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  • EVENTS
  • Sp7. Women and Jazz

    A white marble statue of a woman with flowing robe facing right with head on bent left elbow on knee.


    Top

    Contents

    • 1 Discussion
    • 2 Quotations
    • 3 Introduction
    • 4 Jazz women 1910–1920s America
      • 4.1 Bertha Gonsoulin
      • 4.2 Marie Lucas
      • 4.3 Marion Harris
      • 4.4 Valaida Snow
      • 4.5 Ina Ray Hutton
      • 4.6 The Ingenues
        • 4.6.1 Names of The Ingenues
    • 5 Jazz women in 1930's America
      • 5.1 L'ana (Webster) Hyams
      • 5.2 Viola Smith
    • 6 Jazz women in 1940's America
      • 6.1 Sarah Vaughn
      • 6.2 Melba Liston
      • 6.3 Ada Leonard's All-American Girl Orchestra
      • 6.4 Marjorie Rainey's Rhythmettes
      • 6.5 Barbara Carroll
      • 6.6 Mary Lou Williams
      • 6.7 Billie Rogers
      • 6.8 International Sweethearts of Rhythm
      • 6.9 Marjorie Hyams
      • 6.10 Hazel Scott
      • 6.11 Beryl Booker
      • 6.12 Dorothy Donegan
    • 7 Jazz women in 1950's America
      • 7.1 Jutta Hipp
      • 7.2 Shirley Scott
      • 7.3 Blossom Dearie
    • 8 Jazz women in 1960's America
      • 8.1 Joanne Brackeen
      • 8.2 Carol Sloan
    • 9 Jazz women in 1970's America
      • 9.1 Ahnee Sharon Freeman
      • 9.2 Jessica (Jennifer) Williams
    • 10 Jazz women in 1980's America
      • 10.1 Emily Remler
      • 10.2 Terri Lyne Carrington
      • 10.3 Kris Davis
      • 10.4 Fay Victor
      • 10.5 Nedra Wheeler
      • 10.6 Geri Allen
      • 10.7 Saskia Laroo
      • 10.8 Dena DeRose
    • 11 Jazz women in 1990's America
      • 11.1 Lena Bloch
      • 11.2 Nichole Mitchell
      • 11.3 Roberta Gambarini
      • 11.4 DIVA jazz orchestra
      • 11.5 Ingrid Laubrock
    • 12 Jazz women in the 20th century
    • 13 Jazz women in 21st Century
      • 13.1 Esperanza Spalding
      • 13.2 Nubya Garcia
      • 13.3 Sarah Milligan
      • 13.4 ARTEMIS
    • 14 Musician's Biography Websites
    • 15 Internet & Bibliographic Resources on Women in Jazz
      • 15.1 Eight Rising Women Instrumentalists from 2016
      • 15.2 Ten Rising Women Instrumentalists from 2018
      • 15.3 Women in Jazz and Beyond in the 21st Century
      • 15.4 Women in Jazz Internet Resources
    • 16 NOTES  

    Discussion[edit]

    Quotations[edit]


    Cindy Blackman Santana looking ferociously powerful pounding on her drum kit. (Cindy Blackman Santana (b. 1959))

    “Leonard Feather, a fellow expatriate from England, and well-known figure in the jazz world as a critic, composer, and record producer, had by then begun tracking Marian McPartland's career, carefully and with a certain concern. Writing in Downbeat in 1952, he drily, but bluntly, summed up Marian's position in jazz: "She is English, white, and a woman—three hopeless strikes against her."”[1] (bold not in original)
    “"Only God can make a tree," the swing historian George T. Simon wrote in The Big Bands (London: Macmillan, 1967), "and only men can play good jazz."[2] (bold not in original)
    “In addition to unfair pay scales, jazz women encountered equally hostile philosophical and sexist attitudes. An unsigned Down Beat article of 1938 illustrates one particularly potent masculine point of view:

    Why is it that outside of a few sepia females, the woman musician never was born capable of sending anyone further than the nearest exit? It would seem that even though women are the weaker sex they would be able to bring more out of a poor, defenseless horn than something that sounds like a cry for help. You can forgive them for lacking guts in their playing but even women should be able to play with feeling and expression and they never do it. ("Why Women Musicians are Inferior" 1938)

    Both the anonymity of this tirade and the willingness of Down Beat to publish it reveal a latent yet permeating sexism. The explicitly masculinist and racialized tone of this passage represents one particularly prevalent political ideology. Here, women are defined as physically inferior, yet are somehow expected to have greater expressive and emotional capacities. Further, the anonymous author promulgates racial stereotypes by admitting a few black (sepia) female musicians into the masculine institution of jazz.”[3] (bold and bold italic not in original)


    PalomarBallroomAllGirl3DColorizedSmooth.gif


    WomenBandPalomarBallroom.jpeg
    Nearly all-women band, Primalon Ballroom, Fillmore district, San Francisco, CA circa 1950s.
    Click on picture to see source and learn more.
    A colorized photo of the almost all woman band at the Palomar ballroom.
    A colorized photo of the almost all woman band at the Palomar ballroom surrounded by outside frames around photograph.



    A colorized version of the Harlem stairsteps photograph of "The Girls in the Band."


    Colorized group shot for Director Judy Chaikin's documentary "The Girls in the Band" (picture modeled after Art Kane's Esquire magazine (now colorized) photograph "A Great Day in Harlem" taken in 1958). AGreatDayInHarlemMiniPhotoColorized.jpeg

    GirlsInTheBandHarem2008.jpeg


    Original black and white group shot for Director Judy Chaikin's documentary "The Girls in the Band" (picture modeled after Art Kane's Esquire magazine photograph "A Great Day in Harlem" taken in 1958). AGreatDayInHarlemMiniPhoto.jpeg Chaikin's documentary tells the true stories of female jazz musicians enduring sexism, racism, and lack of opportunities all so they could play their music.


    QueenOfSpadesLPLogos.gif QueenOfSpadesPOJLogos.jpeg QueenOfSpadesLPLogos.gif

    Introduction[edit]

    Women have probably been underrepresented in every professional field with few non-gendered exceptions. For how this has affected women philosophers generally, see Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting's essay "Women or Philosophers" (February 4, 2021) and Helen Beebee's article "Women in Philosophy: What's Changed?" (May 29, 2021) both at The Philosophers' Magazine. To see what has been adopted to assist UK philosophy departments, learned societies and journals in ensuring that they have policies and procedures in place that encourage the representation of women in philosophy, see "Good Practice Scheme." For women's representations in philosophy classrooms and faculty offices, see "The Diversity of Philosophy Students and Faculty in the United States," (May 30, 2021) by Eric Schwitzgebel, Liam Kofi Bright, Carolyn Dicey Jennings, Morgan Thompson and Eric Winsberg.

    Established jazz author Ted Gioia (b. 1957) in his third edition of The History of Jazz (2021) points out how women instrumentalists have often struggled to make it in an overly patriarchal jazz community.

    “Women had long been accepted as vocalists in popular music, but few had enjoyed successful careers as jazz instrumentalists, and even fewer managed to make records during this period. Surviving news coverage attests that female bands were well known during the 1930s, and we hear mention of the Harlem Playgirls, the Darlings of Rhythm, the Hip Chicks, Dixie Sweethearts, and other ensembles, but we have little documentation of the music they made. But in 1937, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, an all-female swing band, was formed—initially as a fund-raising project at the Piney Woods Country Life School for poor and orphaned African American children in Mississippi. But the band members had larger ambitions and, after a well-received debut at the Howard Theater, would go on to tour the United States and Europe, as well as record for the Victor label. The ensemble was often marketed for its glamour, and this may have led some to overlook its high musical standards, as demonstrated on tracks such as “Swing Shift” and “Bugle Call Rag.” But Louis Armstrong was so impressed with trumpeter Ernestine “Tiny” Davis that he offered her a job at a substantial pay raise, which she declined, and the propulsive drummer Pauline Braddy, billed as “Queen of the Drums,” was a major talent by any measure. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm not only helped establish women as respected instrumentalists, but also broke down barriers as the first integrated female band in the United States. Yet their example would stand out as a rare exception, and only gradually gain the interest of critics and music historians. A turning point came in 1980, when pianist and broadcaster Marian McPartland worked with the Kansas City Jazz Festival to sponsor a reunion and public event honoring nine surviving band members. Williams, for her part, gradually rose through the ranks of the Kirk organization: for a time she acted as chauffeur for the band (she also worked as a hearse driver during this period), eventually securing a spot as a staff writer and full-time performer. But from 1930 until 1942, Williams served as the main catalyst for the Kirk ensemble. Her charts, such as “Mary’s Idea” and “Walkin’ and Swingin’,” were marked by a happy mixture of experimentalism and rhythmic urgency, while her playing soon earned her star billing as “The Lady Who Swings the Band.” In later years, Williams’s progressive tendencies became even more pronounced, leading her to adopt much of the bebop vocabulary and inspiring her to compose extended pieces, most notably the Zodiac Suite from 1945. Following her conversion to Catholicism in the 1950s, Williams wrote and performed a number of sacred works and continued to expand her musical horizons long after the age when most artists settle comfortably into a familiar style and repertoire. Her 1962 work for voices “Black Christ of the Andes” is a neglected masterpiece that makes clear that Williams could have reached the highest rung as a choral composer, and fifteen years later this stalwart of traditional jazz went head-to-head with free-jazz titan Cecil Taylor in a controversial Carnegie Hall concert. At this high-profile performance, held four years before Williams’s death in 1981, two confident masters of the jazz keyboard confronted each other head on, and neither side blinked. As such daring gestures made clear, 'none of the Kansas City pioneers brought a broader perspective to their music making than Mary Lou Williams.”[4] (bold not in original)


    In her "Women in Jazz 1920s–1950," a term paper in 2015 for her "History of American Music" course, author Emma Lamoreaux explains that women are underrepresented in jazz history for multiple reasons. First, there was significant and repressive male prejudice against all non-male musicians. Second, jazz had a social stigma of being sleazy and sexy, allegedly inappropriate for female participation since people judged it socially unacceptable for women to participate in such activity. A third and strikingly telling reason accounting for women's underrepresented in jazz history is from an over-reliance on recordings. Female jazz musicians were underrepresented in recordings precisely because of the first two prejudices against their playing jazz in the first place.

    Women jazz musicians have almost always been in a discouraging situation caused by numerous factors against them: male gender prejudices against female musicians, the belief by many that there are no good female jazz players (although this has always been false), that playing anything other than the piano or singing was not 'lady-like' and was inappropriate for women to play the trumpet, the saxophone, the bass, or the drums.

    Several newspaper reporters have written about the problems for women entering into the jazz field, including Robert Palmer (1945–1997) in his January 21, 1977 New York Times article "Women Who Make Jazz" and Peter Watrous in his November 27, 1994 New York Times article JAZZ VIEW: "Why Women Remain At the Back of the Bus."

    Lamoreaux, in her paper, discusses multilingual composer, instrumentalist, singer, and dancer Valaida Snow (1904–1956). Often known as the “Queen of Trumpet,” Snow recorded her album "Hot Snow," containing both her singing as well as playing her trumpet. By the age of 15, she had learned to play the cello, bass, banjo, violin, mandolin, harp, accordion, clarinet, trumpet, and saxophone. Louis Armstrong thought so highly of her trumpet playing that he said she was the world's second-best jazz trumpet player besides himself. Because of this, she was named "Little Louis" after Louis Armstrong.

    A more well-known and influential woman musician was singer, songwriter, electric guitarist, and recording artist Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915–1973), who was not really a jazz musician but more of a hot gospel performer with her electric guitar playing using heavy distortion and influencing 1960's British electric blues guitar players, such as Eric Clapton and Keith Richards. Wikipedia: Sister Rosetta Tharpe notes that “She attained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and rhythmic accompaniment that was a precursor of rock and roll. She was the first great recording star of gospel music and among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll."”

    Another unsung woman of jazz was Dorothy Donegan (1922–1998), an American jazz pianist and vocalist, working primarily in the stride piano and boogie-woogie style, but she also could play Bebop, swing jazz, or even classical music.

    The International Sweethearts of Rhythm was an all-female jazz orchestra in the 1940s that toured widely, including traveling and performing in many venues.

    Irene Schweizer
    Jolle Leandre
    European ones like Barbara Thompson and Marilyn Mazur

    Above all, however, they looked to Jutta Hipp, who had already proven in the early 1950s that a musician could be taken seriously as a woman at the instrument even without the "exotic bonus."

    There were only three female musicians in Cologne, Germany's WDR big band in 2018. Australian-born trombonist Shannon Barnett became a full member in January, 2014. See and hear her killer trombone solo at 2:12 in on a Paquito D'Rivera date with the WDR Cologne big band.

    Karolina Strassmayer alto saxophonist. Since 2004 she has been the first woman to be a permanent member of the WDR Big Band Cologne. In 2004, Strassmayer was also named "Top Five Alto Saxophonist" of the year by the American jazz magazine Downbeat. She played alto sax on Joe Lovano's 20th album "Symphonica" released in 2009 on Blue Note Records from a November 26, 2005 live recording.

    Drummer Eva Klesse (b. 1986) became the first female instrumentalist to be appointed professor of jazz at Hochschule für Musik, Theater and Medien in Hannover, Germany (2018).

    See below for more facts about these individuals and groups.


    A woman in a 1950s style full length house dress listening to a large brown wooden furniture radio.

    NOTE: Screencapture below of women in jazz from WikiVisually: Jazz under topic heading of 2. Elements and Issues of 2.4 Roles of women. Click on any hyperlink, including the photo itself, to go there, then scroll down, or click here and go directly.

    WikiVisuallyJazzWomen.jpeg

    (Rosetta Reitz (1924–2008)
    Photo by Jill Lynne, 1977)

    🌕 Rosetta Reitz (1924–2008) championed women's jazz.
    🌕 See Douglas Martin's obituary "Rosetta Reitz, Champion of Jazz Women, Dies at 84," NYTimes, November 14, 2008.



    MedievalTapestryTrombonistPOJLogos.jpeg

    Jazz women 1910–1920s America[edit]

    Bertha Gonsoulin[edit]

    A colorized photographic cutout of Bertha Gonsoulin wearing a white dress and a plain expression on her face facing the camera. Bertha Gonsoulin wearing a white dress and a plain expression on her face facing the camera. A colorized photographic cutout of Bertha Gonsoulin wearing a white dress and a plain expression on her face facing the camera.

    Bertha Gonsoulin (1890–1951)
    (active 1915→1944)

    PinkShinyButton19.png pianist
    PinkShinyButton19.png music educator on piano


    Bertha Gonsoulin in center surrounded by the Bunk Johnson band with Bunk on the far right.
    (Bunk Johnson played a concert a week at the Geary Theatre in San Francisco, starting in May 1943 and recruited from Los Angeles players who were sympathetic to his aims. Pictured l. to r. Everett Walsh drums, Buster Wilson piano, Ed Garland bass, Bertha Gonsoulin piano, Frank Pasley guitar, Kid Ory trombone, Bunk Johnson trumpet.) (Source: Black Beauty White Heat)

    A colorized photograph of Bertha Gonsoulin in center surrounded by the Bunk Johnson band with Bunk on the far right.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif As a young woman she played piano in her violinist father's orchestra in Louisiana with trumpeter Bunk Johnson.[5]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif learned three tunes as a pupil of Jelly Roll Morton (1890–1941) in early 1920s: "Kansas City Stomp," "The Pearls," and "Frog-i-more" as reported by musicologist, music historian, book author, professor, and journal editor Dr. Sherrie Tucker.

    “At some point in the early nineteen twenties, either before her departure to Chicago with Oliver, or after her return, she took some lessons from Jelly Roll Morton. Bill Colburn told William Russell that Bertha “couldn't go to the places where [Morton] played, so he went to her home [in San Francisco] to teach her. She said he taught her several of his compositions, including "Kansas City Stomp," "The Pearls," and "Frog-i-more."[6] (bold not in original)

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif became King Oliver’s (1881–1938) pianist after Lil Hardin (1898–1971) left the band returning to Chicago about the time that the Pergola Dancing Pavilion at 949 Market Street closed in San Francisco in October 1921. Gonsoulin stayed with them when they arrived at the Royal Gardens in Chicago in 1922.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif For a few months, Joseph "King" Oliver (1885–1938), Ed Garland (1895–1980), Johnny (1892–1940) and Warren "Baby" Dodds (1898–1959), Edward "'Kid" Ory (1886–1983), and Gonsoulin sponsored their own weekend dances in an Oakland hall. It was probably this band, billed as "King Oliver's and Ory's Celebrated Creole Orchestra," which later played for a Mardi Gras ball at the Municipal Auditorium in Oakland on February 28, 1922.[7]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Gonsoulin, who had returned to the Midwest with Oliver, went back to San Francisco at the end of November 1922, and Lil Hardin, who had been playing with Mae Brady at the Dreamland, rejoined the Oliver band.[8]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif One afternoon in May 1943 at a rehearsal in the San Francisco home of Bertha Gonsoulin, Bunk Johnson (1879–1949) played four versions of this same tune as part of a medley of Buddy Bolden(PoJ.fm) tunes using the song "Make Me a Pallet on the Floor."A (Wiki) Bunk started the tune by playing "Make Me a Pallet on the Floor"B (see 108 vocal versions; 46 instrumental) in the key of Eb and then changing key to Ab in the ‘making runs’ part. The ‘making runs’ part has the same basic chord structure as, for instance, "Tiger Rag." With his fertile imagination, Bunk could play a chorus a hundred different ways.[9]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Reviewer Scott Yanow (b. 1954) informs us that Gonsoulin played two good numbers on Bunk Johnson's album titled "Bunk Johnson in San Francisco."
    The front album cover for "Bunk Johnson In San Francisco" with a black and white photograph of Bunk Johnson on the cover. The back album cover for "Bunk Johnson In San Francisco" with a list of song titles and their personnel.
    “It is interesting to hear Ory a year before he started to officially make a comeback, although the best music is actually provided by pianist Bertha Gonsoulin who is featured on "Wolverine Blues" and "The Pearls." . . . Much better are six duets that Bunk had with Gonsoulin two days before, and one day after, the concert.” (bold not in original)

    "Bunk Johnson: Rare & Unissued Masters, Volume 2 — 1943–1946"

    RedPointingRightArrow.png 13. "Plenty to Do" (featuring Bertha Gonsoulin)
    RedPointingRightArrow.png 14. "I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate" (featuring Bertha Gonsoulin) [Alt]
    RedPointingRightArrow.png 15. "St. Louis Blues" (featuring Bertha Gonsoulin)

    PinkTriangleRight.jpeg February 25, 1922: The Oliver-Ory band plays the Mardi Gras Ball in Oakland, California with Bertha Gonsoulin on piano.

    PinkTriangleRight.jpeg April 17, 1922: The Oliver band plays at a Grand Ball in San Francisco with Bertha Gonsoulin on piano.

    PinkTriangleRight.jpeg April 22, 1922: Oliver's band is featured at the opening of Ragtime Billy Tucker's Hiawatha Dancing Academy in Los Angeles, California.

    PinkTriangleRight.jpeg June 1922: Joe Oliver is featured at the Lincoln Gardens in Chicago.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif she became a respected piano instructor at Booker T. Washington Community Service Center—her photograph appeared in the Chicago Defender for that year, with the caption calling her “one of the finest instructors, composers, and trainers of aspiring musicians in the west.”[10]

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif It is highly unusual when one can list all of the recordings of a jazz musician. It is quite likely that this can be done in Gonsoulin's case, as found at AllMusic.com:

    A list of all twenty songs recorded by Bertha Gonsoulin at AllMusic.com

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Here are the titles of the CDs with Gonsoulin's recordings:

    A  list of the five CDs containing Gonsoulin's recordings.


    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen on Spotify.com to four tunes of Bertha Gonsoulin. Bunk Johnson suffers no poor musicians so Gonsoulin must have been competent. Her playing, however, is an acquired taste. You be the judge. “Occasionally, Gonsoulin is allowed a solo (e.g. “Sister Kate” or “The Pearls”). Her instrument rings loud and clear, revealing her to be a more than competent stride player, whose harmony-rich style is characterized by twinkling riffs and blisteringly quick, half-keyboard runs.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Writer Dave Doyle reports that “Jazz writer Rudi Blesh approached Gonsoulin in 1943 about appearing in a series of concerts and recordings. Miss Bob had apparently given up jazz for church music, but was persuaded to help bring the NOLA sound to new audiences. The scene of her return was the San Francisco’s Museum of Art, where Blesh was giving lectures soundtracked by old New Orleans musicians. Enter Johnson and Gonsoulin, on April 11, for a concert which was hailed a great success. (Louis Armstrong wrote to Blesh full of praise, expressing a desire to jam with the duo.) Blesh arranged a few more dates featuring Johnson and Gonsoulin, as well as recording some of their rehearsals (which can also be heard on the aforementioned CD). Gonsoulin was upstaged by Kid Ory at the Geary Theater when she appeared there on May 9, receiving a mere footnote in press reports. She played twice or more at the CIO Hall, in 1943 and 1944, after which her trail runs more or less cold—interviewing Gonsoulin some years later, Russell asked her little about the years outside of her first and second winds.”[11]

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Lawrence Gushee, "New Orleans: Area Musicians on the West Coast, 1908-1925," Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 22, Supplement: Best of BMR.

    Dr. Sherrie Tucker (University of Kansas) reports on Gonsoulin's jazz career in her well-researched article "A Feminist Perspective on New Orleans Jazz Women," a project for the NOJNHP (New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park) Research Study.

    “Cornetist and band leader Joe “King” Oliver moved from New Orleans to Chicago around 1918 or 1919. His first Chicago jobs were in Bill Johnson‟s Royal Gardens band and Lawrence Duhe's Dreamland Café band, but by the fall of 1919, he was leading the band at the Dreamland. The band included Honore Dutrey, Johnny Dodds, Ed Garland, Minor Hall, and a recent migrant from Tennessee, pianist Lil Hardin. Business, however, was rocky at the Dreamland. According to Gene Anderson, rumors that the club might be sold were circulating, and so Oliver decided to seize the opportunity for a California tour for which he had been recommended by trombonist Kid Ory. The band opened at Pergola, a dance hall in San Francisco in June, 1921. (p. 265)

    “According to Burton W. Peretti, "For New Orleans jazz musicians before 1917, distant California was as important a market as Chicago." Indeed many New Orleans musicians, including Jelly Roll Morton and Kid Ory had moved their career bases to the West Coast as early as musicians in the more often-noted Chicago migration. We know little about Gonsoulin's role in this movement. She is not mentioned in Tom Stoddard's history of jazz in San Francisco, Jazz on the Barbary Coast (Chigwell, Essex: Storyville, 1982). The details of her life are as scarcely considered by most Oliver scholars as the minutia about other members is actively debated. We do know that her nickname was “Bob” or “Miss Bob.” (p. 266)

    “We also know that Gonsoulin stuck it out through the year of personnel changes and fickle employment. At one point, a reconfigured band called, “King Oliver's and Ory's Celebrated Creole Orchestra,” made up of Oliver, Kid Ory, Baby Dodds, Ed Garland, Johnny Dodds, and Bertha Gonsoulin, played for Mardi Gras Ball in Oakland. When Oliver brought his band back to Chicago in June, 1922, Gonsoulin was still the pianist. It was she, in fact, not Hardin, who was the working pianist in the Creole Jazz Band when Oliver sent away for a young New Orleans musician by the name of Louis Armstrong to join as second cornet. As Gonsoulin told William Russell in 1940, “the telegram asking Louis Armstrong to join the Oliver band was sent to him on a Saturday evening and he replied Sunday evening. Louis arrived on Tuesday evening, carrying his cornet wrapped in a black bag.” Oliver took Armstrong to the Dreamland to meet Lil Hardin, and to try and convince Lil to come back to his band at the Royal Garden.

    “When [Louis] Armstrong joined the band in August 1922, he did so as a part of a larger reorganization of the Creole Jazz Band, which included more shifting of personnel, such as the return of clarinetist Honore Dutrey and pianist Lil Hardin. When Hardin agreed to re-join the band in December 1922, Bertha Gonsoulin was sent back to San Francisco. As an out-of-towner, Gonsoulin recalled that she had been paid in cash the whole time she was in Chicago, and had amassed so much of it that she “carried it home in a pillow case.” At some point in the early twenties, either before her departure to Chicago with Oliver, or after her return, she took some lessons from Jelly Roll Morton. Bill Colburn told William Russell that Bertha “couldn't go to the places where [Morton] played, so he went to her home to teach her. She said he taught her several of his compositions, including "Kansas City Stomp," "the Pearls," and "Frog-i-more." (p. 267)

    “What happened to Gonsoulin over the next twenty years is, again, sketchy. The 1930 Census lists a Bertha Gonsoulin, age 49, “wife,” living in Louisiana. This could very well be her. [NOTE: In 1930, Bertha was exactly forty years old.] The age could be right, but by 1940, we find her again in San Francisco. Perhaps she could have moved back and forth between the two cities. We know from a photo and caption in the Chicago Defender, that, in 1940, she was a well-respected piano teacher at the Booker T. Washington Community Service Center in San Francisco. The paper ran a photograph of her looking very distinguished in a white dress, regal gaze, sitting at a piano, not as an entertainer, but as a “Trainer of Musicians.” The caption stated that “Miss Bertha Gonsoulin . . . has the enviable reputation of being one of the finest instructors, composers, and trainers of aspiring musicians in the west.”

    “The second [chance to play with Bunk Johnson] came over twenty years later when her [Bertha Gonsoulin] credentials as an Oliver alumnus brought her to the attention of Rudi Blesh and other movers and shakers of the New Orleans Revival. These enthusiasts of early jazz sought Gonsoulin's services as an appropriate accompanist for New Orleans trumpet legend, Bunk Johnson, in 1943.

    “Accounts of the 1943 Bunk Johnson concerts and recordings make no mention of her reputation as a “fine instructor,” or “composer,” but they do suggest that she had become “immersed in church music when she was approached by Rudi Blesh to accompany Bunk on the piano.” Martin Williams adds that she had, in fact, “given up jazz for church music” and “had to be persuaded” to play with Bunk Johnson. Whether or not Gonsoulin herself found church music incompatible with jazz—(had she “given up” jazz, or had she not had opportunities to work as a jazz pianist?)—over the next several months, she played a role in the celebration of New Orleans jazz (pre-1929) that became known as the New Orleans Revival. (p. 268)

    “In San Francisco in the 1940s, the New Orleans Revival centered around Lu Watters's Yerba Buena Jazz Band, a contemporary group of white male musicians who were inspired by the music of “King” Oliver. Christopher Hillman wrote of the atmosphere of excitement, when, “[I]n early 1943, Rudi Blesh, who was on the fringe of the movement associated with the book Jazzmen, arranged to give a series of lectures on New Orleans jazz at the Museum of Art in San Francisco.” Concerts by “authentic” New Orleans jazz musicians were conceived as part of this popular lecture series. Blesh and other collectors raised money to bring Bunk Johnson appear at one of the lectures, but they had to find musicians to play with him. Blesh located “Bertha Gonsoulin, a lady who had once played with King Oliver in Chicago, but was by then heavily involved in church music.” She agreed to accompany Johnson on the piano.

    “The lecture/concert (April 11, 1943) was an enormous success. In his opening remarks, Blesh shared a letter from Louis Armstrong that praised Bunk's genius, and put in a good word for “Miss “Bob” (Bertha Gonsoulin), expressing hopes that they “could get together for a jam session in the near future.” A list of the numbers played by Johnson and Gonsoulin, compiled by Mike Hazeldine and Barry Martyn, includes “Maple Leaf Rag,” “Down by the Riverside,” “High Society,” “Careless Love,” “Pallet on the Floor,” “Tiger Rag,” and “Yes, Lord, I'm Crippled.” The concert was recorded, and several of the numbers are currently available on CD (AMCD-016 "Bunk Johnson in San Francisco"). This event was so well received, that a subsequent one was planned for May 9, 1943 at the Geary Theater.” (p. 269)

    “On May 7, 1943, Johnson and Gonsoulin met at the latter musician's home on 1782 Sutter Street in San Francisco to prepare for the forthcoming concert. William Russell, who had just arrived from New Orleans, was on-hand to document the session, which, he later recalled, had not been planned as a recording session, but rather as a chance “to get Bunk's lip in shape.” This rehearsal, however, was, in fact, issued on the American Music label, and is also represented on the aforementioned CD (AMCD- 016 "Bunk Johnson in San Francisco"). The May 9th concert little resembled this intimate rehearsal. It did not include duets between Johnson and Gonsoulin. Trombonist Kid Ory and his band had been brought up from Los Angeles, and the concert primarily featured Johnson with Kid Ory's band. Gonsoulin, who would have known Ory from 1920s concerts with King Oliver, was not much featured, but did play a couple of solos. The next day, she expressed disappointment when she found that her own contributions in the concert were “hardly mentioned in the press.” Perhaps in response to her ennui, Russell recorded Gonsoulin re-creating the solo rendition of “The Pearls” she had performed the previous night. This, too, appears on "Bunk Johnson in San Francisco."

    “After the Geary Theater concert, several traditional jazz concerts were presented at the CIO, co-sponsored by a coalition of jazz fans and labor union figures, including Harry Bridges. Bunk Johnson and Bertha Gonsoulin were the “special guests” at the first such concert on July 11, 1943. After Johnson left the San Francisco Bay Area for lack of work, Gonsoulin made at least one further appearance at the CIO, in the spring of 1944.

    “At some point, Russell interviewed Gonsoulin, and his hand-written notes are housed at The Williams Research Center. I have drawn heavily from these notes, as one of the few sources of information on Gonsoulin, but must add that these notes are sketchy, focus entirely on her year with King Oliver, and include her claim to have been the pianist on the Gennett session of “The Chimes,” which is incorrect. (p. 270)

    “Future research should continue to seek information on Bertha Gonsoulin for years other than 1921–22 and 1943–44. Future research should also explore the possibility that Gonsoulin may have been thinking of a different recording session, other than her discredited claim to have been on the Gennett session, when she told Russell she recorded with Oliver.”[12] (bold not in original)


    Bibliography

    Primary Sources:

    Armstrong, Lillian Hardin, Oral History, July 1, 1959, Reel I [of I]–Digest–Retyped, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University.
    Russell, William. "Bertha Gonsoulin,1940s," handwritten notes from “California Notes”, MSS 536 F15. The Williams Research Center.
    Russell, William Russell, Oral History digest, Reel I, Feb. 2, 1975, 2, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University

    Secondary Sources:

    Anderson, Gene. "The Genesis of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band." American Music 12.3: 238 (21).
    Dahl, Linda. Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen (New York: Limelight Editions, 1989), 23.
    Handy, D. Antoinette. Black Women in American Bands and Orchestras, Second Edition. Lantham, Mass. and Kent: Scarecrow Press, 1998, 223.
    Hazeldine, Mike, and Barry Martyn, Bunk Johnson: Song of the Wanderer (New Orleans: Jazzology Press, 2000). For more information on these recordings, see http://www.weigts.scarlet.nl/430510.htm
    William Russell, "Bertha Gonsoulin 1940s," handwritten notes from “California Notes”, MSS 536 F15. William Russell Collection, The Williams Research Center.
    Hillman, Christopher. Bunk Johnson: His Life & Times (New York: Universe Books, 1988.
    Peretti, Burton W. The Creation of Jazz: Music, Race, and Culture in Urban America. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
    Placksin, Sally. Jazzwomen: 1900 to the Present, Their Words, Lives and Music (London and Sydney: Pluto Press, 1985), 44.
    Rose, Al, and Edmond Souchon. New Orleans Jazz: A Family Album. Revised edition. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.
    Russell, William. “Oh, Mister Jelly” A Jelly Roll Morton Scrapbook (Denmark: JazzMedia Aps, 1999).
    "Trainer of Musicians." Chicago Defender, February 3 1940: 9. Photo and caption of Miss Bertha Gonsoulin, piano teacher at Booker T. Washington Community Service Center, San Francisco.
    Williams, Martin. Jazz Masters of New Orleans. New York: MacMillan, 1967, 235, 238.
    AMCD-016 "Bunk Johnson in San Francisco" (These are the recordings from the museum concert, the rehearsal at Gonsoulin's home, and the final intimate session at Gonsoulin's home the day after the Geary Theater concert).

    Hal Smith, "Bunk Johnson," The San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation Collection: The Charles N. Huggins Project,


    Bunk’s first engagement in San Francisco was a concert at the War Veterans Memorial Building, where he played, accompanied by former King Oliver pianist Bertha Gonsoulin. He talked about his early career and generally held the audience in the palm of his hand. This successful event was followed by a concert at the Museum of Modern Art.

