Word: contraltos
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Golden Horseshoe, the place usually reserved for visiting statesmen and royalty, sat a small, aged lady who had once been a washerwoman in Philadelphia. Her name was Anna Anderson. As a girl, her daughter dreamed of singing in this great gilt and plush house. Now, at 52, Contralto Marian Anderson was realizing the dream. The first Negro singer to appear at the Metropolitan, she was making her debut in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera...
...sounds of Archie Bleyer slapping his knees. Sample Mr. Sandman lyric: "Give him a lonely heart like Pagliacci, and lots of wavy hair like Liberace." No. 4 bestseller: Teach Me Tonight (Abbott), with the DeCastro Sisters in a twangy, eagerly enunciated request for seduction. The melody is in the contralto, while the other girls warble country-alto above. No. 11 but climbing fast: The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane (Victor), in which the Ames Brothers croon their kind of bumdadabum, bumbum, bum in a shuffle rhythm, sing the praises of their heroine ("Me-o, myo what a girl") tongue...
From the time Contralto Marian Anderson first realized that she had a remarkable voice, she wanted to sing at the Metropolitan Opera. In those days, hiring a Negro artist was unthinkable at the Met. She went on the concert stage instead, and became one of the great recitalists of all time. But last week, fiftyish and famous as ever,* she sat down with the Met's General Manager Rudolf Bing and signed up for a starring role this winter...
...spite of an operation five years ago for removal of a cyst on her esophagus that endangered her voice. Today Contralto Anderson can almost equal the vocal glory of her best years...
Mahalia still sings in churches. But her deep, creamy contralto has also been heard five times in Carnegie Hall, where she fills the house without benefit of advertising ("You just get a feeling she's coming," explains one New York fan). Two years ago, on a European tour, greetings came from Queen Elizabeth and Winston Churchill before an Albert Hall concert...