Ruth Jean Baskerville was born to Marion Baskerville and Claude Carlton on September 13, 1924, in Danville, Virginia. Her mother was African-American and French and her father was an English-born Irishman. She grew up with three older white half-sisters and her brother James Edward Goode.
She attended Westmoreland Elementary School and Langston High School in Danville before moving with her family to Brooklyn, New York, where she attended Girls" High School. She studied at New York University for two years before getting married.
lieutenant represented many of the United States" top African-American performers. Bowen really started her career via an introduction to singer Dinah Washington. There are two versions of their first meeting.
Another story is that "Major Robinson, a nationally syndicated columnist, introduced Bowen to Dinah Washington in 1945." Both sources seem to agree, however, that this initial meeting is what lead to Bowen becoming Washington"s personal publicist and manager.
While working with Washington and her booking agent, Joe Glaser, Bowen learned a great deal about the entertainment industry in general, and about booking artists more specifically. Using David Dinkins as her lawyer (he was later elected as mayor of New York City), Bowen got her booking license from the State of New New York
Together with Washington, she started a booking agency, Queen Artists, in 1959. By 1964, after the death of Washington, Bowen renamed her company as the Queen Booking Corporation.
She handled all types of talent, from "..individual singers to soul-rock groups to gospel choirs to comedians."
Bowen represented artists including: Aretha Franklin, The Drifters, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Patti LaBelle and Bluebells, Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions, Gladys Knight & the Pips, The Isley Brothers, Kool & the Gang, The Dells, The Chi-Lites, The Sweet Inspirations, The O"Jays, The Intruders, Gene Chandler, Teddy Pendergrass, Smokey Robinson, Bobby Womack, Marvin Gaye, Millie Jackson, Ike Turner and Tina Turner, The Four Tops, The Marvelettes, Dee Dee Warwick, Dee Dee Sharp, The Delfonics, The Manhattans, The Ohio Players, Jerry Butler, Tyrone Davis, The Staple Singers, The Stylistics, Barbara Mason, Ben East. King, First Rate (at Lloyd's) Green, Tavares, Gwen McCrae, Stanley Turrentine, Bobbi Humphrey, and others".
A singer, he was one of the original members of the doo-wop group, The Ink Spots, and toured with them around the country in the 1940s and 1950s.