    Next, jazz impresario Rudi Blesh invited Bunk to perform in his “This Is Jazz” concert series at the Geary Theater. This ambitious presentation was to include Kid Ory, Mutt Carey and members of Ory’s band as backing.

    At the Geary Theatre (1943). (L-R) Kid Ory tmb, Wade Whaley cl, Mutt Carey tpt, Bunk Johnson tpt, Everett Walsh drm, Frank Pasley gt, Ed Garland b, Buster Wilson p. Source: Louisiana State Museum Jazz Collection.

    Bunk Johnson’s Geary Theatre concert in San Francisco included musicians from Los Angeles players who were sympathetic to his goals. (L-R) Everett Walsh drm (Holding a picture of Lu Watters), Buster Wilson p, Ed Garland b, Bertha Gonsoulin p (Replaced Lil Hardin in King Oliver’s Band in 1921), Frank Pasley gt, Kid Ory tmb and Bunk Johnson tpt. Source: Claes Ringqvist - The Swedish Bunk Johnson Society

    "Bunk Johnson in San Francisco" CD American Music AMCD – 16 includes the 1943 concert at the Geary Theater with Kid Ory’s band, duets with pianist Bertha Gonsoulin, Bunk playing along with a George Lewis record and two fragments of unreleased sides from the 1944 sessions.


    A closeup photograph of a large piece of driftwood appearing to have engraved PoJ.fm logos burned into the wood and a large shiny gold tenor saxophone leaning prominently up against the driftwood on the left side at a 22.5° angle.

    Marie Lucas[edit]

    A colorized and enhanced photograph of Marie Alucas in center surrounded by her all female bandmates in uniforms with large buttons and bellboy style hats.

    Marie Lucas (b. 1886[13] or 1891[14]–d. April 24, 1947)
    (active 1909→1935)

    MarieLucasOrchestra.jpeg


    PinkShinyButton19.png trombonist
    PinkShinyButton19.png pianist
    PinkShinyButton19.png arranger
    PinkShinyButton19.png musical director
    PinkShinyButton19.png orchestra leader
    PinkShinyButton19.png bandleader
    PinkShinyButton19.png music educator


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Protege of James Reese Europe (1881–1919).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif came from a family of musicians and became distinguished during the Harlem Renaissance as a music and dance director. Her father was Samuel Lucas (1840-1916), a minstrel comedian, musician, and singer who starred in vaudeville and musical comedy during the 1860s to early 1900s and known as "the Grand Old Man of the Negro Stage," performing with most of the major minstrel and theatrical troupes of the era. Her mother, Carrie Melvin Lucas, Sam's second wife, was a musician as well as an actress. Sam and Carrie were married in Boston, Massachusetts on August 11, 1886 and divorced in 1899.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Marie's musical education began with her parents, since her mother played the violin and cornet, and her father played the guitar.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif She received formal musical training at schools in Nottingham, England, and at the Boston Conservatory in Massachusetts.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In 1909, Lucas's father obtained a leading role in an original musical comedy The Red Moon, and Marie made her debut in this show that ran from May 3, 1909 to May 29, 1909.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif had several established musicians in her various bands, including tubist and bassist Rafael Escudero (1891–1970), trombonist Juan Tizol (1900–1984), jazz double bassist, tubist, and bandleader Bill Benford (1905–1994), his drummer brother Tommy Benford (1904–before 1994), and American trumpeter, pianist, arranger, and composer Dave Nelson (1905–1946).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif has the ignominious distinction of NOT having a Wikipedia entry.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif conducted (James Reese) Europe's Lady Orchestra, (see p. 17 or p. 38), NY Age, Thursday, December 3, 1914.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif she debuted an all-female orchestra at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, New York City on December 3, 1914. Experienced musician's in that orchestra included Marie Wayne (Townsend) and Mildred Franklin, violins; Maude Shelton, viola; percussionist Alice Calloway, cello; and Nellie Shelton, bass violin. Later members of Lucas's Lafayette Ladies Orchestra were Olivia Porter (Shipp) with Maude Shelton playing violin as well as viola.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In 1916 she became musical director of the Quality Amusement Corporation, which was responsible for managing several black theaters on the East Coast.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif she directed an all-female orchestra known as the Lucas Colonial Theater Orchestra in Baltimore, Maryland and later held a lengthy residency with an orchestra at the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C. (1916-17), included in the bands were Evangeline Sinto, violin and double bassist and bass violinist 🎻 (Lolita Cordoba) Santos Rivera.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif advertisements circulated announcing Lucas's availability to teach and train "all young women with even a slight knowledge of music" for female theater orchestras in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.[15]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Female orchestras under her superb direction performed between the years 1915 and 1920 as she was one of the “best known of the female leaders of syncopated orchestras.”[16]
    “ . . . her groups also played regularly at theaters in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Like the male musicians, the women moved from one group to another. The most active women on the East Coast during this period included, in addition to Anderson and Lucas, Alice Calloway (drums), Mildred Franklin (violin), Pearl Gison (cornet), Leora Meaux (cornet), Mamie Mullen (piano), Olivia Porter (string bass), Ruth Reed (cornet), Maud Shelton (violin), Nellie Shelton (string bass), Eva Sinton (violin), Della Sutton (trombone), and Florence Washington (drums). Trombonist Mazie Mullins played with both male and female bands.”[16]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Jazzmen Elmer Snowden (1900–1973) and Duke Ellington (1899–1974) wrote of her 1919–20 activities at Washington D.C.'s Howard Theatre.

    “According to Snowden, Marie Lucas's band [male] would come out into the pit, and she had sent down to Cuba or wherever it was [Ellington said Puerto Rico] and got all those musicians like trombonist Juan Tizol (1900–1984) and bassist and tubist Ralph Escudero (1898–1970) and had enlarged her band. They would play the show, and we'd [Louis Thomas's Band] come back and play the intermission and exit music (Stanley Dance, The World of Swing, p. 47). In his book Music Is My Mistress Ellington indicated that a group under Lucas's direction played the TOBA circuit as well as the Howard Theatre. He indicated that the group was very impressive "because all the musicians doubled on different instruments, something that was extraordinary in those days" (p. 34).”[15]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif she was listed as a "composer and arranger" in The Official Theatrical World of Colored Artists the World Over, with her address being at the Lincoln Theater in Lexington, Kentucky.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif During the 1930s, she toured with the Merry Makers, an all-male group.[17]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In 1931, the Afro-American newspaper 📰 The Chicago Defender

    TheChicagoDefenderNewspaperLogo.jpeg reported that, "Lucas of New York and Her Merry Makers are leaving a smoking trail for the gang who are behind her band . . . ." ("Orchestras," January 3, 1931, p. 5).

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Sources: (Click on book cover to see preview pages, if available, that are searchable)

    BlackWomenInAmericanBandsAndOrchestrasBookCover.jpeg       BlackWomenOfTheHarlemRenaissanceBookCover.jpeg       TheMusicOfBlackAmericansBookCover.jpeg       PuertoRicanWomenFromTheJazzAgeBookCover.jpeg

     

    A framed color photograph of a giant "X" formed by clouds over a palm tree with three identical female  saxophonists in left profile playing on the ground around the palm tree 🌴 with a PoJ.fm logo at the center of the "X".

    Marion Harris[edit]

    Marion Harris (1896–1944)
    Mary Ellen Harrison [birth name]
    (active 1914→1934)

    MarionHarrisPlayingUkeleLeft.jpeg MarionHarrisPlayingUkeleRight.jpeg


    PinkShinyButton19.png vocalist
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Vaudeville Blues (also known as classic female blues)
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Vaudeville
    RedPointingRightArrow.png early Traditional Pop
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Vocal Jazz
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Standards
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Blues

    Compositing of seven photos of Marion Harris


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif began her career in the 1910s by singing with colored slides used by motion picture houses of the day.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif introduced to New York's Theatrical community by dancer Vernon Castle (1887–1918) after starting her career on Chicago's Vaudeville circuit.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif starred in the Irving Berlin revue “Stop! Look! Listen!” (1915) playing the character of the aptly named Marion Bright, produced by Broadway producer Charles Dillingham, who did over two hundred shows.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif became a very popular vaudeville performer playing numerous engagements at the PalaceTheatre in New York during the 1920’s.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Among the first white female Jazz singers.


    MarionHarrisRightHandOnFaceCO.jpegMarionHarrisRightHandOnFaceCO.jpegMarionHarrisRightHandOnFaceCO.jpegMarionHarrisRightHandOnFaceCO.jpegMarionHarrisRightHandOnFaceCO.jpeg

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Recorded "After You've Gone" on October 18, 1918 composed by Turner Layton with lyrics by Henry Creamer at the Victor recording studio in Camden, New Jersey.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif After three years of recording with Victor from 1916 to 1919, Miss Harris left for Columbia Records recording there from 1920 to 1922.

    Page 27 from Talking World Magazine of July 15, 1920 announcing Marion Harris is now exclusively recording for Columbia Records.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif A very popular singer in the 1920’s, Marion Harris recorded into the 1930’s with over 130 recordings to her credit. She performed with the Isham Jones Orchestra and at the Cafe de Paris in London in the early 1930’s.


    MarionHarrisColorizedC1.jpeg MarionHarrisColorizedC2.jpeg MarionHarrisRightHandOnFaceCO.jpeg MarionHarrisColorizedC3.jpeg MarionHarrisColorizedBlendC1C3.jpeg

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In 1927 Marion could be seen in Broadway productions of “Yours Truly” and “A Night In Spain.” Marion made numerous appearances at the Palace in New York during 1926 to 1931. In 1929 she sang Vincent Youman’s “More Than You Know” in the musical play “Great Day” which opened in Philadelphia.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif first widely known white female singer to record jazz and blues, featuring a lot of material by Afro-American composers.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Recorded "Never Let No One Man Worry Your Mind" Sheet Music Cover "Never Let No One Man Worry Your Mind" with Marion Harris on cover from 1919 recorded October 6, 1920

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif first white woman to record a jazz vocal on "When I Hear That Jazz Band Play" (1921). Click on song title to hear her sing the song.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif “A blonde flapper, she seemed to epitomize the Jazz Age, and many of the songs she sang included “jazz” in the title.”[18]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif began her recording career with “I Ain’t Got Nobody Much” (1916) (“Much” was subsequently dropped from the song title) for Victor Records.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif popularized such song standards as “After You’re Gone” (1918), “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” (1919), “Look For The Silver Lining” (1920), “I’m Nobody’s Baby” (1921), “Carolina In The Morning” (1922), “It Had To Be You” (1924), “Tea For Two” (1924), “I’ll See You In My Dreams” (1925) and “The Man I Love” (1927).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif had to leave Victor Records for Columbia Records in 1920 when Victor objected to her desire to record 'race music.' Victor thought it inappropriate for a white women to record such music, especially W. C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues." Columbia records agreed that she could record blues songs. This wasn't a case of appropriating Black music. She really took a career risk with this and fought the good fight in terms of racial discrimination in the early 1920s.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen and read the lyrics to "I'm a Jazz Vampire," I'm a Jazz Vampire 🧛‍♀️ Opening Screen title Columbia Records, January, 1921.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif in late 1922 went to Brunswick Records and remained with Brunswick until 1930.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif from 1931 to 1934 she recorded for Columbia Records in London producing her last recording, the appropriately titled “Singin’ The Blues” (Decca F-5160).

    “Beale Street Blues,” “Who’s Sorry Now,” “The Man I Love” and what many consider the definitive performance of “After You’ve Gone.”

    List of Marion Harris's song recordings List of Marion Harris's song recordings List of Marion Harris's song recordings


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif often was heard on the radio.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif starred in an eight-minute film called "Marion Harris, Songbird of Jazz" (1928). (Click on the film title or the screen captures composited below to see and hear it.)

    Nine cutouts splayed across the image mostly diagonally down from upper left to lower right using screen captures from film "Marion Harris, Songbird of Jazz" (1928).

    Nine colorized cutouts of Marion Harris in different poses splayed across the image mostly diagonally down from upper left to lower right using screen captures from film "Marion Harris, Songbird of Jazz" (1928).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif arrived in London, England (1931) and established herself as a cabaret star and BBC radio personality.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif continued to record through 1934 when she retired.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif made these feature-length films listed below. Her final film "Trouble Ahead"/"Falling in Love" (original title) was released in the United Kingdom in 1934 two years before its release in the United States.

    A table listing Marion Harris's four fils, the director, and the year in a black background box.


    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Read more about these songs:

    GreenButtonBullet9.png "After You've Gone" (October 18, 1918)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png "I'm a Jazz Vampire" (1923)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png "It Had To Be You" (1923)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png
    GreenButtonBullet9.png

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Read the lyrics to all of these songs:

    ShinyBlueBullet16.png A good man is hard to find
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png After you've gone
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Aggravatin' papa
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Beale street blues
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Beside a babbling brook
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Blue (and broken hearted)
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Carolina in the morning
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Did you mean it?
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Dirty hands! dirty face!
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Everybody's crazy 'bout the doggone blues (but i'm happy)
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Grieving for you
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png How come you do me like you do?
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png I ain't got nobody
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png I'll see you in my dreams
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png I'm a jazz vampire
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png I'm gonna make hay while the sun shines in virgin
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png I'm just wild about harry
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png I'm nobody's baby
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png It had to be you
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Jazz baby
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Jealous
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Left all alone again blues
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Look for the silver lining
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Nobody lied (when they said i cried over you)
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Nobody's using it now
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Oh! judge (he treats me mean)
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Paradise blues
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Rose of the rio grande
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Some sunny day
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Somebody loves me
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png St. Louis blues
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Sweet Indiana home
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Sweet Mama (Papa's gettin' mad)
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Take me to the land of jazz
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Tea for two
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png The man I love
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png There'll be some changes made
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png There's a lump of sugar down in Dixie
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png They go wild, simply wild, over me
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png When Alexander takes his Ragtime band to France
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png When you and I were seventeen
    ShinyBlueBullet16.png Who's sorry now?

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif See her biography and song and film discography at "Marion Harris" from archived http://www.redhotjazz.com.


    A composite of many different magnetic compasses with musical instruments on them and PoJ.fm logos.

    Valaida Snow[edit]

    Valaida Snow in an open shouldered crossed at neck evening gown smiling at camera in a black and white photograph.

    Valaida Snow
    (June 2, 1903, in Chattanooga, TN or 1904–1956)
    (active 1918→1956)

    PinkShinyButton19.png trumpeter
    PinkShinyButton19.png singer
    PinkShinyButton19.png dancer
    PinkShinyButton19.png a gifted blues vocalist
    PinkShinyButton19.png a multi-instrumentalist proficient on nearly a dozen string and wind instruments, including cello, bass, mandolin, violin, clarinet, saxophone, and accordion.
    PinkShinyButton19.png as a child her bailiwick was the violin
    PinkShinyButton19.png her stage act as a child included singing, dancing and even an escape-artistry act
    PinkShinyButton19.png arranger
    PinkShinyButton19.png a master fabulist—a teller of tall tales


    Composited photograph cutouts of Valaida Snow in the 1940s.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif a child star from the age of five when she began stealing the show as a member of her father’s performance troupe.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif turned professional at the age of fifteen and began focusing on vocals and trumpet

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif was a featured performer in the Noble Sissle/Eubie Blake musical In Bamville (aka The Chocolate Dandies) in 1924.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif when twenty-two headlined Barron Wilkins' Harlem cabaret show.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif throughout the 1920s toured relentlessly, appearing throughout the U.S. in conjunction with the Will Mastin Trio and performing in London and Paris in the musical Blackbirds.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif toured the Far East during 1926, and in 1928 headlined Chicago's Sunset Cafe, where her energetic performances won the admiration of Louis Armstrong as well as Earl Hines, her lover.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif starred in the Sissle/Blake revue "Rhapsody in Black" in the early 1930s.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif came to Hollywood, where she was in several films with her then-husband Ananais Berry.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif along with perfect pitch and gifts for arranging, we was as a brilliant trumpeter.
    

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif headlined the Apollo Theater in 1936, then returned to Europe for more film work and live dates during the 1937 –1941.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif during 1941 in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen, German forces interned her in a concentration camp.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif jazz pioneer

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif world traveller

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif became a big name in Europe and Asia, just as much as she was in black communities across the United States.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif often gave some of the first jazz performances on major international stages.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif helped to bring black music from the vaudeville stage into the audiovisual age by appearing on the movie screen.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif African-American newspapers and the international press celebrated Snow both for her immense skill and for her novelty as a female trumpet master.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Dashing and charismatic, Snow earned the nicknames Little Louis—a reference to Louis Armstrong’s influence on her—and Queen of the Trumpet, given to her by W. C. Handy, who himself was known as the Father of the Blues. That appellation often appeared below her name on the 78-r.p.m. records she made.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Dr. Tammy Kernodle, a musicologist at Miami University in Ohio, said in a phone interview that “she was a greatly respected musician on the vaudeville circuit, and even amongst male jazz musicians themselves.”[19]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif joined the popular revue “Holiday in Dixieland” in 1921 and began to make her name on the national stage.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif held a long residency in 1922 at a Harlem cabaret run by the famed proprietor Barron Wilkins that brought her new levels of attention.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle cast her in “In Bamville” in 1924 (the follow-up to their smash hit musical “Shuffle Along”) where It traveled to New York the next year under the name “The Chocolate Dandies.” The show got poor critical reviews except for Snow and her co-star Josephine Baker, who was early on in her own career,

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif during 1925 she had several tours of the U.S. with small jazz bands.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif starting in 1926 at the age of twenty-two she spent three years traveling across Europe and Asia and became an established star by first going to London and Paris with producer Lew Leslie’s “Blackbirds” revue then joining drummer Jack Carter’s octet on a tour of China and Southeast Asia.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Dr. Tammy Kernodle reports that “she is important in terms of helping us gain an understanding of the spread of jazz to Europe, particularly after World War I because she helped shift the context of jazz away from the early Dixieland style.”[20]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif after returning to the United States in 1929, she had a major role in the musical, “Rhapsody in Black,” where she directed the production’s 60-person stage band known as Pike Davis’s Continental Orchestra. Show producer Lew Leslie had designed the show to showcase her talents, although Ethel Waters was billed as its star.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif from 1935 through 1940 she recorded roughly forty album sides in studios across Europe, including her signature song, “High Hat, Trumpet and Rhythm,” but never made a commercial recording in the United States as a trumpeter.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif moved to Los Angeles in 1943 and became a mentor and inspiration to beginning musicians along Central Avenue clubs that became a hotbed of modern jazz innovation.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif performed at Town Hall in New York City in 1949 and got her first and only mention in The New York Times, May 21, 1949, a one paragraph review under the title "Song Recital by Valaida Snow."


    Nine cutout photographs of Valaida Snow distributed over the entire page with some in color.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Watch the documentary "Valaida Snow, Queen of the Trumpet" where host Tim Reid hosts and interviews Fayard Nicholas, Bobby Short and Bill Reed explaining why Snow's frequent international travels stopped her from becoming more well-known in America.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif See and hear in black and white film Snow dancing, singing, and playing her trumpet 🎺 with the Ali Baba Trio performing "Patience and Fortitude."



    A banner for PoJ.fm with an old-time Victrola box cabinet on legs with two cabinet doors each  containing a PoJ.fm logo on a thinly stripped black lines on white background and the words underneath saying "The Philosophy of Jazz is its own best Sales Person with the word "man" crossed off in white and a yellow "Person" written over it.

    Ina Ray Hutton[edit]

    Ina Ray Hutton (1916–1984)
    Odessa Cowan [birth name]
    (active 1924→1954)


    Compositing of five cutout photos of Ina Ray Hutton glamour photographs.


    PinkShinyButton19.png bandleader
    PinkShinyButton19.png singer
    PinkShinyButton19.png dancer


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif known as "The Blonde Bombshell of Rhythm" and later "The Queen of Name Bands."

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif was the older, half sister of June Hutton, who had sung with The Quintones, The Stardusters, The Pied Pipers, and then went solo.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif fronted an all-women band and then in late 1939 organized an all-men band.


    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif See and hear her perform the song "Truckin'" fronting her orchestra—all eyes on her—energetically conducting a polished band that swings, singing the solo vocal, then concluding with a rousing tap dance perfectly in rhythm made more amazing because of the restrictive nature of her tight-fitting dress.


    The Ingenues[edit]

    The Ingenues
    (active 1925→1937)
    American all-women vaudeville stage band based out of Chicago

    A sepia photograph of the all-woman band, The Ingenues, standing spread out in front of the first trackless train a Metro Goldwyn Meyer promotional vehicle for the movie "Ben Hur," in Sydney, Australia, ca. 1928.
    (The Ingenues in Sydney, Australia standing in front of Metro Goldwyn Meyer's promotional vehicle for Ben Hur, 'the world's first trackless train", in 1928, photographed by Sam Hood)

    A sepia photograph of The Ingenues in 1928 from the short film "The Band Beautiful."


    Women in the Ingenues — First row: left to right, Vilma Grim, Babe Colby, Mina Smith, on violins. Adelheid Liefeld, cello and bassoon.
    Second row: Mary Donahue playing tenor saxophone. Next to Mary, Blanche Olsen stands up with the clarinet, next to Blanche is Alice Pleis on alto saxophone. Then Genevieve Brown stands up and plays her baritone saxophone.
    Back row: Paula Jones stands (highest) on trombone, also Ruth Carnahan is on trombone. Gladys Young and Louise Sorenson, on trumpets. Frances Gorton plays accordion solo, and marimba. Marguerite (Lichtie) O'Neil, harp. Marie Novak (left), and Genevieve Washburn (right), on piano's and Lucy Westgate, flute. Billy Jenks on (tuba) Sousaphone and double bass. Pauline Dove, on the drums.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif billed as the first all-girl jazz band The Ingenues performed Dixieland jazz, Tin Pan Alley, as well as “popular songs, light classical works and novelty numbers.”[21]

    A sepia style photograph by Sam Hood of The Ingenues at the Tivoli Theatre, Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺 in 1928.
    (The Ingenues at the Tivoli Theatre, Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺, 1928, taken by photographer Sam Hood)
    (Photograph in the public domain acknowledged by the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales)


    Names of The Ingenues[edit]

    Labeled Members of The Ingenues from "The Band Beautiful"

    A black and white screen capture of the opening title for the film short "The Band Beautiful." TheIngenuesVilmaGrim.jpeg TheIngenuesMinaSmith.jpeg TheIngenuesDonohueOlsonPleis.jpeg TheIngenuesMargueriteOneill.jpeg TheIngenuesNovakWashburn.jpeg TheIngenuesBillieJenks.jpeg TheIngenuesLucyWestgate.jpeg

    A black and white screen capture of the credits of production title for the film short "The Band Beautiful" by Vitaphone. TheIngenuesBabeColby.jpeg TheIngenuesAdelheidLiefeld.jpeg TheIngenuesGenevieveBrown.jpeg TheIngenuesFrancisGorton.jpeg TheIngenuesYoungSorenson.jpeg TheIngenuesCarnahanJones.jpeg TheIngenuesPaulineDove.jpeg

    “Past members of The Ingenues: Genevieve Brown, Grace Brown, Ruth Carnahan, Babe Colby, Dorothy Donahoe, Juel Donahoe, Mary Donahoe, Pauline Dove, Frances Gorton, Velma Grimm, Billie Jenks, Paula Jones, Marguerite Lichti, Alice Locklin, Margaret Neal, Marie Novak, Blanche Olsen, Alyce Pleis, With Randall, Virginia Roberts, Mina Smith, Louise Sorenson, Lora Standish, Beth Vance, Lucy Westgate, Gladys Young.”[22]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif the band had between eighteen and twenty-three members. A woman could only become a member of the band if she could play at least eight instruments.[23]

    An enhanced, colorized, and animated photograph of The Ingenues orchestra on stage in Chicago, Illinois around 1930.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif the band celebrated their versatility by having many members switch off and all play a new instrument, such as multiple saxophones 🎷 of different types, banjos 🪕, harmonicas A brown harmonica icon, violins 🎻, or accordions 🪗. Click on photographs for source.

    Saxophones 🎷
    An enhanced black and white photograph of The Ingenues holding eight saxophones.
    An enhanced black and white photograph from a German newspaper of The Ingenues lined up across the stage facing the audience holding twelve saxophones of various types with other band members in the background.


    Banjos 🪕
    An enhanced photograph of the twenty-member orchestra with twelve sitting, cross-legged members with banjos 🪕 lined up across center stage.
    An enhanced sepia style photograph of nineteen of The Ingenues lined up on chairs across the entire stage each holding a banjo with crossed legs with a large multiply striped art deco curtain rising way up behind them.
    An enhanced black and white photograph of nineteen of The Ingenues sitting in two rows each holding a banjo 🪕.
    A framed and enhanced sepia photograph of The Ingenues onstage with twenty members lined up on chairs all playing banjos 🪕 with supersized banjos in a fan shape as background behind them.
    An enhanced photograph of eight of The Ingenues visible seated while playing their banjos.


    Harmonicas A brown harmonica icon
    An enhanced photograph of twenty of The Ingenues lined across the stage in two rows each playing an harmonica of various sizes.


    Violins 🎻
    An enhanced black and white photograph of ten of The Ingenues each holding a violin.


    Accordions 🪗
    A blurry black and white photograph of The Ingenues with nine accordions and a cello on far right.
    A very enhanced black and white screen capture from the short film "The Band Beautiful" of a closeup of five seated Ingenues playing accordions.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif one of their featured soloists was "trick trombonist" Paula Jones An enhanced, colorized, and animated screenshot detail of trombonist Paula Jones playing her instrument from the short film "The Band Beautiful." who doubled on novelty (accordions, harmonicas, banjos) and symphonic instruments, as did many other band members.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif beginning in 1925 they headlined for almost ten years, performing to sold-out concert halls and theatres around the globe. With stage sets, costumes, technicians and more than 100 instruments, the group earned the nickname "The Girl Paul Whitemans of Syncopation," as seen in the colorized poster below.

    A composite of headshots of all of members of The Ingenues along with a photographic insert of violinist Mina Smith.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif the Adelaide Register in Australia reported in 1929 that the band travelled with ten tons of stage effects and instruments hauled in three railroad cars. The different types of musical instruments, often played by multiple band members, included the violin, cello, up to twenty banjos 🪕, bassoon, tenor saxophone 🎷, clarinet, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, trombones, trumpets 🎺, French horn, accordions 🪗, marimba, harp, two to twelve pianos 🎹, flute, sousaphone, double bass, drums, castanets, and a kazoo. All of the band members would sing as well.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif the group evolved from smaller groups led by Beth Vance (born Bessie Frances Israel, 1901–1962), who had been part of several traveling orchestras since she was a teenager. By November 1925 Beth Vance's orchestra had grown to seventeen members, including veterans of other all-girl bands, and was renamed The Ingenues.

    An enhanced black and white poster of twelve headshots of The Ingenues band members with a list of their names at the bottom.  The headline at top reads "Pined For Jazz And Now They're Experts At It."


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif while playing at Pittsburgh's Grand Theatre in February 1926, The Ingenues orchestra broadcasted over pioneer radio station KDKA.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif With few exceptions, the orchestra members were born in Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Nebraska.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif By the end of 1926 the Ingenues acquired a manager and producer Edward Gorman Sherman (1880–1940), who would elevate the group from regional popularity to Broadway and international fame.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Ingenues founder Beth Vance was replaced by Marie Novak (1905-1980), who had been the pianist for the Hummingbirds Orchestra in Minneapolis.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Around 1927 the Ingenues grew with former members of Harry Waiman's Debutantes and Bobbie Grice's Parisian Redheads. Vaudeville tours took the Ingenues to dozens of theatres from coast to coast, both in the U.S. and Canada.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Mr. Sherman's marketing expertise produced major interest in every city, often resulting in front page stories in newspapers and performances for charities. The critics unanimously praised The Ingenues, which led to an engagement at New York's most prestigious vaudeville house, the Keith-Albee Palace Theatre, in New York City beginning June 13, 1927.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif
    “According to Marie Novak, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. (1867–1932) attended their show three times that first week and prevailed upon them to appear for four weeks with a further offer of a year's contract in his upcoming Ziegfeld Follies of 1927. Previewing in Boston on August 1, 1927, the 21st Ziegfeld Follies titled "Glorifying the American Girl," had all new songs by Irving Berlin with sets by Joseph Urban, dances by Sammy Lee, costumes by John W. Harkrider, ballets by Albertina Rasch, and the stars Eddie Cantor, Ruth Etting, Cliff Edwards and Claire Luce. The show opened at the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York on August 6, 1927, and The Ingenues were featured in opulent numbers, including Irving Berlin's "Shaking the Blues Away" (later made into a musical comedy film of the same name) with the "Banjo Ingenues" (click to see and hear them perform), and the sensational "Melody Land" first act finale that featured the entire Ingenues Orchestra along with two-piano team Edgar Fairchild (1898–1975) (real name: Milton Susskind) & Ralph Rainger (1901–1942), the Albertina Rasch Girls, and twelve female pianists on all-white baby grand pianos.”[24] (bold not in original)

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif the band played Irving Berlin's "Ooh, Maybe It's You" employing ten saxophones, and the two numbers "It's Up to the Band" The color cover of the sheet music for Irving Berlin's "It's Up To The Band." and "Tickling the Ivories" featuring the Ingenues's accordions.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif they played one hundred sixty-seven Broadway performances closing on January 7, 1928.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif by mid-1928 the band started a two year world tour, including engagements at Los Angeles Metropolitan Theatre. While in Los Angeles Warner Brothers made two nine-minute shorts for Vitaphone: "The Band Beautiful" (1928) An enhanced screen shot of the opening title for the Vitaphone short nine minute film "The Band Beautiful." and "The Syncopating Sweeties" (1928), released nationwide starting in the summer and being some of the earliest sound pictures. For "The Band Beautiful," they play these tunes: 1. "Keep Sweeping The Cobwebs Off The Moon," 2. "Changes," 3. "Shaking The Blues Away," and 4. "Tiger Rag."

    A framed and enhanced poster of headshots with names of members of The Ingenues in the film short for "The Band Beautiful."


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif between 1929 and 1932 the full-sized Ingenues orchestra would tour the world, along with their set builders, electricians and a few mothers. Their appearances in any country would cause much excitement, and they spent many months aboard ships and trains, along with their hundreds of instruments, props and sets.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif headlined in Honolulu, Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth (July 1928 to January 1929), Bombay, Cairo, Paris, Monte Carlo, Berlin, Hamburg, London, Tunis, Rome, (1929), Johannesburg, Sao Paulo & Buenos Ares (June to September 1929).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded for Columbia Records in Brazil making their only commercial recordings released on the Columbia label in Brazil and never available in the U.S. Some recordings were possibly done on the stage of Teatros Santana in São Paulo.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif performed a set at Sing Sing Penitentiary in Ossining, New York for over one-thousand prisoners.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif their last major tours were made in 1931 and 1932.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif a ten-piece Ingenues, again produced by Sherman, played in Muncie, Indiana in 1934.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif orchestra electrician, Ray Fabing (1896–1975), married to Ingenue member Alyce Pleis (1908–1990), directed a few engagements in the mid-west in mid-1936 as "Ray Fabing's Hollywood Ingenues." Using many new members, they were featured in a musical film short titled "Maids & Music" (1937) with Ray Fabing playing a band leader.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif one of the last engagements of the band was at a Mount Morris High School in Freeport, Illinois. In 1937, for a short while The Ingenues were directed by Count Berni-Vici, who had produced an all-women vaudeville orchestra in the late 1920s.


    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif See fifty-nine photos of The Ingenues.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif often billed as “The Band Beautiful,” hence the name of this 1928 Vitaphone short. (Click on it to see and hear it.)

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif See and hear them perform a complex novelty number at Youtube.com with annotations.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Read about them in Kristin McGee's "The Feminization of Mass Culture and the Novelty of All-Girl Bands: The Case of the Ingenues," Popular Music and Society Vol. 31, No. 5, December 2008, 629–662.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Read the assessment of London drummer and percussionist Nicholas D. Ball, who specializes in 1910s–1920s drumming, that Pauline Dove, The Ingenues's drummer, was perhaps the best female jazz drummer and percussionist in the 1920s.


