- Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume One, 1981-1985, pages 102-104. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998.
- In 1924 she was invited to Paris to star at Eugene Bullard's Le Grand Duc.
- After performing at clubs in Los Angeles and San Francisco from 1919 to 1922 she relocated to New York where he sang at Barron DeWare Wilkins' hot spot Barron's Exclusive Club. Her fellow performer their included comedian Frankie Fay, singer Al Jolson and chorus girl Lucille LeSueur, soon to be known as Joan Crawford.
- At the age of 16 she began performing in Chicago's chicest clubs. Her big break came when she was hired to perform at the Cabaret de Champion owned by boxer Jack Johnson.
- Worked with Bill "Mr Bojangles" Robinson on Chicago stages.
- Her mother was born a slave in 1861. Her father was an Irishman, which is how she came by the red hair and freckles. After her father's death, she moved to Chicago with her three siblings.
- Buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York.
- According to Jean-Claude Baker, one of Josephine Baker's children, as recorded in his book about his mother's life, titled Josephine: The Hungry Heart, Baker and Bricktop were involved in a lesbian affair for a time, early in their careers.
- She has been called "one of the most legendary and enduring figures of twentieth-century American cultural history".
- She was an American dancer, jazz singer, vaudevillian, and self-described saloon-keeper who owned the nightclub Chez Bricktop in Paris from 1924 to 1961, as well as clubs in Mexico City and Rome.
- Shortly after moving to Rome, Bricktop received a call from the first secretary, Amin, to the abdicated King Farouk. According to Bricktop, when Amin asked for her to visit, she said, "I'm not drinking. I'm on a novena," to which he responded with, "We're not drinking either, but we're with everybody here at the hotel. They're all talking about you, and my king wants to meet the woman who makes everyone scream when she walks through the door." King Farouk and Bricktop had a friendship for many years. Farouk would bring Bricktop gifts from his travels like bottles of perfume and cigars, though Bricktop didn't smoke. After King Farouk fired Amin, he didn't want Bricktop to have anything to do with his former secretary. Bricktop told Farouk, "Majesty, I didn't even allow my own mother to choose my friends for me." At that point, King Farouk stopped coming to the club and Bricktop never saw him again.
- Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli wrote a song called "Brick Top," which they recorded in Paris in 1937 and in Rome in 1949.
- The Cole Porter song "Miss Otis Regrets" was written especially for her to perform.
- Bricktop broadcast a radio program in Paris from 1938 to 1939, for the French government.
- She married saxophonist Peter DuCongé in 1929. Though they separated after a few years, they never divorced, Bricktop later saying that "as a Catholic I do not recognize divorce".
- Bricktop had planned on creating a film centered around her life. Both Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandrige were up to play Bricktop, though she preferred Pearl Bailey. Bricktop commented that Bailey is "more familiar with my life" and that Dandrige "can't go the way I used to go at her age.".
- Bricktop had a professional relationship with Maya Angelou, which Angelou writes about in her book Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas. Angelou worked at Bricktop's for a time as a singer, though Bricktop nearly turned her away at the door at their first meeting, as she had a rule against allowing unescorted women into her club.
- She began performing when she was very young, and by 16, she was touring with TOBA (Theatre Owners' Booking Association) and on the Pantages vaudeville circuit. Aged 20, her performance tours brought her to New York City. While at Barron's Exclusive Club, a nightspot in Harlem, she put in a good word for a band called Elmer Snowden's Washingtonians, and the club booked them. One of its members was Duke Ellington.
- In 1949, she returned to Europe and started a club in Rome called "Roman Chez Bricktop"[10] located on the Via Veneto where she entertained famous guests including Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Bricktop was a dedicated life member of the NAACP. She traveled to the national office to present the executive director with a $500 check to place her membership.
- John Steinbeck was once thrown out of her club for "ungentlemanly behavior." He regained her affection by sending a taxi full of roses.
- She remained active into her old age and according to James Haskins, had talked to friends on the phone hours before her death. Bricktop died in her sleep at her apartment in Manhattan in 1984.
- She was an excellent dancer. Her first meeting with Cole Porter is described in her obituary in the Huntington (West Virginia) Herald-Dispatch: Porter once walked into the cabaret and ordered a bottle of wine. "Little girl, can you do the Charleston?" he asked. Yes, she said. And when she demonstrated the new dance, he exclaimed, "What legs! What legs!".
- Bricktop continued to perform as a cabaret entertainer well into her eighties, including some engagements at the age of 84 in London, where she proved herself to be as professional and feisty as she had ever been, and included Cole Porter's "Love for Sale" in her repertoire.
- When her father died, her family relocated to Chicago, and she was raised there for her greater youth. It was there that saloon life caught her fancy, and where she acquired her nickname, "Bricktop," for the flaming red hair and freckles inherited from her grandfather.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content