Sapphic Singers Through History

... came to power they banned Waldoff's appearances because of her lesbian identity, that many of her composers and lyricists were Jewish and her rejection of the Nazi regime. Waldoff has been commemorated with sculptor by Reinhard Jacob in Berlin and a star on the Walk of Fame of Cabaret in Mainz.

Waldoff lived together with her significant other Olga "Olly" von Roeder until her death and they ran a gay-lesbian-salon. During the Nazi regime, her career declined because of her lesbian identity and her opposition to the Nazis.

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... commandeered the crowd and flirted shamelessly with the women in the Harlem's Clam House audience. Her first recording was made in 1923 and thereafter she recorded over 100 songs. In her later years she became a theater impresario running three theatres: the Airdrome, the Liberty Theatre and the Lyric, in Columbus, Georgia.

Some of 'Ma' Rainey lyrics contain references to lesbianism/bisexuality. "Prove It on Me" lyrics are purported to refer to an incident in 1925 in which Rainey was "arrested for taking part in an orgy with women from her chorus. It is also rumoured her friendship with Bessie Smith was more than just plutonic.

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...120 songs and collaborated with many other musicians such as Fletcher Henderson and Louis Armstrong and sang two duets with Bessie Smith (unrelated).

When Josephine Baker began to explore her sexuality she had her first relationship with Clara Smith.

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... the great jazz musicians of her times such as including Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson. Three of her recordings were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and in 1989 she was posthumously given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award

Though married Bessie Smith was a lady lover and had numerous affairs including Lillian Simpson, a chorus girl. It is rumoured her friendship with 'Ma' Rainey was . Like Rainey, Smith sang risky songs with explicit lesbian content such as "It's Dirty But Good" (1930).

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... the notorious gangster Francisco Cirofici. Before long, she was being billed as the "Sweetheart of Dreamland" cafe preforming alongside the likes of Louis Armstrong. She was the first African-American singer to be backed up by a White band in 1923. In 2011, Alberta Hunter was inducted to the Blues Hall of Fame.

In 1919, Hunter was in a lavender marriage but divorced in 1923. Apparently Hunter never consummated the union, using the excuse that she didn't want to have sex in the same house where her mother lived. Four years later she sailed for France, accompanied by Lottie Tyler (the niece of Bert Williams, a well-known comedian) who became her life long partner. Hunter kept her sexuality private and disapproved of public displays of queer affection.

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... the first African American to: appear on radio (1922), star on her own at the Palace Theater, New York (1925); appear on her own television show (1939), to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award (1962). Moreover, she was nominated for an Oscar (for supporting actress in Pinky, in 1949), the second African American to achieve this. Ethel Waters has been inducted 3 times to Grammy Hall of Fame Awards.

During the 1920s, Waters was a lady lover of dancer Ethel Williams. The two were nicknamed "The Two Ethels" and lived together in Harlem.

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... their queer proclivities. Indeed, Lucille Bogan is infamous in the history of the Blues and is considered as a dirty blues musician as her songs mainly covered the themes of drinking, sex and her sexual affinity for women.

She recorded over 100 songs and wrote some of the most sexually explicit songs ever committed to record. Her jaw-dropping song 'Shave 'Em Dry', recorded under the pseudonym Bessie Jackson, begins:

"I've got nipples on my titties
as big as the end of my thumb.
Got somethin' 'tween my legs
'll make a dead man come!"

"B.D. Woman's Blues" packs a real punch. "B.D." was short for "bull dykes," and Lucille Bogan lays it right on the line with the opening verse:

"Comin' a time,
B.D. women ain't gonna need no men.
Comin' a time,
B.D. women ain't gonna do need no men"

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... opened a très chic nightclub called "La Vie Parisienne" in the first gay quarter of Paris, on the borders of the 1st arrondissement, which became one of the trendiest night spots in Paris. Her mixed clientele consisted of the glitterati of the entertainment, artistic, aristocratic, political and financial worlds. Aspiring to become "the most painted woman in the world" Solidor voraciously commissioned portraits of herself to display in her nightclub. She posed for over 250 paintings painted by some of the 20th century greatest artists, including: Francis Picabia, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, Tamara de Lempicka...

Lempicka became her lover. Solidor was not only openly gay she flaunted it with nonchalance, singing erotic lesbian songs to her titillated audience. Her lovers included Yvonne de Bremond d’Ars a rich antiquarian who looked after when in her twenties Solidor first moved to Paris and provided her with elocution and music lessons. Suzy Solidor life is depicted in Jessica Walker's play All I Want Is One Night.

