Belle Baker
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Belle Baker (25 December 1893 - 29 April 1957) was an American singer and actress. Born in New York, she appeared on Broadway and in vaudeville, films, radio and television shows.
In the early 1920s, when she was well known as "the Ragtime singer," Baker took part in a Baltimore song competition with Catherine Calvert, the Hamilton Sisters (Pearl and Violet) and Jessie Fordyce. She was the first artist to record "All of Me," one of the most recorded songs of its era, and she was also the first person in the United States to do a radio broadcast from a moving train.
In 1926, Baker had the title role in Broadway's Betsy. She introduced Irving Berlin's "Blues Skies" in the Florenz Ziegfeld production, which ran for 39 performances from December 28, 1926 to January 29, 1927. With music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart, the musical comedy had a book by Irving Caesar and David Freedman. Victor Baravelle was the musical director.
On radio, she was a guest performer on The Eveready Hour, broadcasting's first major variety show, which featured Broadway's top headliners. After roles in the films Song of Love (1929) and Charing Cross Road (1935), she appeared as herself in Atlantic City (1944).
She was married to the composer Maurice Abrahams (1883-1931), who wrote the songs "I'm Walking with the Moonbeams (Talking to the Stars)" and "Take Everything But You" for Song of Love. The couple had one child. She died of a heart attack in 1957 in Los Angeles.
