EDNA HICKS was an American Blues singer and musician. Most of the people we feature on this page are because of their music and occasionally their dubious or shall we say mysterious or colourful history but Edna has a place in our archives for a very different reason.
Edna was born Edna Landreaux and was the half sister of Lizzie Miles.
She was popular in black vaudeville in the American Midwest in the late
1910s and 1920s. She appeared often in Chicago and Cincinnati, and made
recordings for seven different record labels such as Victor, Vocalion,
Columbia, Gennett, Brunswick, Ajax, and Paramount between the years
1923-1924.
Unfortunately, she passed away at the age of 29, and here's the strangest story that we have ever attempted to verify, what she was doing simply makes no sense. Certainly, this event happened, but why remains a mystery. She passed as a result of burns from a tragic domestic accident in Chicago on August 16, 1925. She was severely burned while helping her husband fill
their car, in actual fact she was filling the tank - holding a lighted candle and splashed petrol onto herself which ignited, she died of the burns three days later.