A music was resonating from Max Dana‘s office this morning: it was Lena Horne singing ‘Stormy Weather’. We were intrigued by this beautiful voice but it wasn’t the first time we heard it. As some of you may already know, Max Dana is huge fan (not to say an expert) of the Jazz singers of this era. ‘The great  Lena Horne died’, she said.

Some of us didn’t know who she was (and I am one of them, I should be ashamed, I know) and we learned as a Jazz singer and an actress she experienced the worst type of racism during her lifetime and that she was an inspiration to the black soldiers during WWII. She was also involved in the Civil Rights Movement and she got her name onto blacklists during the red-hunting McCarthy era.

You can read many articles about her life, starting with Wikipedia if you don’t know her already. Max Dana will probably write about Lena Horne on her blog but we wanted to mention this amazing singer on the Sama Gazette today.

Below is the video of ‘Stormy Weather’ ; her sultry and extremely expressive voice captivated us as soon as we heard it, just like in many of her other songs did (‘Moon River’, ‘Wouldn’t It Be Lovely’, ‘The Man I Love’…).