Eleanor Collins, 104; Canada’s ‘first lady of jazz’ turned down chances to tour US
When the singer and pianist Nat King Cole’s 15-minute variety show debuted on NBC in November 1956, he made history as the first Black American to host a television program. But just over the country’s northern border, another Black entertainer had him beat: In the summer of 1955, Eleanor Collins had her own show on the CBC, Canada’s national broadcasting network.
Although her show was a landmark in TV history — she was both the first woman and the first Black person to host a program in Canada — her selection was hardly a surprise.
By the mid-1950s, Ms. Collins was already widely regarded as Canada’s “first lady of jazz,” known for her mastery of the standards and her commanding performances on radio, early TV specials, and in nightclubs around Vancouver, where she lived.
“As a young man in the 1950s, having just started my radio career, I was mesmerized by Eleanor Collins,” the Canadian broadcaster Red Robinson wrote in The Vancouver Sun in 2006. “To me, she was Lena Horne and Sarah Vaughan all rolled into one. She had electric eyes and a voice to melt the hardest heart. I was in love with her.”
Ms. Collins was at home in the intimate environs of the jazz club. She had a knack for reading the room — she could easily be the center of attention, but if audience members were more interested in one another than in her, she was equally adept at providing background music.
She appeared regularly on bills with big-name acts like Dizzy Gillespie and her fellow Canadian Oscar Peterson whenever they came through Vancouver. Yet she appeared on just four recordings, never made an album under her own name, and rarely traveled, even to other parts of Canada. She also turned down opportunities to join bands touring the United States.
“I never wanted a suitcase life,” she told The Vancouver Sun in 1955. “I had offers, but onebill stands and the nightlife in smoky clubs and halls didn’t fascinate, then or now.”
As a result, though Ms. Collins was widely popular in Canada, she was virtually unknown in the United States.
She died on March 3 at a hospital in Surrey, British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver. She was 104. Her death was announced in a statement released by her family.
Ms. Collins began singing professionally as a teenager, but her breakout moment came in 1954, when she was seen in “Bamboula: A Day in the West Indies,” a CBC special that put a spotlight on Caribbean music — and featured the first integrated cast in Canadian TV history.
Her appearance, singing the sultry ballad “Ill Wind,” showed viewers across Canada what her fans in Vancouver already knew: that Ms. Collins had both immense talent and a commanding presence that could keep audiences enraptured. The CBC immediately began plans for “The Eleanor Collins Show,” which ran for three months in 1955.
By then, Ms. Collins was married with four children and had a house in the Vancouver suburbs — a life she kept sacrosanct even as her star rose. That commitment allowed her to eschew the demands and trappings of the limelight.
“They said, ‘You understand, you must right away have an agent,’” she told the CBC in 2009. “‘And oh, by the way, we want a few dresses that are a little bit more showy.’ I said, ‘Oh, no, none of that.’ I said, ‘I’m not interested. If you’re not interested in what I sing, forget it.’”
Elnora Ruth Proctor was born on Nov. 21, 1919, in Edmonton, Alberta. Her parents, Richard and Estelle Mae (Cowan) Proctor, had moved to Canada from Oklahoma, two among thousands of Black Americans who had bypassed Northern US states for the chance of a homestead in the Canadian West during the Great Migration.
Her father delivered goods by horse and cart, but he stopped working after having a stroke.
Her mother then started a handlaundry service out of their house, enlisting Elnora and her two sisters, Ruby and Pearl, to wash and press shirts and uniforms.
The Proctor family attended a Baptist church in Edmonton, where all three sisters learned music. When she was 15, Elnora won first place in an amateur vocal competition, singing “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby.”
She moved to Vancouver in 1939 to advance her budding singing career. She performed first in a vocal trio called the Three E’s and then in a gospel group, the Swing Low Quartet, with her older sister, Ruby Sneed, on piano.
A few years after arriving in Vancouver, she met Richard Collins while playing tennis. They married in 1942 and stayed together until his death in 2014. She is survived by their sons, Rick, Barry, and Tom; their daughter, Judith Collins Maxie; nine grandchildren; and 15 great-grandchildren.
In 1945, the young family settled in Burnaby, a Vancouver suburb that, at the time, was almost exclusively white — and not especially inviting to Black newcomers. A petition was circulated calling for the Collins family to leave.
They refused, and instead they established themselves as pillars of the local community. Ms. Collins became active in parent-teacher activities and taught music in the Girl Guides.
In 1945, Ms. Collins met Ray Norris, a Vancouver jazz guitarist and bandleader. Soon, she was singing with his band in the city’s clubs, and later that year she began appearing on CBC radio shows like “Happy Holiday” and “Quintet.”
She also appeared onstage in musicals, mostly through Vancouver’s Theater Under the Stars outdoor performances. In 1952, she and her children performed together in “Finian’s Rainbow.”
In 2014, on her 95th birthday, she received the Order of Canada, the country’s secondhighest civilian award.