Today's Throwback Thursday Musical Showcase takes us back to January 1959 when Georgia Gibbs sang The Birth of the Blues on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Georgia Gibbs, born Frieda Lipschitz in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1918, was an American popular singer and vocal entertainer rooted in jazz. Already singing publicly in her early teens, Gibbs achieved acclaim and notoriety in the mid-1950s copying songs originating with the black rhythm and blues community and later became a featured vocalist for many radio and television variety and comedy programs.
Gibbs was the youngest of four children of Russian Jewish descent. Her father died when she was six months old, and she and her three siblings spent the next seven years in a local Jewish orphanage.
In 1943, with her name changed to Georgia Gibbs, she began appearing on the Camel Caravan radio program, hosted by Jimmy Durante and Garry Moore, where she remained a regular performer until 1947. It was Moore who bestowed upon her the famous nickname "Her Nibs, Miss Georgia Gibbs," ironically using the title to describe the singer of diminutive stature who had an enormous "authoritative" prominence in American pop music.
Enjoy!


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