Adelaide Hall is musical history, a central figure in the great resurgence of African-American music that began in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. A jazz innovator (she performed with Duke Ellington, Art Tatum and Fats Waller), Adelaide settled in London in 1938 and became one of Britain's best-loved entertainers.

Adelaide performed everywhere: in Broadway and West End musicals, the Cotton Club, Chicago, Paris, the London Palladium and music halls from Land's End to John O'Groats. Her style was always that of a musical-comedy star, rather than the night club chanteuse, and she would light up as soon as she stepped onto the stage.

To commemorate the centenary of her birth on October 20 2001, Stephen Bourne's Sophisticated Lady is the first biography of the acclaimed star. With a Foreword by Lena Horne and Barbara Windsor, it charts her illustrious career from the 1920s to the 1990s.

To Order a Copy: please send a cheque for £5.00 (UK and Ireland only), made payable to LBH & F, to:

The ETHNIC COMMUNITIES ORAL HISTORY PROJECT (ecohp) is a non-profit making organisation set up in 1987 to provide local people with a voice. It has produced many publications over that time.

STEPHEN BOURNE is the author of Aunt Esther’s Story (ECOHP, 1996), Brief Encounters (Cassell, 1996), A Ship and a Prayer (ECOHP, 1999) with Sav Kyriacou, and Black in the British Frame - The Black Experience in British Film and Television (Continuum, 2001). He has received two Race in the Media awards from the Commission for Racial Equality, and in 1998 he was shortlisted for The Voice Black Community Award for Literature.

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