Marion Harris

A hitmaker who was recording before the end of World War I, Marion Harris sang a Broadway version of the blues several years before it had cracked the commercial consciousness, near the end of the 1910s. In that, she was a harbinger of the Jazz Age, although her hits dried up by the mid-'20s, and when she died in 1944 she had been long forgotten. Still, Harris was among the most popular singers of the '20s, and her versions of "St. Louis Blues," "Tea for Two," and "Look for the Silver Lining" were the most successful of the era. Born in 1896, probably in Indiana, Harris made ...