Jazz

By: Regina Harris Baiocchi

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Jazz

Betty Carter's 1958 tune proclaims, “Jazz ain't nothing but soul.” Jazz, America's art music, was born in the late nineteenth century simultaneously in New Orleans, Atlanta, Biloxi, Mobile, and Memphis. As Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio River immigrants moved north, so too did jazz. Like most western music, jazz has eastern roots. Its gene pool is filled with blues and spirituals, along with field hollers and the African hand-drumming that slaves imported to the Americas. It is a form in which black women have participated from its inception. At times, they have fought exclusion, but their achievements have been, nonetheless, remarkable.

Origins of Jazz

The immediate predecessor of jazz had no name, unless it could be called “dance music.” It was played for family celebrations and in brothels. It was heard from the stages of black vaudeville and minstrel shows. Most of the instruments used during its performances were leftovers from Civil War and other military marching bands. Discharged soldiers brought instruments home with them. Pawn shops doubled as “po' folks' bank” and local music store. Musicians sold and bought instruments at these pawn shops, and pawned marching band instruments were brought indoors to form bands. In these early bands, most of which performed within the community, women were common. There was not yet any significant amount of money to be made or prestige to be garnered from performing this music, and so there was little need for exclusion. That would change, but in the 1880s and 1890s, there were a great many family bands in which mother and daughters played alongside fathers and sons. In fact, jazz great Lester Young was taught the saxophone by his sister Irma who, along with his mother and various female cousins, made up the Young Family band.

Then, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Decatur Street in Atlanta, Beale Street in Memphis, and similar districts in other cities saw drunks, prostitutes, shootings, fights, and women playing jazz. Use of the term “jazz” dates back to 1900, when it was first known as “jass.” A variety of definitions has been assigned to this colorful word, including “improvised music,” “decoration,” “jive,” “nonsense,” “pretentious or braggadocios talk,” “lewd copulation,” “fecal matter,” all in the underground currency of brothels and juke joints. Regardless of its etymology, jazz is the first American art form, and black women were there at its beginnings.

Living in St. Louis in the 1880s, Mama Lou played in a brothel and is credited with either writing or definitively interpreting “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ray” and “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” for which songwriter Theodore Metz later took credit. According to Linda Dahl in Stormy Weather, she was probably responsible for “Frankie and Johnny” and “The Bully Song” as well. In Storyville, in New Orleans, Mamie Desdoumes played without two middle fingers on her right hand. Miss Antonia Gonzales ran her own brothel, sang, and played the cornet.

Two transitional singers of note in the creation of jazz vocals were Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters. Both began as blues singers and continued to perform magnificently in that tradition. But they also moved into the jazz form and made major contributions there. Their music illustrates well the movement from blues and vaudeville dance music toward the form that would become jazz.

Alberta Hunter (1895–1984) enjoyed two music careers on four continents. She debuted in rough Chicago joints, and wrote “Down Hearted Blues” for Bessie Smith. Hunter starred in the musical Showboat with Paul Robeson at London's Palladium, and sang for the USO. At age sixty-one, Hunter became a nurse in a New York City hospital, but was forced to retire from that work at the age of eighty-two. Then she recorded for Songs We Taught Your Mother and Chicago: the Living Legends. She sang at New York's Cookery Club till age eighty-nine. Hunter also wrote music for the 1978 film Remember My Name. A lesbian, Hunter used aliases—Alberta Prime, Josephine Beatty, and Helen Roberts—to avoid violating so-called morality stipulations in her recording contract.

Philadelphian Ethel Waters (1896–1977) began in vaudeville, sang in clubs, and recorded “Down Home Blues” and many other songs on Black Swan, an African American label. During the 1920s she recorded a string of hits that included both slow, sweet ballads and up-tempo jazz. Beginning in the 1930s, Waters's stage and movie career flourished. She toured with her husband, Eddie Mallory, and appeared in the Broadway production of Mamba's Daughter. Waters premiered three hits in the film Cabin in the Sky (1943), and won a New York Drama Critic Award for her role in Pinky (1949).

By the 1920s, jazz reigned as the popular music of the day. Indeed, the twenties became known as the Jazz Age. But what distinguished jazz from the music that preceded it? What set this music apart, not only from other African American forms, but from all other western musical genres?

Jazz Is

Unlike most western music, jazz musicians don't simply read the composer's music verbatim. Jazz “lead sheets” consist of printed music that may include the “head” or melody, chord symbols in jazz notation, rhythmic patterns, and lyrics. Music is realized when the performer takes the composer's lead or blueprint. Lead sheets are often departure points used to synchronize intros, accents, bridges, cadences, codas, and tags. In its pure form the jazz repertoire is based on three Blues chords: I–IV–V. For example, in the key of F-Major the chords are F, B-flat and C. These chords are expanded via altered notes and substitutions.

