Early Life
Bailey was born in Southampton County in southeastern Virginia, to the Reverend Joseph and Ella Mae Ricks Bailey. She was reared in the Bloodfields neighborhood of Newport News, Virginia.
She made her stage-singing debut when she was 15 years old. Her brother Bill Bailey was beginning his own career as a tap dancer, and suggested she enter an amateur contest at Philadelphia’s Pearl Theater. She entered, won first prize, later won a similar contest at Harlem’s famous Apollo Theater, and decided to pursue a career in entertainment.
Read more about this topic: Pearl Bailey
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious. For that we care for them; from that have issued endless consequences.”
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“Glorious bouquets and storms of applause ... are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys. But to move an audience in such a role, to hear in the applause that unmistakable note which breaks through good theatre manners and comes from the heart, is to feel that you have won through to life itself. Such pleasure does not vanish with the fall of the curtain, but becomes part of one’s own life.”
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