Rock Hall Inductee Ruth Brown Dead at 78

The woman who influenced perhaps more influential female singers, among them Bonnie Raitt and Janis Joplin, has died at 78.

Ruth Brown, who toured with everyone who was anyone in the 1950s, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Musicians known musicians, and if Brown’s legacy had faded over the decades (despite a mid 1970s comeback), the people playing the songs remembered.

Brown had a heart attack and stroke near her Las Vegas home.