Duke Ellington described jazz as “beyond category.” Yet genres abound. Among them are traditional, big band, bebop, cool, fusion, avant-garde, crossover, ethnic, and vocal.

New Orleans and Traditional Jazz

New Orleans jazz grew directly out of the dance music of Storyville and the brass bands of street celebrations. Women like New Orleans pianist Olivia Charlot remembered fighting their families and respectable society for the chance to play in clubs in so-called redlight districts. As prejudice against women instrumentalists spread, their best chance for success often rested with becoming strong piano players. These were women such as Sweet Emma Barrett (1898–1983); Billie Pierce (1907–1974); Dolly Adams, who flourished in the 1920s; and Jeanette Salvant Kimball (1906–2001).

Straight ahead, mainstream, or traditional jazz is early 1900s music influenced by ragtime, boogie-woogie and Harlem stride piano, as distinguished from the New Orleans Jazz of the same era. Ragtime, or “ragged time,” is a colloquialism for syncopation—playing ahead of or behind the beat, as opposed to playing strict downbeats. Boogie-woogie (also referred to as barrelhouse and honky-tonk, after the joints that featured the style), appeared in the 1928 recording “Pinetop's Boogie-Woogie,” by Clarence Pinetop Smith. Boogie-woogie is the art of repeating a left-hand bass pattern in the piano (eighth-note ostinato) while the right-hand plays melodies and countermelodies. The boogie-woogie technique quickly spread from piano to other instruments.

Stride, or Shout, piano playing was popularized at early twentieth-century Chicago and Harlem rent parties. As the name implies, the pianist's left hand establishes stride or jump-bass patterns on beats one and three, with left-hand chords on beats two and four. Meanwhile, the right hand plays chords, or melodies. In more complex settings, the left hand also plays a walking bass line.

Among the black women who excelled at traditional jazz were Ragtime Kate Beckham and Julia Lee in Kansas City and Lil Hardin Armstrong in Chicago. Armstrong met her husband Louis when they both played with famed bandleader Joe “King” Oliver. Lil recorded vocals and piano for Louis's historical Hot Five and Hot Seven albums. Mother and daughter Dyer Jones and Dolly Jones Hutchinson, in Chicago, were among the first jazz recording artists.

Billie

. “Lady Day” Holiday (1915–1959) modeled her untrained voice after her idol, the great blues singer Bessie Smith, and in so doing, she molded a style that is pure jazz. In 1933 Billie Holiday made her recording debut, singing “Your Mother's Son-in-Law” with Benny Goodman. She appeared at the Apollo in a one-reeler with Duke Ellington, and in the film New Orleans with Louis Armstrong. Holiday integrated Goodman's and Arte Shaw's bands and sang with Lester Young and Count Basie. Her “Strange Fruit” set the standard for ballads. With its poignant melody and raw, haunting lyrics detailing lynching, it was banned by clubs and radio stations. Thanks to the jukebox, the record and its flip side, “Fine and Mellow,” became hits. “God Bless the Child” espouses autonomy. Another notable tune, “Lover Man,” was a natural for Holiday, who lived its message a few times. She drank heavily, and smoked opium.

Despite hundreds of records, Holiday was often denied royalties. Two failed marriages and her mother's death sparked heroin use. In 1947 she was imprisoned for possession of illegal substances. As an ex-convict, Holiday was denied the cabaret card she needed to perform in clubs. Successful recordings, tours, and a TV show called The Sound of Jazz did not slow Lady Day's downward spiral. She finally succumbed to drug-induced ailments. Hours before her kidneys failed on 17 July 1959, she was arrested on her hospital deathbed for possession. Posthumous tributes include a 1972 movie Lady Sings the Blues starring Diana Ross, and reissues of Decca, Columbia, and Verve sides.

Big Bands and Swing

. Big bands, also known as dance bands, emerged in the 1930s with ten or more players organized into three sections: reeds, brass, and rhythm. Reeds consist of alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones; some doubling flute or clarinet. Brass instruments include trumpets and trombones. Jazz rhythm sections include guitar, piano, bass, and drums. Pianist Blanche Calloway, Cab's sister, led her own band, the Joy Boys. On occasion, singers “sat in.” Sitting in was the practice of having a singer sit on the side of the band. When it was time to sing, she would stand and sing from the sidelines. When her song ended, she returned to her sideline seat.

