International Sweethearts of Rhythm | |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Sweethearts of Rhythm |
| Origin | Piney Woods, Mississippi, U.S. |
| Genres | Jazz |
| Years active | 1937 (1937)–1949 (1949) |
| Labels | Rosetta |
The International Sweethearts of Rhythm was an Americanjazz ensemble, believed to be the first racially-integratedall-female band in the United States.
During the 1940s, the band featured some of the best female musicians of the day.[1] They playedswing andjazz on a national circuit that included theApollo Theater in New York City, theRegal Theater in Chicago, and theHoward Theater in Washington, D.C.[2][3] After a performance in Chicago in 1943, theChicago Defender announced the band was "one of the hottest stage shows that ever raised the roof of the theater!"[4] They have been labeled "the most prominent and probably best female aggregation of theBig Band era".[5] During feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s in America, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm became popular with feminist writers and musicologists who wanted to highlight previously-overlooked contributions from female musicians.
The original members of the band had met in Mississippi in 1938 at thePiney Woods Country Life School, a school for poor andAfrican American children.[6] The majority who attended Piney Woods were orphans, including band memberHelen Jones, who had been adopted by the school's principal and founder (also the Sweethearts' original bandleader),Laurence C. Jones.[6] During a 1980 Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival interview, band member Helen Jones said that the existence of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm was the result of Jones's vision. In the 1930s he was inspired byIna Ray Hutton'sMelodears to create anall-female jazz band at Piney Woods.[6] Having been an entrepreneur when it came to fundraising, in the early 1920s Jones supported the school by sending an all-female vocal group called theCotton Blossom Singers on the road.[7]: 85–86 Following the fundraising successes of the band and other Piney Woods musical groups, he formed the Swinging Rays of Rhythm led by Consuela Carter. The band toured throughout the eastern U.S. to raise money for the school. According to the saxophonist and bandleader Lou Holloway, the Swinging Rays of Rhythm became the resident all-female swing band at Piney Woods after April 1941 when the Sweethearts left and began traveling cross-country.[7]: 137 Holloway said the Swinging Rays were understudies for the Sweethearts, performing for them when the Sweethearts had to attend school after missing too many classes.[7]: 138 In 1941, several girls in the band fled the school's bus when they found out that some of them would not graduate because they had been touring with the band instead of sitting in class.[7]: 171
In 1941, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm became a professional act and severed connections with Piney Woods.[7]: 6 The band settled inArlington, Virginia, where a wealthy Virginian supported them.[8] Members from different races, including Latina, Asian, Caucasian, Black, Native American, Indian and Puerto Rican,[9][10] lent the band an "international" flavor, and the name International Sweethearts of Rhythm was given to the group. Composed of 14- to 19-year-olds, the band included Pauline Braddy (tutored on drums bySid Catlett andJo Jones), Willie Mae Wong (sax), Edna Williams and thirteen others, includingHelen Jones Woods, who was the daughter of the Piney Wood School's founder.Anna Mae Winburn became bandleader in 1941 after resigning from her position leading theCotton Club Boys inNorth Omaha, Nebraska, which featured guitaristCharlie Christian[11] andFletcher Henderson.[6][12] Winburn led the band until her retirement.[7]: 154
The first composer for the band wasEddie Durham, withJesse Stone replacing him in 1941. Durham left the Sweethearts to formEddie Durham's All-Star Girl Orchestra, taking some of the Sweethearts with him.[4] Stone brought in professional musicians to help bridge the gap between experienced and inexperienced players.[7]: 159 Two of Stone's professionals were trumpeterErnestine "Tiny" Davis and saxophonistVi Burnside. Both were members of the all-blackHarlem Playgirls during the 1930s.[7]: 161 The sixteen-piece International Sweethearts of Rhythm included a brass section, heavy percussion, and a deep rhythmic sense, along with many of the best female musicians of the day.[13] About the group's self-titled recording,Lewis Porter wrote, "The sixteen recordings here reveal the dynamic blues playing and driving riffs for which the band was noted, as captured inArmed Forces Radio Service broadcasts of 1945 and 1946."[14]
