A torchy, 'proto-soul' Aretha?  Judy Garland with a gospel growl?  Maria Callas meets Grace Jones...?  Star-making entertainment columnist Walter Winchell simply called Joyce Bryant "The Voice You'll Always Remember." This held true for those who saw her live - combining fifties high-glamour with a raw emotional investment a decade ahead of its time. 
 
Raised in a strict Seventh Day Adventist family, Joyce Bryant was an unlikely candidate to become the first dark-skinned African American woman celebrated as a 'sex symbol' by the mass media.  Internationally acclaimed in the early 1950's for her four and a half-octave vocal range, Bryant packed 'the big rooms' in the U.S. and abroad.  

In an era before on-stage pyrotechnics and 'auto-tune,' female vocalists had two weapons to hold audience attention:  talent and glamour.  Joyce Bryant delivered both in abundance. Her silver-tinted hair startled audiences almost as much as her low-cut, skin-tight gowns by pioneering African American designer Zelda Wynn, who would later create the prototype Playboy 'Bunny' costume (Wynn would ultimately serve as the founding designer for the Dance Theater of Harlem for nearly three decades).  At once carnal and classic, Zelda's creations at once reflected and fueled the duality of Bryant's elegantly torrid stage persona. So tightly gowned that she had to be carried onstage, Joyce would violently slash and punch at the air with her arms - hence the nickname: "Belter Bryant!"  It was as if she was fighting something...  and indeed, she was.

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In December of1952 Bryant defied Ku Klux Klan threats as the first black entertainer to perform in a Miami Beach hotel, the site of swank nightclubs which were then a prestige link on the winter nightclub circuit. These bookings were entirely off-limits to black performers.  In an age when only major black stars received such exposure, LIFE magazine chronicled her 1953 triumph at Manhattan's prestigious Copacabana. Time magazine opined that the smash-hit engagement positioned her to rank "among the top two or three female nightclub headliners of the day."

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Her intensely emotional delivery of torch-songs like "Love for Sale" and "Drunk With Love" astounded packed nightclub audiences, despite being banned from radio for being "too sexy."  In 1954, critic James Goodrich observed, "[...Joyce Bryant] has a talent so exciting she can maintain a topflight rating on personal appearances alone.  Few performers working today can claim that sort of pull."  With stellar arrangements by her exclusive pianist George Rhodes (who, after Bryant left popular music, became music director for Sammy Davis, Jr. for the remainder of his life), Bryant's career just kept gaining momentum. In late 1954, she dropped the 'gimmick' of silver hair, as it was no longer necessary.  The year 1955 brought a return engagement at Hollywood's Coconut Grove, packed houses at the Chicago Theatre, and both Spring and Fall bookings at Harlem's famed Apollo Theatre.  As film director Otto Premminger's initial first choice for the title role in "Carmen Jones," Bryant's future seemed limitless.

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Instead, Bryant saw her guest appearances deleted from Hollywood films, her recordings shelved and her money pocketed by unscrupulous management.  Taking refuge in her Seventh Day Adventist faith, the 28 year-old shocked the industry, walking away from stardom in late-1955.  Devoting herself to her Seventh Day Adventist Faith, Bryant entered religious college and made extensive, highly-successful concert tours raising money for the church.  By the end of the 1950's, one of that decades most exciting and critically acclaimed entertainers had slipped almost completely from the public consciousness.   But as a creative artist, she was far from through.

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Within a decade, Bryant had reinvented herself as a trained classical vocalist. After six years of study with famed Howard University voice instructor Frederick "Wilkie" Wilkerson, she won a contract with the New York City Opera. Bryant toured internationally in lead roles with such co-stars as LeVern Hutcherson, Florence Henderson, Ricardo Montalban and Avon Long. She herself later became a vocal coach of note, working with such diverse artists as Phyllis Hyman, Raquel Welch, Michelle Rosewoman, and Jennifer Holiday.

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Often woefully miscategorized as a "quitter," extensive research uncovers a rather different tale of a woman who reinvented herself as an artist on her own terms - refusing to be another a victim of the entertainment machine.