The City Fair launched in 1970 on a shoestring budget, run out of a vacant furniture building at Charles and Franklin streets. Office equipment included desks cast off from the school system. Naysayers, including the mayor, thought the whole idea naïve. Who would attend a three-day, county-style fair in downtown Baltimore two years after the ’68 riots? It turned out, 350,000 people that inaugural year. Nearly double the following September. Soon a million visitors.

“Bob Embry [then-Housing and Community Development director] invited Hope Quackenbush and me, who worked for him, to lunch to brainstorm something to bring people downtown,” PR maven Sandy Hillman remembers. “We came up with a civic celebration that would get city neighborhoods together in the same space at the same time. Tommy D’Alesandro, the mayor, was not convinced this was a good idea on the heels of the riots. Don Schaefer was the City Council president then and so we went to him. He loved it.”

Ultimately, the City Fair withered after being displaced by Harborplace. But it served as proof of concept for the Farmers Market, which Hillman got going in 1977, and Artscape, five years later. The 1970 fair also brought fireworks back to the Inner Harbor for the first time, reportedly, since 1781, when 50,000 Baltimoreans climbed Federal Hill to celebrate Maryland joining the United States.

The 1970s was a gritty, challenging time, of course. The fair’s opening acts often reflected, one might say, the era’s “nothing to lose” attitude. In 1972, The Great Zacchini, known as the Human Cannonball, was shot 200 feet over the Inner Harbor. In 1973, 68-year-old Karl Wallenda, pictured above, walked—and did a headstand—on a six-story, high-wire strung from the mast of the USS Constellation. In 1979, Doug Jones, a 26-year-old “Culligan Man” from Carroll County, climbed a 165-foot ladder and dove into 25 feet of water.

The true spirit of the fair, however, was its sense of togetherness. On its very first Saturday night, a late storm whipped through, toppling numerous booths.

“The next morning, people from different neighborhoods, across racial and demographic lines, helped each other,” remembers Bob Hillman, Sandy’s husband, and the City Fair’s first chair. “That rebuilding had a tremendous psychological effect, not only among the mix-and-match participants involved in the clean-up, but with everyone. It was an incredible statement about what a city can be.”

The annual fair didn’t include just carnival rides, local food, and off-the-wall stunts, but top-notch entertainment like Baltimore’s first lady of jazz, Ethel Ennis, and a certain Douglass High alum named Cab Calloway.

Rolling with unexpected weather issues, as well as scheduling snafus, is inevitably part of such event planning. The Glenn Miller Orchestra, booked as the closing act in 1971, for example, got lost on their way to perform. That prompted quick-thinking Sandy Hillman to divert the Orioles’ team bus, which was headed back to Baltimore from then-Friendship International Airport (now BWI) to the fair. The team had clinched the AL East title with a weekend sweep in Cleveland.

“They arrived as the band finally got there and had begun playing,” Bob Hillman recounts with a wry laugh. “The Orioles come out on the stage, and the place goes wild. Afterward, Jim Palmer, who had no idea that there was even thing called the City Fair, comes up to Sandy and says, ‘It’s amazing you got this all together for us in a couple of hours.’”

Every year, we’re seriously impressed by the amount of artistic talent in Baltimore, and 2019 was no different, with top-notch music coming out of the city—making its way onto both the local and national stage. It also felt like a year where the musical community came into its own. No, Rolling Stone didn’t name us the best music city in America again (not that we need that recognition to know that we are), but there were numerous moments of reckoning, if you will. Rising artists finally got their due. Established acts performed epic homecoming shows. Hallowed institutions wrestled with their futures. There were both losses of legends and celebrations of lifetimes, and each reminded us of the great impact this city has had, and continues to have, on the musical form. Here, we round up some of the most memorable moments of 2019. And we recommend keeping your ears perked for all that is to come in 2020.

