Actor and singer Kenneth Spencer sought to follow Paul Robeson as a leading artistic spokesman for the Black community in theater and music. A singer with a degree from the Eastman School of Music, Spencer made a major impression as a concert artist and on radio in California at the outset of the 1940s, and in 1943 got major acting roles in two MGM films, Bataan and the acclaimed musical Cabin in the Sky. He recorded a fair body of classical music as well as spirituals and folk songs, but his major extant recording is his performance of "Ol' Man River" in the cast recording of the 1946 revival of Showboat. At the end of the '40s, Spencer moved to Europe, where he spent 15 years performing regularly and making occasional film appearances. Kenneth Spencer died in a plane crash just outside of New Orleans in 1964.