Vaughn De Leath: The 1st Lady of 1920’s Radio

Female American singer Vaughn De Leath was was a household name in the 1920's earning herself the nicknames "The Original Radio Girl" and the "First Lady of Radio." Nowadays she is mainly regarded as an obscure recording artist, but her fascinating life story and her outstanding contribution both to modern music and to Radio Broadcasting deserve much greater recognition. 

De Leath was an early female exponent of the style of vocal singing known as “crooning”.  One of her later hit songs, "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" recorded in 1927 achieved everlasting fame when it was covered by Elvis Presley in 1960. She also originally recorded “I Want To Be Loved By You” - a song that was later made famous by the Hollywood movie star Marilyn Munroe. 

Leonore Vonderlieth was born in the town of Mount Pulaski, Illinois on September 26, 1894. Her parents were George W Vonderlieth, the son of German immigrants Henry Vonderlieth and Catherina Vonderlieth, and Katherine “Katie” Vonderlieth - formerly Miller - who had been a local musician and singer before her marriage. Leonore also had an older sister called Alma but sadly their father died on October 2nd 1901 when his youngest daughter was just 7 years old. 

At the age of 12, Leonore relocated to Los Angeles with her mother and sister, where she finished high school and studied music. Whilst at Mills College, she began writing songs, but she soon dropped out of her studies to pursue a singing career and adopted the stage name of "Vaughn De Leath." which was a play on her German surname. Her vocals ranged from soprano to deep contralto and were well adapted to the emerging, less restrictive jazz vocal style of the era.

The decade named as “The Roaring Twenties” took place in a fast paced, ever- changing world, where automobiles began to roll off the production lines in their thousands and astonished crowds gathered to see the exciting new 'moving pictures'. To prosper or just survive in this innovative and creative decade, one had to be adaptable, intuitive, enterprising and talented. Vaughn De Leath was all of these things and more - as can be heard by the extraordinary breadth of her musical repertoire and her flexible singing style. Such talents were instantly recognized in a survivor and achiever. She was an “all American girl” completely in tune with the modern times.

In January 1920, inventor and radio pioneer Lee DeForest brought her to the tiny studio of his station, 2XG, located in New York City's World's Tower, where she sang "Swanee River" in a live broadcast. This was a whole year before the first broadcasting station went on the air in an experimental way. It was very crude broadcasting in 1920, compared with the kind of work done only seven years later, but when Vaughn de Leath sang her jazzy tunes to satisfy a whim of De Forest, transmission was much cruder. She recalls:  

    "The studio at that time was a very small room, hardly any bigger than a fair-sized closet, and the broadcasting was done by means of an instrument which greatly resembled an old fashioned phonograph horn."

Although this was not, as is sometimes wrongly stated, the first time a female vocalist had  broadcast live, Vaughn nevertheless established herself as a skilled radio performer whilst Radio broadcasting was still in it’s infancy. De Leath wasn't the first female singer to broadcast for Lee De Forest either - a "contralto singer named Van Boos" (Eugenia Farrar) sang "I Love You Truly" for him over an experimental New York City station in 1907.

 De Forest would later say about Vaughn De Leath:

 "She was an instant success. Her voice and her cordial, unassuming microphone presence were ideally suited to the novel task. Without instruction she seemed to sense exactly what was necessary in song and patter to successfully put herself across".

Having been advised that high notes sung in her natural soprano might shatter the fragile vacuum tubes of her carbon microphone's amplifier, De Leath switched to a deep contralto and in the process invented "crooning", which became the dominant popular vocal singing style for the next three decades. 

By 1921, in the formative years of commercial radio, De Leath began singing at WJZ, in Newark, New Jersey (a station later known as WABC in New York City). She also performed on the New York stage in the early to mid-1920s, but radio became her primary medium, and she made a real name for herself as a radio entertainer. She was able to accompany herself on banjo, ukulele, guitar, and piano, and could literally entertain the listeners for hours at a time when there was an excess of programming time and very little recorded material to go on the air with. De Leath also had a highly versatile range of styles, and as the material required, could adapt to become a serious balladeer, a playful girl, a vampish coquette, or a vaudeville comedian.

Her recording career began in 1921. Over the next decade she recorded hundreds of songs for a number of labels, including Edison, Columbia, Okeh, Gennett, Victor, and Brunswick. She occasionally recorded for major label subsidiaries under various pseudonyms such as Gloria Geer, Mamie Lee, Sadie Green, Betty Brown, Nancy Foster, Marion Ross, Glory Clark, Angelina Marco, and Gertrude Dwyer. She literally appeared under one name or another for just about every single US record label around in the 1920s.

