Tonya Bolden - Take-Off. American All-Girl Bands During World War II

GIRL MUSICIANS.

Brass, rhythm, saxes. Young, attractive, modern readers. Steady engagements. AIRMAIL photo, details. Take-off?

his was the start of a June 1941 help-wanted ad for the Swinghearts. An outfit like that clashed with the dominant idea of what was respectable for female bands. Many people thought it downright devilish for a woman to make a sax wail, produce walking-bass plucks, let loose hot licks on skins, or make other moves in service of the most dynamic dance music of the day. Some called this jazz jump, others jive. In the end, swing thrived.

If I were seeking an effect of power, of heavy beats I should certainly not go to work with a group of girls, Phil Spitalny told Etude magazine in 1938, four years after he launched the band that became the Hour of Charm. Its name came from the Sunday-night radio show, which premiered in 1935. Many Americans deemed this super-successful orchestra, with its mostly mellow music, the ideal all-woman band.

Swing gave wings to the jitterbug and other ecstatic, acrobatic dances. Swing gave rise to a slew of slangfrom A (Apple for Harlem) to Z (zooty for flashy or extremeas in the zoot suit).

In between, you had canary (gal singer), cat (guy in a swing band), hep (progenitor of hip), and take-off: to solo, improvising to your soul's delight.

Jitterbugs, June 1938. A few years later, a Life magazine article about how a mass of teens let loose at a Harry James concert in the Big Apple had the headline Jitterbugs Jam James's Jive Jag. Some fans cut the rug in the aisles. Others jittered in their seats.

Swing's biggest boostersthe big bands. These twelve-to-twenty-piece (or larger) orchestras bounced out of the Big Apple and the Big Easy; they clocked out of K.C., Chi-Town, and Cincy.

A big band's rhythm section usually had an 88 (piano), doghouse (bass violin), and drum setride cymbal a must! Its brass section, a triplet of trumpets and a pair of trombones (aka tramaka slushpumps, sliphorns, and sackbutts). The reed section might have one of each from the family of sax (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone)and a licorice stick (clarinet), perhaps. Fiddles (violins), belly-fiddles (guitars), a woodpile (xylophone), and a grunt horn (tuba) were also in the swing of things in some big bands.

Cab Calloway is most remembered for the song Minnie the Moocher, with the scat Hi-De-Hi-De-Hi-De-Ho. Cab once led a band with his older sister, Blanche, also a singer. In the 1930s, she broke bad with her own all-guy band: Blanche Calloway and Her Joy Boys. Blanche also had an all-girl band for a beat.

Big band leaders were piano playerstake Count Basie for onesingers, with Cab Calloway a prime example, and hide-beaters like Gene Krupa. These cats and scores of other legends fronted bands that served up tunes that still make folks jump, jive, and wail today. One O'Clock Jump, Stompin at the Savoy, and In the Mood are just a few. On the list, too, the song some say gave swing the big kickoff: the 1932 Duke Ellington hit It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing).

Some big bands featured a canary or had a fem on the 88's. As for the rest of the bandlassies, step back! That was the rule.

Cover boy, 1945. Gene Krupa was certainly among the flashiest, if not truly the world's fastest, drummer as billed.

Good jazz is hard, masculine music with a whip to it. So said music maven Marvin Freedman in an early 1941 issue of Chicago-based DownBeat, the era's primo jazz magazine (the Beat to hepsters). Like many guys, Freedman didn't think gals could truly dig swing or any other jazz. Women like violins, and jazz deals with drums and trumpets. Many women winced at this digGimme a break! The Swinghearts was one band that blasted Freedman's bum rap. And this chick band was by no means the first.