Remember Her Name

While I didn’t get through much of a recent viewing of the 1978 film Remember My Name — if ever there were a flinty movie you needed to be in the right mood for, this was it — it did remind me of two distinct things. The first is that no actor in Hollywood history has ever seemed more uncomfortable in his own skin than Anthony Perkins, displaying a palpable distress that works perfectly in Psycho yet makes many of his other screen performances a squirm-fest even for a sympathetic viewer.

The second is how lucky I was to have seen Alberta Hunter perform in the late Seventies. Hunter, whose music is heard throughout Remember My Name, had one of the great comeback tales of the time. Born in 1895 (a fact which, in itself, can send chills down your spine in wonder), Hunter spent five decades performing and recording as a popular vocalist whose fluid style morphed from blues to jazz to musical theater to cabaret. Although she collaborated with the likes of Louis Armstrong and Paul Robeson throughout her peak years, Hunter never attained the success of other more striking singers of the time.

Retiring from show business in the late 1950s, Hunter became a nurse, working at a hospital on Roosevelt Island in New York City for the next two decades, clearly content to have become a footnote in musical history. All but forgotten, Hunter was unexpectedly rediscovered in 1976, beginning an extended engagement at the Cookery, a Greenwich Village restaurant now long gone, that lasted for the next six years. It was there that I saw her perform.

Hunter, who got right back on the showbiz horse as if the previous decades had been merely a blip, became a media sensation who, thankfully, lived up to all the attention she was getting due to her advanced age and the strange circumstances of her career. If the years had not been especially kind to her voice, Hunter masked the wear and tear by becoming a master of conversational delivery. Utterly charming, with a mischievous and randy manner underscored by her sly way with innuendo, Hunter —also an elegant interpreter of standards (I particularly remember a poignant rendition of the 1933 song, “A Hundred Years from Today”) — was an enchanting performer who delighted in captivating an audience. With her career rejuvenated, Hunter was now recording for Columbia under the aegis of the famed record producer John Hammond, who, along with Cookery owner Barney Josephson, had given the zesty octogenarian a new lease on life, and she was relishing it.

I can thank my best friend (then as now), Dave, with encouraging me to see Hunter. Back in 1970, Columbia began reissuing the complete recordings of Bessie Smith, the rightfully crowned “Empress of the Blues.” Dave, who purchased The World’s Greatest Blues Singer, Columbia’s initial release in its chronological series of Smith’s career, was immediately enchanted by Smith’s majestic voice and singular artistry. The album kicks off with a bang: the initial track being Smith’s very first recording, the 1923 smash hit “Downhearted Blues.” The lyricist of the song? One Alberta Hunter.

For Dave, the chance to see Hunter in the flesh was a no-brainer. For me, still not nearly as enraptured at the time by vocalists as I was by instrumentalists, the pull wasn’t as strong. But the temptation to experience this living link to profound musical history was finally too hard to resist. I then witnessed a performance that offered both a portal to the past and a glimpse of what aging with renewed grace and purpose might look like.

Thanks, Alberta, and thanks, Dave.