International Sweethearts of Rhythm

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International Sweethearts of Rhythm
General information
Genre (s) jazz
founding 1939
resolution 1949
Last occupation
Trumpet
 Ernestine "Tiny" Davis
Ray Carter
Johnnie Mae Stansbury
Edna Williams
saxophone
 Marge Pettiford
Amy Garrison
Helen Saine
Grace Bayron
Viola Burnside
Willie Mae Wong
trombone
 Judy Bayron
Helen Jones
Ina Belle Byrd
bass
 Lucille Dixon
guitar
 Roxanna Lucas
piano
 Johnnie Mae Rice
Drums
 Pauline Braddy
singing
 Anne Mae Winburn
Evelyn McGee
Carline Ray
Soloists
Tenor saxophone
 Viola "Vi" Burnside
Trumpet
 Ernestine "Tiny" Davis

The International Sweethearts of Rhythm was a 1939 at the Piney Woods Country Life School in Mississippi , founded Jazz - Big Band , which consisted only of women (without segregation).

Bulk

Well-known forerunners as an all-girl band were Ina Ray Hutton and her Melodears , which existed from 1934 to 1939. They began as a band from the Piney Woods School, a school for poor children and orphans in Mississippi, mostly from the black population, but also from other minorities such as Mexicans and Chinese. The headmaster Laurence C. Jones had heard the band from Ina Ray Hutton and wanted to raise money for the school with a similar band. Jones started out with fifteen girls from his school, ages 14-19, but also recruited members outside of school on touring and traveling. The band toured all over the south. They eventually broke up with their founder Jones (who formed another women's band, the Swinging Rays of Rhythm) after a strike (they were badly paid, their degrees weren't secure, and Jones invested their money in life insurance policies that were made out to school) . They joined the local black musicians' union in Washington, DC and got Eddie Durham as arranger. Durham contributed not insignificantly to the success by tailoring the arrangements for the band, for example, knowing that the soloists had a limited talent for improvisation, he wrote the solos in such a way that they sounded improvised. He also perfected her demeanor with new costumes and a band style that followed that of Jimmy Lunceford . They had great success, including 35,000 spectators in a week at the Howard Theater in Washington, DC in 1941. The band members were still exploited (with wages well below union standards), which was one reason why Durham left the band. They slept on the bus on tours.

From 1941, the glamorous Anna Mae Winburn (or Anna May, born 1913) was the director, who also appeared as a singer. She was previously the director of the Cotton Club Boys, but after many of the musicians moved to Fletcher Henderson (or were drafted), she was stranded in Omaha and willingly took over the leadership of the Sweethearts. Other professional musicians such as Vi Burnside and Tiny Davis joined in 1941. In 1942 they toured coast to coast alternately with Fletcher Henderson's band. At the time when many big band musicians moved in in the 1940s, the Sweethearts also had great success in the media, and toured mainly in front of colored audiences. In 1946 they appeared in a film (That Man of Mine, with Ruby Dee ) in which they played themselves. In the mid-1940s they appeared in leading concert spots such as the Savoy Ballroom and the Apollo Theater and toured Europe in 1945 for troop support (due to letter campaigns from black US soldiers stationed there), where, as was customary at the time, they were separated in front of white and black audiences occurred. In 1947 leading musicians such as Winburn, Davis and Burnside left the band. The big band existed until the end of 1948. On the one hand, their manager Rae Lee Jones died, on the other hand, the public's taste and the general conditions for big bands changed.

Her arrangers included the Kansas City veterans Eddie Durham (who also arranged for Ina Ray Hutton's band) and, as his successor, Jesse Stone (1943) and, in the mid-1940s, Maurice King. One of the band's very early arrangers was the solo trumpeter Edna Williams.

Winburn tried again and again to found new follow-up bands in the 1950s, but without being able to build on old successes. Soloists included Viola "Vi" Burnside (tenor saxophone), a schoolmate of Sonny Rollins' and previously with the Harlem Playgirls , Ernestine "Tiny" Davis (trumpet), also formerly with the Harlem Playgirls, and Peggy Becheers (tenor saxophone).

