Hazel Scott

Happy Birthday, Hazel Scott 1920-1981....Beautiful, talented and an outspoken Civil Rights activist, Scott is another Lost Lady of Jazz. Scott was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad to a musician mother and an absent father. When she was 4 she moved with her mother and grandmother to New York City where her mother eventually found work playing saxophone with Lil Hardin Armstrong. Scott was a child prodigy on piano and benefited by the constant stream of her mother's musician friends, among them Art Tatum, Lester Young and Fats Waller, who spent time socializing in her flat. By the age of 8 Scott was given scholarships to study at Juilliard, by her teens she was playing in jazz bands, performing at Roseland Ballroom with the Count Basie Orchestra and hosting her own radio show on WOR. She made her Broadway debut in the musical revue "Sing Out the News" at the age of 18.

Throughout the 30's and 40's Scott performed in various nightclubs playing blues, jazz, popular music and swinging the classics. Her performances at both the uptown and downtown Cafe' Society clubs brought her both fame and fortune, earning nearly a million dollars a year (in today's dollars)  by 1945. Time magazine reviewed her performances this way, "Where others murder the classics, Hazel Scott merely commits arson. Strange notes creep in, the melody is tortured with hints of boogie-woogie, until finally, happily, Hazel Scott surrenders to her worse nature and beats the keyboard into a rack of bones".

Scott was a spirited young woman with an engaging personality and outspoken politics. She credited her strength to being raised by two outspoken, strong willed, independent women. She was one of the first Black entertainers to refuse to perform before segregated audiences. In her words, "Why would anyone come to hear me, a Negro, and refuse to sit beside someone just like me?" Along with Lena Horne, Scott was one of the first Black artists to be given respectable roles in Hollywood movies. She played herself in several movies including "I Dood It", "Broadway Rhythm", The Heat's On", "Something to Shout About" and "Rhapsody in Blue". During the filming of "The Heat's On" she staged a strike when she learned the black female characters would be wearing demeaning aprons to see their sweethearts off to war. The strike went on for three days and the aprons were eventually removed. The incident would cost Scott her film career.

In 1945 She married the first black congressman from the East Coast, Adam Clayton Powell. As Mike Wallace described the couple, "They were stars, not only in the black world but in the white world. That was extraordinary." In 1950 she was offered the opportunity to be the first black performer to host her own syndicated television show. She was the solo star of the show and performed on the piano and often sung in one of the seven languages she spoke. Her triumph was short-lived as the House Committee on Un-American Activities grew in strength. Her performances at Cafe' Society (considered a hot bed of politically leftist activity) and her outspoken support of the civil rights movement made her a target for the committee. She voluntarily made an appearance before the committee but her outspoken testimony caused her show to be cancelled and future bookings for engagements to become sparse.

Her marriage on the rocks and her career stalled, Scott left for France where she joined the growing black expatriate community. Work in Paris was a struggle and after a 10 year absence, Scott made her way back to the States. When she arrived she discovered that musical tastes had changed and she was no longer remembered. She continued to play small clubs and experiment with expressing herself musically. She died of pancreatic cancer in 1981 at the age of 61.