Everyone loves a love song, and there is a long musical history of “crooners” who caused hearts to beat a bit faster, leading to mass swooning at their performances. Where Black male artists were concerned, the long history of racial segregation in the U.S. had a significant impact. The fears of “race-mixing” engendered by antimiscegenationists to “protect the purity of white-womanhood” (while hypocritically and simultaneously having no problems with the rape and concubinage of Black women by white men), prevented many early Black male vocalists from achieving the level of stardom and fortune attained by white artists of equal or lesser talent.
In spite of those racial barriers, we still have a lengthy catalog of sexy Black singers of love songs, and ballads (along with the concomitant heartbreak) to explore and celebrate.
My mom adored Billy Eckstine, thought I don’t think my dad did—even though they looked a lot alike.
When I see photos of Billy Eckstine, I am reminded not just of his suave, debonair appearance; I can also hear his mellow bass-baritone voice in my head.
Billy Eckstine's smooth baritone and distinctive vibrato broke down barriers throughout the 1940s, first as leader of the original bop big band, then as the first romantic black male in popular music. An influence looming large in the cultural development of soul and R&B singers from Sam Cooke to Prince, Eckstine was able to play it straight on his pop hits "Prisoner of Love," "My Foolish Heart" and "I Apologize." Born in Pittsburgh but raised in Washington, D.C., Eckstine began singing at the age of seven and entered many amateur talent shows. He had also planned on a football career, though after breaking his collar bone, he made music his focus. After working his way west to Chicago during the late '30s, Eckstine was hired by Earl Hines to join his Grand Terrace Orchestra in 1939. Though white bands of the era featured males singing straight-ahead romantic ballads, black bands were forced to stick to novelty or blues vocal numbers until the advent of Eckstine and Herb Jeffries (from Duke Ellington's Orchestra).
Though several of Eckstine's first hits with Hines were novelties like "Jelly, Jelly" and "The Jitney Man," he also recorded several straight-ahead songs, including the hit "Stormy Monday." By 1943, he gained a trio of stellar bandmates -- Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Sarah Vaughan. After forming his own big band that year, he hired all three and gradually recruited still more modernist figures and future stars: Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham, Fats Navarro, and Art Blakey, as well as arrangers Tadd Dameron and Gil Fuller. The Billy Eckstine Orchestra was the first bop big-band group, and its leader reflected bop innovations by stretching his vocal harmonics into his normal ballads. Despite the group's modernist slant, Eckstine hit the charts often during the mid-'40s, with Top Ten entries including "A Cottage for Sale" and "Prisoner of Love." On the group's frequent European and American tours, Eckstine also played trumpet, valve trombone, and guitar.
“I Apologize,” which he recorded for MGM in 1948, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. Commit the below image of Eckstine and a swooning fan to your memory, as we’ll be talking more about it in a moment.
Enjoy this Eckstine “Soundie”—a 1940s precursor to music videos.
Like all the Black musicians during that time, no matter how many records they sold, Eckstine was still subject to discrimination. His obituary, written by Steve Voce for the Independent in 1993, takes a look at some of the racism Eckstine encountered while traveling with the Earl Hines Band.
(Eckstine) and the Hines orchestra suffered from discrimination when they toured the South. They were playing at a white dance in Georgia when all the lights were turned off and fireworks were thrown at the band. There was only one door out of the hall and the audience, thinking that bombs were exploding, panicked and it was amazing that there were no serious injuries. On the way back north the band traveled in what they called a Jim-Crow car. 'In those days they had segregated trains, and the black car was always right behind the coal car, so that all the dirt and dust would fly in on us. There was an old, rotten cracker in the coach behind us, and he did a lot of eating. When he got through with something, he'd open the door and throw his garbage into our section.
'When you got to Washington you'd left the South and were all right. I jumped off the train and waited for this cracker. I hit him and he slid backwards. I grabbed him and hit him again, and he started crawling under the train. 'I'm gonna whip your ass across the tracks and back under again.' '
By the 1950s, Eckstine was a well-known star, and not only for his vocal talents—he was also a major attraction for the ladies. Eckstine’s sex appeal flowed across racial lines, and would put a serious crimp in his budding career.