Big bands of the 1930s and 1940s are classified as “sweet” if they specialized in ballads popularized by vocalists like Ivie Anderson, Pearl Bailey, Kay Davis (Kathryn McDonald Wimp), Maria Ellington (Mrs. Nat “King” Cole), Betty Roche (Mary Elizabeth Roche), Joya Sherrill and Helen Humes. Swing and hot bands cook, so to speak, by way of innovative improvisational solos of leaders like Mary Lou Williams, who lived from 1910 to 1981. Such solos were typified by very long lines or phrases. Expansive transitions between swing and bebop typify so-called pre-bop music such as Williams's 1939 Zodiac Suite.

Mary Lou Williams

. Pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams was born in Atlanta, grew up in Pittsburgh, and later defined the style known as “Kansas City” jazz. Her hit “What's Your Story, Morning Glory?” helped to shape the Andy Kirk Orchestra's distinct sound. Her deftly arranged charts created “the greatest small band” because Williams got a big sound from so few players. “Roll 'Em” was a Benny Goodman chart buster. Williams arranged for such luminaries as Earl Hines, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie. She mentored Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and other bop, swing, and avant-garde pianists while maintaining her more traditional roots, a feat accomplished by very few.

Zodiac Suite is an example of Williams's diverse repertoire. The Williams Trio recorded seventeen sides, one for each sign of the astrological zodiac and five outtakes at a 1945 Town Hall concert with the New York Philharmonic. The Smithsonian recording label reissued Zodiac in 1995. Williams went to Europe in 1952, converted to Catholicism and wrote over one hundred sacred compositions. In 1957 she appeared with Dizzy Gillespie at the Newport Jazz Festival. Among her milestone compositions are Black Christ in the Andes, Mary Lou's Mass, and History of Jazz.

Williams went on to receive fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation, as well as five honorary doctorates. In 1996 the Kennedy Center named its Jazz Festival in her honor. In 1977, Williams joined Duke University's faculty, where she remained until 1981.

The Rise of “All-Girl” Bands

. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm formed in 1937 at the Piney Woods School for poor and orphaned blacks in Mississippi. After touring to raise funds for the school for several years, band members decided to declare their independence in 1941. Over the years, a handful of white women played with the band, wearing bronze makeup in the Jim Crow South to avoid being arrested. The professional version of the Sweethearts debuted at the Washington, DC, Howard Theatre, where they set 1941 box office records under Anna Mae Winburn's baton. They also broke box office records at Chicago's Regal and New York's Apollo theatres and played jubilee sessions for black soldiers.

International Sweethearts' trumpeters included such notables as Ernestine “Tiny” Davis, Ray Carter, Johnnie Mae Stansbury, and Edna Williams. Marge Pettiford, Amy Garrison, Helen Saine, Grace Bayron, Viola Burnside, Rosaline “Roz” Cron, and Willie Mae Wong played sax. July Bayron, Helen Jones, and Ina Bell Byrd played trombone. The rhythm section included Johnnie Mae Rice on the piano, Lucille Dixon on bass, Pauline Braddy on drums, and Roxanne Lucas on guitar. Evelyn McGee and Anna Mae Winburn provided vocals. The group's ten-year life-span is documented on Hindsight and Rosetta Records.

Vi Burnside played tenor sax with the International Sweethearts of Rhythm and Vi Burnside & Her All Stars in the 1940s and 1950s. Burnside squared off in a legendary 1945 jam session with Margaret Backstrom, a tenor sax player with the Darlings of Rhythm, another black “all-girl” band. The head-chopping contest is documented in Sherrie Tucker's Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s.

The International Sweethearts prided themselves on teaching others how it ought to be done. But there are listeners who claimed the Darlings did it better. Many musicians who played with one group also played, at one time or another, with the other, but the Darlings of Rhythm were no school band. They began as professionals and never went in for the glamorous look of the Sweethearts. They weren't “pretty girls,” and they didn't wear pretty costumes. They did, however, swing. Backstrom and other Darlings of Rhythm were known for their fast, hot style. Josephine Boyd played alto sax with the Darlings. Boyd and Backstrom were former members of the All-Girl Star Orchestra.

International Sweethearts of Rhythm.  Shown here are just a few members of the all-women orchestra, founded in 1939. The ensemble competed successfully with male orchestras and broke attendance records at several American theaters.

