The CD is Mildred Bailey's That Rockin' Chair Lady, and it's on the Topaz Jazz label.
When you think of different styles of music, do you think of that music representing different groups of people? Most of us probably do. The history of music is often tied to social class, ethnicity, race, nationality, and other factors, yet we know that with musical talent and training, one can learn to make any type of music. This is true of jazz, which is most often associated with Black American culture, even though the earliest formal accolades for jazz went unsurprisingly to white men. Mildred Bailey wasn’t a man, and she wasn’t white, yet her jazz performance was considered magic to some of the big names in the music industry, even if she is not widely known today. Let’s correct that.
Bailey was born Mildred Rinker on February 27, 1903 or 1907, into the Coeur d'Alene Tribe or Schitsu'umsh People of Idaho on their reservation on her mother Josephine’s side; her father, Charles, was of German-Swiss heritage. The Rinker household was full of both traditional music from their indigenous side and the popular music of the day, because Josephine played piano, while Charles played fiddle and called for square dancing. Bailey credited the traditional music of her people as excellent in terms of smoothing out and empowering her soprano voice.
By 1912 her family had moved to Spokane, Washington, but her childhood is a bit tricky to understand after that point. Most sources claim that Josephine died in 1913, but other sources push that date back to 1917. Did Charles remarry? Did he disappear? That, too, is unclear, because Bailey and her three her brothers, Al, Charles, and Miles, were all in the music industry and rarely talked about their backgrounds outside of the music. All too often, the press during Bailey’s heyday merely called her white or let their readers assume she was a white woman.
Whatever her late childhood was like, Bailey married and quickly divorced her first husband, Ed Bailey, in Seattle. While the husband didn’t stick around, Bailey kept the surname because she felt it would be better for a career in music. Bailey sang professionally in Hollywood clubs, both legal ones and speakeasies. Her repertoire included popular songs of the day, blues, and vaudeville numbers.
Her second husband, Benny Stafford, helped her with that career. Soon she was working with jazz singers and band leaders. By 1925 Bailey was singing on the L.A. radio station KMTR. In 1929 she recorded with jazz guitarist Eddie Lang, who himself did not fit the Anglo model of what a great jazzman was. Her connections in the Californian music scene helped out her younger brothers and a future superstar named Bing Crosby, who was their friend and a member of their trio. The boys and Bailey all worked for a few years with Paul Whiteman’s orchestra.
Jazz in the 1930s was a man’s world. The big bands were led by men, the records were sung by men, and many of the compositions were written by men. Yet Bailey became the lead singer in Whiteman’s band and earned the titles “The Queen of Swing” and “The Rockin' Chair Lady” for her 1932 rendition of Hoagy Carmichael's song by that same title. However, the partnership was not what Bailey was hoping for, so she moved to New York City in 1932.
After a couple of years as a radio performer in NYC, Bailey began recording regularly, first with the Brunswick label for Jack Kapp, who had met and worked with her during her L.A. period. She met her third husband, Red Norvo, and they became known as “Mr. and Mrs. Swing” for several years until their divorce in 1942. The couple continued to work together, making records until the mid-1940s. From 1944-1945, she had her own radio show on CBS that played across the United States.
Bailey probably had an eating disorder, since her weight fluctuated quite a bit, though she was almost always what we would call obese. Her health deteriorated, and eventually Bailey could no longer perform. Superstars like Crosby and Frank Sinatra helped her out, but by December 12, 1951, she died from heart failure, in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she had recently retired to her farm in 1949.
Bailey’s discography is extensive, and you can buy collections of her singing even today, primarily through Mosaic Records. Many years after her death, Bailey has been recognized for her talents with an induction into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1989 and a US Postal Service stamp in 1994. The members of the Coeur d'Alene Tribe are still fighting to have her heritage acknowledged by the greater jazz community.