The New York Historical Society details how one picture changed everything.
The women were mostly white and Eckstine was multiracial, a fact that made the photo highly subversive in segregated America. Eckstine’s biographer Cary Ginell writes, “It was obvious that for these women, there was no racial barrier at all…. It’s not necessarily a sexual image, but one of pure, innocent, unabashed delight.” Holmes herself later told an interviewer, “That picture was my favorite, because it told just what the world should be like.”
The editors at LIFE were well aware that wasn’t what America was like. But rather than confront that racism head-on, there was hesitation in the halls of the magazine. The stalemate was broken by LIFE founder and Time Inc. head Henry Luce, who sided with Holmes and insisted that the photo run. When the April 24, 1950, issue hit stands, readers found the three-page story inside, entitled “Mr. B: Bobby Soxers Become Billy Soxers to Boost Baritone Billy Eckstine.” It led with the shot of Eckstine and his fans and a caption that read: “Billy is swarmed by admirers. Most profess to have maternal feelings about him. ‘He’s just like a little boy,’ they say.” The nothing-to-see-here text is telling, according to Sarah Gordon, New-York Historical’s co-curator of the LIFE exhibition. “The editors knew how potentially explosive this was,” she says. “This was absolute pop-star hysteria, pre-Elvis, pre-Beatles. But they tried to dial it back with emasculating language that they knew wasn’t true.”
If the caption was ludicrous, it was also a failure. The photo was just too vivid to ignore. But rather than being charmed or impressed by it, more than a few white readers were appalled. LIFE’s internal report on letters to the editor noted that 59 complaints were received about the Eckstine story, expressing vicious, hysterically racist sentiments like, “That picture of Billy Eckstine with a white girl clinging to him after a performance just turns my stomach.” Other readers described the photo as “the most nauseating picture of the year” and “the most indecent picture ever published by LIFE.”
I told you we’d be coming back to that image. Did those LIFE photos deny Eckstine future stardom, or was the racial climate in the States the real culprit?
Quincy Jones is quoted in The Pleasures of Jazz as saying of Eckstine: “They never let him become the sex symbol he might have become. If he’d been white, the sky would have been the limit. As it was, he didn’t have his own radio or TV show, much less a movie career. He had to fight the system, so things never quite fell into place.”
My mom may have thrilled to Billy Eckstine, but the crooner who stole the hearts of my generation—as a pre-teen and teenager—was Johnny Mathis. It’s hard to believe I was only 10 when I first heard “Chances Are.”
Chances are 'cause I wear a silly grin
The moment you come into view
Chances are you think that I'm in love with you
This was Mathis' first #1 hit single and was included on his compilation Johnny's Greatest Hits, which is regarded as the original Greatest Hits album. Mathis was just two years into his recording career at the time, but Columbia Records was pressuring him for a new release, so his producer Mitch Miller came up with the idea for a hits package. "That was Mitch Miller's idea," Mathis explained in a 2018 Songfacts interview. "That was the first time I had a chance to go out of the country and go to Great Britain. They wanted me to go in the studio and make some more recordings. I had had some success with 'It's Not for Me to Say,' and I wasn't able to record anything new, so he threw the first four recordings that I did—both sides on them—and called them Johnny's Greatest Hits. That was a little flamboyant, because it was not the greatest hits, yet. But that was a great beginning for a lot of people. Even Mozart has a Greatest Hits now. Good idea from Mitch Miller."
The album spent a whopping 490 weeks on the Billboard chart and held the record for the longest run until it was surpassed by Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon at 491 weeks in 1983.
Johnny’s Greatest Hits held that record for a quarter century! What is even more interesting is that we almost missed out having Johnny Mathis the singer, since he could have become Johnny Mathis the Olympian.
