Ruth Brown, original name Ruth Alston Weston, (born Jan. 12, 1928, Portsmouth, Va., U.S.—died November 17, 2006, Las Vegas, Nev.), American singer and actress, who earned the sobriquet “Miss Rhythm” while dominating the rhythm-and-blues charts throughout the 1950s.
Her success helped establish Atlantic Records (“The House That Ruth Built”) as the era’s premier rhythm-and-blues label.
What is Ruth Brown known for?
The oldest of seven children, Brown was steered away from “the devil’s music” by her father, a church choir director, but by her late teens she was singing in clubs in Virginia’s Tidewater region and had begun to perform with touring bands.
In 1949, after spending nine months in a hospital recovering from an automobile accident, Brown released her first recording, “So Long.”
Her career began a long decline in the early 1960s. Having survived four failed marriages, she spent the next decade driving a bus and cleaning houses while raising two sons.
She began acting in the mid-1970s, first in television situation comedies and then in films and on the stage.
In 1989 she won a Tony Award for best performance by a leading actress for the musical Black and Blue, and in 1990 she won a Grammy Award for best jazz vocal by a female.
