2 Expatriates Do It Their Way in Britain

Expatriate is a confusing word, carrying as it does overtones of renounced allegiance to one’s native land. According to Webster’s, however, it can simply refer to anyone who lives in a foreign country, no matter what the reason.

The other evening two distinguished expatriates could be found--one onstage, the other in the audience--at Pizza on the Park, one of this city’s more attractive rooms, where the quality of music and pizzas alike is usually of a high order.

Marion Montgomery, currently winding up a three-week run here, was on the verge of American success when she left the United States. Born in Natchez, Miss., she lived in Southern California for a few years, recording for Capitol with such musicians as Dick Hyman and Kenny Burrell, and earning encomiastic reviews. (“She is dynamite,” said Down Beat.)

American fame did not ensue, mainly because Montgomery met and fell in love with an Englishman, the composer and pianist Laurie Holloway, and settled down to a domestic life in England. Now the mother of a grown daughter, she is back on the British scene, working sometimes with her husband, but currently with the American pianist and singer Richard Rodney Bennett, who occasionally flies over to team with her.

Her mixture of pop, jazz and cabaret, with Bennett joining in for a few vocal duets, is so engaging that one wonders how her life and career might have evolved had it not been for that chance encounter more than 20 years ago.

A vastly different case is that of the woman who sat in the audience. Adelaide Hall has at least two claims to fame: She has been singing professionally longer than anyone else now living (her famous recording of “Creole Love Call” with Duke Ellington’s orchestra was recorded in October 1927, just after her 23rd birthday); and she was responsible for bringing out of obscurity a man who was arguably our greatest jazz instrumentalist, Art Tatum.

Still a striking woman and still active at 84, Hall explained how the Ellington connection came about:

“I was touring the RKO theater circuit, closing the first half of the show, and Duke’s band was opening the second half. One night, standing backstage, I heard him playing “Creole Love Call” and began humming to fill in those spaces in the melody. Duke heard me and after the show said: ‘Hey, I like that! Let’s keep it in!’ A few days later he had me in the recording studio, singing that tune and another wordless vocal on ‘Blues I Love to Sing.’ ”

Though she never joined the orchestra, Hall’s name has been associated with the Duke’s ever since. She has appeared in Ellington tribute concerts over the decades, but had an independent career that included visits to London and Paris with the show “Blackbirds of 1928.”

In 1932 she was working in Cleveland when word reached her about an extraordinary pianist in Toledo. “At that time I was using two pianists to back me. I sent for this young fellow, Art Tatum, and after listening to him I asked if he’d like to travel with us.

“He joined me and my other pianist, Joe Turner, and the two of them recorded a couple of songs with me in New York; the date was August 10, 1932. Of course, Art soon went out on his own, and the rest is history.”

During the 1930s Hall’s international career flourished. She married Bert Hicks, worked for a while in Paris with the bands of Willie Lewis and Ray Ventura, and then, in 1938, settled in London, her home base ever since. She has long been a British citizen.

In Hall’s case, expatriation was due partially to work opportunities, but as had been the case with countless black Americans ever since Josephine Baker abandoned the States in 1924, the immense difference in social attitudes, and the almost total absence of overt racism in most European countries, had to play a part in bringing her the security she sought. It was not hard to give up the black traumas of 1930s America for the green pastures of England and the Continent.

“I never stopped working. I recorded with Fats Waller playing the organ when he came here in 1938. I sang with some of the English bands--Sid Lipton, Joe Loss--and I had my own club in London for a while.”

Her husband died in 1962. Hall remained active, returning to the United States now and then for visits. “George Wein brought me over a couple of years ago for some concerts, and I went to New York in ’83 to celebrate Eubie Blake’s 100th birthday. But I’m still happy here in London, and this is where I’m going to stay.”

When Ellington died in 1974, Hall sang at a memorial service in the church of St. Martin’s in the Fields. Her gentle, high-pitched voice was heard again only months ago when the American saxophonist Bob Wilber, now an English resident, staged an Ellington tribute concert.

Last April Adelaide Hall was the centerpiece for a documentary TV concert filmed at a studio in Hammersmith. Entitled “Sophisticated Lady,” it features as guest artist another great expatriate, one who outranks even Hall in age: the saxophonist Benny Waters, long a Paris resident, who has lived for almost 40 years in Paris. He was born in Brighton, Md., on Jan. 23, 1902.