(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . New Day Cafe - Saturday: Critters, Food, and also - Admiring Joyce Bryant. [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-04 Good morning, Newdists. Hope you all are healthy and well. Onwards for the first round — Your Caturday cafe dog — (The Bravery Bear, the glam clip by her ear and her fashionable scarf did me in. 😍) x This is Malu. She had to get some shots at the vet today. Was a little nervous, but she brought her Bravery Bear, and he made everything okay. 14/10 we're so proud of her pic.twitter.com/ampiognvn3 — WeRateDogs® (@dog_rates) January 30, 2023 . . x I was today years old when I learned of the Willow Ptarmigan. pic.twitter.com/KtRVIBTeNU — TG (@TG22110) January 29, 2023 . x Finally finished carving this block, just waiting on paper delivery so I can get it printed. Very pleased so far, I have high hopes for this one 🙂. #ArtistOnTwitter #printmaking #linoprint pic.twitter.com/fDfCftFwBV — Louise Hobson (@LouiseHobsonArt) January 27, 2023 . x All in drag pic.twitter.com/Y00I78kBVL — Paul Wright 🇬🇧🇯🇲🇸🇰 (@wilder_action) January 24, 2023 . . x Tonight’s thread The Crow family and friends, I’ll start with this Hooded Crow taken in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 retweeting the lot pic.twitter.com/7VCWhUcuFh — Jeff’s Wildlife Photography (@sykesjeff) January 29, 2023 . . x This gentle giant has something to say 😂 pic.twitter.com/SOsOs320bA — Puppies Club (@thepuppiesclub) January 2, 2023 . Newdists, please grab a plate of food, a cuppa and join us in the thread. . . x These tofu pouches are stuffed with so much ginger goodness!V pic.twitter.com/NcSDuV5W1o — Tastemade (@tastemade) January 31, 2023 . . The Amazing Joyce Bryant I was going to do my usual diary, and then I saw this article… Today, I’m going do a fast diary about Joyce Bryant. I had never heard of her. And then I read about her in the Telegraph.UK. x Her mermaid dresses were so tight that she had to be carried to and from the stage. Good obit of a great lady.https://t.co/DGJcoP7OgH — Quentin Letts (@thequentinletts) January 20, 2023 Evidently, Walter Winchell wrote: “Joyce Bryant’s waffles, ‘Drunk With Love’ and ‘Love for Sale,’ are darn good, but you’ll have to take our word,” Walter Winchell, the influential columnist and a Bryant fan, told his readers in June 1953. “Both ditties are banned from networks.” Banned! For a long time! For being too provocative... Also: In her nightclub appearances, Ms. Bryant developed a signature sexiness, wearing striking gowns that accented her hourglass figure. Credit — Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images (NYT) Acclaimed singer Joyce Bryant passed away in November of 2022. She was 95. She was known for her sultry voice, her gorgeous dresses and her iconic hair. She was, also, known as the ‘black Marilyn Monroe.’ (Rolling my eyes really hard as I typed that. Ms. Bryant’s photos show, clearly, she was gorgeous!) Also, she acted in films. x Rest in Peace to performer and Civil Rights Activist Joyce Bryant. Born in raised in Oakland, she became one of America’s first Black female sex symbols. She was also censored for her performances and her looks because they were deemed too inappropriate for White America. pic.twitter.com/S2dxkyE624 — lǝɓıu (@black_0rpheus) November 21, 2022 She began singing in the era of segregation, and was promoted to Black and White audiences as: [...] a sex goddess. Sheathed in cleavage-baring mermaid gowns so tight that she writhed more than walked, she had hits with the sensual numbers “Love for Sale” and “Drunk With Love,” both of which were banned from the radio. In 1955, she was at the pinnacle of her career: In 1955, Joyce Bryant was riding the crest of a singing career that had been building since, 1942, when she was 14 years old and sang “On Top of Old Smoky” in a nightclub audience‐participation performance and was offered a two‐week contract at $125 a week. She had become the epitome of the sexy nightclub singer—with silver‐dyed hair, wearing a backless, spangled silver gown and silver nail polish, belting out “Love for Sale” and “Drunk With Love” (both hit records although they were banned from the air). But, in November 1955, with contracts signed for engagements at the Waldorf‐Astoria, in Las Vegas, Miami Beach cr.d [sic] South America, Miss Bryant abruptly quit show business and enrolled in a small Seventh Day Adventist school in Alabama to become an evangelical missionary. For the last 20 years she has followed two careers, first as a missionary and, more recently, as concert and operatic singer with the City Center Opera Company and in Europe with French, Italian and Viennese opera companies. Her fashionable dresses were a trademark look and were made especially for her: “Many of Joyce’s gowns are created so form-fitting that the singer cannot sit down in them,” The Pittsburgh Courier wrote in 1954. “Joyce has had to develop a glide to move about.” And there was her hair — silver, thanks to the application of radiator paint. Sometimes she went with