Austin/Thompson Collection, by permission of Moorland-Spingarn Research Center

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Often dismissed as “ham fats,” or inferior musicians, female groups began to thrive as more and more male players were drafted into military service. Among them were the Harlem Playgirls, led by Sylvester Rice, and Bobbie Howell's American Syncopators. The sixteen-piece, “all-girl” band Prairie View Co-Eds began on the Texas A&M campus during WWII, entertaining black servicemen. Despite high-profile gigs at the Apollo and other national venues, the group reverted to its former all-male status after the end of the war.

The Jazz Greats

Anyone near 81st and Golden in 1940s Cleveland heard piano students and a band swinging hit parade tunes. The activity came from the home of pianist Evelyn Freeman, born in 1919. Neighbors sought a court injunction to silence the “racket.” It began with a trio of Freeman, her Dad, and brother, Ernie. But Evelyn was the driving force, playing piano, lining up gigs, expanding the group to include an orchestra, and writing a theme song, Dancing Every Sunday, subtitled At Oster's Ballroom for 35 Cents.

Freeman's debut concert was billed as “Symphony to Swing.” By the end of the concert at the Phillis Wheatley Center, the ensemble was swinging so hard, they brought down the house. Some dates were broadcast on WTAM and WHK radio. Freeman protégé Hale Smith was a pianist and composer whose music has been performed by Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman, and Betty Carter. Ernie Freeman won Grammies for arranging Frank Sinatra's Strangers in the Night and Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Waters. Freeman moved to Los Angeles to become a recording artist. She married Tommy Roberts, with whom she co-founded The Young Saints, a youth vocal ensemble that sang for President Nixon. Freeman's drummer, James “Chink” McKinley, later played for Dorothy Donegan.

The pianist Dorothy Donegan (1924–1998) was born in Chicago. She cut her chops at DuSable High School and in church. By the age of fourteen, she earned a dollar a night by performing in local clubs. A student of the Chicago Musical College, Donegan recorded blues and boogie-woogie sides for the Bluebird label. At the age of eighteen, Donegan was the first African American to perform at Chicago's Orchestra Hall, an athletic performance that inspired The New York Times to dub her “blizzard fingers.” Donegan garnered Time magazine coverage and a visit from jazz pianist great, Art Tatum, a meeting that sparked a lifelong friendship. As Tatum's protégé, Donegan flaunted virtuoso chops. She kicked her long legs up to her cheeks, sang campy lyrics in parodied voices, put her “hands on her hips and let her backbone slip” without missing a piano lick. Donegan earned $3,000 a week in the United Artists film Sensations of 1945. Her career includes albums, tours, and innumerable club dates.

Philadelphian Shirley Scott (1934–2002) began blocking chords behind her brother's sax in the family's basement speakeasy. She studied trumpet but eventually gravitated toward the jazz organ of choice, the famous Hammond B-3. In the early twentieth century, jazz musicians held jam sessions or rent parties and “sang for their supper.” Supper could be chicken with spaghetti, coleslaw, and cornbread; or greens, candied yams, crackling bread, and smoked ham hocks, or chitterlings. Among the possible combinations of musicians and instruments on these “Chitlin' Circuit” trios was one known as the “grits-and-gravy group”—guitar, drums, and the Hammond B-3 organ. The Hammond B-3 with its specially designed rotating Leslie speakers was more responsive than a standard-issue pipe organ. Amplified speakers inside the organ cabinet contained rotating horns that sped up or slowed down to alter a note's vibrato. Under Scott's deft fingers and soul-stomping feet, the B-3 hollered aplenty. Scott led a trio with John Coltrane. A gig with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis led to the so-called Cookbook albums. Scott was crowned “Queen of Organ.” In the 1950s, she and tenor sax man Stanley Turentine were all the rage. They collaborated for twelve albums, three daughters, and two sons.

Scott recorded twenty–three albums for Prestige, ten for Impulse, three each for Atlantic and Chess, one for Strata East, two on Muse, and three on Candid. Scott was music director for Bill Cosby's revival of the television show You Bet Your Life. Memorable albums include three Cookbooks, Great Scott, and the organ landmark Have you had Your B-3 Today?, which featured ten organists. Scott developed heart trouble due to diet pills, for which she filed a lawsuit and won $8 million. Her heart failed in 2002. Scott's legacy includes a professorship at University of Pittsburgh.

