937) in the Broadway
production "Jazz Train", which was a huge
success. In 1960, she played in Europe, where
the show was entitled “Broadway Express”. She
recorded a dozen songs with Swiss accompanists
for the Basel based label Ex-Libris. Records
on the Brunswick label followed and she
recorded duets with Jackie Wilson, including
“Shake A Hand”, in 1963, which topped the R &
B Charts.
Linda attended Stella Adler's Acting School in
New York City. The classes paid off when Linda
Hopkins took a part in the Broadway musical "Purlie",
in 1970. Linda received a Tony Award and Drama
Desk Award, in 1972, for "Inner City". She
performed in many roles for stage, movie and
TV, such as Lil' Boy's Mother in "The
Education Of Sonny Carson" (1974), as a singer
in "Roots", "The Next Generation“ (1979), as
Flossie King in the Clint Eastwood movie "Honkytonk
Man" (1982) and as a housewife in the comic
horror film "Leprechaun 2" (1994).
In
1973, she made her first LP on RCA, entitled
"Linda Hopkins". Her other featured records
included "Here's The Kid" on Jazz Between The
Dykes (1994, Holland) and "How Blue Can You
Get" on Quicksilver (1995).
Linda Hopkins' triumph was when her ensemble
dedicated a program to Bessie Smith. She told
producer Leonard Feather, "I didn’t want to
picture Bessie as just a singer of songs about
misery, or as a poor broken down alcoholic. If
I did that, I would be living a lie. Bessie
brought joy and happiness to people – she had
her upbeat side; everybody enjoyed seeing it
then, and they want to remember it today.”
She
conceived the entire program as a one woman
show and staged it as "Me And Bessie",
in 1974, in Los Angeles and Washington D.C.,
thrilling audiences and critics alike. In 1975
she took the show to Broadway at the
Ambassador Theatre, then at the Edison
Theatre.
The
show lasted thirteen months and 453
performances. No other artist before or after
her ever filled a Broadway theatre by herself
with only a band. Every evening was
triumphant. The soundtrack was released on
Columbia Records. Hopkins received a Critic’s
Award for this outstanding achievement.
When her show closed, Linda toured together
with Sammy Davis Jr. for nine months and sang
at the official inauguration ball for
President Jimmy Carter. Previously, she sang
for President Johnson and, later, for
President Clinton.
The
musical revue "Black And Blue" was another
highlight in Linda's career. Two Argentines
living in France, Claudio Segovia and Hector
Orezzoli, who produced several splendid stage
events, created this show as an homage to the
Blues and Jazz of the glamorous Cotton Club
era in Harlem, New York. In 1985, the
applauded world premiere took place at the
Théâtre Musical de Paris and, in 1989, Linda
found herself back on Broadway, where she held
the stage as the undisputed star of a thirty
piece ensemble for 829 performances not
counting the European shows before and after
Broadway. The illustrious cast included also
the legendary tap dancer Bunny Briggs, who
performed with Duke Ellington in the 1930s.
Linda Hopkins was nominated for a Tony Award
in 1989, for her part in this show at the
Minskoff Theatre and, from 1995 to 1997,
she toured with the Europe with "Black
And Blue", one more time.
The
musical revue "Wild Women Blues", a tribute
most of all to the Lady singers Bessie Smith,
Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Dinah
Washington opened at the Freie Volksbühne, in
Berlin, in December 1997. Together with Maxine
Weldon, Mortonette Jenkins and a first
class band, Linda Hopkins staged the entire
spectrum of female emotions of joy and
frustration of love and elicited thunderous
applause from the audience. For three years,
the show played Berlin, Hamburg (three times
at the St. Pauli Theater), Munich, Cologne,
Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna,
Ljubljana, Monte Carlo and the island of Sylt.
Though it hasn't taken her to Broadway yet,
Linda enjoys this show, which also plays in
the U.S.A., even more than "Black And Blue"
because in she has far more scope to unfold
her personality and to act out her spontaneous
ideas. During "Down Home Blues", she
parades onstage in her tight-fringed 1930s
costume. While the audience is jumping up from
their seats, Linda revels in an improvised
clownesque interlude. Once, quite
unintentionally, Linda lost a piece of her
costume on stage in Berlin and all of a sudden
was standing there in knee long, lily white
and lace trimmed grandma underwear. There
couldn't have been a gimmick better calculated
and the audience went nuts at this hilarious
sight. Linda, of course, didn't make any haste
at all to get off stage but played heavily on
the unexpected situation. Linda's sense of
humor, irony and warm-heartedness are so
original, so direct and so disarming that you
simply can't help loving her.
In
2005, Hopkins played “Wild Women Blues” in
Hamburg, for two months and in Paris, for
three weeks. She was honored with a star on
the “Hollywood Walk Of Fame”. Oh, yes: The kid
is alright.
(Edited from
© December 2003 – January 2006 by Mojo
Mendiola) |
