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 Her big break came in 1920 (she was 25), when "Professor" George Morrison, one of Denver's most popular black musicians, hired her as a featured performer with his traveling "Melody Hounds." This "large, Negro woman who sings jazz songs," as one critic described her, was soon a headliner. Unfortunately, her father wouldn't have much time to enjoy her success. He died on December 5,1922, at 82. And she experienced another loss just a few months later when her young husband, George Langford,whom she had married earlier that year, was shot and killed in a fight. She would remarry three
times: to Howard Hickman, in 1938; James Lloyd Crawford, in 1941; and Larry
Williams, in 1949. She divorced all three and later quipped that she'd had so
much trouble keeping a husband because she couldn't find one who believed he
should support her. Through the rest of the 1920s she sang on Denver's KOA
radio station, the first black ever to do so. She also got work on the road
with black vaudeville troupes. I 1929, after a touring production of Show Boat
she was in went bankrupt in Chicago, she found work at Club Madrid in
Milwaukee. She auditioned as a singer, but the only job available at the mostly
white club was as an attendant in the ladies' washroom. Still, it was work, and
she sang and danced in the washroom so often that female patrons started
pestering the owner, Sam Pick, to let her perform on stage. Legend has it that
she got her chance on a particularly slow night. McDaniel took the stage and
belted out a rousing "St.Louis Blues" that got a standing ovation
from the sparse crowd. People started coming to the club just to hear her sing,
and what began as a lucky shot stretched into a successful two-year run. But by
1931, McDaniel felt it was time to move on. Her brother Sam and sisters Etta
and Orlena had moved to California years before and seemed to have prospered.
When they urged Hattie to join them, she didn't need much convincing. She
arrived in California carrying a cheap purse that contained $20 in cash and a
lucky rabbit's foot. She soon found that Hollywood was not a friendly town.
She made the rounds of the studios, but while several producers assured her
that she had talent, none was willing to give her a job. Down to her last dime,
she hired herself out as a domestic.
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