    🔸 Metro-Gnomes, a small band fronted by Jack Hylton's then-wife Ennis Parkes.

    | 🔸 | 🔸



    “Other all-girl bands popular in the 1920s and '30s included Edna White's Trombone Quartet, Bobbie Grice's Fourteen Bricktops, Bobbie Howell's American Syncopators, The Dixie Sweethearts, The Darlings of Rhythm (with tenor saxophone player Margaret Backstrom and alto saxophone player Josephine Boyd), Eddie Durham's All-Star Girl Orchestra, The Parisian Redheads (from Paris, Indiana), and The Twelve Vampires. The best-known and most successful girl band of the '20s was Babe Egan and Her Hollywood Redheads.[25] (bold not in original)

    A new crop of all-girl orchestras popped up in the 1930s that included Ina Ray Hutton and Her Melodears, Phil Spitalny's and His Musical Queens, and Dona Drake and Her Orchestra. Conversely, another band was Ramona and Her Men of Music. The new female bands were conventional bands playing popular songs for dancing, with the leader acting as the glamorous and sexy center of attention.

    There were dozens of extremely popular, highly visible and audible all-girl jazz bands active during the 1920s and 1930s, including Ina Ray Hutton and HerMelodears, the Harlem Playgirls, Miss Babe Eagan and Her Hollywood Redheads, the Dixie Sweethearts, the Ingenues, Rita Rio and Her All-Girl Orchestra, and Wayman’s Debutantes.

    pianists such as Lil Hardin Armstrong

    Lovie Austin developed jazz and led their own bands;

    in New York, Hallie Anderson, organist

    pianist Mattie Gilmore and trombone player and arranger Marie Lucas trained orchestras for theaters.

    Sherrie Tucker’s four-year research on New Orleans jazzwomen uncovers a few of the female musicians, mainly pianists and self-trained instrumentalists, who worked in the red light district:

    cornet Antonia Gonsalez

    Mamie Desdunes, pianist

    Dolly Adams, pianist

    Camilla Todd, pianist

    Edna Mitchell, pianist

    Rosalind Johnson, pianist who was also a song writer and received formal musical training.


    WomensBackOpeningWindowPOJLogos.jpeg

    Jazz women in 1930's America[edit]

    excellent all-female group including Jean Starr (1919-1956) on trumpet, Marjorie Hyams on vibes, Marian Gange on guitar, Vicki Zimmer on piano, Cecilia Zirl on bass, and Rose Gottesman on drums.

    An enhanced black & white photograph of the neon marquee's containing Charlie Parker and Margie Hyams trio on 52nd street in New York City taken by William P. Gottlieb.
    gg

    L'ana (Webster) Hyams[edit]

    L'ana (Webster) Hyams (1912–1997)

    A photograph of L'ana Hyams wearing a full length shiny silk dress standing in profile facing viewer's right holding a saxophone. A photograph of L'ana Hyams wearing a full length shiny silk dress standing in profile facing viewer's right holding a saxophone. A photograph of L'ana Hyams wearing a full length shiny silk dress standing in profile facing viewer's right holding a saxophone.
    PinkShinyButton19.png saxophonist
    PinkShinyButton19.png bandleader

    RedButtonBullet10px.png

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif 🔸


    A color photograph of the blue/green water at Mono Lake with a crusty island sticking out with a purple-pink sky and a trumpet lying on the island's shore, a saxophone in the foreground under water, and PoJ.fm logos added

    (Main background photo by Ron Reiring taken at Mono Lake August 27, 2014. Purple/pink sky inserted from photo taken by Sue B (firago on Flickr) and shared with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Science in Action Flickr Group, uploaded on February 18, 2015, with fireworks, musical instruments and PoJ.fm logos added)


    Viola Smith[edit]

    Viola Smith
    (1912–October 21, 2020)
    (active 1925→2012)

    ViolaSmithLargeKitBW.jpeg ViolaSmithPublicityPhoto.jpeg ViolaSmithCoquettes1939ScreenCapture.jpeg


    PinkShinyButton19.png drummer
    PinkShinyButton19.png bandleader


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif grew up in a musical household with nine siblings and attended a rural schoolhouse.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif when she was 13, her father assigned her the drums in the family band, partly because all the other instruments were already taken.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif grew up playing in a jazz band with her seven sisters, the Schmitz Sisters Orchestra, conceived of by her entrepreneurial father, and the orchestra performed at state fairs and toured the vaudeville circuit. The Schmitz Sisters Orchestra toured heavily and once participated in a radio battle with an all-male big band, performing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Ms. Smith’s sisters gradually left the band to raise families or pursue other occupations, and with her remaining bandmate, Mildred, she formed a new all-female ensemble, billed as Frances Carroll (the frontwoman) and the Coquettes. Their picture appeared on the cover of Billboard magazine, and they performed in a Warner Bros. musical short. Mildred eventually also got married, and Ms. Smith became the last sister standing.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif started another all-female outfit, the Coquettes, which was known of nationally during the late 1930s.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif found opportunities in New York City where she studied timpani at the Juilliard School and played with the snare drum virtuoso Billy Gladstone at Radio City Music Hall.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif became the first female star of jazz drumming.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif joined Phil Spitalny’s all-female big band, Hour of Charm, and stayed with the group for over a decade, appearing with them in the Abbott and Costello comedy “Here Come the Co-eds.”

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif first professional female jazz drummer.[26]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif played a giant 12-piece drum kit.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif billed as the “fastest girl drummer in the world.”

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif wrote an editorial during World War II in DownBeat magazine titled “Give Girl Musicians a Break!.”advocating for big bands to hire female musicians in place of the male ones who had been drafted She urged orchestras to hire talented female musicians who could fill in during the war effort. “Why not let the girls play in the big bands?” she wrote. “In these times of national emergency, many of the star instrumentalists of the big name bands are being drafted. Instead of replacing them with what may be mediocre talent, why not let some of the great girl musicians of the country take their places?” “There are many girl trumpet players, girl saxophonists and girl drummers who can stand the grind of long tours and exacting one-night stands,” she continued. “The idea of girls not being able to play legitimately is a worn-out myth now.”

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif worked with Ella Fitzgerald and Chick Webb.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif had a showcase tune of a jazzy arabesque called “Snake Charmer,” where she showed her virtuosity on the drum kit

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif when people called her the “female Gene Krupa,” she corrected them: “Krupa,” she said, “was the male Viola Smith.”

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif performed at President Harry S. Truman’s inauguration gala.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif made several appearances on Ed Sullivan’s popular variety television show.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif signed endorsement deals with Ludwig Drums and the Zildjian cymbal company.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif performed on Broadway as a member of the Kit Kat Band in the original 1966 production of “Cabaret.”

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif See and hear her play a drum solo and perform with the orchestra on the video Frances Carroll and her Coquettes.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Read a great article about her at 107 years old by Emma Starer Gross, "The Beat of Her Own Drum: How did the 107-year-old jazz legend Viola Smith wind up in a law-breaking Christian quilting commune in an Orange County suburb?," in thelandmag.com, September 22, 2020.


    propulsive drummer Pauline Braddy (1922–1996) billed as “Queen of the Drums”


    Early French Queen of Spades playing card with PoJ.fm logos embedded

    Jazz women in 1940's America[edit]

    Sarah Vaughn[edit]

    Sarah Vaughn in 1942 singing into a large silver  microphone 🎙. Mirror image of Sarah Vaughn in 1942 singing into a large silver microphone 🎙.


    Sarah Vaughn (1924–1990)
    (active 1942→1990)

    PinkShinyButton19.png vocalist
    PinkShinyButton19.png pianist
    PinkShinyButton19.png accompanist
    PinkShinyButton19.png radio DJ

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif “possessed one of the most remarkable voices in jazz—a voice of great beauty, suppleness, flexibility, and power. She had a full two-octave range, perfect pitch, and an improvisatory ability the equal of any instrumentalist. She could easily have been a diva in the world of opera, but early in life Vaughan was drawn to jazz and so lent her talents to it for over forty years.”[27]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif

    Melba Liston[edit]

    Melba Liston (1926–1999)
    (active 1944→1987)

    MelbaListonPuckeredShoulderPlayingColorizedCO.jpeg


    PinkShinyButton19.png slide trombone MelbaListonSmilingWhilePlayingColorizedCO.jpeg


    PinkShinyButton19.png arranger
    PinkShinyButton19.png composer
    PinkShinyButton19.png bandleader
    PinkShinyButton19.png educator in Los Angeles, CA and in Jamaica
    MelbaListonHoldingTromboneAtSidePuckeredShoulderColorizedCO.jpeg

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif was the first woman trombonist to play in multiple big bands (Gerald Wilson's (1943–44), Count Basie (1948–1949), Dizzy Gillespie's (1949–1950) and in the 1960s.[28]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif worked with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie (1947), saxophonist Dexter Gordon (1947), vocalist Billie Holiday (1949), saxophonist John Coltrane (in big band 1949), in pianist and band leader Count Basie band (1949), with drummer Art Blakey (1957), with trumpeter and arranger Quincy Jones (1959 & 1961), and with vocalist and band leader Billy Eckstine (1961)

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif worked as an extra in Hollywood, appearing with Lana Turner in The Prodigal (1955) and was in The Ten Commandments (1956)

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif later in her career (late 1950s) became a well-known arranger for pianist Randy Weston (b. 1926–d. 2018) and again in 1980s and 1990s.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In early 1960s worked with vibraharpist Milt Jackson, trumpeter Clark Terry, and saxophonist Johnny Griffin.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif early 1960s arranged for Motown and was on a album with Ray Charles.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif helped establish the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra (1964).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif called the “first lady of the slide trombone.”

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif throughout her career she played and recorded with EVERYBODY:

    GreenButtonBullet9.png Art Blakey (three albums 1957 & 1965)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Ray Charles (1959 & 1962)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Dinah Washington (two albums in 1957 & 1958)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Betty Carter (1958 & 1961)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Dizzy Gillespie (five albums 1955–1957)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Randy Weston (ten albums 1958–1998)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Quincy Jones (nine albums 1959–1965)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Jimmy Smith (five albums 1963–1969)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Ernie Henry (1957)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Bennie Green (1958)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Jimmy Cleveland (1959)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Babs Gonzales (1959)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis (1960)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Cannonball Adderley (1961)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Billy Eckstine/Quincy Jones (1961)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Mark Murphy (1961)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Sam Jones (1961)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Junior Mance (1961)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Oliver Nelson (1962)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Milt Jackson (1962 & 1963)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Oscar Peterson (1962)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Ella Fitzgerald (1962)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Al Grey (1962)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Charles Mingus (1962)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Billy Mitchell/Bobby Hutcherson (1962)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Freddie Hubbard (1963)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Mary Lou Williams (1964)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Elvin Jones (1965)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Shirley Scott (1966)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Tamiko Jones/Herbie Mann (1967)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Blue Mitchell (1967)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Freddie McCoy (1968)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Kim Weston (1970)
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Junior Mance (1973)

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif forty year career in jazz.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to "Blues Melba" at YouTube.com.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to entire album MelbaListonAndHerBonesAlbumCover.jpeg "Melba Liston and her Bones" at YouTube.com.

    Ada Leonard's All-American Girl Orchestra[edit]

    Ada Leonard's (1915–1997) All-American Girl Orchestra (active 1944→1987)


    PinkShinyButton19.png conductor
    PinkShinyButton19.png arranger
    PinkShinyButton19.png composer
    PinkShinyButton19.png bandleader

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif

    ShinyPurpleGlassyBullet30.png

    Marjorie Rainey's Rhythmettes[edit]

    Marjorie Rainey (1915–1997) Rhythmettes
    (active unknown)


    PinkShinyButton19.png conductor
    PinkShinyButton19.png arranger
    PinkShinyButton19.png composer
    PinkShinyButton19.png bandleader

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif


    WomanSittingYellowLPTurntablePOJLogos.jpeg

    Barbara Carroll[edit]

     

    Barbara Carroll (1925–2017)
    (active 1940→2016)

    Four non-identical color photographic cutouts composited together of Barbara Carroll.


    PinkShinyButton19.png pianist
    PinkShinyButton19.png vocalist
    PinkShinyButton19.png


    A composite of eight album covers of Barbara Carroll surrounding a picture of herself sitting at a piano.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif 75 year career!

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif frequently introduced as “the first lady of jazz piano,” (although there are several such candidates, such as Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981) and Marian McPartland (1918–2013)).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif “she embodied a timeless bohemian elegance and artistic grace.”

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif had a “steady, unfailing sense of swing.”

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif played everything from “peppy minimalist bebop to Gershwin to a lush Debussy-influenced impressionism, while maintaining a strong attachment to the blues.”

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif “seemingly knew every popular standard ever written.”

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif English jazz critic Leonard Feather 🪶 (1914–1994) dubbed her “the first girl ever to play bebop piano.”


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif



    Mary Lou Williams[edit]

    (her Harlem apartment, New York, N.Y., ca. August 1947)
    (Mirror image detail of Photo by William P. Gottlieb)

    Mary Lou Williams /
    Mary Elfrieda Scruggs
    (birth name)
    (1910–1981)
    (active 1920→1981)



    TictacBlueCu10.gif piano Piano1.png
    YellowButtonBullet10px.png soloist
    YellowButtonBullet10px.png combos
    YellowButtonBullet10px.png arranger
    YellowButtonBullet10px.png composer
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Spirituals
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Ragtime
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Stride piano
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Gospel
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Blues
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Ballads
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Swing
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Bebop
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Post-Bop
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Third stream
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Free jazz

    (Detail of portrait of Mary Lou Williams in her apartment, New York, N.Y., August, 1947)
    (Photo by William P. Gottlieb)

    An enhanced and colorized photographic cutout of Mary Lou Williams turned slightly towards viewer's left wearing long dangly metal earrings circa 1947.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png as can easily be seen by all of the jazz genres Williams performed over her career listed above, she was open and adaptive to new music.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png Williams took the name "Mary Lou" at the suggestion of Brunswick Record's Jack Kapp as quoted in Max Jones's Jazz Talking: Profiles, Interviews, and Other Riffs on Jazz Musician's, Da Capo Press, 2000, 190. Her last name of Williams came from her husband, saxophonist John Williams, who she married at age 16.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png musical prodigy who could pick out simple tunes at age two, who taught herself to play the piano at three years old, including playing back a tune she heard her mother play on the family organ at that age, and discovered in high school she had perfect pitch.[29][30]

    GreenButtonBullet9.png supported her large family by playing at parties at six years old.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png began performing publicly at the age of seven when she became known in Pittsburgh as "The Little Piano Girl."

    GreenButtonBullet9.png her professional debut with big bands came in 1922, at age 12, when she substituted for a pianist in the Buzzin' "Sparrow" Harris and His Hits and Bits Revue, a traveling show.[31]

    GreenButtonBullet9.png billed as Mary Lou Burley, she toured occasionally for the next few years (early 1920s) passing through New York City several times, playing for such artists as Jelly Roll Morton, Willie (“the Lion”) Smith, Fats Waller, and Duke Ellington. Played with Duke Ellington's Washingtonians when only twelve years old, as well as with Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter, according to Williams in her interview on Marian McPartland's "Piano Jazz" (1978).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png known as "the first lady of the jazz keyboard."

    FirstLadyOfPianoAlbumCoverDarkHeadsot.jpeg FirstLadyOfPianoExposedShoulder.jpeg FirstLadyOfPianoYellowAlbumCover.jpeg
    A William P. Gottlieb photograph of Mary Lou Williams with a grand piano fretboard in foreground.

    (Photo by William P. Gottlieb)



    (New York, NY ca. 1946)
    (Photo by William P. Gottlieb)

    GreenButtonBullet9.png one of the earlier women recognized as highly successful in jazz. FirstLadyInJazz19271957AlbumCover.jpeg

    (Café Society Downtown, New York, N.Y., ca. June 1947)
    (Photo by William P. Gottlieb)

    GreenButtonBullet9.png “No woman other than the vocalists Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald had so dominated the swing scene or earned the genuine respect of bandleaders and musicians alike.”[32]

    GreenButtonBullet9.png joined the St. Louis based band the Synco Jazzers in 1925 led by John Overton "Bearcat" Williams (1905-1996), whom she married in 1926.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png played with John Williams's Syncopators (1926–1929).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png served as deputy pianist and arranger for Andy Kirk's

    (Andy Kirk (1898-1992))



    Twelve Clouds of Joy band until April 1930, at which time she became a regular member.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png the Kirk band in the 1930s success was largely due to her distinctive arrangements, compositions and solo performances on the piano.[33] Listen to Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy with arrangements and compositions by Williams. See Andy Kirk and his Clouds of Joy discography.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png “an important swing pianist, with a lightly rocking, legato manner based on subtly varied stride and boogie-woogie bass patterns.”[34]
     

    (Photo taken around 1947)

    (her apartment, New York, N.Y., ca. August 1947)
    (Detail of Photo by William P. Gottlieb)

    (Portrait taken between 1938 and 1948)
    (Detail of Photo by William P. Gottlieb)

    GreenButtonBullet9.png wrote and arranged "Camel Hop" written for Benny Goodman's radio show sponsor, Camel cigarettes, followed by another big hit for Goodman in her "Roll 'Em" (a boogie-woogie piece based on the blues) (1937), "What's Your Story, Morning Glory" for Jimmie Lunceford, arrangements for the biggest act at the time of Cab Calloway, rearranged Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" as "Trumpets No End" (1943) a big hit for Duke Ellington that Ellington recorded in 1946[35] and the Dizzy Gillespie smash hit, "In the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee" (1949).
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png supplied noteworthy swing-band scores arranging for Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey, and Earl Hines, during the late 1930's.[35]

    GreenButtonBullet9.png became involved with a younger group of New York musicians including Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Tadd Dameron, and Dizzy Gillespie (1943), moving from what Encyclopedia Brittanica describes as “an established musician in the swing style, she easily made the transition to bebop. Her apartment became a meeting place, and she wrote several important compositions in the bebop style, including “In the Land of Oo-Blah-Dee,” “Tisherone,” “Knowledge,” “Lonely Moments,” and “Waltz Boogie.” The latter was recorded with Girl-Stars, one of her several women’s bands, in 1946.”
     
    A compositing of three photographs taken by Robert P. Gottlieb of Mary Lou Williams in late 1940s plus one more source unknown in lower right corner.



    GreenButtonBullet9.png quit the Kirk band to form her own small group in New York with her second husband, trumpeter Shorty Baker, (1942).[35]

    GreenButtonBullet9.png premiered the first of many large compositions including the 12-movement Zodiac Suite ZodiacSuiteAlbumCover.jpeg whose “Capricorn” movement was created especially for dancer Pearl Primus who also performed at Café Society (1945).
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png moved to Europe performing in both Paris and London (1952).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png famously halted a 1954 Paris concert beginning her hiatus from the stage before starting again to perform in 1957 with Dizzy Gillespie at the Newport Jazz Festival and later performing with her own trio.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png founded Mary Records, the first recording company begun by a woman.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png three movements from her "Zodiac Suite" were performed in Carnegie Hall by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra—a very early instance of the recognition of jazz by a leading symphony orchestra (1946).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png among the first jazz artists to perform at Carnegie Hall and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, New York City (1946).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png an important figure in Bebop who contributed scores to Dizzy Gillespie’s big band.
     
    MaryLouWilliamsThreeHornsBehindHer.png

    GreenButtonBullet9.png worked with some of music’s greatest legends, including Ben Webster, Bud Powell, and Thelonious Monk. A photograph from Milt Hinton closeup of Mary Lou Williams standing left of Thelonious Monk at the photographic shot by Art Kane for Esquire magazine's "A GreatbDayin Harlem."

    GreenButtonBullet9.png based in Europe between 1952 and 1954.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png retired from music in 1954 to pursue religious and charitable interests. MaryLouWilliamsOlderBlueCO1.png

    GreenButtonBullet9.png resumed her career in 1957 where she remained active throughout the 1960s and 1970s leading her own groups in New York clubs, composing sacred works for jazz orchestra and voices, and devoting much of her time to teaching.
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png long regarded as one of the most significant female musicians in jazz, as an instrumentalist, as a composer, and as an arranger.[36]

    GreenButtonBullet9.png retained the status of a modernist for most of her career.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png “easily adapting in the 1940s to the new Bebop idiom and in the 1960s her play attained a level of complexity and dissonance that rivaled avant-garde pianism of the time, but without losing the underlying blues feeling."[37]
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png breadth of her work as a composer and arranger can be seen from her expert swing-band scores for Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy (Listen to Walkin’ and Swingin’, or Mary’s Idea, etc.) to the large-scale sacred works of the 1960s and 70s.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png her "Waltz Boogie" (1946) WaltzBoogieRecord.png was one of the earliest attempts to adapt jazz to non-duple meters.
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements recorded in 78, 45, and LP formats. See some of her album covers below and click on any of them to go to her discography.

    A collage of Mary Lou Williams album covers.
    A collage of Mary Lou Williams album covers.
    A collage of Mary Lou Williams album covers.
    A collage of Mary Lou Williams album covers.
    A collage of Mary Lou Williams album covers.


    MaryLouWilliamsFriendsAroundPianoGottlieb1947.jpeg GreenButtonBullet9.png friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron (to the right of Mary Lou in photograph), Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie (Dizzy partially hidden by piano player; click on photo for who else is in photograph by William P. Gottlieb).
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png In the 1960s and ’70s composed a number of her sacred works and liturgical pieces for jazz ensembles, including a cantata, "Black Christ of the Andes" (1962); three masses that included "Black Christ of the Andes" (see track list for "Black Christ of the Andes") (1963)[38], "Mass for the Lenten Season" (1968), "Music for Peace" (1970), popularly known as "Mary Lou’s Mass" MaryLousMassAlbumCover.png which (1970) became well known in a version choreographed by Alvin Ailey.
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png In 1970 as a solo pianist and providing her own commentary, she recorded a comprehensive performance-lecture entitled "The History of Jazz." (FW2860) MaryLouWilliamsTheHistoryOfJazzAlbumCover.png
     
    Listen to Mary Lou playing boogie-woogie piano and her own tune "Roll 'em."

    GreenButtonBullet9.png made an appearance (click on "appearance" to view video) on A screen capture of Mary Lou Williams seated playing piano on left with Mr. Rogers standing in middle and bassist Milton Suggs playing bass on right.

    Mister Roger’s Neighborhood (PBS) with bassist Milton Suggs (1973).



    GreenButtonBullet9.png Guggenheim Fellowships, 1972 and 1977.

    MaryLouWilliamsOlderLookingLeftRCO178.png
    GreenButtonBullet9.png
    “Why have jazz historians generally avoided serious consideration of her music and her contributions to jazz, even as she garnered praise and respect from her peers? One obvious answer is that Mary Lou Williams was a woman performing and writing in the male-dominated field of jazz music whose abilities enabled her to defy the conventional gender roles implicit in the jazz narratives of her day. According to this view, women in jazz were rare, women pianists rarer still, and women who, besides their superiority as players, could also compose and arrange first-class music for big band and combo were simply unheard of. Yet Duke Ellington famously described (in his autobiography, Music Is My Mistress) that Williams was "perpetually contemporary," going on to say that "her writing and performing are and have always been just a little ahead throughout her career."[39]

    GreenButtonBullet9.png nominee Grammy Awards, Best Jazz Performance – Group, for the album "Giants—Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Hackett, Mary Lou Williams" (1971); also released under the title "Mary Lou Williams and the Trumpet Giants."

    GreenButtonBullet9.png honorary degree from Fordham University in New York (1973).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png In 1975 was appointed to the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and in 1977 to the faculty at Duke University.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png performed duets in concert with avant-garde player Cecil Taylor (1977).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png founded the Mary Lou Williams Foundation (1980).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png honorary degree from the Jesuit school Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri (1980).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png taught on the staff of Duke University as the first Artist-in-Residence from 1977 until her death in 1981.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png received the Duke University's Trinity Award 🥇 (May 10, 1981)[40] for service to the university, an award voted on by Duke University students.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png Duke University DukeUniversityLogo1.png established the MaryLouWilliamsCenterForBlackCultureLogoWithHead.png Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture (1983). MaryLouWilliamsCenterForBlackCultureLogo1.png
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. has an annual Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival (annually since 1996).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png her archives are preserved at Rutgers University's Institute of Jazz Studies in Newark (since 2000).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png her Pennsylvania State Historic Marker MaryLouWilliamsHistoricMarker.jpeg is placed at 328 Lincoln Avenue, Lincoln Elementary School, Pittsburgh, PA, noting her accomplishments and the location of the school she attended.
     
    GreenButtonBullet9.png trumpeter Dave Douglas released the album "Soul on Soul" SoulOnSoulAlbumCover.jpeg as a tribute to her, featuring original arrangements of her music and new pieces inspired by her work (2000).
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png the album "Impressions of Mary Lou" ImpressionsofMaryLouAlbumCover.jpeg by pianist John Hicks featured eight of her compositions (2000).
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png had a small cameo in Ken Burns’s documentary "Jazz" on PBS (Public Broadcasting System) (2001).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png the Dutch Jazz Orchestra researched and played rediscovered works of Williams on their album "Lady Who Swings the Band" (2005).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png Geri Allen's Mary Lou Williams Collective released their album "Zodiac Suite: Revisited" (2006).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png a YA historical novel based on Mary Lou Williams entitled Jazz Girl, JazzGirlBookCoverSarahBruceKelly.jpeg by Sarah Bruce Kelly, published in 2010.
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png merited a children's book based on Mary Lou William's early life, entitled The Little Piano Girl LittlePianoGirlBookCover2.png by Ann Ingalls and Maryann MacDonald with illustrations by Giselle Potter, (published in 2010).
     
    GreenButtonBullet9.png a poetry book by Yona Harvey entitled Hemming the Water HemmingTheWaterCover.jpeg published in 2013, inspired by Williams and featuring the poem "Communion with Mary Lou Williams" (2011).
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png the American Musicological Society published Mary Lou Williams's Selected Works for Big Band, a compilation of eleven of her big band scores (2013).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png Her New York Times obituary reports that “Miss Williams was an important contributor to every aspect of jazz that developed during a career that began in the late 1920's and lasted for more than half a century.”[41]
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png an award-winning documentary film entitled, "Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band,"
    MaryLouWilliamsSwingsTheBandMoviePoster.png produced and directed by Carol Bash, premiered on American Public Television and was screened at various domestic and international film festivals (2015).

     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png What'sHerName women's history podcasts aired the episode "THE MUSICIAN: Mary Lou Williams," with guest expert "Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band," producer and director Carol Bash (2018).
     

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to an "Interview with Mary Lou Williams" (recorded live in 1976).
    InterviewWithMaryLouWilliams1976.jpeg

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to "NPR's 'Jazz Profiles' on Mary Lou Williams, 'Perpetually Contemporary'," July 25, 2007.
     

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to Mary Lou Williams playing, even singing, and being interviewed by Marian McPartland (1918–2013)

    A black and white photograph of Mary Lou Williams and Marian McPartland sitting on the same piano bench during the first episode of NPR's program "Piano Jazz" in 1978. A color photograph of Mary Lou Williams and Marian McPartland sitting together on piano bench with big smiles.

    on the very first episode of McPartland's "Piano Jazz" (recorded live in 1978) with bassist Ronnie Boykins (1935–1980).

    Album cover of Mary Lou Williams on the very first episode of  Marian McPartland's "Piano Jazz" radio program.
     


    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to "Mary Lou Williams Centennial On JazzSet," from radio station WBGO, broadcast May 6, 2010. The first concert is from the University of Michigan (1978) where she plays her history of jazz medley first playing solo piano on spirituals (her own composition), Ragtime playing "Fandangle" a rag her mother had taught her, demonstrates Kansas City Swing (a "Blues,") a swinging left hand untitled number, a boogie-woogie on "Baby Bear Boogie." Adding bassist Ronnie Boykins, they perform "On Green Dolphin Street," "Baby Man" (by John Stubblefield), "Jeep Is Jumpin'" (by Johnny Hodges), and "Let's Do the Froggy Bottom." The University of Wisconsin, Madison concert adds drummer Charlie Persip where the trio plays Dizzy Gillespie's "Olinga," followed by "Medi II," then "Bag's Groove" by Milt Jackson.
    A William P. Gottlieb black and white photograph of Mary Lou Williams smiling sitting on a piano bench closeup of her from the waist up facing right and looking at camera 📸.
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Mary Lou Williams Lane, a street near 10th and Paseo in Kansas City, Missouri, was named after her (2018).

    (Photo by Michelle Pond)

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Tammy L. Kernodle, (B.M., M.A.), "Anything You are Shows Up in Your Music: Mary Lou Williams and the Sanctification of Jazz," Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1997.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Tammy L. Kernodle, Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004).

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Ayana Contreras, "Mary Lou Williams, Writ Large," DownBeat, December 7, 2020.


    Billie Rogers[edit]

    BillieRogersHeadshot.jpeg

    Billie Rogers (1917–2014)
    (active 1927→1947)

    PinkShinyButton19.png trumpeter
    PinkShinyButton19.png singer

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif first woman to hold a horn position in a major jazz orchestra (Woody Herman's 1941).

    International Sweethearts of Rhythm[edit]

    InternationalSweetheartsOfRhythmEarly1940s.jpeg

    International Sweethearts of Rhythm
    (active 1937→1949)

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif first integrated (Caucasian, Black, Latina), all women's big band in the United States.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif bandleader was Anna Mae Winburn (1913–1999) A black and white photographic cutout of Anna Mae Winburn standing.



    Marjorie Hyams[edit]

    MarjorieHyamsInSuit.jpeg

    Marjorie Hyams (1920–2012)
    (active 1940→1970)


    PinkShinyButton19.png vibraphonist
    PinkShinyButton19.png pianist
    PinkShinyButton19.png arranger

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif talented vibraphonist able to play in both bop and swing settings.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif featured with Woody Herman's First Herd (1944–1945).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif led her own trio (1945–1948).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif an original member of the George Shearing Quintet (1949-1950).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded with Flip Phillips, Mary Lou Williams, and Charlie Ventura.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Read her JazzWax interview.


    Hazel Scott[edit]

    A black and white film screenshot of Hazel Scott's smiling head with her name written at bottom. A colorized black and white film screenshot of Hazel Scott's smiling head with her name written at bottom.

    Hazel Scott (1920–1981)
    (active 1938→1981)

    PinkShinyButton19.png jazz and classical pianist who could swing the classics.

    A collage of screen shots of Hazel Scott performing at a piano from an Army/Navy Screen Magazine release  number 8 film 🎞.
    (Click on montage of screen captures to see and hear her swing Chopin for Army–Navy Screen Magazine)


    A colorized collage of screen shots of Hazel Scott performing at a piano from an Army/Navy Screen Magazine release  number 8 film 🎞.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif her mother Alma in 1948 set her daughter, aged eight, up for an audition at the Juilliard School where the minimum age of admission was sixteen, but Alma insisted they let Hazel audition. After playing a virtuosic Rachmaninov Prelude one of her judges labelled her a ‘genius,’ and she was granted a scholarship.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif in her teens she played in a jazz band and hosted her own radio show.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif started playing in nightclubs and became known for her skills in improvisation and ‘jazzing up the classics’—playing Bach, Mozart and Liszt sped-up and syncopated.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif headlined at New York’s Café Society because her contemporary and friend, Billie Holiday (1915–1959), recommended her to one of the first clubs that didn’t segregate black and white audience members.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif soloed at Carnegie Hall.

    A diptych of Hazel Scott wearing round earrings and dark lipstick.

    A colorized diptych of Hazel Scott wearing round earrings and dark lipstick.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif when twenty years old in 1940 released her debut album, "Swinging the Classics," to rave reviews.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Duke Ellington (1899–1974) and Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) were fans.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif her hands were insured by Lloyds of London.

    A black and white photograph of Hazel Scott] wearing stylish emerald-looking earrings. A colorized black and white photograph of Hazel Scott] wearing stylish emerald-looking earrings.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif by 1945 she was earning $75,000 a year (over one million dollars in current money) and had become rich and famous.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif she was the first black American to host her own 15 minute television show on three times a week.[42]

    The album cover of "Relaxed Piano Moods" by Hazel Scott on a dark background and a headshot closeup of Hazel Scott's face with her two black gloved hands grasping her own cheeks. The colorized album cover of "Relaxed Piano Moods" by Hazel Scott on a dark background and a headshot closeup of Hazel Scott's face with her two black gloved hands grasping her own cheeks.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif "Relaxed Piano Moods" was inducted into the NPR Basic Jazz Record Library in 2001. The album was recorded in 1955 for Debut Records with Scott accompanied by the label's two owners and Hall of Fame musicians drummer Max Roach (1924–2007) and bassist Charles Mingus (1922–1997). “The album is now considered by jazz critics and aficionados as one of the most important jazz recordings of the twentieth century.”[43]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif at twenty-two, made her debut in a New York musical.

