Jazz singer broke ground as national TV series host
B.C. musician was compared to Horne and Fitzgerald
Vancouver jazz great Eleanor Collins died at Surrey Memorial Hospital March 3.
She was 104 years old when she died — and was still living independently in Surrey, with the help of her children.
Collins was a trailblazer who was the first Black person to host a national TV series on CBC in 1955, a year before Nat King Cole got his own TV series in the United States.
Collins was born Eleanor Ruth Proctor in Edmonton on Nov. 21, 1919. Her parents were originally from Oklahoma, and immigrated to Alberta in 1910 to become homesteaders.
She came from a musical family, singing in her local Baptist church and with her uncle Bert's family band. “Whenever the cousins got together as children, and even in later life, we would begin to harmonize,” she recalled in 2022, when Canada Post released an Eleanor Collins stamp.
But the family grew up poor. “My father suffered a stroke in our early years, lying in bed for seven or eight years,” she told the Province in 1973. “To stay off welfare and to feed us, my mother at first worked for rich ladies, and then took in hand laundry to stay home with her children. The thing was that in those days we were so poor we didn't even have hot water.”
Somehow her mother found the money to give her three daughters piano and violin lessons.
It paid off. Eleanor became a singer, and her sister Ruby Sneed became a classical pianist who drew the approval of opera/spiritual singer Marian Anderson. The youngest sister, Pearl Brown, became an acclaimed jazz and blues singer — and Jimi Hendrix's aunt.
Collins started singing in Edmonton in her teens, winning a talent contest at 15 and singing with an orchestra at Edmonton's Tivoli Ballroom. But she always remained level-headed about her career.
“I never wanted a suitcase life,” she told The Vancouver Sun in 1955. “Bigger bands came to Edmonton and I had offers, but one bill stands and the nightlife in smoky clubs and clubs didn't fascinate, then or now.”
After visiting her sister Ruby in Vancouver she decided to come west in 1939. She married Dick Collins in 1942 and the couple had four children. But she continued to sing, initially with a trio called the Three E's, then with the Swing Low Quartet, which included her sisters.
But her family took precedence over her career.
“In those early days, I would always be home for dinner,” she said in 1973. “I would never take an outof-town job.”
She could sing most anything, from jazz to blues, gospel, pop and show tunes. She was often compared to Lena Horne and Ella Fitzgerald for her musical ability and elegance.
Her diversity led to all sorts of gigs, including Theatre Under the Stars productions of Kiss Me Kate and Finian's Rainbow. She was a regular on CBC Radio from 1945, and got her big break on a 1954 CBC TV production called Bamboola, where she drew rave reviews and an ACTRA award nomination.
This led to Collins' own series, The Eleanor Show, in 1955. In 1964, CBC gave her another TV show, Eleanor, where she was backed by another Vancouver jazz legend, pianist Chris Gage and his trio.
She had to deal with some racism in the 1940s, when her family moved to an all-white neighbourhood in Burnaby and neighbours signed a petition to try to keep her family out.
“To combat the ignorance and misguided attitudes of her new neighbours, the Collinses immersed themselves in their new community by participating in local activities, events and organizations,” said an obituary from the Collins family. “By showing their new neighbours that they were `ordinary people with the same values and concerns as they had,' Eleanor and her family broke down barriers by inviting others to see beyond skin colour.”
She received many accolades late in life, including the Order of Canada in 2014 and was on a Canada Post stamp in 2022. She was in remarkable physical shape. When she was 57, a Province writer noted she looked like she was in her 20s. When she was in her 90s, she looked like she was in her 50s.
“People often asked Eleanor her secret to longevity,” said the Collins family obituary. “For sure it was not genetics, as no one in her family lived beyond their 50s. But she subscribed to a protocol of diet and exercise which held her in good stead all her life. In more recent times she was well into the importance of a healthy gut microbiome, and became a great enthusiast of her liquid Bio-K Probiotics!”