Runnin' Wild, Rose of the Rio Grande, St. Louis Blues, You've Got to See Mama Every Night, Tea For Two, I'll See You In My Dreams, A Good Man is Hard to Find, It Had to Be You, Haunting Blues, Somebody Loves Me, The Memphis Blues, Nashville Nightengale, I Ain't Got Nobody.
After You’ve Gone (1918) is found at Season 1 episode 31.
Master of the wisecrack "when I get my razor sharp you'll have wings and play a harp". Her Paradise Blues (included on our Spencer Williams show) in 1916 is an early blues reflecting the Bert Williams' songs commenting on music, "Play that Barbershop Chord" and "You Can't Get Away From It".
Around the time women were fighting a war against men to get the vote, Harris expressed a young liberated urban life, Runnin’ Wild, but also personified the femininity of the newlywed New Yorker in Tea for Two. There doesn’t seem to be any coherent biography of Harris so facts are sketchy despite her being a leading pop star in vaudeville, far more important to jazz than Jolson or Cantor, and later a pioneer of the torchy lounge ballad. In 1929 she starred in a movie musical. But illness and a move to England took her out of circulation in the US. Compare to Coleman Hawkins and others going to Europe.
Rose of Rio Grande is here a generation before Ivy Anderson. WC Handy was the recipient of her superstar ownership of his material. She broke Spencer Williams’ first hit standard in 1916. She could float in Nightengale, Haunting, Dreams and then go wild in Runnin’, See Mama. And launch hit standards It Had to Be You and Somebody Loves Me. The personality behind the singing stands out with Runnin’ Wild defining the image for jazz. She was not part of the blues craze rather was a star personality. Handy’s melodic blues style fit her stage presence, likely she was his most popular contemporary interpreter.
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