The band consisted mainly of colored musicians (which, according to the laws of the time in the southern states, included not only African-Americans, but also Hawaiians, Chinese and Mexican ethnic origins, who were also represented in the Sweethearts), but also took on white musicians, which was in the Problems in the South ( Jim Crow Laws), where the band toured frequently. The first was trumpeter Toby Butler in 1943. In the band also played trombonist Helen Jones, 13-year-old when she joined, daughter of the founder of Piney Woods Country Life School, Laurence Clifton Jones. She died in 2020.

Anna Mae Winburn revived the band in 1950 as Anna Mae Winburn and her Sweethearts of Rhythm , which lasted until 1955. After the sweethearts ended, Tiny Davis formed her own band Hell Divers and later had a bar in Chicago with her partner, drummer and pianist Ruby Lucas.

Other all girl bands of the time were the Sweethearts, the Harlem Playgirls and Ina Ray Hutton's Melodears: the British Ivy Benson and Her All Girl Orchestra , Ada Leonard and her All American Girls , the Phil Spitalny and his Hour of Charm All-Girl- Orchestra , the Darlings of Rhythm under Clarence Love , the Praerie View Coeds , Swinging Rays of Rhythm , Eddie Durham's All Star Girl Orchestra (founded by Durham in 1942 after his departure from the Sweethearts, with some of the Sweethearts musicians whom he took with him on his departure ) and the Dixie Rhythm Girls . The last five bands and the Harlem Playgirls consisted of colored musicians.

Recordings

  • The Women, Classic Female Jazz Artists 1939–1952 , Bluebird, 1990, some pieces in a compilation by Leonard Feather .

Documentary film

  • International Sweethearts of Rhythm by Greta Schiller , Andrea Weiss (1986)

(Two musicians of the band, the solo trumpeter Tiny Davis and the drummer Ruby Lucas, introduce Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss in more detail in their documentary Tiny & Ruby: Hell Divin 'Women (1988))

literature

  • D. Antoinette Handy: The International Sweethearts of Rhythm: The Ladies Jazz Band from Piney Woods Country Life School , Scarecrow Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-8108-3160-5
  • Marian McPartland: The untold story of the international sweethearts of rhythm , in McPartland All in good time , 1980, also reprinted in Gottlieb (editor) Reading Jazz , Bloomsbury 1997
  • Linda Dahl Stormy Weather , Limelight Editions 1996
  • Sherrie Tucker: Swing shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s , Duke University Press 2000

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ He had previously done this with a choir in the style of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the Cotton Blossom Singers , from 1927.
  2. ↑ According to the band manager, funds were put into a 10-room house in Arlington, Virginia, where the band lived outside of the tour. When the band broke up, they saw nothing of it. Contrary to promises, the social security contributions were also not paid.
  3. ↑ She used to be with the Lloyd Hunter Serenaders
  4. ^ IMDB International Sweethearts of Rhythm . They had other short films ( soundies ); 1947 She's crazy with the heat , How 'bout that Jive .
  5. ↑ He became their arranger in 1941 when the band broke up with Jones and joined the black musicians' union in Washington, DC to continue performing.
  6. ↑ She also sang, her slim figure didn't quite meet the expectations of a girl band at the time, but she was able to take advantage of this for funny numbers.
  7. ↑ Linda Dahl: Stormy Weather. 1996, p. 198. She was first lead tenor saxophone, then second. She later lived in California.
  8. ↑ Linda Dahl: Stormy Weather. P. 56. The Boston alto saxophonist Roz Cron, who joined the band in 1944, was locked up in El Paso for one night because the local police did not pass her off as a mulatto .
  9. ↑ Michael J. West: Remembering Helen Jones Woods (1923-2020). JazzTimes , August 14, 2020, accessed on August 15, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Originated in 1943 from former (colored) musicians from Prairie View College in Texas to fill the gap caused by the male school orchestra members drafted for military service. They toured a lot in the south and also performed at the Apollo Theater . Among them was Clora Bryant . They existed until 1946, Tiny Davis took over some of their musicians in their Hell Divers.