https://soundprojections.blogspot.com
PHOTO: MELBA LISTON (1926-1999))
https://thegirlsintheband.com/2013/11/melba-liston/
Melba Liston
by Nicole Williams Sitaraman
Melba Liston was a trombone player who was nothing less than a force of nature. In addition to being sought after for her second-to-none slide playing, she became widely revered for her jazz arrangements and compositions. She is, without question, one of the unsung heroes of the jazz genre.
She was born in Kansas City, MO on January 13, 1926. When she was seven years old, Melba selected the trombone as her instrument of choice as part of her elementary school’s new music program. She later reflected that as a little girl, she chose the trombone because she thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. As a youngster learning to play the slide, she quickly learned how difficult playing the trombone was but she stuck with it. Only a year later, she was good enough to play a solo on a local radio station.
In 1937, her family moved to Los Angeles and Melba’s mother matched her with a music teacher named Alma Hightower. Melba studied with Hightower for a few years but by the time Melba reached the age of sixteen, she decided to become a professional musician and joined the musicians union. She became a member of the band of the Los Angeles Lincoln Theater. During her period with the Lincoln Theater band, she interfaced with the International Sweethearts of Rhythm and also began composing and arranging for other acts performing at Lincoln Theater. This spirit of musical entrepreneurship and creativity would carry Melba throughout her illustrious career as a trombone player, composer and arranger (roles rarely given or attributed to women in jazz during this era).
After her stint at the Lincoln Theater, she joined a band newly-formed by trumpeter Gerald Wilson and also recorded with Dexter Gordon. Melba stayed with Wilson’s band through 1948 when the band broke up. She then joined Dizzy Gillespie’s big band which, at the time, included musicians such as John Coltrane and John Lewis. Melba enjoyed working in this exciting band full of talented artists but Gillespie disbanded the group only a year later. She (and her former bandleader Gerald Wilson) then joined a band backing Billie Holiday on tour. The experience of touring throughout the south with Holiday’s band, coping with the strains of limited income and even more limited audiences, was strenuous, disheartening and exhausting for Melba. In later years, Melba spoke candidly about the extreme difficulties of being a female jazz musician during this era. More than being shunned or overlooked, she, and likely many other women musicians trying to make their way, were abused. However, despite consistent abuse by male musicians, Melba found strength and motivation in her music.
She later left Billie Holiday’s band, stopped playing the trombone and moved back to Los Angeles where she worked in a clerical position in the city’s Board of Education. She stopped playing the slide but her creativity and love of music prevented her from abandoning arranging and composing altogether. Melba quickly became known and respected in music as a savvy and remarkable bebop jazz arranger. Her later work would demonstrate her stellar ability to transcend categories and embrace post-bop, Afrobeat and Motown sounds in her compositions.
During the 1950’s, Melba tried her hand at small roles in film, including bit background parts in The Prodigal and the Ten Commandments. However, in 1956, she returned to playing her trombone in Dizzy Gillespie’s orchestra commissioned by the U.S. State Department as a musical ambassador of the U.S. in South America. She wrote and arranged many of her most memorable tunes during her work with Dizzy’s ambassador orchestra including “Stella By Starlight,” “My Reverie,” and “The Gypsy.” She later transitioned into working with Quincy Jones (a fellow alum of Dizzy Gillespie’s band) and his orchestra as both a player and writer until that group fell on difficult financial times. In 1958, Melba Liston recorded her only album as a leader, Melba Liston and Her ‘Bones – a true gem in jazz history.
She later settled in New York and worked as a freelance arranger and composer for studio sessions of various artists including Marvin Gaye, Milt Jackson, Randy Weston, Gloria Lynne and the Supremes. During the 1960’s is when Melba’s best collaborative relationship – partnering with Randy Weston – flourished. Randy Weston simply adored her expert musical abilities and they worked together on a number of projects for many years to come. In fact, their collaborations produced several notable albums including the critically acclaimed albums Uhuru Afrika (1960) and Highlife (1963). I would venture to say that Melba was a pioneer in the explicit melding of contemporary African rhythms and intonations with American jazz. I am sure Fela Kuti took a listen to these albums on occasion.
