Bee Palmer | |
|---|---|
 Palmer, c. 1919 | |
| Born | Beatrice Charlotta Palmer September 11, 1894 |
| Died | December 22, 1967 (aged 73) Manhattan, NY, U.S. |
| Occupations |
|
| Spouses |
|
Bee Palmer (born Beatrice Charlotta Palmer) was an American singer, dancer, and showgirl who achieved fame during the Jazz Age as the "Shimmy Queen."
Bee Palmer was born in Chicago, IL, to Charley A. Palmer and his wife, Anna (Larson) Palmer. She reportedly began performing before World War I "around the cafes of South Chicago where she would sit at tables and croon to guests" for small sums. [1] She also danced professionally and is said to have dubbed herself the “Shimmie Queen” by 1914. [2]
Palmer first attracted significant attention as a "Western girl" performing in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1918. She got a good review for singing I Want to Learn to Jazz Dance. [3] She also won acclaim for her role in the Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic of 1918. Described as "a blonde with trained shoulders who can sing rag and act jazz," she sang Let me Shimmy and be Satisfied. Another reviewer was less impressed with the same show, stating that Palmer "did the vulgar shimmy in a tightly fitting cerise dress trimmed merely with a cord at the waistline." [4]
Palmer was widely credited as the inventor of shimmy, although other white dancers, including Gilda Gray and Mae West, also claimed to have originated the act. Despite these assertions, the dance's origins remain contested, although it almost certainly had African American roots. Palmer herself was said to call the shimmy an African American “folk dance.” [5]
Palmer reaped fame when the shimmy became a craze personifying the "madcap exuberance and permissive morals of the Jazz Age." The dance inspired several popular songs, including Shimmee Town (performed in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1919), Shim-Me-King’s Blues (recorded by Mamie Smith in 1921), I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate, and Shim-Me-Sha-Wabble (1923). [6]
Such was Palmer's shimmy fame--or, to some, infamy--that she became one of the people who personified the Roaring Twenties. One writer described her as:
Taken the raw human--all too human--stuff of the underworld, with its sighs of sadness and regret, its mad merriment, its swift blaze of passion, its turbulent dances, its outlaw music, its songs of the social bandit, and made a new art product of the theatre. She is to the sources of jazz and the blues what François Villon was to the wildlife of Paris. Both have found exquisite blossoms of art in the sector of life most removed from the concert room and the boudoir, and their harvest has the vigor, the resolute life, the stimulating quality, the indelible impress of daredevil, care-free, do-as-you-please lives of the picturesque men and women who defy convention. [7]
Palmer began touring in 1921 with a revue called Oh Bee! The band was called Bee Palmer's New Orleans Rhythm Kings and included such notables as Emmett Hardy, Leon Ropollo, and Santo Pecora in addition to pianist/songwriter Al Siegel. However, the act received criticism due to the perception that the shimmy was immoral. With guardians of public morals speaking out against the shimmy and other “modern dances,” at least one theatre is said to have canceled the show. [8]
Palmer continued to appear on Broadway throughout the 1920s. She starred in the Passing Show of 1924 at the Winter Garden and performed with Paul Whiteman at Carnegie Hall in 1928. By the mid-1930s, Palmer had faded from public attention.
Palmer recorded several early jazz songs.
In 1930, Palmer co-wrote the song Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone with Sidney Clare and Sam H. Stept. [10] Many famous singers later covered the tune, including Frank Sinatra, Ethel Waters, and Willie Nelson.
Palmer married and divorced at least twice: Albert Siegel (married 1921, div. 1928) and Sol "Sonny" Taubin (married 1942. div. ca. 1951). Palmer told the press in 1933 that she had married pianist Jack Fina, but Fina denied the report, calling it "embarrassing." [11]
In 1921, Palmer's then-husband, Al Siegel, filed a lawsuit against boxing champion Jack Dempsey for "alienation of his wife's affection." Palmer denied any indiscretion, saying "Al Siegel is a cheap piano player whom I picked out of the gutter and married." Dempsey also denied an affair, claiming the suit was "the scheme of two cheap vaudeville performers for publicity." [12]
Little is known about Palmer's later years. She died on December 22, 1967, in New York City and was buried in Cedar Park Cemetery, Calumet Township, IL. [13]
Jean Schwartz was a Hungarian-born Jewish American composer and pianist. He is best known for his work writing the scores for more than 30 Broadway musicals, and for his creation of more than 1,000 popular songs with the lyricist William Jerome. Schwartz and Jerome also performed together on the vaudeville stage in the United States; sometimes in collaboration with Maude Nugent, Jerome's wife, and the Dolly Sisters. Schwartz was married to Jenny Dolly from 1913 to 1921.
