Eva Taylor

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Eva Taylor (January 22, 1895 - October 31, 1977) was an African American blues singer and stage actress.

Born Irene Joy Gibbons in St. Louis, Missouri, she began singing as a child and toured extensively with the "Josephine Gassman and Her Pickaninnies" vaudeville act. As a young woman, she continued her career in music and eventually met the multi-talented writer and composer Clarence Williams. They married in 1921, and after her husband was hired by Okeh Records, they settled in New York City where she recorded a number of records alone and together with her husband throughout the 1920s and '30s. Although she adopted the stage name of Eva Taylor, she also worked under her birth name as "Irene Gibbons and her Jazz Band." She was part of the "Charleston Chasers," the name given to a few all-star studio ensembles who recorded between 1925 and 1931.

In 1927, Eva Taylor appeared on Broadway in "Bottomland," a musical written and produced by her husband. She retired from the music business in the early 1940s but returned to performing in the late 1960s and early 1970s with tours throughout Europe.

Eva Taylor died of cancer in 1977 in West Hempstead, New York and was interred next to her husband in Saint Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale, Long Island, New York. Their grandson is Clarence Williams III.