Valerie Wisecracker and Angela Patua, Brazilian Musician, paid tribute to

Mary " Diamond Teeth" McClain, an original!

from The African American Registry Mary McClain *Mary Smith McClain was born on this date in 1902. She was an African-American blues singer and entertainer. Better known as Walking Mary and later Diamond Teeth Mary, she was born in Huntington, West Virginia. Mary McClain was the half sister of Bessie Smith (Smith's mother was one of Mary's four stepmothers). At the age of 13, young McClain couldn't stand the beatings any more and left home to join the circus disguised as a boy in her brother's clothes. She came to Memphis, Tennessee, worked as a chorus girl and joined the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, where she became a featured singer. McClain spent the 1920’s and 1930’s performing in a variety of medicine and minstrel shows. She shared billings with her sister Bessie, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Big Mama Thornton, Ray Charles, Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington. She toured with the USO and sang at the Apollo Theater, the Smithsonian, and at the White House where her show-stopping charisma received standing-ovations. McClain also lived with baseball great Satchel Paige, and was never short of stories about her life and times. One evening in Memphis she recalled that a young Elvis Presley "would bring Howlin' Wolf and me liquor from the liquor cabinet." During the '40s, McClain had diamonds removed from a bracelet and set into her upper and lower front teeth, creating a dazzling stage effect. The diamonds, earned McClain her nickname, and although the original stones were sold to help pay her mother's medical bills, she later got a new set of teeth, new diamonds, and her first album release, IF I CAN'T SELL IT, I'M GONNA SIT ON IT on the Big Boss label. Tragically, McClain witnessed the heartbreaking death of Bessie Smith. She once remembered “Bessie was lying in a hospital waiting room, her arm hangin' by a thread and bleedin' in a pan while the white doctors stood by and watched doing nothin'. They let her die." "Diamond Teeth" Mary McClain died on April 4, 2000. As she wanted, her ashes were sprinkled on the railroad tracks in West Virginia where she hopped her first train. Her gowns are in the Florida State Museum and the Memphis Blues Museum. in Miami, Tobacco Road named the performing room upstairs the Diamond Teeth Mary Cabaret in her honor. Reference: Nothing But the Blues The Music and the Musicians Edited by Lawrence Cohn Copyright 1993 Abbeville Publishing Group, New York ISBN 1-55859-271-7