The venues where they performed were predominantly, if not only, for black audiences. These included theApollo Theatre in Harlem, theHoward Theatre in Washington, D.C., theRegal Theatre in Chicago, theCotton Club in Cincinnati, the Riviera in St. Louis, the Dreamland in Omaha, the Club Plantation andMillion Dollar Theater in Los Angeles.[7]: 6 Critic Leonard Feather wrote, "if you are white, whatever your age, chances are you have never heard of the Sweethearts[...]".[6]
The Sweethearts swiftly rose to fame, as evidenced by oneHoward Theater show in 1941 when the band set a box office record of 35,000 patrons in one week. In Hollywood they made short films to use as "filler" in movie theaters.[15]
Although the International Sweethearts of Rhythm were successful, as they made two coast-to-coast tours in their bus, a few impediments remained.[7]: 157 According to pianist Johnnie Mae Rice, because of the Jim Crow laws in the southern states of the formerConfederacy, the band "practically lived on the bus, using it for music rehearsals and regular school classes, arithmetic and everything".[6] Segregation laws prevented them from using certain restaurants and hotels.[16] During the 1980 Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival, saxophonistRoz Cron said, "We white girls were supposed to say 'My mother was black and my father was white' because that was the way it was in the South. Well, I swore to the sheriff in El Paso that that's what I was. But he went through my wallet and there was a photo of my mother and father sitting before our little house in New England with the picket fence, and it just didn't jell. So I spent my night in jail."[6] Because of situations like this, the band members took precautions. For example, the white women in the band wore dark makeup on stage to avoid arrest.[17][18] They made relatively little money as a traveling band. According to saxophonist Willie Mae Wong Scott, "The original members received $1 a day for food plus $1 a week allowance, for a grand total of $8 a week. That went on for years, until we got a substantial raise—to $15 a week. By the time we broke up, we were making $15 a night, three nights a week."[6]
After Stone left in 1943 he was replaced by Maurice King, who continued the tradition of professionalism that Stone brought to the group.[7]: 159 (King later arranged forGladys Knight and theDetroit Spinners.) The band performed at theApollo Theater in 1943.[7]: 171 In 1944 the band was named "America's No. 1 All-Girl Orchestra" byDownBeat magazine.[17] The band enjoyed a large following among African-American audiences. They played battle-of-the-bands concerts against bands led byFletcher Henderson andEarl Hines and sold out large venues such as theRhumboogie Club in Chicago. According to D. Antoinette Handy, the band received a larger vote than was given toErskine Hawkins and his band.[7]: 155 According to bassist Vi Wilson, jam sessions sometimes turned into battle of the band sessions between the Sweethearts of Rhythm and theDarlings of Rhythm. "They said, 'Those girls play like men.'"[19]: 70 DuringWorld War II, African American soldiers overseas wrote the band letters, asking them to come to Europe to perform. When the band toured France and Germany in 1945, the members became the first black women to travel with theUSO.[7]: 162
The International Sweethearts of Rhythm performed in 1948 with Dizzy Gillespie at the fourth annualCavalcade of Jazz concert atWrigley Field in Los Angeles on September 12.[20] They also performed at the eighth Cavalcade of Jazz concert on June 1, 1952 when Anna Mae Winburn was leading.[21] In 1980, jazz pianistMarian McPartland convinced the organizers of the third annual Women's Jazz Festival inKansas City to reunite the Sweethearts.[6] Included in this interview were nine of the original members as well as six of the band's later members (four wereCaucasian).[6]
Among the reasons given for the band's breakup were aging, deaths of members, weariness of life on the road, marriage, career changes, problems with managers, and lack of funds.[7]: 165–166 Tiny Davis turned down the opportunity to tour with the band in 1946.[22] Rae Lee Jones continued to fight for the Sweethearts, but after 1946 the key instrumentalists had left and the band began to unravel with Jones's death in 1949. Guitarist Carline Ray Russell said musical tastes were changing.[7]: 165 Jazz writer Frank Tirro said that bebop musicians such asDizzy Gillespie,Charlie Parker,Thelonious Monk, andKenny Clarke were trying to change jazz from dance music to a chamber music art form.[7]: 167
