Nita Bradley

Vo­cal­ist Nita Bradley is best re­mem­bered for her time with Artie Shaw’s band in the late 1930s, dur­ing which she shared the stage with Bil­lie Hol­i­day. She worked only spo­rad­i­cally in the early 1940s be­fore dis­ap­pear­ing com­pletely in the mid­dle part of that decade.

Noth­ing is known of Bradley’s early life or ca­reer prior to first join­ing Shaw in late 1937. She stayed with Shaw only briefly at that time, leav­ing the band in March 1938. After Bradley’s de­par­ture, Shaw hired Hol­i­day as her re­place­ment. Hol­i­day was al­ready a well-​known star, and her hir­ing was a pro­mo­tional win for Shaw. Her pres­ence in the band, how­ever, was prob­lem­atic for many rea­sons. While she wasn’t the first black singer with a white band, she was one of the first, and Shaw was forced to re­hire Bradley to meet con­trac­tual oblig­a­tions at clubs and the­aters that wouldn’t allow African-​American artists on stage. Shaw also needed Bradley for the stu­dio. Hol­i­day was signed to the Brunswick label, who re­fused to let her record on Blue­bird with Shaw. Bradley had re­joined Shaw by June but left the band again by No­vem­ber, with Shaw hir­ing a then un­known Helen For­rest to re­place her.

Bradley mar­ried Shaw drum­mer Cliff Lee­man and had given birth to a son by July 1940. After her mar­riage, she semi-​retired, often trav­el­ing with her hus­band, who be­came part of Tommy Dorsey’s band in Sep­tem­ber 1939 and Char­lie Bar­net’s or­ches­tra in No­vem­ber of that year. In Sep­tem­ber 1940, Bradley sang with Bobby Hack­ett’s band at Nick’s jazz club in New York.

In Au­gust 1941, Lee­man and Bradley found them­selves in trou­ble with the law after Lloyd Hundling, a mem­ber of Bar­net vocal group the Quin­tones, failed to make a stop while dri­ving in Los An­ge­les and ran into a truck car­ry­ing work­men, killing his pas­sen­ger, noted Bar­net gui­tarist An­thony ‘Bus’ Etri, and crit­i­cally in­jur­ing Hundling him­self. The dri­ver of the truck re­port­edly died as well. Hundling was taken to Los An­ge­les Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal, where he went into surgery and was given very lit­tle chance to re­cover. He passed away a week later in the hos­pi­tal’s prison ward. Only min­utes be­fore the ac­ci­dent, Hundling had re­ceived a ci­ta­tion for speed­ing, and when po­lice searched the car and the two men at the scene, they found “reefers” in both Hundling’s and Ezri’s pock­ets. Of­fi­cers went to the house where the pair were stay­ing, which they shared with Lee­man and Bradley. A search found a “quan­tity” of mar­i­juana, in­clud­ing a reefer in the pocket of a shirt owned by Lee­man. Both Lee­man and Bradley were ar­rested. They were later cleared.

In Sep­tem­ber 1942, Bradley took over as fe­male vo­cal­ist for Bar­net’s or­ches­tra after Frances Wayne left the band. Bradley only planned to fill in until Bar­net could hire an­other singer, but Bar­net had trou­ble find­ing a re­place­ment. Within a two-​week span, he went through both Dell Parker and Perry Rus­sell be­fore Bradley ended up with the job per­ma­nently. She re­mained as vo­cal­ist with the or­ches­tra until early 1943, when Bar­net dis­banded to take a rest.

After Bar­net’s or­ches­tra broke up, Lee­man went to work for Johnny Long’s band in Chicago. Re­ports soon after had Bradley and Lee­man sep­a­rat­ing, with Bradley tak­ing their child and head­ing to Hol­ly­wood for pic­ture work. What pic­ture work she did, if any, is un­known. She and Lee­man even­tu­ally rec­on­ciled.

In Feb­ru­ary 1944, Bradley sang with Lee Cas­tle’s band, and in Oc­to­ber of that year Lee­man an­nounced that he was form­ing his own or­ches­tra, with Bradley as vo­cal­ist. In De­cem­ber 1945, she recorded one side with Teddy McRae and his Zanz­ibar Or­ches­tra. Be­yond that, Bradley dis­ap­pears into the mists of his­tory.