Ivie Anderson
Jazz Singer Turned Restauranteur
TOES: That, Ollie, is none other than Ivie Anderson.
OLLIE: And who’s that...?
TOES: She’s a singer, one of the best. Toured with Duke Ellington…
The owner of “Ivie’s Chicken Shack” (who disapproves of Toes and company’s nickname for Ollie) was a jazz great. This profile from AllAboutJazz sums up her life nicely.
Considered one of the finest singers of the golden age of jazz, Ivie Anderson was a fluent vocalist who impressed many with her blues and scat phrasings. Most impressed was Duke Ellington, who kept her on as vocalist for eleven years and is thought to be the best singer he ever had.
“Born in California, young Ivie received vocal training at her local St. Mary’s Convent and later spent two years studying with Sara Ritt in Washington, DC. Returning home she found work with Curtis Mosby, Paul Howard, Sonny Clay, and briefly with Anson Weeks at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in Los Angeles. She also found work in vaudeville, touring the country as a dancer and vocalist in the Fanchon and Marco revue, starring Mamie Smith, and with the Shuffle Along revue. She was featured vocalist at the Culver City Cotton Club before leaving to tour Australia in 1928 with Sonny Clay. Returning after five months down under she organized her own show and toured the U.S. In 1930 she found work with Earl Hines.It was while appearing with Hines that Ellington first heard her sing. He hired her in February 1931, and she quickly became a fixture of the orchestra’s sound.
“The Voice of Ellington,” the beautiful and stylish Anderson was with the bandleader for eleven years, a term longer than any other of his vocalists. With a relaxed style, light tone and superb diction she would competently perform blues, ballads, and novelty songs with both enthusiasm and ease. “It Don’t Mean a Thing” was the first of her many recording hits with Duke Ellington and His Orchestra which include: “I’m Satisfied,” (1933) “Cotton,” (1935) “Isn’t Love the Strangest Thing?” (1936) “Love Is Like a Cigarette,” (1936) “There’s a Lull in My Life,” (1937) “All God’s Children Got Rhythm,” (1937) “If You Were in My Place,” (1938) “At a Dixie Road Diner,” (1940) and “I Got It Bad (and That Ain’t Good)” (1941).
Retiring in August 1942 due to chronic asthma, she opened her own Chicken Shack restaurant in Los Angeles. Though continuing to sing regularly in West Coast nightclubs her medical condition kept her from recording or touring extensively and ultimately led to her early death. Ivie Anderson passed away in December of 1949.
Another informative article about Ivie is this one from FROM THE VAULTS
You can listen to (and often watch) Ivie perform on YouTube. Here are links to four great songs:
It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)
I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)
All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm (From the Marx Brothers 1937 film “A Day At The Races.” )
As for IVIE’S CHICKEN SHACK, here’s a excellent description from the LAist article The Legacy of LA’s Black-Owned Restaurants
One of the most famous restaurant owners on the avenue, Ivie Anderson, was also an accomplished jazz vocalist. Anderson, a California native, sang with the Duke Ellington Band for more than a decade, charming audiences across the country. “Ivie can sing a song so that the audience gets every word,” The California Eagle enthused, “and, at the same time make cracks at Sonny Greer, tease Duke and wink at the boys in the front row.”
But in the 1930s, Anderson found her career derailed by asthma. Pivoting to a new career, she opened the small, intimate Ivie’s Chicken Shack with her husband Marque Neal. Ivie’s became a favorite of musicians such as Art Tatum. Bogle writes:
The restaurant itself “was a small room. Very tastefully, very, very well done inside. Simple. And nice, easy banquettes to slide into and a spinet piano,” said [musician Bobby] Short. “And she had some wonderful, wonderful piano players there. She had Charles Brown as a young man who just began his career, probably at Ivie’s Chicken Shack.” In the evening, patrons “could go there and have drinks. You found a lot of so-called upper crust sitting in there. And she welcomed the white trade.” “She kind of ran short because all these big shot Hollywood types would come in and say, ‘Put it on my tab.’ And they owed her,” producer Jean Bach recalled. “She should have been tougher about that.”
From 1930 to 1945, Ivie Anderson lived in this house (724 E. 52nd Place) in Los Angeles’ 52nd Place Historic District . It still stands.
Thanks to the fabulous actor Natalie Wachen — a jazz singer herself — for voicing Ivie in Episode One. (See Cast for Natalie’s bio.)
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