Musician, Actress, Singer. She gained fame as an American entertainer during the Black Jazz Age of the 1920s and 1930s. She was given the nicknames "Queen of the Trumpet" and "Little Louis," referring to famed American trumpeter Louis Armstrong. Born the oldest of five children of traveling entertainers, she lived most of her life on stage and on the road. Eventually, her sisters, Lavaida, Alvaida, and Hattie, had showbusiness careers with various levels of success. She had one brother, Arthur. Her mother was a Howard College music teacher, while her father was a minister as well as a bandleader. After being able to play several musical instruments, which included the cello, banjo, bass, violin, harp, accordion, clarinet, saxophone, and, of course, the trumpet, she started her stage career at age 15. She could dance and sing and was a prolific songwriter. As a fifteen-year-old bride, she married Samuel Lewis Lanier. Leaving an abusive marriage, she started a solo career in a revue called "Holiday in Dixieland." She performed in 1920 at sporting events in Philadelphia and Atlantic City. In 1922, performing as a dancer, singer, and musician, she gained national recognition touring all over the United States, including at Barron Wilkin's Harlem Cabaret. She appeared on Broadway in New York City with Josephine Baker in the musicals "In Bamville" and "The Chocolate Dandies" in 1924. In 1926, she toured London and Paris with Lew Leslie's Blackbirds Revue, which followed from 1926 to 1929, touring with Jack Carter's Serenaders throughout Asia and Russia. She is credited as being one of the first to perform American Jazz in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Peking, Burma, Tokyo, Bombay, and Cairo. With her travels, she learned seven languages. She became known for her flamboyant personal style, featuring elegant gowns, feathered hair pieces, an orchid-colored Mercedes limousine, and a pet monkey. As an African-American woman, she found that her career in the United States had limited advancement, but by staying in Europe for decades, she achieved some much-deserved recognition. While in Europe, she could dine in fine restaurants and had acquaintances of noblemen. In 1931, she returned to the United States to perform with Ethel Waters in the successful tour of "Rhapsody in Black," and although Water was billed as the top entertainer, critics claim that she stole the show. On October 5, 1932, she made her first recording as part of the Washboard Rhythm Kings and eventually made a total of fifty records under European labels. She wrote and recorded her theme song, "High Hat, Trumpet and Rhythm." In 1934, she married a nineteen-year-old, Ananias "Nyas" Berry, who was a member of the Berry Brothers Dance Trio, but the marriage ended after three years with the negative press coverage of her being acquitted of the charge of bigamy and their age differences. She appeared in French movies "Take It from Me" in 1937 and "Irresistible You," "L'Alibi," and "Pieges" all in 1939. After her performance in front of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, she was presented with a golden trumpet. As the politics of Europe became uncertain with Adolph Hitler's Nazi Party coming to power, she was encouraged to return to the United States in the late 1930s but did not. Although the "Amsterdam News" claimed she was detained as the "only colored woman entertainer on record in a Nazi concentration camp," she was actually imprisoned in Nazi-occupied Denmark in October of 1941. She had a history of drug abuse and had health issues to resolve before sailing to the United States on a refugee ship on March 12, 1942. Some sources claim there was a prisoner exchange for her. In 1943, she married Earle Edwards, who became her manager. She had no children. In 1943, she appeared at the Apollo Theater in New York City. After settling in California, she continued to perform with some recognition in the United States, dying suddenly with a cerebral hemorrhage after a performance at the Palace Theatre in New York City. With very little press coverage in the United States, her belated obituary was published in "The New York Times" on February 22, 2020, as part of a series of articles called "Overlooked No More." Her name was mentioned in this newspaper once before: in 1949, in a performance review. She had several biographies written about her, including the 2007 "High Hat, Trumpet and Rhythm" by Mark Miller. Since her life timeline became a puzzle as events were often embellished by various people, not well-documented with her vagabond lifestyle, or claims could not have happened at a certain time, Miller did use legal documents to give his timeline of events of her life. Various documents and photographs are part of the collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.