She was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Although most sources state that her birth name was Edna Landreaux, the daughter of Victor Landreaux and Rena Moore, researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc suggest that her birth name was Lucille Landry, the daughter of Victor Landry and Rosa Moore. She was the half-sister of Lizzie Miles. She is believed to have moved north in her mid-teens. In 1910 she is listed as working as a nurse and still living at home, but on 10 June 1912, as Edna Landry, she married vaudeville performer and touring company manager Will Benbow, and performed in his shows, but they separated after a few years. She was popular in black vaudeville in the American Midwest in the late 1910s and 1920s, appeared often in Chicago and Cincinnati, and made recordings for seven different record labels in 1923 and 1924: Victor, Vocalion, Columbia, Gennett, Brunswick, Ajax, and Paramount. Her most frequent accompanist was Fletcher Henderson; some of her recordings featured accompaniment by Porter Grainger and Lemuel Fowler. In 1916, she appeared was in a show called Follow Me at Casino Theater in New York City. She also appeared in Billy King's musical comedy Over the Top, and the musical comedies The New American, A Trip Around the World, and A Derby Day in Dixie, all in The Lafayette Theater in New York City.
In August 1925, while assisting her husband in filling their automobile's gasoline tank, she was burned after splashed gasoline was ignited by a candle she was holding. She died in a Chicago hospital two days later, on August 16. She is buried at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Worth, Illinois.
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By Uncle Dave Lewis
Edna Hicks was a New Orleans native, and is first heard from in 1916 when she is listed in the cast of a black vaudeville show in New York in 1916. She toured on the TOBA circuit and was quite popular in her day, especially in the Midwest, appearing in Chicago and Cincinnati. Edna Hicks was not a particularly artistic Blues singer, but had a loud, clear voice and a good sense of timing. Her recording career began in March of 1923 and lasted exactly one year. She recorded a couple sessions each for Victor, Columbia, Ajax, Brunswick, Vocalion, Paramount and Gennett. Edna Hicks' 32 issued sides for these companies are among the rarest of any made by the blues women of the 1920s, and her final Paramount coupling (Paramount 12090) has never been located. Although Fletcher Henderson was her most frequent accompanist, she was also backed by Lemuel Fowler and Porter Grainger.
Edna Hicks was on tour to Chicago when, on August 16, 1925, she was cleaning an old pot bellied stove with gasoline. When the rags she was using ignited, Edna Hicks burned to death. She was 29 years old.