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I began my Career on Television with the Buster Davies Singers on NBC’s “Bell Telephone Hour,” a job I received through the Juilliard School jobs for students. When I look back over my successes, I cannot separate them from the survival experiences that made my more than 143 appearances on National television possible. Luckily, I was well prepared for the journey. My parents, Rev. and Mrs. Isaac Bartley Butler had sent all of their six daughters to college.
Before going to college, we all grew up on a 68 acre farm on the 76 Hyway going East from Columbia, S.C. to Sumter in Richland County address of Eastover, S.C. Eastover was a small town about 7 miles down the road that the railroad traveled through its crossing in the middle of town, that had a Post Office, A Sheriff’s Office, A Country Store, A Liquor Store on the other side of the tracks, A Piccolo Joint (where people hung out on Saturday Nights).
A few blocks away, across the tracks was the Webber Elementary and the Webber High School for people of African descent. Down the road, about a half mile and on a different street was the school for people of Caucasian descent. About seven miles away going West was The Crossroads School at the intersection of the 601 Hyway and the 76 Hyway. Crossroads was where my mother “Emma Angeline” taught 2nd grade and my father “Isaac” was Principal and taught Mathematics. This was where we went to Elementary School. Rev. and Mrs. Butler adopted me at 12 days old.
We went to different High Schools depending on what our parents thought our needs were. My parents boarded me out with a Black family, Mr. and Mrs. Waters, in the City of Columbia, so I could attend the C.A. Johnson High School, while my sisters went to the Webber High School. Later, in my tenth grade, they built a new School in nearby Hopkins, S.C. (Mr. U. R. Barber Principal) and I transferred from my city school.
It’s from there that I applied to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Because of circumstances beyond my control, I ended up at Fisk University in Nashville and studied Music with distinguished teachers like John W. Work, Composer, Director of the famed Fisk Jubilee Singers for some sixteen years and Collector of Folk Music… He was a Juilliard School and a Columbia University Graduate. John Work encouraged me to go to Juilliard, I applied and won a Scholarship from my audition on Stravinsky’s “Three Songs from Shakespeare.”
After the Bell Telephone Hour, I began looking for work in the entertainment business. I took my first professional headshots with Photographer Charles Stewart (See in Images) and they carried me a long way. They saw me through “The Pilgrims/Just Arrived” years on Columbia Records and my first years as a Stand-up Performer in my own ACT (See Credits in“Mapping My Legacy”).
