Rosetta Reitz

Happy Birthday, Rosetta Reitz...September 28, 1924-November 1, 2008...Without the tireless, diligent work of Rosetta Reitz, much of the music and history of many female jazz artists would be lost to us. Throughout her lifetime Reitz enjoyed a varied career which included working as a stockbroker, a food columnist for the Village Voice, a college professor, owning a greeting card company and the Four Seasons bookstore and writing a groundbreaking book on women's menopause. She was an outspoken feminist and the co-founder of the Older Women's Liberation (OWL). She also founded Rosetta Records which focused on the female recording artists who had been forgotten and ignored by mainstream labels.

Reitz's introduction to jazz was through her ex-husband and other male friends but over time she began to realize that women's music was missing from what she was listening to. She began collecting old 78 recordings of musicians like trumpeter and vocalist Valaida Snow, pianist and singer Georgia White and a host of forgotten blues singers. She also discovered many lost recordings by better known performers including Ida Cox, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Mae West. Her collection covered music from the 1920's to the 1960's with an emphasis on the music of the Blues Queens of the 20's.

Reitz was quoted in the 1980's, "In that decade in the 1920's, when jazz was really being formulated and changing from an entertainment music into an art form, these women were extraordinarily important and instrumental in accomplishing that. Louis Armstrong was a sideman on records in the '20's with singers like Sippie Wallace, Eva Taylor, Hociel Thomas, Virginia Liston and Margaret Johnson. These women's records were made as their records, but when they come out now they are reissued as Louis Armstrong records, when actually he's not that important on them."

"These women had the power. They hired the musicians and the chorus line, a lot of them wrote the music themselves and they produced their own shows. They were more than just singers; they were symbols of success."

With $10,000 she borrowed from friends, Reitz founded Rosetta Records in 1979. Most of the music she released was already in the public domain but she made a point of tracking down the rights to some of the songs and paying royalties to the artists when she could. She supervised the remastering of the often damaged original records, researched the backgrounds of the artists, wrote the liner notes, designed the album graphics and found vintage photographs for the albums. Originally sold through mail order, the label was eventually picked up by several record stores. As recording technology progressed, the albums were converted to tapes and then CD's. Reitz released 17 compilations of vintage jazz and blues, most of them centered around a theme but she also recorded retrospectives of The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Valaida Snow and Mae West.

In 1980 and 1981, Reitz produced a tribute to "Women of Jazz"  at Avery Fisher Hall as part of the Newport Jazz Festival. It was called "The Blues is a Woman" and featured Adelaide Hall, Big Mama Thornton, Nell Carter and Koko Taylor with narration by Carmen McRae. She also lobbied for a postage stamp in Bessie Smith's honor. Reitz planned to release 26 albums and write a book on women in jazz but she died at the age of 84 of heart disease before she could fully realize her dream. Her albums have not been reissued but renewed interest in many of the artists Rietz promoted have been re-discovered by the greater recording industry.

Slam Stewart

Happy Birthday, Leroy Eliot "Slam" Stewart...September 21, 1914-December 10, 1987...Slam Stewart was an excellent swing bassist with a unique sound which he created by humming along an octave higher than his bowing. He started playing violin but switched permanently to the bass at age 20 while attending the Boston Conservatory. It was there that he got his idea of humming along with his instrument after hearing Ray Perry singing along with his violin.

In 1937, Stewart teamed up with singer, guitar player, comedian "Slam" Gaillard to form the novelty act "Slim and "Slam". "Flat Foot Floogie" was their first big hit in 1938 and it cemented their popularity until the act broke up in the early 40's. Stewart worked regularly throughout the 40's doing session work with Art Tatum, Lester Young, Fats Waller, Coleman Hawkins, Red Norvo (which featured a famous session with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker) and the Benny Goodman Sextet, among others. He also headed his own group which at one point included Erroll Garner on piano.

Later in his career he worked with other groups headed by Billy Taylor and Roy Eldridge. He also recorded a couple of albums with another "Humming" bassist, Major Holley. His unique and solid bass style kept him working regularly when he wasn't busy teaching at the University of New York in Binghamton, New York or at Yale University.  He died in Binghamton at the age of 73.

