Career

She was the first widely known white singer to sing jazz and blues songs. Born Mary Ellen Harrison, probably in Indiana, she first played vaudeville and movie theaters in Chicago around 1914. Dancer Vernon Castle introduced her to the theater community in New York, where she debuted in a 1915 Irving Berlin revue, Stop! Look! Listen!

Between 1931 and 1933, when she performed on such National Broadcasting Company radio shows as The Ipana Troubadors and Rudy Vallee"s The Fleischmann"s Yeast Hour, she was billed by National Broadcasting Company as "The Little Girl with the Big Voice."

In early 1931 she performed in London, returning for long engagements at the Café de Paris.

In London she appeared in the musical Ever Green and broadcast on British Broadcasting Corporation radio.

Their house was destroyed in a German rocket attack in 1941, and in 1944 she travelled to New York to seek treatment for a neurological disorder. Although she was discharged two months later, she died soon afterwards in a hotel fire that started when she fell asleep while smoking in bed.