The fourth of seven children, John Royce Mathis was born on September 30, 1935 in Gilmer, Texas to Clem and Mildred Mathis. As a small boy, the family moved to Post Street in San Francisco. It was there that he learned an appreciation of music from his father who taught him his first song, “My Blue Heaven”. At age eight, his father purchased an old upright piano for $25. When he brought it home, it wouldn’t fit through the front door. So that evening, Johnny stayed up all night to watch his father dismantle the piano, get it into the small living room of their basement apartment and then reassemble it...
At George Washington High School, Johnny was known not only for his singing ability but his athleticism as well. He became a star athlete on the track and field team as a high jumper and hurdler and played on the basketball team. In 1954, Johnny enrolled at San Francisco State College (now called San Francisco State University) with the intention of being an English and Physical Education teacher. While there, Johnny set a high jump record of 6’-5 1/2”. This is still one the College’s top jump heights and was only two inches short of the Olympic record of the time. Just as when he was in high school, Johnny’s name was frequently mentioned in the sports sections of the Northern California newspapers. In fact he & future NBA star Bill Russell were featured in a 1954 sports section article of the San Francisco Chronicle demonstrating their high jumping skills (Russell #1 & Johnny #2 in the City of San Francisco at that time). During one meet at the University of Nevada Johnny beat Russell’s highest jump attempt that day. He was often referred to as “the best all-around athlete to come out of the San Francisco Bay Area”...
In early September of 1955, Johnny landed a job singing weekends at Ann Dee’s 440 Club. After repeated attempts, Helen convinced George Avakian, then head of Jazz A&R at Columbia, to see him. Avakian came to the club, heard Johnny sing and sent the now famous telegram to his record company: “Have found phenomenal 19 year old boy who could go all the way. Send blank contracts.” Avakian left for New York after telling Johnny that he would eventually send for him. Johnny continued his studies at San Francisco State and gained additional fame as a high jumper. In early 1956, Johnny was asked to attend the trials for the 1956 Olympic teams that would travel to Melbourne, Australia that summer. At the same time, Columbia Records requested that Johnny come to New York to start arrangements for his first recording session. Clem helped his son decide that his future and best interests were with the recording company. So, Johnny gave up his chance to become a member of the USA Olympic Team. He went to New York to record his first album in March of 1956.
Mathis, who turns 85 in September, has never hesitated to give props to the musicians who came before him, including Billy Eckstine, for opening the doors.
You can read more on Mathis at the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award website.
Adam Reader, “The Professor of Rock,” recently did an interview with Mathis. They explored his early recordings, and how he came to record “Chances Are.”
My favorite Mathis tune is Errol Garner’s “Misty” ...what’s yours?
By the 1970s, there was no question about Black male singers being sex symbols. I have a long list, but since I only have space for one more in today’s story, my choice is Teddy Pendergrass. Though he started in a group, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Teddy’s is the voice I remember, and after he left them, his solo career was stunning.
Pendergrass told his own story before he died in January 2010.
For those of you who know me, and for those who do not … Let me tell you about who I am and why I am here. I was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pa. I was given the opportunity to sing my first song in church at 2 ½ years old, and I did. In grade school, I was given the opportunity to join the now world famous Philadelphia Boys Choir, and I did. In Jr High, I was given the opportunity to join the All City School Choir, and I did. At 13, I saw a set of drums on the stage of the place where my Mother washed dishes and scrubbed floors. I took the opportunity to teach myself how to play. At 18, while working as a waiter in an Atlantic City nightclub, I was given the opportunity to audition for a job playing drums with a band and travel. I did, and I got the job. A year later, I was offered an opportunity to play drums for a singing group named the Blue Notes, and I did. A year later, I was given the opportunity to become their lead singer, and yes, I did. A year later, we signed a recording contract, and the name changed to Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. We had immediate success with songs like “If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” “The Love I Lost,” and “Wake Up Everybody.”
In 1975, unsatisfied with my situation, and after much thought, I decided to take a huge risk and strike out on my own. So, with no money, I left the Blue Notes. A year later, I signed a solo recording contract, and as they say, the rest is history. I quickly surpassed all previous record sales by any black artist, sold out national and international concerts, owned estates, cars, my own private jet and oh yes, let’s not forget my “For Women Only” concerts. I HAD IT ALL!
