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When she moved to Chicago from New Orleans in 1927, sixteen year old Mahalia Jackson found her way to the Greater Salem Baptist Church where she joined the choir. Soon she was singing with the Johnson Gospel Singers, traveling from church to church in the Chicago area. In 1929 she began working with Tomas A. Dorsey, who coined the term “Gospel music.” Dorsey had previously be Ma Rainy’s band leader and performed as “Georgia Tom” in a blues duo with Hudson “Tampa Red” Whittaker.

Mahalia Jackson was the first person to have a world class professional career singing only Gospel music. She refused to do any secular songs and divorced her husband, Isaac Hockenhull, because of his constant insistence that she do so. She was the first Gospel singer to perform in Carnegie Hall in 1950 and she toured Europe to wide acclaim. Jackson sang at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961 and at the 1963 march on Washington, appearing with Dr. Martin Luther King. She is credited with mentoring Aretha Franklin, Della Reese and gospel singer Albertina Walker.

Here is Mahalia Jackson at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival singing “Didn’t It Rain.”

In 1927, law student and part time band leader, Hoagland Howard Carmicael sat down at an old upright piano in the Book Nook in Bloomington, Indiana, across the street from the Indiana University School of Law, where he was a student, and wrote down the melody that was running through his head. Originally an up tempo dance tune, Star Dust was inspired by the improvisational work of cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. In 1929 Carmichael slowed the tune down to and lyrics were added by Mitchell Parish, still it was a pretty danceable tune when recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1931.

Jazz pianist and pop singer, Nat King Cole hosted a short lived television show on NBC, The Nat King Cole Show, from November 1956 to December of 1957. NBC carried the show at a loss because the network was unable to find commercial sponsorship for a variety entertainment program hosted by a sophisticated, urbane “negro.” In this clip from his show Cole sings his legato version of “Stardust.”

At the height of his career, Cab Calloway’s big band alternated with Duke Ellington’s as the house band at New York’s Cotton Club. One group would be out touring the country while the other held down the Cotton Club and it’s weekly radio broadcast. Calloway had taken voice lessons as a child, although his parents had hoped he would become a lawyer like his father. He was famous for his scat singing, which he claimed to have learned from Louis Armstrong. This song, “Minnie the Moocher” is his best known work. A short film starring Betty Boop was built around the song. In 1980 Calloway appeared, singing “Minnie the Moocher” in the film “The Blues Brothers.”