The roaring twenties were also known as "The Jazz Years”. The first jazz recording had been made in 1917 by the white jazz band The Original Dixieland Jazz Band and in 1920 it was the black blues singer, Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues”, selling 75,000 copies in Harlem within a month that set the ball rolling for blues records too. But in a racially segregated USA the records of black artists were placed into what the industry then categorised as “Race Recordings” allotting them to issue series of their own. This was black music for a black audience but through artists like Vaughn de Leath the songs could also reach a broader white audience and blur those musical boundaries.

Listening to her recordings and hearing the many musical and subject references to the south, it is difficult to believe that Vaughn De Leath was not born or associated with the South in any way. I Love The Land Of Old Black Joe, was one of several "Southern" style songs that she recorded including Is Ya?, Honey, Honey (l’se A Waitin’ Jes Fo’ You) and Stay In Your Own Backyard and the novelty song Blow, Blow, Blow On Your Old Harmonica, Joe 

Though not mimicking the stereotyped southern black accent Vaughn still accentuated a “slight southern drawl” in her light hearted “popular” songs such as  As Long I’m With You and Since I Found You. These recordings are tantalizing in the way that the listener is left wondering how much of the performance is pure theatre and how much is a true reflection of her character; carefree, humorous and determined? 

Similar clues to her wonderfully comic character are found in  When The Pussywillow Whispers To The Catnip which was also known as The Whisper Song. This comedy song proved to be very popular in 1927 with several recordings of the number being released in the same year by other artists, including Cliff "Ukelele" Ike who had recorded it in the previous month to her release. It’s slightly surreal subject matter and silly sound effects border on the zany and one cannot help but wonder what could have happened had it got into the hands of Spike Jones a few years later.

Dancing The Devil Away was a snappy “hot” jazz number which Vaughn recorded in the company of Don Voorhees And His Earl Carroll Vanities Orchestra - under whose name the record was released. Vaughn also provided the vocals for the flip side of the record The Same Old Moon. 

De Leath's “Crooning” style is beautifully demonstrated on the delicate There’s A Cradle in Carolina. The song is that of the restless, displaced, wandering hobo who at “the end of the road” has journeyed so far only to find himself staring at failure and dreams of returning to the comfort of home. The record was evidently a hit with Gene Austin, Ben Bernie and Nat Shilkret, including the song into their recordings within days of Vaughn’s release.

The knock-about novelty duet with Jack Kaufman I’m Gonna Dance Wit’ De Guy Wot Brung Me (also known as The Gum Chewers Song) was originally written by Walter O’ Keefe with music (for ukulele) by Harry Archer. This wonderful comedy song is made all the more humorous by Vaughn’s attempt to sound like someone from the Bronx when she actually sounds more like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins! 

The gloriously catchy hit song I Can’t Give You Anything But Love had featured earlier in the year in what was to become the longest running black musical of the twenties, “Blackbirds of 1928”. It opened in May of the same year, featuring Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson and singer, Adelaide Hall. The song was written by Dorothy Fields, daughter of the musical’s producer Lew Fields, with music by Jimmy McHugh. Vaughn De Leath recorded it with Ben Selvin's Knickerbockers!

I’ve Got A Feeling I’m Falling was originally written by Billy Rose with music by Thomas “Fats” WaIler. This popular song with it’s Waller trade mark composition does have a diluted jazz feel and Vaughn’s crooning style gives the song great justice. It seems to have been first recorded by Beb Bernie and his Roosevelt Orchestra in late March 1929. “Fats” WaIler, himself, left the piece alone until August, by which time several artists had recorded this hit including Gene Austin and Miff Moler. He did record it was as one of his many piano instrumentals which he then re-recorded six years later, again only as an instrumental.

With her versatile singing style Vaughn approached the moods of her song with great effect, from the lively Marianna to the melancholic love song My Dear which is set against the background of what sounds like the accompaniment of the popular Hawaiian guitarist of the day Frank Ferrara. Her best-known recording over the years was probably the version of "The Man I Love" she sang with Paul Whiteman's Concert Orchestra for Columbia.

De Leath also recorded songs for silent films - she composed the title song for the 1922 silent film Oliver Twist. An article in Spotlight's Glare in The Music Trades (November 11, 1922) described the link with the Jackie Coogan movie as "One of the biggest tie ups ever undertaken in connection with a picture feature song".

