Music Pick: Herb Jeffries

Herb Jeffries, who died Sunday at 100, or maybe just 99, was an enigma wrapped in a riddle. Born in either 1913 or 1914, the bi-racial Jeffries was a jazz singer in the Earl Hines orchestra in the early 1930's. By the late thirties he morphed into a singing cowboy star in early black westerns . He was known as "The Bronze Buckaroo". Then in 1940 he moved effortlessly back to jazz with the Duke Ellington jazz orchestra and waxed "Flamingo" which eventually sold 14 million records and ranks as an all time jazz ballad classic. His singing ranged moved from falsetto to baritone. He moved to Europe for many years singing in his own night clubs. Returning to the US in the 1950's Jeffries landed acting roles on "I Dream of Jeannie" and "Hawaii 5-O". He kept performing in nightclubs well into his nineties. Jeffries was light enough to have passed for white but chose a black racial identity saying: "I just knew that my life would be more interesting as a black guy. If I’d chosen to live my life passing as white, I’d have never been able to sing with Duke Ellington.” Check out "Flamingo" to get the primo Jeffries singing experience. The feature "I'm a happy cowboy" from his 1938 black western "Two gun man from Harlem" gives a glimpse of the "Bronze Buckaroo" facet of this truly enigmatic figure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D96gvWk6lE