Ismay Blakely Duvivier (August 27, 1903 – February 6, 2004) was an American dancer and nurse, born in

Saint Croix Saint Croix; nl, Sint-Kruis; french: link=no, Sainte-Croix; Danish and no, Sankt Croix, Taino: ''Ay Ay'' ( ) is an island in the Caribbean Sea, and a county and constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), an unincorpo ...

. Her collection of

Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the t ...

and later jazz memorabilia and photographs, from her own and her son's careers, is now held in the

Institute of Jazz Studies The Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) is the largest and most comprehensive library and archives of jazz and jazz-related materials in the world. It is located on the fourth floor of the John Cotton Dana Library at Rutgers University–Newark in Newa ...

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

Early life

Ismay Blakely was born in Saint Croix in the

Virgin Islands The Virgin Islands ( es, Islas Vírgenes) are an archipelago in the Caribbean Sea. They are geologically and biogeographically the easternmost part of the Greater Antilles, the northern islands belonging to the Puerto Rico Trench and St. Croix ...

, then a part of the

Danish West Indies The Danish West Indies ( da, Dansk Vestindien) or Danish Antilles or Danish Virgin Islands were a Danish colonization of the Americas, Danish colony in the Caribbean, consisting of the islands of Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, Saint Thomas ...

. She moved to the United States as a child with her parents, George Alexander Blakely and Beatrice Peebles Blakely, and was raised in New York City. She graduated from high school in 1919.

Career

After 1929, to support her son and widowed mother, Duvivier worked a dancer and a chorus girl. She danced at the

Cotton Club The Cotton Club was a New York City nightclub from 1923 to 1940. It was located on 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue (1923–1936), then briefly in the midtown Theater District (1936–1940).Elizabeth Winter"Cotton Club of Harlem (1923- )" Blac ...

, performed with

Cab Calloway Cabell Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, conductor and dancer. He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalist ...

and

Ethel Waters Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an American singer and actress. Waters frequently performed jazz, swing, and pop music on the Broadway stage and in concerts. She began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Her not ...

, and toured the eastern United States in various productions. In 1929 she appeared in an early short musical film, ''On the Levee'', with singer

Jules Bledsoe Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe (1898 – July 14, 1943)
by John Troesser. Retrieved ...

. She left her performing career in 1932; she remembered later, "I got tired of being away from home and was disgusted with fighting guys off." She became a nurse at Lincoln Hospital, where she worked until 1962. In retirement, she supported her son's musical career, and maintained a collection of photographs and memorabilia that became useful to jazz scholars.

Personal life

Ismay Blakely married Jamaican-born

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

army medic Leon Vincent Duvivier in 1920; they had a son,

George Duvivier George Duvivier (August 17, 1920 – July 11, 1985) was an American jazz double-bassist. Biography Duvivier was born in New York City, the son of Leon V. Duvivier and Ismay Blakely Duvivier. He attended the Conservatory of Music and Art, where ...

, born later that year. She lived with her son, a noted jazz musician, arranger and composer, until he died from cancer in 1985. She died in 2004, aged 100 years, in New York. She donated the Ismay and George Duvivier Papers, including their letters and her scrapbooks of her own and her son's careers in show business, to the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Duvivier, Ismay 1903 births 2004 deaths Harlem Renaissance African-American female dancers American nurses People from Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands American centenarians Women centenarians American women nurses 20th-century American dancers People from the Danish West Indies African-American nurses