As the song says, she came a long way from St. Louis. Because she was cold in the ghetto there all during her childhood, Josephine Baker became a dancer to keep warm. As she grew into international fame as a stage and cabaret performer, the heat stayed on. New York had never seen anything quite like the red-hot way she sang and shimmied the Charleston and black bottom at the old Plantation Club. Paris, to which she moved in 1925 at age 19, had never seen anything like her at all. At the Folies-Bergere,...
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