Ethel Ennis passes away.
This past February, Baltimore’s “First Lady of Jazz” passed away at age 86. During the late 1950s and 1960s, the West Baltimore singer recorded for major labels, toured Europe, headlined the Newport Jazz Festival, and performed regularly with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Duke Ellington. As a child, she learned to play piano at the Ames United Methodist Church in Sandtown-Winchester and later became a mainstay at the Red Fox on Pennsylvania Avenue. Disillusioned by the music industry, Ennis ultimately eschewed national stardom and returned to Baltimore for a more simple life, where she performed until her later years. Her mark on the greater musical world remains.

Dan Deacon performs with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
It felt like fate had somewhat of a hand in the moment when Dan Deacon first took to the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall stage with members of the BSO this spring. At the time, the orchestra was in the midst of a contentious contract dispute that would eventually lead to a summer-long lockout of the musicians by the organization’s management (see below), while the electronic artist—15 years after moving to Baltimore and forever changing the local music scene—was quietly working on a new record about overcoming doubt, and reckoning with age and death and time. For a few hours, the two iconic musical acts, seemingly from opposite of the sonic spectrum, though Deacon studied composition in college, came together for a night that would become a gift to the city. The musicians filled the halls with hope, as concertgoers got out of their seats, ran down the aisles, and started an impromptu dance party in front of the venerable stage.

Abdu Ali releases FIYAH!!!.
Over the last several years, few musicians have been as influential and integral to the Baltimore music scene as Abdu Ali. From the glory days of their all-inclusive, underground Kahlon dance party at The Crown to national coverage by the likes of The New York Times, The New Yorker, and NPR more recently, the avant-garde rapper has helped put Baltimore’s DIY culture on the map, remaining deeply rooted to their hometown city along the way. This spring, the release of their studio debut, FIYAH!!!, took their artistry to a new level, fusing hip-hop and Baltimore Club music with jazz and punk. The record and its release solidified Ali’s star power with a full-band lineup, led to a sold-out show at the Ottobar, and helped them nab a well-deserved “Artist of the Year” award from City Hall.

André De Shields wins his first Tony.
As a cherry on top of a 50-year acting career, 73-year-old Charm City native André De Shields took home his first Tony Award in June, winning best featured actor in a musical for his performance of the god Hermes in Hadestown. De Shields grew up in West Baltimore, one of 11 children, and graduated from City College before moving from regional theater to Broadway. He would go on to gain renown for his roles in shows like The Wiz and The Full Monty. A few weeks after the Tonys, he was also presented with a mayoral salute and key to the city by Mayor Jack Young. “This is what you get when you blow them out of the water,” he said during his acceptance speech, showing the crowd his Tony. “I did it the only way you could—the Baltimore way.”

Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon slays on American Idol.
If you don’t watch American Idol, you might have missed, in our opinion, one of the most special stories of the television show’s history. If you do watch American Idol, you’ve already been a Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon fan for months. The Catonsville singer-songwriter placed sixth in the competition, wowing judges and viewers with his sensational falsetto, his original song “Almost Heaven,” and his backstory, the son of a Baptist pastor who discovered he was gay at age nine. This fall, Harmon released his debut album and this winter, graduated from Towson University, where he studied vocal performance.

Beach House gets sentimental at the Hippodrome.
In June, dream-pop duo Beach House returned to the city for their first big hometown performance since the Windjammer music festival at Pier Six in 2015. Taking over the hallowed stage of the Hippodrome Theatre at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, singer Victoria LeGrand and guitarist Alex Scally put on a powerful show to promote their latest album, 7, with some old favorites thrown in along the way. Typically stoic performers, they both spoke sentimentally about the city, even referencing the Orioles. Opening acts were also must-see sets by Dan Deacon and Future Islands’ William Cashion.

The Ottobar persists and, as The Windup Space closes, Rituals opens in its stead.
Two big changes took place at local music venues this year, with the announcement of sales and closures stirring fear for a scene that already lamented a dearth of creative space. But a few months after the Ottobar announced that its longtime owners were selling the business, it was revealed that longtime bar manager Tecla Tesnau would be taking over the Remington rock club in late summer, keeping it in local hands, and it seems that little has changed. And just weeks after word surfaced that The Windup Space would be closing its doors, news broke that the location would be reopened as Rituals, a bar and venue that would keep the same all-inclusive, DIY tradition alive and well, allowing the arts community to let out a collective sigh of relief. There, lineups have included local favorites like Lower Dens, Eze Jackson, and Chiffon.