In 1982 and at the height of my career, I had an automobile accident. I WAS DEVASTATED! I had no idea what to do or where to turn. After being pushed aside and in despair, unexpectedly and thankfully, in ‘83, another golden and much-needed opportunity came my way. Not knowing whether I could, or would succeed, I was offered another recording contract.Pendergrass truly was a legend.
Pendergrass was truly a legend.
This brilliant piece of writing from Ericka Blount Danois is a must read.
I came of age in Washington, D.C., in the 1970s and ’80s, when individuality was king and people were suddenly doing exactly what they wanted to do. Adults were wearing their hair long, dropping acid, picking Afros, and being their true selves. Marvin Gaye had dropped the clean-cut, shaved face, choir boy look that Motown had cultivated for him at the same time he remade his sound into politically conscious music with his concept album What’s Going On. Stevie Wonder followed suit with Innervisions. On the basketball court, Walt “Clyde” Frazier was the arbiter of cool. He dressed with the sartorial spirit of the flamboyant pretty-boy-Floyd of your neighborhood, wearing gold chains, capes, and wide-brim hats, with a beard, bushy sideburns, and a bop walk that gave him an aura of unflappable bravado. His signature style earned him the first sneaker endorsement, with the Clyde Pumas. When white movie executives started meddling, director Gordon Parks had to fight Hollywood to keep Richard Roundtree’s facial hair for the movie Shaft, because he knew losing the facial hair meant losing a symbol of Shaft’s masculinity...
Before Prince and D’Angelo’s overtly sexual song titles, lyrics, and stage shows brought a fearless, audacious brand of sexuality to the mainstream, things were different. Like Roundtree, Isaac Hayes, and Melvin Van Peebles, Teddy represented a new unbridled black masculinity that black men had previously been forced to hide in the white American mainstream. These tall men had commanding voices and a rich, flamboyant fashion sense. They wore facial hair. They didn’t hide their sexual presence. They didn’t have to wear shirts and ties. They could look and sound like themselves.
As a preteen tomboy who was still two-step slow dragging a foot apart from boys at school discos and watching Dr. J float from the free throw line, Teddy Pendergrass represented both the promise of what was to come and the fallout of being unapologetically black, audacious, and sexy.
And that he was. No one who ever saw him in a live performance could deny it.
Pendergrass did concerts that were billed as “For Women Only,” described by Steve Rose for The Guardian in “Teddy Pendergrass: sex, drugs and the tragic life of the ‘Black Elvis’”:
Pendergrass was sexy as well as sexual. He was a tall, handsome, stylish man, given to performing in a white vest and a layer of sweat. Think Barry White in the body of Idris Elba. By all accounts, women found him irresistible, and Pendergrass felt obliged to love as many of them back as he possibly could. They rushed the stage and threw their underwear at him when he performed. They disguised themselves as maids to get into his hotel room. Gordon’s big idea was to put on women-only concerts – “Spend the night with Teddy” – where women would be given chocolate teddy-bear lollies to suck as they swooned to slow jams such as Turn Off the Lights (sample lyrics: “Turn off the lights and light a candle / Tonight I’m in a romantic mood / Let’s take a shower together / I’ll wash your body and you’ll wash mine / Rub me down with some hot oils, baby, yeah / And I’ll do the same thing to you”).
His audiences were openly interracial—and the world didn’t end. I really wish the title of this amazing video wasn’t misspelled, but the world also won’t end.
Whether we go back in time to Joe Williams, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Arthur Prysock, or move forward to Al Green, Isaac Hayes, Luther Vandross, Peabo Bryson, Jon Lucien and more, there will always be crooners … and swooners.
We even had a president who got into the act.
I’ll see you in comments for your crooner song picks, but don’t get so lovestruck that you forget to make it to the mailbox or polls—and vote.
COVID-19 is ravaging the country, and we have no idea whether it will even be safe to vote in person come November. With Turnout2020, you can start calling swing state voters now—and help them request an absentee ballot. No one should have to risk their health to exercise their right to vote. Sign up to volunteer today.