De Leath's recording accompanists included some of the major jazz musicians of the 1920s, including cornetist Red Nichols, trombonist Miff Mole, guitarists Dick McDonough and Eddie Lang, and bandleader Paul Whiteman. She demonstrated a high level of instrumental ability on the ukulele, and occasionally accompanied herself on recordings, including on the hit 1925 hit Ukulele Lady, which was covered by Bette Midler. Vuaghns version was later used in the 1999 film, The Cider House Rules

In 1923, Vaughn became one of the first women in America to manage a radio station - WDT in New York City, on which she also performed:

Boston Herald, July 29, 1923

FAMOUS  'RADIO  GIRL'  NOW  OWN  DIRECTOR: 

Miss  De  Leath  Extends  Versatility  as  Manager  of  WDT

Vaughn De Leath, so popular with radio fans through her frequent appearances before the microphone, is about to challenge the approval of radio audiences in a new role--that of studio and program manager of station WDT, now opening for general broadcasting.

Rated among the leading women composers of the country, her songs and musical scores are known to all lovers of good music. As a recording artist, her phonographic records have an enormous circulation, marked by an unusually even distribution over the entire country, due, no doubt, in a large measure, to the great range of her contralto voice (three octaves) and its quality of sympathetic appeal.

This young woman's remarkable versatility is further shown by her high rank as a piano player (not the mechanical kind) and by her success as a director of her own band and orchestra, or more than 60 pieces, as well as her own popularity as a concert singer and recitalist.

Sadly her career as a Director of a Radio Station did not progress any further than that - the station eventually became defunct and Vaughn simply went back to singing again.

She was one of the first American entertainers to broadcast to Europe via a transatlantic radio transmission. The Wireless Age (1923) presented an interview with "Vaughn De Leath, The Original Radio Girl", which recounted the 12:30AM December 9, 1922 WJZ radio broadcast from New York to London.

 The Star-Spangled Banner burst upon the air like the coming of a cyclone. ... And then a voice came in "WJZ - WJZ - WJZ." ... His Majesty's Consul-General in New York then spoke briefly, expressing the hope that radio will be the means of cementing the English- speaking peoples of the world even more closely. Then Vaughn De Leath sang.

This was the first confirmed trans-Atlantic reception of a U.S. broadcasting station ever. 

One of her last newspapers interviews was with The Zanesville Ohio Times in 1927 where she reflected back on her career and described her love of singing on the Radio:

    "I never fail to feel a shiver of joy when I enter a broadcasting room," she says. "My enthusiasm for it is boundless, for each time I feel it is a new experience. My underlying thought always is that, somewhere or other in the extensive ether, there is someone who has never heard me before.That, together with the thought of my faithful listeners, gives me an incentive always to do my best."

 Still one to break broadcasting boundaries, in 1928 she appeared on an experimental television broadcast, and later became a special guest for the debut broadcast of Voice of Firestone Radio Hour.

She made her final nationwide network performances in the early 1930s and in her waning years, she made radio appearances on local New York stations, including WBEN in Buffalo. 

For most of her career Vaughn DeLeath had billed herself as "the First Lady of Radio," but in 1931 she sued singer Kate Smith for also using this name. Smith withdrew, and went back to using her other trademark nickname "the Sweet Songbird of the South”. However it was a bittersweet victory, as after a final recording session for Eli Oberstein's Crown label in 1931, Vaughn De Leath disappeared from the radio and the music business altogether. 

Little is known about what happened in De Leath's personal life after 1931 but from records we know she had two husbands. Her first was Leon Geer, an artist whom she had married in New York on 17 April 1924 and then divorced in 1935. She subsequently wed Jewish musician Irwin Rosenbloom, on June 9, 1936 at Bel Air Methodist Episcopal church, Maryland. Four years later on May 20, 1941 in Reno Nevada she was granted a divorce from Rosenbloom on the grounds of extreme cruelty. Rosenbloom went on to marry the infamous Opera Soprano, Lydia Locke in the 1950’s. (See Separate blog post on Lydia Locke for more details)

  

With the decline of her radio performances, no more recordings being made and two failed marriages behind her, tragically Vaughn De Leath went from being the pioneering "First Lady of Radio" to an alcoholic living in absolute poverty within the space of just 10 short years.

She was only in her late 40’s when she died on May 28, 1943 in Buffalo, New York and her ashes were taken buried in her childhood home of Mount Pulaski, Illinois. 

Her lasting legacy was that she left behind a wonderful collection of songs and music from the early days of recording and broadcasting, which we can still enjoy today. 

©The History Researcher / Chrissy Hamlin