Bertha Hill
Bertha "Chippie" Hill, was an American blues and vaudeville singer and dancer, best known for her recordings with Louis Armstrong.
Career
Hill was born on March 15, 1905 in Charleston, South Carolina, one of sixteen children. The family moved to New York in 1915 when she was 13 years old. She began her career as a dancer in Harlem and by 1919 was working with Ethel Waters as a dancer in New York. At age 14, during a stint at Leroy's, a noted New York nightclub, Hill was nicknamed "Chippie" because of her youth. She also performed with Ma Rainey as part of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. She was not just part of the troupe, she was a singer and dancer specifically. She later established her own song and dance act and toured on the TOBA circuit in the early 1920s.About 1925, she settled in Chicago, where she worked at various venues with King Oliver's Jazz Band. During this period she recorded with major Chicago musicians, including pianist and bandleader Lovie Austin, whose studio groups included Chippie on multiple tracks. She first recorded in November 1925 for Okeh Records, backed by the cornet player Louis Armstrong and the pianist Richard M. Jones, singing such songs as "Pratt City Blues", "Low Land Blues" and "Kid Man Blues" that year and "Georgia Man" and "Trouble in Mind" with the same musicians in 1926. Music scholars point out that Hill's 1926 version of "Trouble in Mind" stands out as an early blues interpretation with a structure different from many later versions. Her performance style has also been studied for its expressive vocal style and the way she portrays herself in the song, which reflect traits shared by early blues women. She also recorded in 1927, with Lonnie Johnson on the vocal duet "Hard Times Blues", plus "Weary Money Blues", "Tell Me Why" and "Speedway Blues". In 1928, she recorded vocal duets with Tampa Red, singing "Hard Times Blues", "Christmas Man Blues", and another version of "Trouble in Mind" for Vocalion. In 1929 she recorded "Non-Skid Tread" with "Scrapper" Blackwell and the Two Roys, with Leroy Carr on piano. Hill recorded 23 titles between 1925 and 1929. Hill was best remembered today for "the ten recordings she made for Okeh in 1925 and 1926 that featured Louis Armstrong on cornet".
In the 1930s she retired from singing not only to raise her seven children but also because of the great depression that was happening at the time. However she would occasionally sing in Chicago theaters throughout the 1930s, she also had a long residency at Club DeLisa during the 1930s-early 1940s, she was rediscovered in 1946 by writer Rudi Blesh, she was also working at a bakery at the time. Hill returned to singing in the mid 1930s with Jimmie Noone as a collaborator. Hill staged a comeback in 1946 with Lovie Austin's Blues Serenaders, Hill had also been working with Lovie Austin in the mid 1930s long before this comeback, and recorded for Rudi Blesh's Circle label. A 1947 entretainment report listed Hill as a returning performer, indicating that she was still active on stage after the war. She began appearing on radio and in clubs and concerts in New York, including in 1948 the Carnegie Hall concert with Kid Ory, and she sang at the Paris Jazz Festival and also other places around Europe, and worked with Art Hodes in Chicago.
She was back again in 1950, when she was run over by a car and killed in New York at the age of 45, the incident happened in Harlem. She is buried at the Lincoln Cemetery, Blue Island, Illinois.