Kenneth Spencer

Actor/singer Kenneth Spencer hoped to succeed Paul Robeson at some point as the leading artistic spokesman for the Black community in theater and music. A singer by training with a degree from the Eastman School of Music, Spencer made a major impression as a concert artist and on radio in California at the outset of the '40s, and in 1943 got major acting roles in two MGM films, Bataan and the acclaimed musical Cabin in the Sky. Unfortunately, Spencer didn't get the kind of career-defining roles or songs, such as Brutus Jones in The Emperor Jones or Joe (and the signature song "Ol' Man River") that Robeson had performed in the '20s. Though he recorded a fair body of classical music as well as spirituals and folk songs, he never emerged with the same kind of profile that Robeson had achieved a half-generation earlier. Spencer's major extant recording is his performance of "Ol' Man River" in the cast recording of the 1946 revival of Showboat, although his beautiful bass-baritone voice can also be heard on the soundtrack of the 1946 movie A Walk in the Sun singing the folk-like ballads written by Earl Robinson and Millard Lampell that move the story and underscore the action. At the end of the '40s, frustrated over the meager opportunities that he found as a Black actor/singer in America, Spencer moved to Europe, where he spent the next 15 years concertizing regularly and making the occasional film appearance. Spencer died in a plane crash just outside of New Orleans, in 1964.
© Bruce Eder /TiVo