African Americans have made extraordinary contributions to the history and culture of the United States as part of the nation and apart from it. This month, Auction Finds presents “28 days (Plus 1)” of this collaborative history. The additional day is intended to break Black history out of the stricture of a month into its rightful place as an equal partner in the history of America. Each day, I will offer artifacts culled from the auction tables and my research, along with the stories they hold.
Feb. 18, 2022
Jazz singer Ann (Anna) Robinson sings at Village Vanguard, 1941
Ann (or Anna) Robinson was a night-club singer and performer in musicals on Broadway during the 1940s. She sang before white audiences in several clubs in New York, including the Village Vanguard, which featured some of the top jazz performers. She performed “gut-bucket rhythmic and riff rough-house vocalizing,” as one book noted.
Robinson was said to have made several three-minute records in 1939 with Jimmy Johnson & His Orchestra, scatted on a song called “Harlem Woogie,” and performed as Anna Robinson on a song titled “Hungry Blues” written by Langston Hughes with music by James P. Johnson in a one-act opera. It was titled “De Organizer,” about organizing Black sharecroppers in the South. The opera was performed in 1940 at Carnegie Hall, and CBS was going to use it for radio but found it too controversial.
Robinson was a free spirit (In his autobiography, musician Milt Hinton said she’d answer her door naked), sexually liberated and outspoken. She also wrote songs that others recorded – for which she was never credited – and her material and routines were copied by others. Read the full story.
Listen to her sing “Hungry Blues.”
Listen to her sing “Harlem Woogie.”
