LaVern Baker

LaVern Baker ranked among the standout vocalists on the mid-'50s rock & roll circuit, where her boldly alluring style proved ideal for delivering the infectious Atlantic novelties "Tweedlee Dee," "Bop-Ting-a-Ling," and "Tra La La" at the height of the genre's initial commercial surge.

Born Delores Williams, she performed at Chicago's south-side Club DeLisa by age 17 while appearing in tattered clothing under the stage name "Little Miss Sharecropper," the identical billing used for her 1949 RCA Victor debut alongside Eddie "Sugarman" Penigar's band. She recorded briefly for OKeh in 1951 with Maurice King's Wolverines under the name Bea Baker before adopting LaVern as her first name upon joining Todd Rhodes' outfit as lead singer in 1952; in that role she fronted the group on the fervent ballad "Trying," issued by Cincinnati's King Records.

Atlantic signed her as a solo act in 1953, and she introduced herself with the fiery "Soul on Fire." The sly, Latin-inflected "Tweedlee Dee" became a dual-market hit on the R&B and pop charts in 1955, though its pop reach was curtailed when Georgia Gibbs recorded a version for Mercury. Baker responded by suing over the appropriation, yet the case failed. Her profile nevertheless continued to rise, as "Bop-Ting-A-Ling," "Play It Fair," "Still," and the driving "Jim Dandy" each reached the R&B Top Ten in the following years.

Her magnetic stage presence translated naturally to television and film. She appeared in the landmark R&B revue segment on Ed Sullivan's program in November 1955 and performed notable numbers in Alan Freed's rock films Rock, Rock, Rock and Mr. Rock & Roll. Her Atlantic output stayed in demand through the decade: the 1958 ballad "I Cried a Tear" scored a major success, she employed a fervent gospel shout on the Leiber & Stoller-penned sendup "Saved" in 1960, and she completed a Bessie Smith tribute album prior to departing the label in 1964. A short stint at Brunswick, highlighted by the spirited duet "Think Twice" with Jackie Wilson, preceded a late-'60s tour entertaining troops in Vietnam. Illness struck after the tour, leading to hospitalization and a subsequent move to the Philippines, where she remained for 22 years managing an NCO club on Subic Bay under U.S. government auspices.

In 1988 Baker returned to the United States to headline Atlantic's 40th-anniversary celebration at New York's Madison Square Garden. The event opened doors to a soundtrack contribution for the film Dick Tracy, the lead role in the Broadway production Black & Blue (succeeding her former Atlantic colleague Ruth Brown), the DRG comeback album Woke Up This Mornin', and a standout set at the Chicago Blues Festival. Baker died on March 10, 1997.