Gladys Bentley was a pianist, singer, and performer during the Harlem Renaissance. She was born in Philadelphia, the daughter of American George L. Bentley and his wife, a Trinidadian, Mary Mote. She moved to New York at the age of 16, and her career as a performer skyrocketed when she appeared at Harry Hansberry's Clam House on 133rd Street, one of New York City's most notorious gay speakeasies, in the 1920s, as a black, lesbian, cross-dressing performer. She headlined in the early 1930s at Harlem's Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in men's clothes (including a signature tuxedo and top hat), played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting outrageously with women in the audience. On the decline of the Harlem speakeasies with the repeal of Prohibition, she relocated to southern California, where she was billed as "America's Greatest Sepia Piano Player", and the "Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs". Fictional characters based on Bentley appeared in Carl Van Vechten's Parties, Clement Woods's Deep River, and Blair Niles's Strange Brother. She recorded for the OKeh, Victor, Excelsior, and Flame labels.
When Bentley first moved to New York from Philadelphia, she impressed a Broadway agent right away, recorded eight tracks, and received a $400 check. Later, she heard that the Hansberry Clam House on 133rd Street needed a male pianist. This is when Gladys began performing in men's attire ("white full dress shirts, stiff collars, small bow ties, oxfords, short Eton jackets, and hair cut straight back"), and here, she perfected her act and became very popular and successful. Her salary started at $35/week plus tips, and went to $125/week, and the club was soon named after her stage name at the time (Barbara "Bobbie" Minton) and was called Barbara's Exclusive Club. She then began performing at the Ubangi Club on Park Avenue, she got an accompanist on piano and was successful enough to own a "$300/month apartment in Park Ave. with servants and a nice car" (although some have said that she was living in the penthouse of one of her lesbian lovers). She toured the country, some destinations being Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Hollywood, where she was very well liked by celebrities such as Cesar Romero, Hugh Herbert, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck, and others.
Gladys Bentley/Bobbie Minton had great talent on piano, as well as singing and as an entertainer. Her performances were "comical, sweet and risque" for the era and the audience. She would often sing about "sissies" and "bulldaggers", and, either using innuendos or more literally, about her female lovers and flirt with female audience members. She mostly played the blues and did parodies of popular songs of the time: "mocking 'high' class imagery with 'low' class humor, she applied aspects of the sexually charged 'black' blues to demure, romantic 'white' ballads, creating a culture clash between these two music forms". Gladys sang loudly, and her vocal style was very deep and booming, sometimes using a growling effect, and imitations of a horn using her voice. Her vocal range is quite wide, as you can hear in her recordings, she mostly sings in a deep, low range, but surprises the listener by reaching up to very high notes. Bentley's performances appealed to black, white, gay, and straight audiences alike, and many celebrities attended her shows. Langston Hughes recorded his reaction to the beginning of Bentley's career success:
"For two or three amazing years, Miss Bentley sat, and played piano all night long ... with scarcely a break between the notes, sliding from one song to another, with a powerful and continuous underbeat of jungle rhythm. Miss Bentley was an amazing exhibition of musical energy – a large, dark, masculine lady, whose feet pounded the floor while her fingers pounded the keyboard – a perfect piece of African sculpture, animated by her own rhythm".
Towards the decline of Harlem and speakeasies, Gladys moved to southern California, where she got married. She tried to continue her musical career, but without as much success as she had had in the past.
She died, aged 52, from pneumonia in 1960.
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By Steve Leggett
Gladys Bentley was born August 12, 1907 (some accounts list the birthday as January 12), in Philadelphia, PA. As a young woman she moved to New York City's famous Harlem district, where, dressed in her signature tuxedo and top hat, she began singing at rent parties and speakeasies, creating an image as a lesbian chanteuse. She recorded ten tracks for Okeh Records in New York between August 1928 and March 1929, eight of which were officially released by the label. In 1937 she left New York and moved to Los Angeles, CA. She recorded ten tracks for Excelsior Records in 1945 and a single for Flame Records in the 1950s, but given that she had to considerably tone down her outrageous and bawdy stage act in order to record, none of her releases effectively captures her musical essence. She died on January 18, 1960, from flu complications.