Credit: Image Donated by Corbis-Bettmann
Pearl Bailey was a fifteen-year-old student at North Philadelphia's William Penn High School when she entered a talent contest at the Pearl Theater and won $5 and a two-week engagement. Soon Bailey was honing her skills on the vaudeville circuit in Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pottsville, and other Pennsylvania coal towns, and night clubs in Baltimore and Washington D. C. At twenty, she began touring as a featured vocalist with a string of swing-era Big Bands.
