Born Anna Marie Wooldridge in Chicago,ย Illinoisย on August 6, 1930, and raised on a farm in Calvin Center, Cass County, Michigan, Abbey Lincoln (stage name) was an African-Americanย jazzย singer, songwriter,ย actress, andย civil rights activist. The tenth out of twelve children, she began her singing career at a young age, performing in school and church choirs. At 19, Lincoln won her first amateur concert.
When she was 22 years old, Lincoln moved toย Californiaย and then spent a year in Honolulu,ย Hawaii, as a singer at a nightclub with the stage name Gaby Lee. She moved back to California where she met Bob Russell, lyricist, who became her manager and gave her the stage name Abbey Lincoln.
After living in California for many years, Lincoln moved back to Chicago as her singing career was beginning to take off. She landed a role as a singer in the 1956 filmย The Girl Canโt Help It. After the film, Lincoln fired her manager and became a recording artist.
Lincoln recorded her first album,ย Abbey Lincolnโs Affair: A Story of a Girl in Love, in 1955. She moved to New York City,ย New Yorkย in 1957 to pursue her music career by working at the Village Vanguard, a jazz club in Greenwich Village, New York. While performing there she metย Max Roach, a drummer, composer, and bebop creator whom she would eventually marry.
Roach played a large role in her civil rights activism in the 1960s. She, her husband, and other artists performed at benefits and fundraisers for theย National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)ย and theย Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), among other civil rights groups. Lincolnโs music began to reflect injustices blacks experienced in America in albums likeย We Insist! Freedom Now Suiteย andย Straight Ahead.
Lincoln played roles in the 1964 filmย Nothing But a Manย andย For the Love of Ivyย in 1968. By the end of the 1960s, however, Lincoln and Roach divorced, and she moved back to California, where she became immersed inย art. In the 1970s and 1980s, Lincoln recorded songs for Inner City and Enja, small independent record labels. In 1989, Lincoln was invited byย French producer Jean-Philippe Allard to record for Verve Records/ France, giving a major boost to her career. In 1990, Lincolnโs album,ย The World Is Falling Down, propelled her back into fame in her sixties. She continued to record philosophical CDs for Verve, which brought her continuous success.
In 2003, Lincoln received the National Endowment for the Arts NEA Jazz Masters Award. Her last album,ย Abbey Sings Abbey, was recorded in 2007. She died on August 14, 2010 at the age of 80 in her Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan, New York.
