Willene Barton

Willene Barton (* around 1930 in Georgia ) is an American jazz saxophonist (tenor saxophone).

Barton came to New York City when she was ten, where she attended Manhattan High School. She learned the saxophone largely self-taught, but was also supported by Eddie Durham , who put together an all-girl band in the 1940s and was previously with the International Sweethearts of Rhythm . In 1951 she began to play professionally as a member of the successor to the Sweethearts under Anna Mae Winburn . At that time she also tried her hand at cutting contests with the leading tenor saxophonist Vi Burnside , but without getting close to her. But they had a good relationship with each other.

1953 to 1955 she had her own band with Myrtle Young, a former tenor saxophonist of the Sweethearts, and in 1955 her own quartet Four Jewels with Bu Pleasant (piano), Gloria Coleman (then Gloria Bell), bass. Barton was friends with Eddie Lockjaw Davis at the time , who was her temporary agent. She also met Sonny Stitt , Ben Webster , Illinois Jacquet, and Gene Ammons . In 1956 she formed an all-male band (except for her) with George Tucker, bass, and Gildo Mahones on piano, with whom she played at Connie's Inn in Harlem. She then played with the organist Dayton Selby for six years . In 1957 she was with Melba Liston in Bermuda for a few months when she led her own all-women band. In the 1960s she played in a band with tenor saxophonist Elsie Smith, who had played with Lionel Hampton . Also in the 1960s, however, she largely gave up her bands because of the predominance of rock and pop music. She took a day job and only performed occasionally.

It wasn't until the early 1980s that she began to form her own bands again. She performed at the Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival and in 1981 at the Kool Jazz Festival in New York at Carnegie Hall . She also toured Europe (France, Switzerland) with Great Ladies of Jazz by Sandra Reeves Phillip and a year later also played in Tunisia and at the North Sea Jazz Festival .

She recorded two albums with the Dayton Selby Trio (The Feminine Sax, There she blows, 1957).

literature

• Linda Dahl Stormy Weather , Limelight 1996, Chapter Willene Barton , pp. 197-201
• Kathleen Thompson Willene Barton , in Darlene Clark Hine (Ed.) Black Women in America: Music , Encyclopedia of Black Women in America. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 1997, Oxford University Press 2005

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Linda Dahl wrote in her book based on an interview in 1979 that she would not disclose her age, but was estimated to be over 50 (1979)
2. ↑ Tom Lord lists five recording dates from 1950 to 1958 in his jazz discography