Like her friend Shirley Scott, Gloria Coleman married a sax player, George Coleman. Her piano and organ chops ignited clubs in the 1960s and 1970s. She began as a violinist and bassist, playing bass with Sonny Stitt and Sarah McLawler. A composer and poet, Coleman produced work that appeared on the Impulse record label. Organist Sarah McLawler was born in Louisville and attended Fisk University. She founded the All-Star Girl Orchestra in the 1940s, and later the all-female Syncoettes. She formed the McLawler combo with herself on piano, Lula Roberts on sax, Vi Wilson on bass, and Hetty Roberts on drums. She recorded on the Chess, King, and Brunswick labels. Her organ trio, with her violinist husband Richard Otto and drummer Tommy Hunter, is recorded on Vee Jay. Other pianists of note within this highly charged, intense idiomatic B-3 style of jazz include Lovie Austin (1887–1972) and Hazel Dorothy Scott (1920–1981).

“Queen of Trumpet” Valaida Snow (1903–1956) also sang and danced. Four of her CDs were reissued between 1994 and 2001. Ernestine “Tiny” Davis was born 1913 in Memphis and played with the Harlem Playgirls and the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, with whom she also sang. Louis Armstrong offered Tiny ten times her salary to join him. Tiny refused. In the 1950s Tiny led the Hell Divers. Decades later, Tiny and lifetime lover, drummer and singer Ruby Lucas, appeared in a film, Tiny and Ruby—Hell Divin' Women (1988).

Bebop

In the 1940s bebop was fathered by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie “Bird” Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Max Roach. It began as rapid fire playing, heightened syncopation, the compression of countless notes in minute time frames, the use of altered chords, polyrhythms, and polytonality. It is high-energy music, bordering on frenzy. Bop thrives in smaller groups like the trio—piano, bass, and drums—and quintet—piano, bass, drums, saxophone, trumpet—rather than in big band settings. Boppers raised the jazz bar. Musical forms were expanded, and fast riffs were played. Harmonies were altered. The flat 5th/raised 4th was used so often it became known as the “devil's interval.” Front beats and backbeats were accented. A few critics feared Jazz was becoming an elitist art form because few musicians could match Bop's breakneck speed, resolve the tension created by non-chord tones within Bop's confines or sustain the high temperature intensity without blinking. Bebop devices included chords progressing in fourths and half-steps, in addition to established motion. Bop was so different that Duke Ellington said, “Playing bebop is like playing scrabble with all the vowels missing.”

A variation of bebop, hard Bop is typically louder, more intense, soulful, tinged with funk and gospel elements, and features more interactive drumming. “Drum melodies” become more prevalent, as opposed to the drummer only marking time. Like most labels, this 1950s and 1960s bop label was used more by writers and critics than by musicians.

Betty “Bebop” Carter (1930–1998) the so-called Queen of Bop, was born Lillie Mae Jones in Flint, Michigan. She studied piano at Detroit's Conservatory of Music and sang in her father's church choir. At sixteen, she sat in as a singer with Bird and other musicians passing through Motown. An amateur contest win led her to Lionel Hampton. Hampton, who fired her seven times, nicknamed her Betty “Bebop” because of her acrobatic vocal abilities. (She remained with Hampton because his wife kept rehiring her.) Her hypnotic blend of clarity, scatting, elastic phrasing, and supersonic up-tempos were executed with harmonic precision. Carter disliked the limitation of being labeled “bebop” and “avant-garde.” Among Carter's most successful and diverting performances was her 1976 “Tight,” a pithy piece of heaven, and her 1993 live album Feed the Fire.>

After taking time away from her career to have a child, Carter faced uncompromising record execs. In 1970 she founded Bet-Car Records and produced five albums; two were Grammy nominees. Look What I Got won a 1988 Grammy. Her legacy includes innovative compositions, twenty-five albums, and Presidential Medals of Honor. Carter often toured with “young cats,” housing them in her Brooklyn home. Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McCrae, and Nina Simone lauded Betty's purism. Despite pressures to record pop tunes, Carter remained a Jazz artist, exclusively.

Composer and trombonist Melba Liston (1926–1999) was born in Kansas City and grew up in Los Angeles. She began her career with Gerald Wilson's Orchestra and worked in small combos with Dexter Gordon. She also worked as a big-band section player. In the 1940s, she collaborated with the Count Basie Band and with Billie Holiday. She joined Dizzy Gillespie's bebop big band in 1950. As an arranger, Liston is closely linked to Randy Weston. She tried her hand at acting, taught in Jamaican schools, and arranged for Basie, Dizzy, Johnny Griffin, Milt Jackson, Quincy Jones, and the Superfly soundtrack. Melba and Her Bones (1958) is her most acclaimed album.

