Melba Liston performs on Art Ford’s Jazz Party, a television program broadcast from Newark, N.J., in 1958. Although Melba Liston was a woman in a male-dominated profession, she excelled anyway. Some consider her an unsung hero and she is very highly regarded in and outside of the jazz community as a trailblazer, as a musician … Continue reading
September 1944, and saxophone legend Lester Young arrives at Fort McClellan, Alabama, for basic training. Young is a jazz star, and he expects to be placed in a military band, like white musicians Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw. Instead, he’s assigned to a combat unit. Here marks the beginning of the end for the “President … Continue reading
1925, and Louis Armstrong hits the music scene with a splash. With trumpet in hand and a wonderfully unique voice, he took on popular songs and stretched the boundaries of their rhythms and melodies so profoundly that American music hasn’t been the same since.Indeed, Louis Armstrong was America’s first “pop star,” whose appeal ignored the … Continue reading
Early 1939. The lights go down at New York’s Cafe Society. The waiters hush the drinking audience, a single small spotlight shines on her face. And Billy Holiday begins to sing. “Southern trees, bears strange fruit blood on the leaves, blood at the root.” The song ends, and the spotlight goes out. Billy leaves the … Continue reading
Nina Simone’s career in activism began in 1964, when her songs openly addressed racial inequality prevalent in the United States. She recorded the still-controversial “Mississippi Goddam,” her respon se to the murder of Medgar Evers and the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. That song, and others like “Old Jim Crow,” she said, were … Continue reading