"Women in Jazz": An Audacious, Amazing Musical Compilation on YouTube

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2022 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Right now Ilm listening to Women in Jazz,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHE4UTFDlL0,

a compilation on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHE4UTFDlL0) of the great women jazz singers – not only the famous names (Billie Holiday – represented by her Decca remake of “Them There Eyes” instead of her far superior Columbia original – Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, Lena Horne, Dinah Washington, Kay Starr, Pearl Bailey) but the near-greats that had at least cult careers (Anita O’Day, Carmen McRae, June Christy, Betty Carter, Annie Ross, real-life couple Jackie Cain and Roy Kral, Nellie Lutcher – doing an infectious vocal version of the Dixieland standard “That’s A-Plenty” – and Helen Forrest, whose career never recovered from the trauma of being dumped by her employer and lover, Harry James, when he married Betty Grable instead and Forrest learned about it the way the rest of the world did, through the media)/

There are also at least some of the unjustly forgotten, including Ivie Anderson (represented here by one of her most magisterial records, “I Got It Bad [And That Ain’t Good]” with Duke Ellington, for whom Ivie worked for 11 years until her chronic asthma forced her to retire to L.A. in 1942 and led to her death seven years later – ironically the asthma also probably contributed to the absolutely haunting quality of her voice). Helen Humes, Etta Jones (not to be confused with Etta James, a superb blues and soul singer not represented in this collection), Ann Moore (one of the real surprises, doing a hard-edge rendition of “Meet Me at No Special Place” with Count Basie’s band and making quite a contrast with the soft, subtle, laid-back version by Nat “King” Cole from which I learned this song), Lil Green (working with a big band instead of the stripped-down blues combo, with Big Bill Broonzy on guitar, with which she made her best and most famous records), Betty Roché (doing a ribald version of “I’ll Get By” with Earl Hines’ band – I had assumed that was the familiar version on a Grand Award LP that also contained seven songs by Dinah Washington but Roché went into a second chorus, featuring the words “I’ll get high” instead of “I’ll get by” and doing other variations that made the song considerably more counter-cultural), Melrose Colbert (also with Hines, during the period in which he was using an all-female string section to avoid having his musicians get drafted, doing a searing version of Fats Waller’s “Black and Blue”), Kay Davis (represented by her greatest record, Duke Ellington’s “Tramsblucency”), Kay Penton (doing “As Time Goes By” with Teddy Wilson – I would rather have seen her represented by her greatest record, “Heaven’s Doors Are Open Wide” with Tadd Dameron’s studio band, a truly haunting original ballad by Dameron recorded in 1949 but allowed to molder in the Capitol Records vaults until 1972), Blue Lu Barker (doing a song called “Trombone Man Blues” that’s essentially an offtake of Alberta Hunter’s “Downhearted Blues”), Rose Murphy (doing a typically annoying number called “Busy Line” – at least she doesn’t go “chi-chi” on this one), Rae Pearl (on the only record of hers I’ve heard, “Casbah” with Tadd Dameron’s band, where he used her wordless vocal much the way Duke Ellington had used Kay Davis’s in “Transblucency”), Addie Williams (doing a neo-blues number called “Maybe Someday”), torch singer Dorothy Ellis (on a great neo-blues song called “Slowly Go Out of My Mind”) and bebop scat singer Betty Mays.

Quite frankly I would have wanted to see more woman instrumentalists on a program called Women in Jazz – including the greatest non-singing female jazz musician of all time, Mary Lou Williams – though a few women sneaked in because they both sang and played, including Valaida Snow. She was called “the female Louis Armstrong” because she was Black, she sang and she played trumpet, and she’s represented here by one of his biggest hits, “You’re Driving Me Crazy” – and her trumpet solo, though not as overwhelming as his, is quite fine in its own right. There are also singers who accompanied themselves on piano, including Nellie Lutcher, Una Mae Carlisle (a protegée of Fats Waller, though she did not play piano on all her records and I have no idea whether the rather distantly recorded piano on this record, “Walkin’ by the River,” is hers), Rose Murphy and Carmen McRae (though she doesn’t play on her track here, “Pass Me By” – her first record with Mercer Ellington’s orchestra, and Mercer claimed in his autobiography that his dad, Duke Ellington, interceded with Musicraft Records to make sure an inferior alternate take of this record got issued instead of the master Mercer wanted released). The one female jazz singer I would have considered important who isn’t included here is Connee Boswell (she used the spelling “Connie” when she sang with the Boswell Sisters but changed to “Connee” when she went out on her own), and I would gladly have sacrificed Rose Murphy’s track for one by the Boswells (either the sisters or Connee’s later solo recordings). There’s also a “mystery track” in the next-to-last spot just before Della Reese’s “Blue and Orange Birds and Silver Bells,” and the singer here is good enough I wish I knew who she was.