Lovie Austin

Happy Birthday, Lovie Austin...September 19, 1887-July 10, 1972...Another Lost Lady of Jazz, Lovie Austin was a groundbreaking bandleader, session musician, composer and arranger during the classic blues era in the 1920's. Austin studied music in college in Nashville, Tennessee and then in 1923, headed for Chicago, the town she would make her permanent home. Austin was a fun loving woman, often seen riding around town in her Stutz Bearcat with leopard upholstery, dressed to the teeth. Her joie de vivre made her a popular vaudeville performer and accompanying blues singers was her specialty.

Austin backed many of the famous blues artists of her time including Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Ethel Waters and Alberta Hunter and her artistry can be heard on their recordings. She also lead her own band, the Blues Serenaders, which included Tommy Ladnier, Shirley Clay, Kid Ory and Johnny Dodds among others. She also worked with other prominent jazz musicians of the 20's, including Louis Armstrong and worked as a session musician for Paramount Records. She co-wrote "Down Hearted Blues" with Alberta Hunter which became a huge hit for Bessie Smith in 1923.

After 1926, Austin's recording career ended and she became the musical director of the Monogram Theater in Chicago which featured T.O.B.A. acts. She worked there for 20 years. After WW2 she played piano and taught music at a school of dance and occasionally performed in clubs.
In 1961, Austin returned to recording, making an album with Alberta Hunter as part of Riverside records "Living Legends" series.

Pianist Mary Lou Williams called Lovie Austin  her biggest inspiration. In 1977 she described seeing her for the first time," When I was between 8 or 10 years of age (1918-1920), my step-father and my brother-in-law, Hugh Floyd, often took me to dances and theaters to listen to musicians. Well, there was this T.O.B.A. theater in Pittsburgh where all of the black entertainers came. I remember seeing this great woman sitting in the pit and conducting five or six men , her legs crossed, a cigarette in her mouth, playing the show with her left hand and writing music with her right. Wow! I never forgot this episode...My entire concept was based on the few times I was around Lovie Austin. She was a fabulous woman and a fabulous musician too. I don't believe there is a woman around now who could compete with her. She was a greater talent than many of the men of this era."

William McKinney

Happy Birthday, William McKinney...September 17, 1895-October 14, 1969...McKinney got his start as a circus drummer, traveling around the south. After a stint in the military during WW1, he took over the leadership of the Synco Jazz Band in Springfield, Ohio in 1922, turning over his drumsticks to Cuba Austin to take on the full time managing and leadership of the group. The band toured the Midwest and California, finally finding a steady gig in Detroit's Greystone Hotel Ballroom in 1926, where they changed the name to McKinney's Cotton Pickers.

By 1929 the band had moved to Harlem. Don Redman did most of the arranging for the band which featured mainly hot numbers written by Redman or other members of the band. The band members fluctuated, like many bands of that size, but many excellent players passed through the ranks including Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Lonnie Johnson, James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. When the band signed with Victor Records they were required to play more commercial music but never failed to give the pieces a special twist of their own.

In the early 30's there were several bands touring as McKinney's Cotton Pickers. McKinney spent most of the 40's managing several of his bands, retiring from the business at the end of the decade. He also ran the Cozy Cafe in Detroit in the late 30's. He spent the 50's working in an auto factory before retiring and returning to his childhood hometown of Cynthiana, Kentucky.

Trixie Smith

 

Remembering Trixie Smith...1895-September 21, 1943...One of the Lost Women of Jazz, Smith had a clear, warm delivery and a talent for finding excellent musicians to back her. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Smith studied at Selma University in Alabama before moving to New York in 1915 to enter show business. At first she worked in minstrel shows and on the TOBP vaudeville circuit where she became a featured vocalist. In 1922 she made her first recording for the Black Swan label including "My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)". That song would turn out to be the first secular recording that would mention "rock and roll" and would spawn other records by blues singers of the era with "rock" and "roll" in the lyrics.

