Back in the early 1980s when I was practically a teenager (okay, I admit it! I was older than a teenager), I dreamed of dancing on Broadway. So, as soon as I could, I left Chicago for New York City, brights lights, fame and fortune (a story I intend to write about one day, but not today). I was pretty focused on ‘me’ as many twenty-something year-olds can be (no offense), so I didn’t know that I was hanging out with a legend, and in retrospect, quite a few legends.

I was a waitress at a jazz club in lower Manhattan called The Cookery. It was owned  by a man named Barney Jacobson. I didn’t know as much as I thought about the history of jazz (and frankly, am just now learning about its roots for a historical romance I’m writing). Therefore, I didn’t know this old man with a leathery voice had also owned Cafe Society where Billie Holiday first sang Strange Fruit. However, this post is not about Mr. Jacobson or Ms. Holiday, but another blues singer and song writer, and her name was Alberta Hunter.

When I met Ms. Hunter she was well into her 80s, and a headliner at The Cookery, where I worked six nights a week for maybe a year. It was also the place where I met a woman who is still one of my best friends and godmother to my son, and got to know the bartender, a young man named Colin Quinn, who ended up on Saturday Night Live for five years. I also served shots of whiskey to tables of celebrities and Broadway stars including Dick Cavett, Loretta Devine (original cast of Dreamgirls), Sheryl Lee Ralph (original cast of Dreamgirls), Nell Carter, and Gregory Hines.

Alberta Hunter was a big star in the 1920s, a song writer and blues and jazz singer, one of the pioneers in jazz.

Usually, Ms. Hunter was already seated at the piano by the time I arrived to set up my station before the club opened at 9 p.m. (and it stayed open until 2 a.m., or later). I probably talked to her every day. She reminded me of my grandmother, and she’d ask me questions about how I was doing, what I was doing and then she’d tell me stories, I half listened to (because I was twenty-something and didn’t know better). I do remember she was funny, drank a lot of tea, and we’d talk about Chicago, because she knew I was a transplant from the “Second City” as Chi-Town used to be referred to back then (Never quite New York, always striving, but never succeeding to be the place you wanted to be, but the city where you ended up – sorry Chicago, aren’t you glad those days are done?).

Ms. Hunter was booked every other month or so, alternating with other  jazz singers from Mr. Jacobson’s past. But I do remember I made crazy, good, tips whenever she came to town. I also remember she had gorgeous hands – and  wore bright red fingernail polish, and bright red lipstick.

Cool, huh:)…

Happy Black History Month!