00:00 Welcoming Ruth Brown after great set on stage 1; recent Rolling Stone magazine article on Ruth Brown; currently at a career peak at her 62nd birthday 04:27 Ruth Brown born in Virginia; raised in a musical, southern, church-going family; father was an assistant choir director; Ruth sang in choir since age 4 06:14 1948 first recording Ruth did; first female artist to record for Atlantic Records after just beginning under the leadership of Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson; the song “Lucky Lips”; the Dick Clark show; early career as a bandstand song singer; learning from Bing Crosby and Billie Holiday 08:40 Ruth is considered a rhythm and blues singer; worked with Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Buddy Johnson, Billy Eckstine, Count Basie, George Shearing 10:50 Being a mother and continuing her career; being on Broadway, received a Tony and a Grammy; Allan Toussaint and Vernel Bagneris wrote a script of a play for an old folk tune called Stack of Lee; Ruth worked on a workshop for Stagger Lee in New Orleans about this at La Petite Theater; the play went to New York; Ruth Brown cast in Hairspray by John Waters as Motor-mouth Maybelle 14:26 The musical Black and Blue; won a Tony; no script; set in the 1920s 16:04 The Rhythm and Blues foundation; Getting royalties for her music; Ahmet Urtegun contributed 1.5 million dollars to start the Foundation to give money to those musicians; based at the Smithsonian Institute in D.C. 22:00 Motor-mouth Maybelle: Brown acknowledged a new set of fans from that project; Ruth does have plans to record soon; “Blues Stage” a radio show Ruth hosts; originally called Harlem Hit Parade 25:49 Laverne Baker is back; Brown talks about her contemporaries still being around; Cocoa Taylor, Etta James, Nell Carter, Faye Adams 30:16 Allison Miner thanks Ruth sincerely for coming; beautiful conclusion; Ruth Brown requests the audience hold B.B. King in their prayers.
