Home » Jazz Articles » Under the Radar » Women in Jazz, Part 1: Early Innovators
Women in Jazz, Part 1: Early Innovators
Jazz is a self-taught art, and I was a loner.
—Mary Lou Williams
Recent media projects such as Director Judy Chaikin's Girls in the Band (Virgil Films and Entertainment, 2015), Freedom of Expression (Beckeresque Press, 2015) by Chris Becker, and the Enstice/Stockhouse collaboration Jazzwomen (Indiana University Press, 2004) have done little to alleviate the marginalization of women in jazz. From the time of the early pioneers of the genre, to the current community of artists, women—other than vocalists—have been underrepresented. Modern era female instrumental jazz artists/composers have emerged as influential leaders but names like
Carla Bley
piano1938 - 2023
Maria Schneider
composer / conductor
Geri Allen
piano1957 - 2017
Regina Carter
violinb.1966
Nicole Mitchell
fluteb.1967
Mary Halvorson
guitar
Kris Davis
pianob.1980
Ancestry
In the ancient West African lands that gave us the foundations of jazz, the role of women in music was significant. In the early West African griottes, who performed as musical sages, poets and minstrels, we can see parallels to early black jazz musicians in America: revered for their talent but often treated with fear and suspicion when not performing. In Africa—as in America—gender biases often relegated griottes to lesser instrumental roles and vocals. Their male counterparts (griots) traditionally played the twenty-one-string kora and griottes, by many oral accounts, did not. However, the prestigious Museum of African Art in Belgrade, Serbia suggests that griottes not only played the kora but also the balafon, an ancient predecessor of the European xylophone, and the ngoni, a five or six-string lute that evolved into the banjo.In her 2003 Carnegie Mellon University paper Experience West African Drumming: A Study of West African Dance-Drumming and Women Drummers, Leslie Marie Mullins explains that drumming was specifically the territory of male musicians in West Africa. Mullins reveals that several myths were employed to keep women and drums far apart. Among them, Ghanaian women were thought (by males) to lack the physical strength for the strenuous activity of drumming, and they were taught that drumming would lead to infertility. Despite formal restrictions on women drummers, they participated in less established ways. In African Music (Horizons de France, 1969) Cameroonian writer and composer Francis Bebey cites the example of village women pounding human-sized pestles into oversize mortars and using the rhythm as accompaniment to their work songs.
Less than three-hundred years after the invention of the djembe drum in the then massive Mali Empire of West Africa, the first slaves arrived in the Jamestown, Virginia colony. The culture and tradition they brought with them could only be carried internally. Depending on slaves' destinations, the playing of music was restricted (New Orleans), or banned (South Carolina). The slaves represented a variety of cultural groups with diverse musical backgrounds. They did not arrive directly from West Africa but from the dozen colonized islands of the Caribbean where their own musical traditions were further influenced by the British, French, Dutch and Portuguese colonizers. In John W. Blassingame's The Slave Community (Oxford University Press, 1972) the author says "Slaves spent their Sundays...strumming the banjo, singing, dancing...fiddling. They often organized dances and parties to which all the slaves in the neighborhood were invited." The author does not explain how the slave came by these instruments but they may have been passed down, or sold to the slaves by the plantation masters. Where instruments were not permitted, the slaves found internal resources, such as the body slap, to celebrate. Blassingame quotes the personal journal of an observer in the late 1770s, saying "These dances were individual dances, consisting of the shuffling of the feet, swinging of the arms and shoulders in a peculiar rhythm of time developed into what is known today as the Double Shuf?e, Heel and Toe, Buck and Wing, Juba, etc. The slaves became pro?cient in such dances, and could play a tune with the feet, dancing largely to an inward music, a music that was felt, but not heard." Blassingame makes no gender distinctions in plantation music where the slaves' repertoire was confined to muffled rhythm of feet and hands.
