News & Updates — women in jazz

One of my very favorites is the pianist/harpist/composer and cosmic music traveler Alice McLeod, known later as Alice Coltrane. Another great jazz artist from Detroit, she is possibly best known for being the wife and collaborator of John Coltrane, but Alice is an amazing artist in her own right. She brought celestial concepts into the music and fused free jazz, Indian, European classical, new age, bebop and avant-garde into a gorgeously spiritual, intense experience. Her music has gained much more currency in the last twenty years but I have always been a fan. I remember thinking "why are her records...

A pioneer woman of jazz, Anna Mae Winburn directed the all-female, racially integrated International Sweethearts of Rhythm, a top attraction in the '40s. Although often looked at as a novelty act, the reality is that the band included top notch musicians whom were not given a fair respect in the male-dominated jazz world. From Indiana, Winburn came from a musically-inclined African-American family. She learned to sing and play piano & guitar. She worked in Lloyd Hunter's Serenaders, a popular Nebraska-based territory band of the swing era that included Preston Love. She also led an all-male band (including Charlie Christian!) in...

The queen of break-beat harp-jazz, Dorothy Ashby grew up in Detroit. Her father was a jazz guitarist and she went to high school with Donald Byrd and Kenny Burrell. After college she gigged around as a pianist in the early '50s while also dedicating time to mastering the harp. By the mid-'50s she was playing bop as a harpist and recorded several albums for Prestige, Atlantic and the Chess family of labels from the late '50s into the '70s. Her classic 1970 album The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby featured her on the Japanese koto. Her tunes have been sampled by hiphop...

Yet another great born on this day include the amazing vocalist/activist/songwriter/actress Abbey Lincoln. Her long career included tender ballads, fierce firespeak, protest music, screen acting and she was an inspiring presence on the scene for civil rights, creative music and powerful vocals. From rural Michigan, the early '50s found her singing professionally in Los Angeles and Honolulu. She made her first record in '55 and one with Benny Carter the next year. A string of classics with Riverside and Candid came after, including Abbey Is Blue and Straight Ahead. Starting in 1959 she worked with (and eventually married) Max Roach....

One of the first ladies of rock & roll, Peggy Jones Malone aka "Lady Bo" was a guitarist and occasional songwriter & arranger for Bo Diddley. A Harlem native, she started playing guitar at 15, influenced by Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell and Charlie Parker. She was a doo wop singer with the Bop Chords and a professional dancer. She played on several of Bo's '50s and early '60s tunes, such as "Hey! Bo Diddley", "Roadrunner", "Say Man", "Bo Diddley's A Gunslinger", "Crackin' Up" and others. She played mostly rhythm but her and Bo would sometimes alternate leads on stage. (Later...