Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
E-Book Description: An aging, lonely Josephine Baker has one last chance to dance across the stage, but only if she accepts an invitation to visit Berlin. The destination unlocks long-buried memories of the decadent pre-World War II Berlin, and of a beautiful young woman who reached out the star and eased her loneliness.
Public Domain
Josephine Baker Biography: Jo Baker was born June 3, 1906, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her birth name was Freda Josephine McDonald. She married Willie Baker in 1921 (notice she would have been 15 at the time - and he was her second husband!) and chose to keep his last name. Her father, Eddie Carson, was a drummer who abandoned her and her mother while Josephine was small.
Baker's first jobs were as a babysitter and a housekeeper for white families in St. Louis. When she was 13, she got a waitressing job in a club, and ever after she was financially independent - unusual for an American woman of that time.
Within three years, she made it onto a stage as a performer, appearing in comedy sketches. She was rejected as a chorus girl for being "too skinny and too dark." Still, she learned all the chorus lines' routines, and thus could fill in for dancers when they were absent. Audiences began to notice how she incorporated comic touches - such as the famous way she crossed her eyes - into the dance routines, and she became a breakout star.
Public Domain
Given the opportunity to perform in France, Baker became an instant sensation. She was a major celebrity in Europe, starring in two movies in 1930 and becoming one of the most-photographed women in the world. A tour of the U.S. in 1936 proved disastrous, though: deeply ingrained racism made American critics and audiences unable to accept a woman of color who displayed Baker's celebrity status, power and sophistication.
Returning to France, Baker worked for the French Resistance during World War Two, risking her life to smuggle secret messages in her music sheets. In the 1950s and 1960s, she actively fought against American racial segregation, although she continued to live in France. She eventually adopted twelve children from different ethnic backgrounds; she called them her "Rainbow Tribe."
In 1973, Baker finally enjoyed a warm reception in the U.S. when she performed at Carnegie Hall. Baker died in France in 1975.
Here's Baker singing "Bye Bye Blackbird." (You may remember Johnny Depp and Marion Cotillard dancing to Joss Stone's much-slower version in the movie Public Enemies.)
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This is actually a false start, but I'm nonetheless working on writing at least 4,000 words of a speculative story in which Bessie Smith is a vampire. In this scene, she's canoodling with Benny Goodman (not just a pun on her song title; they actually toured together), but soon she will hook up with George Gershwin. She'll pass her immortal gift to him to save him from the brain tumor that, otherwise, will kill him. Its intended destination is the anthology Vampyres: A History Written in Blood.
A good man is hard to find, Bessie thought, chuckling. Leaning back against the cheap headboard, she watched Benny pour whiskey into a chipped tumbler. On the stage and in the sack, Benny was pure passion. Everywhere else, he looked so stiff and square he might’ve had a fireplace poker up his ass. Benny knew how to show a girl a good time, but this could never be a permanent thing.
“Get you another drink, doll?” he asked her.
She bristled at the overly-familiar nickname. The other boys in the band called her Miss Bessie, and she liked it that way. “Sugar, you got no idea how thirsty I am.”
He filled the other tumbler and brought it to her in bed, then sank into the uncomfortable chair in the corner. He sipped his whiskey steadily; Bessie downed hers in quick swallows. It hadn’t had an effect on her since ’29, the year she crossed over, but she could keep a secret.
Bessie had learned to keep the secret well. She hadn’t kept it from Jack, but then, Bessie’s late husband hadn’t had the decency to keep it in his own pants before he called out Bessie for her trysts. Jack had known about her back-alley fling with the Romanian, the one who’d taken her blood and given her the unasked-for “gift” of immortality. He brought it up that day – the last day of their marriage, the last moments of Jack’s life – to start one of their knock-down, drag-out fights. He hadn’t expected Bessie’s new strength…or her fangs.
She still smiled when she remembered the look on Jack's face right after she drained the life out of him. Whatever the Romanian had given her, she hadn’t passed it on to Jack. In nearly eight years, she hadn’t passed it on to anyone, as far as she could tell. She also hadn’t aged a day and hadn’t been sick once.
