I recognized the profile on the album cover as soon as I saw the name. Who wouldn’t know the stacked buns and long black ponytail that was the trademark hairstyle of the incomparable Josephine Baker.
It’s not often that I come across anything at auction pertaining to the woman who was the bad girl of Paris in the early part of the 20th century. Not a Paul Colin poster or an autographed photo of her banana-skirt outfit or even a recording by this famous singer, dancer and performer. Until now. The album was titled “Encores Americaines,” and contained songs in both English and French.
The album was released by Columbia Records in 1951 at a time when Baker was finally receiving some acceptance as a black female artist in her native country. She had left the United States in the 1920s amid grinding racism, settled in Paris and then became a French citizen in 1937. She was loved by the people of Paris, playing its venues like the star they had made her, and making several movies. “I felt liberated in Paris,” she said.
She chose France as her new country a year after a disastrous return to the United States in the “Zeigfield Follies” on Broadway. The 1936 play was a flop, she did not get kind reviews, and she was devastated, according to an account on the Josephine Baker website. She wanted her native country to love her back, but it would be more than a decade later (1951) before she would feel partly welcomed – and even longer (1973) before she would feel comfortably welcomed.
According to the album’s liner notes, she returned to the United States in a revue after World War II – one site noted that she was here in 1948 – but the show ended in Boston. By the third time, 1951, the country apparently was a tad more ready for her.
She performed at the Strand Theater on Broadway in a show that led to a national tour. Life magazine reported that she was “singing love songs in five languages and making the Strand movie theater seem intimate as a boudoir.” The Life article included a number of Alfred Eisenstaedt photos of Baker, with captions noting her expensive and elaborate costumes.
The record album at auction included such songs as “Brazil,” “Besame Mucho,” “Afraid to Dream,” and “I’m Feeling Like a Million.” It did not include her signature song “J’ai Deux Amours” (“Two Loves Have I”), whose lyrics, according to the 2010 book “The Guest List,” referred to Paris and Africa (not America). She first recorded it for Columbia in 1930, in the thick of her heyday years in Paris, where she was even honored with dolls in her image (including a Lenci doll in 1926).
While Baker was in the United States in 1951, the NAACP honored her by designating May 20, 1951 as Josephine Baker Day for her civil rights work. She rode in a 25-car motorcade through Harlem that, according to the Amsterdam News newspaper, drew 100,000 people.
Baker’s 1973 performance at Carnegie Hall must have been the crowning achievement for her. According to the Josephine Baker website, she was still not sure if she would be fully accepted and acknowledged. She got her answer: The audience gave her a standing ovation before she even began to sing.
The rider notes on the back of the 1951 album outlined Baker’s appeal to Parisians, her humble origins in America and her return visits to perform in this country. It also offered this confounding query:
“Just why Josephine Baker should have been the darling of Parisians for twenty years without exciting her native land is one of those questions that forever worry theatrical historians.”
