5:30 p.m. Nov. 24
Ruth Brown was bigger than New York, where she cut her R&B chops and she was larger than Las Vegas, where she died from complications of a stroke and a heart attack on Nov. 17. Brown was 78 and she lived life at a full tilt 78 RPM/MPH/DIY.
She cast a rainbow with an endless pot of gold.
I met Brown in April, 1988 at the Atlantic Records 40th anniversary party at Madison Square Garden in New York. I was backstage doing interviews with seminal Atlantic R&B artists like Brown and the late LaVern Baker. Brown was the most commercially successful act at Atlantic between 1949 and 1962 and the label was often referred to as "The House that Ruth Built." I was more excited about seeing Baker and Brown than the historic reunion of Led Zeppelin (without John Bonham of course), the Bee Gees (who hadn't performed together since 1979) and Vanilla Fudge!
And Brown was on the cusp of something very big........
Hipsters In Heaven: November 2006 Archives
Continue reading Ruth Brown's Rainbow.
Dave Hoekstra
Dave Hoekstra has been a Chicago Sun-Times staff
writer since 1985. His collection of Sun-Times travel
columns, "Ticket To Everywhere," was published in 2000
by Lake Claremont Press. He was lead writer for "Farm
Aid: Song for America" (Rodale Press, 2005) which
commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Willie Nelson
inspired effort. He won a 1987 Chicago Newspaper Guild Stick O-Type Award for Column Writing. Hoekstra wrote and co-proudced the WTTW-Channel 11 PBS special: "The Staple Singers and the Civil Rights Movement," nominated for a 2001-02 Chicago Emmy for a documentary program/cultural significance.
He lives in Chicago.
