Black Excellence: Adelaide Hall

March 14, 2025

Adelaide Louise Hall (20 October 1901 – 7 November 1993) was an American-born UK-based jazz singer and entertainer. Her career spanned more than 70 years from 1921 until her death. Early in her career, she was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance; she became based in the UK after 1938.^[1][2][3] Hall entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2003 as the world’s most enduring recording artist, having released material over eight consecutive decades.^[4] She performed with major artists such as Art Tatum,^[5] Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Cab Calloway, Fela Sowande,^[6] Rudy Vallee,^[7] and Jools Holland, and recorded as a jazz singer with Duke Ellington (with whom she made her most famous recording, “Creole Love Call” in 1927)^[8] and with Fats Waller.^{[9][10][11][12]}