The Darling Saxophone Four
March is Women’s History month – which leads me to consider the role – or lack thereof – women have played, and continue to play in Jazz.
All of us can list the female vocalists who have made a name for themselves in Jazz – from Bessie Smith through Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald to Diana Krall – but looking for women instrumentalists is another story.
This is not because they do not exist – as early as the 1910’s, women’s orchestras, small and large, began to appear. There was something of a craze for women’s saxophone quartets as early as 1915 (check out what appears to be a bass Sax in the photo accompanying this piece).
Large and small women’s groups continued to organize and play through the 1940’s. With the end of the big band era and the rise of rock and roll in the fifties, big bands of all kinds disappeared from the jazz scene
And today? Female jazz musicians still develop and perform, albeit, mostly vocalists – a few instrumentalists to consider though: Jane Ira Bloom (soprano sax), Regina Carter (violin), Anat Cohen (clarinet – check out her CD in the Manieri collection), Tia Fuller (saxophone), Diana Krall (best known as a vocalist, but check out her piano tracks on her first CD – Stepping Out), and one that defies category – Billy Tipton.
Billy Tipton was a pianist and band leader who settled in Eastern Washington in the 1950’s. What makes Billy hard to categorize is that, while he lived as a male his adult life, ‘he’ was born Dorothy Lucille Tipton . . . .
Live Jazz performances are all around us – help keep it alive be attending performances. You’ll have a great time and the musicians will love it.
