As Josephine Baker enters the Pantheon, Zeweed pays tribute to the most French of Americans. A look back at the eventful life of a singer, dancer, feminist icon, mother of 12 and cannabis enthusiast who risked her life for the Resistance during the Second World War.
Born in 1906 in St. Louis, Missouri, Freda Josephine McDonald lived in abject poverty, sleeping rough and surviving on scraps she found in garbage cans. At the age of 15, her brother managed to get her an audition for a revue in a music hall show.
With her boundless energy, pretty face and legendary smile, she not only won the audition, but quickly became the highest-paid chorus girl of the day.
Cannabis being closely linked to the history of jazz in the United States, it was through contact with black musicians that she came into contact with marijuana.
After suffering the horrors of racism throughout her youth, she used her savings to buy a one-way ticket to France, a country more tolerant of artists of color. She is now 19 years old.
In Paris, too, her success was immediate. The “Danse sauvage” she performed almost naked with a plastic banana-covered loincloth became legendary. A dance that could be construed as morally questionable colonialist spirit. She turned it into a satire, proclaiming her independence and freedom.
In the book written by her son Jean-Claude Baker, “Josephine: The Hungry Heart”, he recounts how the diva often invited friends to smoke and debate with her before each performance. In the same biography, we also find the testimony of Phillip Lesshing, a 23-year-old bassist in Buddy Rich’s orchestra:
“Josephine once invited several of us to come down to her dressing room and try a really good reefer. I went down with Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison, the trumpeter and Buddy Rich, and we smoked pot with Josephine Baker… but the marijuana didn’t affect her performance. Never “.
Jazz & reefers
Weed is an integral part of her life and her creative process, and she doesn’t hesitate to share her passion with those close to her. After a tour, she gave Buddy Rich and his orchestra a golden cup as a parting gift, engraved with the team’s names and filled with cannabis.
Joséphine is a pioneer in many fields. Not content with being one of the first openly bisexual artists in the history of French showbiz, Joséphine is not afraid to flaunt herself in the company of a wide variety of partners.
Her aura of scandal perhaps explains the huge success of her single: J’ai deux amours, which is her declaration of love to France.
Spying and microfilms
She became French in 1937, the year she married a Jewish man, and became a spy during the Second World War, hiding information in her sheet music with invisible ink and unmasking many Nazi spies with a microfilm hidden in her bra.
In 1948, she was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Rosette de la Résistance at a ceremony in her honor, and according to her son, she smoked a joint that same evening.
An activist before her time, Josephine continued to fight for what she believed in until the end of her life. In the 50s, she returned to the United States, using her celebrity to defend the rights of Afro-Americans. She toured the country, refusing to play in segregated venues, whatever the cost.
Mother hen with 12 children
Her family of 12 orphans, whom she dubbed the “rainbow tribe” because of their varied origins, cost her a good part of her fortune, but never her smile.
Her son Jean-Claude describes a loving and caring mother, even in the darkest days.
She passed away at the age of 68, the day after a performance celebrating 50 years in the business.
To this day, she is the only woman of American origin to have ever received full military honors; at her funeral at the Madeleine on April 15, 1975.
The ultimate honor, Joséphine Baker will now be laid to rest in the Panthéon, a building inscribed in large letters“Aux grands hommes, la patrie reconnaissante” (“To great men, the grateful fatherland“).
Enough to make Joséphine laugh forever.
