AMERICA'S LAST DIVA Called Home!

[Ronn Nichols]

Eartha Kitt, a sultry singer, dancer and actress who rose from South Carolina cotton fields to become an international symbol of elegance and sensuality, has died, a family spokesman said. She was 81.
Andrew Freedman said Kitt, who was recently treated at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, died Thursday in Connecticut of colon cancer.

Those are the facts of Ms Kitts death…….But he facts don’t even begin to tell her STORY. Here let me add my two-cents worth before you read the rest. I am 59 years of age. When Eartha dies she was 81 and that means she was a full TWELVE years older than me. I discovered her at the sam time that he world did. Only, I was 16 and she was 25……..GROWN……ACCOMPLISHED……and BLACK!

She became an instant part of that cadre of women who would go on to define me as a Black Man SMITTEN. To be sure she was one of many. Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne and Eartha all had a profound effect on this impressionable teenage boy with RAGING HARMONES!. Dorothy was quite BEAUTIFUL, Lena Horne was just as BEAUTIFUL…..BUT EARTHA was SEXY!!! Was she ever!!!

Many nights during that first Holiday season of “SANTA BABY” I lay dreaming of a sexual liaison with this icon of sexual passion and wanton desire. At exactly where I am starting this Tribute Concert! Somewhere between my second and third WET DREAM over her………OOPS DID I SAY THAT!
Cest Si Bon TOO CLOSE SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES HIS MAN IS MINE CHAMPAIGNE TASTES I LOVE MEN THIS IS MY LIFE I AM HERE!

[Edie Antoinette]

Excellent! If you don't mind, here's what I put together last week:
If you want me to turn the music off let me know..

