Recent Obituaries, Classic Films Only

[CBHagman]

77. Herb Jeffries, star of African-American cowboy movies.

I wasn't at all familiar with his story! Read on.

[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/herb-jeffries-jazz-balladeer-and-star-of-all-black-cowboy-movies-dies/2014/05/26/a2416490-c5da-11df-94e1-c5afa35a9e59_story.html?hpid=z5[/url]

Herb Jeffries, a jazz balladeer whose matinee-idol looks won him fame in the late 1930s as the “Bronze Buckaroo” — the first singing star of all-black cowboy movies for segregated audiences — died May 25 at a hospital in West Hills, Calif. He was widely believed to be 100, but for years he insisted he was much older.

The cause was stomach and heart ailments, said Raymond Strait, a friend of 70 years who had been working with Mr. Jeffries on his autobiography. Mr. Jeffries liked to exaggerate his age to shock listeners. “He wanted people to say, ‘Wow, he can still sing pretty good for 111,’ ” Strait said.

Mr. Jeffries had a seven-decade career on film, television, record and in nightclubs. His baritone voice — extraordinarily rich but delicate — was memorably captured on his greatest musical success, a 1941 hit recording of “Flamingo” with Duke Ellington’s big band.

With a towering physique and a square jaw, Mr. Jeffries was perfectly suited to capitalize on the singing-cowboy movie craze that Gene Autry and Roy Rogers popularized in the 1930s.