Al Hibbler
Albert George Hibbler (
August 16,
1915-
April 24,
2001) was a
singer. He was born in
Tyro,
Mississippi. From birth he was
blind.
He attended a school for the blind in
Little Rock, Arkansas where he joined the school
choir. He won an amateur talent contest in
Memphis, Tennessee and at first worked with local
bands, as well as starting a band of his own. In 1942 he joined a band led by
Jay McShann, and the next year he joined
Duke Ellington's band, replacing
Herb Jeffries. He worked eight years with Ellington before becoming a soloist. Some of his singing is classified as
rhythm and blues, but he is really best classified as a bridge between R&B and
traditional pop music.
His biggest hit was "
Unchained Melody" in
1955. Other hits were "
He", "11th Hour Melody", "Never Turn Back", and "After the Lights Go Low" (all in
1956). "After the Lights Go Low", sung with a put-on
British accent, was his last charted hit.
In the late
1950s and
1960s, Hibbler became a
civil rights activist, marching with protestors and getting arrested in
1959 in
New Jersey and in
1963 in
Alabama. The notoriety of this activism discouraged major
record labels from carrying his work, but
Frank Sinatra supported him and signed him to a contract with his label,
Reprise Records.
However, Hibbler made very few recordings after that, occasionally doing live appearances through the
1990s. He died in April,
2001 in
Chicago.
*
Oldies.com biopgraphy*
Arkansas Jazz Hall of Fame site biography
*
Jazzhouse website obituary reproduced from The Scotsman, 2001
