JOSEPHINE BAKER: J'ai Deux Amours

Josephine Baker
(1906-1975)

Born in St. Louis in 1906, Josephine Baker came to be one of the most famous and beloved of Parisian stars. She was, by all accounts, born for the stage. Already at 13, she was performing dance numbers in the street. Shortly thereafter, she joined the Dixie Steppers vaudeville troupe and began touring the United States. Though she married at 15 -- the first of four trips to the altar -- Baker was by no means ready to settle down. After starring in Chocolate Dandies, a Dixie Steppers production, Baker made her way to Paris in 1925. Still in her teens, she took the town by storm with her performance in "La Revue Negre", an all-American, all-Black show featuring the music of the Claude Hopkins Band, with Sidney Bechet. Returning a year later, Baker opened a night club, Chez Josephine, where she performed American songs such as "Pretty Little Baby" and "Suppose," which appear in this collection.

Blessed with a great sense of humor and a superb sense of comic timing, to go along with a variety of talents and sultry looks, Josephine was not averse to using stunts to make sure that people knew who she was. Among the dances, for instance, that she made famous was the 'Fatou' number in which she wore a girdle of bananas (at the Follies-Bergere in 1926). There were also her versions of the Charleston which she performed while dancing on the mirror. There was also the Conga danced in a long fringed skirt-which is represented on this record by "La Conga Blicoti," by the Lecuona Cuban Boys.

The songs on this disc were all somehow incorporated into Josephine's shows and films in the 1930s, when she was in her prime. "J'ai Deux Amours" (I have two loves) was composed for her by Vincent Scotto for the 1930 revue at the Casino de Paris, Paris Qui Remue. In La Joie de Paris (The Joy of Paris), a 1932 revue, also at the Casino, she satirized the fashion for sunbathing in the song, "Si J'étais Blanche" (If I Were White)

Of all the American artists who had flocked en masse to Paris during the Jazz Age, Josephine was one of, if not the most popular. Far from minding the attention, she enthusiastically returned the affection that was lavished upon her by the country that became her home. During the Second World War, she worked for the French Resistance and was awarded the highest honours the French can bestow: the Croix de Guerre, Rosette de la Resistance and the Legion d'Honneur. Upon her death, at age 68, she was accorded a full-scale, 21-gun salute State Funeral at the Church of the Madelaine in Paris, the first woman of American birth ever to be so honoured in France. Her relations with the country of her birth were more complicated and troubled. After making it big in Paris, Baker made two failed attempts to duplicate her success at home, but the warm reception accorded her the third time round helped to erase some of the memories of the earlier chill.

In addition to performing, Baker devoted a great deal of time and energy to philanthropic activities and other good causes. She worked all her life to try and make a better future for Black people all over the world. Later in her career, when the opportunity arose, she helped break down the "color line" by refusing to perform before segregated audiences.

She was also deeply committed to helping disadvantaged youth. Among those attending her funeral were her twelve adopted children, known as "the Rainbow Tribe," for whom she had gone on working in her effort to prove that it was possible for people of different races and religions to live together in harmony. When we remember her now it is as a great humanitarian, as well as that fiery star who the great French writer Colette called, "the most beautiful of panthers." "To dance is to live," said Josephine in 1927, "I would like to die at the end of a dance." She almost got her wish. Josephine passed away during the run of a show in Paris celebrating the 50th anniversary of her debut .

--Patrick O'Conner, (Author of Josephine Baker: The Biography) 1996