Baltimore jazz icon Ruby Glover talked about her life and career before treating her audience to some singing in Baltimore City Hall?s rotunda Thursday afternoon, a spokesman for the mayor’s office said.
Glover, 77, has been a part of the city?s jazz scene for more than 50 years as a performer, organizer and lecturer.
“They reference Ruby as the godmother of jazz in Baltimore,” said Keith Covington, owner of the New Haven Lounge, one of the jazz clubs where Glover performed. “She’s served as a nurturer to many, many jazz artists. She?s somebody we admire and look up to.”
Glover teaches jazz appreciation at Sojourner-Douglass College in Baltimore and has helped organize the annual Billie Holiday Vocal Competition, now in its 18th year.
Glover’s voice, with smoky, bluesy overtones, has been compared to Holiday?s, Covington said. “It?s great to hear. It?s angelic.”
Glover grew up in East Baltimore and attended Dunbar High School, where she began singing at dances and talent contests. She also performed at jazz clubs along Pennsylvania Avenue when the area was a musical hotbed.
“She knew every club on the east side and the west side,” said Elizabeth Schaaf, an archivist at the Peabody Institute.
Mayor Sheila Dixon presented Glover with a crystal candy dish from the City of Baltimore in recognition of her accomplishments, Dixon?s spokesman Anthony McCarthy said.
The event kicked off Dixon?s inaugural Red Bag speaker series. Dixon created the Women?s History Month series to recognize the achievements of outstanding professional women from Baltimore, McCarthy said.
The Red Bag series will feature speakers from backgrounds in the ministries, the media, and health and science each Thursday in March.
