LaVern Baker has the strange distinction of being a wildly successful performing artist, the second African American woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, one of the first eight recipients of the Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, and, at the same time, unknown to far too many people. Even her Wikipedia entry calls attention to its unfinished state and includes many inaccuracies. I’ve tried to cobble together the story of her life with the most reliable information I could find.

Born Delores Evans in Chicago, she was the niece of Merline Johnson, who sometimes may have gone by Merline Baker in the clubs where she sang with the Big Bill Broonzy and Blind John Davis as the Ya Yas Girl. Many sources commonly point to another aunt: Memphis Minnie, and give her the name Merline Baker, but of all the aliases that Memphis Minnie went by, Merline was not one of them. It is possible that one errant source long ago decided LaVern Baker’s aunt was Memphis Minnie and simply ran with it, molding information about Merline Johnson to fit the fantasy.

As Delores Evans she sang gospel while growing up, until, at the age of 17, she established her first entertainment persona performing at the club DeLisa under the name Little Miss Sharecropper. As Little Miss Sharecropper, she took inspiration from a contemporary, Little Miss Cornshucks, dressing herself in a tattered cotton sack to evoke the antebellum south for the southerners that were flooding into the Chicago area. During this time she also went by Bea Baker, perhaps imitating her aunt who was said to go by Baker as a back-stage alternative to her on-stage name the Ya Yas Girl.

At nineteen, she married Eugene Williams, a postal worker in Cook County. Some time just afterwards she got a gig at the Flame Bar and recorded with the Eddie Penigar Band. Then, in 1952, she adopted LaVern Baker as the name she would use for the rest of her career after joining the Todd Rhodes Orchestra and before touring Europe. Upon her return, she was signed to Atlantic Records in 1954 as their second female artist after Ruth Brown. A year later she would have her first, and one of the biggest, hits of her career: “Tweedle-Dee.”

Directly after her release of ‘Tweedle-Dee’ it was covered by Georgia Gibbs, who, like several white cover artists at the time, were taking advantage of radio’s aversion to playing ‘black’ music by making copies that would high-jack the sales of the original records. A newspaper article from 1958 gives one rendition of the story where LaVern Baker called up her Congressman, Charles Diggs, to complain about how copyright law had to be changed to rectify the situation. As excited as I was by the idea that LaVern Baker instigated a change to copyright law, I could find no mention of amendments to the law being proposed by Charles Diggs and/or made concerning music in the mid1950s.

In 1955 Baker appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, performing ‘Tweedle-Dee’ in a line up of R&B musicians arranged by DJ Dr. Jive. Her subsequent hits, including ‘Jim Dandy,’ and ‘I Cried a Tear’ endeared her to early Rock and Roll fans. She would become known as one of the first queens of the Rock and roll era.

After a tour of Australia in 1957, her marriage to Eugene Williams was ending. They were divorced by 1958 and in 1959, or 1961, she married comedian Slappy White. Some reports say that her fame was fading by the time she left Atlantic Records in 1964 and signed up to go on a USO tour in 1966. While on tour, she fell ill with pneumonia performing in Vietnam. Her recovery was long, first in Thailand and then in the Philippines. By the time she felt healthy again, in 1967, the USO tour had gone on without her and she was stranded on the Naval Base Subic Bay with no way to get home.

Slappy White, perhaps assuming the worst, both made moves to divorce Baker and to have her declared dead. He assumed all rights to her recordings.

“I decided to quit tearing myself up and accept the fact that I wasn’t going home anytime soon. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go, seeing as my own husband just up and declared I was dead so he could make some money off my records. He never even tried to find out about where I was or if I was alive. Who wants to go back to that?”

-LaVern Baker quoted in Bob Gulla’s Icons of R&B and Soul

LaVern Baker stayed in the Philippines from 1967-1988, performing at the NCO club at Subic Bay. While in the Philippines she had two daughters, and adopted another. Upon returning to the states she jumped determinedly back to work, performing at the 1998 Atlantic Records 40th anniversary celebration at Madison Square Gardens, and obtaining a lead role on Broadway in 1990. By the time she was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times in 1995, her health had begun to infringe on her work. A few strokes and a late diagnosis of diabetes had resulted in the loss of some memory and both her legs. Baker refused to be stopped, and continued performing until she died in 1997 at the age of 67.

Lost History

Some of the most illuminating quotation and additional details about LaVern Baker’s life, especially her years in the Philippines, comes from a 2007 first hand account by D. Armenta, a navy air traffic controller who filled in a shift at the Armed Forces Radio/Television station in Subic Bay twenty years earlier when LaVern Baker came by to tell her story. Unfortunately, only the first page was archived by the Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine (in the reference list below), and, other than the quotations made in Gulla’s book and other works, is currently lost to time like much of LaVern Baker’s story.

