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Dynamic Women of Early Jazz and Classic Blues, Part 1 of 2

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Phil Spitalny’s Hour of Charm Orchestra featuring “Evelyn and her Magic Violin.”

The Hour of Charm Orchestra

The Hour of Charm Orchestra (1934-1952) was one of the best-known all-women ensembles heard regularly on the NBC broadcast network and Armed Forces Radio during World War II.  It’s included primarily for contrast to the other more ‘organic’ ensembles profiled here.

The popular and successful orchestra was the confection of conservatory trained classical musician Phil Spitalny, a Russian immigrant.  Touring, performing and broadcasting coast-to-coast, they played mostly light classics, middlebrow arrangements of popular standards, hymns, patriotic fare and over-inflated caricatures of jazz.

Hiring only conservatory graduates, Spitalny claimed that up to 1500 candidates had been auditioned for his orchestra ranging from 22 to 45 pieces.  Some of the members wrote arrangements that emphasized the strings, harp and piano but included saxophones, trumpets and trombones.  No sheet music was seen on stage and the music was memorized.

 

Hour of Charm – A

Vogue 78 rpm picture discs were not uncommon at the time.

Most of the musicians sang in the chorus, played multiple instruments (one played twelve) and appeared in white evening gowns.  A subcommittee of five band peers monitored the dating activities of the young women – unmarried by contract.  In her book, Swing Shift: “All Girl” Bands of the 1940s, Sherrie Tucker interviewed former employees of Spitalny.

Viola Smith was a successful professional drummer before and after her 13 years with Hour of Charm.  She remembered, “a lovely life.  Because you worked hard, but we played hard.  We had so much free time.  We had a few summers off.”She received advanced private musical training with experts from the Count Basie band, Julliard School and the NBC Symphony Orchestra.  As the featured soloist of “Sing, Sing, Sing” she was paid above union scale.

By contrast trumpeter Vernell Wells,a veteran of several traveling “all girl” bands, found the maestro “high strung.”  She described her arduous decade with Spitalny’s orchestra as strenuous, recalling“we were under terrific pressure.”Nonetheless, she was also privately tutored by elite musicians from the NBC Symphony and New York Philharmonic orchestras.

 

Queens of Harmony

Julliard graduate Evelyn Kaye (1911-1990) was star of The Hour of Charm –featured on her “Magic Violin,”a 1756 Bergonzi. She was concertmaster, wrote most of the arrangements, kept an eye on the charming ladies and was Spitalny’s lover.  The couple eventually wed after the orchestra disbanded, successfully shifted to songwriting, and remained happily married until Phil’s passing in 1970.

Hour of Charm was not a Swing, Jazz nor Big Band.  It was the exact opposite of the sassy Melodears swing orchestra fronted by the “Blonde Bombshell of Rhythm,” Ina Rae Hutton.

Actress and bandleader, singer and dancer Ina Rae Hutton.

Ina Rae Hutton and her Melodears

Ina Ray Hutton (Odessa Cowen, 1916-1984) became leader of the 15-piece all-female Melodears in 1934 at the initiation of promoter and agent Irving Mills.  Hutton began her show business career tap dancing at age 8 or 9, progressing through Broadway, Ziegfeld Follies, movies and television.

Hutton – Melodears clip -(1936-37) Truckin,’ High Steppin,’ Melodear Swing, Suzi-Q.mp3

 

The Melodears (1934-39) were a decent Swing band playing good charts with enthusiastic riffing and hot solos loosely modeled on the popular Casa Loma Orchestra.  They made a dozen records, appearing in two feature length films and several movie shorts.  Their best material and the music heard here are from Paramount film shorts of 1936-37 where Ina Rae’s is occasionally seen and heard tap dancing.

A lubricious platinum blonde who was married and divorced six times, Hutton went on to lead all-male bands through the late 1940s. She reorganized an all-female group that appeared on her nationally televised “Ina Rae Hutton Show” produced at KTLA-TV in Los Angeles from 1951-56.

 

Melodears – Accent on Girls

Hutton, the Melodears and her later ensemble.

It’s remarkable and regrettable that Melodears were the sole all-women Swing band in the 1930s to make records. They were by no means the only “all girl” performing ensemble — just the only one to appear widely on discs and film.  Other touring and performing bands were the Darlings of Rhythm, The Harlem Play-girls, Dixie Rhythm Girls and Eddie Durham’s All-Star Girl Orchestra.

The Texas-based Prairie View Co-eds were among the more successful all-woman African American performing bands — not unlike the International Sweethearts, and in fact musicians rotated through both bands.  Lasting into the early 1940s they toured nationally and appeared regularly at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem.

A small set of talented, beautiful, tough and creative women thrived in early Jazz, Blues, Swing and Popular music despite resistance, skepticism, hostility and ridicule from their critics and male peers.  These columns are merely an introduction and not a comprehensive survey of the talented female musicians who expressed themselves and made a living playing popular music.

The Prairie View Co-eds.

In part two, you’ll meet yet more charismatic and dynamic women who shaped early Jazz and Blues.  Featured are arranger, composer and bandleader Lil Hardin, midwife to Jazz on record and former Mrs. Louis Armstrong; the tough and independent “Mother of the Blues” Ma Rainey; accomplished jazz violinist Ginger Smock; and jazz composer, arranger, bandleader and revolutionary modernist Mary Lou Williams.

Thanks to Hal Smith for music consultation and assistance.

 

Sources and further exploration:

Black Beauty, White Heat: A Pictorial History of Classic Jazz 1920-50, Frank Driggs and Harris Lewine (Da Capo Press 1995)

Jazz Records, 1897-1942 [discography], Brian Rust (Arlington House, 1978)

Of Minnie the Moocher and Me, Cab Calloway (Thomas Crowell, 1976)

Swing Shift: “All Girl” Bands of the 1940s, Sherrie Tucker (Duke University, 2000)

The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (St. Martin’s Press, 1988)

 

Dynamic Women of Early Jazz and Classic Blues, Part 2 (Conclusion)

 

One Response to Dynamic Women of Early Jazz and Classic Blues, Part 1 of 2


  1. For more about women of Jazz see:

    Five JAZZ RHYTHM Radio Programs – Pioneering Women of Jazz
    http://jazzhotbigstep.com/18801.html

    Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey on JAZZ RHYTHM
    http://www.jazzhotbigstep.com/36101.html

    International Sweethearts – Documentary film
    https://jezebelproductions.org/intl-sweethearts-of-rhythm-store/

    More International Sweethearts on Youtube
    https://youtu.be/WczP3PyHt20
    https://youtu.be/uN7xU11_gS4

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