Pearl Bailey, a Southern preacher's daughter who became a top performer best known for her throaty rendition of "Hello Dolly," died Friday at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. She was 72.
The singer, dancer, humorist and homespun philosopher - Pearlie Mae to friends - had suffered a recurring heart condition since the early 1960s."Singing does bring out the soreness," she once said. "But when I get on the floor, baby, you know nothing hurts."
Last month the singer underwent surgery to replace her arthritic left knee with a metal and plastic joint.
Bailey, who has been performing 57 of her 72 years, is one of the few entertainers who could still be called a trouper in the classic sense.
Born in Newport News, Va., as a young girl she moved with family members to Washington and then Philadelphia, where she made her debut at age 15, winning an amateur contest by singing "Poor Butterfly."
Perhaps best-known for playing Dolly in the black version of the musical "Hello, Dolly!" in the late 1960s, she also enjoyed a long film career, with her movies including "Carmen Jones" and "Porgy and Bess."
In 1968, she received a special Tony award for her role in "Hello, Dolly!" But Bailey considered herself foremost a singer.
Her standbys included "Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home," "St. Louis Blues," "Row, Row, Row," and "That's Good Enough for Me."
She also served as a delegate to the United Nations under the Reagan administration.
Miss Bailey did her first show for U.S. servicemen in 1941 and had been a staple performer of the United Service Organizations - better known as the USO - since then.
She wrote humorous and inspirational books, including "Hurry Up" and "America & Spit." Last year she published an autobiography, "Between You and Me."
Flipping a feather boa or swathed in chinchilla, ablaze with rhinestones and jewels, Miss Bailey was famous onstage for her throwaway style of singing, a mumbling growl laced with husky patter.
"I'm not a comedienne," she once told an interviewer, "I call myself a humorist. I tell stories to music and, thank God, in tune. I laugh at people who call me an actress."
She attributed her talent to God.
"People say, `Pearl, what style do you have?' I say it's God, not style."
At a Washington, D.C., performance of "Hello, Dolly!" she was joined onstage by then-President Lyndon Johnson and his wife.
And in 1970, President Richard Nixon named her America's "ambassador of love" to the world.