Chief Bey
American musician
James Hawthorne (April 17, 1913 – April 8, 2004), also known as James Hawthorne Bey and Chief Bey, was an American jazz percussionist and vocalist, a visual artist and folklorist of African traditions. He was also ordained in Nigeria as a Shango Priest.
Early life and education
Born James Hawthorne in Yemassee, South Carolina, on April 17, 1913, Bey moved with his family to Brooklyn and then to Harlem, where he began playing drums and singing in church choirs.
He also served in both the Army and Navy and during World War II. He attended cosmetology school.
Career
In the 1950s, Chief Bey performed in an international tour of Porgy and Bess along with his wife Louise Hawthorne, starring Leontyne Price and Cab Calloway. He also began a busy recording career, performing with flautist Herbie Mann's At the Village Gate (1961), Art Blakey's The African Beat (1962), Ahmed Abdul-Malik's Sounds of Africa (New Jazz, 1961), as well as albums by Harry Belafonte, Miriam Makeba, Miriam Greaves and Pharoah Sanders, among others.
He took his stage name after joining the Moorish Science Temple of America, a Muslim sect whose practitioners often add the suffix "Bey" to their names. Then he taught the shékéré, a West African gourd percussion instrument, at the Griot Institute at Intermediate School 246 in Brooklyn. He performed on Baba Olatunji albums as a vocalist and played African drums and Percussion, Agbé/large Shékéré, Agogo/Bells. As a drum maker, he invented the No Whole Tension Technique of roping skin onto drums.
The public source identifies “Chief Bey” as american musician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Chief, American and musician.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5096668. VIAF identifies the subject as 79980635. The Library of Congress control number is n95067566. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1913, 2004, 1961 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chief Bey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.