Singer, instrumentalist, and educator Revella Eudosia Hughes (July 27, 1895 - October 24, 1987) was born in Huntington and grew up at 1209 Seventh Avenue. Her father, George Hughes, was a switchman for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway and then a long-time postal carrier; Anna Page Hughes, her mother, taught piano and was a seamstress.

Revella Hughes started taking piano and singing lessons at age five and violin when she was 10. In 1909, she earned a diploma from her mother’s alma mater, Hartshorn Memorial College (now part of Virginia Union University), in Richmond. She graduated from Oberlin High and Conservatory (1915) and earned a bachelor’s degree in music from Howard University (1917). Blending the influences of classical training, spirituals, and the sound of the burgeoning Jazz Age, she created a distinctive style all her own.

After teaching at the Washington Conservatory of Music and Expression and at what is now South Carolina State University, she moved to Harlem about 1920. According to that year’s census, she lived first in the home of the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. and his family. Powell and her father apparently knew each other from Washington’s Wayland Seminary (later part of Virginia Union).

One of her housemates was Marianna Johnson, a contralto and pianist who had also grown up in Huntington. Both recorded for Black Swan, a short-lived but historically important early record label owned by Black entrepreneurs featuring Black musicians. In 1921, Hughes cut Black Swan’s first 78 rpm recording: “At Dawning” and “Thank God For A Garden.”

The two performed together regularly, including fundraisers for political activist Marcus Garvey. By 1923, Johnson had returned to Huntington, where she married Nester Martin. It appears Johnson’s professional music career ended then; she died in 1998 at age 100. In the early 1920s, Hughes was married to former Howard classmate Layton Wheaton but divorced three years later. She never remarried.

In September 1921, Hughes became the first featured Black soloist at New York Mayor John Hylan’s Peoples’ Concerts in Central Park. Her stunning soprano voice and other musical talents took her to the top of what was becoming known as “Black Broadway.” Performing at times as Carmela Desche, her first show, Dumb Luck, flopped. After that, though, her career took off.

In 1923, she served as choral director of the popular Shuffle Along revue, appearing with the likes of Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson. She then took on the lead female role in the touring company of Runnin’ Wild, which introduced “The Charleston” song-and-dance rage, and appeared in Hot Rhythm. All three shows were quite popular. In addition, she performed classical piano with the Washington Symphony Orchestra and jazz and swing piano with fabled musicians Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, and Cab Calloway.

In 1930, she partnered with Georgette Harvey, Musa Williams, and Lois Parker to sing twice weekly on radio as the Four Bon-Bons, although CBS avoided any mention of their race. In August 1931, they were part of an early experimental television simulcast. The Four Bon-Bons ended their radio career in February 1932 but appeared on stage in Blackberries of 1932. Throughout the group’s short career, Hughes was the chief music arranger.

In 1932, at the peak of her success, she returned to Huntington to care for her widowed mother. For the next decade, Hughes was music supervisor of Cabell County's Black school system. During that time, she established the Douglass High School band and Barnett Grade School’s orchestra, and headed the piano and violin departments at West Virginia State College (now West Virginia State University). She felt initial distrust from the public due to her Broadway background, later recalling, “Some parents . . . complained to the school board that they didn’t want this show business woman teaching their children.”

But her accomplishments quickly turned public sentiment. For three consecutive years, the Douglass band won the West Virginia High School Music Contest for Black schools. She remembered, “When I was ready to leave, the parents begged me to . . . stay with them. Isn’t life funny? When I left, I left them with a band of 124 pieces. There was $900 in the bank; they had uniforms and good instruments, including sousaphones. . . . When I began we had to borrow instruments from stores and organizations for our parades.”

After her mother died in May 1942, Hughes left Huntington, returned to the performance ranks, and earned a master’s degree in music from Northwestern University. Touring with the USO during World War II, she entertained Allied troops in North Africa and Turkey. Her concerts in the states increasingly demonstrated her musical versatility as she added the new Hammond organ to her repertoire. Known as the “Sophisticated Lady of the Organ,” she officially retired in 1955 and started spending her spare time transcribing old spirituals for piano and organ.

In 1960, Hughes was thrust into the spotlight again when chewing gum heiress Evelyn Adams died and left her nearly a million dollars. The two had lived together in Adams’s Long Island home. The news became public after a bizarre incident in February 1961 when Hughes accidentally shot herself and a friend with a World War I German handgun while preparing to move. Both recovered.

At age 84, Hughes came out of retirement for the New York Women’s Jazz Festival in 1980. She continued to perform periodically for the next four years. One of her final appearances was part of the West Virginia Black Cultural Festival at the state Culture Center in Charleston in 1984. The next year, Marshall University awarded her an honorary doctorate, and she donated a sizeable part of her memorabilia to the school library’s Special Collections.

Revella Hughes died in New York City and was buried in Huntington’s Spring Hill Cemetery.