Olive Brown

Olive Brown (30 August 1913 – 9 May 1982; St. Louis, Missouri), born Olive Jefferson, was an American blues singer whose principal musical influence was Bessie Smith, and whose repertoire also drew on material associated with Ethel Waters.
 

Early Life

Brown's family relocated from St. Louis to Detroit while she was still a child; her mother played ragtime piano, and Brown herself began singing publicly at the age of five, performing at a sanctified temple in St. Louis before the family's move. This early grounding in church singing shaped the vocal foundation she would carry into her later career.

Career

Brown made her professional debut in Detroit's clubs in the early 1940s, relocating within a few years to Chicago, and she spent much of her career working on an axis between Detroit, Chicago and St. Louis. Comfortable across blues, jazz and early rock and roll, she both sang and played drums with a range of bands over the decades, and led her own group, Olive Brown & Her Blues Chasers.

In the late 1960s, she drew praise for fronting Buck Clayton's band for a CBC radio broadcast recorded in Toronto. As the 1970s began, recognising an audience appetite for authentic early blues, she shifted her focus toward the material of Bessie Smith and Mamie Smith, recording an album of classic interpretations including "Empty Bed Blues," "Aggravatin' Papa," "Back Water Blues," "Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer," and "'Deed I Do," with pianist Mike Montgomery.

A year earlier, she had recorded a live set at the King Cotton Hotel in Memphis, released as Olive Brown Sings! on the GHB label. Her track "Roll Like a Wheel," although not released at the time it was recorded, later gained attention when it was included on the compilation Don't Freeze on Me: Independent Women's Blues.

In the early 1970s, Brown returned to St. Louis, performing on the city's riverboat lines, and in 1973 she received rave reviews for a lively performance at the St. Louis Ragtime Festival. Billed in her later years as "The New Empress of the Blues," she gave her final public performance at a benefit concert in 1980.
 

Personal Life

Outside of music, Brown, known in private life as Mrs. Olive Brown Graham, served as president of Black Rose Inc., a manufacturer of costume jewellery. She died in hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, on 9 May 1982, from kidney failure following a long illness.

Though her recording career was relatively brief and regional, Brown is remembered as an authentic link to the classic blues tradition of Bessie and Mamie Smith, carried forward into the second half of the twentieth century.