Chubby Newsome born 27 January 1920

 Velma "Chubby" Newsom or Newsome (January 27, 1920 – September 13, 2003) was an American R&B singer who performed and recorded in the 1940s and 1950s. 

She was born Velma Williams, either in Detroit, Michigan, or perhaps in Alabama before moving to Detroit as a child, yet  when she registered with Social Security (in Michigan, in October 1939), she gave her birthplace as Wilburton, Oklahoma. She next turns up on January 2, 1937, when she married Carl Allen Newsom, Jr. in Oklahoma City. This marriage did not last long and sometime before 1944, she married someone named Hale, although she always appeared professionally as "Newsom". 

The first documented professional appearance by Velma Newsom was in June 1941, when she was the singer with King Allen and His Royal Sultans. In 1942, Velma became part of a trio. Velma, Zodie Mae and Curley were billed as the "Three Kiddetts". By September that year she was singing solo at the Cozy Corner in Detroit. Later in 1943 she appeared at Detroit's Club B & C and in mid Aprl 1944 was part of the "Sensations Of 1944" show at the Club Sensation. And then, she reinvented herself. "Chubby Newsome" appeared as part of the "Follow The Crowd" revue at Ruby Shelton's 440 Club (Indianapolis) in late August 1944; she was still there in December. Along the way, she did some entertaining for the troops at nearby Camp Atterbury. 

                                    

She started to establish herself as a singer and dancer in vaudeville, making use of her beauty and voluptuous physique, before moving to New Orleans where she sang in clubs including the Dew Drop Inn.

She was discovered there in 1948 by bandleader Paul Gayten, who signed her to De Luxe Records. Her first record, "Hip Shakin' Mama", on which she was backed by Gayten's band, and reportedly by saxophonist Sam Butera, was credited to Chubby "Hip Shakin" Newsom and Her Hip Shakers. Because of a distribution arrangement between De Luxe and Miltone Records, the single was released at the same time on both labels, and in early 1949 reached No. 8 on the Billboard Race Records chart, as the R&B chart was known at the time. The Chicago Defender called her the "singing sensation of 1949". 

Newsom made several further recordings for De Luxe, some with Gayten's band and others with the band led by Dave Bartholomew, which included saxophonist Herb Hardesty, guitarist Ernest McLean, bassist Frank Fields, and drummer Earl Palmer. They were less commercially successful than her debut recording, though AllMusic reviewer Bruce Eder described them as "excellent records and some of the most delightfully raunchy New Orleans-style rhythm & blues of their era". She briefly married Ken Gorman, a singer with Gayten's band, before ending her involvements with both Gorman and Gayten and returning to performing at the Dew Drop Inn. 

In 1950 she started recording for Regal Records, issuing several singles, some recorded with the Howard Biggs Orchestra. However, her recordings for Regal were not hits. She also performed in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago and elsewhere on bills with musicians including Paul "Hucklebuck" Williams, Erroll Garner, and Larry Darnell. In 1951, she appeared on a Regal package tour with Paul Gayten and Little Jimmy Scott, some of whose recordings were erroneously attributed to Newsom. She signed for the Chance label in Chicago in 1953 and recorded with the Al Smith orchestra, but the recordings were never released; she also toured with Smith. 

Around 1954, Newsom formed a duo known as the Bluzettes (or Bluezettes) with Alberta Adams. Adams said of the duo: "We was the baddest thing out there. We did blues and blues ballads. We was shaped alike, like bricks, with small waistlines. We dressed alike, same hair, and we sounded like one voice". The pair toured with Tiny Bradshaw's band, but had little success, and Newsom withdrew from the music business shortly afterwards. Her last recordings were made in 1957. 

Then, things got quiet for several years. Chubby wasn’t heard of again until March 1962, when she appeared at King Arthur's Lounge in Kansas City. In September of that year, she was at the Combo Club, also in KC and was still there in late November. There are no further mentions of Chubby; what she did with the rest of her life remains a mystery.

By 1983, she'd left Detroit and moved to Kansas City, Kansas, where her mother lived. That's where Velma Newsom died, on September 13, 2003, at age 83. There was an obituary in the September 17 Kansas City Star, but it only mentions that she died at Shawnee Mission Medical Center. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & Marv Goldberg’s Notebooks)