Anna Mae Winburn

Happy Birthday, Anna Mae Winburn...August 13, 1913-September 30, 1999...Ana Mae Winburn was a triple threat; Bandleader, singer and drop-dead gorgeous. As a bandleader, she had an eye for talent and a dogged determination to overcome racial and gender prejudices to lift her talented players into the jazz pantheon where they belonged.

Born in Tennessee but raised in Indiana, Winburn entered a talent contest in her teens and won a spot on a local radio station singing for a white band. From there she moved to Nebraska where she sang and played guitar in several territory bands lead by Red Perkins. She moved on to lead Lloyd Hunters Serenaders but the draft during WW2 decimated their ranks and they were disbanded. The Kansas City Blue Devils, which included among them the amazing Charlie Christian, were looking for a leader and Winburn took over the job, changing the name to Anna Mae Winburn and her Cotton Boys. The band was touring successfully throughout the Midwest when once again, Winburn found herself adrift. As she told it, "We were a tremendous hit, packing in crowds everywhere until one night in Minneapolis, Minnesota, when jazz producer and entrepreneur, John Hammond, came through town with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra. They were playing a benefit and some of my musicians asked me if they could sit in  and show them what they could do. I told them they could as long as they didn't disrupt the dance." Hammond was so impressed that he hired them on the spot and took them back to New York.

It was at that time she was approached by the owner of the Dreamland Ballroom, Jimmie Jewel, to lead the all-female orchestra The International Sweethearts of Rhythm. At the time the band was made up primarily of  18 young female musicians from the Piney Woods Country Life School in Mississippi and Winburn was reluctant. Winburn said of her first meeting, "What a bunch of cute little girls, but I don't know if I can get along with that many women or not." But she soon changed her mind, "When I first saw those girls I was really amazed. They were very young and composed of many different races and nationalities. Some of them were mulattoes and some were part Italian or Chinese. When they came onstage in their colorful gowns they looked like a beautiful bouquet of mixed  flowers."  And with the addition of some new professional players, they could also swing as hard or harder than their male competition.

Much of their touring took place throughout the South and Midwest where the good-old-boy network keep their exposure to a minimum. Audiences in the Northeast were in mostly black venues and ballrooms which also kept their profile low. That, and the fact that bookings dried up after the war when the male players returned, closed the chapter on possibly the greatest all-female band of all time. "We never got the recognition we deserved. Men would say. 'Oh, they're a bunch of cute girls but they really can't play.' They were wrong. I'd put put some of those girls up against any man. People are now just realizing how good those girls really were."

Winburn retired from jazz in the 50's. "The International Sweethearts of Rhythm were way ahead of their time and they did a lot to break down racial and sexual prejudice in this country," Winburn said. "We were a close knit family of 18 girls who helped bring people together through the International language of jazz."