Lena Horne

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne ( New York , June 30 1917 - New York City , May 9 2010 ) was an African-American singer, dancer, actress and human rights activist. ==Live [  edit ] == Horne made ​​his debut at sixteen years as a dancer in the famous New York Cotton Club, where she quickly went to sing with the orchestra of Cab Calloway . In 1935-1936 she was a singer on tour with the orchestra Noble Sissles and she took her first two albums for Decca Records .

Late thirties Horne went to Hollywood to try her luck there in the film world. She got several smaller roles and two more in the movies Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather (the soundtrack of the latter film earned her a world on). Horne, however, felt that they as African-American was systematically impeded the development of her career, which took her discouraged and continue to mature its leftist ideas.

After the Second World Horne spent several years in Western Europe, where she performed in more Netherlands and Belgium . After returning to the United States, at the time of McCarthyism , she experienced as a supporter of left-communist ideas increasingly clear that she had become a 'persona non grata'. She was initially working in nightclubs and also arranged for television, but was most evident in the sixties increasingly as a human rights activist and took including with Martin Luther King participated in the peace march to Jackson (1966).

In the seventies and eighties Horne recurred regularly on television shows, including in The Muppet Show and The Cosby Show . In the early eighties they sparkled more than 100 times on Broadway in the one-woman show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music.

Horne was incorporated in 1991 in the Georgia Music Hall of Fame and received many awards, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989.

Horne was married to the pianist, composer and arranger Lennie Hayton . The singer died in May 2010 at almost 93 years old. ==Discography (selection) [  edit ] == Lena Horne, 1941 photo Carl Fighting .*Charlie Barnet: the Transscription Performances (1941)
 * Lena Horne with the Dixieland Jazz Group of NBC's Chamber Music of Lower Basin Street (RCA)
 * Sidney Bechet: 1923-1936 (Classics)
 * Billy Eckstine: Together (SpotLite, 1945)
 * Lionel Hampton: Vibebrations (Giants of Jazz, 1945)
 * Artie Shaw: 1940-1941 (Classics)
 * It's Love (RCA, 1955)
 * Porgy and Bess (with Harry Belafonte, RCA, 1959)
 * Songs By Burke and Van Heusen (RCA, 1959)
 * Lena on the Blue Side (RCA, 1962)
 * Lena Lovely & Alive (RCA, 1963) with the Marty Paich Orchestra
 * Lena Sings Your Requests (1963)
 * Lena Goes Latin (1963)
 * Here's Lena Now (United Artists, 1964)
 * Lena Soul (1966)
 * Lena and Gabor (Skye, 1970)
 * Lena and Michel (RCA, 1975)
 * Lena, a New Album (RCA, 1976)
 * The people in my life (TC 1988)
 * We'll Be Together Again (Blue Note, 1994)
 * An Evening with Lena Horne (Blue Note, 1995)
 * Being Myself (Blue Note, 1998)