Pearl Bailey

CTL-E-6118 · Person · musician · 1918–1990

VERIFIED evidence grade — master store (canonical CSV)

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-02948 · provenance: canonical master store (CSV), record CTL-P-1074 + build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6118. Master record source: CTL seed 2026-10-16 — UNVERIFIED, verify before public citation.

Pearl Bailey was an American singer and actress born March 29, 1918, in Newport News, Virginia, and raised in part in Philadelphia, where she left high school at fifteen for a career as a singer and dancer. She sang in cafes, nightclubs and theatres, at times with big bands led by Cootie Williams and Count Basie, and joined Cab Calloway for theatre and nightclub engagements after a 1944–45 stint at New York's Blue Angel. Her Broadway debut came in St. Louis Woman in 1946 and her first film, Variety Girl, in 1947. She took secondary film roles in Carmen Jones (1954) and Porgy and Bess (1959). Her most memorable stage role was Dolly Gallagher Levi in the all-Black production of Hello, Dolly!, on Broadway from 1967 to 1969 and then on tour. She received a Special Tony Award for that title role in 1968. She hosted The Pearl Bailey Show in 1971, was appointed a special ambassador to the United Nations in 1975, earned a Georgetown bachelor's degree in theology at sixty-seven, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan in 1988. She died August 17, 1990, in Philadelphia.

The record

• Also known as: Pearl Mae Bailey
• Role(s): singer, actor

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 4 — 747 Program, Wave 11; fourth Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Pearl Bailey entity in the live graph at 3,763 entities (exact / normalized / alias match + token containment; CLEAR). ID CTL-E-6118 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — Scan Tail Wave 3 packet ordered reserve, position 33 of 35 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #2003). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — National-scope Person record in MUSIC-001/PPL-001; no Chicago claim is made for Bailey in the sourced material opened. Vital status: Deceased — born March 29, 1918, Newport News, Virginia; died August 17, 1990, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Britannica, updated Aug. 13, 2026, accessed 2026-10-16; corroborated by Wikipedia). STATISTICS — STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Born March 29, 1918 and died August 17, 1990, aged 72 (Britannica and Wikipedia, accessed 2026-10-16). Broadway Hello, Dolly! run 1967–69 per Britannica. No sales or chart statistics asserted beyond the sourced top-ten placing of 'Takes Two to Tango' in 1952 (Wikipedia, accessed 2026-10-16). CONFLICT SHOWN, NOT BLENDED: brief wording 'Tony Award' vs. the sourced specific form 'Special Tony Award' (Wikipedia) — record uses the specific form. MEDIA: photo HELD (Pearl Bailey c. 1946 portrait illustrated on the Wikipedia Pearl Bailey article (also the Britannica 1952 Bailey photograph) — for a later PHOTO-001 pass to verify creator, rights and credit; no license claimed. — named candidate only; file-level rights verification per CTL-PHOTO-001 still required; no license claimed); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6118-pearl-bailey.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged); map N/A (person record). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Persons carry no map in the packet standard.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created chart (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced statistics and timeline fact) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged.) | audio = HELD (No rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged.)

Relationships

• Cab Calloway — collaborated with
  Joined Cab Calloway for theatre and nightclub engagements after the Blue Angel stint
• Count Basie — collaborated with
  Sang at times with big bands including those led by Count Basie and Cootie Williams
• Tony Awards 1968 — honored by
  VERIFIED FACT

Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Pearl Bailey" (accessed 2026-10-16) — birth March 29, 1918 Newport News and death Aug. 17, 1990 Philadelphia; church singing, bands of Cootie Williams and Count Basie, Blue Angel 1944–45, Cab Calloway, St. Louis Woman 1946, Variety Girl 1947, Carmen Jones and Porgy and Bess, Hello, Dolly! Broadway 1967–69 and tours, The Pearl Bailey Show 1971, UN special ambassador 1975, Georgetown theology degree at 67, Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1988 — http://www.britannica.com/biography/Pearl-Bailey (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, "Pearl Bailey" (accessed 2026-10-16) — full name Pearl Mae Bailey; Special Tony Award for the title role in the all-Black Hello, Dolly! in 1968; 'Takes Two to Tango' top ten in 1952; Presidential Medal of Freedom on October 17, 1988; death at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, Aug. 17, 1990 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Bailey (build store)
• https://www.tonyawards.com/winners/year/1968/category/any/show/any/ (verification source · master store)

Evidence note (master store)

Won Special Tony Award at the Tony Awards 1968 — per the official Tony Awards winners record (tonyawards.com), cross-checked on the per-year winners pages (fetched 2026-10-17)

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Record CTL-E-6118 · Combined Graph record U-02948 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 3 mapped relationships.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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