News & Updates — women in jazz

She was the lady who swings the band. Mary Lou Williams may be not be considered a major jazz star but her contributions as a pianist, arranger, composer, teacher, radio host and historian are immense. She has been a professional since she was a little girl in Pittsburgh and was playing with Duke Ellington's Washingtonians at 13. She married saxophonist John Williams in 1927 and formed a band with him in Memphis before they both joined Andy Kirk's Twelve Clouds of Joy in Oklahoma City in '29, with whom Mary Lou made her first recordings as the band's pianist, composer...

The Mother of the Blues, Gertrude Pridgett aka Ma Rainey, was an early singing star for that newfangled phonograph record player invention, as well as traveling and performing since the age of 12. She came from Georgia and heard the blues around 1902. She and her husband Will Rainey started groups called Alabama Fun Makers Company and then Assassinators of the Blues(!) and hit the road, also joining minstrel & medicine shows. She found herself in New Orleans in 1914 and started hanging with King Oliver, Louie Armstrong and Sidney Bechet. With her powerfully expressive vocals she cut her first...

One of the greatest singers of her time, Bessie Smith and her powerful voice was a major attraction of the 1920s and stood to influence many jazz & blues vocalists, most notably Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin. Bessie came from Chattanooga TN. She had lost both her parents by the age of 9 and her & her siblings busked in the streets for a living. At 18 she found work as a dancer in a traveling company that her brother worked for. Ma Rainey was also in the troupe and helped Bessie learn to handle a stage, as well as...

Happy birthday to Lady Day, the most impactful American singer that ever lived. The most emotional and distinguishable voice in music, Billie Holiday was immensely popular. She was also a screaming example of how fucked up America is and exposed its mistreatment of those who come from the poorest sect of society. While she achieved wealth and fame due to her talent, the system failed her in so many ways. A victim of assault, racism, child poverty, prostitution, domestic abuse, jail time, theft, drugs and systematic legal bullshit (such as the revoking of her ability to perform in NYC), she...

Blues-boogie piano star Camille Howard was one of the better known female talents of the early R&B and jump-blues years. One of the finest blues piano players of the era, she rocked the Los Angeles scene with her own groups, as well as with her husband Roy Milton's band as pianist and occasional singer (and he drummed on many of her records). Out of Galveston TX, she was performing in the local Texas nightclubs by the mid-'30s. She moved to California in the early '40s and joined Milton's band, making her recorded debut with them in '45 for Lionel Hampton's...