Joyce Bryant had aspirations of becoming a teacher. But, at 19, she was dared to participate in an impromptu singalong at a local Oakland club. She noticed that she was the only one singing. The club owner offered her $25 to continue. She accepted, as she need the money to get home.
And that was the beginning of Joyce’s career.
By the late 1940s, Joyce was performing in New York nightclubs. Those gigs led to a 118-date tour of the resorts in the Catskill Mountains. She soon found herself on the same bill as the famed Josephine Baker. In an attempt to stand out, Joyce painted he hair silver. She put on a tight silver dress and draped herself in a silver fox coat. In Joyce’s own recollection: “I stopped the show.”
Tight, cleavage-revealing silver dresses became Joyce’s trademark, along with her silver hair and four-octave vocal range. Joyce was turning heads and becoming a top headliner. She earned the nicknames “The Bronze Blond Bombshell” and “The Black Marilyn Monroe.” Singer Etta James later admitted that she tried her best to copy Joyce’s style.
Joyce recorded a number of popular and successful songs, some of which were banned from radio play for their suggestive lyrics. Her 1954 recording of “Running Wild” was given the “okay” by CBS and NBC censors, who deemed her previous efforts “too sexy for airplay.”
A fierce opponent to Jim Crow laws, Joyce became the first black entertainer to perform at a Miami Beach hotel, despite threats from the Ku Klux Klan. She also broke racial barriers at nightclubs in the Washington, DC area.
In spite of her provocative act, Joyce was a deeply religious person. She hated the drug and gangster culture so prevalent in the nightclub business. In 1955, she left show business to focus on civil rights issues and church interests. Joyce regularly organized fundraisers for food, medicine and clothing for underprivileged communities. She appeared sans makeup and without her trademarked silver hair.
She made a return to the stage in the 1960s, touring with French and Italian opera companies. Coming back her jazz roots, Joyce worked as a vocal coach for Phyllis Hyman and Raquel Welch in the 80s.
Joyce died from complications of Alzheimer’s Disease in 2022 at the age of 95.