Ralph Cooper, long-term MC at the theatre, remembers: “Ruth started out on my Amateur Night In Harlem show. So did the audience at Harlem’s famed Apollo. And though Lucky Millinder may have thought otherwise, she knew she could sing. She’d started out as Ruth Weston, from Portsmouth, Virginia. According to Brown, Millinder confronted her and snapped: “I hired you to sing, not be a waitress. They went down well with the audience, after which Ruth took the opportunity to grab half-a-dozen Cokes for her fellow band members. Lucky chose to stick with his two regular singers, Bull Moose Jackson and Annisteen Allen.” One night, Millinder lined up a gig in Washington DC and allowed Brown to perform two songs. She’d previously been a band singer with Millinder, and in her 1996 autobiography Miss Rhythm she revealed: “For over a month I rode the bus with the Millinder band without getting to sing one note. You’re fired!”īut perhaps the cover that might have brought Ruth Brown most satisfaction was the one involving Harris and Millinder. Atlantic Records even covered their own release, recording a version by one Bill Haley, leader of The Saddlemen, a musician whose time was yet to come. Even in the brief time it took Brown’s rendition to clamber to the top, rival versions by Louis Prima, Frank Warren, June Hutton, Red Kirk, Benny Goodman, Jo Stafford with Gene Autry and Wynonie Harris with Lucky Millinder’s band were available, thanks to industrious promotion by George Simon’s Simon House company. Penned by Rudy Toombs, Teardrops From My Eyes attracted cover versions by the sackload. Not bad for a girl who had signed her Atlantic contract in a Pennsylvania hospital bed after a car accident in January 1949. The single was not only a hit but, in terms of black music, a super-hit as it topped the R&B charts for 11 weeks in a row.
Teardrops From My Eyes was the icing on the cake. Atlantic was not to be a one hit wonder but a real record company. Atlantic’s Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson were ecstatic: it was the label’s second release to notch a place in the charts. Ruth Brown had previously charted with So Long, her first-ever record, in September 1949.
Featuring the voice of Ruth Brown, the record had hit Number 1 in the R&B charts by December. Atlantic Records had released their first 7-inch 45 single, Teardrops From My Eyes, in October 1950. THE SWITCH TO MICROGROOVE WAS WELL UNDER WAY.
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