Marion Harris (born Mary Ellen Harrison; March 25, 1897 – April 23, 1944) was an American popular singer who was most successful in the late 1910s and the 1920s. She was the first widely-known white singer to sing
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...
and
blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...
songs.
[Ward, Elijah (2005). ''Escaping the Delta''. .]
Early life
She was born Mary Ellen Harrison on March 25, 1897 in
Vanderburgh County, Indiana. Her parents, James P. Harrison (in the family stove manufacturing business) and Gertrude Kappler Sturtevant (a railroad stenographer) had eloped to marry in
Boonville, Indiana
Boonville is a city in Boon Township, Warrick County, Indiana, United States. The population was 6,246 at the 2010 census. The city is the largest community in and the county seat of Warrick County.
History
Boonville was founded in 1818 and ...
in 1893. Her parents marriage was not to be a long term success - her father's family business fell on hard times, and he was eventually to commit suicide by train in Boonville in 1917, having been reduced to relying on charity. Presumably they were divorced prior to 1914, when her mother remarried engineer John M. Blades, who she remained with until her death in 1921. Ironically her paternal grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Harrison (no relation to the President despite her publicity machine claiming this) was to die in a hotel accident in 1907, the same fate that later claimed Marion Harris herself.
Marion sang in
vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment which began in France in the middle of the 19th century. A ''vaudeville'' was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a drama ...
and movie theaters in Chicago around 1914. The dancer
Vernon Castle introduced her to the theater community in New York City, where she debuted in the
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin (born Israel Isidore Beilin; May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was a Russian-born American composer and songwriter. His music forms a large part of the Great American Songbook. Berlin received numerous honors including an Acade ...
revue ''Stop! Look! Listen!'' in 1915.
Recordings
In 1916, she began recording for
Victor Records, singing a variety of songs, such as "Everybody's Crazy 'bout the Doggone Blues, but I'm Happy", "
After You've Gone", "
A Good Man Is Hard to Find", "When I Hear That Jazz Band Play" and her biggest success, "
I Ain't Got Nobody" (originally titled "I Ain't Got Nobody Much").
In 1920, after Victor prevented her from recording
W.C. Handy's "
St. Louis Blues", she joined
Columbia, where she recorded the song. Sometimes billed as "The Queen of the Blues",
she recorded blues and jazz songs throughout her career. Handy wrote, "she sang blues so well that people hearing her records sometimes thought that the singer was colored." Harris commented, "You usually do best what comes naturally, so I just naturally started singing Southern dialect songs and the modern blues songs."
She was briefly married to the actor
Robert Williams Robert, Rob, Robbie, Bob or Bobby Williams may refer to:
Architecture
* Train %26 Williams#Robert Edmund Williams, Robert Edmund Williams (1874–1960), Canadian-American architect
* Robert Williams (architect) (1848–1918), Welsh architect a ...
. They married in 1921 and divorced the following year. Harris and Williams had one daughter, Mary Ellen, who later became a singer under the name Marion Harris Jr.
In 1922, she signed with
Brunswick. She continued to appear in Broadway theatres throughout the 1920s. She regularly played the
Palace Theatre, appeared in
Florenz Ziegfeld
Florenz Edward Ziegfeld Jr. (; March 21, 1867 – July 22, 1932) was an American Broadway impresario, notable for his series of theatrical revues, the ''Ziegfeld Follies'' (1907–1931), inspired by the '' Folies Bergère'' of Paris. He al ...
's ''Midnight Frolic'', and toured the country with vaudeville shows.
After her divorce from a marriage that produced two children, she returned, in 1927, to New York theater, made more recordings with Victor and appeared in an eight-minute
Vitaphone
Vitaphone was a sound film system used for feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects made by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National Pictures, First National from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone is the last major analog sound-on-disc sys ...
short film, ''Marion Harris: Songbird of Jazz''. After performing in a Hollywood movie, the early musical ''
Devil-May-Care'' (1929), with
Ramón Novarro, she temporarily withdrew from performance because of an undisclosed illness.
Later career and death
Between 1931 and 1933, Harris performed on such NBC radio shows as ''
The Ipana Troubadors'' and Rudy Vallee's ''
The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour''. She was billed by NBC as "The Little Girl with the Big Voice."

In early 1931, she performed in
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
, returning for long engagements at the
Café de Paris (located in London). In London, she appeared in the musical ''
Ever Green'' and broadcast on
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
radio. She also recorded in
England
England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
in the early 1930s but retired soon afterward. In 1936, she married Leonard Urry, an English theatrical agent.
Their house was destroyed in a German bombing attack in 1941, and in 1944 she travelled to New York to seek treatment for a neurological disorder. She was discharged two months later.
She died on April 23, 1944, at
Le Marquise Hotel from a fire that started when she fell asleep while smoking in bed.
Discography
* ''The Complete Victor Releases'' (
Archeophone, 2000)
* ''Look for the Silver Lining'' (Living Era, 2006)
Hit singles
Notes
References
External links
*
Marion Harris at The Jazz Age*
*
The Complete Marion Harrisat the
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...
Marion Harris recordingsat the
Discography of American Historical Recordings
The Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) is a database catalog of master recordings made by American record companies during the 78rpm era. The 78rpm era was the time period in which any flat disc records were being played at ...
.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harris, Marion
1896 births
1944 deaths
20th-century American women singers
American blues singers
American women jazz singers
American jazz singers
American women pop singers
Singers from Indiana
American vaudeville performers
Burials at Kensico Cemetery
Deaths from fire in the United States
20th-century American singers