Etta Moten was born in Weimar, Texas, the only child of a Methodist minister, Rev. Freeman F. Moten, and his wife Ida. She started singing as a child in the church choir.
She attended Western University, a historically black college (HBCU) in Quindaro, Kansas, where she studied music. She completed her education at the University of Kansas, where she earned a B.A. in voice and drama in 1931. Moten became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, which provided a network throughout her career.
Moten moved to New York City, where she first performed as a soloist with the Eva Jessye Choir. Jessye was a groundbreaking collaborator with Virgil Thomsonand George Gershwin. Moten was cast in the Broadway show Zombie.
On January 31, 1933, Moten became the first black star to perform at the White House. She performed in two musical films released in 1933: Flying Down to Rio(singing "The Carioca") and a more substantial role as a war widow in the Busby Berkeley musical Gold Diggers of 1933 (singing "My Forgotten Man" with Joan Blondell).
Gershwin discussed her singing the part of "Bess" in his new work Porgy and Bess, which he had written with her in mind. She was concerned about trying a role above her natural range of contralto. In the 1942 revival, she did accept the role of "Bess", but she would not sing the word "nigger", which Ira Gershwin subsequently wrote out of the libretto. Through her performances on Broadway and with the national touring company until 1945, she captured Bess as her signature role.
She stopped performing in 1952 due to vocal problems. After her husband, Claude Barnett, died in 1967, she lived in Chicago, where she became active in theNational Council of Negro Women, the Chicago Lyric Opera and the Field Museum. She was also active in the DuSable Museum, and the South Side Community Art Center.
In addition to activities with civic organizations, Moten Barnett served as a board member of both The Links, a service organization for African-American women, and her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha. She was also active in International Women's Year activities and events in the 1980s.
Etta Moten Barnett hosted a radio show in Chicago called I Remember When before the United States government appointed her to be a representative on cultural missions to ten African nations. Dozens of recordings of I Remember When are available at the Library of Congress and at the Schomburg Library in New York City. On March, 6, 1957 Moten Barnett interviewed Dr. Martin Luther King in Accra, Ghana, where they were both attending the celebration of Ghana's independence from Great Britain--she as the wife of Claude Barnett, a prominent Republican member of the official U.S. delegation headed by Vice President Richard Nixon; and King, fresh from the Montgomery Bus Boycott, as a man interested in the liberation of oppressed people globally, but with no official place in Ghana's Independence Day festivities. The recording of this conversation, conducted in a Ghanaian radio studio where Moten Barnett was gathering recordings for her Chicago broadcasts, is also available at the Library of Congress and the Schomburg Library.
About 1918 she married Curtis Brooks, who had been a teacher of hers in high school. They had three daughters: Sue, Gladys and Etta Vee, but divorced after six years of marriage.
In 1934, while living and working in New York, Moten married a second time, to Claude Barnett, the head of the Associated Negro Press. They were married for 33 years, until his death.
THE CARIOCA, Etta Moten Barnett, vocalist 1933
From Utube
Published on Jul 24, 2013
From Gold Diggers of 1933 - "Remember My Forgotten Man" is sung by Joan Blondell and Etta Moten and features sets influenced by German Expressionism and a gritty evocation of Depression-era poverty. Berkeley was inspired by the May 1932 war veterans' march on Washington, D.C. When the number was finished, Jack Warner and Darryl F. Zanuck (the studio production head) were so impressed that they ordered it moved to the end of the film, displacing "Pettin' in the Park".
Joan Blondell and Etta Moten - Remember My Forgotten Man (1933)
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