TT The Artist pays homage to Baltimore Club.
This summer, TT The Artist made her directorial debut with the sneak peek premiere of her upcoming music documentary, Dark City: Beneath The Beat. Despite relocating to Los Angeles, the beloved rapper has long been a fierce advocate of, and an active participant in, the city’s hometown musical genre, Baltimore Club—the story of which she tells in her unique, colorful film. Featuring cameos and music by fellow local artists such as DDm, Eze Jackson, Mighty Mark, and Rufus Roundtree, it now enters the finishing-touch and fundraising stages in hopes of joining the festival circuit in 2020.

DDm drops Beautiful Gowns.
This summer, DDm released his debut full-length album, Beautiful Gowns, which, unsurprisingly, turned out to be one of the most fun, infectious records to come out of Baltimore this year. That’s thanks to the pure showmanship of the city-born rapper who has brought bravado, wit, humor, and heart to his music and live performances across the city for years, from the local battle rap circuit through his Bond St. District duo and now in his solo career. A year after his planned debut, Soundtrack To A Shopping Mall, was nixed, these 13 tracks stood testament to DDm’s determination and dauntless creativity. Self-released, locally produced, and spread without the help of local radio, singles like “He Say She Say” and “Pull Up”garnered thousands of listens on Spotify and views on YouTube all on their own. We personally love the bright, buoyant ballads of “Hooray” and “Forever 21.”

Future Islands rocks out at Union Collective.
In early September, thousands of Baltimore City music lovers packed into the parking lot of Union Collective for a night to remember by local dream-pop darlings Future Islands. Much like their impromptu Hampdenfest performance in 2014, the band’s free live show took place outside as the sun set, featuring both new material off their upcoming album and fan favorites like “Seasons” and “Balance,” with frontman Sam Herring’s mercurial dance moves out in full force. Opening acts included Baltimore artists Smoke Bellow, Joy Postell, and DJs Jason Willett and Jay Buim, and the brewery’s neighbor, The Charmery, sold three Future Islands-themed flavors of ice cream to support city non-profits.

The BSO survives a tumultuous year.
It was a long, strange trip around the sun for the century-old Baltimore Symphony Orchestra: ongoing contract negotiations that tumbled into labor disputes, the cancellation of the summer season, a highly publicized lockout of the musicians by BSO management, followed by months of player protests outside the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. But this fall, both parties reached a one-year agreement that resulted in the meeting of many players’ demands and the on-time opening of the fall schedule. The organization has also since launched their newly formed vision committee and brought in outside help from arts-org “turnaround king” Michael Kaiser, so things are looking up. (Except for maestra Marin Alsop hinting at her departure.)

JPEGMAFIA continues to soar.
It’s been another big year for JPEGMAFIA. The alternative rap artist, known as Peggy, toured the U.S., to many sold-out crowds. He performed at the likes of Afro Punk, Firefly, and Coachella, where rolling stone called his set one of the best of the festival. He opened for big-name acts like Vince Staples and Flume. He garnered national press and profiles by the likes of Billboard, The Guardian, and Paper. And this fall, he released his latest album, All My Heroes Are Cornballs, to national acclaim— a colorful, cacophonous collage that takes us on a trip into his beautiful, manic, often NSFW dream world. All the while, even though he has since relocated to L.A., Peggy always gave love back to Baltimore, his former city, selling out two nights at the Ottobar, hopping on Abdu Ali’s latest record, and bringing fellow rising local rapper Butch Dawson along on his tour. For that, for as long as we can, we’ll continue to claim him as our own.

Morgan State’s marching band leads the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
The holidays came early this year when it was announced that Morgan State University’s Magnificent Marching Machine would be leading the iconic procession of marching bands in the 93rd annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, making MSU the first of Maryland’s historically black colleges to perform in the parade’s history. Ahead of a giant Snoopy balloon, the college band, led by band leader Melvin Miles Jr., marched triumphantly in blue and white uniforms for nearly three miles from the Upper West Side, around Central Park, and down to the famed namesake department store on Herald Square. Millions of viewers watched from the city streets and on their television sets at home.