    A black and white photograph of a headshot of Hazel Scott wearing small earrings and dark lipstick 💄. A colorized black and white photograph of a headshot of Hazel Scott wearing small earrings and dark lipstick 💄.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif had it written into her film contracts that she would only play herself and not any demeaning, subservient roles as was typical of the time for Afro-Caribbean actresses in Hollywood who were only cast as prostitutes, slaves, or maids.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif was featured in five Hollywood films, notably "I Dood It" (1943), "Broadway Rhythm" (1944) and "Rhapsody in Blue" (1945) becoming one of the highest paid Afro-American entertainers in the country.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif while on the set of "The Heat’s On" A color photograph of the movie poster for "The Heat's On" starring Mae West on the poster laying down in an evening dress at a diagonal from upper right corner to lower left surrounded by other cast members on a yellow background. (1943), she noticed that for a scene in which wives were waving their husbands off to war, the black actresses had been dressed in grubby aprons. Hazel kicked up a fuss, left the film and wouldn’t come back until the costumes were changed. After three days, the director gave in, and Hazel returned. The aprons were replaced by floral dresses.

    A colorized black and white photograph of Hazel Scott wearing a scarf around her head. A black and white photograph of Hazel Scott wearing a scarf around her head.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif as a consequence of her strike on set, Hollywood pulled the plug on any new offers, and even her concert dates suddenly became limited.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif she had prodigious piano technique.[44]

    HazelScottBeautifulSmile.jpeg ColorizedHazelScottBeautifulSmile.jpeg


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif one of the first artists making her mark in classical music and jazz when soloing with both the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestras.[44]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif uses post-bebop embellishment techniques that provide lush harmonies highlighting her ideas, as in her solo on George Gershwin's "A Foggy Day."[44]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif “a true trailblazer in African-American culture.”[45]

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Read Karen Chilton's HAZEL SCOTT: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist from Cafe Society to Hollywood to HUAC.
    The book cover for Karen Chilton's book on Hazel Scott.


    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to Hazel Scott on NPR's "Piano Jazz" with Marian McPartland playing and singing in 1980.

    A black and white photograph of a heavyset Hazel Scott in late middle age wearing a fur coat and carrying a leather double handle handbag. A colorized black and white photograph of a heavyset Hazel Scott in late middle age wearing a fur coat and carrying a leather double handle handbag.


    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif View the official website of Hazel Scott


    Beryl Booker[edit]

    BerylBookerWikiHeadshot.jpeg ColorizedBerylBookerWikiHeadshot.jpeg

    Beryl Booker (1922–1978)
    (active 1946–1970s)

    PinkShinyButton19.png pianist

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded "Beryl Booker and her Piano" The album cover for "Beryl Booker and her Piano." (1949)

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Miles Davis sat in with her trio in 1952.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif formed her own female trio with Bonnie Wetzel and Elaine Leighton in 1953.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif toured Europe in 1954 with this group as part of "Jazz Club USA" that featured vocalist Billie Holiday.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded "'Round Midnight" Album cover for "'Round Midnight"  with female vocalist Teddi King. (1953) with female jazz vocalist Teddi King (1929–1977).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded "A Girl Met A Piano" The album cover for Beryl Booker's album "A Girl Met A Piano." (1954)

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif released an EP of "When A Woman Loves A Man" Beryl Booker's EP album cover for "When A Woman Loves A Man." (1954).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif backed Dinah Washington in 1959.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif worked with Slam Stewart, Chuck Wayne, Miles Davis, Clyde Lombardi, Connie Kay, Dinah Washington, Don Byas and others.



    Dorothy Donegan[edit]

     
    A colorized composite of six black and white screen captures of Dorothy Donegan in a flowing white dress seated and playing the piano.


    Dorothy Donegan (1922–1998)
    (active 1938→1998)

    A composite of six black and white screen captures of Dorothy Donegan in a flowing white dress seated and playing the piano.


    SensationsOf1945MoviePoster2.jpeg(Film stills above taken from the movie "Sensations of 1945")SensationsOf1945MoviePoster.jpeg
    PinkShinyButton19.png pianist
    PinkShinyButton19.png vocalist
    PinkShinyButton19.png vibraphonist
    PinkShinyButton19.png

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif first black woman to perform at Chicago's Orchestra Hall in 1943.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif sixty year career.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif could play stride piano, boogie-woogie, swing jazz, Bebop, blues, and classical.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif a protégé of Art Tatum (1909–1956), who said she was "the only woman that can make me practice."

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif music critic of the New York Times John S. Wilson in 1981 proclaims her “the lustiest, most exciting, hard swinging and virtuosic jazz pianist in the world. . . one of the most brilliant pianists, male or female, that jazz has ever known."

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Listen to her all instrumental track "I Just Want to Sing" or another swinging version of it. IJustWantToSingAlbumCover.jpeg

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif See Wilma Dobie's article "Dorothy Donegan Did It Her Way: Fans Loved but Critics Belittled," Jazz Journalists Association Library, 1998.


    A silhouette of a female sax player with brown sun in background emanating out of a saxophone with PoJ.fm logos.

    Jazz women in 1950's America[edit]

    Jutta Hipp[edit]

    JuttaHippHeadShotAlbumCoverDetail.jpeg

    Jutta (pronounced Yoo-ta) Hipp
    (1925–2003)
    (active 1940s→1960) [46]


    PinkShinyButton19.png pianist
    PinkShinyButton19.png bandleader
    PinkShinyButton19.png painter, who as a teenager studied at the Leipzig Kunstakademie
    PinkShinyButton19.png photographer
    Jutta Hipp leaning on top of piano with both elbows. Jutta Hipp facing left with elbow resting on piano.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif started playing piano at the age of nine and as a teenager listened to and practiced jazz in Germany during the Nazi suppression of jazz in World War II.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif admired swing pianists such as Count Basie, Teddy Wilson and Fats Waller. After reaching Munich in the 1950s she found inspiration in pianists Bud Powell, Lenny Tristano and later moved away from Bebop greatly influenced by Horace Silver's blues-inspired rhythmic abilities.[47]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif moved to Munich, Germany in early 1950s and in 1952 recorded with saxophonist Hans Koller (1921–2003).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif led her own quintet in Frankfurt in 1953–1955 and recorded for several labels, including a session that was later released by Blue Note.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif sought out in Germany in January 1954 by music critic Leonard Feather (1914–1994) who had heard recordings of Hipp in 1951 Leonard Feathers liner notes for the album "New Faces, New Sounds from Germany. and encouraged her to come to New York City, which she did.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif played at the Deutsches Jazzfestival in Frankfurt (1954).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif moved to New York City in November 1955 and played at the Hickory House Exterior photograph of the jazz restaurant the Hickory House in New York City. beginning in March 1956 recording two trio albums Album clover for "Jutta Hipp at the Hickory House." Album cover for volume two of "Jutta Hipp at the Hickory House" (1956). for Blue Note Records playing in a more blues drenched style following Horace Silver. Her trio mates were British bassist Peter Ind (1928–2021) and drummer Ed Thigpen (1930–2010) known for his years with pianist Oscar Peterson (1925–2007) for Volumes 1 and 2 (Blue Note, April, 1956) .

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif “the first white female jazz instrumentalist as well as the first European instrumentalist to be signed by Blue Note Records.”[48]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif her first recording for Blue Note Records in 1954 was a live recording with sidemen Jutta Hipp Quintet record label identifying all musicians on record. titled "New Faces, New Sounds from Germany." Album cover for Jutta Hipp Quintet "New  Faces, New Sounds from Germany."

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif performed at the Newport Jazz Festival in the summer of 1956 performing “a magnificent version of the "St. Louis Blues."”

    Album cover in dark blue for the song "St.Louis Blues" written by W. C. Handy.




    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif her last recording on Blue Note with Zoot Sims Album cover of Jutta Hipp with Zoot Sims. (1956) shows herself to have an original style.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Ben Ratliff, in The New York Times 2003 obituary, wrote that Hipp “developed a style that was lean, percussive, swinging and interrupted with plenty of rests, not far from Horace Silver's style but more low-key.”

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif The Penguin Guide to Jazz observed that Hipp is “not as easy to pigeonhole as some accounts suggest. There are extra notes in many of the chords that give them a tense, slightly jangling quality, but Hipp was also capable of playing with delicate lyricism [ . . . ] and with a rugged, funky edge.”

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif painted scenes of street life in Queens, New York, USA 🇺🇸.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif was also a fine photographer, who took many shots of her favorite Long Island beaches and of the musicians playing in New York City and Long Island jazz clubs.

    “As Hipp…matured artistically, she had defined her own artistic standards and revolted when pressured to record music she did not like. She also suffered from severe stage fright throughout her career. Thus being the featured artist at a large performance venue was more of a daunting chore for Hipp than a joyful public celebration of her talent.” – All About Jazz[49]
    Sign post for Jutta Hipp Weg (Way) in Hipp's hometown of Leipzig, Germany in 2009.

    Shirley Scott[edit]

     

    Organist Shirley Scott gazing forward as a young woman while seated. Organist Shirley Scott gazing forward as a young woman while seated.


    Shirley Scott (1934–2002)
    (active 1955→2001)


    PinkShinyButton19.png organist    Hammond c3 Emilio Muñoz.jpg
    PinkShinyButton19.png bandleader

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif "Shirley Scott, 67, Performer Known as the Queen of the Organ."


    Blossom Dearie[edit]


    Colorized photographic mirroring cutouts of Blossom Dearie's head(s) looking inward photographed in 1957.


    Margrethe Blossom Dearie (1924–2009)
    (active 1952→2006)

    An animated .gif of four identical colorized headshots of two Blossom Dearie's on left with two looking back on right slowly nodding their heads.


     
    LightningInABullet.gif “The jazz pixie with a little-girl voice and pageboy haircut who was a fixture in New York and London nightclubs for decades.”[50]
    Stephen Holden (b. 1941)

    LightningInABullet.gif“Dearie's voice is a “childish treble” and a “baby voice” singing “postgraduate lyrics.”[51] Whitney Balliett (1926–2007)                    

    LightningInABullet.gif “In France's Jazz Magazine, pianist and connoisseur reviewer Raymond Fol (1928–1979) insisted on one point when concluding his review: “I've said that Blossom Dearie possesses a rare talent, that of allying taste and simplicity, an unfailing harmonic sense, a light, soft touch, and finally, swing.”[52] Raymond Fol (1928–1979)

    LightningInABullet.gif “when it came to assessing her musical ability . . . Dearie’s success—niche though it might have ultimately been—came from her singular ability to accompany her elegant, straightforward-sung melodies with dynamic and propulsive piano playing. Apocryphally, Miles Davis called her “the only white woman who ever had soul.” But what soul she had, the genuine feeling she was able to impart via mostly faithful renditions of the American songbook, came from her resistance to imitation (of artists black and white alike) in favor of a sound that tied her neither to jazz precedent nor cabaret clichés. On "Blossom Dearie" (Verve 1957), The colorized album cover for the Verve Records debut album for "Blossom Dearie" (Verve 1957) with a picture of Dearie wearing glasses on the cover with out of focus musicians in the background. she’s sophisticated but earthy; she’s straightforward and precise but still witty and light. In other words, she’s the sound of New York at its location-shot, cosmopolitan, dry-martini best, thanks to her unique ability to soak up life and art uptown, downtown and everywhere in between.”[53] Natalie Weiner (b. 1990)

     


    PinkShinyButton19.png vocalist
    PinkShinyButton19.png pianist


    A surprise expression animated .gif of a glasses wearing Blossom Dearie reading a piano score on piano while seated at it's bench.


    TripleHeadBlackBullett.png bandleader
    TripleHeadBlackBullett.png composer
    TripleHeadBlackBullett.png arranger
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Vocal Jazz
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Broadway 🎭
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Traditional Pop
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Standards
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Cool jazz

    A framed composite of thirteen color  photographic cutouts of Blossom Dearie throughout her career on a soft yellow colored background with her name twice in graphic.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Leonard Feather (1914–1994) described her as “chic, sleek and squeaky clean, a voice in a million” and while she was clearly classified as a jazz vocalist, she found that description incomplete and thought of herself as “a songwriter’s singer of all the great Broadway and Hollywood tunes that were in her repertoire, along with contemporary people like Dave Frishberg.”[54]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif studied classical music as a child, switched to jazz as a teenager and played with her high school dance band.[55]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif moved to New York in the 1940s and was hired by Woody Herman (1913–1987) to sing with his Blue Flames, a vocal group within his big band. Later she worked in a similar fashion with Alvino Rey’s (1908–2004) singing group, the Blue Reys.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In the early 1950s, moved to Paris and formed an eight-member vocal group, Les Blue Stars, that worked from 1952 to 1955, and had a hit in Paris and the United States with a French version of “Lullaby of Birdland.” Dearie arranged and conducted several of the group’s popular tunes.

    Three pictures of LP records made by Les Blue Flames with a front of a compilation album and on either side of that album cover are pictures of the record labels with  their songs.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif While in Paris, worked with singer Annie Ross (1930–2020) and later signed with Verve Records by producer Norman Granz (1918–2001) where she made six solo albums, including the acclaimed “My Gentleman Friend” recorded in 1959, but not released until 1961.

    The album cover for "My Gentleman Friend" by Blossom Dearie with her head dominating the cover and she is resting her chin on her hand and staring dreamily outward.

    A framed composite of thirteen color photographic cutouts of Blossom Dearie throughout her career on a gray colored background with her name twice in graphic.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif returning to New York in the mid-1950s she led several trios with guitarist Herb Ellis (1921–2010) and bassist Ray Brown (1926–2002).

    A color photograph of middle aged Blossom Dearie from her album cover "Me And Phil - Blossom Dearie Live In Australia."


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif started to make her mark on television as a guest on shows hosted by Jack Paar (1918–2004), Dave Garroway (1913–1982), and Merv Griffin (1925–2007).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif released her debut album "Blossom Dearie" (Verve 1957).

    An animated .gif of the album cover for the debut album of "Blossom Dearie" (Verve 1957) with a picture of Dearie wearing glasses on the cover moving her head left and right against the non-moving background. The album cover for the Verve Records debut album for "Blossom Dearie" (Verve 1957) with a picture of Dearie wearing glasses on the cover. An animated .gif of the album cover for the debut album for "Blossom Dearie" (Verve 1957) with a picture of Dearie wearing glasses on the cover with her head moving relative to the background closer and farther away.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif made albums for Capitol Records in the 1960s, including “May I Come In?” (1964), a collection of standards arranged and conducted by composer Jack Marshall (1937–1973).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif in 1973 she started her own record company, Daffodil Records The icon logo for Daffodil Records., where she was the only artist, and one of her early albums, “My New Celebrity Is You,” included eight of her own compositions. The album’s title number was written by her good friend Johnny Mercer (1909–1976).

    Three record labels of the front sides of the vinyl disks of Blossom Dearie's Daffodil Records recordings.



    A framed composite with a teal green background of one-hundred forty-seven (147) album covers of recordings with Blossom Dearie.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif best known for her collaborations on “I’m Shadowing You,” again with lyrics by Johnny Mercer; “I Like You, You’re Nice,” “Sweet Georgie Fame,” “Inside a Silent Tear” and “Hey John.” The album cover for "Blossom Dearie Sings" with a drawing of  her on right side and song titles listed on left side.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In the 1970s, she sang for the children’s educational program “Schoolhouse Rock!,” The cartoon logo for School House Rock with the three words in yellow stacked on top of each other looking as if carved out of stone surround by cartoon characters. including “Mother Necessity,” “Figure Eight” and “Unpack Your Adjectives.”

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif known for performing several songs by Dave Frishberg (1933–2021), including “Peel Me a Grape,” “I’m Hip” and listen to “My Attorney Bernie.”


    Display of Blossom Dearie album covers, labels, and year released.
    Display of Blossom Dearie album covers, labels, and year released.
    Display of Blossom Dearie album covers, labels, and year released.


    Animated Blossom Dearie's
    (View clockwise starting at 10 o'clock in the upper left corner)
    (moving left to right, then repeat)

    AnimatedMilesBlossomDearieTenOclock.gif AnimatedBlossomDearieTwelveOclock.gif AnimatedBlossomDearieTwoOclock.gif AnimatedBlossomDearieFiveOclock.gif AnimatedBlossomDearieSevenOclock.gif AnimatedBlossomDearieOuterEightOclock.gif AnimatedBlossomDearieInnerTenOclock.gif

    AnimatedBlossomDearieElevenOclock.gif AnimatedBlossomDearieOneOclock.gif AnimatedBlossomDearieThreeOclock.gif AnimatedBlossomDearieSixOclock.gif AnimatedBlossomDearieInnerEightOclock.gif AnimatedBlossomDearieNineOclock.gif AnimatedMilesBlossomDearieTenOclock.gif


    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to her at NPR's "Blossom Dearie on Piano Jazz," originally broadcast in 1985; rebroadcast on October 30, 2009.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Read her obituary by Jon Thurber, "Blossom Dearie dies at 82; jazz and cabaret singer," Los Angeles Times, February 9, 2009.


    TheEliteConversationCardsDeckPOJLogos.jpeg

    Jazz women in 1960's America[edit]

    Joanne Brackeen[edit]

     
    A photograph by Italian photographer Paolo Ferraresi (with his permission) of Joanne Brackeen as a younger woman with eyeglasses and frizzy hair looking to her right. A photograph by Italian photographer Paolo Gialappait (with his permission) of Joanne Brackeen as a younger woman with eyeglasses and frizzy hair looking to her left.

    (Photo(s) used by permission[56] of the photographer Paolo Ferraresi)


    Joanne Brackeen (b. 1938)
    (active 1970→present)


    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg jazz pianist
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg composer of over three hundred compositions with over one hundred recorded.
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg educator
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg bandleader


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Joanne Brackeen was born Joanne Grogan in Southern California in 1938, and began to play the piano at the age of 9, even though she had desired to play since age 5.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif is a full-time professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, and a Berklee guest professor at the New School in New York City.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Brackeen was a child prodigy who at age 11, learned to play the piano in six months by transcribing eight Frankie Carle (1903–2001) solos. By 12, she was already performing professionally.


    A black and white photograph of a young Brackeen in a black turtleneck sweater with both hands grasping the sides of her face.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Some of her musical constituents at the time were Art Farmer, Dexter Gordon, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, Bobby Hutcherson, Scott Lafaro, and Charles Lloyd.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif the Los Angeles Conservatory offered her a full scholarship, but she attended classes for only a few days before deciding that live performance on the bandstand would help her career more than school 🏫.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Brackeen married and moved her family, including four children, to New York in 1965. She began her career there with such luminaries as George Benson, Paul Chambers, Lee Konitz, Sonny Stitt, and Woody Shaw among others.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in 1969, becoming the first and only female member of the group, staying until 1972.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Brackeen then performed extensively with Joe Henderson (1972-75) and Stan Getz (1975-77). After leaving Stan Getz' quartet, she emerged as a leader.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Traveling and performing mainly with her own band which at various times included Terence Blanchard, Michael Brecker, Ravi Coltrane, Jack DeJohnette, Eddie Gomez, Billy Hart, Horace "El Negro" Hernandez, Branford Marsalis, Cecil McBee, John Patitucci, Chris Potter, and Greg Osby.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif has recorded more than two dozen recordings as a leader, including one-hundred of her three-hundred original compositions. She appears on nearly one-hundred additional recordings with other musicians.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Besides teaching at Berklee College of Music and the New School, she has led clinics, master classes, and artistic residencies worldwide.


    A color photograph of an older Joanne Brackeen sitting at piano with head turned towards camera revealing a high forehead

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Berklee College of Music has recognized Brackeen with the following prestigious honors: a Distinguished Professor Award, an Outstanding Achievement in Education Award, and the Berklee Global Jazz Institute Award.


    A full color photograph of Joanne Brackeen late in her career sitting royally at piano.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif received an Outstanding Educator Award from the International Association for Jazz Education, a Living Legend Award from the International Women in Jazz, and the BNY Mellon Jazz 2014 Living Legacy Award.


    A color photograph of Joanne Brackeen late in her career holding a microphone 🎤.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif received two National Endowment for the Arts grants for commissions and performances and received a U.S. Department of State sponsorship for a tour of the Middle East and Europe in the mid-1980s. She continues to teach and tour internationally, and to date, she has played in forty-six countries.

    Selected Discography:

    ShinyNeonGreenBullett15.png Six Ate, Candid (1975)
    ShinyNeonGreenBullett15.png Fi-Fi Goes to Heaven, Concord Jazz (1986)
    ShinyNeonGreenBullett15.png Live at Maybeck Recital Hall, Concord Jazz (1989)
    ShinyNeonGreenBullett15.png Pink Elephant Magic, Arkadia Jazz (1998)
    ShinyNeonGreenBullett15.png Popsicle Illusion, Arkadia Jazz (1999)

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif 2018 NEA Jazz Master. Since the program started in 1982, she is one of the few non-singing female musicians crowned an NEA Jazz Master along with trombonist/arranger Melba Liston (1987), pianists and composers Marian McPartland (2000), Toshiko Akiyoshi (2007), Carla Bley (2015), Maria Schneider (2019), and Dorthaan Kirk—recipient of the 2020 A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship for Jazz Advocacy.

    A color graphic of twenty-one album covers of the music of Joanne Brackeen with titles and dates of release from discogs.com.


    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Read John Murph’s “Joanne Brackeen: Still Proudly Unorthodox,” JazzTimes, February 10, 2020.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to National Publuc Radio (NPR) logo. Joanne Brackeen on NPR's Piano Jazz originally recorded August 15, 2005 and read about it from author David Lyon published March 14, 2014.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to her interview with Bob Karcy on the last track of her solo album "Popsicle Illusions," Arkadia Records (2000).

     

    Carol Sloan[edit]

     
    A color photograph of Carol Sloan in her twenties wearing a dark jersey at a microphone.


    Carol Sloane (b. 1937)
    (active 1961→September 2019)

                 


    A color photograph of Carol Sloane in middle age wearing a black turtleneck with her right hand held just under her throat.         A color photograph of a middle-aged Carol Sloane with shiny gray hair curled under at sides of her head.
    A color photograph of Carol Sloane standing to the left of a smiling Dizzy Gillespie.

                      (with Dizzy Gillespie)

                 

    A color photograph of an older Carol Sloane holding a microphone.     A color photograph of Carol Sloan with close cropped white hair wearing a red blouse late in her career.     A color photograph of Carol Sloan with close cropped white hair wearing a black blouse late in her career.


    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg jazz vocalist

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif “Her main assets were her warmly appealing timbre, good range and secure time, all amply demonstrated in these two albums made in 1961–62. On "Out of the Blue," a record with memorable contributions by soloists Bob Brookmeyer, Clark Terry, Nick Travis and Jim Hall, she is backed mostly by Bill Finegan's arrangements.” (Click anywhere on quotation for source)

    OutOfTheBlueAlbumCover.jpeg LiveAt30thStreetAlbumCover.jpeg HeartsDesireAlbumCover.jpeg


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Started singing with a local danceband as a 14-year old in 1951.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In 1960, Jon Hendricks asked her to temporarily sub for Annie Ross in Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif appeared at the 1961 Newport Jazz Festival.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded two albums for Columbia Records in 1961–1962.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif played and recorded with pianist Bill Charlap (b. 1966), alto saxophonist Phil Woods (1931–2015), clarinetist and tenor saxophonist Ken Peplowski, and pianist Sir Roland Hanna (1932–2002).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded more than thirty albums under the Prestige, Contemporary, and especially the Concord label.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif link=http://www.discogs.com/Carol-Sloane-Well-Meet-Again/release/1537222alt=Carol Sloan's album cover for "We'll Meet Again" with her head shot large on the cover.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Read about "Sloane: A Jazz Singer" movie 🎥 at GoingBarefoot.com.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Listen to "I Never Went Away."


    WomanTrombonistLunaBackgroundJAK.jpeg

    Jazz women in 1970's America[edit]

    Ahnee Sharon Freeman[edit]

     
    Closeup headshot of Sharon Freeman blowing hard on french horn in 1987 with the George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band, Rockefeller Hall, Houston, Texas.  Photograph by Lindy Pollard. Sharon Freeman closeup headshot profile facing to right.


    Ahnee Sharon Freeman (b. 1958)
    (active 1972→present)


    PinkShinyButton19.png jazz pianist
    PinkShinyButton19.png French horn player
    PinkShinyButton19.png composer
    PinkShinyButton19.png arranger
    PinkShinyButton19.png musical director for Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, Don Pullen, and for Beaver Harris's 360 Musical Experience


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif played French horn for Carla Bley's jazz opera "Escalator over the Hill."

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif French hornist on Gil Evans's 1973 album "Svengali."

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Starting in 1982, she was musical director and a member of Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif in 1983 worked on a piece of jazz Christmas music.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif She has played with Frank Foster, Charles Mingus, Don Cherry, Muhal Richard Abrams, David Murray, Lionel Hampton, Don Pullen and Beaver Harris.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif nominated for a Grammy for her arrangement of "Monk's Mood" for five French horns and rhythm section for Hal Willner's album, That's the Way I Feel Now: A Tribute to Thelonious Monk.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif commissioned by the Jazz Composer's Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the Harlem Piano Trio.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif cited by Jazz Times as the top-rated established jazz French horn player.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Hear her interviewed and playing piano on Marian McPartland's "Piano Jazz" broadcast in the Spring of 1988.


    A framed color photograph of many silver keys laid out in glass surrounding one silver padlock with a PoJ.fm logo on it and the words Philosophy of Jazz in the upper right corner.

    Jessica (Jennifer) Williams[edit]

     
    A glowing Jessica Williams with head turn down facing left with yellow background. A glowing Jessica Williams with head turn down facing left with yellow background.

    (Photo by Jimmy and Deana Katz/courtesy of Jessica Williams)


    A slowly moving .gif of mirror images of color photographic cutouts of Jessica Williams with her bent right hand near her chin zooming towards and away from viewer.


    Jessica (Jennifer) Williams (1948–March 12, 2022)
    (active in performance 1976→2012)


    TictacBlueCu10.gif Instrument:


    PinkShinyButton19.png American acoustic pianist EnhancedBiggerPianoN1.jpeg

    PinkShinyButton19.png Fender Rhodes electric piano A color photographic cutout of a Fender Rhodes electric piano.
    PinkShinyButton19.png RMI electric piano A color photographic cutout of an RMI (Rocky Mount Instruments electric piano.
    PinkShinyButton19.png Key Bass
    PinkShinyButton19.png Drums
    PinkShinyButton19.png Bells 🔔
    PinkShinyButton19.png Keyboards
    PinkShinyButton19.png Percussion
    PinkShinyButton19.png Synthesizer


    YellowButtonBullet10px.png Roles:

    YellowButtonBullet10px.png composer
    YellowButtonBullet10px.png leader
    YellowButtonBullet10px.png arranger
    YellowButtonBullet10px.png sequencing
    YellowButtonBullet10px.png mastering


    BlueButtonBullet10px2.png Style/Genre:

    RedPointingRightArrow.png Contemporary jazz
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Piano jazz
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Swing
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Bebop
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Post bop
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Jazz-funk
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Post fusion
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Electronic
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Neoclassicism
    RedPointingRightArrow.png often dense, electrically orchestral and frequently groove-oriented sound gets tagged "creative, Indie, 21st century music."

    A montage of eight photographs of headshots of Jessica Williams half in color and half in black and white mixed together.

    *
     

    “One of the greatest jazz pianists I have ever heard.”

    (Click on quotation for source)
    DAVE BRUBECK
    (1920–2012)
    *
     

    “Jessica is a beautiful player.”

    (Click on quotation for source)
    McCOY TYNER
    (1938–2020)
    *
     

    “The most important pianist to arrive since Bill Evans.”

    (Click on quotation for source; then, click on "Press")
    ALUN MORGAN
    (1928–2018)
    of Gramophone
    *
     

    “During the 1980s she recorded very little under her own name but her technique achieved supernatural status, a worthy disciple of Art Tatum although in an altogether different voice. By the time she resurfaced with "And Then, There's This!" (1990) in a trio, she had become one of the greatest living virtuosi of the piano.”

    (Click on quotation for source)
    PIERO SCARUFFI
    (b. 1955)
    *
     

    “A powerful virtuoso whose complete control of the keyboard, wit, solid sense of swing, and the influence of Thelonious Monk have combined to make her a particularly notable player. One of the top pianists of today . . . she is a giant . . . consistently brilliant.” All Music Guide

    SCOTT YANOW
    (b. 1954)
    *
     

    “Williams is, as always, brilliant and transcendent.”

    (Click on quotation for source)
    JEFF WINBUSH
    (b. 1956)
    All About Jazz reviewer
    *
     

    “I'm running out of superlatives to describe her playing!”

    (Click on quotation for source)
    HUMPHREY LYTTELTON
    (1921–2008)
    BBC
    *
     

    “Apart from her phenomenal technique and a hugely fertile imagination, she has the rare ability to draw listeners into her private musical world and hold them there, enthralled.”

    (Click on quotation for source)
    DAVE GELLY
    (b. 1938)
    LONDON OBSERVER
    *

    “But listening to "Tatum's Ultimatum" The album cover for "Tatum's Ultimatum" by pianist Jessica Williams with a closeup of the inside of a piano bathed in yellow and purple light. (Red and Blue Recordings, 2008) or "Songs for a New Century" The album cover for Jessica Williams's "Songs For A New Century" with the title and her name centered on cover and a closeup photograph of Williams in left profile playing the piano. (Origin Records, 2008) makes clear that Williams ranks with Keith Jarrett, or beyond.” (Click here for source of quotation.) Williams has positioned herself in the top level of current jazz pianists and, with discs like "Songs for a New Century" and "Tatum's Ultimatum," she has established herself as the top solo pianist working today (in 2008).”

    DAN MCCLENAGHAN
    (b. 1952)
    *

    “A vibrant force on the contemporary music scene.”

    (Click on quotation for source)
    ROLLING STONE
    *
     

    “She should be heard by everyone who cares about jazz.”

    (Click on quotation for source; then, click on "Press")
    WILLIAM STEPHENSON
    Jazziz Magazine
    *
     

    “Jessica Williams may be the great living lyric poet of the piano. She is utterly magnificent.”

    “Certainly she is the most poetic of all living jazz pianists . . . everyone who has heard her play is a little bit in love with her.”

    (Click on quotation for source)
    JEFF SIMON
    The Buffalo News
    (July 23, 2004
    March 31, 2002)
    *
     

    “I will say on record that I think she is the finest pianist of our time. And her records are bar none, the most consistently immaculate and for your hard-earned dollars, a Jessica Williams album is a no-brainer.”

    (Click on quotation for source; then, click on "Press")
    FRED JUNG
    All About Jazz
    *
     

    “I could review Jessica Williams' newest release in a single phrase—one of the finest solo piano albums I've ever heard . . . impeccable taste, remarkable technique, pristine sound and boundless inspiration, but even those descriptions can't adequately delineate the entire package.”

    (Click on quotation for source; then, click on "Press")
    JACK BOWERS
    All About Jazz
    *
     

    “This is easy. Jessica Williams doesn't make bad records.”

    (Click on quotation for source; then, click on "Press")
    LAWRENCE BRAZIER
    JazzNow
    *
     

    “Jessica Williams is an outstanding jazz talent, and probably the finest improvising pianist in jazz today.”

    (Click on quotation for source; then, click on "Press")
    PAT HAWES
    Jazz Journal International
    *
     

    “Among the most lyrical and expressive pianists in jazz.”

    (Click on quotation for source; then, click on "Press")
    ANDREW GILBERT
    Contra Costa Times
    *
     

    “She is simply a pianistic force of nature that will not be denied. As with her previous, releases, this will have a place on my best-of-the-year list.”

    (Click on quotation for source; then, click on "Press")
    C. MICHAEL BAILEY
    All About Jazz
    *
     

    “Williams has a beautiful touch, and great fluency of both imagination and execution.”

    (Click on quotation for source; then, click on "Press")
    PETER WESTBROOK
    Reviewing the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center, Jazz Review
    *
     

    “There is nothing Jessica Williams can't do on a piano, and she is one of jazz's most unique, talented and important voices.”

    (Click on quotation for source; then, click on "Press")
    TERRELL HOLMES
    All About Jazz
    *
     

    “The trio CD "Live at Yoshi's: Volume One," recorded in 2003, finds the eclectic veteran demonstrating the rich and varied two-handed interplay that sets Williams apart from her peers. Despite the obvious empathy of the Williams Drummond Lewis triumvirate, the leader's dexterous work leaves little doubt that she could handle the whole shebang all by herself, if need be.”