Benny reached over and fiddled with the knob on the radio. It crackled and groaned before he settled on a jazz station. Bessie recognized the instrumental. “Gershwin,” she said.
He bobbed his head enthusiastically. “From Girl Crazy – ‘Treat Me Rough.’ Not one of the best numbers in the show.”
“I don’t know,” Bessie said. “That one sounds truer than all those June-moon I-love-you songs I couldn’t sing with a straight face.”
As I'm researching this beautiful and immensely talented woman, I'm reading A Bad Woman Feeling Good: Blues and the Women Who Sing Them by Buzzy Jackson. It gives me more good information about the recently deceased Etta James. Part of the James chapter reads:
"For a seventeen-year-old, she certainly sounded like a woman. Just as the early blues queens such as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Victoria Spivey had brought sexuality, humor, and sass to the new world of blues recording,Etta James was bringing the same qualities to early rock 'n' roll. Sex was always one of James's favorite topics, from 'Roll With Me, Henry' on. Like Bessie Smith's 'I'm Wild About That Thing' (1929), James's songs were evidence that women enjoyed sex and were comfortable asking for what they wanted. They also depicted sex as an integral part of the romantic experience, something to be approached with humor and passion, as opposed to something a 'good girl' denied her partner, a concept popular among mainstream moralists that had been sold to women since the nineteenth century. Up until the feminist movement of the 1960s, women's blues were one of the few sources providing a counter-argument to the idea that sexual enjoyment was reserved for men only."
There you have it - blues women are the spiritual ancestors of erotica writers.
The other women's music book I read this week was a children's book I received free of charge from the Amazon Vine program: Jazz Age Josephine by Jonah Winter (words) and Marjorie Priceman (illustrations). Marjorie Priceman's illustrations are beautiful, especially the two-page spread of the Eiffel Tower.
The words don't completely impress me. The scat-singing parts aren't easy to read. The truncated story of how Miss Baker partially overcame racism and couldn't overcome loneliness, while it may indeed be true, is not a very emotionally satisfying read. I have a hard time imagining that the intended audience of children 4-8 will care very much about jazz or about Josephine Baker. Some noble parents or educators might display this one in February for Black History Month or in March for Women's History Month, but I doubt many children will count it among their favorites.
I hope I'm wrong, though. Josephine Baker is a fascinating and inspirational figure.
It's Friday! I'm in love...with sharing my creative writing with the world. If you're joining me from the fabulous Shah Wharton's Weekend Creation Blog Hop, welcome!
Today, I'd like to spotlight "Josephine Baker in Berlin." In this stand-alone short story of just over 4,700 words:
An aging, lonely Josephine Baker has one last chance to dance across the stage, but only if she accepts an invitation to visit Berlin. The destination unlocks long-buried memories of the decadent pre-World War II Berlin, and of a beautiful young woman who reached out the star and eased her loneliness.
Find the e-book in every possible format at Smashwords for $.99. If you do read it, I would LOVE a review.
Jo Baker was a fearless, triumphant woman, and so is Shannon Mulholland, a United Nations emergency coordinator whose side project is Safi Coffee. The fair-trade company works with coffee growers in Kenya, helping them achieve higher living standards. The beans come right to your door, which is awesome, but the best part is how your morning cuppa joe could be doing some real good in the world.
FYI, I've been seriously considering Jane Friedman's advice to blog on a regular schedule. In her most recent article in Writing For Dollars!, Jennifer Brown Banks of the Pen & Prosper blog gives the same advice. So, having heard it from two different but authoritative sources, I believe I will henceforth institute WIP (Work In Progress) Wednesdays.
A lot of people like to do Wordless Wednesdays, with just a visual, but I'm not much of a visual artist. I like the sound of WIP Wednesdays because I can share about what I'm working on, and so can my guest bloggers. Look for that this coming Wednesday.
Send me an e-mail if you're a writer interested in being featured on an upcoming WIP Wednesday.
Update, January 2015: Find "Josephine Baker in Berlin" at my Etsy shop, Writer's Brain Has Wings.