A star is born in Maggie Rogers.
In the 12 months of 2019, Eastern Shore native Maggie Rogers released a debut album via Capitol Records, starred as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, sold out her U.S. tour, performed at the likes of Coachella, attended the Met Gala, and garnered her first Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. While still a student at NYU, the singer-songwriter got her first taste of fame serendipitously, when a video of Pharrell Williams going ga-ga for one of her songs went viral. But everything that came next, and all that lies ahead, has undoubtedly been the result of her own talent and star staying power.

Check out our Spotify playlist below for Lydia’s Top 30 songs of 2019.

You may have heard that Baltimore has been disparaged recently. Here at Baltimore, we’ve spent 112 years celebrating this city—and we’re not about to back down now. Take a look back as we revisit some of the many reasons why Charm City lives up to its name. Here are some highlights from our archives:

We’ve got Otterbein’s.

The sacred sugar cookies of Bawlmer.

And the best crab houses in the country.

From Captain James, Oprah’s favorite, to the James Beard Award-winning Schultz’s Crab House.

Photography by Scott Suchman

Oprah Winfrey got her start here on WJZ.

Recently, she made a local news appearance on WBAL to defend Baltimore’s honor. “This charming city is anything but full of rats,” she said.

Illustration by Anita Kunz

We have sports legends.

The Iron Man even beat The Iron Horse’s streak!

Photography by Mike Morgan

Our chefs win James Beard Awards.

Woodberry Kitchen’s Spike Gjerde is a farm-to-fork pioneer. Even former First Lady Michelle Obama eats here.

Photography by Mike Morgan

We have some of the best museums in the country.

Among them are the first-of-its-kind National Great Blacks in Wax Museum, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History & Culture, and the Baltimore Museum of Art—which is expected to unveil its upcoming Matisse center by 2021, making it the premier place to study the French artist and his works.

Some of the most iconic artists hail from here.

John Waters, Blaze Starr, and Joyce Scott. (Need we say more?)

-Bryan Burris

We have the largest free arts festival in the country.

Local legends (Ethel Ennis) to national names (TLC) have stepped up to the stage here.

Our symphony is home to conductor Marin Alsop, the first woman to head a major American orchestra.

In an era when symphonies around the country are closing their doors permanently, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is one of only 25 of the 800 or so U.S. orchestras to have been around for more than 100 years.

Photography by David Colwell

We invented just about everything.

Hyperbole? We think not. Read on.

Sean McCabe

After five years as one of the anchors in the burgeoning Station North Arts and Entertainment District, Red Emma’s—Baltimore’s favorite worker-owned bookstore, café, restaurant, and event space—is moving back to Mount Vernon.

Kate Khatib, a Red Emma’s co-founder, said the bookstore coffeehouse hopes to open in the former home of Spike & Charlie’s at Preston and Cathedral streets by early September. The new location is essentially seven blocks south on Maryland Avenue and the protected bike lane there. It allow Red Emma’s to double the size of its bookstore (to 1,500 titles) and offer a seated dining option (small plate-based options) while still providing a versatile space for its readings, film screenings, panel discussions, and spoken word performances.

“We have absolutely loved being on North Avenue these past five years—we couldn’t imagine a better neighborhood to grow and develop our worker cooperative,” Khatib said, adding that making the decision to move has been a difficult process. “While we’ve managed to achieve some of our goals as a project since moving, we’ve struggled to recapture the cozy community feel of our original location, and, at the same time, have outgrown the capabilities of the cafe space we designed back in 2013.”

The new venue, with two floors and a street-level bar, will offer Red Emma’s an opportunity to grow its restaurant while also enabling the coffee and bookstore to return to the cozy basement-level vibe of its original Mt. Vernon home on St. Paul Street. At their current North Avenue address, having the coffee shop, bookstore, dining area and event space all in one large open area proved challenging at times.

