This week on Riverwalk Jazz, vocalists Nina Ferro, Topsy Chapman and 
Girl Singers of the Swing Era on Riverwalk Jazz This Week
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data-original-title="" title="">Stephanie Nakasian join The 
Jim Cullum Jr.
cornetb.1941
Ivie Anderson
vocals1905 - 1949
Helen Humes
vocals1913 - 1981
Ella Fitzgerald
vocals1917 - 1996
Martha Tilton
vocals1915 - 2006
Helen Ward
vocals1916 - 1998
The program is distributed in the US by Public Radio International, on Sirius/XM satellite radio and can be streamed on-demand from the Riverwalk Jazz website.
Duke Ellington
piano1899 - 1974
Benny Goodman
clarinet1909 - 1986
“Girl singers" were good for business in the glory days of the big dance band scene. With their gal-next-door looks or nightclub sophistication, they provided sex appeal on the bandstand for the college boys and GIs buying tickets for a night of dancing. Bandleaders weren't always eager to add a female vocalist to their all-male ensembles, and when they did, “girl singers" were often relegated to warbling a chorus or two at the mic, then stepping back to let the jazz band carry the tune.
Helen Ward was an NBC staff singer when Benny Goodman hired her for his weekly Let's Dance radio show, just months before jump-starting the Swing Era. Before her early departure from the band in 1936, the dark-haired singer with all-American good looks cut several hit records with Goodman. Her vocals gave a terrific lift to the whole band. She specialized in putting warmth and swing into the medium tempos that Goodman took on almost every tune—even ballads. A heartthrob for thousands of young men who followed the band, Ward created the model for every “girl singer" who followed.
Barely five feet tall and a blue-eyed blonde,
Martha Tilton
vocals1915 - 2006
Paul Whiteman
composer / conductor1890 - 1967
Artie Shaw
clarinet1910 - 2004
A popular GI pin-up in the war years, Tilton shipped off to the South Pacific for a series of USO shows led by Jack Benny. Then back home in the states, Martha became one of the first artists to be signed by
Johnny Mercer
composer / conductor1909 - 1976
Billie Holiday
vocals1915 - 1959
Count Basie
piano1904 - 1984
Traveling with a busload of musicians was not a life that came easy to Billie Holiday— but Count Basie's offer of $14 a day sounded like big money in the lingering years of the Great Depression. As Billie said, nobody told her she'd be traveling 500 miles a day and performing one-night stands for months at a time. The raggedy bus they dubbed the Blue Goose was either sweltering hot or freezing cold. And once Billie paid for a place to stay, got her hair fixed and gowns pressed, there wasn't much left over to take home to her mother.
Touring with Artie Shaw's band was even tougher. Being the only black woman on a bus full of white men was not only uncomfortable, but dangerous when traveling in Jim Crow territory. Billie spent most of her time with Shaw's band hiding in the back of the band bus, surviving on takeaway sandwiches from greasy spoons.
Catching Helen Humes sing the blues at Harlem's Renaissance Ballroom convinced producer
John Hammond Jr.
guitar, acousticJohn Hammond and Basie lifted Humes out of the territory band circuit and into the big time. After her 4-year stint with Basie, she launched a lucrative solo career, morphed into an R & B diva, and then in the late '50s returned to mainstream jazz. Helen Humes could sing it all. Some called her the greatest 'Helen' of all the girl singers of swing. But she was never far from the suggestive, bluesy songs that began her career.
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Don Mopsick
Topsy Chapman
Stephanie Nakasian
Jim Cullum
Ivie Anderson
Helen Humes
Ella Fitzgerald
Martha Tilton
Helen Ward
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Benny Goodman
Paul Whiteman
Artie Shaw
Johnny Mercer
Billie Holiday
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