Despite the impact of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm being mostly ignored in popular histories of jazz, the band enjoyed a resurgence in popularity amongfeminists in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, the band was among the first marketed aswomen's music. Several feminist writers, musicologists, and others have taken on the task of elevating women's contributions to and integral participation in the making of jazz history. Flutist Antoinette Handy was one scholar who documented the story of these female musicians of color.[23]Sherrie Tucker, author of several articles on the subject matter as well as the bookSwing Shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s, states the importance of bringing women into the male-dominated version of jazz history:
[T]hrough serious study of jazzwomen's oral histories, scholars might learn new narrative strategies for imagining and telling jazz histories in which women and men are both present. Because women who played instruments other than piano were seldom the 'favored artists' of the 'superior genres,' and because they were hardly ever recorded, they have had little access to the deceptive 'coherence' of mainstream histories. Therefore, they are uniquely positioned to suggest new frameworks for telling and interpreting jazz history.[19]: 68
The feminist era also brought to attention the work of producerRosetta Reitz, who worked closely with the International Sweethearts of Rhythm. Her biographical liner notes for theInternational Sweethearts of Rhythm record, as well as top quality recordings, have been made available worldwide through her company,Rosetta Records, whose focus is primarily to feature female and black jazz and blues musicians who are not usually recognized for their tremendous talents.[14] TheInternational Sweethearts of Rhythm record compilation (1984) was followed two years later by a documentary short film directed and produced byGreta Schiller andAndrea Weiss,[13] "at the onset of the third-wave feminist movement".[24]: 183 International Sweethearts of Rhythm: America's Hottest All-Girl Band premiered at the 1986New York Film Festival.[25][26]
There has also been considerable scholarship conducted regarding the "International" aspect of their name and the effect it had on the band's acceptance among African Americans and whites in the South.[27] According to one jazz historian the band membership included "Willie Mae Wong, Chinese saxophonist; Alma Cortez, Mexican clarinet player; Nina de LaCruz, Indian saxophonist; and Nova Lee McGee, Hawaiian trumpet player. They were all children of mixed parents; the rest were Afro-American."[28] A publicity poster for the band's September 1940 performance inEmporia, Virginia included the text "America's Greatest Female Band, The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, In Whose Veins Flow the Blood of Many Races: Indian, Mexican, Chinese, Negro".[7]: 119 The first white musicians joined in 1943.[7]: 119
There were also severallesbians in the band, including Tiny Davis, whose independent music career and partnership with Ruby Lucas were later the subject of Schiller and Weiss' documentaryTiny and Ruby: Hell Divin' Women[dead link].[29]
In 2004 theKit McClure Band releasedThe Sweethearts Project on Redhot Records. It is a tribute album recorded entirely with an all-female band using only songs the Sweethearts recorded.[30]
In March 2011, six of the surviving members of the band donated memorabilia and artifacts from their touring years to theNational Museum of American History. The ceremony marking the donations was the kick-off event of theSmithsonian Institution'sJazz Appreciation Month, and the band members received a standing ovation from attendees.[31] The International Sweethearts of Rhythm Collection at the Archives Center, National Museum of American History makes available to the public for research news clippings, photographs, correspondence, ephemera from USO travels, newsletters, books related to the group, and sound recordings.
In 2012, the compilation albumInternational Sweethearts of Rhythm: Hottest Women’s Band of the 1940s was selected by theLibrary of Congress for preservation in theNational Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[32]
In May 2021, the Urban One Honors ceremony recognized the band for their contributions as a symbol of success over adversity.[33]
The lineup of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm changed throughout the band's career. The names listed below are how the members were billed at the time; names after marriage may be different.
Arrangers/musical directors:
The band recorded four songs.[36]: 19
The following album is a compilation of live radio appearances:
The International Sweethearts of Rhythm were featured in several short films (includingSoundies), one feature-length film,[36]: 90 [24]: 261 and two documentary films. They were:
A 2004 DVD calledSwing Era: Sarah Vaughan features Vaughan, along with little-seen material from the International Sweethearts of Rhythm.[38]
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