Earth Kitt died today.

It’s a sad sad day.

Loved her for many, many reasons.

But only recently learned of her own childhood and work on behalf of homeless children.

I don’t really have the words, I’d rather listen that voice of hers instead.

Thanks Eartha, for everything.

See her official website here.

And these, as but two of many articles about her passing.

Playbill, Eartha Kitt, Exotic Songstress and Actress, Dies at 81

Eartha Mae Keith was raised in punishing circumstances. Born out of wedlock, she claimed to be the child of a rape; her mother was a part-African-American, part-Cherokee-Native-American sharecropper in South Carolina, her father a white plantation owner of German and Dutch lineage. She was given away by her mother when she was eight, and raised in Harlem. Eartha Kitt believed that Mamie Kitt was her biological mother. Her new family often beat her and she frequently ran away from home. By her teens, she was living on her own.

NYT, Eartha Kitt, a Seducer of Audiences, Dies at 81 (see the video in the sidebarof Eartha at the Cafe Carlyle too.)

For these performances Ms. Kitt likely drew on the hardship of her early life. She was born Eartha Mae Keith in North, S.C., on Jan. 17, 1927, a date she did not know until about 10 years ago, when she challenged students at Benedict College in Columbia, S.C., to find her birth certificate, and they did. She was the illegitimate child of a black Cherokee sharecropper mother and a white man about whom Ms. Kitt knew little. She worked in cotton fields and lived with a black family who, she said, abused her because she looked too white. “They called me yella gal,” Ms. Kitt said.

At 8 she was sent to live in Harlem with an aunt, Marnie Kitt, who Ms. Kitt came to believe was really her biological mother. Though she was given piano and dance lessons, a pattern of abuse developed there as well: Ms. Kitt would be beaten, she would run away and then she would return. By her early teenage years she was working in a factory and sleeping in subways and on the roofs of unlocked buildings. (She would later become an advocate, through Unicef, on behalf of homeless children.)

“I’d Rather Be Burned As a Witch (Than Never Be Burned At All).”

(audio clip)

They say that I’m a witch
and that I weave a spell
[laughing] Well…

I’ll use my eyes to invite you
My lips to delight you
And all the charms of the feminine wiles to excite you

They say that I’m a witch
and that I weave a spell
Well I’ll be a son of a —
And a what the —
Well, let me tell you brother
I’d rather be burned as a witch
Than never be burned at all

I’ll use my songs to entice you
With verses to vice you
And all of my bags of tricks to shoes and rice you

They say that I’m a witch
and that I weave a spell
Well I’ll be a son of a —
And a what the —
Well, let me tell you brother
I’d rather be burned as a witch
Than never be burned at all

Do you want a gal who would be a pal,
who would never look at another?
Who’d be good and true and take care of you?
Sorry, you want another!

I’ll use my charms to undo you
My arms to unglue you
And all of the hex of the weaker sex to voodoo you

They say that I’m a witch
and that I weave a spell
Well I’ll be a son of a —
And a what the —
Well, let me tell you brother
I’d rather be burned as a witch
Than never be burned at all

Do you want a love who’s a turtle dove,
who will bring you life’s little joys?
Who is sweet and shy, with a gentle eye?
I’ll take the men not the boys!

I’ll use my eyes to invite you
My lips to delight you
And you never can tell when I’ll use my teeth to bite you

They say that I’m a witch
and that I weave a spell
Well I’ll be a son of a —
And a what the —
Well, let me tell you brother
I’d rather be burned as a witch
Than never be burned at all

The Divaville Lounge on WXDU in Durham will be producing an extended tribute to Eartha on the January 4 program.

Finally, I leave you with an interview in which she talks briefly about her “illegitimacy”/bastardy, along with a copy of her video with Bronski Beat, Cha Cha Heels, which was but one of many aspects of her crossover with and embrace of Queer culture.