Ruth Etting

Ruth Etting — American singer and actress whose clear torch-song delivery made her a radio, Broadway, and early talkie star — died in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on September 24, 1978. She was eighty. Born November 23, 1897, in David City, Nebraska, she modeled and sang in Chicago, then rode the microphone boom into national fame with songs that treated heartbreak as something you could dance past without denying it. Hits like "Love Me or Leave Me," "Ten Cents a Dance," and "Shine On, Harvest Moon" put her voice in living rooms that had never seen a nightclub. Hollywood shorts and features followed; so did tabloid turbulence around her marriage and the violent jealousy of her former husband — a public drama later filmed without erasing the craft that made her famous in the first place. Fans remembered the velvet control more than the headlines. Colorado Springs became a quieter late chapter after Midwestern beginnings and New York lights. She died there after years away from the bandstand, leaving recordings that still define a certain 1920s–30s American ache. She died in Colorado Springs on September 24, 1978. Old radio transfers still introduce her as if the needle never left the groove. Etting's gift was intimate clarity — making a torch song feel like a private letter read in public. Notice Nearby keeps the death date so September 24 remembers the Nebraska singer who turned microphone closeness into national style.