That same year she won a blues singing contest judged by Vernon and Irene Castle singing her song "Trixie's Blues". Her most famous song, "Railroad Blues" was recorded in 1925 with Louis Armstrong on coronet. She recorded with James P. Johnson and Freddy Keppard as well as Fletcher Henderson's band and the all-white band "The Original Memphis Five", both of which were billed as Trixie Smith and her Down Home Syncopators. Although she made some excellent recordings with an all-star band which included Sidney Bechet in 1938-39, her recording career was pretty much over by 1925.

As the era of great female jazz singers came to an end, Smith kept her career going by performing in cabarets and in musical revues at the Lincoln Theater in Harlem. She appeared in a few movies including "God's Stepchildren" and "Swing!" in 1938. That same year she also appeared in the famous Carnegie Hall concert, "From Spirituals to Swing". When she died five years later after a brief illness at the age of 48, Smith was already a largely forgotten artist. 

Ella Mae Morse

Happy Birthday, Ella Mae Morse...September 12, 1924-October 16, 1999...Morse's musical style blended jazz, blues and country and some critics have called her one of the first rock-and-roll singers. Her recordings were popular on both the U.S. pop and Rhythm and Blues charts but her versatility may have kept her from being a bigger star in an era when promoters didn't know what to do with a white singer whose "hip" style made listeners think she was black.

Morse was first exposed to blues style guitar in her native Paris, Texas when she heard a local blues player, "Uncle Joe," practicing in the back of the local grocery store. Uncle Joe as well as her music loving mother encouraged her natural talent for the blues. She soon got a spot singing on a local radio station. In 1939 she and her mother moved to Dallas, Texas where she got another radio gig after winning a talent contest.

In 1938, Morse auditioned for Jimmy Dorsey who hired her on the spot. Morse had told him she was 19 but when the Dallas School Board informed him he would be responsible for his 14 year old singer's education she was fired. She was remembered by Dorsey's pianist at the time, Freddy Slack, and when Morse and her mother moved to San Diego, Slack offered her a job with his new band.

In 1942 at the age of 17, Morse had her first hit with Slack's band, "Cow-Cow Boogie". It was the first hit Record for Capitol Records as well. "Mr. Five by Five" came next . A year later in 1943, Morse began recording solo, making a splash with "Shoo-Shoo Baby" which reached number one on the R&B charts. In 1946 Morse and Slack had another big hit with "House of Blue Lights" and in 1952 her version of "Love Me Or Leave Me" featured her biggest hit, "Blacksmith Blues" on the flip side, selling over a million copies and earning her a gold record.

Morse stopped recording in 1956 but she kept working until the early 90's, performing at Michael's Pub in New York and several venues in Los Angeles including Disney Land on a regular basis. She died in 1999 at the age of 75.

Adele Astaire

Happy Birthday, Adele Astaire...September 10, 1896-January 25, 1981...When Astaire's mother was told by a teacher that her children might have a chance in show business, the stagestruck Ann Austerlitz packed up her family and moved them from Omaha, Nebraska to New York. By the time she was 8, Astaire and her younger brother Fred, had an established career on the vaudeville circuit. From all accounts, Adele Astaire out-shined her brother in both stage presence and dance skills. Initially, Fred was just a foil for her talents.

 From vaudeville they made the leap to Broadway in 1917 in "Over the Top" becoming popular performers overnight. Fred did most of the choreography for their dances but it was Adele's easy charm and mobile face that entranced the audiences. In 1923 the Astaire's began a long engagement on the London stage, becoming even bigger stars than they were in the States.

The Astaires returned to New York to star in George and Ira Gershwin's first Broadway play, "Lady Be Good" followed by "Funny Face." The plays were a big success in New York and in London. The British were especially fond of Adele whose high- spirited, prankster nature was a contrast to her more reserved brother. Never-the-less, the siblings were very close.

Both of the Astaires were celebrated in high society in New York and in London and at one point, Adele caught the eye of Lord Charles Francis Cavendish, the second son of the 9th Duke of Devonshire. After a successful run on Broadway in the "Band Wagon" in 1931, Adele retired from show business and married Lord Cavendish, moving to Ireland to live at Lismore castle. She had three children but all died shortly after childbirth. Lord Cavendish was an acute alcoholic and died at the age of 38 in 1944.