During the 1970’s, Melba Liston spent six years in Jamaica on a music education appointment at the University of Jamaica and served as director of popular music studies at the Jamaica Institute of Music. When she returned to the US, she formed an all-female jazz band called the Melba Liston Company which headlined at the Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival. The band was discontinued in 1983.
Melba continued to be actively involved in the jazz scene as an arranger and composer including critically acclaimed projects with Randy Weston through the 1990’s. Unfortunately, her health declined with the first of several strokes in 1986. Melba Liston passed away in 1999 but left a phenomenal legacy as a jazz trailblazer.
Sources:
http://elvispelvis.com/melbaliston.htm
http://www.fyicomminc.com/jazzwomen/melbaliston.htm
http://www.randyweston.info/randy-weston-sidemen-pages/melba-liston.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3812/is_200003/ai_n8890639/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melba_Liston
http://curtjazz.wordpress.com/tag/jazz-trombone/
Check out: Nicole Williams Sitaraman’s blog on Jazz Virtuosa at http://jazzvirtuosa.blogspot.com/
http://www.theheroinecollective.com/melba-liston/
BIOGRAPHY: Melba Liston – Jazz Trombonist
Melba was born in Kansas City in 1926, and when she was seven years old she was offered a choice of instruments to learn as part of her elementary school’s music programme. She chose a trombone because she found it beautiful. Only a year later she played it well enough to perform solo on local radio. In 1937, Melba and her mother moved to California where, at the age of sixteen, she took up her first professional engagement with the pit band of the Los Angeles Lincoln Theatre. Not only did she play there, but she also wrote and arranged musical scores for other performers.
Melba then joined composer and trumpeter, Gerald Wilson, both as a musician and as his assistant arranger, in his newly-formed big band. She also worked with tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon at this time, and the pair recorded a track called Mischievous Lady which Gordon had written especially as a tribute for her. Melba was starting to excel as a soloist and Dizzie Gillespie was so impressed with her skill that, when Gerald Wilson’s orchestra disbanded in 1948, he asked her to join his ensemble.
Melba played with Gillespie and his band in New York alongside musical luminaries such as John Coltrane and John Lewis. She loved working with such a progressive and exciting band but, due to financial constraints, the orchestra broke up only a year later.
After a short time touring with Count Basie, Melba joined the band hired to accompany Billie Holiday for a tour of America’s South. This was an extremely unhappy and difficult time in Melba’s career. The audiences were mostly small and indifferent, and she faced a great deal of hardship whilst on the road. Later in life, Melba would also speak of the profound difficulties she experienced being a woman in the music industry during this era. She not only found herself disregarded and ignored, but also suffered abuse, discrimination and even sexual assault. When the tour with Billie Holiday came to an end, Melba was so disillusioned with the music industry that she temporarily turned her back on it. She returned to Los Angeles to take a clerical job at the Board of Education and also supplemented her income by taking small acting roles in several Hollywood movies.
Happily, during the late 1950s, Melba was lured back to music and joined Dizzie Gillespie’s latest big bebop band for tours to the Middle East, Asia and South America. She was both a writer and an arranger for the band and most commentators agree that she produced some of her finest work at this time.
In 1958, Melba formed her own all-female quintet and also recorded her only album as a band leader, Melba Liston & Her Bones – widely regarded as a jazz classic. She then went on to work with trumpeter Quincy Jones, who had formed a band to tour Europe with his Free and Easy show. She wrote consistently for this band, particularly standards and ballads, and continued to work with Jones when the ensemble returned to New York.
Across the following decade, Melba lived in New York, working as a freelance arranger and composer with various recording companies and for many prestigious artists, including Tony Bennett and Diana Ross. She also embarked on a wonderfully creative collaboration with pianist Randy Weston. The pair would work together for many years to come, producing a number of highly regarded and innovative recordings.
In 1973, Melba’s career took a different direction. She moved to Jamaica for six years and served as the Director of Popular Music Studies at the Jamaica Institute of Music. In 1975, she wrote and arranged the score for a film called Smile Orange, a sortie into Reggae music. On returning to the USA in 1979, Melba formed an all-female jazz band called the Melba Liston Company which headlined at the Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival.
