Joyce Bryant would become the first dark-skinned African-American woman celebrated by the mass media as a 'sex-symbol'. Internationally-acclaimed in the early 1950's for her four and a half-octave vocal range, Bryant packed 'the big rooms' in the U.S. and abroad.
Nicknamed "The Bronze Blond Bombshell," Joyce never achieved Eartha Kitt, Lena Horne or Dorothy Dandridge popularity, but the supper club chanteuse is still fondly remembered. The four octave singer, aka "The Black Marilyn Monroe", "The Voice You'll Always Remember," and "The Belter," was born in Oakland, CA, but raised in San Francisco (the oldest of eight children). She moved to Los Angeles to live with cousins when she was in her late teens. An impromptu singalong in a Los Angeles club in the late '40s was Bryant's first public performance. From there, she picked up other gigs and built a strong reputation by 1950.
Her act was outrageously sexy; she wore provocative, tight, backless, cleavage-revealing mermaid dresses that left little to imagine and they were so tight, she had to be carried off-stage. Supposedly, Bryant twisted so much she lost four pounds a performance. The blond hair probably inspired Etta James -- who, like Bryant, was also raised in San Francisco and lived in Los Angeles -- to copy the blond hair image later. Bryant's hair was naturally black, but not wanting to be upstaged by Josephine Baker at a club, she doused it with silver radiator paint, slithered into a tight silver dress and voila: the Bronze Blond Bombshell and even Baker was impressed.
The gimmick and Bryant's elastic voice elevated the singer to heavyweight status; she earned as much as 3,500 dollars a gig and 150,000 dollars a year in the early '50s. She was called one of the most beautiful black women in the world and regularly appeared in Afrocentric magazines like Jet. A Life magazine layout in 1953 depicted the sexy singer in provocative poses. She recorded a series of 78s for OKeh Records with the Joe Reisman Orchestra around 1952 that includes "It's Only Human," "Go Where You Go," "A Shoulder to Weep On," "After You've Gone," and "Farewell to Love." Two recordings, "Love for Sale" and "Drunk With Love," were banned from radio play– because it was to sexy. As meteoric as her career took off, it landed even faster.
The paint damaged her hair and, raised to fear God, she started having second thoughts about her image. She disliked working on the Sabbath and hated the clubs and the men (often gangsters) who frequented them, lusting after her body. She was once beaten in her dressing room for refusing an admirer's advances. Years later, she told Essence magazine that she never enjoyed her career. She wanted to quit earlier, but couldn't because of nefarious managers and prior commitments. She found solace in pills: pills for sleeping and pills for energy. The first phase of her career ended in 1955 when she denounced it for the church.
She enrolled at Oakwood College, Ebony the most widely circulated African-American magazine in the U.S., ran a five-page feature article on her conversion in its May 1956 issue titled "The New World of Joyce Bryant." According to the church's primary publication, Review and Herald, the piece accurately described the church's doctrines and pictured her present life on campus in a favorable light. In 1957, Bryant became a Bible instructor in the Allegheny Conference, a regional black conference, initially working in related Washington, D.C., area churches. In 1958, she and Richard Penniman (Little Richard), a recently converted pop music superstar, worked with E. E. Cleveland, famed black evangelist, in a twelve-week series in Washington, D.C. The write-up about that event in the September 11, 1958, Review and Herald, related the following: The last night of the series will long be remembered by those in attendance.
Two former stars of show business, Joyce Bryant and "Little Richard" Penniman, said to be the creator of rock and roll, boldly witnessed to the saving power of God.As Miss Bryant, who has been billed at the nightspots of two continents, told of her struggles to get away from God, many felt the tears rolling down their cheeks. Two months ago her former booking agent offered her $200,000, tax free, if she would take the leading role in a picture to be made. In relating this experience Miss Bryant said, "Peace of mind, and the knowledge of working with God in saving the souls of men, bring more comfort and lasting joy than all the money and glamour."
She returned to entertaining in the '60s, finding work with touring foreign opera companies. She returned to the rocky club scene and sang on cruise ships; this time without the theatrics, blond hair, and tight dresses. Although never as famous as Eartha Kitt and Dorothy Dandridge, noted popular black singers, Bryant because of her talent was, like them, able to help break racial barriers, gaining access to the most prominent stages in that area of popular music performance. Along the way, she endured her share of indignities, including being burned in effigy when she stayed and sang in a Miami hotel. Martin Luther King, Jr., nationally famous civil rights pioneer, particularly enjoyed her singing and, following Sunday services, she would often join King and his family for dinner at an Atlanta, Georgia, restaurant.
She later became a vocal coach of note, working with such diverse artists as Phyllis Hyman, Raquel Welch, Michelle Rosewoman, and Jennifer Holiday. Often woefully miscategorized as a "quitter," extensive research uncovers a rather different tale of a woman who succeeded in reinventing herself as an artist on her own terms - refusing to be a victim of the entertainment machine. Bryant was honored at the Arlington County Library in Arlington, VA, during Black History Month at an event hosted by jazz historian and WPFW radio host Jim Beyers (who calls her the Lost Diva).
