In late 1940, Elsie Houston signed with Willmore & Powers, a management agency. I've included a page from her press kit. (Click on it for a better view). It includes a "suggested program" featuring her Classical and Folk-Lore repertoire as well as press notices drawn from France and Brazil. Other parts of the press kit include a head shot (the photo used in her obituary) and excerpts of reviews and profiles in New York and Chicago papers.

The kit uses language from an Olin Downes review for her tagline: "Elsie Houston: A remarkable diseuse...a master musician." (Note: the "voodoo" act is mentioned but not highlighted. This would change.)

[My thanks to the generous reader who found this for me.]

The first extended scholarly English-language biography of Elsie Houston has been published, half a chapter in Micol Seigel's new book, Uneven Encounters: Making race and nation in Brazil and in the United States. Seigel's linguistic skills and academic research position has given her access to material I could never dream of finding, though like me, she has found huge holes in the EH time line and a number of "facts" that turn out to be strategic falsehoods.

Here's some new information:

First, additional insight into her relationship with Benjamin Péret:

Friends of Houston's remembered Péret as eccentric and always financially unstable. Houston's sister claimed that "the marriage got in the way of [Houston's] career" and that "Benjamin didn't like music. He got in the way of her studies." (p. 169)

Second, Seigel implies that Houston deliberately "ratcheted up" her social position in New York. My sense is that she may very well have invented her relationship to Sam Houston and her mother's Portuguese roots (distancing herself from any African ancestry).

Third, Seigel notes that Etta Moten Barnett used Houston's recordings to "demonstrate the proximity of black U.S. and Afro-Brazilian culture," noting a Chicago radio program from 1955.

The whole book, beyond the EH section, is worth your time, especially if you are interested in race and transnational history. I am extremely sympathetic to Seigel's overall position that strictly comparative studies (US vs Brazil, e.g.) are nonsensical.

Here it is. Finally. The only documentary Elsie Houston footage I know of.

Thought some readers (who might not have an "Elsie Houston" google alert like I do) would appreciate this:
A rather significant collection of photos, correspondence, and concert-related material. For the time being you can get a glimpse at what's there. I don't have the budget to be a "collector" so I won't be bidding against you...

Interesting EH-related items will occasionally show up on ebay, such as this invitation to an art auction at the Julien Levy Gallery. Listing first under the heading "entertainment" is "Elsie Houston: Brazilian Strip Tsi Tsi Dance." (I know nothing about this particular act). Listed second, her friend, Sam Barlow, doing "Pocket Book Whittling." My guess would be 1938, when she was still breaking in to the NY social scene. [UPDATE: 1937]

An interesting article in the current issue [the link might need updating soon] of Caribbean Beat on Calypso performer, Beryl McBurnie (stage name La Belle Rosette). McBurnie, who was a star in 1940s New York, was a strong influence on Katherine Dunham. She debuted during one of Elsie Houston's Coffee Concerts at the Museum of Modern Art; according to the New York Amsterdam News, at least, McBurnie stole the show. Here's the review as posted in the article:

So far, it had been a nice evening of South American Music at the Museum of Modern Art. The audience was remotely polite, applauding the mediocre efforts of the artists at the proper time. But it was an uninspired audience, overburdened by dull music interpreted lugubriously. There hadn’t been a single lift—that is until the curtain parted to reveal Belle Rosette—a slender bronze girl in a flowing and colorful costume—an infectious grin lighting her face.

“She poised there on her toes for a split second and then, at the first beat of the drums from the trio of Haitians huddled in the shadow of the stage, Belle Rosette executed the first sinuous and sensuous movements of the [Shango], a dance she brought from her native Trinidad.

“Excitement ran high. No longer was the audience nice and polite and remote. It completely lost its face and became rowdy in paying obeisance to this girl from Trinidad who completely stole the show from the star. When it quieted down after a third encore, Belle Rosette sang a Calypso song about the Germans surrendering to the British.

She was no longer a dancer—but a minx kidding the life out of the Axis dictators.”

I just updated the Elsie Houston discography to include one new release and one old one that I hadn't known about. Unfortunately, the link to the discography on Ends Her Life has gone bad (I need to go back in and fix it, but at the risk of having Dreamweaver screw up all the other links again...)
Here's the link to the discography, which includes the recent Cherry Red Villa-Lobos reissue (EH has a very small role, in the Quatour), and a French release that includes EH singing three of the Serestas.