Throughout the 1980s Melba continued to be actively involved in the jazz music scene as an arranger and composer, and in 1987 was awarded the Jazz Masters Fellowship of the National Endowment for the Arts. Sadly, her health began to decline in 1986 with the first of several strokes. She died in 1999 having made a unique and remarkable contribution to the music of the 20th Centur
References include All About Jazz, Arts.gov, The Guardian, The Independent, Indiana Public Media. ©The Heroine Collective 2015 – Present, All Rights Reserved.
Melba Liston
(1926-1999)
Artist Biography by Scott Yanow
Melba Liston - Melba And Her Bones (Full Album):
Melba Liston
https://www.npr.org/2008/07/09/92349036/melba-liston-bones-of-an-arranger
Melba Liston: Bones Of An Arranger
Born in 1926, Liston first laid eyes on the trombone in grade school; immediately, she said, she knew she wanted one. With encouragement from her family and music teachers, she began to develop her talent in school and local ensembles. One of her high-school friends, alto saxophonist Vi Redd, says that Liston was always musically ahead of her peers. "Melba's just always been an advanced musician," she says. "We had to struggle to keep up with her."
While in high school, Liston landed her first professional job at the Lincoln Theater pit band in Los Angeles. After a year of work, she worked as an assistant to arranger and composer Gerald Wilson, who was forming his first big band.
AUDIO: <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/92349036/92363021" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"></iframe>
https://www.wijsf.com/jazzwomen/melbaliston.html
Melba Liston was born in Kansas City and moved with her family to Los Angeles at the age of 11 where she played with youth bands before starting her career in a pit orchestra (1942). She joined Gerald Wilson's band in 1943 and began writing arrangements; during her time with Wilson she recorded with Dexter Gordon (1947), then when Wilson's orchestra disbanded on the East Coast (1948) she accepted a job with Dizzy Gillespie. She toured with Billie Holliday (1949) but was so profoundly affected by the indifference of the audiences and the rigors of the road that she gave up playing and took a clerical job.
In the mid-1950s she enjoyed a brief career as a film extra, appearing in The Prodigal and The Ten Commandments. She re-joined Gillespie for tours sponsored by the US State Department in 1956 and 1957, recorded with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1957), and visited Europe (1959) with the show Free and Easy, for which Quincy Jones was music director.
In the 1960s she worked for a variety of leaders including Randy Weston, then taught at the Jamaica School of Music for six years (1973-79), before returning to the USA to lead her own bands. She was a talented and sensitive arranger, and one of the most accomplished trombonists of her generation.
--STAN WOOLLEY, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz.
A selected discography of Melba Liston albums.
- Melba Liston and her Bones, 1958, Metrojazz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melba_Liston
Melba Liston
Life and career
Liston was born in Kansas City, Missouri. At the age of seven, Melba's mother purchased her a trombone. Her family encouraged her musical pursuits, as they were all music lovers.[2] Liston was primarily self-taught, but she was "encouraged by her guitar-playing grandfather" who she spent significant time with learning to play spirituals and folk songs.[3] At the age of eight, she was good enough to be a solo act on a local radio station.[4] At the age of ten, she moved to Los Angeles, California. She was classmates with Dexter Gordon, and friends with Eric Dolphy.[3] After playing in youth bands and studying with Alma Hightower, she joined the big band led by Gerald Wilson in 1944.[5]
She recorded with saxophonist Dexter Gordon in 1947 and joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band, which included saxophonists John Coltrane, Paul Gonsalves, and pianist John Lewis) in New York for a time[5] when Wilson disbanded his orchestra in 1948. Liston performed in a supporting role and was nervous when asked to take solos, but with encouragement she became more comfortable as a featured voice in bands.[1] She toured with Count Basie, then with Billie Holiday (1949) but was so profoundly affected by the indifference of the audiences and the rigors of the road that she gave up playing and turned to education. Liston taught for about three years.
She took a clerical job for some years and supplemented her income by taking work as an extra in Hollywood, appearing in The Prodigal (1955) and The Ten Commandments (1956). She returned to Gillespie for tours sponsored by the U.S. State Department in 1956 and 1957, recorded with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1957), and formed an all-women quintet in 1958. In 1959, she visited Europe with the show Free and Easy, for which Quincy Jones was music director. She accompanied Billy Eckstine with the Quincy Jones Orchestra on At Basin Street East, released on October 1, 1961, by Verve.