Fred continued his career and was making a splash in Hollywood. Although Adele made a visit to California to test the waters, she was intimidated by her brother's success and withdrew from show business permanently. From what has been written by critics and others who had the pleasure to see her perform, she was an exceptional talent. Sadly, there is no footage of any of her performances, only a few recorded duets with her brother, George Vollaire and Bernard Clifton. She died in Scottsdale, Arizona after a stroke at the age of 84.

Meade Lux Lewis

Happy Birthday, Meade Lux Lewis...September 4, 1905-June 7, 1964...(birthdate is variously recorded).. Born in Chicago, Lewis was a popular performer there in the 20's but he wasn't well known outside of the area. He made his living running a taxi cab company with fellow Boogie-Woogie pianist Albert Ammons until a recording of his classic, "Honky Tonk Train Blues" made it into the hands of impresario John Hammond. The record had been made in 1927 but didn't come to Hammond's attention until 6 years later.

Under Hammond's guidance, the record was remade and released to great acclaim. Hammond next booked Lewis, Ammons and Pete Johnson into his legendary "From Spirituals to Swing" concert which boosted the popularity of all three players. The trio performed often together, rising to become the top Boogie-Woogie pianists of the day with Lewis leading the pack. They had an extended run at the Cafe' Society, toured as a trio and inspired the formation of Blue Note Records. Their popularity spurred on the Boogie-Woogie craze which lasted for nearly a decade.

As Boogie-Woogie popularity began to wane, Lewis experimented on the celeste and the harpsichord and explored playing old rags and pop songs. He also appeared in the movies "New Orleans" and "Nightmare" and had an uncredited part in "It's A Wonderful Life" playing piano in a scene where George Bailey gets thrown out of a bar. He continued playing in Chicago and California up until his death in a car accident at the age of 58.

Memphis Slim

Happy Birthday, Memphis Slim...September 3, 1915-February 24, 1988...His father played piano and guitar and operated juke joints and in his honor, John Len Chatman would first record under his father's name, Peter Chatman. He soon changed his name to Memphis Slim but would continue to publish some of his 500 songs under his father's name. Memphis Slim got his start in the 1930's in the  honky-tonks and dance halls around Arkansas and Missouri, moving up to Chicago in 1939 to work with Big Bill Broonzy as his piano player. In 1940 Slim recorded his first sides for Blue Bird records, "Beer Drinking Woman" and "Grinder Man Blues" which would remain on his song list for decades.

Slim became a regular session musician for Blue Bird, playing piano for Sonny Boy Williamson, Washboard Sam, Jazz Gillum as well as Broonzy. Slim was influenced by the style of Roosevelt Sykes early on, but Broonzy encouraged him to develop a style of his own. After WW2, Slim went about creating a sound for himself that would become one of the major influences of jump-blues. He put together his own band, the "House Rockers" and cut two classics in 1947, "Lend Me Your Love" and "Rockin' The House." The next year he recorded his biggest hit, "Nobody Loves Me," later covered by dozens of others including Joe Williams, Lou Rawls, Natalie Cole, Eric Clapton and B.B. King as "Every Day I Have The Blues."

Slim tended to jump around on record labels but what he recorded was solid. "The Come Back", Sassy Mae" and "Memphis Slim U.S.A" all made the charts toward the end of the 50's. In all he recorded more than 20 albums under his name and appeared on many more as a side man. Like many other African American artists of the time, Slim tired of the difficulties of being black and on the road in the segregated Unites States. When an offer came to play in Europe, he jumped at the chance and never came back.

In 1960, Slim made his first trip out of the U.S. on a tour of Europe. In 1962, Dixon put together the first of a series of American Folk Festival concerts with Memphis Slim as a featured artist. Slim found the more open environment invigorating and moved to Paris permanently. His engaging personality, and fine tuned playing style, story and history telling of the blues made him a popular entertainer. He was one of the most popular blues players in Europe for almost thirty years.
He died of renal failure at the age of 72.