Pretender to queen of soul
QUESTION Did a singer make a fortune pretending to be Aretha Franklin?
NIGHTCLUB singer Vickie Jones looked and sounded so much like Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, that audiences were fooled, but she did not make her fortune.
Born Mary Jane Jones in Virginia, she was widowed and divorced with four sons by the age of 27.
She got by on government handouts, donations from her gospel choir and earning ten dollars a night as a Motown tribute act in local nightclubs.
In January 1969, she shared the bill with Lavell Hardy, a 24-year- old New York hairdresser with a 6 in pompadour. He was struck by her vocal and physical resemblance to Aretha Franklin and hatched a scheme to exploit this.
He persuaded her to come to Florida on the pretext she would earn $1,000 opening for Franklin. But when she arrived, she discovered he planned to pass her off as the real Aretha. He threatened to ‘throw her in the bay’ if she refused.
Hardy organised gigs for the imitation Franklin, charging a fraction of the $20,000 ($160,000/£116,600 today) fee the real singer could command.
He refused to pay Jones and between performances he locked her in a hotel room on a diet of two hamburgers a day.
As his ambitions grew and venue sizes increased, Franklin’s promoters became aware of the scam and Hardy and Jones were arrested.
At her hearing, Jones, who was defending herself, was asked to sing. She sounded so much like Aretha Franklin that the judge spared her because the audience hadn’t been able to tell the difference. Hardy escaped prosecution on the basis he had no money left after paying legal fees.
The publicity earned Jones a legitimate singing career, appearing with band leader Duke Ellington and commanding fees of $1,000 a night.
But after just a year of fame, she abruptly abandoned the stage when she found out her mother had returned her boys to live with her abusive second husband. She dedicated the rest of her life to raising her sons.
Sue Taylor, Bridgnorth, Shropshire.
QUESTION What is the origin of the wonderful Wiltshire dialect word Sowlegrove, which means February?
THIS delightful term was recorded by the noted 17th-century antiquarian John Aubrey, who wrote: ‘The shepherds and vulgar people in South Wilts call Februarie “Sowlegrov” and have this proverb of it: viz. ‘ Soulgrove sil lew’ — February is seldom warm — sil pro seld, seldome.’
Its origins go back to Old English, which was introduced by the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians and other Germanic migrants in the 5th and 6th centuries.
While the Old English word for the sun was sunne, the borrowed Latin word sol was also used and this is the origin of the first part of Sowlegrove.
The second element is likely to be the third person singular form groweth, from the verb growan, which means it grows or increases, referring to increased daylight hours after the depths of winter.
The transformation from sol groweth to sowlegrove would be the result of changing pronunciation over time.
David Rayner, Canterbury, Kent.
QUESTION Were there women among the Viking invaders?
SHIELD maidens are mentioned in Norse sagas, but other than these epic poems there is little historical evidence for female Viking warriors.
Danish and Norse raiders sailed from their home ports in Denmark, Norway and Sweden each spring, looking for plunder. The need to carry as many warriors as possible in their ships and to leave room to return with treasure and slaves meant that families did not accompany them.
Like the Anglo-Saxons before them, some also set out looking for land to conquer and settle. These parties would take their families with them.
In some cases, raiders became settlers, sending boats back to their homelands to collect their families.
Some graves of female settlers that have been uncovered contain weapons, but archaeologists don’t agree this means they were warriors.
Grave goods were common among pagan tribes and were usually property of value to the family. Weapons were included as a matter of course.
Norse mythology dictated a warrior could enter Valhalla only if he died with a sword in his hand. So part of the burial ritual was the warrior being laid to rest holding a weapon, ready to fight when he reached the Hall of Asgard. No women have been discovered holding a sword, which suggests they weren’t warriors.
According to Norse mythology, on their deaths women went to the Hall of Asgard to serve the men food and drink. The male afterlife consisted of feasting, drinking and fighting.
That doesn’t preclude the possibility of women fighters. Under attack, everyone was expected to defend themselves.
There are two substantiated accounts of Norse women fighting. The first was in AD 971 when King Sviatoslav I of Kiev attacked the Byzantine empire in Bulgaria. After the battle, the Byzantines were surprised to find women among the dead warriors.
In Iceland, Freydis Eiriksdottir, halfsister of Leif Erikson — who is thought to have been the first European to set foot in North America, 500 years before Christopher Columbus — was reported to have taken up a sword to scare off marauders from Greenland.
The fight is recorded in a saga, but doesn’t describe her as a shield maiden, though it does say she was pregnant and fought bare-breasted.
There are two shield maidens in the Hervarar saga, but that is regarded as a legend rather than a historical account. n IS THERE a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT; or email charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection is published, but we’re unable to enter into individual correspondence.