Blanche Calloway
Blanche Calloway (born February 9, 1904 in Baltimore , Maryland , † December 16, 1978 there ) was an American jazz singer , band leader and composer of swing . She is considered to be one of the first women to lead an all-male orchestra.
Live and act
Blanche Calloway was the older sister of the singer and band leader Cab Calloway . She studied music at Morgan State College, which she left in 1923 to join a musical group. She recorded music with a variety of formations from the mid-1920s to 1935. She competed with Andy Kirk in 1931 for the direction of his band and then formed her band, "Blanche Calloway and Her Joy Boys", in which musicians such as Pinetop Smith , Ben Webster , Clyde Hart , Cozy Cole and Mary Lou Williams played. Together with the orchestras of Kirk and Moten, she completed an east coast tour with the Joy Boys in 1931 . The band, which had to record under the name Fred Armstrong and His Syncopators , was quite successful for some time; Cozy Cole, who stayed with Calloway for two and a half years, rated the combo as "great" at the time. She lost musicians to the Moten Band and had to break up her orchestra in 1938; she continued as a solo artist, then with a band at the Howard Theater in Washington, DC From the 1950s to the 1970s she worked as a manager for singer Ruth Brown , as a disc jockey and later as program director for WMBM in Florida .
Cab Calloway cited them as the reason for his entry into show business. "Despite her talent and accomplishments, she did not match her brother Cab's success or the popularity of the all-women bands that captured the attention of the audience at the time."
Discographic notes
- Blanche Calloway and her Joy Boys: Cab Calloway and Co. (RCA)
- Ruben Reeves : The Complete Vocalion 1928-1930. ( Timeless )
- Louis Armstrong : Louis Armstrong and the Blues Singers 1924-1930 (Affinity)
Secondary literature
- Linda Dahl: Stormy Weather. The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen. London: Quartet Books, 1984. ISBN 0-7043-2477-6
- Frank Driggs & Chuck Haddix Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop - A History . Oxford: Oxford University, 2005; ISBN 978-0-19530-712-2
- Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD . 6th edition. Penguin, London 2002, ISBN 0-14-051521-6 .
Remarks
- ↑ According to other information such as answers.com: Blanche Calloway was born in 1902
- ↑ It was only through an intrigue with Bennie Moten that Kirk succeeded in taking away an engagement in Kansas City and thus securing his own position in the band. See Driggs & Haddix, Kansas City Jazz, pp. 101f.
- ↑ See Driggs & Haddix, Kansas City Jazz, pp. 105f.
- ↑ a b Dahl, Stormy Weather, p. 49
- ↑ Contains songs by Calloway like I Need Lovin ', Just a Crazy Song, Growlin' Dan, Concentratin 'on You, Last Dollar .
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Calloway, Blanche |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American jazz singer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 9, 1904 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Baltimore , Maryland |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 16, 1978 |
| Place of death | Baltimore , Maryland |