- Classic blues singer whose deep, dusky voice was heard on the international club scene.
- Produced the documentary film Angela Davis: Portrait of a Revolutionary (1971).
- Ran away from home at fifteen to go to New York City and start a singing career. She sang the blues in bars and other venues in Paris before returning to the States and starting an acting career.
- Bessie Smith was her idol.
- Was singing in Paris in 1960 when she met Maurice Girodias (1919-1990), the French publisher of such banned books as "Lolita" and "The Ginger Man," who hired her to sing at, and later run, the Blues Bar in Paris.
- The daughter of tobacco sharecroppers and one of nine children, she began singing in church as a teenager.
- Twice married, she is survived by her children, Jessie Mae Frazier and Fernando Harper.
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