The jazz trumpet virtuoso who was set back by sexism

Clora Bryant should have been one of the most famous jazz trumpeters of the 20th century. Her dexterous, passionate playing dazzled Dizzy Gillespie—an inventor of bebop—who in the 1950s took to calling Bryant his protégée. Louis Armstrong was so impressed by the self-described “trumpetiste” that he once jumped up and jammed with her onstage in Las Vegas. But Bryant was largely shunned by club and record-label owners, who believed the trumpet was a man’s instrument, and she spent most of her career in obscurity. “If I was a piano player or just a singer, I would have no problem,” Bryant once said. “But when you start putting that iron to your mouth, you run into problems.”