Biography
Little Miss Cornshucks earned a reputation as a riveting live performer and ranks among the most influential vocalists on record, yet time, misfortune, and personal difficulties have largely erased her achievements. A detailed May 2003 article by critic Barry Mazor in No Depression brought renewed attention to her contributions. Traces of her style surface in the work of early soul singers Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding, R&B stalwarts Ruth Brown and LaVerne Baker, and even 1950s pop vocalist Johnnie Ray. Her interpretation of “Try a Little Tenderness” spanned the song’s original crooner era and its later soul revival, supplying a clear model for the versions later recorded by Franklin and Redding. Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun once declared her the finest blues singer he had encountered.
Born Mildred Cummings on May 26, 1923, in Dayton, Ohio, she grew up in a large musical household. A local promoter arranged her move to Chicago in 1940, where she refined the “rustic comedienne” character—straw hat, pigtails, bare feet, and country-bumpkin attire—that became her trademark. Audiences in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York responded to both the sharp comic timing and the deeply affecting vocals that defined her stage shows. Her commercial peak arrived in the late 1940s, a period that included an appearance in the Hollywood B-movie Campus Sleuth.
Her first recordings, among them the signature song “So Long,” appeared on the short-lived Sunbeam label; one of those sides was the affecting original “I Don’t Love You Anymore,” which she co-wrote. She also cut material for Miltone under saxophonist and producer Maxwell Davis, whose résumé included sessions with B.B. King and Percy Mayfield. In 1950 an Ebony magazine cover story on jump-blues singers featured her prominently. That same year she recorded for Coral Records, backed by a band led by swing musician Benny Carter. These Coral sides, widely regarded as her finest work, contain the definitive reading of “So Long” as well as her influential treatment of “Try a Little Tenderness.”
Asthma, nasal-cavity growths, erratic conduct, and a drinking problem soon contributed to her gradual withdrawal from public view. In 1953 Atlantic Records signed the gifted Cornshucks imitator Miss Sharecropper, who later abandoned the persona to become the renowned LaVerne Baker. Occasional appearances at smaller venues continued amid reports of a nervous breakdown. An attempted return in the early 1960s produced her sole album, The Loneliest Gal in Town, for Chess Records; singles drawn from the LP failed to connect with listeners. Around the same period Aretha Franklin’s Billboard-charting rendition of “Try a Little Tenderness” appeared, underscoring the symbolic end of the comeback effort. (A version of the song also appeared on Cornshucks’ Chess album.) Her last known public performance most likely occurred in the mid-1960s. She subsequently lived alone in Dayton for several years and ceased performing. Several strokes in the 1990s preceded her death in Indianapolis on November 11, 1999; she is survived by a daughter, Francey.
Born Mildred Cummings on May 26, 1923, in Dayton, Ohio, she grew up in a large musical household. A local promoter arranged her move to Chicago in 1940, where she refined the “rustic comedienne” character—straw hat, pigtails, bare feet, and country-bumpkin attire—that became her trademark. Audiences in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York responded to both the sharp comic timing and the deeply affecting vocals that defined her stage shows. Her commercial peak arrived in the late 1940s, a period that included an appearance in the Hollywood B-movie Campus Sleuth.
Her first recordings, among them the signature song “So Long,” appeared on the short-lived Sunbeam label; one of those sides was the affecting original “I Don’t Love You Anymore,” which she co-wrote. She also cut material for Miltone under saxophonist and producer Maxwell Davis, whose résumé included sessions with B.B. King and Percy Mayfield. In 1950 an Ebony magazine cover story on jump-blues singers featured her prominently. That same year she recorded for Coral Records, backed by a band led by swing musician Benny Carter. These Coral sides, widely regarded as her finest work, contain the definitive reading of “So Long” as well as her influential treatment of “Try a Little Tenderness.”
Asthma, nasal-cavity growths, erratic conduct, and a drinking problem soon contributed to her gradual withdrawal from public view. In 1953 Atlantic Records signed the gifted Cornshucks imitator Miss Sharecropper, who later abandoned the persona to become the renowned LaVerne Baker. Occasional appearances at smaller venues continued amid reports of a nervous breakdown. An attempted return in the early 1960s produced her sole album, The Loneliest Gal in Town, for Chess Records; singles drawn from the LP failed to connect with listeners. Around the same period Aretha Franklin’s Billboard-charting rendition of “Try a Little Tenderness” appeared, underscoring the symbolic end of the comeback effort. (A version of the song also appeared on Cornshucks’ Chess album.) Her last known public performance most likely occurred in the mid-1960s. She subsequently lived alone in Dayton for several years and ceased performing. Several strokes in the 1990s preceded her death in Indianapolis on November 11, 1999; she is survived by a daughter, Francey.