The ability to divide the multi-purposed operation onto different floors and into distinct spaces will make everything more efficient, Khatib added. “We still want to have big events where we have 150 people come. But sometimes a room that holds 20 or 30 is better environment other things.”

Other changes include doubling the size of the bookstore, offering a seated dinner option, featured a dedicated gluten-free fryer, adding a full bar, and offering 10 more worker-owner track jobs, bring the Red Emma’s staff to a total of 35. Owners also said they want to strengthen their “commitment to creating and sustaining an inclusive gathering place with regular pay-what-you-want-nights and family-style dinners.”

Prior to hosting Spike & Charlie’s, the 9,000-square-foot building at 1225 Cathedral Street served as home to a jazz club run by Baltimore legend Ethel Ennis. “Our cooperative is increasingly owned by young black and brown women, queer, and trans folks,” Khatib said. “There’s a connection there to a hidden history of entrepreneurialism that’s really meaningful for us.”

For the immediate future, Red Emma’s will be open at its current location, Wednesdays through Sundays, through the end of June. They will closed for moving in July and August before opening in their new location.

Did you ever hear the one about Lady Day biting Miles Davis at Ethel Ennis’s house? It’s true. She bit him on the hand. And drew blood.

In the early-1960s, Ennis was living on Druid Hill Avenue, across from Union Baptist Church, and the famous trumpeter paid her a visit. A few years earlier, the two had shared a bill at New York’s Village Vanguard, and Davis was a fan. At one point, he reached toward Ennis while they were talking, and Lady Day sunk her teeth into him.

Ennis explains that Lady Day was an English Cocker Spaniel, not a certain jazz singer with that nickname, and drops into one of her spot-on impressions, this time mimicking Davis’s raspy voice. “‘That goddamn dog bit me,'” she says, before bursting into a laugh and clapping her hands. “Whew, he was not happy about that, and I did feel terrible at the time.”

Sitting in the front room of the modest Mondawmin row home she’s lived in since 1963, the 78-year-old Ennis exudes a playfulness that runs counter to any diva-esque attitude you might expect from the grand dame of Baltimore jazz. She’s dressed comfortably, in a long white shirt, black slacks, and black slippers. In fact, the mere mention of the d-word is likely to be met with a sidelong glance and a droll reply that she was “raised better than that.”

After 60 years in the music business—she signed her first recording contract in March 1951—Ennis retains a sense of good-humored modesty that would make her grandmother proud. She’s toured the world, appeared numerous times on national TV, hobnobbed with a who’s who of jazz greats (along with Miles, there was Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, and Benny Goodman), and never let it go to her head. After performing at the 1973 Presidential Inauguration, she came home and cleaned the refrigerator.

Sitting across the room, her husband, Earl Arnett—a writer and former reporter for The Sun—chuckles at that last tidbit. “Ethel performed for millions of people that day,” he says, “and came home as if nothing happened. That’s the way she’s always been; she does everything her way.”

And she usually does it with Arnett by her side. Married for 43 years, Ethel and Earl are the sort of couple that finish each other’s sentences, trade inside jokes, and communicate on a variety of levels—sometimes wordlessly with just a glance or half-smile. A mixed-race couple, they were wed in Aspen in 1967, when such unions were still illegal in Maryland. The state’s miscegenation laws were changed later that year.

No conversation about Ennis’s life and legacy would be complete without Arnett in the room to jog her memory and fill in details to stories, of which there are many.

Ennis dislikes interviews—that sort of blatant self-promotion goes against her sense of modesty—so a visitor brings some old 78 records to discuss instead. After all, she can’t resist great music.

Ennis spots a copy of Bessie Smith’s “I’m Wild About that Thing” and flips it over—”You’ve Got to Give Me Some” is on the other side. “I’d love to hear that,” she says, with a mischievous half-smile. “That title is so funny.”

Ennis has been known to sing Smith’s “Empty Bed Blues” at shows, but she usually shies from that sort of material. “I could never perform blues unless it was tongue in cheek,” she explains. “The blues were always [sings in a deep voice], ‘Ohhh, I woke up this morning, and I’m feeling so bad.’ My grandmother always told me that sort of music was demeaning.”