    (Click on quotation for source; then, click on "Press")
    STEVE FUTTERMAN
    JazzTimes Review, January 2005
    *
     

    “Is Jessica Williams capable of a false step? The pianist continues to put out one stellar recording after another, though without the fanfare that accompanies some of her peers. Her latest, a tribute to John Coltrane, is as soulful as anything she's recorded and just as elegant.”

    (Click on quotation for source)
    JOHN FREDERICK MOORE
    Jazziz Review, 2007
    *
     

    “Jessica Williams is a phenomenally gifted pianist who combines great technical proficiency with profound musicality. By turns dramatic, lyrical, and meditative, her playing contains echoes of such predecessors as Waller, Garner, Garland, Monk, and Evans (to name just a few), yet her sound is distinctively her own and decidedly fresh and modern. As an improviser she is boundlessly creative and never seems less than fully engaged and "in the moment"; not only does she seem to be able to play anything that occurs to her, but what occurs to her is always interesting and often arrestingly beautiful.”

    (Click on quotation for source)
    Posted by LEONARDO BARROSA
    WorkJazz, December 20, 2005
    *
     

    “White San Francisco-based pianist Jessica Williams began to improvise in the vein of Thelonious Monk but in a rather shy manner, both as a solo performer, for example in the psychological vignettes of "Portal of Antrim" (1976), and as a member of a small ensemble, notably on "Orgonomic Music" (June 1979). During the 1980s she recorded very little under her own name but her technique achieved supernatural status, a worthy disciple of Art Tatum although in an altogether different voice. By the time she resurfaced with "And Then There's This" (February 1990) in a trio, she had become one of the greatest living virtuosi of the piano. Unfortunately the consequence was that she devoted most of her recordings to interpretations of jazz standards, returning to creative terrain only with "Inventions" (January 1995) and "Joy" (January 1996).”

    (Click on quotation for source and then scroll down)
    PIERO SCARUFFI
    A History of Jazz, 2006.
    *


    A montage of photographs of Jessica (Jennifer) Williams throughout her career.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif started playing the piano at age four with music lessons from a private teacher at five, and enrolled in the Peabody Preparatory at age seven.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory of Music where she studied classical music and ear training with Richard Aitken and George Bellows.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif while still a teenager, began playing with Richie Cole, Buck Hill, and Mickey Fields.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In June 1976 when twenty-eight years old she began performing regularly with the "Philly Joe" Jones band in New Jersey. Philly Joe (1923–1985) was the drummer for the first Miles Davis Quintet (1955–1958).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Subsequently, she worked with drummer Lex Humphries (1936–1994) in Philadelphia and New York City, before switching to the West Coast in October 1976.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded her debut album, "The Portal of Antrim" (Adelphi Records 1976), with a trio of bassist and drummer, where she played acoustic piano, PMI and Rhodes Fender electric piano, synthesizer, key-bass, drums, and even bells! (See the composite immediately following for album details and a review by Scott Yanow.)

    A framed composite of the album covers for Jessica Williams's debut album in 1976 of "The Portal of Antrim."


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In 1977, Williams moved to San Francisco, where she played in various house bands at the Keystone Korner. A black and white photograph of the jazz club "Keystone Korner' taken in 1982. She played in the bands of Eddie Harris (1934–1996), Tony Williams (1945–1997), Stan Getz (1927–1991), Bobby Hutcherson (1941–2016), and Charlie Haden (1937–2014), eventually leading her own jazz trio, and recording prolifically for the next several decades.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif her musical career was mostly on the West Coast, San Francisco in the 1970s and 80s, and thereafter in the Pacific Northwest, though she toured widely as a soloist and with her trio. She recorded several albums in Portland, Oregon, including two with the great walking bass player Leroy Vinnegar (1928–1999) and drummer Mel Brown (b. 1944). The album cover for "Encounters 1" with Jessica Williams trio with a bright yellow background with the three players individually  photographed each situated inside of a red box with Jessica Williams on left half, bassist Leroy Vinnegar on right side above drummer Mel Brown. The album cover for "Encounters, Volume 2" by the Jessica Williams trio with walking bassist Leroy Vinnegar and drummer Mel Brown.


    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to Jessica Williams's Portland Trio with Leroy Vinnegar and Mel Brown around 22:35 minutes in on Jazz Northwest with Jim Wilke from KNKX Public Radio from a 1994 date playing Randy Weston's tune "Berkshire Blues" high up at the posh Portland restaurant Atwaters closed since 2001.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif performed with a who's who in jazz over a four decade career, including:

    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Richie Cole (1948–2020)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Buck Hill (1927–2017)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Mickey Fields (1932–1995)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Eddie Harris (1934–1996)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Tony Williams (1945–1997)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Stan Getz (1927–1991)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Big Nick Nicholas (1922–1997)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Airto (Moreria) (b. 1941) and Flora Purim (b. 1942)

    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Charlie Rouse (1924–1988). The album cover for "Epistrophy" by Charlie Rouse with him on the cover facing right blowing saxophone. Played the track "Blue Monk" on Rouse's last recording "Epistrophy."

    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Dexter Gordon (1923–1990)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png John Abercrombie (1944–2017)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Leroy Vinnegar (1928–1999)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Charlie Haden (1937–2014)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Victor Lewis (b. 1950)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Red Mitchell (1927–1992)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Bobby Hutcherson (1941–2016)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Ray Drummond (b. 1946)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Mel Brown (b. 1944)
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Dave Captein (b. 1954) appearing on ten of her CDs
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Jeff Johnson (b. 1954) been playing with Williams since 1991
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png Dick Berk (1939–2014)


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif has released over 85 albums and written over 1,000 compositions. An enhanced and colorized headshot of Jessica Williams looking straightforward with her hair cascading down here left shoulder and her right shoulder hidden behind a post.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif See a timeline of her discography.


    The first of three lists in historical order of Jessica Williams's album covers and titles. The middle of three lists in historical order of Jessica Williams's album covers and titles. The last of three lists in historical order of Jessica Williams's album covers and titles.


    A collage of album cover from the recordings of Jessica Williams. A collage of album cover from the recordings of Jessica Williams. A collage of album cover from the recordings of Jessica Williams. A collage of album cover from the recordings of Jessica Williams. A collage of album cover from the recordings of Jessica Williams. A collage of album cover from the recordings of Jessica Williams.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Recorded excellent tribute albums for Thelonious Monk "In the Key of Monk" (recorded 1997/released 1999) & "More for Monk" (2007) & "Deep Monk" (2008), Bill Evans (recorded 1996/released 1998), Duke Ellington (recorded 2000/released 2001), Dr. Billy Taylor (2006), Miles Davis (released 2007), and John Coltrane (recorded 2007/released 2011). See and hear from the album covers below.


    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Click on any of the album covers for more information about it and listen to thirty second samples of any tune on the album in question, then click on the back arrow of your browser to return to PoJ.fm.

    The album cover for "In the Key of Monk" by Jessica Williams with her pictured on the left half of the cover facing the camera with head lowered bathed in yellow light with the album title center middle on the right half., A faded yellow album cover with a faded graphic of Williams sitting at piano bench., The album cover for "Deep Monk" by Jessica Williams featuring a grayish-white textured looking cover with artist's name in upper left corner and album title in lower right corner both in oversized font., The album cover for "Joyful Sorrow: A Solo Tribute to Bill Evans" by Jessica Williams with a drawing of a silhouetted pianist hunched over a piano facing to right peeking out between two stage curtains barely draped open., The album cover for "I Let A Song Go Out of My Heart: The Music of Duke Ellington" by Jessica Williams . The album cover for "Billy's Theme: A Tribute to Dr. Billy Taylor" with a  picture of buildings in New York City photographed through the trees of Central Park., Jessica Williams's album cover for "Virtual Miles Volume 1." Jessica Williams's album cover for "Virtual Miles Volume 2.", The album cover for the Jessica Williams trio with her bent over a piano facing right on left side of cover with the title of "Freedom Trane" and the trio's name on right side of cover.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif qualified for two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (1984 & 1988).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif awarded a Rockefeller Grant for composing (1989)

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif won the Alice B. Toklas Grant for Women Composers (1992).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif received a Fellowship in Music Composition with the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1995).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif received The ASCAP-PLUS AWARD for distinguished contributions in the areas of composition and performance, yearly for twenty-four years.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif two-time Grammy Nominee, including her 1986 album "Nothin' But the Truth," and "LIVE at Yoshi's Volume One" in 2004 for Best Jazz Instrumental Album.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Over forty years has recorded for Adelphi, Clean Cuts, Jazz Focus, Candid, Concord, Landmark-Fantasy, Timeless, Maxjazz, Origin Arts, and on her own label, Red and Blue Records.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In 1997, she established her own record label, Red and Blue Recordings. She also started her publishing company, JJW Music/ASCAP, and an internet mail order business, jessicawilliams.com (now defunct).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif was a guest on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross The logo for Fresh Air with Terry Gross. March 29, 2002.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif On NPR Piano Jazz The logo for National Public Radio's (NPR) Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland. she told interviewer Marian McPartland (1918–2013) that her main influences were not pianists, but horn players, most notably Miles Davis and John Coltrane (see her Coltrane tribute album "Freedom Trane").

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Her album "Joyful Sorrow: A Tribute to Bill Evans" was among the Top 5 CDs of JazzTimes Critics Poll in 1999.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif her album "In the Key of Monk" won that honor again in 2000.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In Europe, she scored Jazz Record of the Year for two consecutive years in the Jazz Journal International Reader's Poll.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Best Instrumental Jazz Album National Endowment for the Arts (1988, 1992).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Alice B Toklas Fellowship Money for Women (1993).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Rockefeller Grant (1990).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Record of the Year (1994, 1995) Jazz Journal International Reader's Poll.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Presented a plaque of civic appreciation from Mayor of Sacramento, CA Anne Rudin with a key to the City of Sacramento (1989).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Meet the Composer Grant (1991).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Sacramento Arts Commission, four grants (1984–1988).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Keys to the City of San Mateo (1997).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Artist of the Year Award Santa Cruz County (2002).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif One of the TOP 5 CDs of 2000 (JazzTimes Critics Poll — "In the Key of Monk").

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif One of the TOP 5 CDs of 1999 (JazzTimes Critics Poll — "Joyful Sorrow: A Solo Tribute to Bill Evans").

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Fifteen Special Awards Panel Grants from ASCAP for composition.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Best Jazz Album of the Year The dark green album cover for "Live at Yoshi's, Volume One" by the Jessica Williams trio with the title on top half and a photograph of Williams sitting with her open left hand propped under her chin on the bottom half. ("Live at Yoshi's, Vol 1") (recorded live in July, 2003; released 2004) from All About Jazz

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Best Jazz Album of the Year ("Live at Yoshi's, Vol 2") (recorded live in July, 2003; released 2005) The album cover for the 2005 "Live at Yoshi's, Volume 2" by Jessica Williams's trio. from All About Jazz.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif written scores for PBS and HBO.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif appeared in festivals and venues worldwide, including the Purcell Room in London, the Bern Jazz Festival, the Monterey Jazz Festival, the New Morning in Paris, Spivey Hall in Georgia, the Opera House in Tokyo, and hundreds of other venues.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif opened at the 2004 and May, 2006 "Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival" at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C..

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif interviewed by the BBC in Brecon, Wales.

    Grammy nominations:

    "Nothin' But the Truth" — 1986.
    "Live At Yoshi's, Vol. 1" — 2004.

    Other Grants and Awards:

    National Endowment for the Arts grants — 1984, 1988.
    Rockefeller Grant (composing) — 1989.
    Alice B. Toklas Grant for Women Composers — 1992.
    John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship — 1995.
    Presented the keys to the city of Sacramento, California.
    Four grants from the Sacramento Arts Commission.
    Presented the Keys to the City of San Mateo, California.
    Artist of the Year in Santa Cruz County — 2002.
    Jazz Record of the Year for two consecutive years in the Jazz Journal International Reader's Poll.
    Billboards Magazine charting: "This Side Up" — Top Jazz Albums, peak No. 24, 2002.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to full versions of all songs in the albums listed below from Spotify.com. Click on "See Discography" button half-way down the page to go to albums listed in composite below.

    A 3D black then inner frame white framed composite of all of the album covers and titles available to play full songs from Spotify.net on a black background.


    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif See Jessica Williams's discography at MusicBrainz.com.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif had a spinal fusion with internal instrumentation in 2012 at Swedish Hospital's Neurosurgery Unit in Seattle, WA, and subsequently lost her ability to perform, although she continued to make electronic music.[57]

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to her beautiful rendition of "Blue Tuesday."

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to her play "Empathy."

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to "Love and Hate" (2006).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Read her tribute obituary "Remembering Jazz Pianist Jessica Williams" by Ted Gioia.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Read Robin Lloyd's obituary "Pianist Jessica Williams has died," KNKX Public Radio, March 17, 2022.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Read Avery Jeffry's obituary "Remembering Sacramento jazz pianist Jessica Williams," CapRadio, March 17, 2022.

    A framed list of Jessica Williams's discography.

    A framed graphic of a jeweled mandala central figure in multi-colored sparkling gemstones with shiny blue metal saxophones hover on either side and PoJ.fm logos.


    Jazz women in 1980's America[edit]

    Emily Remler[edit]

     
    In a  black and white photograph we have Emily Remler with her head leaning back with her eyes closed playing her guitar. Emily Remler in an orange shirt playing her electric guitar. Emily Remler with her head leaning back with her eyes closed playing her guitar.


    Emily Remler (1957-1990)
    (active 1976→1990)

    PinkShinyButton19.png American jazz guitarist who rose to prominence in the 1980s.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif primarily playing bop guitar with her own groups.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif playing was significantly influenced by Wes Montgomery (1923–1968) and Herb Ellis (1921–2010).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif released six albums with her own groups Emily Remler's album cover for "Firefly" (1981). (1981), Emily Remler's album cover for "Take Two" (1982). (1982), Emily Remler's "Transitions" album cover (1984). (1984), Emily Remler's "Catwalk" album cover (1985). (1985), Emily Remler's "East to Wes" album cover (1988). (1988) and a duet album with Larry Coryell Larry Cornell and Emily Remler "Together" album cover (1985). (1985).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif her final album, "This is Me," Emily Remler's final album cover for "This Is Me" 1991. was her first entry into the contemporary jazz-pop realm.


    An unframed graphic of the PoJ.fm logo with blue POJ, white dot period, pink fm on a pitch black background.


    Terri Lyne Carrington[edit]

     
    TerriLyneCarringtonAtDrumKitCropped.jpeg


    Terri Lyne Carrington (b. 1965)
    (active 1983→present)


    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg American drummer
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg Composer
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg Educator
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg Producer

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif consecutively named Jazz Artist of the Year for 2021 and won the 68th DownBeat Critics Poll in 2020, becoming the first female instrumentalist to be awarded this honor.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif NEA Jazz Master 2021. Read the DownBeat article.

    Kris Davis[edit]

    🔸 Kris Davis

    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg singer

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif

    Fay Victor[edit]

    Fay Victor

    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg singer

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif


    Nedra Wheeler[edit]

     

    Nedra Wheeler (b. 1962)
    (active 1980→present)


    A color photograph of Nedra Wheeler in a black blouse with see through arms and plunging necklace with her bass resting against her neck on her left side. A color photograph of Nedra Wheeler wearing black framed glasses in a full-length beige puffy dress with a matching beige jacket.


    PinkShinyButton19.png American jazz bassist based in Los Angeles
    PinkShinyButton19.png bandleader
    PinkShinyButton19.png composer
    PinkShinyButton19.png vocalist
    PinkShinyButton19.png experience with diverse musical genres including jazz (straight-ahead and contemporary), Pop, R&B, World Music and interpretations of original compositions for modern dance

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif performs in Southern California and has toured internationally for more than 30 years.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recipient of the 2006 Jazz Legend of Los Angeles Awards from the Dunbar Economic Development Corporation and The City of Los Angeles.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif has a Master of Fine Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif a performer and teacher with the Jazz Mentorship Program at the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs-Watts Towers Arts Center & the Charles Mingus Youth Arts Center.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Developer of the U.S./Japan Gospel Workshop and Inter-Cultural exchange for the CAT Music College of Osaka.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Adjunct Professor in music at the Los Angeles Community College School District.

    ​RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif performed and recorded with Stevie Wonder, Ella Fitzgerald, Pat Benatar, Linda Hopkins, Kenny Kirkland, Jeff "Tain" Watts, Bob Dylan, Billy Higgins, The Harper Brothers, Branford Marsalis, Tracy Chapman, Kenny Barron, Al "Tootie" Heath, Cedar Walton, Elvin Jones, and Alice Coltrane.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recordings include film soundtracks for "Malcom X," "Chick Peas," "Clockers," "Menace to Society," and "King of California."

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif self-produced her debut CD entitled "Gifts: Live at Birdland West" (1989).

    GiftsCDPicture.jpeg
    Nedtra Wheeler's autograph on yellow paper.

    Geri Allen[edit]

     

    Geri Allen (1957–2017)
    (active 1982→2017)


    A collage of Geri Allen with photos from flickr.com many by Timothy Forbes taken on the closing night of the Washington Women in Jazz Festival on March 27, 2013.


    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg pianist
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg singer
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg educator
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg composer
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg arranger
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg Art Song / Folk / Pop / Post-Bop / Avant-Garde Jazz
    A teenage Geri Allen playing at the piano


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif worked with many jazz musicians, including Ornette Coleman, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette, and Charles Lloyd.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif her primary musical influences were her four mentors Marcus Belgrave, Donald Walden, Betty Carter, and Dr. Billy Taylor, as well as pianists Bud Powell, Mary Lou Williams, Thelonious Monk, Hank Jones, Alice Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, and Herbie Hancock.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif received her early music education at the Cass Technical High School in Detroit and the Jazz Development Workshop mentored there by trumpeter/teacher Marcus Belgrave.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif earned her bachelor's degree in jazz studies from Howard University in Washington, D.C. (1979).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif studied under composer Thomas Kerr, and pianists Raymond Jackson, John Malachi, Fred Irby, Arthur Dawkins, and Komla Amoaku.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif moved to New York City after graduating and studied with pianist Kenny Barron.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif attended the University of Pittsburgh and earned a master's degree in ethnomusicology (1982).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif returned to New York (1982) to tour with Mary Wilson and The Supremes.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif became a charter member of the Black Rock Coalition and the Brooklyn M-Base movement in mid 1980s, including saxophonists Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, Gary Thomas, and vocalist Cassandra Wilson among others.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif played on several of Steve Coleman's albums, including his first, "Motherland Pulse," (1985) providing the composition "The Glide Was in the Ride", (click on song title to listen) a track listed on the "New Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz" New Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz album cover (2011).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif was the original keyboarder of Steve Coleman's M-Base band Five Elements.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif had her debut album as leader, "The Printmakers" Geri Allen's debut album cover for "The Printmakers" (1984), with Anthony Cox and Andrew Cyrille recorded in Germany and released by the newly founded German label Minor Music.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif performed with two members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) Joseph Jarman and Frank Lowe, then toured and recorded with altoist Oliver Lake.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded first solo piano album, "Home Grown" Geri Allen's "Homegrown" (1985) album cover (1985) followed by an album Geri Allen's album cover for "Open on All Sides in the Middle" (1985) and a concert tour with the large ensemble project "Open on All Sides in the Middle."

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif her last recording for Minor Music, "Twylight," (1989) had her singing on two tracks and playing a synthesizer.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif played piano on bassist Charlie Haden's album "Etudes" Charlue Haden's album cover for his "Etudes." (1988) in a trio with drummer Paul Motian.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif played on drummer Paul Motian's album Paul Amotian's album cover for his "Monk in Motian." "Monk in Motian" (1988).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif played in Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra Montreal concert (1989).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif was the first recipient of 1995s Soul Train's Lady of Soul Awards for jazz album of the year Geri Allen's album cover for "Twenty-One." for "Twenty-One," featuring Tony Williams and Ron Carter.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif first woman, and youngest person, to receive the Danish Jazzpar Prize (1996).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded with Ornette Coleman on his "Sound Museum" (1996) and later "The Gathering" (1998).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded "The Life of a Song" with Dave Holland on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif commissioned to compose "For the Healing of the Nations" (2006), a Sacred Jazz Suite for Voices, written in tribute to the victims, survivors and their families of the 9/11 attacks.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif active in the documentary film "Live Music, Community & Social Conscience" (2007) while performing at the Frog Island Music Festival in Michigan.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif contributed original music for the documentary film "Beah: A Black Woman Speaks," directed by Lisa Gay Hamilton, that received a Peabody Award

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif helped orchestrate Andy Bey's "American Song" nominated for a Grammy Award.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2008.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif received "A Salute to African-American Women: Phenomenal Woman" from the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, Epsilon chapter at the University of Michigan (2008).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif awarded the "African-American Classical Music Award" from the Women of the New Jersey Chapter of Spelman College (2008).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif her album "Flying Toward the Sound" Geri Allen's 2010 album cover for "Flying Toward the Sound." was rated one of the Best Of 2010 on NPR, DownBeat magazine, the All About Jazz website, and the Village Voice's Jazz Critics' Poll.


     Fourteen Geri Allen album covers and titles


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif received a nomination for the NAACP Image Award for Best Jazz Album, "Geri Allen & Timeline Live" in 2011.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif nominated for The 10th Annual Independent Music Awards under the Live Performance Album category, and for "Best Jazz Pianist" by the Jazz Journalists Association (2011).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif served as an Associate Professor of Jazz & Contemporary Improvisation at the School Of Music Theatre & Dance, at the University of Michigan (2011).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif was a curator in New York City at the STONE (2012).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif beginning in 2013 returned to her alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh, as an Associate Professor of Music and Director of the Jazz Studies Program.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music (May 2014).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif part of two recent groundbreaking trios: ACS (Geri Allen, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Esperanza Spalding) and the MAC Power Trio with David Murray and Terri Lyne Carrington with their debut recording "Perfection" (2016) released on Motéma Music to critical acclaim.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif toured Europe as a guest artist with McCoy Tyner (Spring 2017).


    A framed manipulated photograph showing an overhead drone view of several crowded islands in the inlet where islands are shaped like the letters for the word "jazz" with PoJ.fm logo in corner.


    Saskia Laroo[edit]

     

    A color photographic cutout of identical Saskia Laroo with a green patterned shirt with straps blowing hard on silver trumpet facing each other.

    A color photographic cutout .gif of identical Saskia Laroo with a green patterned shirt with straps blowing hard on silver trumpet facing each other moving back and forth.


    Saskia Laroo (b. 1959)
    (active 1982→present)


    A frame colored dark butterscotch surrounding a composite of seventeen color photographic cutouts (some repeat) of Saskia Laroo at various stages of her career usually holding or playing her trumpet on a lighter butterscotch colored background.


    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg trumpet
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg cornet
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg saxophone
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg piano
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg upright bass
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg singer
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg composer
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg arranger
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Nu jazz
    RedPointingRightArrow.png jazz rap
    RedPointingRightArrow.png jazz fusion
    RedPointingRightArrow.png post-bop
    RedPointingRightArrow.png Bossa nova
    RedPointingRightArrow.png combination of jazz, pop, world and dance


    An animated .gif of four identical colored quadrants in a square of a colorful Saskia Laroo with eight arms circling her each holding or touching a musical instrument on a black background.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif



    ShrinkingMultiArmedSaskiaLarooGIF.gif

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif founded her own record label “Laroo Records” in 1994 and released seven CD’s and 1 DVD as of 2014.

    2014 CD+DVD: Saskia Laroo Band - "Live in Zimbabwe" (also single & videoclip: "Africa Dancin'")
    2011 CD: Duo Laroo/Byrd – "A Tribute to Miles and Monk"
    2008 CD: Saskia Laroo – "Really Jazzy" (also singles+ videoclips: "Really Jazzy"; "Up the Mountain")
    1999 CD: "Saskia Laroo meets Teddy Edwards featuring Ernie Andrews" – Sunset Eyes 2000
    1999 CD: Saskia Laroo - "Jazzkia"
    1998 CD: Saskia Laroo - "Bodymusic" (also single + videoclip: "Spin")
    1994 CD: Saskia Laroo - "It's Like Jazz" (also single + videoclip: "Ya Know how We Do")

    Dena DeRose[edit]

     

    Dena DeRose (b. 1966)
    (active 1985→present)



    A color photographic cutout of mirror facing images of Dena DeRise playing at the piano and smiling with short blonde bob haircut.


    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg pianist
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg singer
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg educator (currently tenured as the Professor of Jazz Voice at the Jazz Institute of The University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria)
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg composer
    RedPointingRightArrow.png mainstream jazz
    RedPointingRightArrow.png free jazz


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif brings a modern-jazz hipness to the American standard repertoire, and approaches virtually everything she plays with a "swing first" mentality.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif began playing piano when she was three while also studying classical organ and percussion.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif while in high school she played in the orchestra, the marching band, and the jazz band, as well as being an accompanist for musicals.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif took classes in classical piano at SUNY Binghamton while working as a jazz pianist in upstate New York.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif in mid–1980s was struck with a combination of arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome that greatly affected her right hand having two operations and being unable to play piano for two years.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif While recovering from corrective surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome, she was challenged by someone to sing in a club and only a few weeks later started touring as a vocalist.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif moved to New York City in 1991, where she began working the club circuit. Since then, she has also become a active music educator, and appearing regularly at jazz festivals.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif released "Introducing Dena DeRose" (Sharp Nine Records 1996), her leader debut, followed by 1999's "Another World" (Sharp Nine 2001), and "I Can See Clearly Now" (Sharp Nine 2001).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded the acclaimed "Love's Holiday" (Sharp Nine 2002), the last of her leader dates for that label, with pianist Bill Charlap, vibraphonist Joe Locke, and trumpeters Jim Rotondi and Brian Lynch.


    DenaDeRoseBlackTankTopRedShirt.jpeg

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif produced her own Grammy-nominated debut "A Walk in the Park," on her new label (Max Jazz 2005).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif released three albums in 2007 including the first of three best-selling "Live at the Jazz Standard" (Max Jazz 2007) volumes with her trio of bassist Martin Wind and drummer Matt Jones. The second volume spent twelve weeks on the jazz charts. Later, "Travelin' Light" (2012).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif on her debut for High Note paid tribute to pianist/vocalist Shirley Horn with "We Won't Forget You: An Homage to Shirley Horn," (High Note 2014) using an all-star horn section with her trio making many critics' best of the year year lists.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded "United" (High Note 2016) whose title track original was well received with the inclusion of guest trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and guitarist Peter Bernstein.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif besides working with her own trio, Derose has played with major players such as Randy Brecker, Bruce Forman, Ray Brown, Clark Terry, Benny Golson, Houston Person, and Ken Peplowski.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif released her eighth studio album, "United" (HighNote Records 2016), with guest trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and guitarist Peter Bernstein.

    DenaDeRoseSunglassesPurpleCoat.jpeg

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif played with tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton in his quartet on La Rosita records (2018).


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif pianist on the free form "Alpenglow in Copenhagen" The album cover fir "Alpenglow in Copenhagen." (2019) an avant improvising trio with bassist Mads Vindig and improvising vocalist Annette Giesriegl.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded her trio album "Ode to the Road" (High Note 2020) featuring guest trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, saxophonist Houston Person, and vocalist Sheila Jordan on several tracks.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif frequently leads jazz clinics and workshops at prestigious summer schools and jazz festivals, including the Stanford Jazz Workshop, Centrum-Port Townsend Jazz, the Dave Brubeck Institute in Oakland, CA, The Jazz School in Berkeley, CA, Taller de Musics in Barcelona-Spain, the JEN, The Litchfield Summer Jazz Camp, Jazz Camp West, and The Royal Conservatory of Music in Den Haag.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Dena DeRose (on left) and Champian Fulton (on right) for the Steinway Two Piano Festival, Pizza Express on Dean Street, London, England, St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 2022 in their first ever concert as a duo.

    A color photograph of Dena DeRise on far left pointing to her co-pianist Champian Fulton on right with two Steinway pianos sandwiched between them.
    (Phone snap by Sebastian Scotney)

    Jazz women in 1990's America[edit]

    Lena Bloch[edit]

     

    Lena Bloch (b. 1962)
    (active 1989→present)


    Lena Bloch leaning flat on saxophone with both elbows bent.


    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg Instrument

    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg tenor saxophone
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg flute
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg clarinet

    RedPointingRightArrow.png Style/Genre:

    RedPointingRightArrow.png swing
    RedPointingRightArrow.png post-bop explorer
    RedPointingRightArrow.png committed to collective improvisation
    RedPointingRightArrow.png cool jazz with an avid interest in the still-visionary music of such cool-school innovators as Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz, and Warne Marsh.

    A collage of photographs of Lena Bloch throughout her career.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Lena plays marvelous tones. See and hear it for yourself at the opening of "Heart Knows." Who can play like this? Oh yeah, John Coltrane (1926–1967).

    ““In jazz,” muses Lena Bloch, “many things come together that are thought of as opposites: mind and feeling, responsibility and abandonment, looseness and precision, improvisation and composition. I just love that.” (click on the quotation for source)

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Born in Moscow, Russia 🇷🇺 in 1962, Lena Bloch immigrated to Israel 🇮🇱 to attend the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance (now called the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance) and afterwards moved to Europe in 1990, where she became a part of the European jazz scene in Germany and Holland for twelve years.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif she has studied with multi-instrumentalist (tenor saxophone, flute, oboe, bassoon, bamboo flute, shehnai, shofar, arghul, koto, piano, vocals) Yusef Lateef (1920–2013) in Massachusetts, Kaveh Dalir-Azar from Iran 🇮🇷 while in Germany 🇩🇪, tenor and alto saxophonist and flutist Dave Liebman (b. 1946) in his European workshops, bassist Dave Holland (b. 1946) and tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano (b. 1952) in Banff, Canada 🇨🇦, and, most notably, with alto saxophonist Lee Konitz (1927–2020), whom she had met in 2001 in Cologne, Germany.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif acquired her Artist Diploma cum laude from Cologne Conservatory, Germany (1999) studying with American jazz artists drummer Keith Copeland (1946–2015) and percussionist John Marshall (b. 1954), who performed in her quartet.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In Europe, she performed with pianist Mal Waldron (1925–2002), tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin (1928–2008), pianist Horace Parlan (1931–2017), drummer Alvin Queen (b. 1950), and pianist Juraj Stanik (b. 1969).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif received a full scholarship for Jazz In July workshop in 1994 and studied with multi-instrumentalist Yusef Lateef (1920–2013) and pianist Dr. Billy Taylor (1921–2010), winning the “Outstanding Performance Award.”