On a sour note, during the occupation of Paris, by The Third Reich, Solidor's nightclub, was popular with German officers and in 1941 she recorded a version of the song "Lili Marleen" (two years before Marlene Dietrich released her version) with French words by Henri Lemarchand. Understandably this was not taken well and after the war she was convicted by the Épuration légale as a collaborator and was exiled from France. Some researchers think that Solidor was helping the Resistance by overhearing Nazi officers' conversations and that she also helped several Jews to escape. To date, there is no proof of the aforementioned and surely that proof would have been presented during her trial for alleged Nazi collaboration. Moreover, one has to question why The Nazi officers overlooked Solidor's overtly Sapphic performances yet in Berlin, at the same time, openly out Claire Waldoff was banned from performing. Personally, for this reason I deliberated over including her on this page.

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... Marlene Dietrich is an iconic German-American actress and singer. Her performance as Lola-Lola in Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930) in which he sings "Falling in Love Again" and which became her signature song, brought her international acclaim and a contract with Paramount Pictures in America. She became one of the highest-paid actresses of the time featuring in classics like Shanghai Express (1932) and The Devil Is a Woman (1935). The American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth greatest female screen legend of classic Hollywood cinema, in 1999. Dietrich was renowned for attending underground drag balls and queer revues in 1920s Weimer Berlin and once declared "I am, at heart, a gentleman". Refering to the closeted lesbian and bi-sexual scene in Hollywood, of which she was a prominent a member, she coined the phrase "sewing circle". She had an affair with Mercedes de Acosta (a poet, playwright, and novelist and another key member of the "sewing circle". Did she or didn't she have a love affair with fellow actress Greta Garbo and the singer Edith Piaf? That is the question!

In interviews Dietrich said that while in London filming Knight Without Armour (1937), she was approached by Nazi Party officials and offered lucrative contracts to return to Germany to be the foremost film star in the Third Reich. In the sanctuary of London, she refused their offers and in 1937, applied for U.S. citizenship, renouncing her German citizenship.

With Billy Wilder (a legendary Austrian Jewish Director who had escaped to France then America) and several other exiles, in the late 1930s, they created a fund to help Jews and French dissidents escape from Germany, house them, provide financial support and even advocate their American citizenship. It is In 1937, her entire salary for Knight Without Armor (reportedly $450,000) was put into escrow to help the refugees and she opened her home in America to German and French exiles during World War II.

On America's entry to WWII, Dietrich became one of the first public figures to help sell American war bonds and was reported to have sold more war bonds than any other star. Between 1944 and 1945, she performed in morale-boosting shows for Allied troops in Algeria, Italy, the UK, France, and Heerlen in the Netherlands, and entered Germany with Generals James M. Gavin and George S. Patton.

Dietrich also worked with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.), the predecessor of today's CIA, to record a series of anti-Nazi albums, using propaganda to weaken the morale of Nazi troops. The broadcasts of these songs and interviews, sent over German airwaves, were meant to create tension between the Axis Powers (the military alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan who fought in World War II against the Allies). After the war Dietrich deservedly received the Medal of Freedom in 1947, for her "extraordinary record entertaining troops overseas during the war" and was also awarded the Légion d'Honneur by the French government for her wartime work.

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... agent and civil rights activist. Her life is so incredible I couldn't keep her bio short! Being billed as "the highest-paid chorus girl in vaudeville" landed Baker an opportunity to tour in Paris. Swiftly, she became the toast of Paris and an iconic image and a symbol of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties, appearing practically nude onstage in her self-designed costume comprising short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace. Among her various performance accolades Josephine became the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture, the silent film Siren of the Tropics (1927).

Though she was married four times she had many lesbian affairs. Co-author and an unofficial adopted son, Jean-Claude Baker's biography "Josephine: The Hungry Heart" mentions six of her lady lovers: Bessie Allison (a performer who later became the first African-American woman to hold a seat in the New York State Legislature, Clara Smith ( "Queen of the Moaners"), and actresses Evelyn Sheppard, and Mildred Smallwood, all of whom she met on the black performing circuit during her early years onstage in the United States and when she relocated to Paris: expat jazz singer Ada "Bricktop" Smith, and the French novelist Colette. Perhaps her most famous of her lovers, was Mexican artist Frida Kahlo who she during Kahlo's trip to Paris in 1939. Awkwardly, Frieda Kahlo was travelling with her husband, muralist Diego Rivera.

When WWII broke out, and Paris was occupied by the Third Reich, Josephine was recruited by French Resistance. Taking advantage of the occupiers’ trust, she risked her life on clandestine work for the Allies. Her celebrity and fame opened doors, and in social gatherings she rubbed shoulders with and charmed high ranking Nazi personnel, and officials to collect information.

