You would be forgiven if you never heard the name Doris Rheubottom-Hackley (1899-1985) since very few Americans have. However, in the 1930s, the Black swing-era jazz vocalist whose career spanned Philadelphia, Harlem and other East Coast cities was the cat’s meow, as they might have said back then.

Rheubottom’s voice once filled jazz clubs, like Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway and Bessie Smith, and yet her name has virtually disappeared from American music history.

“She was up there with the Billie Holidays and all of them in her day, but we didn’t know that when we were kids,” said Norma Thomas, founding director of the Fayette County African American History and Cultural Center in southwestern Pennsylvania and author of a book on the African American history of Fayette County. “She was just Aunt Doris, who we knew sang, but we didn’t know how famous she was.”

Rheubottom appeared in more than 200 Black newspaper articles between the 1920s and 1950s and in the Library of Congress-preserved 1932 musical short, “Smash Your Baggage.” Despite her documented success, she remains largely absent from conventional jazz histories, and much of her personal memorabilia was reportedly discarded after her death.

But Thomas and her daughter Raina J. León, a Chestnut Hill resident and Philadelphia’s 2026-2027 poet laureate, will be reviving the once-celebrated Swing-era vocalist’s music on Nov. 6 with a 7 p.m. performance of “Swing Mezzo” at Young American Cider, 6350 Germantown Ave., as well as a month-long residency ending Nov. 27, 7-9 p.m., at Our House Cultural Center, 6380 Germantown Ave.

León grew up in Southwest Philadelphia and has studied at Penn State, Columbia University and the University of North Carolina, and lived in Las Vegas, Germany, and the San Francisco Bay area before returning to Chestnut Hill with her husband and children in 2020. She is a visiting professor for creative writing at Bryn Mawr College and professor emerita at Saint Mary’s College of California.

Supported by the Velocity Fund and the Puffin Foundation, the “Swing Mezzo” project integrates archival research, original jazz compositions, live performance, poetry, digital collage and visual installation to celebrate Rheubottom and the Black women of that era whose often-unappreciated artistry shaped American music.

Throughout November, an exhibition, workshops, film screenings and artist conversations at Our House Cultural Center will explore Black history, archives, creative practice and cultural preservation. The residency concludes Nov. 27, 7–9 p.m., with “Blue Notes on Black Friday,” a reception featuring music, food, dancing and conversation.

“Until 2024, Doris was buried in an unmarked grave in a historically Black cemetery, one that was established in the 1800s,” León told the Local last week. “After doing a podcast (‘Generational Archives’) episode about her life and running a GoFundMe campaign, my mother and I raised enough money to change that.”

The Nov. 6 performance transforms these archival fragments into an interdisciplinary choreopoem featuring original compositions by pianist and composer Kendrah Butler-Waters, jazz standards performed by vocalist Hiwot Adilow, musical interpretation by pianist Stephanie Cole and percussionist Karen Smith, and poetry by León.

Doris Rheubottom (her maiden name) was married to a comedian, Bland “Crackshot” Hackley, and they often performed together. What began as a podcast episode based on the few documents Thomas and her daughter had uncovered led to research (10 articles, then many more), trips to the Library of Congress, a performing arts library in New York, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and two interviews with family members.

“We discovered Doris in a Vitaphone short film, ‘Smash Your Baggage,’ preserved at the Library of Congress,” Leon said, “dancing in a family reunion video originally recorded on Super 8. Most recently, after photographing nearly 4,000 family photographs, we found Doris in many of them, and I made a new scrapbook that shows at least part of her family life.

“Her life is important because, in remembering her, we return our attention to all the other performers who made up the Harlem Renaissance, those whose careers were long and those whose lives were short,” she continued. “In addition, she worked hard to preserve all of her costumes, photographs and news clippings from her performing career, but when she died, all of these things — an archive of jazz history and her place within it — were thrown away. Through the ‘Swing Mezzo’ show, we reclaim the stories and innovate within them as part of a collective.

“We need to know how to preserve our legacy, how to communicate our intentions and the importance of our stories. There are lessons in resilience, resistance, gumption, community, living a life on one’s own terms and legacy in the stories I’ve been able to recover.”

For more information, visit rainaleon.com. Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.