1. Barbara Jean Spillman, known professionally as Barbara Dane, was an American folk, blues, and jazz singer, guitarist, record producer, and political activist.
20 Facts About Barbara Dane
1. 2.
Barbara Dane's parents were from Arkansas, and arrived in Detroit where she was born in the 1920s.
3.
Barbara Dane's father Gilbert Spillman was a pharmacist who ran his own store, and her mother Dorothy Spillman was a professional bridge player.
4.
Barbara Dane graduated from Redford High School in Detroit and briefly attended Wayne State University.
5.
Barbara Dane began to sing regularly at demonstrations for racial equality and economic justice.
6.
Barbara Dane received an offer to tour with Alvino Rey's band, but she turned it down in favor of singing at factory gates and in union halls.
7.
Barbara Dane toured the East Coast with Jack Teagarden, appeared in Chicago with Art Hodes, Roosevelt Sykes, Little Brother Montgomery, Memphis Slim, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon, and others, played New York with Wilbur De Paris and his band, and appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson as a solo guest artist.
8.
At this location, Barbara Dane performed regularly with her two most constant musical companions: Kenny "Good News" Whitson on piano and cornet and Wellman Braud, a former Duke Ellington bassist.
9.
Barbara Dane will be portrayed by singer Sarah King in the forthcoming film A Complete Unknown.
10.
Barbara Dane was the Michigan teenage director of American Youth for Democracy in the early 1940s, which was at that time the youth wing of the Communist Party USA.
11.
Barbara Dane was expelled from the Communist Party in the late 1940s, along with her husband at the time, folk musician Rolf Cahn.
12.
Barbara Dane stepped up her work in the movements for peace and justice as the struggle for civil rights spread and the Vietnam War escalated.
13.
Barbara Dane sang at peace demonstrations in Washington, DC, and throughout the US and toured anti-war GI coffeehouses all over the world.
14.
In 1966, Barbara Dane became the first US musician to tour post-revolutionary Cuba, during which Fidel Castro visited with her for three hours while she was doing her laundry at her hotel.
15.
In 1970, Barbara Dane founded Paredon Records with husband Irwin Silber, a label specializing in international protest music.
16.
Barbara Dane produced nearly 50 albums, including three of her own, over a 12-year period.
17.
In 1978, Barbara Dane appeared with Pete Seeger at a rally in New York for striking coal miners.
18.
Barbara Dane had two children with her second husband, jeweler Byron Menendez, whom she divorced in 1963.
19.
Nina Menendez, Barbara Dane's daughter, is the artistic director of the Bay Area Flamenco Festival and Festival Flamenco Gitano.
20.
On October 20,2024, Barbara Dane, who had heart failure, died through assisted suicide at her home in Oakland, under the provisions of the California End of Life Option Act.