[BITList] Fwd: Rhythm is everything

[John Feltham]

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Mercer,  Mabel  [real name Mabel Wadham]  (1900-1984), cabaret singer, was born on 3 February 1900 at 30 James Street, Burton upon Trent, the daughter of Emily Mabel Wadham (b. 1879), variety artiste, who was the daughter of the painter Benjamin Braffet Wadham. Her father was an African-American musician whose identity is not established; his name may have been Mercer, but this is not verifiable. She was raised by her grandmother and educated (1907-14) at a convent school at Blackley, Manchester.

Mabel Wadham began her stage career dancing with the Romany Five, the family act of her aunt Rhoda King. When the act broke up about 1916, she joined a dance troupe and came to the notice of Nannette Horton Boucher, daughter of the pioneer African nationalist Africanus Horton, who took her into her household; there she associated for the first time with others of African descent. Consequently some contemporaries from this era recalled her as Mabel Boucher. In 1917-19 she toured with the show Coloured Society as a dancer and pianist. In mid-1920, when she appeared in London with the Southern Syncopated Orchestra, she was still billed as Mabel Wadham, but in the early 1920s she worked intermittently in an act called Kay and Mercer, travelling to Belgium and Luxembourg. She had a relationship at this time with Robert Williams, part of an African-American act known as Williams and Taylor, who worked in revue with Kay and Mercer.

Mercer appeared in Paris in 1924-5 at Le Grand Duc and Chez Florence; and then as a chorus girl in Blackbirds of 1926 in Paris and London and with the African-American bandleader Sam Wooding. She had a small part in Show Boat at the Drury Lane Theatre, London, in 1928. In 1931 she was working at Chez Florence with the band of her then-partner, the African-American drummer Harvey White (b. 1896), when she joined Ada Smith (known as Bricktop) in the management of her new club. Mabel Mercer began singing at the tables, soon becoming a Parisian institution and a favourite with British and American visitors, including royalty. In 1936 she appeared in the British film Everything is Rhythm. In February-March 1938 she appeared in Amsterdam with the band of the African-American jazz violinist Eddie South. Although in this period she frequently worked with jazz artistes, she was never herself a jazz singer.

Mabel Mercer moved to the United States in October 1938 for a six-month engagement at the Ruban Bleu Club in New York and was reunited with her mother, recently married to an American. In 1940 she went to the Bahamas for a holiday, but stayed on professionally after finding she would not be readmitted to the USA. Mabel Mercer reportedly performed frequently at private functions for the duke and duchess of Windsor. During 1941 she married Kelsey Pharr, a member of the Delta Rhythm Boys, a vocal group, in order to secure readmission to the USA. Although she never lived with her husband, who was openly homosexual, they remained married until he died in 1964. In New York Mercer worked again at the Ruban Bleu, then briefly at a new club called Bricktop's with Ada Smith. Through a relationship with the pianist Cyril F. (Cy) Walter, she secured a residency at the club Tony's at 59 West 52nd Street, which continued for seven years. She moved in 1949 to the Byline Room at 137 East 52nd Street, and with the club in 1955 to a new location on West 56th Street. When this engagement ended in summer 1958, she moved to the RSVP Room.

During the 1950s Mabel Mercer's singing gained wider currency through a series of LP albums for the Atlantic label, including Sings Cole Porter (Atlantic 1213) and Once in a Blue Moon (Atlantic 1301), on which she performs songs from the standard repertory of American popular song of the pre-rock era. She became a US citizen in 1952. For much of the 1960s she worked only intermittently, making some of her appearances outside New York. An engagement at the St Regis Hotel in 1972 fuelled a return to prominence. In 1977 Mercer revisited Europe, where she appeared at the Playboy Club, London, and made a BBC television series, Miss Mercer in Mayfair. Despite failing health, she continued working until hospitalized with angina in January 1984. She died in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on 20 April 1984, survived by Harry Beard, a manager, her companion from the late forties. Whitney Balliett said that her singing 'lay somewhere between the concert hall and jazz. She had a rich, low mezzo-soprano and considerable range'  (Balliett, 'Profiles', 55).

Howard Rye 

Sources  J. Haskins, Mabel Mercer, a life (1987) + H. Rye, 'Visiting firemen 15: the Southern Syncopated Orchestra (Part 2)', Storyville, 143 (1990), 165-78 + W. Balliett, 'Profiles, a queenly aura', The New Yorker (18 Nov 1972), 55-64 + L. McGlohan, 'Miss Mercer, you done good', C.R.C. Newsletter [Decatur, GA], 10/4 (1984), 2 + W. Balliett, 'Our footloose correspondents: in the country', The New Yorker (6 Sept 1982), 40-49 + Bricktop [A. Smith] and A. Haskins, Bricktop (1983) + J. Gill, 'Mercer, Mabel Alice Wadham', Encyclopedia of African-American culture and history, ed. J. Salzman, D. L. Smith, and C. West (1996)
Archives NYPL, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, papers | NYPL, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Bricktop papers
Likenesses  J. Kudler, photograph, c.1978, Hult. Arch. · photograph, Redferns Music Picture Library, London [see illus.] · photographs, repro. in Haskins, Mabel Mercer



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