Ennis grew up in Sandtown-Winchester. Her mother, Bell, played piano at Ames United Methodist Church, and her father, Andrew Sr., worked long hours at his barber shop in Harlem Park. Her younger brother, Andrew Jr., played the clarinet and saxophone and went on to join Ray Charles’s band. But it was her grandmother, Honey, who exerted the greatest influence on her.

“My grandmother taught me to be a lady,” says Ennis, “and she expected me to always act like one. She also wanted me to sing things that would uplift the spirit and not dwell in sorrow.”

Ennis went to Douglass High School, was captivated by rhythm and blues—especially “race records” by singers such as Nellie Lutcher and Camille Howard—and played piano in a local group, Riley’s Octet. Though she was just 15 when she joined the band, her mother was surprisingly supportive, figuring that youngsters rehearsing music weren’t out running the streets and getting in trouble. Honey called such music “common,” but Ennis wasn’t dissuaded. It was, after all, uplifting.

“And the guys were protective and never took advantage of me,” recalls Ennis. “I liked being part of the gang.”

One night at Randallstown’s Oddfellows Hall, an audience member offered her a tip if she’d sing “In the Dark,” but, at that point, she’d never sung in public—she was still just the piano player. But the five-dollar tip was too big to resist, and her angelic, full-throated singing brought the house down. The crowd demanded encores, and, from then on, she was a vocalist.

After graduating high school in 1950, Ennis went to business school during the day and continued performing at night, either as a solo act or with bassist Montell Poulson. She sang between acts at strip clubs on The Block and at a truckers’ bar on Pulaski Highway. She and Poulson played mostly ballads, jazz tunes, and R&B at Phil’s Lounge, The Zanzibar, and Pennsylvania Avenue’s Club Casino.

One night, a New Yorker named George Fox dropped by Club Casino for a drink and was floored by what he heard. Fox owned a club at Pennsylvania and Fulton called The Red Fox, and he saw Ennis as the type of singer who could headline the Persian Room at The Plaza.

Fox made sure Ennis had a steady gig at The Red Fox for the next nine years. She never returned to business school.

But she always remembered her grandmother’s advice: “Don’t go against your grain for gain.”

A Billie Holiday record catches Ennis’s eye—”Gloomy Sunday.” On the label, under the title, it’s described as “the famous Hungarian suicide song.” One of Holiday’s signature tunes, its pinched melancholia and fatalistic lyrics (“Gloomy is Sunday, with shadows I spend it all/My heart and I have decided to end it all”) dovetailed perfectly with her tragic persona and decadent lifestyle. Holiday cast a long shadow for female vocalists trying to break into the business—especially if that vocalist was from Baltimore.

“For me, it’s all about personal happiness, and I didn’t want to live that kind of life,” she says. “Earl, what did that manager once tell me?”

“She had a manager in New York,” says Arnett, “who told her, ‘You can either be happy, or you can have a career in show business. They don’t go together.'”

“I’ve found that’s a fairly common attitude,” adds Ennis.

“That’s why a lot of show people are fairly miserable in their personal lives,” points out Arnett. “But that’s not to say Ethel hasn’t had some sorrow, too. Her first husband was abusive, and you would think the blues would come out of that, like with Billie Holiday.”

“Uh-uh,” says Ennis, shaking her head. “Noooo. I wrote a song about that period of my life. It went, ‘Loving you made me a better woman'”—she pauses—”‘for another man.'” She giggles and points toward Arnett, who beams back at her.

Ennis met attorney Jacques Leeds between sets one night at The Red Fox. They married in 1957 after dating for two years and would have seemed, to outside eyes, like the ultimate power couple. Ennis had scored a record deal, cut three acclaimed discs (Lullabys for Losers, Change of Scenery, and Have You Forgotten?), and had started getting national attention and bookings around the country. Leeds became city solicitor and was named Assistant State’s Attorney General in 1960.

But Ennis says there were problems: Leeds was jealous of her success, drank too much, and was unfaithful. “One night, I came home from work,” she recalls, “and there was Jacques and a girlfriend in bed, drunk as skunks.”

