North Florida Music Hall of Fame

This Jacksonville native (b. 1915) ran away from home at age 17, supposedly stowing away on a freighter to Manhattan, where he landed a job as a singing waiter. In 1933, bandleader Erskine Hawkins spotted Daniels, and added him as the featured vocalist for his orchestra. Daniels soon became a popular cabaret singer, and began appearing in pictures in the late 1930s. In 1943, Daniels gave new meaning to the Johnny Mercer show tune “That Old Black Magic”; the single went on to sell a staggering 12 million copies. He began appearing on Broadway in 1945 and was one of the first African Americans to host his own network-television variety show on ABC in 1952. He continued to perform in such Broadway and London musicals as Golden Boy (1964), Hello, Dolly (1975) and Bubbling Brown Sugar (1977). Even after open-heart surgery, Daniels continued performing in nightclubs, right up to his death in 1988.