In the 1960s she began collaborating with pianist Randy Weston,[6] arranging compositions (primarily his own) for mid-size to large ensembles. This association, especially strong in the 1960s, would be rekindled in the late 1980s and 1990s until her death. In addition, she worked with Milt Jackson, Clark Terry, and Johnny Griffin, as well as working as an arranger for Motown, appearing on albums by Ray Charles. In 1964, she helped establish the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra.[7] In 1971 she was chosen as musical arranger for a Stax recording artist Calvin Scott whose album was being produced by Stevie Wonder's first producer, Clarence Paul. On this album she worked with Joe Sample and Wilton Felder of the Jazz Crusaders, blues guitarist Arthur Adams, and jazz drummer Paul Humphrey. In 1973, she moved to Jamaica to teach at the Jamaica School of Music for six years before returning to the U.S. to lead her own bands.
During her time in Jamaica, she composed and arranged music for the 1975 comedy film Smile Orange[8] starring Carl Bradshaw, who three years earlier starred in the first Jamaican film, The Harder They Come.
She was forced to give up playing in 1985 after a stroke left her partially paralyzed,[5] but she continued to arrange music with Randy Weston. In 1987, she was awarded the Jazz Masters Fellowship of the National Endowment for the Arts. After suffering repeated strokes, she died in Los Angeles, California in 1999 a few days after a tribute to her and Randy Weston's music at Harvard University. Her funeral at St. Peter's in Manhattan featured performances by Weston with Jann Parker as well as by Chico O'Farrill's Afro-Cuban ensemble and by Lorenzo Shihab (vocals).
Composing and arranging
Her early work with the high-profile bands of Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie shows a strong command of the big-band and bop idioms. However, perhaps her most important work was written for Randy Weston, with whom she worked for four decades from the early 1960s.[2]
Liston worked as a "ghost writer" during her career. According to one writer, "Many of the arrangements found in the Gillespie, Jones, and Weston repertoires were accomplished by Liston."[9]
Social meaning
Liston was a female in a profession of mostly males. Although some[10] consider her an unsung hero,[11] she is highly regarded in the jazz community. Liston was a trailblazer as a trombonist and a woman. She articulated difficulties of being a woman on the road.
"There's those natural problems on the road, the female problems, the lodging problems, the laundry, and all those kinda things to try to keep yourself together, problems that somehow or other the guys don't seem to have to go through."[12]
She goes on to recount the struggles she experienced as an African American woman, which affected her musical career.[12] However, she generally spoke positively about the camaraderie with and support from male musicians.[1] Liston also dealt with larger issues of inequity in the music industry. One writer has said, "It was clear that she had to continually prove her credentials in order to gain suitable employment as a musician, composer, and arranger. She was not paid equitable scale and was often denied access to the larger opportunities as a composer and arranger."[12]
Musical style
Liston's musical style reflects bebop and post-bop sensibilities learned from Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, and Art Blakey. Her earliest recorded work—such as Gordon's "Mischievous Lady" a tribute to her—her solos show a blend of motivic and linear improvisation, though they seem to make less use of extended harmonies and alterations.[2]
Her arrangements, especially those with Weston, show a flexibility that transcends her musical upbringing in the bebop 1940s, whether working in the styles of swing, post-bop, African musics, or Motown.[2] Her command of rhythmic gestures, grooves, and polyrhythms is particularly notable (as illustrated in Uhuru Afrika and Highlife). Her instrumental parts demonstrate an active use of harmonic possibilities; although her arrangements suggest relatively subdued interest in the explorations of free jazz ensembles, they use an extended tonal vocabulary, rich with altered harmonic voicings, thick layering, and dissonance. Her work throughout her career has been well received by both critics and audiences alike.[2]
Discography
As leader
- Melba Liston and Her 'Bones (MetroJazz, 1959)
- Volcano Blues with Randy Weston (Antilles, 1993)
As sidewoman or guest
With Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers- 1957 Art Blakey Big Band
- 1957 Theory of Art
- 1965 Hold On, I'm Coming
- 1958 Out There with Betty Carter
- 1961 I Can't Help It
- 1959 The Genius of Ray Charles
- 1962 The Ray Charles Story, Vol. 2
- 1955 Jazz Recital
- 1956 World Statesman
- 1957 Dizzy Gillespie at Newport
- 1957 Birks' Works
- 1957 Dizzy in Greece
- 1959 The Birth of a Band!