Benjamin Latrobe was a British architect who emigrated to the U.S. and has been called "the father of American architecture," having designed the White House, the U.S. Capitol building and major projects throughout the eastern half of the country. His extensive diaries were a combination of architectural notebooks, travel journals, and social observation. The diaries were combined and published in 1903, eighty-three years after his death in New Orleans. Among his notes were comments on those of Sunday slave activities in Congo Square (now part of
Louis Armstrong
trumpet and vocals1901 - 1971
Post Emancipation
The spirituals that came out of slave territories did not fade away after the Civil War though their emphasis focused on the religious rather than to the coded messages sometimes embedded in the lyrics. In those messages, slaves often dropped hints of escape routes, rebellions and news of family members but by the 1870s the songs were Christian gospel hymns and reflections on the hardships of slavery. Groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers (1871-present) and their off-shoot quartet later infused spirituals with the rhythmic beat of blues and jazz. A photograph of the 1882 version of the group shows six women and four men. Members of the late 1880s group such as Sadie Chandler Cole, Josephine Moore, Minnie Butler and Ella Sheppard were all accomplished pianists and performed instrumentally. The group gave black performers a national stage that would have been unthinkable ten years before emancipation. White audiences, accustomed to white performers in black-face, found "actual black performers" as "odd" according to the book The Singing Tours of the Fisk Jubilee Singers: 1871-1874 (by L.D. Silveri, Greenwood Press, 1989). The early Fisk group performed for President Ulysses S. Grant and throughout England and France.At the turn of the nineteenth century Creole musicians in New Orleans were concocting an amalgam of musical styles as diverse as their gumbo. They borrowed the swamp blues, zydeco and Cajun styles though they may have gone by other names, or no names. Marching band music from Europe, the Cuban habanera, slave spirituals and the field songs of West Africa were all in the mix of new music not confined to theaters or concert halls. Krewe parades, second lines and funeral marches became the everyday venues for the earliest form of jazz, soon followed by the more formally organized ragtime. Folk ragtime—a type of traditional ragtime—was thought to have originated with informally trained African American pianists with a basic understanding of syncopated music. It was popular simultaneously to the cakewalk and the more widespread style of ragtime. Historically, ragtime is most often associated with a small group of male composers,
Scott Joplin
piano1868 - 1917
Ragtime
May Aufderheide was one of the best-known early women ragtime composers. While she was a talented composer and pianist, her success may well have been aided by her affluent father who opened his own music publishing house to issue Aufderheide's music. Aufderheide—who was white—had her most successful piece "Dusty" published in 1908; the sheet music reflecting white insensitivity with its cover portraying a cartoonish blackface character. While Aufderheide was one of the better-known ragtime composers at the turn of the twentieth century, she was not the most prolific. Henrietta Blanke, Sadie Koninsky, Anita Owen and Charlotte Blake were each credited with dozens of compositions but also composed "jazz" waltzes similar to the "Missouri Waltz," "Jug Band Waltz" and the "Mississippi Waltz," all popular in the ragtime era. Sophie Tucker's Five Kings of Syncopation are widely believed the first popular all-female dance band. Tucker, a Russian immigrant, performed in 1907 in blackface and affecting a Southern accent. The prevailing attitude in the white press reporting of blacks and ragtime is framed in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of August 6, 1911 which describes the relationship: "It was typically negroid in the years prior to the Civil War. It bears radical resemblance to the fantastic waywardness of Creole song. Now the most significant fact about this music is that it has become typically American. It has outgrown its negroid limitations..." Not surprisingly, less is known of ragtime composers of color, but a few left their mark. The child of a Louisiana plantation overseer, Geraldine Dobyns composed only three rags but her first, "Possum Rag," is still performed.In 1914, Harlemite, Ethel Hill was leading the Hill Astoria Ladies' Orchestra at Barron's Astoria Café, a prestigious, and private, club in Harlem. At the same time, the best-known black-American ragtime bandleader, James Reese Europe, created James Reese Europe's Ladies Orchestra in 1914. Reese quickly changed the band's billing to indicate that the orchestra was now under the direction of Marie Lucas according to D. Antoinette Handy's Black Women In American Bands and Orchestras (Scarecrow Press, 1998). Linda Dahl, in Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen (Limelight Editions, 1989) noted that Lucas was trained as a trombonist, pianist and arranger. Her father had led the Lafayette Ladies Orchestra and when he passed around 1915, Lucas assumed leadership. The band's reputation was such that Lucas was able to recruit players throughout the east and from as far as Cuba. Both Dahl and Handy highlight Louisville, Kentucky born Leora Meaux, a classically trained cornet, trumpet, and saxophonist. She had established herself in several all-women bands including Hallie Anderson's Lafayette Theatre "Lady Band" in 1919; her own group, the Vampires around 1927, the Lafayette Theatre House Orchestra, the Negro Women's Orchestral and Civic Association and later in her career played with Lil Armstrong's orchestra.
