Music / Film & TV
Herb Jeffries
1913–2014 · singer, actor
Detroit-born baritone who starred as a singing cowboy in 1930s Black-cast westerns and sang Duke Ellington's hit "Flamingo."
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
West Hills, Los Angeles, California
aged 100- Birth name
- Umberto Alexander Valentino
- Also known as
- The Bronze Buckaroo
- Detroit years
- 1913–early 1930s
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Jeffries was born Umberto Alexander Valentino in Detroit to an Irish mother who ran a rooming house. He grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood, later describing himself as a "ghetto baby" who met little open racism as a child, and he often questioned why anyone should have to identify with a single race. As a teenager he loved to sing and hung around the Howard Buntz Orchestra at Detroit ballrooms. At Louis Armstrong's urging he left for Chicago, where he sang in clubs and with Earl Hines. In the late 1930s he starred in low-budget westerns made for Black audiences, among them Harlem on the Prairie and The Bronze Buckaroo, becoming one of the first Black singing cowboys on screen. He then joined Duke Ellington's orchestra and recorded the 1941 hit "Flamingo." He kept performing into old age and died in 2014 at 100.
Highlights
- Starred in The Bronze Buckaroo (1939) and other Black-cast westerns
- Sang "Flamingo" with Duke Ellington's orchestra (1941)
- Recorded the calypso concept album Jamaica
- Lived to the age of 100