Lincoln, Abbey

Abbey Lincoln was born Anne Marie Wooldridge on August 6, 1930 in Chicago. The tenth of twelve children, she grew up on a farm outside of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her professional career began immediately after high school. Traveling west to Los Angeles, she found work right away on the supper club circuit where she began her transformation into glamour girl and sexy chanteuse, which culminated in her role at Moulin Rouge. There, she was given the name Gaby Lee. Soon after, lyricist Bob Russell, who became her manager for a time, suggested the name Abbey Lincoln. In 1956 she released her first LP, Affair ... a Story of a Girl in Love, and made her first film, The Girl Can't Help It, appearing in a dress once worn by Marilyn Monroe. Up until that time, she accepted that women singers were packaged that way and she enjoyed being thought of as beautiful and desirable. However, Abbey Lincoln began another transformation in tandem with the growing civil rights movement.

Her voice remained her instrument, but the image developed for her no longer fit her calling. The content of her recordings began to change, and on the cover of her third album, It's Magic (Riverside, 1958), the seductive pose was dropped and her natural hair was shown. Recording in New York with Kenny Dorham, Sonny Rollins, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Max Roach, she began to envision herself and the music in a new light, delving deeper into her craft while becoming more and more aligned with the civil rights movement. This trajectory culminated with We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite, released on Candid Records in 1960. "Driva Man" and the "Protest" movement of "Triptych," were dramatic highpoints of the record, led by the material and Abbey Lincoln's impassioned and unconventional performance. In 1962, Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach began a marriage that lasted 8 years.

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2022-05-25 01:05:50 pm

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