[3] One-quarter Chickasaw,[4] she grew up in both cultures, and was especially close to her maternal grandmother, who spoke no English and taught her to do beadwork and to identify herbs and other edible things in nature.

[1] The couple moved to Los Angeles in 1926, and Mobley began to take voice sessions with Emma Loeffler de Zaruba,[5] a former opera singer and chair of the Hollywood Bowl campaign.

[7] Invited by a promoter to appear in Germany, she received scholarships to study opera at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome in the early 1930s.

[2][4] In 1935 she appeared in the annual performance of The Song of Hiawatha by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor at the Royal Albert Hall in London, singing the role of Minnehaha.

She continued to sing solo roles in Los Angeles and Chicago, notably taking on the title role of Aida with the Chicago Opera Company in Trieste, the first person of Native American descent to perform the part.

[4] She was inducted into the Chickasaw Nation Hall of Fame in 2009,[9] an honor accepted in her stead by her niece, Aurelia Guy Phillips.