Ruth Brown - Personal Life

Personal Life

  • Oldest of seven children.
  • First husband Jimmy Brown (trumpeter) was found to be already married.
  • Married Earl Swanson (saxophonist) in 1955, the father of her son Earl Swanson Jr.
  • Married to Bill Blunt (police officer) for three years.
  • Was mother of Ronald David Jackson ("Ronnie") with Clyde McPhatter of The Drifters, although Ronnie grew up believing that his father was Brown's former companion and accompanist Willis "Gator" Jackson.
  • Her nephew Rakim is considered one of the most influential rappers in the history of the hip hop genre.

Brown died in a Las Vegas-area hospital on November 17, 2006, from complications following a heart attack and stroke she suffered after surgery in the previous month. A memorial concert for her was held on January 22, 2007 at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York.

Brown is buried at the Roosevelt Memorial Park, Chesapeake City in Virginia.

Read more about this topic:  Ruth Brown

Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:

    I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly you find—at the age of fifty, say—that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about.... It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.
    Agatha Christie (1891–1976)

    There was a heavy power in her eyes which laid hold of his whole being, as if he had drunk some powerful drug. He had been feeling weak and done before. Now the life came back into him, he felt delivered from his own fretted, daily self.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)