Fascinating Women

THEY MAY NOT BE HOUSEHOLD NAMES, BUT THEY WERE TRUE JAZZ PIONEERS

CORA “LOVIE” AUSTIN

1887-1972

Born in Tennessee, Austin led the studio band at Paramount Records in Chicago throughout the 1920s. A virtuoso of jazz arranging, she orchestrated, performed and conducted for more than 100 recordings by the likes of Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter, Louis Armstrong and Kid Ory. “She was a greater talent than many of the men of this period,” the pianist Mary Lou Williams, who was deeply influenced by Austin, once said.

UNA MAE CARLISLE

1915-1956

The brilliant singer and pianist toured Europe in the late 1930s, “charming the aristocracy with her witty stylings,” says Hannah Grantham, a Smithsonian musicologist. Of African and Native American descent, Carlisle was the first black woman to have a composition appear on a Billboard chart (“Walkin’ by the River,” 1941) and the first black American to host a national radio show (“The Una Mae Carlisle Radio Show” on WJZ-ABC).

ERNESTINE “TINY” DAVIS

C. 1909-1994

The Memphis-born vocalist and trumpeter enjoyed a decades-long career, touring with many bands during the golden age of jazz and leading the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, a racially integrated band of 17 women that defied Jim Crow laws to tour the South in the 1940s. Louis Armstrong was so impressed with Davis’ playing that he reportedly tried to hire her away from the Sweethearts; Davis turned him down.

DOROTHY DONEGAN

1922-1998

The Chicago native, who studied at the Chicago Conservatory, could play boogie, bebop and classical. In 1943, Donegan was the first black performer to hold a concert bill at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, performing Rachmaninoff and Grieg in the first act and jazz in the second.

DYER JONES

C. 1890-UNKNOWN

Though she was never recorded, and many of the details of her life are lost to history, Jones, who played the trumpet, exerted a major influence on early jazz, Grantham says. In the 1910s, she led a circus band around the country. Among the aspiring female musicians she mentored were runaways from a Charleston, South Carolina, orphanage, the future “Queen of the Trumpet” Valaida Snow and Jones’ own daughter Dolly, who made history in 1926 as the first female trumpeter to record a jazz record. Jones even formed a family trio, with her husband on saxophone and Dolly on trumpet.