To boot, as an international entertainer, she had an excuse to travel which she did within Nazi-occupied Europe, to neutral Portugal, and to South America. Risking her life, courageously, Josephine smuggled coded messages, written in invisible ink on her music sheets, between the French Resistance and the Allies. The messages contained crucial military intelligence about for example German troop concentrations, airfields, harbours, and defences. If this wasn't enough, she also heroically hid fugitives in her home, supplying them with forged identification papers and visas obtained through her clandestine contacts. Commissioned as a lieutenant, later in the war, she joined the French Women's Auxiliary Air Force and preformed shows for Allied troops to keep their spirits up. An utter heroine. After Frances liberation, she returned to Paris in October 1944, she was greeted by throngs of people on the Champs-Élysées welcoming her home. In recognition of her wartime heroics, she deservedly was awarded the Croix de guerre (Medal of Resistance ) by the French military, and eventually she was named a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur by General Charles de Gaulle.

Why did Paris and France become her home? When she would return to America she was continuously greeted with racism. In one example, in the 1950s her husband and herself were refused reservations at 36 hotels because of racial discrimination. Over the years she gave talks on the subject of racism, challenged segregation laws and marched for civil rights with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the historic March on Washington in 1963. She was so vociferous in her denunciations of American racism at various international forums that she ended up on the FBI watch list and lost her US citizenship rights for over a decade.

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... speakeasy era. From an early age, Bentley was attracted to women having crush on one of her female teachers in elementary school, and she preferred wearing men's clothes. At the age of 16 she moved from Philadelphia to Harlem, NYC which was home to other sexually-fluid entertainers. Moreover, during the Prohibition era the police tended to turn a blind eye to Harlem's shenanigans. When she heard that Harry Hansberry's Clam House on 133rd Street, one of the city's most notorious gay speakeasies needed a male pianist she won the audition and subsequently performed in "white full dress shirts, stiff collars, small bow ties, oxfords, short Eton jackets, and hair cut straight back". Bentley became very popular and successful with her performances appealing to black, white, gay, and straight audiences alike, and many celebrities attended her shows. She would adapt the popular songs of the day with the filthiest lyrics possible. From the start of her performing career Bentley was openly lesbian, often singing about "bulldaggers" and "sissies" and through innuendo or more literally, about her female lovers, and, flirting with women in the audience. Once, she told a gossip columnist that she had just gotten married to a white woman - it seems most likely this was just a PR gos.

Shockingly in 1950s America, lesbians and gays were considered a "national menace" as were communist. This was a time of the anti-communist campaign known as McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare. From 1950 - 52, the U.S. State Department fired nearly 300 employees because they were homosexual or suspected of being homosexual. The term for this persecution was popularized by David K. Johnson's 2004 book which studied this anti-homosexual campaign, The Lavender Scare. The book drew its title from the term "lavender lads", used repeatedly by Senator Everett Dirksen as a synonym for homosexual males. One can imagine what an horrendous time this was for the LBTQ+ community.

Perhaps to restart her career as a more traditional black woman performer, in 1952, Bentley wrote her life story in an article for Ebony magazine, entitled "I Am A Woman Again" that stated she had undergone medical treatment that had awakened her "womanliness" and "cured" her. A pinch of salt - remember, she did say she had gotten married to a white woman...

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... a crucial role in Joseph Goebbels entertainment industry and Nazi propaganda. Perhaps to fill the gap left by Marlene Dietrich, in 1936, Leander was contracted to work for the state-owned Universum Film AG (UFA), Berlin, which was Goebbels' key Nazi propaganda vehicle and starred in ten films. She revealed that she made her a fortune not from her UFA roles, but through the royalties from the records she released during this time such as "Davon geht die Welt nicht unter" (This is not the end of the world) and "Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen" (I know that someday a miracle will happen") which have been cited as examples of effective Nazi propaganda.

Even though her work for the Nazis was extremely controversial, Post-war, she became a major gay icon in Sweden, Germany and internationally.

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... singer and posthumously, won four Grammy Awards for Best Historical Album and eight of her songs have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame including "Strange Fruit," a powerful song by Abel Meropol (a.k.a Lewis Allen) about the lynching of Black men in the South.

Her career spanned 26 years: recording 38 singles and 12 studio albums. She performed with countless stars of her era including Count Basie Orchestra and on tour with Artie Shaw and his band, she became one of the first Black women to perform with an all-white band. Shockingly like many African-American performers, at the time, she endured insults and discrimination while on tour, especially in the South, where restaurants and diners would not serve her. Sorry, too sad to summarise her tragic life - Diana Ross portrayed her in the movie Lady Sings the Blues (1972).

Throughout her career, Holiday was quite openly bi and was rumoured to have dated a notable amount of actresses including Tallulah Bankhead whom she called "Lady Peel" and heiress Louise Crane. Moreover, whilst she served time for possession of heroin she apparently had lesbian relationships with inmates.