Works Referenced

• Armenta, D. (2007) My Brush with Greatness:  The Amazing and True Story of 50s Diva LaVern Baker. originally:  www.associatedcontent.com/article/156936/a_true_story_in_honor_of_black_american.html . retrieved 4/7/2022: http://web.archive.org/web/20071017044337/www.associatedcontent.com/article/156936/a_true_story_in_honor_of_black_american.html

• Bakers Protest Stopped Thefts.  Jackson advocate. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.), 07 June 1958. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn79000083/1958-06-07/ed-1/seq-5/>
• Dunbar, T. (2018) “Lavern Baker (1929-1997)” Black Past.  https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/baker-lavern-1929-1997/
• Gardner, Elysa (1995) Hall of Famer Returns to the Spotlight : Pop Beat: After a roller-coaster career and losing both legs to diabetes, singer LaVern Baker prepares for a Cinegrill gig and plans a life beyond concerts. Los Angeles Times.  https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-08-26-ca-38992-story.html
• Gulla, Bob (2008) Icons of R&B and Soul:  An Encyclopedia of the Artists Who Revolutionized Rhythm.  vol.1
• “LaVern Baker” (2022) Wikipedia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaVern_Baker
• “LaVern Baker” (1997) The Daily Telegraph.  13 Mar 1997, Thu.  pg29
• Lavern’s ‘Jim Dandy.’ Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.), 03 Feb. 1957. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1957-02-03/ed-1/seq-101/>

Carrie Mitchell was born in Fernandina Beach, just north of Jacksonville in Nassau county. From her age as reported in her obituary, she would have been born around 1894/5, but other researchers have placed her birth at 1886. This 1886 date seems more probable since all sources seem to agree that she entered Meharry Medical School in 1904. If born in 1886, she would have been 18. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Most sources list that Mitchell grew up 130 miles southwest of Fernandina Beach, in Ocala, and that she attended both the Orange Park School for girls and Howard Academy. I assume that the Orange Park School for Girls is actually the Orange Park Normal and Manual Training School in Orange Park, just south of Jacksonville, not far from Fernandina Beach where she was born. Her time in Ocala would have started, then, when she left the greater Jacksonville area and started in Howard Academy. After Howard, she entered Meharry Medical School, in Nashville Tennessee, and graduated in 1908.

Sources don’t seem to agree on the order of what came next. Apparently she was licensed to practice medicine in Florida from 1906 to 1935, but this would have meant she obtained her license before returning to Ocala after graduating from medical school. She also owned and operated a drug store on Broadway street in downtown Ocala. Some sources claim she did this prior to becoming a doctor, but this timing doesn’t fit well with her graduation and her licensing. In 1915 she married a co-alumnus of Meharry Medical School and dentist Dr. Lee Royal Hampton. There is some mention that she gave up one of her businesses when she married. Since she reportedly practiced medicine for thirty, forty, or forty-five years, remaining the only African American woman to practice medicine through the 1920s and 1930s, I would assume that she ceased running her drug store, likely in operation from 1908 to 1915. She quickly filled her free time by helping to found, and then serving as the secretary for, the Florida Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Association. She was often a speaker at conventions of medical professionals and was president of the Woman’s Convention in 1955.

The couple lived on Magnolia Street in Ocala while Dr. Carrie Hampton continued her practice, becoming one of Ocala’s most highly respected citizens. Her husband, Dr. L. R. Hampton, died sometime after having practiced dentistry in Ocala for 40 years. Dr. Carrie Hampton died in Halifax Hospital 12/13/1964 at the reported age of 69.

Figure from: Map of Florida According to Latest Authorities. Digital Collections, Tampa Library, University of South Florida. https://theleemsmachine.com/bean/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/mapoffloridaaccordingtolatestauthorities.jpg

Referenced

1. Colburn, D. R., & Landers, J. (1995). The African American Heritage of Florida. University Press of Florida.
2. “Dr. Carrie Hampton, Pioneer Negro Doctor” (1964) Tampa Bay Times.  December 18.
3. “Dr. Carrie Hampton, Thrift Hospital, and Medical Contributions” (n.d.)  City of Ocala Recreation and Parks.  https://ocala.oncell.com/en/dr-carrie-hampton-thrift-hospital-and-medical-contributions-251390.html
4. Gibbons, P. (2016) One man’s war on Florida’s desegregated schools. RedefineED. https://www.redefinedonline.org/2016/09/war-florida-desegregated-private-schools/
5. ‘Negro Speak’ (1936) Tampa Tribune.  April 1.
6. “Other Events” (1955) Tampa Bay Times. October 12th.
7. Orange Park School. (1900) The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.), 10 Aug. 1900. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84027621/1900-08-10/ed-1/seq-3/>
8. Smiley-Height, S. & McGinnes, L. (2020) First Ladies.  Ocala Style Magazine.  https://www.ocalastyle.com/first-ladies/
9. “State’s First Negro Woman Doctor Dies” (1964) Tampa Tribune.  December 14.

