Amanda Aldridge

Amanda Aldridge was born in Upper Norwood, London on March 10 in 1866. She was the third child of African-American actor Ira Frederick Aldridge and his second wife, Amanda Brandt, who was Swedish. She had two sisters, Rachael and Luranah, and two brothers, Ira Daniel and Ira Frederick.  She studied voice under Jenny Lind and George Henschel at the Royal College of Music in London, and harmony and counterpoint with Frederick Bridge and Francis Edward Gladstone.

Aldridge worked as a concert singer, piano accompanist, and a voice teacher. A throat condition ended her concert appearances, and she turned to teaching and published about thirty songs between the years 1907 and 1925.

Her notable students included African-American performers Roland Hayes, Lawrence Benjamin Brown, Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson, and Bermudian-British actor Earl Cameron.

At the age of 88, Aldridge made her first television appearance in the British show Music For You, where Muriel Smith sang Montague Ring’s “Little Southern Love Song”. After a short illness, she died in London on 9 March 1956, a day before her 90th birthday.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Aldridge