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... over 100 million records, they had forty-six top ten hits and a dozen number-ones which include "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" and "Don't Fence Me In" with crooner Bing Crosby and They also performed with nearly all of the major big bands of the era, including those led by Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman... They are also remembered very fondly for entertaining the Allied forces in Africa, and Italy, as well as in the U.S., visiting Army, Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard bases, hospitals, and munitions factories, during WWII.

In 1941, Maxene married Lou Levy, a music publisher and the Andrew Sisters' manager from 1937 to 1951, and they adopted two children but amicably divorced eight years later. Thereafter Maxene entered a thirteen-year relationship with a woman. Then she met Lynda Wells via Lynda's parents who had been friends of the Andrews Sisters. Utterly stranger than fiction: Lynda Wells became Maxene's manager, adopted daughter, and... her lover and longtime companion and both became born again Christians. Yep, you read that right!

From a transcript of an interview with Lynda Wells: "Maxene had her major heart attack in Northwestern Hospital in Chicago and darn near died and they thought I was her daughter and had to sign all these rights and things for them to do these medical procedures to save her life, and I had no authority to do that. We didn't have a living will at that time. She hadn't been sick." On hearing this their friend Carol Hampton (a Christian) "took me and Maxene by the hand and took us out on the street where they lived and knocked on the door of... an attorney friend of hers, and she said, "This one needs to adopt this one... Within three weeks I was her daughter, which made life a very strange kind of..." This poignantly highlights how awful it must have been for same sex partners in situations such as healthcare and lovingly wishing to pass on their inheritance to their partner. Bravo to Lynda Wells for revealing this.

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... on the US market scoring 18 singles in the Billboard Hot 100. Her swinging solo career began in 1963 with the upbeat pop beat hit "I Only Want to Be with You" and "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" (1966), and "Son of a Preacher Man" (1968). Bravo to the Pet Shop Boys who gave her career a renaissance in the late 80's with "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" and "In Private".

Among her countless accolades, Dusty received an OBE, given for "services to popular music" in 1999 and posthumously was inducted to both the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1999) and the UK Music Hall of Fame (2006), and received a Grammy Hall of Fame award in 2001.

In the swinging sixties fun-loving hedonism flourished, yet any suggestion of non-normative sexuality was considered career suicide. In 1970, just one year after the Stonewall Riots during an interview with Ray Connolly of the London Evening Standard, she told him: "A lot of people say that I'm bent, and I've heard it so many times that I've almost learned to accept it. I know I’m perfectly capable of being swayed by a girl as by a boy. More and more, people feel that way and I don't see why I shouldn't."

Dusty was linked to many women during her life, including in the late 1960s and early '70s, Norma Tanega, a California-born singer-songwriter who wrote a few of Springfield’s songs such as "Go My Love", photojournalist Faye Harris and Toronto-based singer Carole Pope. In 1982, while in recovery, Dusty met Teda Bracci, an American actress and although gay marriage was not yet legal, the two were wed in California (26 years before same-sex marriage became legalised in California - June 16, 2008). They lived together for two years, before parting ways.

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... Gore was not a one hit wonder - other hits of her include "You Don't Own Me" and "Judy's Turn to Cry". To my surprise Lesley Gore composed songs, with her brother, Michael Gore, for Fame (1980) the movie, for which she was nominated an Oscar for "Out Here on My Own" at the 53rd Academy Awards. Her brother, however, won two Oscars for Best Original Score and Best Original Song "Fame".

More of a surprise to me was to discover that, Lesley Gore was gay and had sussed this out at the age of 20! In 2004, she hosted the PBS television series In the Life, which focused on LGBT issues and, in a 2005 interview with After Ellen, she stated she was a lesbian. She revealed that since 1982 she had been in a relationship with Lois Sasson, a luxury jewellery designer. Sasson stayed with her until sadly Gore's death - 33 lovely years together.

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... influential women in rock; recording hits like "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" and "Cherry Bomb".

After The Runaways disbanded, having produced five albums, Joan Jett formed the Blackhearts in 1979. The following year, with her band mate Kenny Laguna, Jett founded Blackheart Records producing Riot Grrrl acts like Bikini Kill, Girl in a Coma, L7, The Dollyrots...

Not only is she a rockin singer, she is a skilled guitarist and Rolling Stone has included her as one of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. Her signature guitar is a white Gibson Melody Maker, which she has played on all her hits since 1977. Legendary guitar brand Gibson have released 3 bespoke models of Joan Jett's Melody Maker guitar (2008, 2010 and 2019).

Further cherry accolades include being inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in the Class of 2015 and a edgy biopic - The Runaways (2010) staring Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett.

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