Eleanor Collins: Lullaby of Birdland

Sunday is jazz day. Continuing my focus on artists who died in 2024, today I present a song by Ella Fitzgerald. Yes, I know that Ella Fitzgerald died almost 30 years ago, but I’m using her version of “Lullaby of Birdland” to focus on another jazz vocalist named Eleanor Collins whose tone was very similar to Fitzgerald. Collins died on March 3, 2024 at the age of 104. Collins is virtually unknown outside of Canada because she never accepted any offers to record in the United States. In fact, she only laid down a handful of recording sessions during her lifetime (all for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), but in Canada she was known as Canada’s First Lady of Jazz. Her career is the stuff of legend. After a relatively successful 10-year career of performance with several Canadian bands (from around 1938-48) she “retired” for a few years. When she returned in 1952, she broke down barriers left and right but was ignored outside of Canada. She co-starred on the CBC Vancouver television show Bamboula: A Day In The West Indies in 1954. This was the first interracial television cast in Canada, and the first variety series produced in Vancouver. Then she starred in her own show (The Eleanor Show) from June 19 to September 11, 1955. This makes her the first woman, first black person, and first jazz singer to headline a national television show. This was over a year before The Nat King Cole Show premiered on NBC at the end of 1956. She then spent the next 60 years (yes, 60 more years) starring in her own tv programs, appearing on other shows, and performing live. As if all of that isn’t enough, she was married for over 70 years, raised four children, fought against racism as the only black family in her neighborhood when her new neighbors tried to keep her family from moving in, and volunteered at her children’s school (when they were being bullied for being black) by teaching music to the young girls at the school. I had never heard of this amazing woman until I conducted research for this post, but that is why I make the Radio Faux Show – to learn about amazing artists who I wouldn’t know otherwise.

To learn more about Eleanor Collins, check out her Wikipedia page or watch some of these videos.

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