Abbey Lincoln

Abbey Lincoln married her longtime collaborator Max Roach in 1962. The marriage ended in 1970.

She lived a long life and was professionally active until a few years before her death. She died on August 14, 2010, in Manhattan after suffering from ill health during the last years of her life.

She was born as Anna Marie Wooldridge on August 6, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois, US into a large family. She was the 10th of the 12 children born to her parents.

Raised in a farm in Michigan, she was exposed to music quite early on in life and loved listening to it constantly. She became a part of the school and church choirs as well.

At the age of 14, she began to sing with local bands. By this time she had also started to write her own lyrics.

By the early 1950s she had begun singing professionally. Early in her career she sang under various stage-names including Gaby Lee before settling on the name Abbey Lincoln in 1956.

In the mid-1950s she became acquainted with the saxophonist Benny Carter and made a recording with his band. The year 1956 witnessed Abbey recording her first album, ‘Abbey Lincoln Affair: A Story of a Girl in Love’ for Riverside Records.

The following year, she moved to New York City and worked at the Village Vanguard. It was during her performance at the Village Vanguard that Abbey met drummer, composer and bebop innovator Max Roach who introduced her to New York’s jazz elite.

In the 1950s she also ventured into acting and made an appearance in the musical comedy film ‘The Girl Can't Help It.’ She appeared as herself, wearing a dress that had been worn by Marilyn Monroe in ‘Gentleman Prefer Blondes’ (1953), drawing comparisons between herself and the sex symbol.

On the musical front, Abbey and Roach collaborated throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Together with Charles Mingus, Oscar Brown and John Coltrane, Abbey and Roach were in the middle of the civil rights movement.

One of the best known collaborations between Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach was the landmark civil rights-themed recording ‘We Insist!’ (Subtitled Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite) which was released in 1960. With this album, Roach became one of the first artists to use jazz as a way of addressing racial and political issues during the 1960s. Following the release of the album, Lincoln became more actively involved in the civil rights movement.