Ernestine Davis
Ernestine "Tiny" Davis (born August 5, 1907 in Memphis , † January 30, 1994 in Chicago ) was an American jazz trumpeter and singer of swing .
Life
Davis grew up in Memphis and learned to play the trumpet from the age of 13, receiving only the usual school lessons and otherwise studying her role model Louis Armstrong on records. Then she moved via St. Louis to the heart of jazz in midwestern Kansas City , where she played in nightclubs for little money and soaked up the music, and finally to Chicago . She had her first permanent engagement with the Harlem Playgirls in the mid-1930s. In 1941 she was recruited by Jesse Stone for the International Sweethearts of Rhythm , another all-women band. There she was solo trumpeter and singer. Her plump figure (which she nicknamedTiny ) used them for weird singing numbers (and other novelty numbers). She stayed with the Sweethearts until almost the end. The main reason, according to her own statements, was the friendship with the band members, because she had better offers (Louis Armstrong once offered her ten times her salary) and the sweethearts were paid very poorly.
In 1947 she founded her own band Tiny Davis and her Hell Divers with six members, partly taken over by the Prairie View Coeds (the girls got their name from Prairie View College in Texas, whose school band they used to be). They played in the Apollo Theater and New York clubs and toured the Caribbean (Jamaica, Trinidad, Puerto Rico); after that they settled in Chicago. The musicians included alto saxophonist Bert Etta Birdie Davis, who later accompanied Dinah Washington (whom she called Ladybird), pianist Maurine Smith, drummer Helen Cole, tenor saxophonist Margaret Backstrom and bassist Eileen Chance. Tiny Davis himself sang, played trumpet and other instruments, and conducted.
With her partner and friend Ruby Lucas (pianist and also former Sweethearts) she ran a bar Tiny and Ruby´s Gay Spot in Chicago in the 1950s .
In 1988 Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss made a documentary about Tiny and Ruby: Hell Divin Women , which won an award for best documentary at the San Francisco Film and Video Festival.
literature
- Linda Dahl Stormy Weather , Limelight 1996, pp. 84-85
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Davis, Ernestine |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Davis, Tiny (nickname) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American jazz trumpeter and swing singer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 5th August 1907 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Memphis |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 30, 1994 |
| Place of death | Chicago |