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The Documentary: The Lost Legacy of Little Miss Cornshucks

The Documentary: The Lost Legacy of Little Miss Cornshucks: The Lost Legacy of Little Miss Cornshucks

Mildred Cummings aka Little Miss Cornshucks

23/09/2014 GMT

The Lost Legacy of Little Miss Cornshucks

BBC World Service - The Documentary, The Lost Legacy of Little Miss Cornshucks, The Lost Legacy of Little Miss Cornshucks

The story of the unique 1940's singer Little Miss Cornshucks and her lost legacy

The story of the unique 1940's singer Little Miss Cornshucks and her lost legacy.

In the late 1930s a young Mildred Cummings from Dayton, Ohio is barefoot, standing in the spotlight on stage, wearing that same old shabby dress and a broken straw hat. This is Little Miss Cornshucks and she has the audience in the palm of her hand, a unique act and larger than life personality. By the 1940's she made top-billing at nightclubs across America, performing heartbreaking ballads. But who remembers her now? 

Author and poet Salena Godden travels to downtown Chicago in search of the missing legacy of Little Miss Cornshucks, the best blues singer you never heard. She meets unofficial biographer Barry Mazor, who spent years tracing her tale. Ninety-eight-year-old former dancer Lester Goodman remembers the 'black and tan' nightspots that Cornshucks commanded, now long gone. And, taking a road trip on Route 65 to Indianapolis, Salena visits the home of Mildred's family, her daughter Francey and grand-daughter Tonya, filled with pictures, music and memories. 
 
Why did this unique voice, that could so easily lift or reduce an audience to laughter and tears, die in complete obscurity, with her influence unmarked and unrecognised? 
 
The song 'Try A Little Tenderness' became a powerhouse hit for both Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding. Salena  invites us to take a moment to listen back to the inimitable Little Miss Cornshucks earlier version, to make the case for a lost legend of blues.

(Photo: Mildred Cummings aka Little Miss Cornshucks, courtesy of Cornshuck's family)

BBC World Service

Salena Godden visits blues and jazz-soaked Chicago to uncover the story of the unique 1940s singer Little Miss Cornshucks.

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