[Dixielandjazz] Herb Jeffries at 100 - Palm Springs Desert Sun

[Robert Ringwald]

At 100, Age Is Just a Number for Jazz Legend Herb Jeffries
by Bruce Fessier
Palm Springs Desert Sun, September 24, 2013
One of Palm Springs' greatest legends, the Bronze Buckaroo, Herb
Jeffries, turns 100 years old today.
He and his wife, Savannah, just drove in from their home in
Wichita, Kan., Sunday, but they still didn't know where they
would celebrate his centennial. Cafe Aroma in Idyllwild, which
has a room named after Herb, wanted to throw a party for their
popular mountain resident, but Savannah is afraid it's too small
for such a festive occasion. So, if anyone has any ideas for a
venue, send them to
herb at herbjeffries.com
I attended Herb's 90th birthday party at the Racquet Club in
2001. Yeah, 2001. He discovered his birth certificate a few years
later and learned he was actually born in 1913. He had lied about
his age to play a nightclub in his native Detroit, where Louis
Armstrong heard him and recommended him for a major nightclub gig
in Chicago.
Herb eventually came to believe age was irrelevant, and he proved
it in his 80s. A friend who had heard him in the late 1930s said
his voice was better than it was when he was in his 20s.
"I don't have any reference to (age)," Jeffries said in 1999.
"We're subliminally brainwashed with that word 'old.' It's a good
commercial word for people who want to make money with it. I
don't believe in it."
Herb has two major claims to fame. He was the first singing
cowboy of color and he was Duke Ellington's male vocalist in the
1940 big band that is widely considered the greatest big band of
all time.
He made an even more significant impact in the early 1930s.
That's when he declared himself black to be able to sing with the
all-black bands of Erskine Tate and Earl Hines even though Herb
says he was only 1/16th black. His mother was Irish and his
absentee father was part Sicilian and part Moorish.
When he toured the South with Ellington's band, he could have
passed for white, but he chose to endure the slurs,
discrimination and bad hotel rooms his bandmates had to
experience. To him, it was worth it to play with the most
significant jazz musician of the 20th century.
Herb moved to Palm Springs in the 1980s and opened his own
nightclub in the Bougainvillea Room of the Palm Springs Tennis
Club. He sang at the McCallum Theatre's "Let Freedom Ring"
benefit for 9/11 victims in 2001 -- one of my top 25 favorite
events in the McCallum's history -- and, as recently as 2009, was
hosting open mic nights in Palm Desert.
He's an amazing man who has survived an airplane crash, climbed
the Swiss Alps and married the most famous stripper of the 1950s,
Tempest Storm. He's practiced yoga for more than 65 years, which
most certainly has contributed to his lucidity and still robust
baritone.
See the story I wrote about him in 2001:
http://voices.mydesert.com/2013/09/23/herb-jeffries-palm-springs-\
legend-2001-story
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-Bob Ringwald K6YBV
www.ringwald.com
916/ 806-9551

"He hits from both sides of the plate. He's amphibious." - Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra