IDA JAMES

Ida James was a legendary black African American jazz singer from the 1930s to the 1940s. She was born in 1920, and by the mid 1930s, she was singing professionally on the radio in Philadelphia on children's shows. In 1936, she joined Earl Hines' band. In the early 1940s, she gained notoriety with her giant hit "Shoo Shoo Baby", which gave her the nicknames "The Shoo Shoo Baby" and "The Shoo Shoo Girl". She was the singer for Erskine Hawkins' Orchestra and she performed a legendary duet with Nat King Cole on "Is You Is, Or Is You Not My Baby". She appeared in three all-black movies: The Devil's Daughter, Trocadero, and Hi-De-Ho. But sadly, by the 1950s, she was mostly forgotten, working in bars in Harlem in New York City. She passed away in 1986 at the age of 66.