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif granted a full scholarship to attend Banff International Workshop in Jazz & Creative Music in Banff, Canada 🇨🇦 (1999), and studied with Joe Lovano (b. 1952), pianist Kenny Werner (b. 1951) and bassist Dave Holland (b. 1946).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif met her most important teacher, Lee Konitz (1927–2020), in 2001 where Konitz introduced her to the music of the Lennie Tristano (1919–1978) school, especially that of Warne Marsh (1927–1987).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif received her Master’s of Music degree in Jazz Studies and Composition from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2006), studying under American composer of contemporary classical music Salvatore Macchia (b. 1947) and keyboardist Jeffrey W. Holmes and played the first tenor chair in the Jazz Ensemble. She won the MENC Award (2004) in Minneapolis and later the “Downbeat Student Award” (2005).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif became interested in Arabic, Persian and Turkish music in Germany, and played in the famous “Embryo” band touring in Italy.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded a CD with jazz percussionist Steve Reid him, “Steve Reid Live In Europe” (2000).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif moving to United States in early 2000s she worked with Vishnu Wood, Arturo O’Farrill, George Schuller, Billy Mintz, Dave Shapiro, Roberta Piket, Scott Wendholt, Dan Tepfer, Jeremy Stratton, Chris Higgins, Bill Wurtzel, Kim Clarke, Bertha Hope, Ted Brown, Jimmy Wormworth, Taro Okamoto, and Shinnosuke Takahashi.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Lee Konitz invited her to sit in with his quintet at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola (Summer 2008), with Dan Tepfer, Peter Bernstein, Ray Drummond and Matt Wilson.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded some CD material with Vadim Neselovskyi on piano and George Kaye on bass (2009).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif from 2000–2002 she played saxophone and composed with jazz percussionist Steve Reid (album “Live In Europe”, Mustevic Records, 2000), with Boris Netsvetaev and Chris Lachotta.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif went to graduate school in 2003 and earned a Master’s Degree in Composition while a teaching assistantship at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she studied with Salvatore Macchia and Jeff Holmes.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif played the first tenor saxophone chair in the Jazz Ensemble and got a “Downbeat Student Award” (2005) and MENC Award (2004) in Minneapolis.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif came to the United States 🇺🇸 in 2003, earning a Master’s Degree in Composition at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif after moving to Brooklyn, New York🗽 in 2008 has performed with, among others, Dan Tepfer, Roberta Piket, Brad Linde, and Sarah Hughes, George Schuller, Frank Carlberg, Putter Smith, Mark Ferber, Sumi Tonooka, Kim Clarke, Vishnu Wood, and Vladimir Shafranov contributing to the development of the tradition of spontaneous improvising and open musical communication.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif a fifteen year disciple of saxophonist Lee Konitz (1927–2020), a close friend.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif collaborated with many former students of Lennie Tristano’s, including Bob Arthurs, Connie Crothers, Ted Brown, Harvey Diamond, Joe Solomon, and Charles Sibirsky.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif an improviser, dedicated to spontaneity and precision.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif featured in the “Four Extraordinary Women In Jazz” workshop/performance (with Connie Crothers) and in the Lester Young 100’s Birthday Concert in 2009 with Ted Brown and Chris Byars at Smalls Jazz Club.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif a soloist for the Vermont Jazz Big Band, the Ambassadors of Light, and the Vishnu Wood Quartet.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif has also gained significant recognition in Europe, performing with such diverse musicians as “Embryo”, Keith Copeland, Alvin Queen, and Steve Reid.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif During her first years in Brooklyn Lena was featured in the “Four Extraordinary Women In Jazz” workshop/performance (with Connie Crothers) and in the Lester Young 100’s Birthday Concert (with Ted Brown and Chris Byars, Smalls Jazz Club).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif She was a frontwoman in Vishnu Wood Quartet (2008-2014) and performed with this group at several festivals (with Vishnu Wood, James Weidman, Bertha Hope, Makaya MacCraven, R J Miller).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif has been a part of Lady Got Chops festival (NY State) with groups led by Mala Waldron, Sumi Tonooka, Kim Clarke.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif she has worked with Arturo O’Farrill, George Schuller, Putter Smith, Bill Wurtzel, Scott Wendholt and many others.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In 2014, she was an invited soloist with the New York Chamber Players Orchestra, performing the concerto for alto saxophone and orchestra by Eric Koenig at the Merkin Concert Hall.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In 2016, she met the nucleus of her recent quartet: bassist Cameron Brown and drummer Billy Mintz, Joining these colleagues for her first album as leader was Chicago guitarist Dave Miller. The album “Feathery” was top-rated in Downbeat Magazine, Pop Culture Classics, Jazz Inside Magazine, New York City Jazz Record, France Musique, Canadian Audiophile, Music Charts Magazine—and voted best debut release of 2014 by Dan Morgenstern, as well as one of the top 10 Jazz Albums 2014 (Just Jazz, USA) and top 50 Jazz Albums 2014 (JazzLinks, Austria-Germany).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif in 2014, pianist and composer Russ Lossing joined the Lena Bloch Quartet, called Feathery, has been performing regularly in New York City and Brooklyn concert spaces and jazz clubs. They released the album “Heart Knows” in 2017 (Fresh Sound Records) and were selected to perform it for the 40th National Chamber Music Conference in NYC in 2018.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif she has been influenced by Eastern European and Middle Eastern tradition to 20th–21st century and Western classical music.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif an active instructor and clinician, teaching woodwinds and improvisation, and member of Jazz Education Network, New Music USA and Chamber Music America.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts (2015).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif currently a faculty member at Slope Music, in Brooklyn, New York.

    A color photograph of Lena Bloch playing her saxophone accompanied by pianist Charles Sibirsky, the owner and founder of Slope Music, in 2018 surrounded by a small audience sitting in chairs looking in from multiple rooms.
    (Lena Bloch playing her saxophone at Slope Music accompanied by pianist Charles Sibirsky,
    the owner and founder, in 2018. Click on picture for source.)


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif she has performed in Israel, Holland, Italy, Germany, Belgium, England, Canada, Russia, Slovenia and the United States.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif has performed in New York City at Birdland, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Smalls Jazz Club, St. Peter Church Jazz Ministry, St. Marks Church, Sofia’s, Fat Cat, Puppets, 5C, and The Old Stone House Brooklyn to name a few.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif has played with the “Ambassadors of Light” (Vermont), Vermont Jazz Center Big Band, Vishnu Wood Safari East, Kim Clarke’s Inner Circle, Bill Wurtzel Trio, Afro-Cuban Latin Jazz Orchestra, Brad Linde Ensemble, Lester Young Birthday Tribute and Jimmy Giuffre/Gerry Mulligan projects.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif released her debut album “Feathery” The album cover for "Feathery" by the Lena Bloch quartet with Lena Blochs head on the cover in color and feathers to her left. (Thirteenth Note Records 2014) with guitarist Dave Miller, and long-time rhythm section of bassist Cameron Brown and drummer Billy Mintz. The album was top-rated in Downbeat Magazine, Pop Culture Classics, Jazz Inside Magazine, New York City Jazz Record, France Musique, Canadian Audiophile, Music Charts Magazine and voted the best debut release of 2014 by Dan Morgenstern, as well as one of the top 10 Jazz Albums 2014 (Just Jazz, USA) and top 50 Jazz Albums 2014 (JazzLinks, Austria-Germany).

    A detail of a color photograph of Lena Bloch standing and wearing a black ensemble with a red vest and black sneakers 👟while playing her saxophone.
    (Detail of photograph of Lena Bloch with her band Feathery
    at The Falcon, Marlboro, New York, March 8, 2020.
    Click on photograph for source)


    Selected jazz festivals:

    🐉 Red Sea Jazz Festival – Eilat, Israel 🇮🇱 1990
    🐉 Leipziger Jazz Newcomers Competition, winner – Lepzig, Germany 🇩🇪 1999
    🐉 Leverkusener Jazz Tage – Leverkusen, Germany 🇩🇪 2000
    🐉 Ingolstadter Jazz Tage – Ingolstadt, Germany 🇩🇪 2001
    🐉 Jazz Lent Maribor (with Alvin Queen) – Slovenia 🇸🇮 2002
    🐉 Voronezh Jazz Festival – Russia 🇷🇺 2002
    🐉 Women In Jazz Festival – Amherst MA USA 🇺🇸 2004
    🐉 Lady Got Chops Festival – New York City NY USA 🇺🇸 2010 & 2011
    🐉 Temple Of The Arts Jazz Festival – 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013
    🐉 Washington Women in Jazz Festival (soloist with Brad Linde Ensemble) – 2015
    🐉 40th National Chamber Music Conference – showcase with Feathery Quartet – 2018

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to both renditions of Bloch's "Heart Knows" or "Heart Knows" for an excellent composition, beautiful performance, and all players creating an outstanding jazz musical mood.


    Nichole Mitchell[edit]

     

    Nichole Mitchell (b. 1967)
    (active 1990→present)


    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg flute
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg composer
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg bandleader
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg college educator
    RedPointingRightArrow.png straight-ahead jazz
    RedPointingRightArrow.png post-bop explorer

    GreenWaterdropsPOJLogos.jpeg

    Roberta Gambarini[edit]

     
    Roberta Gambarini headshot .gif looking straight ahead with big smile and hair moving back and forth.

    Roberta Gambarini (b. 1972)
    (active 1991→present)


    Roberta Gambarini headshot and torso looking straight ahead with big smile.


    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg jazz vocalist
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg pianist
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg composer
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg clarinet (as a 12 year old)
    A color photograph of a full body shot of Roberta Gambarini in a black dress facing frontwards with a big smile. A color photograph of a full body shot of Roberta Gambarini in a black dress facing frontwards with a big smile. A color photograph of a full body shot of Roberta Gambarini in a black dress facing frontwards with a big smile. A color photograph of a full body shot of Roberta Gambarini in a black dress facing frontwards with a big smile. A color photograph of a full body shot of Roberta Gambarini in a black dress facing frontwards with a big smile. A color photograph of a full body shot of Roberta Gambarini in a black dress facing frontwards with a big smile.
    A color photograph of a full body shot of Roberta Gambarini in a black dress facing frontwards with a big smile. A color photograph of a full body shot of Roberta Gambarini in a black dress facing frontwards with a big smile.

    RedPointingRightArrow.png vocal jazz
    RedPointingRightArrow.png killer at scatting
    RedPointingRightArrow.png impeccable timing
    RedPointingRightArrow.png historian of jazz


    CircleStarBullet.png

    “Robert Gambarini is my musical soulmate. She will be the best singer around for quite a while.
    The sky's the limit for her.”
    [58]

    Saxophonist James Moody (1925–2010)

    CircleStarBullet.png

    “Gambarini is the best singer to emerge in the last sixty years.”[58]

    Pianist Hank Jones (1918–2010)


    CircleStarBullet.png

    “Gambarini is a true successor to Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Carmen McRae.”

    Kevin Lowenthal, Boston Globe



    A color photographic cutout of Robert Gambarini from the shoulders up facing to the right wearing a gown with straps and red and white jewelry earrings. A color photographic cutout of Robert Gambarini from the shoulders up facing to the left wearing a gown with straps and red and white jewelry earrings.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif At seventeen, began singing and performing in jazz clubs around Northern Italy and at eighteen moved to Milan from her birthplace in Torin, Italy to further her career as a jazz singer.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif While in Milan, took third place in a national jazz radio competition on television that led to performance opportunities at jazz festivals around Italy.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif performed on jazz broadcasts on Italian radio and television.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif began recording both under her own name and as guest vocalist in the late 1990s.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In 1997, she worked with French Hammond organ player Emmanuel Bex (b. 1959), touring jazz clubs all over Italy.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif beginning In 1998 she moved to the United States with a scholarship from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif after only two weeks in the U.S. received a third place finish in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocal Competition.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif two weeks after the Monk competition, Jimmy Heath hired her for her first concert in New York City at the Schonburg Center for Research in African-American culture in Harlem, Manhattan.

    RobertaGamboriniRedStrapsHeadThrownBackSmilingFacingLeft.jpeg


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif began touring with the Dizzy Gillespie All Star Big Band in 2004 performing with James Moody, Frank Wess, Jimmy Heath, Paquito D'Rivera, Roy Hargrove and others.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif In 2006 and 2007 she toured with her own trio and the Hank Jones trio with two performances, in June 2007, at the Puerto Rico Heineken Jazz Fest with James Moody and Roy Hargrove.

    A color photograph of Roberta Gambarini in a blue dress facing to the right.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif released her debut album "Easy to Love" (Groovin’ High/Kindred Rhythm) on June 6, 2006 that was nominated for a Grammy Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2007.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif won the 2007 Female Jazz Singer of the Year from the Jazz Journalists Association (JJA) and as the 2007 Talent Deserving Wider Recognition from DownBeat magazine’s Annual Critics Poll.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif with pianist Hank Jones made her major label debut on "You Are There" (Groovin’ High/Emarcy) (2008).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif known for her perfect timing and nuances, lyrical, ballad tones, impeccable diction, and exceptional mastery of scat, rhythm, and phrasing.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif voted Rising Star Female Vocalist of the Year in 2008 DownBeat Critics Poll (2008).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif studied vocal technique, among others, with Michiko Hirayama (1923–2018), whose very particular vocality incorporates many techniques of the Japanese and Eastern tradition in general, combining them with Western traditions, including that of Gregorian chants. Gambarini reports that “From Michiko Hirayama I learned a lot, especially regarding aspects of vocal work that relate to energy and deep spirituality. And the absolute value of ‘expressiveness,’ combined with rigor and discipline.”[59]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded her second album, "So In Love" (2008), which received her second Grammy nomination in the Best Jazz Vocal Album category (2009).

    “If there’s any lingering doubt that Roberta Gambarini has, with remarkable alacrity, joined the upper echelon of jazz singers, "So in Love" should erase it.”[60]
    A color .gif photograph of Roberta Gambarini in a blue and green straps dress facing to the right.


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif participated in two editions of the Pozzuoli Jazz Festival in 2013 and 2014 in Italy.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif has performed with Dave Brubeck, Randy Brecker, Michael Brecker, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Slide Hampton, Roy Hargrove, Jimmy Heath, James Moody, Hank Jones, Frank Wess, Claudio Roditi, Mulgrew Miller, Christian McBride, Toots Thielemans, Chucho Valdés, Horacio "El Negro" Hernández, and Paquito D'Rivera as well as playing at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Town Hall and Walt Disney Concert Hall, and jazz festivals around the world, such as Barbados, London, Monterey, North Sea, Toronto, and Umbria.

    Discography:

    "Apreslude" with Antonio Scarano (Splasch, 1991)
    "Easy to Love" (Groovin' High, 2006)
    "Lush Life" (55Records, 2006)
    "You Are There" with Hank Jones (EmArcy, 2007)
    "So in Love" with James Moody, Roy Hargrove (EmArcy, 2009)
    "The Shadow of Your Smile: Homage to Japan" (Groovin' High, 2013)
    "Connecting Spirits: Roberta Gambarini Sings the Jimmy Heath Songbook" (Groovin' High, 2015)
    "Dedications: Roberta Gambarini Honors Ella, Sarah & Carmen" (Groovin' High, 2019)

    As guest vocalist:

    CircleStarBullet.png Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Band, "Dizzy's Business," The album cover for "Dizzy's Business." (MCG Jazz, 2006)
    CircleStarBullet.png Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Band, "I'm Be Boppin' Too" The blue background album cover for the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Band's "I'm Be Boppin' Too" with large white font, Dizzy's famous bent trumpet, and a list of all major performers. (Half Note, 2009). Listen to 30 second samples.
    CircleStarBullet.png Roy Hargrove Big Band, "Emergence" The album cover for Roy Hargrove's Big Band album "Emergence" with a black and orange cover with Roy Hargrove's silhouette facing left profile on the right side of cover holding his trumpet mouthpiece straight up at waist height. (EmArcy, 2009). She sings on tracks 7 ("Everytime We Say Goodbye") and 8 ("La Puerta").
    CircleStarBullet.png Paul Kuhn, "Swing 85" The dark blue album cover for "Swing 85." (In+Out, 2013)
    CircleStarBullet.png James Moody & Hank Jones, "Our Delight" (IPO, 2008)
    CircleStarBullet.png "New Stories, Hope Is in the Air: The Music of Elmo Hope" (Origin, 2004)

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to her singing and being interviewed by guest host Jon Weber (b. 1961) at "Roberta Gambarini On Piano Jazz," NPR.org, originally recorded January 13, 2011 and originally broadcast March 29, 2011.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif See and listen to her fabulous scatting with trumpeter Roy Hargrove who scats with her and plays his trumpet supported by the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band led by Slide Hampton (1932–2021) in South Orange, N.J., October 2008.


    A NASA photograph in public domain of the International Space Station and Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft were making their approaches with four PoJ.fm's logos in between in the darkness of outer space.
    (The International Space Station and Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft were making their relative approaches on December 21 (year unknown).
    Original photograph from NASA. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel with PoJ.fm logos added in between.

    DIVA jazz orchestra[edit]

     

    DIVA Jazz Orchestra
    (active 1992→present)


    DIVA Jazz Orchestra group shot if them sitting together and laughing.


    🔸 Diva Jazz Orchestra albums at Discogs DivaJazzOrchestraSherrieIn White.jpeg

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif See and listen to the DIVA band Live at Birdland swinging away.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recording of four musicians from the jazz big band Diva (founded in 1992)—bassist Melissa Slocum (b. 1961) (center top of album cover), pianist Jill McCarron (b. 1961) (center bottom), alto saxophonist Carol Chaikin (b. 1959) (left on album cover), and drummer Sherrie Maricle (b. 1963) (right on album cover). UnpredictableNatureDedicationAlbumCover.jpeg


    Melissa Slocum (born July 26, 1961) is an American double bass player who is active in both jazz and classical music.

    The following is an English translation of the German Wikipedia page on Melissa Slocum.

    “Life and work: Slocum grew up in a musician household in Ohio (her father was a horn player in the Cleveland Orchestra; her mother, a professor of medieval studies, played the viola) and began playing the piano at the age of three. She was encouraged by her parents to study classical music. She started playing bass guitar at the age of twelve, and a year later she began performing professionally as a musician. A gifted student, she graduated from high school at the age of fifteen. By age eighteen, she had earned a bachelor's degree in classical piano music from Youngstown State University; she spent another year there to get a second degree in art history, specializing in ancient Egyptian art.


    In 1981 Slocum moved to New York to study art and shortly afterwards began playing the double bass, which she studied with Lisle Atkinson in the Jazzmobile and later privately. In 1984 she became the bassist for Ted Curson's late night sessions at Blue Note; 1985/86 she was a member of the house band at Arthur's Tavern. In 1986 she received a scholarship to study with Rufus Reid and gave up her art history studies. For the next several years she worked with Dakota Staton, Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey, Bobby Enriquez and Ralph Peterson; she also belonged to Charli Persip's Superband in the late 1980s, before she was a founding member of the Diva Jazz Orchestra in 1992. She also completed a master's degree in jazz at the Manhattan School of Music (1994) to study classical double bass there. After further studies at Mannes College of Music (1997–98), she took part in the double bass performance doctoral program at Stony Brook University, focusing on historical performance practice of baroque music. While working for this degree, she freelanced with Kevin Mahogany, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and Roy Meriwether, and worked as the bassist for the Broadway musical Phantom of the Opera.

    Slocum has also worked with Cab Calloway, Clark Terry, Wynton Marsalis, Woody Shaw, Hank Jones, Hamiet Bluiett and Don Byron. She also accompanied Howard Johnson's Tubachor Gravity for more than 20 years. In the field of classical music she worked with Kurt Masur, Neeme Järvi, Zdeněk Mácal, Itzhak Perlman and Stanislaw Scrowachewsky. In 2013 she made a recording of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite with the Harmonie Ensemble New York. She can also be heard on albums by Özay Fecht, Kevin Mahogany and Avery Brooks as well as with Concert Royal, the American Classical Orchestra and the Fairfield Symphony.” (bold not in original)

    RedModularFormBullet16.png Melissa Slocum at Discogs


    RedModularFormBullet16.png Leslie Gourse (1939-2004), Madame Jazz: Contemporary Women Instrumentalists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Clicking on the ISBN number takes you to Amazon.com where you can see inside of this book: ISBN 0-19-508696-1.

    RedModularFormBullet16.png Quotations below from Carolyn Glenn Brewer, Changing The Tune: The Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival 1978–1985 ChangingTheTuneBookCover.jpeg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 9–13. Some paragraphs combined into one block quotation.

    “When Dianne called Marian (McPartland), the quintet was preparing for a three-night gig in Rochester, New York, and a live recording. Marian had picked an eclectic bouquet of players. Veteran guitarist Mary Osborne, whom many called the best guitarist of her generation, was already well known to New York audiences. Dottie Dodgion on drums had made her reputation playing and singing in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco with Charles Mingus and Al Cohn, among others. Vi Redd's soulfully fearless alto saxophone sound had complimented the groups of both Max Roach and Dizzy Gillespie. Marian picked bassist Lynn Milano, the youngest of the group by a generation and a graduate of Eastman, because her sound contradicted her petite size. None of the women had played together as a group before.[61] (bold not in original)

    There was nothing new about a group of women playing jazz. Since baby jazz wailed its first double high C, women's groups have played in ballrooms, in vaudeville venues, at movie premiers, and on every imaginable road gig—right alongside the men. As early as the 1920s, bands such as Babe Egan's Hollywood Red Heads and The Bricktops contributed to the popularity of the new sound. Peggy Gilbert's All Girl Band and Ina Ray Hutton and her Melodears attracted the attention of promoters Florenz Ziegfeld and William Morris, and both bands participated in early, short subject sound films for Fox, Movietone, and Vitaphone. That women could hold all the chairs in a performing jazz band was unique only in the sense that, in the early-twentieth century, female musical education was predominately gender specific. Girls were encouraged to play piano or sing, perhaps play the violin, but blowing was considered unfeminine. Females were not thought strong enough to hold and play, much less carry, large instruments such as the baritone saxophone or string bass. By the 1920s much of that changed. High school concert bands either integrated both genders into their programs or formed all-female bands. With the availability of jazz recordings, female and male musicians had access to the same music to listen to. Female ears absorbed the complexities of what they were hearing as well as those of their male counterparts.”[62] (bold not in original)

    “ . . . Goodman, girls learned to swing as strongly as their dance partners. But firmly established cultural stereotypes kept denying that this was so. In a February 1938 Down Beat opinion piece, an anonymous writer stated, "Women as a whole are emotionally unstable, which prevents their being consistent performers on musical instruments." Bandleader and saxophonist Peggy Gilbert lost no time writing a rebuttal. "The manager is constantly reminding the girls not to take the music so seriously, but to relax, to smile," Gilbert wrote in Down Beat in April of 1938. "How can you smile with a horn in your mouth? How can you relax when a girdle is throttling you and the left brassiere strap holds your arm in a vice?" The undeniable truth was that a female jazz artist's popularity was based on visual attributes rather than musical expertise. Long, flowing, tight-waisted gowns, with billowing sleeves, in cotton candy colors, defined the dress code. Saxophonist Roz Cron remembers a particularly humiliating outfit. "I was playing at the Oriental Theater in Chicago with Ada Leonard's band," Cron recalls. "The manager brought out this god-awful, pink thing and said that was what I was to wear. It had all these flounces and flares and ruffles. I was mortified. I'm a professional, not a dress up doll. I hated that costume with a passion." Another member of the band stated, "A man could have white hair and glasses and weigh 300 pounds, but if he could play, great. The girls had to look like starlets. And the things they put on us were unbelievable."[63] (bold not in original)

    Vocalists and a few instrumental soloists, such as pianists Hazel Scott and Mary Lou Williams, managed to break the gender barrier, but they too were expected to present themselves as sex symbols in provocative clothing. Women jazz musicians put up with this because they wanted to play and their opportunities were limited, but the bitter reality was their performances were seen all too often as highly sexualized spectacles. Peggy Gilbert lamented in her Down Beat piece, "Men's orchestras are usually hired because of their ability as musicians. Their good looks, their presentability other than neatness, will rarely enter the question. " Not only men criticized female jazzers. In a 1951 Down Beat interview, Lorraine Cugat, then wife of Xavier Cugat, stated that she would use all men in her new Latin band. "We might as well be honest about this. A girl, no matter what she's got, just can't be a glamorous creature with the mouthpiece of a saxophone between her pretty red lips or while blowing her lovely face all out of shape playing a trumpet or trombone." Waggish gossip columnists of the day speculated that Mrs. Cugat's interest in glamour and an all-male band was motivated by revenge against her philandering, estranged husband more than by a lack of faith in female players, but she went on. "Girls who want to be musicians should stick to any instrument . . . the playing of which doesn't detract from their feminine appeal." Some all-girl bands had drummers who played in high heels. Brass and reed "fem cats" were told to paint their lips with Mercurochrome rather than wear lipstick. In some bands eyeglasses were forbidden. Contact lenses were very primitive, not to mention painful and expensive in those days, so near-sighted players had to memorize the music. Even the highly successful and popular all-female group Hour of Charm, led by Phil Spitalny, one of the few men to front a girl band, was founded in musical compromise.”[64] (bold not in original)


    “Even the highly successful and popular all-female group Hour of Charm, led by Phil Spitalny, one of the few men to front a girl band, was founded in musical compromise. Spitalny publicly made it clear that he wasn't looking for a powerful, hard-swinging sound. In a band that employed more violins than brass, two pianos, and a harp, it's not surprising their repertoire consisted of mostly mellow, sweet tunes. That also pleased the sponsors of the Sunday night radio show of the same name. The listening public deemed Hour of Charm the ideal all-female band. It wasn't only the jazz world that discriminated against female players. Girl harpists and violinists might be acceptable on a stage clouded with taffeta and sequined dresses. Anonymous female trombonists and bassists could be heard on radio broadcasts without public outcry. But in the male dominated world of symphony orchestras, the subject of female members wasn't even open for discussion. It would be 1982 before the Berlin Philharmonic hired a woman. In Vienna it was 1997. [65] (bold not in original)

    Ingrid Laubrock[edit]

     

    Ingrid Laubrock (b. 1970)
    (active 1994→present)


    An enhanced color cutout of Ingrid Laubrock with a pixieish haircut blowing hard into her saxophone. A color photograph of Ingrid Laubrock while not playing.


    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg primarily tenor saxophonist
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg also can play soprano, alto, and baritone saxophones 🎷
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg educator
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg prolific composer
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg arranger
    PinkDullBubbkegumBullet19.jpeg Free jazz / Avant-Garde jazz

    A composite of six color photographic cutouts of Ingrid Laubrock.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif German saxophonist now living in Brooklyn, New York City since 2008.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif interested in “exploring the borders between musical realms and creating multi-layered, dense and often evocative sound worlds.”[66]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif named a “true visionary” by pianist and The Kennedy Center’s artistic director Jason Moran (b. 1975).

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif a “fully committed saxophonist and visionary” by the New Yorker magazine.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif her composition "Vogelfrei" was nominated “one of the best 25 Classical tracks of 2018” by the New York Times.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif has performed with Muhal Richard Abrams, Jason Moran, Nels Cline, Zeena Parkins, Tim Berne, Dave Douglas, Wet Ink, Kris Davis and Tyshawn Sorey in the collaborative trio Paradoxical Frog, Mary Halvorson in Mary’s septet, Tom Rainey, her husband, in numerous settings, and Anthony Braxton, as a member of multiple groups including his Falling River Musics Quartet.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif has composed for ensembles ranging from solo to chamber orchestra.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Awards include Fellowship in Jazz Composition by the Arts Foundation, BBC Jazz Prize for Innovation, SWR German Radio Jazz Prize and German Record Critics Quarterly Award.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif won the best Rising Star Soprano Saxophonist in the Downbeat Annual Critics Poll in 2015 and best Tenor Saxophonist in 2018.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif received composing commissions by BBC Glasgow Symphony orchestra, Bang on The Can, Grossman Ensemble, The Shifting Foundation, The Robert D. Bielecki Foundation, The Jerwood Foundation, American Composers Orchestra, Tricentric Foundation, SWR New Jazz Meeting, The Jazz Gallery Commissioning Series, NYSCA, Wet Ink, John Zorn’s Stone Commissioning Series and the EOS Orchestra.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif a recipient of the 2019 Herb Alpert Ragdale Prize in Music Composition and the 2021 Berklee Institute of Gender Justice Women Composers Collection Grant.


    A composite of twenty-four album covers with Ingrid Laubrock performing on them.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif See her discography at Discogs.com.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Read about the brass-laden eponymous debut album "Ubatuba" (Firehouse 12, 2015)

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Read John Sharpe's review of the spiralling components of and listen to a track from "Serpentines" (Intakt, 2016)

    An enhanced color photograph of the band members from Ingrid Laubrock's album "Serpentines."

    (Craig Taborn on piano, Miya Masaoka on koto, Sam Pluta on electronics, Peter Evans on trumpet and piccolo trumpet,
    Ingrid Laubrock on tenor and soprano saxophones, Tyshawn Sorey on drums, and Dan Peck on tuba)


    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Read about and listen to "Contemporary Chaos Practices / Two Works for Orchestra with Soloists" The album cover for Ingrid Laubrock's "Contemporary Chaos Practices / Two Works for Orchestra with Soloists." (Intakt, 2018)

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Read a supportive review of "Dreamt Twice, Twice Dreamt" (Music for Chamber Orchestra and Small Ensemble) (Intakt, 2020)


    OneJazzWordPOJLogos.jpeg

    Jazz women in the 20th century[edit]

    🔸 Ingrid Jensen (b. 1966) Canadian jazz trumpeter.

    🔸 Matana Roberts (b. 1975) American sound experimentalist, visual artist, jazz saxophonist and clarinetist, composer and improviser based in New York City and has been an active member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).

    🔸 Barbara Thompson (1945–2022) British alto and baritone saxophonist, flutist, pianist, clarinetist and composer who played in many jazz genres, including Latin jazz and big band.

    🔸 Maria Schneider (b. 1960) American composer, jazz orchestra leader, and multiple Grammy Award winner.

    🔸 Geri Allen (1957–2017) American (Pittsburgh) pianist, composer, and educator.

    🔸 Renee Rosnes (b. 1962) Canadian jazz pianist, composer, and arranger.

    🔸 Cindy Blackman Santana (b. 1959) American jazz and rock drummer.

    🔸 Jane Bunnett (b. 1956) Canadian soprano saxophonist, flautist, bandleader, and educator especially known for performing Afro-Cuban jazz and often traveling to Cuba.

    🔸 Mary Lou Williams (1910–1981). American pianist, composer, arranger, and mentor who could play all jazz styles from Ragtime to free jazz.

    🔸 Dorothy​ Donegan (1922–1998) American jazz pianist, vibraphonist, and vocalist, primarily known for performing in the stride piano and boogie-woogie style as well as playing bebop, swing jazz, and even classical music.

    🔸 Marian McPartland (1918– 2013) English-American jazz pianist, composer, and writer. hosted "Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz" on National Public Radio from 1978 to 2011.

    🔸 Mary Osborne (1921–1992) American jazz guitarist.

    🔸 Toshiko Akiyoshi (b. 1929) Japanese-American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader.

    🔸 Carline Ray (1925–2013) American jazz pianist, guitarist, and vocalist. She was a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm.

    🔸 Janice Elaine Robinson (b. 1951) American (Pennsylvania) trombonist.

    🔸 Patti Bown (1931–2008) American jazz pianist, composer, and singer.

    🔸 Andrea Brachfeld (b. 1955) American jazz and Latin jazz flutist.

    🔸 JoAnne Brackeen (b. 1938) American jazz pianist and music educator.

    🔸 Valerie Capers (b. 1935) American pianist, composer, and music educator.

    🔸 Sue Evans (b. 1951) American jazz, pop, classical, and studio percussionist/drummer.

    🔸 Corky Hale (b. 1936), American jazz harpist, pianist, flutist, and vocalist. She has been a theater producer, political activist, restaurateur, and the owner of the Corky Hale women's clothing store in Los Angeles, California.

    🔸 Emmelyne "Emme" Kemp (b. 1936), pianist, vocalist, band leader, Broadway composer, actress, lecturer, and an American music researcher. A protégé of Eubie Blake and best known as a Broadway composer and actor for Bubbling Brown Sugar. Acted in the Woody Allen film "Sweet and Lowdown." She has performed throughout the United States, Germany and Japan.

    🔸 Jill McManus (b. 1940), American jazz pianist, composer, teacher, and author.

    🔸 Nina Sheldon (b. 1940), American pianist, singer, composer and lyricist. NinaSheldonSecretPlacesAlbumCover.jpeg Led the house band at the Village Gate (1974 –1977) in New York City. Has played with Sonny Stitt, George Coleman, Maxine Sullivan, Budd Johnson, Bobby Hackett, and Vic Dickenson. Taught jazz history and improvisation at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland. Performed at major jazz festivals such as Newport jazz festival and the Kool jazz festival in New York and the Kansas City Women's jazz festival.

    🔸A set of three records providing background on the involvement of women with jazz, produced by Bernard Brightman. “Women in Jazz,” collections of recordings made between 1926 and 1961, providing a very convincing demonstration that women, singly and in groups, have been making impressive contributions to jazz since its earliest recorded days and doing it for the most part, in relative anonymity.

    🔸 Listen to "Women in Jazz: Piano players."

    🔸 Margie Hyams (1920–2012), played vibes in Woody Herman's band in the 40's and in George Shearing's original quartet.

    🔸 Vi Burnside (1915–1964), American saxophonist.

    🔸 Vi Redd (b. 1928), American saxophonist.

    🔸 Valaida Snow (1904–1956), American trumpeter.

    🔸 Jean Starr (Jones) (circa 1900– ?), American trumpeter. Daughter of Daniel Williams. She is recorded on the album "Jazz Women: A Feminist Retrospective" on the song "Moonlight On Turham Bay" with L'Ana Hyams and other female performers. She was also recorded as part of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, a group she joined in 1940, including on the song "Tuxedo Junction." She also performed with the Jimmie Lunceford Band and played with the Benny Carter Orchestra. In her later years, she was part of Eddie Durham's All-Star Girl Orchestra. She led the Bronzeville socialite group the Royalites.