Fletcher Henderson
arranger1897 - 1952
Early Jazz
A significant number of female pioneers of jazz had their moment in the sun but have faded from memory. Gertie Wells and her all-black Syncopated Orchestra were playing the Washington D.C. circuit in the early 1920s and Wells is credited with helping
Duke Ellington
piano1899 - 1974
Before she helped guide the fledgling career of her brother,
Cab Calloway
composer / conductor1907 - 1994
Eubie Blake
piano1887 - 1983
Ben Webster
saxophone, tenor1909 - 1973
The granddaughter of slaves, Lillian (Lil) Hardin was an accomplished pianist, composer, arranger, singer, and bandleader before she became the second of four Louis Armstrong wives. She studied music at Fisk University, and in 1917, at the Chicago College of Music, finally earning her PhD from the New York College of Music in 1929. Bandleader Lawrence Duhé heard Hardin playing as a sheet music demonstrator in 1918 and asked her to join his band playing at Chicago's De Luxe Café and shortly afterward at the city's Dreamland Ballroom. King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (essentially, the same group Duhé had led) later moved into Dreamland with Oliver convincing Hardin to remain in his version of the band. With Oliver's band Hardin met Armstrong in 1921 and they married in 1924. Hardin left Oliver's band shortly after he moved it to Los Angeles in 1921. Returning to Chicago, she resumed playing at Dreamland then rejoined Oliver when he returned to Chicago in 1922. In Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism (Thomas Brothers, W. W. Norton & Company, 2015), the author suggests that the classically-trained Hardin simply played to make a living and had little interest in jazz music at the time. She claimed not to recognize Armstrong as being more, or less talented than other trumpeters. Brother's reports it was only when Oliver himself told Hardin that Armstrong was the more talented player between the two trumpeters, that Hardin's interest peaked. With Hardin's encouragement Armstrong left Oliver to form his Hot Five and Hot Seven groups with Hardin on piano and occasional vocals. The first groups to be under Armstrong's name, the Hot Fives included
Kid Ory
trombone1886 - 1973
Johnny Dodds
clarinet1892 - 1940
Johnny St. Cyr
banjo1890 - 1966
Baby Dodds
drums1894 - 1959
Earl Hines
piano1903 - 1983
Freddie Keppard
cornet1890 - 1933
Joe Williams
vocals1918 - 1999
Oscar Brown Jr.
vocals1926 - 2005
No early jazz woman was more influential than
Mary Lou Williams
piano1910 - 1981
Coleman Hawkins
saxophone, tenor1904 - 1969
Fats Waller
piano1904 - 1943
Benny Goodman
clarinet1909 - 1986
Thelonious Monk
piano1917 - 1982
Charlie Parker
saxophone, alto1920 - 1955
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
Dizzy Gillespie
trumpet1917 - 1993
Art Blakey
drums1919 - 1990
A significant part of Williams and Hardin's real-world schooling was their experiences with territory bands of the 1920s. if women were objectified on the established, brick and mortar circuits, it was overall less taxing than what they experienced in the world of backwater one-night-stands. Williams, for all intent and purposes, led her own territory band but with the name "Six Men and a Girl." As instrumentalists, women often found their ability to contribute stifled by the male musicians. Critics were quick to pan women's talents while bemoaning their presence as nothing more than dubiously placed promotional props. Often, women's talents could only be realistically displayed through "all-girl" territory bands. Several such bands successfully made names for themselves throughout the southern and middle plains states. The Harlem Playgirls, The Dixie Sweethearts, the Darlings of Rhythm, and Gertrude Long and Her Rambling Night Hawks, all these African American female bands developed substantial followings coming out of the territories.
