Edna Hicks

Edna Hicks was a New Orleans native, and is first heard from in 1916 when she is listed in the cast of a black vaudeville show in New York in 1916. She toured on the TOBA circuit and was quite popular in her day, especially in the Midwest, appearing in Chicago and Cincinnati. Edna Hicks was not a particularly artistic Blues singer, but had a loud, clear voice and a good sense of timing. Her recording career began in March of 1923 and lasted exactly one year. She recorded a couple sessions each for Victor, Columbia, Ajax, Brunswick, Vocalion, Paramount and Gennett. Edna Hicks' 32 issued sides for these companies are among the rarest of any made by the blues women of the 1920s, and her final Paramount coupling (Paramount 12090) has never been located. Although Fletcher Henderson was her most frequent accompanist, she was also backed by Lemuel Fowler and Porter Grainger. Edna Hicks was on tour to Chicago when, on August 16, 1925, she was cleaning an old pot bellied stove with gasoline. When the rags she was using ignited, Edna Hicks burned to death. She was 29 years old.