Songfacts®:

• This Al Stewart/Peter White composition is a fairly run-of-the-mill tribute song which appears to have been inspired by a TV documentary. Josephine Baker has been called the first black superstar. Born Freda Josephine Macdonald in St. Louis on June 3, 1906, she flunked out of school aged twelve; by the age of fifteen she was playing vaudeville, and before her twentieth birthday she was an erotic dancer at a major Paris theatre. No less a diva than Shirley Bassey cited her as an inspiration, which is high praise indeed, especially as Baker's singing talents were nothing special.
  In the United States she was known more for her political activism than for her acting, dancing and singing, which did not impress American audiences. She died in Paris in 1975. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England