Biography
Myrtle A. Forcey-Southall (September 12, 1919, Washington D.C., USA - August 9, 2002, Washington D.C., USA) was a singer and dancer, aka: Myrtle Wilson; aka: Joyce Jackson.
During her long career, she worked with Duke Ellington, Earl Bostic, Paul Williams and Leo Parker Ella Fitzgerald, and The Ink Spots. She recorded R&B for Mercury Records.
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Myrtle Forcey was born in 1919 in Washington, DC. One newspaper article
stated that at the age of two, she was hit by an automobile, crushing her legs and pelvis.
She did not walk again until age 5. She also started dancing at about the same time, and
continued dancing throughout her school years. During junior high, she was involved in
another automobile accident, and a year later, her legs were scalded with boiling water.
She kept dancing. By 1935, performing under the name Myrtle Wilson, she performed at
the Club Astoria in Baltimore over the course of nine months, apparently taking time out
from school to do so. While there, she often performed on the same stage with Blanche
Calloway, the sister of Cab Calloway. She completed her education at Armstrong High
School in Washington, DC, graduating in 1938. She then began her dancing career in
earnest, performing as a contortionist and dancer in African American jazz clubs such as
Pittsburgh’s Harlem Casino, the Club Caverns in Washington, DC, and one performance
in 1939 at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, with Teddy Wilson as the headlining act. She
apparently continued her dancing career into the 1940s. Around 1947, she married
Thomas W. Southall. At some point in the late 1940s, she began performing as a jazz
singer, using the name “Joyce Jackson.” She sang or performed with Deek Watson and
the Brown Dots; Leo “Mad Lad” Parker; Earl Bostic; the Paul Wilson Orchestra; and
others. She recorded two rhythm and blues records with Mercury Records. Around 1954,
as singer “Joyce Jackson,” she traveled to see her husband who was stationed in
Germany, and she performed as part of the “Slamboree” - a multi-genre musical
extravaganza for American service personnel. She returned to the U.S. and continued
singing in various clubs on the East Coast, including Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York
City, Washington, DC, Baltimore, and also in Montréal, Canada. In 1958 she gave birth
to a son, Tommy Jr. (Thomas W. Southall III) in Washington, DC, and retired from
touring and performing. By 1966, when her husband was overseas in Vietnam, she was
living in Washington, DC, and visited with relatives in New York City and her husband’s
brother or perhaps step-brother, in Hawaii. She died of a stroke on August 9, 2002 in
Washington, DC.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.