Lena Horne

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Lifespan:
June 30, 1917 - May 9, 2010, she died aged 92 and was American.
Birthname:
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne.
Snapshot:
An Artist with 91 releases, and credited 6 times on others' music. 6 collaborations.

Biography

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Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.

Horne joined the mike chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Due to the Red Scare and her left-leaning political views, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood.

Returning to her roots as a nightclub performer, Horne took part in the March on Washington in August 1963, and continued to work as a performer, both in nightclubs and on television, while releasing well-received record albums. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than three hundred performances on Broadway and earned her numerous awards and accolades. She continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000.

The Biography appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lena_Horne. Portions of this Biography may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.

Music

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Genres

Blues, Broadway, Jazz, Ragtime, Vocal Jazz, Jazz Vocals, Swing. Vote on Genres

Discography

97 releases – 91 under her own name and 6 credits on others' music Edit
Collaborations, Groups and Family
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In the News

Lena Horne Dies Aged 92

May, 10 2010

Lena Horne, award-winning American singer and actress, died on Sunday at the age of 92. Her roots in showbiz were as a nightclub singer, but she later diversified into the silver screen where she appeared in a variety of roles. One of her most notable parts was as Selina Rogers in 1943’s Stormy Weather in which she performed the title song which would finally earn a place in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000. Her career in the movies was hampered by racial and political discrimination and by the 1950s Horne was disenchanted, and decided to return to her career as a nightclub singer. This proved to be a lucrative move and she soon established herself as a hot ticket on the nightclub circuit. A series of memorable live albums and equally memorable television performances ensured her ongoing fame. Horne credited pianist and composer Billy Strayhorn as her muse, saying “I wasn’t born a singer… I had to learn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” And she learned her lessons well; in spite of ‘retiring’ in her sixties, Horne performed into her 80th year and released her final solo album, Being Myself in 1998.

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