One singer who is here even though I wouldn’t have considered her jazz is the awesome Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who began in the late 1930’s as a gospel singer and in 1940 joined Lucky Millinder’s band for a series of records – most of them based on her gospel material – that smashed through the musical barriers between sacred and secular with a bulldozer. Among her records were “Shout, Sister, Shout” (the first record that combined gospel and blues and brought gospel to the pop charts, 13 years before the record that’s usually credited with doing that, Ray Charles’ “I Got a Woman”), “That’s All” and “Rock Me.” “Rock Me” is included here, and in the videos (“soundies”) of these songs she strolls in and stands in front of Millinder’s band. They are all neatly dressed in evening wear and are sitting in front of music stands as Millinder conducts them, and they all look very much of their time. Then Sister Rosetta Tharpe walks in, with this big-assed electric guitar with which she can drown out the whole band, and she looks like she beamed in from 20 years later, pounding out power chords and even shredding, anticipating the next two revolutions in pop music that would put the big bands out of existence forever. Tharpe is one of those performers, like Mahalia Jackson, Clara Ward and Marion Williams, who remind us that all rock ‘n’ roll was born in the music of the African-American church (and if you need reminders of that, check out the 1958 film of the Newport Jazz Festival, Jazz on a Summer’s Day, in which the musical performers include Dinah Washington, Big Maybelle and Chuck Berry – but Mahalia Jackson out-rocks them all!), and I’ve pointed this out to people who claim rock is “the devil’s music.” “It is not the music of the devil!" I say. "It’s the music of the Lord!”

00:00:00 Maxine Sullivan – St. Louis Blues
00:03:07 Miss Valaida (Snow) Med Winstrup Olesens Swingband – You're Driving Me Crazy
00:05:26 Ella Johnson & Buddy Johnson – Please Mr. Johnson
00:08:20 Una Mae Carlisle – Walkin' By The River
00:11:21 Teddy Wilson And His Orchestra With Helen Ward – Embraceable You
00:14:38 Mildred Bailey – Lover, Come Back To Me
00:17:38 Duke Ellington And His Orchestra With Ivie Anderson – I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good
00:20:57 Benny Goodman Sextet With Peggy Lee – Where Or When
00:24:57 Lucky Millinder And His Orchestra With Sister Rosetta Tharpe – Rock Me
00:27:03 Harry James And His Orchestra With Helen Forrest – But Not For Me
00:30:14 Bunny Banks Trio With Bonnie Davis – Don't Stop Now
00:32:57 Andy Kirk And His Twelve Clouds Of Joy With June Richmond – Baby Don't You Tell Me No Lie
00:36:07 The Nat “King” Cole Trio With Ida James – Close To You
00:42:13 Louis Armstrong And His Orchestra With Dorothy Dandridge – Watcha Say
00:45:17 Duke Ellington And His Orchestra With Joya Sherrill – I Didn't Know About You
00:48:02 Eddie Condon And His Orchestra With Lee Wiley – Wherever There's Love
00:51:02 Gene Krupa And His Orchestra With Anita O'Day – Tea For Two
00:53:26 Helen Humes And Her All-Stars – He Don't Love Me Anymore
00:56:18 John Kirby And His Orchestra With Sarah Vaughan – You Go To My Head
00:59:20 Thelma Carpenter – Seems Like Old Times
01:02:21 Mercer Ellington And His Orchestra With Carmen McRae – Pass Me By
01:05:06 Duke Ellington And His Orchestra With Kay Davis – Transblucency
01:08:05 Dizzy Gillespie And His Orchestra With Alice Roberts – He Beeped When He Should Have Bopped
01:10:44 Lena Horne – Whispering
01:13:32 Etta Jones With J.C. Heard And His Orchestra – I Sold My Heart To The Junkman
01:16:20 Count Basie Orchestra With Ann Moore – Meet Me At No Special Place
01:19:25 Lil Green And Her Orchestra – Lonely Woman
01:22:22 Lionel Hampton And His Orchestra With Wini Brown - Gone Again
01:25:12 Earl Hines And His Orchestra With Melrose Colbert – Black And Blue
01:28:14 Dinah Washington With Dave Young's Orchestra – Am I Asking Too Much
01:31:04 Duke Ellington And His Orchestra With Dolores Parker – Take Love Easy
01:34:05 Kay Starr – Don't Let Your Love Go Wrong
01:36:59 Teddy Wilson Trio With Kay Penton – As Time Goes By
01:39:56 Jackie & Roy – Deed I Do
01:42.38 Blue Lu Barker – Trombone Man Blues
01:45:31 Rose Murphy – Busy Line
01:48:14 Tadd Dameron And His Orchestra With Rae Pearl – Casbah
01:51:12 Addie Williams – Maybe Someday
01:54:05 Lionel Hampton And His Orchestra With Betty Carter – The Huckle Buck
01:57:12 Pearl Bailey & Hot Lips Page – Baby, It's Cold Outside
02:00:11 Billie Holiday – Them There Eyes
02:03.00 Ella Fitzgerald – Talk Fast My Heart, Talk Fast
02:05.53 Betty Mays And Her Swingtet – May's Haze
02:08:30 Nellie Lutcher – That's A Plenty
02:10:57 June Christy With Stan Kenton And His Orchestra – Lonesome Road
02:15:20 Jack Dieval Et Son Quartett With Annie Ross – Le Vent Vert
02:18:00 Dorothy Ellis – Slowly Go Out Of My Mind
02:24:20 Della Reese With Jimmy Hamilton And His Orchestra – Blue and Orange Birds and Silver Bells