Bricktop

I moved to West Virginia almost nine years ago and it never fails to amaze me the contributions people from this state have made in politics, science, sports and entertainment. When we think about West Virginia we all have a preconceive notion. Mine was hillbillies running around marrying their cousins and living in dilapidated one room shacks with farm animals in the kitchen. I chalked it up to all the Beverly Hillbillies episodes I watch as a kid. I always thought about Jethro when I thought about West Virginia. Anywho, television is a powerful medium. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Booker T Washington was from here as is Steve Harvey, Randy Moss and Henry Louis Gates Jr, a prominent African American historian. There are many more. Click here for a list of 63 famous West Virginians. I was looking for a subject to write about for today’s article and I found out that today is Josephine Baker‘s birthday. Back in the 1930’s Baker was hot!! You could say she was the Beyonce of the time. She has a fascinating story and I have included a link for those who would like to learn more. She died in 1975. While reading about Josephine Baker I found out she was real tight with a woman named Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith. Smith is from Alderson West Virginia. With a name like that I thought she was from Mexico. Okay let me stop that @#!!, my racial profiling is showing. Bricktop is the only female in the feature picture above. The inscription on the picture is from Fats Waller.

Smith’s father was a red headed Irishman and her mother was black. She inherited her fathers flaming red hair and freckles and that’s why they called her Bricktop. Those who were close to her called her Bricky. I don’t know who came up with that nickname, but you can bet it was a hater. Anywho, after Ada’s father died the family move to Chicago and it was there she began performing at the age of 16. By the age of 20 she had gained some success on the vaudeville circuit and began performing in New York City. While at Barron’s Exclusive Club, a nightspot in Harlem, she put in a good word for a band called Elmer Snowden’s Washingtonians, and the club booked them. One of its members was Duke Ellington.

By the mid ’20s (1924) she had moved to Paris and began running the clubs she was performing in. She ran some of the most famous joint’s at the time including the Music Box and the Le Grand Duc. You can equate these clubs to places like the Cotton Club and the Copacabana. Soon enough she acquired her own spot in 1929 and named it Chez Bricktop. “Chez” is french for “at the home or business of.” Personally putting “Chez” in front of Bricktop is like putting raisins in the potato salad but “peu importe,” which is French for whatever. Known for her signature cigars, the “doyenne of cafe society” drew many celebrated figures to her club, including Cole Porter, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Doyenne means big dog sorta kinda.. the definition is “a woman who is the most respected or prominent person in a particular field.”

Her protégés included Duke Ellington, Mabel Mercer and Josephine Baker. Mercer was a cabaret singer who performed in the United States, Britain, and Europe with the greats in jazz and cabaret. A cabaret is entertainment held in a nightclub or restaurant while the audience eats or drinks at tables. Mercer was at the the top of the game as far as nightclub singers go. Another cabaret singer at the time was a black women from Baltimore named Billie Holiday. Bricktop broadcast a radio program in Paris from 1938 to 1939, for the French government. During WWII, she closed “Chez Bricktop” and moved to Mexico City where she opened a new nightclub in 1944. In 1949, she returned to Europe and started a club in Rome. Bricktop closed her club and retired in 1961 at the age of 67, saying: “I’m tired, honey. Tired of staying up all night.” Afterwards, she moved back to the United States. Man… she was living life!! All that in 67 years!!

Bricktop continued to perform as a cabaret entertainer well into her eighties, including some engagements at the age of 84 in London, where she proved herself to be as professional and feisty as she had ever been. She wrote her autobiography in 1983 titled “Bricktop by Bricktop.” She was ninety eight years old. Don’t get me wrong, she had help, but she was one tough little cookie. Bricktop died in her sleep at her apartment in Manhattan in 1984, aged 99. James Haskins, who helped her with her autobiography said she remained active during her old age and had even been on the phone talking to friends just hours before her death. She is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York City.