DOLLY RATHEBE - QUOTATION

Next on the list of profitable entertainment comes music. At least half a dozen bands and "combinations" are good enough to do extremely well anywhere in the world. These bands play at the "socials' and "hops' organised in all the halls of the big cities of the country. They play the most modern jazz, jive and boogie-woogie music. . . . A handful of "big name" individual performers have emerged. To them their fans accord the same love and loyalty that american fans accord Luois Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughan, Josh White and the others. The most succesful and the most popular is a young woman called Dolly Rathebe. Miss Rathebe is the biggest "name" in Black entertainment today and has a following any popular Hollywood singer would be proud of. She has an excellent voice, a lovely face and what Americans have called either "Oomph" or "It" to a degree that would be the envy of most Hollywood "It" girls.She has made a number of records that are "best sellers", and has also appeared in some of the handful of films made for Blacks during the war period when the White Liberals exercised a strong influence.

-Peter Abrahams, Return to Goli (1953).