She retired from show business and became a nurse. For 40 years, she cared for the ill under an assumed name and invented birthdate. She was forced to retire from the health care field when her employer believed she had reached 65. She was actually 81!

Alberta was also a very successful songwriter. Bessie Smith had one of her first huge hits with "Downhearted Blues," which Alberta penned.

Alberta's life was certainly no fairy tale. She ran away from home in Memphis in 1907, at the tender age of 12. She knew even then that the blues was her calling. By the early 1920s, she was at the top of her game, one of the best-selling blues recording artists.

Half a century before Bette Midler got her start singing in a gay men's bathhouse in the Big Apple, Alberta got her start singing in a bordello on the South side of Chicago. That's until there was a murder in the house, and the heat closed down the joint. That she survived that tumultuous period is a wonder in itself. Once, her pianist was shot and killed onstage as she performed.

Alberta Hunter's music falls into two broad categories: her early work from 1921-54, and her later work from 1977-84. Her voice towards the end of her career became grittier, filled with even more character. Many younger listeners prefer this later era. In fact, Alberta sounds completely different, as if she were another woman entirely. There's a huge selection of her works available on compact disc. Or hunt down one of her three videos: Jazz Masters Series: Alberta Hunter (DVD only; released in 2005), My Castle's Rockin' (1992), and Jazz at the Smithsonian (1991).