The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical revue productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 to 1931, with renewals in 1934, 1936, 1943, and 1957. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air.
Florenz Edward Ziegfeld Jr. was an American Broadway impresario, notable for his series of theatrical revues, the Ziegfeld Follies (1907–1931), inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris. He also produced the musical Show Boat. He was known as the "glorifier of the American girl". Ziegfeld is a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.
A shimmy is a dance move in which the body is held still, except for the shoulders, which are quickly alternated back and forth. When the right shoulder goes back, the left one comes forward.
Gilda Gray was a Polish-American dancer and actress who popularized a dance called the "shimmy" which became fashionable in 1920s films and theater productions.
Chicago Musical College is a division of the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.
Thomas Joseph McCarthy was an American lyricist whose most famous songs include "You Made Me Love You", and "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows", from the now-forgotten Oh, Look! (1918), starring the Dolly Sisters, based upon the haunting melody from the middle section of Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu.
Marilyn Miller was one of the most popular Broadway musical stars of the 1920s and early 1930s. She was an accomplished tap dancer, singer and actress, and the combination of these talents endeared her to audiences. On stage, she usually played rags-to-riches Cinderella characters who lived happily ever after. She died suddenly from complications of nasal surgery at age 37.
Doris Eaton Travis was an American dancer, stage and film actress, dance instructor, owner and manager, writer, and rancher, who was the last surviving Ziegfeld Girl, a troupe of acclaimed chorus girls who performed as members in the Broadway theatrical revues of the Ziegfeld Follies.
Louis Achille Hirsch, also known as Louis A. Hirsch and Lou Hirsch, was an American composer of songs and musicals in the early 20th century.
John W. Steel was an American tenor. He was featured in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1919 and 1920 and Irving Berlin's Music Box Revues of 1922 and 1923.
Edythe Baker (1899–1971) was an American pianist and dancer.
David Stamper was an American songwriter of the Tin Pan Alley and vaudeville eras, a contributor to twenty-one editions of the Ziegfeld Follies, writer for the Fox Film Corporation, and composer of more than one thousand songs, in spite of never learning to read or write traditional music notation. He may have written "Shine On Harvest Moon", a claim supported by vaudeville performer and writer Eddie Cantor. He was also a charter member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers or ASCAP.
Roger A. Graham was an American lyricist, composer, singer, and music publisher who flourished from 1906 to 1920 — a period that included World War I, the golden age of Tin Pan Alley, the dawn of the Jazz Age (circa 1914), and the silent film era. Graham was a proponent of vaudeville and burlesque songs. But as a lyricist and publisher, Graham is most remembered for having been an exponent of blues songs.
Diana Allen was a Swedish-American actress and Ziegfeld girl who starred in silent films such as 1921's Miss 139, which is now lost.
The Ziegfeld Follies of 1919 was a revue produced by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. Billed as the thirteenth edition of the Ziegfeld Follies series, it had a tryout at Nixon's Apollo Theatre in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on June 10, 1919 and opened at Broadway's New Amsterdam Theatre on June 16, 1919 and closed on December 6, 1919. It is often considered to be the best and most successful of the Follies series produced by Ziegfeld.
The Elmwood Casino, once known as the "Showspot of Canada," was a nightclub situated on Dougall Avenue in Windsor, Ontario. It was located not far from Detroit, just across the Detroit River.
Al Siegel was a Canadian musician and businessman. He owned the Elmwood Casino, Windsor Raceway and the Blue Room in Toronto. Siegel was also the owner of a Canadian jukebox business.
Hilda Ferguson was an American dancer and showgirl.
Gladys Feldman was an American actress, dancer, and showgirl.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
