Pearl Bailey stood out among vocalists for the unrestrained energy she poured into every appearance, whether on Broadway stages, in cabaret rooms, or before Hollywood cameras. Her warm, deliberately blurred phrasing refreshed familiar numbers such as “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” though commercial success arrived only once, with the chart-topping “Takes Two to Tango.”
Born to a minister, she began singing at age three after her brother Bill Bailey shared a few dance steps with her. Professional work started in her early teens; years of touring as a dancer gave way to featured spots as both singer and dancer in the bands of Noble Sissle, Cootie Williams, and Edgar Hayes. She struck out as a solo performer in 1944, charming nightclub crowds with her unhurried manner and spontaneous comic remarks. During the mid-1940s she briefly filled in for Sister Rosetta Tharpe in Cab Calloway’s Orchestra, then made her Broadway entrance in 1946’s St. Louis Woman, earning an award as most promising newcomer and appearing in her first film, the 1947 release Variety Girl.
Her recording of “Tired,” taken from that picture, failed to reach the charts yet raised her stature within jazz circles. She cut sides for several companies, Columbia among them, throughout the 1940s before signing with Coral in 1952 and scoring her lone hit. Accompanied by Don Redman’s Orchestra, “Takes Two to Tango” climbed into the Top Ten. That same year she married drummer Louie Bellson, who resigned from Duke Ellington’s band to serve as her musical director. Several Coral albums followed in the first half of the decade, along with a starring role as a fortune teller in the 1954 film Carmen Jones. Additional leads came in the W.C. Handy biopic St. Louis Blues and in the first screen version of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.
A 1959 contract with Roulette encouraged a bolder approach. The double-entendre set For Adults Only drew radio bans yet sold briskly, prompting a series of similar LPs into the early 1960s. She remained active on Broadway and captured a Tony Award in 1970 for the title role in Hello, Dolly!. A 1971 television variety series bore her name, after which she withdrew from regular performing. In 1976 she joined the American delegation to the United Nations, and in 1988 she received the Medal of Freedom.