    "Then there was also Leonard Feather, the London-born jazz writer with a reputation for self-promotion who transplanted himself to the U.S. and appears with surprising frequency as pianist, composer and producer. In an action most unconventional for 1945 (and bound to attract media attention), he produced six tracks for Black & White with an all-female group called 'The Hip Chicks' comprising Jean Starr, trumpet; L'Ana Hyams, tenor and soprano saxophones; Marjorie Hyams, vibraphone; Vicki Zimmer, piano; Marion Gange, guitar; Cecilai Zirl, bass, Rose Gottesman, drums and vocalist Vivien Garry."

    🔸 Marion Gange (1912–2012), an American guitarist.

    🔸 Terry Pollard (1931–2009), American vibist and pianist.

    🔸 Lovie Austin (1887–1972), an American pianist in Chicago in the '20s around whom a whole school of male musicians flourished.

    🔸 International Sweethearts of Rhythm (1937–1949), an all‐woman big band.

    🔸 Una Mae Carlisle (1915–1956), an American singer and pianist who recorded with Fats Waller and whose accompanying group follows the patterns of Waller's sextet.

    🔸 Beryl Booker (1922–1978), an American pianist who is heard urging Miles Davis’s trumpet along on Tadd Dameron's (1917–1965) “Squirrel."

    🔸 Kathy Stobart (1925–2014), an English mostly tenor saxophonist.

    🔸 Jutta Hipp (1925–2003), a German pianist.


    FemaleTrombonistWaterRampPOJLogos.jpeg

    Jazz women in 21st Century[edit]

    Ingrid Jensen, Anat Cohen, Sherrie Maricle and the indomitable DIVA Jazz Orchestra, Geri Allen, Cindy Blackman, Tia Fuller, Lakecia Benjamin

    Kris Davis (b. 1980)
    (active 2001→present)

    🔸 Canadian jazz pianist and composer

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Kris Davis first album Lifespan LifespanAlbumCover.jpeg (2003)


    Esperanza Spalding[edit]

    Esperanza Spalding (b. 1984)
    (active 2015→present)

    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png bandleader on double bass
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png bass guitar
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png vocalist
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png composer
    ShinyRedReflectingSphereBullet19.png educator
    ShinyReflectingPurpleSphereBullet.png jazz
    ShinyReflectingPurpleSphereBullet.png jazz fusion
    ShinyReflectingPurpleSphereBullet.png bossa nova
    ShinyReflectingPurpleSphereBullet.png neo soul/progressive soul
    ShinyReflectingPurpleSphereBullet.png contemporary R & B (combines rhythm and blues with elements of pop, soul, funk, hip hop and electronic music)

    EsperanzaSpaldingWikiPhoto.jpeg EsperanzaSpaldingPhotoByWhitten SabbatiniforTheNewYorkTimes.jpeg


    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif unimpeachable claim to mainstream jazz legitimacy playing with Joe Lovano and Geri Allen.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif her first solo recordings deftly combined rich acoustic jazz playing with both Latin and funk elements.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded "Junjo" (2006) where she covered both Jimmy Rowles and Chick Corea, mostly adding wordless vocals to post-bop and Afro-Cuban mixes.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded "Esperanza" (2008) “where the track “Precious” opens with a killer hook of wordless soul-harmonizing worthy of Stevie Wonder, followed by a grooving ballad over a hip bass line and brilliant set of harmonies. Also, “I Know You Know” is a tricky jazz line that manages also to be a hip-shaker.[67]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif American President Barack Obama brought her in for a private concert at the White House.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif won the Grammy for Best New Artist (2011) over a field including Drake, Justin Bieber, and Mumford & Sons.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded "Chamber Music Society" (2010) both complex and funky making judicious use of a string trio with a jazz trio, including Latin grooves and significant improvisation.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif recorded the companion-piece, "Radio Music Society" (2012) including both Stevie Wonder and Wayne Shorter compositions producing richly layered jazz.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif in 2016 produced "Emily’s D+Evolution," focusing on the use of electric guitar and electric bass.


    Nubya Garcia[edit]

    A color photographic cutout of Nubya Garcia in right profile holding her head up with a colorful white dress and yellow and black sleeve. A color photographic cutout of Nubya Garcia in reversed right profile holding her head up with a colorful white dress and yellow and black sleeve.


    Nubya (pronounced nuh-BI-ya) Garcia
    (b. 1991)
    (active 2015→present)

    A black and white photograph headshot of Nubya Garcia looking straight at viewer wearing a large Afro haircut bent on left and right sides at center of her head. A colorized black and white photograph headshot of Nubya Garcia looking straight at viewer wearing a large Afro haircut bent on left and right sides at center of her head.
    (Black and white photo from The New York Times with colorized version on right)


    YellowButtonBullet18.png tenor saxophonist 🎷
    YellowButtonBullet18.png

    A framed composite of color photographic cutouts of ten different images of Nubya Garcia on a black background with a mauve internal border.
    (Photos include work of José Carlos, Merlijn Hoek, Mário Pires and The New York Times)

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif attended several prestigious jazz schools: the Royal Academy of Music, in London England (the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822), the Berklee College of Music (a private music college in Boston, Massachusetts and the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world especially known for the study of jazz and modern American music), and the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (a music and dance conservatoire based in London, England formed in 2005 as a merger of the two older institutions Trinity College of Music and Laban Dance Centre), earning a bachelor’s degree and awarded “a jazz instrumentalist with distinction.”[68]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif She is a member of the contemporary, mostly female, septet, Nerija.[68] Listen to short excerpts at Bandcamp.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif has toured extensively internationally, playing venues and festivals across Latin America, Asia, Europe, Australia, and the United States.[68]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif has a hit radio residency on NTS and also performs live sets throughout Europe.[68]

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif


    A black and white photographic cutout of identical Nubya Garcia's facing each other in mirror image with hoop earrings in profile with a thick single braid coming off the top of her head and hanging down onto her shoulder.

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif
    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Listen to her album "Source." The album cover "Source" by Nubya Garcia.

    The album covers of Nubya Garcia's recordings.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Read Abe Beeson, "The New Cool: Nubya Garcia puts the jazz back in modern jazz," KNKX Public Radio, published September 3, 2020. Accessed January 5, 2020.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Read "Nubya Garcia Live from the Barbican."


    Sarah Milligan[edit]

    Sarah Milligan (b. 1998)
    (active 2015→present)

    SarahMilliganHoldingSaxophoneR.jpeg
    Sarah Milligan (b. 1998), saxophonist

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Sarah Milligan Arts Wordpress
    YellowButtonBullet18.png Sarah Milligan Arts

    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Performed at the Next Generation Jazz Festival
    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington
    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif The Montreux Jazz Festival (Switzerland)
    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif North Sea Jazz Festival (Netherlands)
    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Shared stage at different times with Terrell Stafford, Cyrus Chestnut, Kenny Rampton, and Conrad Herwig
    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif spent the summer of 2018 interning with the Development Department at Ballet Austin
    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif served as Social Media Manager for the Jazz Outreach Initiative in 2019
    RotatingBlueColoredSphereWhiteBackground18.gif Hear her play "East of the Sun" and other tunes


    An elegantly dressed women on American 1920s languidly reading the Philosophy of Jazz newspaper with Art Kane's 1958 Esquire jazz photograph centered on front page with a saxophone playing parrot to her right.

    ARTEMIS[edit]

    ARTEMIS
    (active 2015→present)

    ArtemisGroupShot.jpeg
    (from l. to r.: bassist Noriko Ueda, tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, clarinetist Anat Cohen,
    pianist Renee Rosnes, drummer Allison Miller, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, and vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant)


    🔸 Artemis all female jazz supergroup signs with Blue Note Records in 2019.

    🔸 releases their first album ArtemisBlueNoteRecordCover2020.jpeg in 2020.

    ArtemisInPerformanceOnStage.jpeg
    (from l. to r.: pianist Renee Rosnes, bassist Noriko Ueda, vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana,
    drummer Allison Miller hidden behind to left of clarinetist Anat Cohen, and trumpeter Ingrid Jensen)

    KidGirlArcherPOJLogos.jpeg

    Musician's Biography Websites[edit]

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif See Wikipedia: American women jazz musicians

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif See Wikipedia: American women jazz singers

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif See Wikipedia: Women jazz musicians

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif See Wikipedia: Women jazz singers

    Rossano Sportiello

    Catherine Russell

    Niki Haris

    Cécile McLorin Salvant

    Veronica Swift jazz vocalist and composer

    Tomeka Reid cellist

    Yazz Ahmed flugelhornist and composer from Bahrain 🇧🇭 and London 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿.

    Ariadna Castellanos (Spain) pianist


    Check out their websites

    Click on picture or lighter blue hyperlinks for more information

    Picture

    Name
    Birth/Death

    Roles
    Years Active

    A color photograph of Helen Sung facing forward fronting the piano.

    Helen Sung
    (b. 1971)

    American 🇺🇸 jazz pianist and composer
    1997–present

    A colorized and enhanced photographic detail of Lorraine Geller's head in right profile while she sits on a piano bench with templeless glasses on her nose.

    Lorraine Geller
    (1928–1958)

    American 🇺🇸 Bop pianist
    1948–1958

    An enhanced color photograph of Geri Allen with dreadlocks in her 50's wearing a black dress sitting at a piano bench turned towards the camera.

    Geri Allen
    (1957–2017)

    American 🇺🇸 jazz pianist, composer, and educator
    1982–2017

    A color photograph headshot of Elaine Elias.

    Elaine Elias
    (b. 1960)

    Brazilian 🇧🇷 jazz pianist, singer, composer, arranger and producer
    1981–present

    A color photograph of Connie Han in fancy short black vinyl looking dress standing in front of a black piano.

    Connie Han
    (b. 1996)

    American 🇺🇸 jazz pianist, Steinway Artist, and Mack Avenue Records recording artist
    2016–present

    A black and white photograph of Renee Rosnes wearing a shawl.

    Renee Rosnes
    (b. 1962)

    Canadian 🇨🇦 jazz pianist, composer and arranger
    1985–present

    A color photograph of Connie Crothers with crossed arms and wearing a shoulderless yellow dress in front of a piano.

    Connie Crothers
    (1941–2016)

    American 🇺🇸 avant-garde & free jazz pianist, educator and composer
    1972–2016

    A color photograph of a laughing Judy Carmichael with curly hair.

    Judy Carmichael
    (b. 1957)

    American 🇺🇸 Ragtime, jazz, stride, and swing pianist and singer
    1960s–present

    A color photograph of Carla Bley at age eighty-two with a stern expression.

    (Photograph by Lauren Lancaster in The New Yorker 2018)

    Carla Bley
    (b. 1936)
    2015 NEA Jazz Master

    American 🇺🇸 jazz composer, arranger, bandleader, and keyboardist
    1960–present

    A color photograph of Joanne Brackeen.

    (Photo source)

    Joanne Brackeen
    (b. 1938)
    2018 NEA Jazz Master

    American 🇺🇸 jazz pianist, soloist, bandleader, and music educator
    1969–present

    A color photograph of Alice Coltrane.

    (Colorized Photo source from JM L)

    Alice Coltrane
    (1937–2007)

    A colored signature of Alice Coltrane's autograph.
    American 🇺🇸 jazz pianist, organist, harpist, singer, composer, swamini,
    wife of John Coltrane, and mother of Ravi Coltrane

    1962–2006

    A raspberry colored framing of the same photo in four quadrants rotated by 90° each quadrant of Champian Fulton sitting at piano with her reflection seen in the underside of the piano lid producing a mild kaleidoscopic image.

    Champian Fulton
    (b. 1985)

    American 🇺🇸 jazz singer and pianist
    2000–present

    A color photographic diptych of two headshots of Carmen Staaf.

    Carmen Staaf
    (b. 1981)

     

    American 🇺🇸 pianist, accordionist, educator
    2001–present

    (taught at Berklee College of Music 2005–2009), and winner of the Mary Lou Williams Piano Competition (2009).

    CircleStarBullet.png See her discography at Discogs

    An enhanced and colorized photograph of Sue Richardson holding a trumpet towards her right side.

    Sue Richardson
    (b. 1968)

    English 🇬🇧 singer, trumpet player, and composer
    1983–present


    “She plays swinging jazz trumpet, with excellent technique and a remarkable command of a variety of styles. She sings with a musician's phrasing and her songs come with proper tunes and grown-up harmonies attached—a rarity in itself.” — The Guardian


    CircleStarBullet.png See her albums

    A color photograph of Sheryl Bailey playing her white guitar.

    Sheryl Bailey
    (b. 1966)

     

    American 🇺🇸 jazz/Bebop guitarist and music educator at Berklee College of Music
    1995–present


    CircleStarBullet.png "Rising Star" on the guitar in DownBeat's Critic's Poll for the inclusive years 2013–2019

    A color photograph of Melissa Aldana holding her tenor saxophone with a light blue background in 2021.
    Melissa Aldana in 2021

    Melissa Aldana
    (b. 1988)

     

    Chilean 🇨🇱 tenor saxophonist and studio teacher at New England Conservatory’s Jazz Studies Department
    2003–present


    A color composite of five color photographs of Melissa Aldana holding her saxophone.

    RedPointingRightArrow.png

    “Aldana was one of the founding members of ARTEMIS, the all-star collective that released their self-titled debut on Blue Note in 2020. The album featured Aldana’s composition "Frida," inspired by and dedicated to Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.

    RedPointingRightArrow.png

    Kahlo was also the subject of Aldana’s celebrated 2019 album "Visions" (Motéma), earning her first-ever GRAMMY nomination for Best Improvised Jazz Solo, an acknowledgment of her impressive tenor solo on her composition "Elsewhere." In naming "Visions" among the best albums of 2019 for NPR Music, critic Nate Chinen wrote that Aldana “has the elusive ability to balance technical achievement against a rich emotional palette.”

    RedPointingRightArrow.png

    Aldana was born in Santiago, Chile, and grew up in a musical family. Both her father and grandfather were saxophonists, and she took up the instrument at age six under her father Marcos’s tutelage. Aldana began on alto, influenced by artists such as Charlie Parker and Cannonball Adderley, but switched to tenor upon first hearing the music of Sonny Rollins, who would become a hero and mentor. She performed in Santiago jazz clubs in her early teens and was invited by pianist Danilo Pérez to play at the Panama Jazz Festival in 2005.

    RedPointingRightArrow.png

    Aldana moved to the U.S. to attend the Berklee College of Music, and the year after graduating she released her first album "Free Fall" on Greg Osby’s Inner Circle label in 2010, followed by "Second Cycle" in 2012. In 2013, at 24, she became the first female instrumentalist and the first South American musician to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, in which her father had been a semi-finalist in 1991. After her win, she released her third album "Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio" (Concord). Aldana is also an in-demand clinician and educator and has recently (2021) been appointed to the faculty of the New England Conservatory’s Jazz Studies Department.”[69]

    Won DownBeat's Rising Star Artist of the Year award for 2022.

    A color photograph of Sylvia Cuenca playing her drums.

    Sylvia Cuenca
    (b. 1966)

    American 🇺🇸 jazz drummer and educator
    1986–present

    An enhanced  color photograph of Judy Bailey wearing a red blazer at a piano with arms extended.  

    Judy Bailey
    (b. 1935)

    New Zealand 🇳🇿 (lived in Australia 🇦🇺 since 1960) pianist, composer, soloist, bandleader, arranger, and educator at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music
    1960–2020



    A 3D thin black frame surrounding a composite of eight enhanced color photographs of Judy Bailey at different points in her sixty year career.

    CircleStarBullet.png Read Eric Meyer's Review of "Another Journey: Music for Symphony and Jazz Orchestras" by Judy Bailey. Live recordings."

    An enhanced color photograph of a big smiling Satoko Fujii wearing a blue shirt with brown circular graphics all over it.

    Satoko Fujii
    (b. 1958)

     

    Japanese pianist
    (works in Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪 and Japan 🇯🇵)
    combines avant-garde jazz, contemporary classical music, rock, and traditional Japanese music
    1978–present

    Recognized by The 2015 el Intrus International Critics Poll as one of the composers of the year.



    A color photograph of the magazine cover of Shinjuku Pitt Inn Monthly Live Schedule for January 2021 with Natsuki Tamura and Satoko Fujii prominently on the cover.

    An innovative bandleader and soloist, as well as a prolific recording artist in ensembles ranging from duos to big bands on over 100 CDs as leader or co-leader.



    An enhanced color photograph of Satoko Fujii  wearing a silky blue shirt with brown designs on it reaching into her piano viewed from inside of the piano.

    CircleStarBullet.png Read a review of "Habana's Dream."

    CircleStarBullet.png Read reviews of her albums at AllAboutJazz.com.

    CircleStarBullet.png Listen to two tracks of sound collages from fragments of Fujii's piano solos, recorded, edited, and mixed by herself.

    CircleStarBullet.png Read her biography and album reviews (in Spanish) at El Intruso The logo for El Intruso. You can translate the Spanish to English (or other languages) using Google translate.

    An enhanced and multiply colorized and blended photographs into one of English trumpeter Lily Carassik wearing a white t-shirt and holding her trumpet below her chest looking to viewer's right.

    Lily Carassik
    (b. 1995)

     

    English 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 trumpeter and composer
    (based in London, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿)
    travelled around the world, performing with club acts, jazz bands and pop groups.
    2016–present


    An enhanced color composite of eight photographic cutouts of Lily Carassik playing or holding her trumpet with the large leftmost head being animated.


    RedPointingRightArrow.png “Graduated with a degree in Jazz from Trinity Laban conservatoire in Greenwich, England in 2016.”

    RedPointingRightArrow.png “In 2018, she performed with Camilla Cabello at Wembley stadium. After, she was given the opportunity to join the Miami based cabaret show, Sensatia, created by the American Cirque Nouvea company, Quixotic. She went on to stay and work with the company for several months in Kansas City performing at Boulevadia festival, various venues across the city and even at the Arise festival in Colorado.”

    RedPointingRightArrow.png “In 2019, she joined George Ezra’s band for his sold out UK and European arena tour, his performance at The Brits and his headline slots at the Isle of Wight, Latitude Festival and Glastonbury. In May, 2019, she wrote and released a song to raise awareness for mental health titled "What If."”[70]

    CircleStarBullet.png Listen to her "About The Players" podcast interviewed by Kojo Samuel.

    A color photograph of a Joyce Cooling holding the neck of her upright guitar.

    Joyce Cooling
    (b. 1963)

     

    American jazz guitarist
    1989–present



    A detail of a color photograph of Trish Clowes playing her tenor saxophone in profile turned to viewer's right.
    (Detail of photo by Bill Shakespeare)

    An enhanced color photograph of a squatting Trish Clowes holding her tenor saxophone in front of her.

    Trish Clowes
    (pronounced "Clues")
    (b. 1984)

     

    British saxophonist, composer, educator, and musician on tenor and soprano saxophone. Clowes has played music in these genres: avant-garde, post-bop, & modern jazz, classical, and classical crossover.
    2010–present


    RedPointingRightArrow.png Clowes moved to London in 2003 to study at the Royal Academy of Music and became an associate of the Royal Academy of Music in 2013. From 2012 to 2014, Clowes worked on BBC Radio 3 New Generation program and was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to write for the BBC Concert Orchestra, which earned her a BBC British Composer Award (2015).

    RedPointingRightArrow.png Clowes received her Ph.D. in musical composition at Birmingham City University (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire) in 2020. Her research project focused on the activities of her music festival Emulsion. She researched collective practice and audience interaction.

    RedPointingRightArrow.png Clowes regularly teaches at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.

    RedPointingRightArrow.png Since the 2010s, Clowes has also composed for ensembles such as the London Sinfonietta. In addition, after her debut album Tangent (2010), among others with Chris Montague, Calum Gourlay, James Maddren, she presented a series of albums under her own name, which were released by the London jazz independent label Basho Records until 2019.

    RedPointingRightArrow.png Clowe's quartet My Iris, which has been playing in an unchanged line-up since the album of the same name from 2016, includes guitarist Montague and drummer Madden with pianist and Hammond organist Ross Stanley.

    RedPointingRightArrow.png Andy Robson described in the jazz magazine Jazzwise "A View With a Room," the first album for the US label Greenleaf Music 2022 as "without sentimentality, but with much craft and no little passion" during the difficult Covid-19's pandemic.

    RedPointingRightArrow.png John Fordham wrote in The Guardian that "A View with a Room" (2022) is "a dreamy mixture of structure and eclectic improvisation." The producer was jazz musician and trumpeter Dave Douglas, who owns the Greenleaf Independent label together with Mike Friedman.

    A chart of Trish Clowes recordings and compositions from AllMusic.com.

    CircleStarBullet.png Read AllMusic.com's Trish Clowes's biography.

    CircleStarBullet.png See and hear Trish Clowes performing with her band My Iris at Ronnie Scott's jazz club in 2022.


    A framed colorful graphic of a 17th century astrological circular diagram with PoJ.fm logos.

    Internet & Bibliographic Resources on Women in Jazz[edit]

    NOTE: The information below varies in formatting and does not usually conform to standard bibliographic formatting for ease of reading.


    Eight Rising Women Instrumentalists from 2016[edit]

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Rusty Aceves, "Eight Rising Women Instrumentalists," "On the Corner," SFJazz.org, June 1, 2017, (originally posted March 1, 2016). Accessed July 30, 2022. The eight instrumentalists include:

     

    • Bria Skonberg (b. 1984) — Award-winning Canadian jazz trumpeter and vocalist, winner of the New York Bistro Award for Outstanding Jazz Artist (2014) as well as a Swing! Award given by Jazz at Lincoln Center (2015). In 2013 she earned a Jazz Journalists' Association nomination for “Up and Coming Jazz Artist of The Year” and has been included in DownBeat Magazine’s Rising Star Critics‘ Poll 2013 & 2014. Skonberg swept the 2014 Hot House Jazz Magazine Awards in all categories nominated: Best Jazz Artist, Best Trumpet, Best Female Vocalist and Best Group for the Bria Skonberg Quartet. As a bandleader and guest artist, she has performed at over fifty jazz festivals in North America, Europe, China and Japan and in New York City since 2010 has headlined at Symphony Space, Birdland, The Iridium, Dizzy's Cafe, and Cafe Carlyle.
    Five transparent photographic cutouts of Bria Skonberg enhanced in a composite.
    (Photo in upper left by Thomas Concordia)



     

    • Melissa Aldana (b. 1988) — Chilean tenor saxophonist and winner of the 2013 Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition and Berklee College of Music Presidential scholar graduate who studied with alto saxophonist Greg Osby (b. 1960) and tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano (b. 1952).
    An enhanced composite of six transparent photographic cutouts (with some colorized) of Melissa Aldana holding or playing her saxophone with most shots taken in 2015.
    (Most photos taken in 2015)
    Listen to an interview of Melissa Aldana in 2022.



     

    • Natalie Cressman (b. 1992) — American jazz trombonist and vocalist who has worked with Phish leader Trey Anastasio (b. 1964) as well as with Nicholas Payton (b. 1973), Wycliffe Gordon (b. 1967), Pete Escovedo’s (b. 1935) Latin Jazz Orchestra, American 🇺🇸 musician and world music giant Jai Uttal (b. 1951), and multi-instrumentalist Peter Apfelbaum (b. 1960).
    A transparent color photographic cutout of Natalie Cressman holding her trombone vertical in her left hand.


     

    • Elena Ayodele Pinderhughes (b. 1995) — Californian flutist, songwriter, and singer who has performed with bassist Esperanza Spalding (b. 1984), saxophonist Joshua Redman (b. 1969), and trumpeter Christian Scott (b. 1983).
    A transparent mirrored dyptich of a black and white photographic cutout of Elena Pinderhughes playing her flute with the crossed flutes holding a PoJ.fm logo resting between them.
    (Click on photo for source than move to number twenty out of forty-four)
    • Watch her solo improvisation immediately following Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah's (b. 1983) opening for his NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert, October 9, 2015.


     

    A colorized photo of saxophonist Grace Kelly crouched down facing her left blowing hard on her saxophone with energy swirling graphic overlays around her.
    (Photo taken March 2, 2013 in Bath, Maine
    by Paul VanDerWerf using Photoshop's Artistry 4: Graphic and Grunge Actions then colorized by PoJ.fm)


    • Grace Kelly (b. 1992) — American musician, singer, entertainer, songwriter, arranger, and primarily alto saxophonist. A seven-time winner of the DownBeat Critics Poll who plays on the house band led by Jon Batiste (b. 1986) for "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."


    Born Grace Chung, Kelly was named one of Glamour magazine's Top 10 College Women in 2011. In 2014, Kelly recorded her EP, "Working For The Dreamers." She was featured in the December 2015 issue of Vanity Fair as a notable millennial in the jazz world. In her eighth year in a row being named to the Downbeat Critics Poll, Kelly won the 2016 64th Annual Downbeat Critics Poll "Rising Star Alto Saxophone." Grace's 10th album release as a leader, "Trying To Figure It Out" (2016 PAZZ), was voted the number-two Jazz Album of the Year in the 2016 DownBeat readers' poll.


    Kelly was mentored by saxophone legend Lee Konitz (1927–2020) and has performed with Wynton Marsalis (b. 1961) as well as with saxophonist Phil Woods (1931–2015).


    Watch her killer New Orleans inspired danceable tune "Fish & Chips" with baritone saxophonist Leo P. (born 1991).



     

    • Brandee Younger (b. 1983) — American composer, educator, and harpist in jazz, classical, and pop active since 2006.
    A transparent mirrored dyptich of a black and white photographic cutout of Brandee Younger playing her harp with a PoJ.fm logo at center bottom of harps turned inward.

    While still a twenty-three year old NYU graduate student, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane recruited her to play for his mother's memorial service, harpist Alice Coltrane (1937–2007). Younger studied with alto saxophonist Jackie McLean (1931–2006) and has performed with Jack DeJohnette (b. 1950), Charlie Haden (1937–2014), Lauryn Hill (b. 1975), and Common (b. 1972).


    A mirrored dyptich of transparent color photographs of Brandee Younger wearing a colorful flowered print dress standing on either side of her photographically merged overlapping harps with a PoJ.fm logo in center if merged harps.


     

    • Hailey Niswanger (b. 1990) — American composer and saxophonist who has toured with Esperanza Spalding’s (b. 1984) Radio Music Society and performed with Ralph Peterson Jr. (1962–2021), The Soul Rebels, and Terri Lyne Carrington’s (b. 1965) Mosaic Project. Niswanger recorded with the Wolff & Clark Expedition in 2015 led by pianist Michael Wolff (b. 1952) and drummer Mike Clark (b. 1946).
    Five transparent color photographic cutouts of Hailey Niswanger.
    (Photo on far right by Alan Nahigian)

     


    A colorized photograph of Linda May Han Oh in right profile turning towards her left playing her electric bass in Oslo, Norway in 2019.
    (Victoria Theater on October 23, 2019 in Oslo, Norway 🇳🇴 colorized)


    • Linda May Han Oh (b. 1984) — Australian jazz bassist and composer who DownBeat magazine named #1 Acoustic Bass Rising Star (2010). She has recorded and performed with Lee Konitz (1927–2020), Kenny Barron (b. 1943), Geri Allen (1957–2017), Terri Lyne Carrington (b. 1965), Joe Lovano (b. 1952), and Steve Coleman (b. 1956). Oh is a member of Cuban pianist Fabian Almazan’s (b. 1984) trio with drummer Henry Cole (b. 1979).


     .
    (All photos in composite individually taken by Peter Tea on June 6 & 7, 2011 while on tour in Australia 🇦🇺 and New Zealand 🇳🇿.)



    Ten Rising Women Instrumentalists from 2018[edit]

     

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Rusty Aceves, "Ten Rising Women Instrumentalists You Should Know," "On the Corner," SFJazz.org, March 7, 2018. Accessed July 30, 2022. The ten instrumentalists include:

    🔆 Mary Halvorson (b. 1980) American jazz guitarist who has led over twenty albums and worked with Anthony Braxton, Yo La Tengo, and a trio project with fellow visionary guitarists Elliott Sharp and Marc Ribot.


    🔆 Yissy García (b. 1987) — Cuban-born drummer, composer and Afro-Cuban jazz and rock stylist who has played with Esperanza Spalding, Roy Hargrove, and Dave Matthews. Listen to her band Bandancha play three songs: "Última Noticia," "Universo," and "Te cogió lo que anda" from June 15, 2018.


    🔆 Sasha Berliner(b. 1998) American jazz vibraphonist, composer, and social activist. — Berliner is a San Francisco native who began on drums at eight and attended the Oakland School for the Arts before becoming a two-year member of the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars. Berliner was a student of Stefon Harris and Matt Wilson at the New School in New York. She has worked with Beck, Vijay Iyer, Terri Lyne Carrington, Ravi Coltrane, and Jane Ira Bloom, and released her full-length debut album, "Azalea," in 2018.


    🔆 Yazz Ahmed (b. 1983) British-Bahraini trumpeter — Ahmed has collaborated with artists including Radiohead and Lee “Scratch” Perry, and has created a personal approach born of her Middle Eastern roots and British upbringing described as “psychedelic Arabic jazz.” Originally inspired by her jazz musician grandfather, she has become a major voice in the exploding London jazz scene that includes Shabaka Hutchings, Sons of Kemet, and Yussef Kamaal, releasing her second album, La Saboteuse.


    🔆 Camille Thurman (b. 1986) American jazz saxophonist and vocalist — Already acclaimed by DownBeat as a “rising star,” Thurman received the Lincoln Center Award for Outstanding Young Artists and was a two-time winner of the ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Award. She has performed alongside Dianne Reeves, Wynton Marsalis & the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Erykah Badu, and Roy Haynes. She has recorded four albums including a recent live session featuring Mark Whitfield, Ben Allison, and Billy Drummond.


    🔆 Nubya Garcia (b. 1991) British jazz tenor saxophonist — Among the vanguard of the British scene, London-based Garcia brings her Caribbean heritage into an innovative approach, mixing spiritual, afro-futurist jazz with hip-hop rhythms and global influences. She received the Steve Reid InNOVAtion Award and played on BBC DJ Gilles Peterson’s new Brownswood Recordings compilation "We Out Here." She released her EP "When We Are" in March 2018.


    🔆 Allison Au (b. 1985) Canadian jazz alto saxophonist, flautist, and composer/arranger out of Toronto — Au has established herself as a significant instrumentalist, composer, and arranger who has released two self-produced albums of original material that received two Juno Award nominations and a Best Jazz Album of the Year win for her 2016 album "Forest Grove." Her longstanding quartet won the 2017 Montreal Jazz Festival TD Grand Prix de Jazz and was a 2017 finalist for the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Jazz Artist Award. She won the Duke Ellington Scholarship for Outstanding Achievement and the Ron Collier Memorial Scholarship for Outstanding Achievement in Arranging. As an arranger, she has covered many genres, including jazz, Latin jazz, Salsa, Cumbia, Merengue, and contemporary improvisational music in instrumentation formats ranging from big band ensembles to small jazz combos or even string ensembles.


    🔆 Jaimie Branch (b. 1983) American jazz trumpeter, composer, and recording engineer working in free jazz and improvised music based in Brooklyn, New York. — Branch was listed by Rolling Stone’s’ June 2017 list of “Ten New Artists You Need to Know.” Branch uses free improvisation and cutting edge experimentation working with bass legend William Parker and saxophonist Ken Vandermark, as well as with pop acts Arcade Fire and TV on the Radio. Her debut album "Fly or Die" with cellist Tomeka Reid and drummer Chad Taylor was released in 2017.


    🔆 Tomeka Reid (b. 1977) American jazz cellist — Chicago based Reid is a fiercely creative improvisor and composer who has played with Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, Tyler Ho Bynum, Nicole Mitchell, George Lewis and Myra Melford. Reid often works with Chicago’s legendary AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) while also playing in a quartet with guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Jason Roebke, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara.


    🔆 Sharel Cassity (prounced "Sha-Relle") (b. 1978) American jazz saxophonist, multi-reedist, composer, recording artist, bandleader, and educator. — Chicago based Cassity graduated from Julliard in 2007. She has been on DownBeat’s Critics Poll for Rising Star Saxophonist for a decade. Often leading a quartet, she has recorded five albums as a leader, including the recent two"Elektra" and "Evolve." The saxophonist has played with Roy Hargrove, Cyrus Chestnut, Aretha Franklin, Vanessa Williams, K.D. Lang, Fantasia, Trisha Yearwood, Seth MacFarland (Family Guy), Ruben Blades, DJ Logic, Natalie Merchant (on her recording "Paradise is Here"), Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Christian McBride, and Natalie Cole. Sharel was lead alto in the Diva Jazz Orchestra from 2007–2014 and performed in Wynton Marsalis's Broadway musical "After Midnight." She is a regular member of the Dizzy Gillespie Latin Experience, Nicholas Payton TSO, Cyrus Chestnut Brubeck Quartet, and the Jimmy Heath Big Band. She has toured twenty-four countries performing at leading venues like the Newport Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival & the North Sea Jazz Festival.

