Ada "Bricktop" Smith audio collection

1930-1979

Performer and club owner Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith (August 14, 1894 - February 1, 1984) was born in Alderson, West Virginia. Fascinated by saloons from an early age, she started out in 1910 performing in vaudeville before going on to headline at clubs such as Barron's Exclusive Club in New York City, where she came to be known as "Bricktop" for her red hair.

Bricktop arrived in Paris in 1924, joining a wave of African American expatriate artists. She became a central figure connecting larger-than-life stars. Cole Porter employed her to teach the Charleston dance to socialites and princes at his private parties. She performed widely, organized parties, and opened her own establishment called Chez Bricktop in 1926, drawing that same wealthy expatriate clientele.

Her nightclub became the epicenter of jazz-age Paris, and figured as a temporary home for many expatriate entertainers, including Josephine Baker, Mabel Mercer, and Florence Mills. Bricktop and her club were immortalized in the American literary canon, earning mentions in short stories and novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. One of the first fellow Americans she met in Paris was Langston Hughes. He described her as one of "the bright particular stars of the night life of Montmartre" in his 1937 unpublished essay "Adelaide Hall New Star of Paris Night Life." In 1929, Bricktop married Peter DuCongé, an African American saxophone and clarinet player who toured with Louis Armstrong's band. They separated sometime in the 1930s.

Bricktop continued to sing throughout her career as a club owner. Cole Porter had a dedicated table at her club, and, beginning in 1932, Bricktop adopted his song "Miss Otis Regrets" as her signature standard.

In 1939, Bricktop returned to New York City just before the German invasion of France. While she struggled to find work performing, she found a spiritual home in the Catholic church and remained devout throughout the remainder of her life. She went on to open another nightclub called Bricktop's in Mexico City in 1943. In 1950, she returned to Europe to open a third iteration of her club in Rome. Her nightclub continued to be a vibrant center of artistic and fashionable expatriate society until her retirement in 1961, when she returned to New York.

Even in retirement, according to the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, she made cameo appearances in the 1974 film Honeybaby, Honeybaby directed by Michael Schultz, and Woody Allen's 1983 film Zelig. She also continued to perform a repertoire of 1930s and 1940s jazz standards that included "Miss Otis Regrets." After several attempts throughout the 1960s to record her story, she published her autobiography Bricktop with James Haskins in 1983, before dying a year later.