Clora Bryant was active in LA's Central Avenue Jazz community. Her father moved the family to LA to aid her career. Bryant felt compelled to express her femininity lest men treat her like one of the boys. Bryant took her bebop, big band, and Dixieland sound to Russia. In 1957 her Gal with a Horn was reissued on CD. Yet another notable player, Barbara Carroll (b. 1925) was called by Leonard Feather “the first girl ever to play bebop piano.”

Great Voices of Jazz

In vocal music, too, black women have been dominant figures. Going far beyond the role of “girl singer,” they have created a style of singing that has influenced every other popular genre. Vocal jazz is characterized by unique phrasing, bending notes, glissandi (sliding up or down to pitches) and other special effects, tight harmonies, and scatting. Scatting is jazz's signature form of humming, lip buzzing, and vocalizing whereby the performer sings the melody, or improvises on neutral syllables instead of words. While Louis Armstrong is credited as the inventor of scatting, Ella Fitzgerald developed the “vocalese” language that is synonymous with instrumental and vocal jazz improvisation.

Improvisation is the act of spontaneous composition wherein the performer uses jazz vernacular to communicate with her audience by “soloing over chord changes.” The performer blows, or performs, a solo using vocabulary with respect to harmonic chord changes, melody, rhythm, and the form of the composition. This improvisation is the performer's discovery and expression of new ideas within a framework or chorus. Many choruses last for an average of thirty-two bars. As the soloist improvises, other band members comp, or accompany the soloist by outlining the composition. Accompanists may play sparse chords. Pianists comp beneath solo instruments to keep the integrity of a composition's form. This “frees” the soloist to express herself. As the saying goes, “Everyone else stays at home while the soloist roams.”

Ella

. The ultimate “Voice of Jazz” is personified by the inimitable Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1999). Born in Newport News, Virginia, Ella moved to Yonkers when she was fifteen. Early professional success came when Ella won a talent contest at Harlem's Apollo Theater. Though she entered as a dancer, Ella sang “The Object of my Affection” because her legs were paralyzed by stage fright. After many encores Ella won the $25 grand prize and launched her amateur career. Drummer Chic Webb tutored and adopted Ella when her parents died. Ella recorded her debut signature hit, A-Tisket A-Tasket, in 1938 with Webb's orchestra. When Webb died in 1939, Ella led his orchestra until the WWII draft depleted the group.

When Ella launched her solo career and toured with Dizzy Gillespie, she honed her bop chops. From 1947 to 1953, Ella was married to bassist Ray Brown and fronted for his trio. Ella changed the voice of Jazz via bell-tone precision as evidenced by the 1956 Verve collaboration with Louis Armstrong, The Complete Ella & Louis. Listeners enjoyed Ella's impeccable musicianship and innovative, swinging style. Though Ella's years on the Capitol and Reprise labels from 1960 to 1967 were somewhat marred with uncharacteristic pop and R&B tunes, in 1972 she returned to Jazz on the Pablo label. Ella's scatting is flawless Jazz vocalese whose vocabulary was often mimicked, yet never mastered. On C-Jam Blues she “trades off” with five icons from Ellington's band. This Santa Monica concert is classic dueling, and shows why Ella reigns as “First Lady of Jazz.” Ella enjoyed a sixty-year career, two-and-a-half octave range, Grammy Awards, and a U.S. Presidential Medal.

Lena

. Lena Horne was born June 1917 in Brooklyn. She danced in Harlem's Cotton Club and sang with Noble Sissle before being called to Hollywood. With the support of her father, Horne refused roles deemed “appropriate” for blacks and was therefore often relegated to cameo singing spots that could be easily excised from films when they were shown in the South. Her career includes TV and film gigs—many without credit—and roles in That's Entertainment (1994), The Wiz (1978), Panama Hattie (1942), Cabin in the Sky (1943), and Stormy Weather (1943), for which cosmetics guru Max Factor developed dark makeup to make her look more African. The limitations imposed on Horne as an actor led her to focus on her career as a singer. Here, she modeled her image and repertoire to fulfill her role as a representative of her race. Singing Gershwin and Cole Porter, she became living proof that a black woman could be cool, sophisticated, and above reproach.

Sassy

. Sarah “Sassy” Vaughan (1924–1990) was born in Newark. She began as organist and choir member at Mount Zion Baptist Church. In 1942, an amateur night win—for singing Body and Soul—fetched $10 and a week at the Apollo Theatre. She was hired as vocalist and second pianist by Earl “Fatha” Hines, and later joined Billy Eckstine's Band. Vaughan's recording of Lover Man, with its purring growls, bending notes and elongated phrasing, earned her the nickname “Sassy,” and launched her solo career at New York's Café Society. By 1949, she had landed a contract with Columbia Records. Vaughan's theme song, Misty, shows why she came to be called the “Divine One” and why Downbeat and Metro-nome magazine readers voted her top female vocalist from 1947 to 1952. In 1982 she won a Grammy for Gershwin Live! Vaughan received a lifetime achievement Grammy in 1989, and was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame.

