We continue the series with the world’s first international blues superstar, Alberta Hunter.

Alberta Hunter was a singular talent. Born and raised in Memphis, TN, she began her professional singing career at age 11. By her late twenties, she’d fronted orchestras led by King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, and written "Down Hearted Blues", a massive hit for Bessie Smith.

In the height of Jim Crow, and years before women in America had secured the right to vote, Alberta Hunter became the world’s first blues superstar by taking her talents to Paris and London, where she was received and revered as nothing less than musical royalty.