Helen Oakley Dance

Helen Margaret Oakley Dance , née Helen Oakley (born February 15, 1913 in Toronto , † May 27, 2001 in Escondido ), was a Canadian jazz journalist, jazz historian and producer.

Life

Dance came from a wealthy Toronto family and was a jazz enthusiast after attending an Ellington concert in London in 1933. After she originally wanted to pursue this passion as a jazz singer, she switched to music journalism in Chicago in 1934 and wrote for the Herald Tribune and at the same time regularly for Down Beat (until 1941). In Chicago she founded the Chicago Rhythm Club, organized jazz concerts z. B. Earl Hines and Billie Holiday , and recording sessions for Okeh . At one of her Sunday evening concerts in the Congress Hotel, she brought the colored pianist Teddy Wilson together with the Benny Goodman Orchestra, which was still unusual at the time, as there were still racial barriers for bands. In 1937 she moved to New York City, where she hosted popular jazz parties for Irving Mills' record label Variety / Master . She also produced small group recordings of Duke Ellington , which often appeared under the names of Ellington's band members such as Barney Bigard (e.g. his original version of "Caravan"), Cootie Williams , Rex Stewart or Johnny Hodges . She also worked as a freelance producer a. a. with Mildred Bailey , the bands of Bob Crosby and Chick Webb (with singer Ella Fitzgerald ), with whom she organized many "Battles of Swing". She was also involved in organizing Benny Goodman's Carnegie Hall concert in 1938, and in the early 1940s on recordings of Duke Ellington and John Hammond's "From Spiritual to Swing" concerts. As an important figure in the New York swing scene at the time, she wrote not only for Down Beat, but also for “Jazz Hot”, “Tempo” and “Swing”.

During the Second World War, after her brother and many other Canadians had died in Operation Jubilee in Dieppe in August 1942 , she served in the US Army and was involved in covert OSS operations in North Africa and Italy. She then lived in England for a while, where she married the English jazz journalist Stanley Dance in 1947 . They had already started writing again for magazines such as Melody Maker and Jazz Hot in England, and their collaboration continued in the following decades. B. in the publication of records from Duke Ellington's estate. Both were close friends with Ellington. In 1959 they moved to the USA, where they were active in the civil rights movement through a Catholic organization founded by them in the 1960s.

In 1987 she published her biography of the blues musician T-Bone Walker "Stormy Monday" (Louisiana State University Press, Da Capo), on which she worked since 1971. She and her husband deposited correspondence and other archive material on jazz history at Yale University .

She had four children with Stanley Dance. In 2004 she was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame .

Web links

• Obituary of her son Francis Dance
• Obituary in The New York Times