Dinah

. Ruth Jones (1924–1963), a native of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, changed her name to Dinah Washington after moving to Chicago. She sang gospel and played piano in Sallie Martin's choir and the DuSable High School band. At the age of fifteen, she won an Amateur Night contest at Chicago's Regal Theatre. Her first hit, “Evil Gal Blues,” appeared in 1943. Her 1957 recording of Bessie's least known tunes led critics to label her “defiant.” Washington had recorded R&B tunes, but once inspiredby Lady Day, she turned exclusively to jazz. Once she made the switch, Washington no longer sang spirituals as she did not believe in mixing the sacred with the secular.

Cassandra Wilson, contralto, not only is a jazz vocalist but also performs in other genres—including pop, folk, and Hollywood and Broadway musicals. In 2001 Time magazine called her the best singer in America.

Courtesy of Cassandra Wilson and Paul Zukoski

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Lionel Hampton is credited with renaming Dinah and helping her select a jazz career. Whatever genre she chose, Washington was queen of drama and diction. She influenced Nancy Wilson and Esther Phillips. Despite a sometimes turbulent personal life, which included seven marriages and struggles with weight, Washington's professional career flourished with recordings on the Verve, Mercury and Roulette labels. At thirty-nine, Washington died of an overdose of diet pills and alcohol.

Abby

. Singer, actress, and poet Abbey Lincoln (Aminata Moseka) created art worldwide. She was married to legendary drummer Max Roach and recorded many innovative sides with him. Lincoln's five-decade vocal career is recorded on BMG, Verve, Capitol, and a host of other labels. Lincoln's 1999 Wholly Earth CD features an earthy, percussive title track and duets with Maggie Brown, Chicago-based daughter of Oscar Brown Jr.

Black Women in Contemporary Jazz

Cool jazz emerged in the 1950s as a laid-back alternative to the frenzy of bop, accenting jazz's lyrical qualities. Subgenres of cool jazz emerged along geographical lines. West Coast jazz was popular in California and neighboring states. “Dixieland” emerged among musicians on Chicago's Westside, and in St. Louis, not in Dixie per se. By the 1960s, as British invaders and white U.S. pop musicians reached icon status, Jazz was marginalized. This inspired post-bop innovations. Many post-bop categories fall into the progressive camp and take their names from prominent elements. Progressive jazz includes fusion (jazz-rock, soul-jazz, and hybrids that meld electronic and acoustic jazz), avant-garde or 1970s free, crossover or smooth, world, and ethnic jazz.

There are black women in all these genres, and many women transcend them. They include singers Geraldine DeHaas (founder of the Chicago Jazz Festival and member of Andy and the Bey Sisters), Dee Dee Bridgewater, Dianne Reeves, Cassandra Wilson, Nnenna Freelon, Bobbi Wilsyn (founder of the all-female group She), Rachel Farrell, Rita Warford, Cheryl Skinner, Carla Cook, Julia Huff, and Abbey Lincoln. There are pianist and harpist Alice McLeod Coltrane, Renee Rosnes, Gerri Allen, Valerie Capers, Cheryl Skinner, Bethany Pickens (daughter of Willie Pickens), and members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) Ann Ward and Amina Claudine Myers. Founded in 1965, AACM fosters diverse musicianship and experimentation.

Organist Jackie Ivory, an Arkansas native, recorded on the Atlantic and Soul Discovery labels. Bu Pleasant (Frances Chapman) had a heart as big as her home state of Texas, and tragedy to match. Yet she cut several Muse albums and was inducted into the Texas Jazz Archives. Newark native Rhoda Scott spent most of her time in France where she first played the B-3 and its derivatives, the Hammond B-3000, and the Hammond-Suzuki X-B3. Scott and her mentor, Trudy Pitts, were regulars at the annual Jazz Organ Festival.

Philadelphia organist Trudy Pitts was married to drummer Mr. C., alias Bill Carney. Pitts recorded several albums on Prestige label and had a standing gig at Meiji-En, the nation's largest Japanese restaurant.

Bassist Marion Hayden, a Detroit native and member of the all-female group Straight Ahead, composed and taught in Cleveland. Me'shell Ndegeocello is a bassist who also sings Hip-hop. Guitarist and bassist Carline Ray was an active sideman from 1930 to the 2000s. While Deborah Coleman and Shemekia Copeland more often played Blues guitar, they often recorded Jazz.