    Sharel appears in publications "I Walked with Giants" by Jimmy Heath, "AM Jazz: Three Generations Under the Lens" by Adrianna Mateo and "Freedom of Expression: Interviews with Women in Jazz" by Chris Becker.

    An alumni of IAJE Sisters in Jazz, Betty Carter's Jazz Ahead, and the Ravinia Summer Residency, Sharel has received DownBeat Student Music Awards for Best Jazz soloist, Composition, and Ensemble.

    As classical pianist, Sharel placed third in the Disney International Piano Concerto Competition at the age of 10, among many other collegiate and state piano competitions. An accomplished classical saxophonist, Sharel was offered a full scholarship to North Texas State University for classical saxophone.

    Currently, Cassity has a temporary full-time position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as Professor of Saxophone for the Fall 2019 semester. Additionally, she has three adjunct positions in the Chicago area at Elgin Community College, Columbia College, and DePaul University. Between 2016–17 Sharel taught internationally as the Woodwind Professor at Qatar Music Academy in Doha, Qatar.



    Women in Jazz and Beyond in the 21st Century[edit]

     
    A thick upswept tail blue bent arrow bullet point. Erica von Kleist (b. 1982) — flutist, saxophonist, educator, composer, and bandleader. Von Kleist went to the Manhattan School of Music, then Juilliard, graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in jazz in 2004. She toured with the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and appeared on two of their albums nominated for Grammy Awards. She has performed or recorded with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, Chris Potter, Bebo Valdez, Cachao, Celia Cruz, Kristin Chenoweth, and Seth MacFarlane. Her debut album was "Project E" (2005), followed by "Erica von Kleist and No Exceptions" (2010), then "Alpine Clarity" (2014). She has been voted many times as a “Rising Star” and “Critic’s Pick” in DownBeat magazine.

    An enhanced color photograph of Erica von Kleist wearing black mesh and a spider ring on left hand while holding her saxophone in her lap looking directly into camera.


    A thick upswept tail blue bent arrow bullet point. Yazz Ahmed (b. 1983) a British-Bahraini trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer whose music mixes Arabic and Western influences. She has worked with Toshiko Akiyoshi, Rufus Reid, John Zorn, Ash Walker, the London Jazz Orchestra, and has recorded and performed with Radiohead, Lee Perry, ABC, Swing Out Sister, Joan as Police Woman, Tarek Yamani and Amel Zen, and the band These New Puritans. Her albums include "Finding My Way Home" (Suntara, 2011), "La Saboteuse" (2015) and "Polyhymnia." See her discography.

    A thick upswept tail blue bent arrow bullet point. Sheila Maurice-Grey (b. 1991) — British trumpeter, vocalist, and visual artist. Also known as Ms. Maurice. Bandleader of KOKOROKO and plays with jazz septet Nérija, who were nominated for Jazz Fm Breakthrough Act 2016 and Parliamentary Jazz Newcomer of Year 2017 winner. She has performed with the likes of SOLANGE, KANO on the ‘Jool’s Holland Show’ and ‘The Mercury Prize 2016,’ and features on Little SIMZ’s album ‘Stillness in Wonderland.’

    A thick upswept tail blue bent arrow bullet point. Nigerian saxophonist based in Britain Camilla George (b. 1983).

    A thick upswept tail blue bent arrow bullet point. British fusion and jazz guitarist Shirley Tetteh (b. 1990).

    A thick upswept tail blue bent arrow bullet point. British pianist Sarah Tandy. yeah.

    A thick upswept tail blue bent arrow bullet point. Toshio Matsuura Group.

    A thick upswept tail blue bent arrow bullet point. Sarah Wilson (b. 1968) — American trumpeter, vocalist, and composer whose music uses avant pop, Afro-Latin grooves, indie rock and post-bop. Wilson’s compositions incorporate influences from theater, jazz, dance, and film. Her third album released in 2021 was "Kaleidoscope" (Brass Tonic Records) A color photograph of the album cover for Sarah Wilson's third album "Kaleidoscope." Earlier albums include "Music for an Imaginary Play" (2006) A color photograph of the album cover for Sarah Wilson's "Music for an Imaginary Play." and "Trapeze Project" (2010) A color photograph of the album cover for Sarah Wilson's "Trapeze Project."


    A thick upswept tail blue bent arrow bullet point. Lis Wessberg (b. 1967) — Danish trombonist with thirty year career as sidewoman on over forty albums.
    Three enhanced color photographic cutouts of Lis Wessberg with her trombone.


    — See and hear her official video for the first track titled "The Strip" off of her debut release in 2021 Yellow Map.

    The album cover for "Yellow Map" by Danish trombonist Lis Wessberg..


    — See and hear an eight minute live version of "The Strip."



    Women in Jazz Internet Resources[edit]

    Popular websites that feature women jazz musicians and their information:

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Jazz Women Advocates The logo for Jazz Women Advocates.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png YouTube's Jazz Women videos The logo associated with Youtube's "Jazz Women Videos."

    YellowButtonBullet18.png International Women in Jazz The logo for the organization International Women in Jazz.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Women in Jazz South Florida The logo of the organization Women In Jazz South Florida. started in 2007.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Jazz at Lincoln Center (http://www.jazz.org/category/music/women-in-jazz/)

    YellowButtonBullet18.png The Jazz Gallery (http://www.jazzgallery.org/category/women-in-jazz/)

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Jazz Services (http://jazzservices.org.uk/women-in-jazz-2/)

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Jazz Society of Oregon (http://jazzsocietyoforegon.org/women-in-jazz/)


    YellowButtonBullet18.png
    A color photograph of Dizzy Gillespie on left with Laurie Frink on right in her twenties both playing trumpet.
              (Dizzy Gillespie and Laurie Frink)
    A color photograph of Laurie Frink in her fifties. Laurie Frink (1951–2013) American jazz trumpeter, jazz educator, and counselor.


    YellowButtonBullet18.png German born pianist Dr. Monika Herzig (b. 1964), "Equal Access: Women in jazz come together, Allegro, Volume 122, No. 1, January, 2022. Accessed January 4, 2022.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Kai EL' Zabar (Executive Director of the eta Creative Arts Foundation in Chicago, IL as of July 2019), "Eleven Jazzy Divas Celebrate Women's History Month," The Chicago Defender, March 9, 2016. The featured vocalists include Joan Collaso, Bobbi Wilsyn, Tecora Rogers, Yvonne Gage, Maggie Brown, Julia Huff, Margaret Murphy-Webb, Lynne Jordan, Frieda Lee, Greta Pope, and Felena Bunn singing the music of Chaka Khan, Nancy WIlson, Ella Fitzgerald, Dianne Reeves, Phyllis Hymen, Abbie Lincoln, Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt and more.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Giovanni Russonello, "10 Women in Jazz Who Never Got Their Due," New York Times, published April 22, 2020, updated May 9, 2020.
    The ten women list includes:

    1. Lovie Austin, pianist (1887–1972)
    2. Lil Hardin Armstrong, pianist (1898–1971)
    3. Valaida Snow, trumpeter (1904–1956)
    4. Peggy Gilbert, saxophonist (1905–2007)
    5. Una Mae Carlisle, pianist (1915–1956)
    6. Ginger Smock, violinist (1920–1995)
    7. Dorothy Donegan, pianist (1922–1998)
    8. Jutta Hipp, pianist (1925–2003)
    9. Clora Bryant, trumpeter (1927–2019)
    10. Bertha Hope-Booker, pianist (1936– ) The album cover for "Elmo's Fire" by Bertha Hope-Booker wearing an open yellow shirt displaying her head and shoulders turning slightly to her right on a black background.
    YellowButtonBullet18.png "Women In Jazz Interview" WomenInJazzLogo.jpeg by Mike Flynn at Jazzwise.com webzine, February 17, 2020.
    LouisePaleyNinaFineHeadshots.jpeg
    (The founders of Women in Jazz:
    Nina Fine and Louise "Lou" Paley)
    Louise "Lou" Paley and Nina Fine are addressing the gender imbalance in jazz in the United Kingdom in practical and positive ways.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Cecilia Björck and Åsa Bergman, "Making Women in Jazz Visible: Negotiating Discourses of Unity and Diversity in Sweden and the US," IASPM Journal, Vol 8, No 1 (2018).

    Abstract: “The aim of this article is to examine responses to a project that aspires to further gender-equal jazz scenes in Sweden and the US. The project brought together actors at various levels of the industry: cultural agencies, commercial organizers, activists, and artists. Our analysis—with special focus on resistance-voiced—is based on observations, interviews with organizers, and a documentary about the project. The project’s central ambition was to make women in jazz visible in order to change a structural imbalance where men still take up most of the space on stage. This ambition was, however, complicated as different actors resisted a female–male binary, and thus the very idea of “women in jazz.” The resistance was played out through gender equality discourses of either unity or diversity, varying in relation to national context and generation. The article also discusses visibility as a central but also problematic aspect for gender equality efforts in music.”[71] (bold and bold italic not in original)

    YellowButtonBullet18.png By 1999, little had changed in mainstream jazz historiography as evidenced by the continued absence of many prominent jazzwomen from the jazz sections of the Reader’s Guide to Music History, Theory, and Criticism (1999) edited by Jeremy Steib.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Linda Dahl. Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen. New York: Limelight Editions, 1989. In addition to an impressive collection of biographical information and an extensive discography, Dahl includes chapters such as “Equal time: Beyond the Fraternity, Toward Community” and “Building a Support System,” which further contextualize female participation and give voice to a budding movement toward the normalization of gender in jazz.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Handy, D. Antoinette. Black Women in American Bands and Orchestras, Second Edition. Lantham, Mass. and Kent: Scarecrow Press, 1998.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Sally Placksin. American Women in Jazz: 1900 to the Present, Their Words, Lives, and Music. New York: Wideview Books, 1982. A well-researched collection profiling over sixty jazzwomen.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Susan Cavin, “Missing Women: On the Voodoo Trail to Jazz,” Journal of Jazz, Studies Vol. 3, no. 1, Fall 1975, 4–27.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, The dark blue cover of the book "Blues Legacies and Black Feminism" by Angela Y. Davis. first Vintage Books edition, February 1999. Published in the United Slates by Vintage Books, a division of Random Home, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1998.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Jeffrey Taylor, “With Lovie and Lil: Rediscovering Two Chicago Pianists of the 1920s” (conference paper), Society for Music Theory, Annual Meeting, Columbus, OH, November 1, 2002. Reprinted in Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies, Edited by Nichole T. Rustin & Sherrie Tucker, Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Charles Chamberlain. “The Goodson Sisters: Women Pianists and the Function of Gender in the Jazz Age.” The Jazz Archivist, vol. XV (2001), 1–9.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png "The Girls in the Band" Female Jazz Instrumentalists and their websites

    YellowButtonBullet18.png ArtVilla.com's Women Jazz Musicians Instrumentalists and Vocalists

    YellowButtonBullet18.png "A DIY Guide to the History of Women in Jazz" by Laura Pelligrinelli at NPR'S A BLOG SUPREME, May 10, 2013.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png "Ireland’s jazz scene continued to grow in strength and diversity in 2019: Smaller regional festivals were major successes while a number of important projects were led by Irish and Irish-based women," The Irish Times News, Saturday, Dec 7, 2019.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Jazz, Gender, Authenticity, Proceedings of the 10th Nordic Jazz Research Conference Stockholm August 30–31 2012, Alf Arvidsson, editor, 2014. The articles published here are the authors’s revised versions of the presentations at the 10th Nordic Jazz Conference: Gender and Notions of Authenticity in Jazz, Stockholm, August 30–31, 2012. ISBN: 978–91–979205–3–7. ISSN: 0281–5567.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Lamoreaux, Emma. "Women in Jazz 1920's–1950. " In "History of American Music," Term Paper #1, February 22, 2015. Also available at "Women in Jazz 1920's–1950."

    YellowButtonBullet18.png "Polyrhythms And Improvization: Lessons For Women's History," Elsa Barkley Brown, History Workshop 31 (1991), 85–90. America: History and Life with Full Text.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png "Sound Recordings Reviews," Cheryl L. Keyes (Professor in Department of African American Studies at UCLA and Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Ethnomusicology), Journal Of American Folklore, 105.415 (1992), 73.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png "Beyond Beethoven And The Boyz: Women's Music In Relation To History And Culture," Britain Scott and Christiane Harrassowitz, Music Educators Journal, 90.4 (2004), 50.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png "Telling Performances: Jazz History Remembered And Remade By The Women In The Band," Sherrie Tucker, The Oral History Review, Volume 26, Issue 1, Winter-Spring 1999, 67–84. http://doi.org/10.1093/ohr/26.1.67

    YellowButtonBullet18.png "Black Women Working Together: Jazz, Gender, and the Politics of Validation," Tammy L. Kernodle, Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring), 27–55.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Rosetta Reitz (1924–2008) obituary written by Douglas Martin, "Rosetta Reitz, Champion of Jazz Women, Dies at 84, NY Times, November 14, 2008.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png "Extended Abstract: Jazz and Gender—the impact of gender in jazz production and education," Beatriz Nunes.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Wikipedia: All-female band/The 1920s–1950s

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Leslie Gourse, "Madame Jazz: Contemporary Women Instrumentalists. The book cover for Madame Jazz: Contemporary Women Innstrumentalists with a closeup of the head of a woman in sunglasses holding a saxophone with her right hand inside the mouth of the horn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Leslie Gourse published Madame Jazz “the most comprehensive list ever assembled of women currently playing instruments professionally.” Gourse provides a balanced look at the bright future of female instrumentalists with an acknowledgment of the reality that chauvinism is (and was) alive and well.
    “Madame Jazz is a fascinating invitation to the inside world of women in jazz. Ranging primarily from the late 1970s to today's vanguard of performance jazz in New York City and on the West Coast, it chronicles a crucial time of transition as women make the leap from novelty acts regarded as second class citizens to sought-out professionals admired and hired for their consummate musicianship. Author Leslie Gourse surveys the scene in the jazz clubs, the concert halls, the festivals, and the recording studios from the musicians' point of view. She finds exciting progress on all fronts, but also lingering discrimination. The growing success of women instrumentalists has been a long time in coming, she writes. Long after women became accepted as writers and, to a lesser extent, as visual artists, women in music—classical, pop, or jazz—faced the nearly insuperable barrier of chauvinism and the still insidious force of tradition and habit that keeps most men performing with the musicians they have always worked with, other men.”

     
    SaxAppealBookCover.jpeg YellowButtonBullet18.png See and hear Ivy Benson and her all-girl band performing "Lover" written by Rodgers & Hart and recorded in Europe in 1949. Ivy Benson (1913–1993) was an English musician and bandleader leading an all-female swing band that rose to fame in the 1940s and often headlined at variety theatres and topping the bill at the London Palladium. They became the BBC's resident house band.
    “Ivy Benson was born to be a musician. A good pianist by the age of ten, she was influenced by the music of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and other jazz legends to become a professional instrumentalist—and at age fifteen, having taught herself to play the clarinet and saxophone, Benson joined an all-girl band in Yorkshire, England. Sax Appeal chronicles Benson’s life—beginning with her childhood of relative poverty, exploring her time as a teenage musician playing in the seedy clubs of London, and highlighting her founding of a professional all-female jazz and swing band that would remain active for over forty years.”[72]

     
    YellowButtonBullet18.png PeggyGilbertAndHerAllGirlBandBookCover.jpeg
    “In Peggy Gilbert & Her All-Girl Band, Jeannie Gayle Pool profiles the fascinating life of this multi-talented saxophone player, arranger, bandleader, and advocate for women instrumental musicians. Based on oral history interviews and Gilbert's collection of photographs, newspaper clippings, and other memorabilia, this book includes many materials not previously available on all-women bands from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.”

     
    YellowButtonBullet18.png Sherrie Tucker. "Telling Performances: Jazz History Remembered and Remade by the Women in the Band." Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture. Volume 1, 1997.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Sherrie Tucker. "Telling Performances: Jazz History Remembered and Remade by the Women in the Band". The Oral History Review (Winter–Spring 1999) 26 (1): 67–84. doi:10.1093/ohr/26.1.67. JSTOR 3675691.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Sherrie Tucker, “Women” in the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, ed. Barry Kernfeld, MacMillan, 2001, 978–984.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Sherrie Tucker. Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s.  The book  cover for Swing Shift: All Girl Bands of the 1940s. (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, May 23, 2001).

    “The forgotten history of the “all-girl” big bands of the World War II era takes center stage in Sherrie Tucker’s Swing Shift. Although all-female jazz and dance bands had existed since the 1920s, now hundreds of such groups', both African American and white, barnstormed ballrooms, theaters, dance halls, military installations, and makeshift USO stages on the home front and abroad. Filled with firsthand accounts of more than a hundred women who performed during this era and complemented by thorough—and eye-opening—archival research, Swing Shift not only offers a history of this significant aspect of American society and culture but also examines how and why whole bands of dedicated and talented women musicians were dropped from—or never inducted into—our national memory. Comparing the working conditions and public representations of women musicians with figures such as Rosie the Riveter, WACs, USO hostesses, pin-ups, and movie stars, Tucker chronicles the careers of such bands as the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Phil Spitalny’s Hours of Charm, The Darlings of Rhythm, and the Sharon Rogers All-Girl Band.”[73] (bold and bold italic not in original)

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Sherrie Tucker. "A Feminist Perspective on New Orleans Jazzwomen," A typescript title page for the report "A Feminist Perspective on New Orleans Jazzwomen." Sherrie Tucker Principal Investigator, submitted by Center for Research University of Kansas, September 30, 2004 to New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park National Park, a study of women in New Orleans jazz, contracted by the National Park Service, completed between 2001 and 2004.  

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Rustin, Nichole T. and Tucker, Sherrie (eds). Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies. The book cover for "Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies" with the title in red on upper half with bottom half showing  a picture of three male musicians from behind playing music while three women sit or stand behind them watching. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008). Series: Refiguring American Music.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Read Kara A. Attrep's review of Big Ears.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams. Linda Dahl. 1999.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and An Early Cry for Civil Rights. David Margolick. 2000.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday. Robert G. O'Meally. 1991.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Jazz women: a Feminist Retrospective (1923–57) (Stash) 2 LPs.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen. Linda Dahl. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png “Women in Jazz, Past and Present.” John S. Wilson. The New York Times. June 11, 1978.


    YellowButtonBullet18.png "Women in Jazz Town Hall (A jazz conversation)," WomenInJazzPoster.jpeg hosted by Kaisha S. Johnson, KaishaSJohnson.jpeg Jazz at Lincoln Center's World Congress 2020.
     
    YellowButtonBullet18.png Jazzwomen Speak: Interviews with Six Musicians, Wayne Enstice and Janis Stockhouse, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013).

    The musician's interviewed are: (1) JoAnne Brackeen, piano and composition, (2) Clara Bryant, trumpet, (3) Sheila Jordan, vocals, (4) Abbey Lincoln, vocals, (5) Marian McPartland, piano and composition, (6) Dottie Dodgion, drums.

    YellowButtonBullet18.png Maxine Gordon's website. Maxine Gordon MaxineGordonBookHeadshot.jpeg MaxineGordonFranceR.jpeg has had a long involvement with jazz, including working with the queen of the jazz organ Shirley Scott, producing a son with trumpeter Woody Shaw (1978), becoming wife of saxophonist Dexter Gordon (1983), tour manager for Gil Evan's big band, road manager for the Berlin Jazz Festival (1973), road manager for Dexter Gordon's return from Europe to the United States (1976–1983), author of Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon (2018), an oral historian and archivist in the fields of jazz and African American cultural history, New York University, M.A., (2001–2009) Ph.D.  Candidate, History (African Diaspora). In 2020 still working on her newest book, Jazz Quartette: Shirley Scott, Velma Middleton, Melba Liston, Maxine Sullivan.


    🔸 JazzWax Interview with Maxine Gordon.

    🔸 Fiona Ross, "Maxine Gordon and the Jazz Flame," Interview with Maxine Gordon, Part 1, at the Jazz in Europe website, March 8, 2021.

    🔸 Fiona Ross, "Maxine Gordon and the Jazz Flame," Interview with Maxine Gordon, Part 2, at the Jazz in Europe website, March 8, 2021.

     


    A framed color graphic with Giant saxophone on left-side and abstract large merging to shrinking abstract snowflake-like multiple images in background on right and throughout.

    NOTES  [edit]

    1. ↑ Peter Keepnews, "Marian McPartland, Jazz Pianist and NPR Radio Staple, Dies at 95," New York Times, August 21, 2013.
    2. ↑ Dinitia Smith, "When Women Called the Tunes; Rediscovering the Players Who Kept Things Swinging After the Men Went to War, NYTimes, August 10, 2000.
    3. ↑ Kristen A. McGee, Some Liked It Hot: Jazz Women in Film and Television, 1928–1959 (Middleton, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2009), 11.
    4. ↑ Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz 3rd edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 197–199.] First published in 1997 with second revised edition in 2011.
    5. ↑ Promoter Bill Colburn, who lived in San Francisco and knew Gonsoulin well, told William Russell, “When very young, she played in her father's band in New Orleans. Her father was a violinist who worked on the Southern Pacific Railroad.” If her father's name was Gonsoulin, it is possible the family lived in New Iberia, Louisiana where numerous Gonsoulins show up in US Federal Census records. happyfeetjazz, "Bunk, Bertha & Buddy Bolden," posted on June 3, 2014.
    6. ↑ Sherrie Tucker, "A Feminist Perspective on New Orleans Jazz Women: A NOJNHP Research Study, September 30, 2004, 266–267.
    7. ↑ Warren Dodds, Baby Dodds' Story, 34–35. Also, Gene H. Anderson, "The Genesis of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band," American Music 12, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 295. doi:10.2307/ 3052275.
    8. ↑ Oakland Sunshine, February 25, 1922.
    9. ↑ See Note A., "This Is Bunk Johnson Talking, Explaining To You The Early Days Of New Orleans," Label: American Music – 643, Format: Vinyl, 10", Album, Mono, Country: US, Released: 1952.
    10. ↑ Dave Doyle, "Bertha Gonsoulin: Sidewoman and Sidenote," SyncopatedTimes.corm, November 29, 2021. Accessed July 26, 2022.
    11. ↑ Dave Doyle, "Bertha Gonsoulin: Sidewoman and Sidenote," SyncopatedTimes.corm, November 29, 2021. Accessed July 26, 2022.
    12. ↑ Dr. Sherrie Tucker, "A Feminist Perspective on New Orleans Jazz Women," a project for the NOJNHP Research Study, September 30, 2004, in Partial Fulfillment of #P5705010381, submitted to New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park.
    13. ↑ Basilio Serrano, Puerto Rican Women from the Jazz Age (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2019), Ch. 3.
    14. ↑ Birthdate of Marie Lucas listed as 1891 under the sub-heading "Personal Life" in Wikipedia: Sam Lucas.
    15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 D. Antoinette Handy (1930–2002), Black Women in America's Bands and Orchestras (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1981), 59.
    16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Eileen Southern (1920–2002), The Music Of Black Americans, 3rd edition (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997), 349.
    17. ↑ Faye P. Watkins (Dean of University Libraries at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Tallahassee, Florida), "L: Marie Lucas," in Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era ed. Lean'tin L. Bracks and Jessie Carney Smith (Latham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), scroll down to 148.
    18. ↑ Marion Harris, at JazzStandards.com. Accessed July 21, 2021.
    19. ↑ "Overlooked No More: Valaida Snow, Charismatic 'Queen of the Trumpet'," New York Times, February 22, 2012.
    20. ↑ "Overlooked No More: Valaida Snow, Charismatic 'Queen of the Trumpet'," New York Times, February 22, 2012.
    21. ↑ Wikipedia: The Ingenues.
    22. ↑ Past members of The Ingenues listed at Wikipedia: The Ingenues.
    23. ↑ Read the annotations in this video for proof: "The Ingenues: The Band Beautiful."
    24. ↑ Biography of The Ingenues written by pmintun@mac.com, IMDb Mini Biography: The Ingenues, fifth paragraph.
    25. ↑ Jeannie G. Pool (b. 1951), Ch. 2: "The Melody Girls," Peggy Gilbert and Her All-Girl Band (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2018), 15.
    26. ↑ Alex Vadukul, "Viola Smith, 'Fastest Girl Drummer in the World,' Dies at 107," New York Times, published Nov. 6, 2020, updated Nov. 9, 2020.
    27. ↑ Vincent Pelote, Sassy: The Life of Sarah Vaughan, Notes, vol. 51, no. 1, (1994), 204.
    28. ↑ Scott Yanow, "Melba Liston," AllMusic.com. Accessed May 25, 2021.
    29. ↑ Mary Lou Williams Interview, Melody Maker, April to June, 1954.
    30. ↑ Cassandra Jensen, "Top 10 Reasons Mary Lou Williams Should Be Your Favorite Jazz Musician," BlackPublicMedia.org, (March 31, 2015), third paragraph.
    31. ↑ Encyclopedia Brittanica: Mary Lou Williams, first paragraph. Most recently updated on May 25, 2018.
    32. ↑ Tammy L. Kemodle, "Ch. 5: How Do You Keep the Music Playing?," in Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2020), 81.
    33. ↑ As claimed in the Encyclopedia Brittanica: Mary Lou Williams, second paragraph:
      “In 1927, when her husband, saxophonist and bandleader John Williams, moved to Oklahoma to join the popular Andy Kirk and his Clouds of Joy, Mary Lou Williams took over the leadership of his band. She began a successful arranging career in 1929, when she moved to Oklahoma to join her husband with Kirk. During her time with Kirk, the band became well known for her stunning solo piano and highly original arrangements, including “Froggy Bottom,” “Walkin’ and Swingin’,” “Little Joe from Chicago,” “Roll ’Em,” and “Mary’s Idea.” She is widely credited as a major influence for the Kansas City–Southwest Big Band sound that Twelve Clouds of Joy helped to popularize.” (bold not in original)
    34. ↑ Barry Kernfeld (editor), "Mary Lou Williams," The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz.
    35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 35.2 Encyclopedia Brittanica: Mary Lou Williams, fourth paragraph.
    36. ↑ Alexa Peters, "10 Women Instrumentalists Who Redefine Jazz," Paste magazine, December 1, 2016.
    37. ↑ "Mary Lou Williams," February 23, 2016, TurtleLearning Blog, 8th paragraph. Accessed September 15, 2019.
    38. ↑ Williams performed the full piece for the first time at Saint Francis Xavier Church (located at 46 West 16th Street near 6th Avenue in New York) November, 1962, and she recorded it in October 1963.
    39. ↑ “Tammy L. Kernodle provides a second reason for William's exclusion from most jazz historical narratives: her piano style, composing style, and arranging style defied categorization. Williams mastered each new style from the 1930s into the 1970s, and her arrangements similarly evolved with the passage of time.” in "Mary's Ideas: Big Band Music by Mary Lou Williams," "A Woman's Place in Narratives of Jazz," Theodore E. Buehner, Mary Lou Williams: Selected Works in Big Band, edited by Theodore E. Buehner, (Middleton, Wisconsin: A-R Editions, Inc, 2013), xiii.
    40. ↑ According to John S. Wilson, "Mary Lou Williams, A Jazz Great, Dies," NYTimes Obituary, May 30, 1981, 5th paragraph.
    41. ↑ John S. Wilson, "Mary Lou Williams, A Jazz Great, Dies," NYTimes Obituary, May 30, 1981, Section 1, 21.
    42. ↑ Karen Chilton, "Hazel Scott's Lifetime of High Notes," SmithsonianMag.com, October 15, 2009, quoted at Wikipedia: Hazel Scott.
    43. ↑ Karen Chilton, (author of Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist, from Café Society to Hollywood to HUAC), "Hazel Scott’s Lifetime of High Notes," SmithsonianMag.com, October 15, 2009. Accessed May 25, 2021.
    44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 44.2 Murray Horwitz, "Review: Hazel Scott: 'Relaxed Piano Moods,' NPR (National Public Radio) Music, August 1, 2001.
    45. ↑ Lee Mergner, Review of Karen Chilton's Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist, from Café Society to Hollywood to HUAC, in Jazz Times, reposted entirely at Feel the Blues with all that jazz.
    46. ↑ Hipp's biographer, Katja von Schuttenbach, tells JazzWax's Marc Myers that Hipp worked in jazz until around 1960 at "Jutta Hipp: The Inside Story."
    47. ↑ "Jutta Hipp: The Inside Story," JazzWax by Marc Myers, May 28, 2013.
    48. ↑ Marc Myers, "Jutta Hipp in Germany: 1952–55," JazzWax.com, May 22, 2013.
    49. ↑ "Unsung Women of Jazz # 5 – Jutta Hipp, Curt's Jazz Cafe.
    50. ↑ Stephen Holden, "Blossom Dearie, Cult Chanteuse, Dies at 84," New York Times, February 8, 2009.
    51. ↑ Whitney Balliett, "Hanging Out with Blossom Dearie," Profiles, May 26, 1973, 46. Interview occurred May 18, 1973.
    52. ↑ Raymond Fol, click on "more images" (lower left hand corner) at the discogs.com website of Blossom-Dearie-Les-Blue-Stars-The-Pianist, then move over to the tenth image for the source of the quotation from Raymond Fol in France's Jazz Magazine.
    53. ↑ Natalie Weiner, "Blossom Dearie Was ‘The Only White Woman Who Had Soul’," liner notes for new reissue of Dearie's debut LP "Blossom Dearie" ( Verve 1957), December 27, 2018.
    54. ↑ Jon Thurber, "Blohttp://philosophyofjazz.net/wiki/Advanced_Editing#ALL-TIME_TOP-20_Best_Colorsssom Dearie dies at 82; jazz and cabaret singer," Los Angeles Times, February 9, 2009. She was actual 84 when she died having been born April 28, 1924.
    55. ↑ Richard Havers, Remembering "Blossom Dearie: A Small Voice With A Mighty Impact," UDiscoverMusic.com, published April 28, 2021.
    56. ↑ A screen capture of an email requesting permission for a photograph of Joanne Brackeen to be posted at PoJ.fm granted in an email reply by the photographer Paolo Ferraresi.
    57. ↑ "Jessica Williams," PeoplePill.com. Accessed April 10, 2022.
    58. ↑ 58.0 58.1 "Roberta Gambarini On Piano Jazz," NPR.org, originally recorded January 13, 2011, originally broadcast March 29, 2011.
    59. ↑ Claudia Erba, "Roberta Gambarini, Incontro con la Voce Easy to love," La Redazione, November 3, 2015.
    60. ↑ Christopher Loudon, "Roberta Gambarini: 'So In Love,' JazzTimes.com, updated April 25, 2019.
    61. ↑ Carolyn Glenn Brewer, Changing The Tune: The Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival 1978–1985 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 9–10.
    62. ↑ Carolyn Glenn Brewer, Changing The Tune: The Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival 1978–1985 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 10.
    63. ↑ Carolyn Glenn Brewer, Changing The Tune: The Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival 1978–1985 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 12.
    64. ↑ Carolyn Glenn Brewer, Changing The Tune: The Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival 1978–1985 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 12.
    65. ↑ Carolyn Glenn Brewer, Changing The Tune: The Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival 1978–1985 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 12–13.
    66. ↑ Intakt Records blurb.
    67. ↑ ESPERANZA SPALDING: EMILY’S D+EVOLUTION “The jazz singer and bassist—and former Grammy "Best New Artist"—has created a beyond category masterpiece that sounds better than if Joni Mitchell hired Living Colour as her band and then grafted it all onto a hip-hop sensibility of sorts.” Will Layman, March 11, 2016. "Esperanza Spalding: 'Emily's D+Evolution'," PopMatters.com, March 11, 2016. Accessed January 9, 2022.
    68. ↑ 68.0 68.1 68.2 68.3 "Nubya Garcia," Official Montreux Jazz Festival Website — 2022 © Fondation du Festival de Jazz de Montreux. Accessed January 7, 2022.
    69. ↑ Melissa Aldana's biography, last four paragraphs.
    70. ↑ "Lily Carassik," Beaumont Music. Accessed July 13, 2022.
    71. ↑ Cecilia Björck, Åsa Bergman "Making Women in Jazz Visible: Negotiating Discourses of Unity and Diversity in Sweden and the US," IASPM Journal, Vol 8, No 1 (2018).
    72. ↑ Publisher's blurb for Sax Appeal.
    73. ↑ Sherrie Tucker, Blurb for Swing Shift "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2000).

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