Gladys Bentley

Glady Bentley (12 August 1907-18 January 1960) was a famous butch lesbian African-American Blues singer during the Harlem Renaissance.

Bentley was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She appeared at Harry Hansberry's "Clam House" on 133rd Street, one of New York City's most notorious gay speakeasies, in the 1920s, and headlined in the early thirties at Harlem's Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She was a 250 pound bulldyke, dressed in men's clothes, who played a mean piano and sang her own obscene lyrics to popular tunes of the day, in a deep, growling voice. She relocated to southern California, where she was billed as "America's Greatest Sepia Piano Player", and the "Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs". She was frequently harassed for wearing men's clothing. She married a white woman.

During the McCarthy Era, she started wearing dresses, and married a man.

References

• http://lesbianlife.about.com/od/lesbiansinhistory/p/GladysBentley.htm
• http://members.tripod.com/~laurencefrommer/celebrity/celebrity2bentley.html
• Eric Garber, Hidden from History : Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past