It was an unlikely and courageous love story, but a love story nonetheless. Pearl Bailey was an internationally beloved entertainer. Louie Bellson was one of the finest drummers in the world of jazz. After a four-day courtship in London — they were introduced by Duke Ellington trombonist Juan Tizol — Bailey and Bellson married on November 19, 1952, and remained so for 38 years, until Bailey’s death in August 1990, at age 72.
At that time, interracial marriages were illegal in many states, and quite simply, given their visibility, their decision to wed was dangerous. The two received hate mail and death threats through the years. Even Bellson’s father, at the outset, was strongly against the wedding. He wasn’t “in the mood to have a colored granddaughter,” was just one of the things he said at the time. The mothers of the bride and groom, however, were all for it, and Bailey answered the tabloids by saying, “There’s only one race. The human race.”
Bailey was 34 and Bellson 28 when they were wed in London’s historic Caxton Hall. Actor Jose Ferrer was supposed to be the best man, but traffic and bad weather made that impossible. The reception was held at the upscale Polish Club in Mayfair. Among the 50 guests was Bailey’s dear friend Cab Calloway, then in the British cast of Porgy and Bess.
Though the hate mail and the death threats continued for a time, when the shock (in some quarters) at their marriage wore off and the media moved on to other things, the happy couple continued to pursue their careers. Several years after their union they adopted a son, Tony, and later a daughter, Dee Dee.
By the time of Tony’s adoption, the controversy wore off and the couple was more or less accepted. There are several possible reasons for that acceptance. Perhaps the fact that both were “entertainers” gave them license in the public’s mind to “be controversial,” as it were. Bailey and Bellson were also simply, with rare exception, loved by audiences across the color line.
“Bailey’s charm was so potent and Bellson was such a talented drummer that TV advertisers and audiences tended to overlook their marriage, if they were even aware of it,” said The Wall Street Journal in a piece about the couple’s later years. “Feeling good was simply a more desired emotion than feeling hate.” What the Journal didn’t say was that Pearl Bailey and Louie Bellson were perceived as non-threatening. It’s also essential to note that in 1952, and through the earlier years of their marriage, Bailey and Bellson were not really top-tier celebrities.
Bailey, in her prime, was a superstar, but that didn’t really come until years after her marriage to Bellson. She started out as a singer and a dancer in her adopted hometown of Philadelphia. Her rise was fast: She worked frequently with bands led by Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington, and often appeared in Atlantic City at the Club Harlem and Million Dollar Pier. Note that Pearl Bailey did not appear at Atlantic City’s Steel Pier. The Pier didn’t hire a Black entertainer until singer/bandleader Billy Eckstine was booked to perform in the Pier’s Marine Ballroom in 1951.
She hit the national spotlight by way of her Broadway debut in 1946 in a show called St. Louis Woman. She found success as a recording artist, author, nightclub performer and star of stage and screen — notably in the all-Black version of Hello, Dolly. It was Dolly, which opened with Bailey in the cast in 1967, that made her a superstar. She became increasingly active in Republican politics through the years, and was appointed “Ambassador of Love,” an honorary position, by President Nixon in 1970. In 1988, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Joan Myers Brown, founder of Philadelphia’s acclaimed modern dance company Philadanco, got to know Pearl Bailey well. “I worked in Pearl’s show as a dancer for two years in the late 1950s,” she told me. “I was dancing at the Club Harlem in Atlantic City, she was working on the white side of town. After her show she came to see ours. She fluctuated, sometimes she was an SOB and sometimes she was a sweetheart. She fired me one day for cursing, believe it or not. The next day, she had the company manager in Philadelphia call me to come back.”
Those who knew the “behind-the-scenes” Pearl Bailey were well aware that personally, she was not all sweetness and light and could be difficult. Her personal and professional life, before she hit in St. Louis Woman in 1946, had been a struggle, and there’s no denying the challenges involved in being a Black woman in show business.
Louie Bellson, born Luigi Paolino Alfredo Francesco Antonio Balassoni, was one of those rare people in entertainment who seemed universally loved. He appeared with the big bands of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Harry James and was sometimes deputized in the Basie band. But it was with Duke Ellington that he made history, becoming the first white member of Ellington’s organization in 1951. He also made his mark on drumming with his use of two kick drums, a setup used by many of today’s rock drummers.
Bellson was also a superb arranger, composer and educator, among the first to introduce the concept of the drum clinic. He loved teaching and passing along what he learned from the great drummers in history.
When Pearl and Louie married, he became her musical director and served in that capacity off and on until her passing. Away from Pearl, he appeared with his own bands and as a member of Norman Granz’s Verve recording stable and Jazz at the Philharmonic stage shows, where he could be heard backing Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum and dozens of others.
Bailey wasn’t strictly a jazz singer but did work with dozens of jazz musicians and most of the big bands and was well respected in the world of jazz. Her musical collaboration with Bellson through the years worked as well as her marriage. Knowing Louie as I did — and knowing Pearl slightly — I’d have to rather subjectively say that the success and the longevity of their union was due, in large part, to Louie’s patience, spirituality and generally positive attitude about everything and everybody. JT