an all-silver look: hair, gown, nails. It was a gimmick, she told The Montreal Star in 1967, that had been born of a desire to set herself apart from Lena Horne and Josephine Baker, two top Black stars of the day, at a benefit concert. “After them, who was going to listen to me?” she said. “I knew I had to do something different.” The “something different” garnered a long standing ovation, she told The Star, and “I don’t think the audience even heard me sing that night.” She began singing when she was 14 years old, in Los Angeles. She was famous as one of — three top tier — Black nightclub singers. She had famous fans like Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan. She often appeared on their shows. Her talent, her beauty and her fame could not protect her in segregated America: But “it wasn’t all that easy,” she told the Times in 1977. “I was being booked into totally White situations, singing the kind of songs that White singers sing. I didn’t fit the rhythm and blues or race‐music mold. I’m more like a Judy Garland in presentation. Lena Horne, Billy Daniels and Herb Jeffries could pass, musically. But I couldn’t. I can’t hide the fact that I’m a Black woman.” SNIP Ms. Bryant was a sensation in the 1950s, drawing rapturous audiences at nightclubs from the Copacabana in New York, where she said she was the first “identifiably Black” woman to perform, to venues in Miami Beach, where members of the Ku Klux Klan burned her in effigy to protest the appearance of an African American artist. She was much photographed. Life Magazine did a huge spread on her. She was lauded by Ebony magazine. She was a contemporary of Eartha Kitt and behind Dorothy Dandridge and Lena Horne, and also Sammy Davis Jnr, Frank Sinatra and Harry Belafonte. Joyce Bryant did not find her fame easy to live with. She was fearful of drugs and addiction: Furthermore, she feared descending into drug dependence, as she had seen happen to many fellow performers. The “final straw,” she said, came in late 1955, during a run at the Apollo Theater in New York City, where she was slated to perform eight shows a day. She had recently undergone a tonsillectomy and lost her voice amid the overwork. Even though she was not well enough to sing, her manager pushed her: [...] she recalled. “A doctor was brought in to help, saying: ‘I can spray your throat with cocaine, and that will fix the problem, but you’ll become addicted.’ Then I overheard my manager say: ‘I don’t care what you do, just make her sing!’” She also became dependent on the prescription drugs she used to help her sleep. In February 1955 she made her debut at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, but by the end of the year – drug-addicted, traumatised, her hair and scalp damaged – she had left her life in the fast lane behind, enrolling at a Seventh Day Adventist College in Alabama; her powerful voice was put to good use as an evangelist. She became an active member of the civil rights movement, organising fundraisers for black people to buy food, clothing and medicine, and gave concerts – wearing her natural black hair and no make-up – to raise money for her church. Martin Luther King was a fan, and they became good friends, but when she asked her church to stand against discrimination, she was told, she recalled: “These are of earthly matters and thus of no spiritual importance.” . . There is a documentary film in the works about her career, life and fame: Jim Byers, a host on the Washington-area radio station WPFW who is at work on a documentary film titled “Joyce Bryant: The Lost Diva,” said that Ms. Bryant was cast in several movies but that her scenes were cut when Southern distributors refused to show a movie that depicted a Black woman in a glamorous role. LINK Here is her IMDB page. And of course she was told to tone it down: Despite her burgeoning fame she endured foul treatment. There was violence when she toured the southern states, and the Ku Klux Klan burnt an effigy of her. In 1952, when she played the Aladdin Room at the Hotel Algiers in Miami, she was banned by the management from staying the night there or even being photographed outside it. They also told her to tone down her sultry, seductive act, but she went ahead as normal. For her first show, the front of the stage was ringed with mainly female customers; when she did the second show, she recalled, it was all men. She was someone who pushed the envelope for Black talent. In the mid 1980’s she returned to singing and performing, and reinvented herself: She reinvented herself, training with a vocal teacher and singing for New York City Opera, as well as in Europe. In the 1980s she performed in jazz clubs and worked as a voice coach for the likes of Raquel Welch and Jennifer Holliday. In her later life, she suffered from Alzheimer's. . New Day Cafe is an Open Thread What do you want to talk about today? [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/4/2150964/-New-Day-Cafe-Saturday-Critters-Food-and-also-Admiring-Joyce-Bryant Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/