Female artists were crucial to developing Armstrong, Ellington, Monk and others though even the best known of them performed in the shadows for much of their own careers. In Part 2 of Women in Jazz we move into the modern era of jazz and look at some under-recognized names such as harpist Dorothy Ashby, pianist Beryl Booker, and composer Julia Perry and more popular artists like trombonist Melba Liston, pianists
Shirley Horn
piano1934 - 2005
Marian McPartland
piano1918 - 2013
Vi Redd
saxophone, altob.1928
Alice Coltrane
piano1937 - 2007
Selected Discography
Blanche Calloway & Her Joy Boys 1925-35 (Mélodie Jazz Classic, 1996)
Calloway's recording career was not prolific but the French label and distributor Mélodie wisely included her in their mid-1990s Classics Chronological Series. Twenty-five tracks, of varying sound quality, span a decade of Calloway's career. The raucous nature of her performances caused U.S. labels to shy away recording Calloway but those powerful and gutsy concerts are part of her charm and distinctiveness. The selection of tunes is classic and players such as Cozy Cole, Ben Webster and Louis Armstrong are among those who appear of some tracks.
Lil Hardin Armstrong and her Swing Orchestra 1936-1940 (Mélodie Jazz Classics, 1996)
From the same label and series Hardin is showcased in her post-Armstrong days. Though she didn't record with a group called the "Swing Orchestra" Mélodie may have taken small license with the title. With saxophonist Chu Berry and clarinetist Buster Bailey's along, the album covers some familiar territory but doesn't include tune such as "Struttin' with Some Barbecue" and "Don't Jive Me" for which Hardin was best known. That said, Hardin, like Calloway, often took a surprisingly freewheeling, bare-knuckles approach and many of these tune reflect the confidence she had as a performer.
Mary Lou Williams: A Grand Night for Swinging (HighNote Records, 2008)
Swinging, yes. But in the twilight of her career, 1976, Williams music reflect her spiritual side as well. With bassist
Ronnie Boykins
bass, acousticb.1935
Roy Haynes
drums1926 - 2024
Credits
- Mary Lou Williams photo ? William P. Gottlieb. All Rights Reserved.
- "Lil Hardin [Armstrong]...often imagined herself standing...at the bottom of a ladder, holding it steady for Louis as he rose to stardom." (Margaret Moos Pick, Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound, 2012).
- "Everything that a guy says once, you have to say five times." (Bj?rk in Pitchfork, by Jessica Hopper, 2015).
- "If you're a guy and you have a band, if it's a band of women, it's a girl group" (p. 112). Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender, and Fraternalism (Princeton Legacy Library) Jul 14, 2014 by Mary Ann Clawson.
Tags
Under the Radar
Karl Ackermann
carla bley
Maria Schneider
Geri Allen
Regina Carter
Nicole Mitchell
Mary Halvorson
Kris Davis
Louis Armstrong
Scott Joplin
Fletcher Henderson
duke ellington
Cab Calloway
Eubie Blake
ben webster
King Oliver
Kid Ory
Johnny Dodds
Johnny St. Cyr
Baby Dodds
Earl Hines
Freddie Keppard
Red Allen
Joe Williams
Oscar Brown Jr.
Mary Lou Williams
Coleman Hawkins
Fats Waller
Benny Goodman
Thelonious Monk
Charlie Parker
Miles Davis
Dizzy Gillespie
Art Blakey
Shirley Horn
Marian McPartland
Vi Redd
Alice Coltrane
Ronnie Boykins
Roy Haynes
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