Hilda Perleno

Hilda Eugeana Perleno was an American blues and jazz singer and Broadway performer, born in East St. Louis, Illinois. She studied at the music conservatory at Howard University from 1918 to 1922, laying the foundation for a career that would span stage, radio, and recording work across the 1920s and 1930s.

Perleno entered performing as a chorus girl in the 1924 production In Bamville, and that same year made her Broadway debut in The Chocolate Dandies. Between 1925 and 1926, she worked as a first soprano for the Harlem Production Company, and beginning in 1925 she also performed in Lucky Sambo, a Negro musical comedy that played at the La Salle Theatre in Chicago in March 1927. In that production she appeared opposite Berlena Banks and Jesse Shipp, serving alongside Amanda Randolph as one of the Three Dixie Songbirds. In 1927, she recorded Donald Heywood's compositions "Mango Lane" and "Susanne," performing both as duets with Dan Michaels while Heywood accompanied them on piano. That same year she made regular radio appearances on WCGU, occasionally joined by Heywood. In 1928, she performed in Keep Shufflin' by Miller and Lyles at the Erlanger Theater in Chicago alongside Blanche Calloway, Anna Freeman, Byron Jones, Lew Keene, and Evelyn Keyes.

Perleno's Broadway activity continued into the late 1920s and early 1930s. In April 1929 she appeared in the ensemble of the musical Messin' Around, and in June of that year she took on the role of Sheila Nesbit in Bamboola at the Royale Theatre, performing in the numbers "Ace of Spades," "Tampico Tune," and "Shoutin Sinners." In 1930 she appeared in the Broadway revue Hot Rhythm, and that April she also performed in a production of Shuffle Along at Werba's Brooklyn Theatre alongside Margaret Simms, Allen Virgel, and Valaida Snow. Her final Broadway credit was the revue Yeah Man in 1932.

Away from Broadway, Perleno became one of the featured performers in Ed Smalls' Club Paradise Revue by 1931. Smalls, the owner of Smalls Paradise, produced revues using a permanent cast of entertainers and commissioned original music for productions that were staged both at the club and at local theaters. Jackie "Moms" Mabley was among the featured performers when the revue appeared at the Harlem Alhambra. In April 1937, Perleno appeared at the Apollo Theater in New York City in support of Ella Fitzgerald and the Chick Webb Orchestra during their one-week engagement there.