EARTHA KITT Name: Eartha Mae Keith Born: January 17, 1927 North, South Carolina, U.S. Died: December 25, 2008 (2 years to the day after James Brown) Eartha Kitt was a Diva, an actress, singer, and cabaret star. She is best known for her role as Catwoman in the 1960s TV series Batman, and for her 1953 Christmas song "Santa Baby." Orson Welles once called her "the most exciting woman in the world." In 1960, Kitt was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She has also received three Tony nominations, two Grammy nominations, and an Emmy win. She was profiled on the December 31, 2007 broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition. Kitt's mother was Black Indian with Cherokee ancestry, and her father was European-American. She was born out of wedlock in tiny North, South Carolina, but jokes about the fact that many audiences assume her to be from somewhere more exotic. Kitt now only slightly recalls her mother, who abandoned her to relatives, and she never met her father. She had a very difficult childhood. Kitt got her start as a member of the Katherine Dunham Company and made her film debut with them in Casbah (1948). A talented singer with a distinctive voice, her hits include "Let's Do It", "C'est si bon", "Just an Old Fashioned Girl", "Monotonous", "Love for Sale", "I'd Rather Be Burned as a Witch", "Uska Dara", "Mink, Schmink", "Under the Bridges of Paris", and her most recognizable hit, "Santa Baby." Kitt's unique style was enhanced as she became fluent in the French language during her years performing in Europe. She dabbled in other languages as well, which she demonstrates with finesse in many of the live recordings of her cabaret performances. In 1950, Orson Welles gave her her first starring role, as Helen of Troy in his staging of Dr. Faustus. A few years later, she was cast in the revue New Faces of 1952 introducing "Monotonous", "C'est si bon" and "Santa Baby", three songs with which she continues to be identified. In 1954, 20th Century-Fox filmed a version of the revue simply titled New Faces. Welles and Kitt allegedly had a torrid affair during her run in Shinbone Alley, which earned her the nickname by Welles as "the most exciting woman in the world." In 1958, Kitt made her feature film debut opposite Sidney Poitier in The Mark of the Hawk. Throughout the rest of the 1950s and early 1960s, Kitt would work on and off in film, television and on nightclub stages. In the late 1960s, television series Batman, she played Catwoman in succession to Julie Newmar. In 1964, Kitt helped open the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, California. In 1968, however, Kitt encountered a substantial professional setback after she made anti-war statements during a White House luncheon. It was falsely reported that she made First Lady Lady Bird Johnson cry uncontrollably when in fact, the First Lady replied very diplomatically. The public reaction to Kitt's statements were much more extreme, both for and against her statements. Professionally exiled from the U.S., she devoted her energies to overseas performances. During that time cultural references to her grew, including outside the United States, such as the well-known Monty Python sketch, "the cycling tour", where an amnesiac believes he is first Clodagh Rogers, then Trotsky and finally Eartha Kitt (while performing to an enthusiastic crowd in Moscow). She returned to New York in a triumphant turn in the Broadway spectacle Timbuktu! (a version of the perennial Kismet set in Africa) in 1978. In the musical, one song gives a 'recipe' for mahoun, a preparation of cannabis, in which her sultry purring rendition of the refrain "constantly stirring with a long wooden spoon" was distinctive. In 1984, she returned to hit music with a disco song, Where Is My Man (UK #34); the first certified Gold record of her career. Kitt found new audiences in nightclubs across the country, including a whole new generation of gay male fans, and she responded by frequently giving benefit performances in support of HIV/AIDS organizations. Her 1989 follow-up hit "Cha-Cha Heels" (featuring Bronski Beat) received a positive response from UK dance clubs and reached #32 in the UK charts. In the late 1990s she appeared as the Wicked Witch of the West in the North American national touring company of The Wizard of Oz. In 2000, Kitt again returned to Broadway in the short-lived run of Michael John LaChiusa's The Wild Party opposite Mandy Patinkin and Toni Collette. Begininng in late 2000, she starred as the Fairy Godmother in the National tour of Cinderella alongside Deborah Gibson and then Jamie-Lynn Sigler. In 2003, she replaced Chita Rivera in Nine. She reprised her role of the Fairy Godmother at a special engagement of Cinderella which took place at Madison Square Gardens during the holiday season of 2004. One of her more unusual roles was as Kaa the python in a 1994 BBC Radio adaptation of The Jungle Book. Kitt lent her distinctive voice to the role of Yzma in Disney's The Emperor's New Groove and returned to the role in the straight to video sequel Kronk's New Groove and the spin-off TV series The Emperor's New School, for which she has won two Annie Awards for Voice Acting in an Animated Television Production. She is currently doing other voiceover work such as the voice of Queen Vexus on the animated TV series My Life as a Teenage Robot. In recent years, Kitt's annual appearances in New York have made her a fixture of the Manhattan cabaret scene. She takes the stage at venues such as The Ballroom and, more recently, the Café Carlyle to explore and define her highly stylized image, alternating between signature songs (such as Old Fashioned Millionaire), which emphasize a witty, mercenary world-weariness, and less familiar repertoire, much of which she performs with an unexpected ferocity and bite that present her as a survivor with a seemingly bottomless reservoir of resilience — her version of Here's to Life, frequently used as a closing number, is a sterling example of the latter. This side of her later performances is reflected in at least one of her recordings, Thinking Jazz, which preserves a series of performances with a small jazz combo that took place in the early 1990s in Germany and which includes both standards (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes) and numbers (such as Something May Go Wrong) that seem more specifically tailored to her talents; one version of the CD includes as bonus performances a fierce, angry Yesterdays and a live rendering "C'est Si Bon" that good-humoredly satirizes her sex-kitten persona. From October to early December, 2006, Kitt co-starred in the Off-Broadway musical Mimi Le Duck. She also appeared in the 2007 independent film And Then Came Love opposite Vanessa L. Williams. She will be missed.

[Ronn Nichols]

Thats GREAT...............I love it. Please the muisc on. Thanks My Dear. You are wonderful!

[Shelley "SoleMann" King]

Beautiful Tribute Brother Ronn, never got into her music, but i feel you on the sexiness of Eartha Kitt...Eartha to you was like Jayne Kennedy was to me....LOL

[Ronn Nichols]

Oh Yeah Easily "SoleMann" that exactly right!

[Ronn Nichols]

I understand............Adeze! Her music had to fight a voice often desccribed as having too much "tremelo". Not everybodycouls appreciate that. But her sense of timing made her a natutal as an entertainer!

[Ronn Nichols]

So True!

[Jeff_A]

I saw her last interview on PBS, with Gwen Ifill. It was a wonderful tribute.

[Edie Antoinette]

Jeff..it's good to see you here Man!!! ♥

[Ronn Nichols]

It sure was...........and very well received. She was truly awesome! Thanks Brother!

[Ronn Nichols]

Glad you found it! YES she was quite something...........captial S!!! Good choice for an IDOL!