She shakes her head, but, in typical fashion, can’t resist injecting some levity: “I wouldn’t have minded so much if she was on his side of the bed, but she was on my side.”

That reminds her of a time the phone rang in the middle of the night, and she and Leeds were sound asleep. Ennis picked up the receiver, and the voice on the other end said it was Billie Holiday calling.

She immediately handed the phone to Leeds. “This is somebody playing,” she told him. “Can you deal with it?”

But it actually was Holiday. As it turns out, the two singers had a mutual friend, a Baltimore hairdresser named Sherry who often visited Holiday in New York. “One night, Billie asked Sherry, ‘Who’s that new bitch down in Baltimore?'” says Ennis, impersonating Holiday’s voice. “I think she heard cuts from Lullabys for Losers on the radio, and the announcer mentioned that I was from Baltimore. Anyway, my friend said, ‘Oh, that’s Ethel, my friend. Let’s give her a call.'”

After establishing that it wasn’t some prankster, Ennis got back on the phone and spoke to Holiday. “She told me she really enjoyed my voice,” says Ennis. “She said she could tell that I didn’t fake it, and, if I kept singing like that, I would be famous.”

Ennis flips through more records, a half-smile creasing her face as she comes across names from her past: “Cab Calloway. I worked with him at The Apollo and saw him years later at the Playboy Club.

“Ella Fitzgerald. She was shy, like me. She performed at my junior high school, Booker T. Washington, when I was in the eighth grade, and I got her autograph.”

“Ella used to tell people that Ethel was one of her favorite singers, and that would get back to us from time to time,” interjects Arnett.

“Benny Goodman,” continues Ennis, reading the name off the record label. “In 1958, my manager heard he was looking for a vocalist for a European tour, so I auditioned for him. I accompanied myself on piano and sang ‘I’ll Take Romance.’ Benny Goodman sat in his chair, listened, and smiled, as if to say, ‘Don’t call me. I’ll call you.’ A few weeks later, he called, and I got the job. No one was more surprised than me.” She continues flipping through the stack.

“Dizzy Gillespie. One time, we were on a plane heading to the same jazz festival, and he got on the microphone and went into this spiel about Ethel Ennis being on the plane. He was impressed that I sang the national anthem a cappella at the Presidential Inauguration, and he told the people on the plane about it.”

“That invitation came out of nowhere,” says Arnett. “We got a call from the Office of the Vice President.”

“I asked, ‘The Vice President of what?'” recalls Ennis. “They said, ‘The Vice President of the United States,’ and I said, ‘Take this, Earl. It’s another nut.'”

The memory causes them to burst out laughing. Then, Arnett says: “It turns out [Spiro] Agnew was a fan. We never knew him when he was governor, and I don’t think he even knew Ethel was from Baltimore. But he had Ethel’s records, and that led to her singing the national anthem at the Republican convention in Miami and then at the inauguration. We weren’t Republicans, but Agnew was a sincere fan and wanted to showcase Ethel; so we said, ‘Okay.’ After all, people are people, and, when you think about it like that, it’s not much different from being here in Mondawmin.”

“That’s right,” says Ennis, who’s spotted another familiar name on a record: “Duke Ellington. He was a man of few words. I performed with him on The Bell Telephone Hour in the mid-1960s.”

Arnett cues up a Bell Telephone clip on the TV. Florence Henderson introduces Ennis: “She’s a Baltimore girl, and the word is that she’s well on her way to being the biggest jazz attraction in years. She has taste and style, and she sings just right.”

The audience applauds, and Ennis enters, singing, “When you’re smiling, just keep on smiling/’cause the whole world smiles with you.” She looks completely at ease and composed for someone performing live on national TV. “I don’t think about it,” says Ennis. “I just do it. I guess I don’t get nervous because I’m not ambitious. I always felt like, ‘I don’t belong here, but here I am.'”

In the next clip, Ennis strolls through a lighted gazebo—a prototypical variety-show set piece—wearing a green sleeveless gown and humming melodically. As she exits the gazebo, the camera swings around to catch her entering a stage filled with musicians. A row of trombonists gives the tune a brassy punch, as she begins singing, “Love you madly, right or wrong/sounds like the lyric of a song.”