- 1960 Swiss Radio Days Jazz Series, Vol. 1
- 1960 I Dig Dancers
- 1961 Newport '61
- 1961 The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones: Live!
- 1962 The Quintessence
- 1963 Plays Hip Hits
- 1965 I/We Had a Ball
- 1965 Quincy Plays for Pussycats
- 1963 Any Number Can Win
- 1966 Jimmy & Wes
- 1966 The Further Adventures of Jimmy and Wes
- 1966 Hoochie Coochie Man
- 1969 Jimmy Smith Plays the Blues
- 1957 Dinah Washington Sings Fats Waller
- 1958 Dinah Washington Sings Bessie Smith
- 1958 Little Niles
- 1959 Destry Rides Again
- 1959 Live at the Five Spot
- 1961 Uhuru Afrika
- 1963 Highlife (album) - Music from the new African nations featuring the Highlife
- 1973 Tanjah
- 1992 The Spirits of Our Ancestors
- 1993 Volcano Blues
- 1997 Earth Birth
- 1998 Khepera
- 1957 Last Chorus, Ernie Henry
- 1958 Back on the Scene, Bennie Green
- 1959 Rhythm Crazy, Jimmy Cleveland
- 1959 Tales of Manhattan, Babs Gonzales
- 1960 Trane Whistle, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis
- 1961 African Waltz, Cannonball Adderley
- 1961 At Basin Street East, Billy Eckstine/Quincy Jones
- 1961 Rah, Mark Murphy
- 1961 The Chant, Sam Jones
- 1961 The Soul of Hollywood, Junior Mance
- 1962 Afro-American Sketches, Oliver Nelson
- 1962 Big Bags, Milt Jackson
- 1962 Bursting Out with the All Star Big Band!, Oscar Peterson
- 1962 Rhythm Is My Business, Ella Fitzgerald
- 1962 Snap Your Fingers, Al Grey
- 1962 The Complete Town Hall Concert, Charles Mingus
- 1962 This Is Billy Mitchell Featuring Bobby Hutcherson, Billy Mitchell
- 1963 For Someone I Love, Milt Jackson
- 1963 The Body & the Soul, Freddie Hubbard
- 1964 Mary Lou Williams Presents Black Christ of the Andes, Mary Lou Williams
- 1965 And Then Again, Elvin Jones
- 1966 Roll 'Em: Shirley Scott Plays the Big Bands, Shirley Scott
- 1967 A Mann & A Woman, Tamiko Jones/Herbie Mann
- 1967 Heads Up, Blue Mitchell
- 1968 Listen Here, Freddie McCoy
- 1970 Kim Kim Kim, Kim Weston
- 1973 That Lovin' Feelin' , Junior Mance
- 1978 Skylark, Freddie Hubbard[13]
Further reading
- Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring 2014). Special issue devoted to Melba Liston.
- Ammer, Christine. 2001. Unsung: A History of Women in American Music, 2nd edn. Portland, OR: Amadeus.
- Dahl, Linda. 1984. Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen. New York: Pantheon.
- Hughes, Langston. 1960. Liner notes, Uhuru Afrika. (See discography.)
- Voce, Steve. 1999, April 27. Obituary, in The Independent, London.
- Watrous, Peter. 1999, April 30. "Melba Liston, 73, Trombonist And Prominent Jazz Arranger", The New York Times, C21.
- Miller, S.L. (1992). "Randy Weston & Melba Liston: Together Again, Miraculously". Jazz Times. 22 (1): 24.
External links
- Interview of Melba Liston, Center for Oral History Research, UCLA Library Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
- "Melba Liston: Bones of an Arranger", NPR
- "Melba Liston: A Sensitive and Daring Arranger", The Scotsman
- "Melba Liston and Her 'Bones", All About Jazz
- Melba Liston at Women in Jazz
- Melba Liston with Randy Weston
- Melba Liston biography at National Endowment for the Arts
