Ruth Etting

Ruth Etting stood among the foremost vocalists active across the late-1920s-to-early-1930s span. Unlike her contemporary Annette Hanshaw, she never functioned as a jazz singer; instead she operated as a superior middle-of-the-road pop vocalist often supported by leading jazz musicians. Between 1926 and 1937 she committed more than two hundred songs to disc, performed on-stage, appeared in thirty-five film shorts and three full-length movies, and served as a steady radio presence until an unsuccessful marriage abruptly halted her momentum. A limited return followed in the late 1940s, and she continued to sing from time to time into the mid-1950s, the period that saw the release of the semi-fictional Hollywood film Love Me or Leave Me drawn from her life. An outstanding torch singer whose voice retained its characteristic cry even when she smiled, Etting established the definitive interpretations of "Ten Cents a Dance" and "Love Me or Leave Me."