Ennis smooths the air with her hands, and the camera pulls back to reveal Ellington, dressed resplendently in a deep blue suit, playing a grand piano. As she continues singing, Ennis walks toward Ellington, and the camera comes in close. He can’t take his eyes off her, and she pauses at his side before circling behind and laying both hands on his shoulders. Ellington flashes a smile, as his fingers move purposefully and gracefully across the keys and his feet bounce beneath them.

He stands to conduct the band, and, Ennis, after a final “I love you so maaaadly,” leans across the empty stool and winds down the song with a playful piano solo, eliciting a look of approval from Ellington.

It’s the sort of show-stopping performance that presages superstardom. Ennis has had such moments over the years, but the superstardom never followed, which is fine with her. She’s good-natured about it, content that she opted for sanity and longevity.

“You know, Ethel may be the only singer still performing who has worked onstage with Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Cab Calloway, Lionel Hampton, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie,” Arnett points out. “That makes her somewhat historical.”

Not missing a beat, Ennis quips, “And that’s hysterical.”

The nation’s loss has been Baltimore’s gain. Although she continued to perform and record over the years—her 1998 CD, If Women Ruled the World, was especially noteworthy with gorgeous renditions of songs by the likes of Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt—Ennis stuck close to home and contributed mightily to Baltimore’s renaissance.

Looking through Ennis’s photo albums, you get an idea how important she’s been to this city. There are shots of her hobnobbing with Muhammad Ali at a fundraiser at Centerstage, rehearsing for a flood relief telethon after Hurricane Agnes, performing at the first City Fair and the first Artscape, headlining Afram, singing with the BSO, playing guitar at Coppin, cooking at a March of Dimes fundraiser, and returning from a visit to Xiamen, Baltimore’s sister city in China. She’s especially proud of an animated character, Ethel Earphone, that she played in Book, Look, and Listen, a children’s show that aired on Maryland Public Television in the mid-1970s. She never had any children of her own.

There are also photos taken backstage at Ethel’s Place, the club Arnett and Ennis opened in 1984. Located across the street from the Meyerhoff, it brought a wide range of top shelf acts to town—from Wynton Marsalis and Clifford Jordan to Doc Watson and Yo-Yo Ma.

“The idea was for it to be a gathering place, a focal point, and not just another nightclub,” says Arnett. “And it gave Ethel a place to perform with her peers, and she could do what she wanted. But it never quite gelled the way I imagined, and even though we did some live TV and radio broadcasts, it didn’t catch on as a production facility, which I’d hoped it would.”

As a result, Ethel’s Place closed in 1988.

“As you’re doing all those different things, you don’t really think about it,” says Ennis, “but it’s important to be involved in the community—you do, until it’s done. And I believe you can bloom where you’re planted, so there has always been a kinship between the city and myself.”

So it’s surprising to hear that Arnett and Ennis might move to the Southwest. Arnett has family in Arizona, and the couple visited the area three times in 2010 and seem quite taken with it. “But we haven’t actually found the perfect place,” says Ennis, “and I’d hate to have to move all this stuff that we’ve collected over the years. But we’re thinking about it.”

The timing might be right. Arnett just completed a long stint of community work, twice serving as president of the Greater Mondawmin Coordinating Council, and wants to write a memoir. He expects Ennis will be productive for years to come. “I believe Ethel will be one of those rare performers who will continue working into her 80s,” he says, before mentioning that she’ll be performing at Montpelier Arts Center in Laurel on March 11 and recording with pianist Larry Willis later in the year.

“We just need a little more space and a little more quiet to do the things we want to do before we depart the scene,” says Arnett.

“We might be in the West,” adds Ennis, “but we will definitely be together.”

A final selection from the stack of records Ennis is holding seems appropriate—Sarah Vaughan’s version of Kurt Weill’s “September Song.”

Ennis has long admired Vaughan as a vocalist, and it’s easy to imagine her and Arnett singing along to the final verse:

Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I’ll spend with you
These precious days I’ll spend with you