Drummer Ruby Lucas (Renee Phelan) was a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, and lifelong lover of trumpeter Ernestine “Tiny” Davis. In the 1950s, Lucas and Davis owned Tiny and Ruby's Gay Spot in Chicago. Viola Smith sported stick-twirling showmanship envied by her male peers. A list of later jazz drummers might include Straight Ahead's Gayelynn McKinney, who also played sax.

Terry Lyne Carrington was born in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1965. This child prodigy's mentors included her dad, Sonny, and Jack DeJohnette. At the age of eleven, Carrington won a scholarship to Berklee. She later became an active drum clinician and recording artist, having appeared on a hundred CDs. Accolades included a Grammy nomination for her 1989 Real Life Story.

Born in 1959, Cyndi Blackman appeared on several CDs and inside the covers of numerous percussion magazines, and boasts a long list of TV credits. Chicago hand drummer Coco Elysees was a member of AACM and sat in most often on congas. Elysees moved to Los Angeles to pursue a recording career. Vibraphonist and pianist Darlene Hill taught at Chicago State and Roosevelt University, and performed with noted standup comedian Bernie Mack.

Though not much bigger than her baritone sax, Fostina Dixon charmed a mellow sound from the horn. Dixon appeared with the Winds of Change, playing soprano, alto, flute, or clarinet. Diane “Lil' Sax” Ellis emerged from one of Chicago's most prominent Jazz families to become active as an alto sax sideman and leader of her own pickup band. Matana Roberts also played alto sax. Likewise from Chicago, Roberts left her mark on Boston before moving to New York. Her robust sound ignites her solo CD Gifts, and also Sticks and Stones. Violinist Regina Carter graduated from the New England Conservatory and Oakland University in her native Michigan. Carter appeared with Uptown String Quartet, String Trio of New York, Wynton Marsalis, and Max Roach, and recorded several solo CDs. She appeared on Atlantic Records with Straight Ahead, a quintet that formed in 1987.

Flautist Althea René, also a member of Straight Ahead, was a Howard University graduate who enjoyed a career in France before returning to the United States. AACM member Nikki Mitchell made a home in Chicago where she played flute and founded the Black Earth Ensemble; Mitchell recorded two CDs. Sherry Winston is based in Danbury, Connecticut. Winston's 2002 CD, For Lovers Only, is on the Orpheus label. Trumpeter Diane Lyles, a Hampton Institute alumna, taught at Xavier University and lived in Philadelphia.

Early musicians learned jazz by barhopping, attending jam sessions, and copping from masters, but recording devices cut down on pavement beating. Technology and racial integration patterns diffused the jazz community. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, few neighborhood clubs existed where young musicians could sit inand jam with the pros. NEA grants allowed youngsters to study with jazz elders, but artists no longer had direct access to these fellowships. Rather, one had to be directly sponsored by an eligible organization.

It was always difficult for a musician to earn a living unless she lived in an urban area. Night club and theatre gigs were scarce. Jazz musicians were often forced to play commercial music to earn a living. Teaching and other unrelated jobs allowed artists to eat regularly, but did not facilitate recordings. Record companies turned to jazz in their time of need or during those moments when a jazz musician would become popular with somewhat more mainstream audiences, but for them issuing new jazz records regularly was not a top priority. Jazz, however, managed to retain a level of popularity, even when it is not the genre of choice. In 1990 the recording industry, fearing that the ailing Miles Davis would never record again, fostered the new Miles: Wynton Marsalis. Sadly, no such steps were taken when Ella or Betty or Sarah lay dying. Women have had to create their own networks and opportunities.

The first Women's Jazz Festival was held in Kansas City in 1978, followed by the Kennedy Center's festival. New York's Jazz Mobile and Chicago's Jazz Fest are ways for women to get to know others in their own field and to make new professional contacts. However, most festival lineups include recording artists, and since women of color are grossly underrepresented on record labels, they tend to be underrepresented even at these festivals. Still, African American women continue to play and sing in the great traditions of jazz.

See also Armstrong, Lillian “Lil” Hardin; Blues; Fitzgerald, Ella; Holiday, Billie; Horn, Shirley; Horne, Lena; Hunter, Alberta; McRae, Carmen; Simone, Nina; Smith, Bessie; Vaughan, Sarah; Washington, Dinah; Waters, Ethel; Williams, Mary Lou; and Wilson, Nancy.

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