Emmett "Babe" Wallace

Emmett "Babe" Wallace (June 24, 1909 – December 3, 2006), was an American singer, stage performer, composer, actor, and poet. His decades long career included many years performing abroad in Europe and Israel. He featured on stage and screen. The New York Public Library has a collection of his papers in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Biography Wallace was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 24, 1909, to George Bason and Inez Wallace. Wallace composed the song "A Chicken Ain't Nothin' but a Bird" recorded by Cab Calloway in 1940. Carl Van Vechten photographed him and Yale University Library has the images in its archives. In 1940, Wallace was selected to front the Ella Fitzgerald Orchestra on tour. he died in 2006.

Filmography The Black Network (1936) The Devil's Daughter (1939) as John Lowden Stormy Weather (1943) as Chick Bailey

Compositions "A Chicken Ain't Nothin' but a Bird" Timmie Rogers recorded it and it was a hit. "Dorie Miller" about war hero Doris Miller