Baker, LaVern (1929–1997)

African-American singer. Name variations: The Countess, Little Miss Sharecropper, Bea Baker. Born Delores Williams in Chicago, Illinois, on November 11, 1929; died in New York City on March 10. 1997.

Selected albums:

LaVern Baker (includes "Tweedlee Dee" and "Jim Dandy," 1955); LaVern Baker Sings Bessie Smith (includes "Gimmie a Pigfoot" and "Preaching Blues," 1959); Soul on Fire: Best of LaVern Baker (1991); Live in Hollywood (1992).

Selected singles:

"Tweedlee Dee" (1954), "Bop Ting-a-Ling" (1955), "Play It Fair" (1955), "Jim Dandy" and "Jim Dandy Got Married" (1957), "I Cried Tear" (1958), "Voodoo Voodoo," "Fee Fi Fo Fum," "Humpty Dumpty Heart," "I Can't Love You Enough," "I Waited Too Long," "See See Rider."

With 20 pop hits between 1955 and 1966, LaVern Baker was considered one of rock and roll's finest singers. Like many black singing artists, she got her start singing in church. By the time she was a teenager, she was performing in Chicago clubs, including the Club DeLisa, where she was billed as Little Miss Sharecropper (a name she also recorded under for RCA and National Records). Later, while engaged at Detroit's Flame Show Bar, Baker did a recording, her second, for Columbia under the name Bea Baker. Following her signing with manager Al Green, she made her debut as LaVern Baker in 1953 with "Soul on Fire" backed by "How can you Love a Man Like This?" on Atlantic, a small independent label that would eventually rival the major studios. Her breakthrough recording came in October of the following year with the novelty song "Tweedle Dee," and Baker became one of Atlantic's first performers to crossover to the pop charts.

The year 1954, however, was also the year "cover" records made their debut. Once white studios discovered that rock and roll was lucrative, they took an interest. When a song was successful by a black artist, a white artist on a major record label "covered" the song by recording a similar version. (The most horrifying example of this practice might be Pat Boone's cover for Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti.") When Baker's version of "Tweedlee Dee" reached number 14 on the charts, Georgia Gibbs was hired to rerecord the song, and Gibbs' version reached number 2.

The momentum of Baker's career was constantly stalled by white cover artists who rerecorded her songs into bigger hits. When Baker came out with the hits "Jim Dandy" and "Jim Dandy Got Married" in 1957, Gibbs also covered "Tra La La," the flipside of "Jim Dandy." While Gibb's version of "Tra La La" reached number 24, Baker's only reached 94. Frustrated, Baker contacted Michigan State Representative Charles Diggs, Jr., urging him to revise the Copyright Act of 1909, making verbatim copying of a song arrangement illegal, but she was unsuccessful. Baker didn't mind having her songs covered, she said, but she did mind the fact that they were copied note for note without any thought of compensation. The bluesy "I Cried a Tear" (1958) was her only Top Ten pop record.

In 1965, Baker left Atlantic for Decca's Brunswick label. In the late 1960s, she began to tour military bases overseas, becoming the entertainment director at the Subic Military Base in the Philippines. After a self-imposed exile of 20 years, she returned to the United States in the late 1980s and continued to do live-performance work; she also recorded "Saved" and "Leaving It up to You" with Ben E. King for the film Shag, and "Slow Rolling Mama" for the film Dick Tracy. She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. In 1995, suffering from diabetes, LaVern Baker was forced to have both legs amputated below the knee. She died two years later, in 1997, at age 67.