If I’d chosen to live my life passing as white, I’d have never been able to sing with Duke Ellington.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2014-06-11 20:44Z by Steven

“He [Herb Jeffries] told me he had to make this decision about whether he should try to pass as white,” the jazz critic Gary Giddins recalled in an interview for this obituary. “He said: ‘I just knew that my life would be more interesting as a black guy. If I’d chosen to live my life passing as white, I’d have never been able to sing with Duke Ellington.’”

William Yardley, “Herb Jeffries, a.k.a. ‘Bronze Buckaroo’ of Song and Screen, Dies at 100 (or So),” The New York Times, May 26, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/arts/music/herb-jeffries-singing-star-of-black-cowboy-films-dies-at-100.html.

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