My head has been full of the myriad of terrible stuff in our world; stuff that is not new, but that Covid-19 has placed a magnifying glass over and lit fire to stress and hardships that had been slowly baking under the surface of our everyday USA. And I have been wanting to celebrate something good, because there are still good things out there and good people. We cannot turn away from the terrible stuff, we cannot pretend it is not there, but we can show it something better.

Today, I am celebrating Mary Fields: a pioneer, a mail carrier, a woman, and an African American.

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I am not original when declaring that there is something fascinating about the wild west. In my youth, I became obsessed with stories of western pioneers and nere-do-wells after reading Doc Holiday by John Myers Myers. What I didn’t find a lot of in those stories were women or African Americans. Rodger Hardaway, a scholar working in the niche field focusing on African American Women in the west postulates that the small percentage of African Americans out west, and even smaller percentage of women to men leads to a lack of historical treatment. I’d postulate that the prejudices that keep our history books full of white men might have something to do with it as well.

Mary Fields was an independent and powerful woman. Born before the Civil War, she was enslaved to the Warren family in either West Virginia or Arkansas. After emancipation Mary Fields took chamber maid and laundress jobs on steam ships traveling up the Mississippi. It was on the river that she met Judge Dunne, according to one source (Hanshew, 2014). Other sources say Fields first made acquaintance with the Dunne family when one of the Warner family’s daughters married a Dunne (Reindle, 2010). However they met, Fields would take a position among the Dunne family household staff.

When Judge Dunne’s wife died, Mary Fields took his five children to his sister, Mother Mary Amadeus, at the Ursuline convent in Toledo Ohio (Wikipedia). Mother Mary Amadeus asked her to stay and work for the convent. There, Fields earned herself a reputation for being hard working, argumentative, and loyal. She enjoyed a good drink, a cigar, and took to wearing men’s jackets and boots. Field’s employment at the convent in Toledo seems to have been a comfortable arrangement even though the girls at the convent school were reportedly afraid of her wrath should they tread on her freshly cut lawn. Fields only left when Mother Amadeus, who had been sent to Montana to establish a mission, fell ill with pneumonia.

Fields nursed her friend back to health in Montana and then took on many of the same duties at St. Peter’s Mission that she had carried out in Toledo, though possibly without pay. Fields’ happy arrangement with the nuns of St. Peter’s came to an end when Fields and a hired man drew guns on each other in a dispute. This was the last straw for the bishop who had already heard stories of her cussing, drinking, smoking, and wearing men’s clothing. He ordered her to be dismissed from the convent.

Possibly with the help of Mother Amadeus, Fields set herself up in nearby Cascade and opened a restaurant that quickly folded due to her not charging cash strapped patrons. After doing sundry odd jobs Mary Fields won a Star Route contract with the US Post Office because she was the fastest applicant to hitch a team of six horses (Wikipedia). She was only the second woman to be employed as a carrier by the postal service and the first African American woman.

Already in her sixties, Fields would carry the mail between the Cascade train depot and St. Peter’s Mission for two four-year contracts. She acquired the nickname “Stagecoach” Mary for her reliability. She never missed a day. When the snow was too deep to pull the stagecoach through, she donned snow shoes and carried the mail herself. When the coach was overturned she paced in the cold to keep from freezing, and protected her cargo, horses, and mule from roaming wolves. Fields embodied the mission of the post office. She traveled through rain, sleet, and snow to deliver precious supplies and communication. The internet has made it easy today to overlook the great history and service of the US Post Office even as it supplies us in this pandemic and looks toward an uncertain future (Murse, 2020).

While carrying the mail, Fields became so beloved by the people of Cascade that they rebuilt the laundry service she started in retirement after it burned to the ground. She also ate for free at the local restaurant, and was given a special dispensation by the Mayor to drink in the saloons when women were no longer allowed to do so. Gary Cooper, also of Cascade, remembered her fondly in a piece he related for Ebony magazine in 1959. Cooper told of how she babysat most of the children in town, spending most of her earnings from childcare on candy and treats for the children. She was made the mascot of the baseball team for her tireless devotion and providing bouquets and boutonnieres to the star players from her own garden.

Stories of her exploits, like punching a man down in the street who had not paid his laundry bill, paint a picture of a woman who was larger than life. She was also six feet tall and, according to some, over 200 pounds. But I wonder if just under the surface is the story of a lonely woman as well. Fields never married, she socialized with men, and was the only African American in Cascade. As pointed out by her autobiographer, a subtle racism could have made her an outsider even as she was embraced by the people of Cascade (Hanshew, 2014). Fields left no written record of her own view point, so we may never know the personal thoughts and feelings of this legendary woman.

The archivist at the Ursuline Convent in Toledo mentioned that most inquiries about Mary Fields happen around Black History Month (Reindl, 2010) and the dates on many of the articles I found corroborated this. It’s sad that we restrict our appreciation of underrepresented citizens to one month a year. I say that this month is African American History Month and every month should be African American History Month; every month should be Women’s History Month; every month LGBTQ+ History Month; every month Native American Heritage Month. After all, our history books have taught us that every month has always been White History Month, yes?