I never saw a woman play the trumpet, especially jazz… not when I was younger.
-Ingrid Jensen
We’re still stinging from the passing a year ago last month of jaime branch (she preferred her name in lowercase). So to further honor her, this week we’ll take a minute to recognize some key female trumpeters who paved the way for her. This was brought to my attention by my musical mentor, who after reading the branch leg of our journey wrote to me, “True, Jaimie Branch could play. However, you need to hear Ingrid Jensen also and going back further Clora Bryant.” That was sound advice.
Although Clora Bryant was not the first woman to play or record the trumpet in jazz, she is perhaps the most well-known. She is the only one to play with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Louie Armstrong.
Clora Bryant was born in Texas in 1927. Her mother died when she was only 3 years old. Along with her two older brothers, she was raised by her father. When she was a junior in high school, she wanted to join the marching band; however, her father couldn’t afford to buy her an instrument. Her older brother played the trumpet and when he was drafted into WWII in 1941, he left it behind. Her younger brother told her about the horn, and she took it to her father. He contacted his brother, who played in a territory band, and her uncle helped her get started. Before long, she joined the marching band.
She graduated in 1943, with scholarships to Bennett College in South Carolina and Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio. But she turned them down in favor of Prairie View A&M University outside Houston on the strength of their jazz program and 16-piece, all-female swing band — the Prairie View Coeds. Prairie View, established in 1876, was the first Texas state-supported college for black students. Bryant toured with the Coeds and even appeared at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater in 1944.
In 1945, when her father got a job in the shipyards near Long Beach, California, he brought the family to Los Angeles. But because Bryant arrived in January, when classes were already filled, she had to wait until the spring of 1946 to enroll in college.
Once Bryant transferred to UCLA, it wasn’t long before she discovered Los Angeles’ Central Avenue and its world-famous Club Alabam, The Downbeat, and The Bird in the Basket (a.k.a. Jack’s Basket Room). Since she was underage, she could only stand outside and listen. That said, she never showed up without her horn, knowing if she were ever invited in she would get the chance to play and learn from the best.
By 1946, Bryant was playing as a featured soloist for the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, America’s foremost all-female, integrated swing ensemble. Here’s a video of the band in the mid or late-1940s:
The Sweethearts of Rhythm disbanded in 1949, but left an inspiring tradition of all-female bands and the possibility of jazz music as an option for young women, although still a difficult field for them to break into.
After the Sweethearts, Bryant remained in Los Angeles, where she became part of Central Avenue’s swinging music scene. Her discography is limited, but she did record …gal with a horn for Mode Records in 1957:
From this album, here is Gypsy In My Soul:
It would be another twenty years before another female trumpet player made serious headlines in the jazz world.
I recall reading that jaimie branch mentioned many male trumpeters as influences, but I was surprised that she mentioned only one female: Barbara Donald.
Barbara Donald was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1942. When she was a teenager, her family moved to California. In the early 1960s, she toured with both R&B and jazz groups, where she crossed paths with saxophonist Sonny Simmons. They were married in 1964.
Her first recordings were with her husband in August and December of 1966 on the ESP label. The first Staying on the Watch was released in 1966:
Two years later, ESP released the second Music of the Spheres:
From Staying on the Watch, here is City of David. Donald and Simmons are smoking:
After recording with ESP, the couple moved to California. On February 10, 1969, they recorded Manhattan Egos at Sierra Sound Studios in Berkeley. It was released later that year by Arhoolie Records. Here’s a shot of them from that time at Newman Hall in Berkeley:
Personal problems derailed both their music careers and their home life, leading to divorce in 1980. Simmons busked on the streets of San Francisco for many years, until he resurrected his career in the early 1990s and began playing in nightclubs again. In the early 1980s, Donald was able to step out from under the shadow of Simmons and moved up to Washington, recording a couple of albums as a leader with her band Unity for the Cadence label.
Simmons and Donald reunited for one final album, Reincarnation, which included their son Zarak on drums. It was recorded Live at Barb’s BBQ in Olympia, Washington on June 28, 1991, but not released by Arhoolie until 2015.
Donald is still in good form here; however, a few years after the recording, she suffered a series of strokes that put an end to her playing. She passed away in Olympia in March 2013.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, branch must have been influenced by Ingrid Jensen, who might have been teaching at Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore in the late 2000 timeframe when branch studied there.
In a 2000 interview with Marian McPartland, Jensen spoke about a certain naivety in her early development as a trumpet player:
Through my development, because I never saw a woman play the trumpet, especially jazz… not when I was younger. I’d never seen any pictures until I saw a picture of Stacey Rowles. So I never really even thought, ‘Oh, wow, this is a normal thing to do.’ Because of that, it took me a while to really accept that what I was doing was cool.
Also in the interview, Jensen confided that after college she saw a video of McPartland playing the piano with the true essence of femininity yet in complete control. She was very inspired by that. It may have been naivety that drove her, but it was never just about the music - she’s a leader. In this regard, she reminds me of Mary Lou Williams. You can read more about her here.
It takes strength to be the leader of the band, particularly when all the band members are men.
Born in Vancouver and raised in Nanaimo, Canada. She received several scholarships but decided to head east to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she graduated in 1989. From 1990 to 1992, she toured with the Vienna Art Orchestra and taught jazz trumpet at the Bruckner Conservatory of Music in Austria. Still in her twenties, she was the youngest professor in the history of the Bruckner Conservatory. She settled in New York City in the mid-1990s, and from 1994 to 2012 joined the innovative jazz orchestras of Maria Schneider. In October 1994 in New York, she recorded her debut album as a leader Vernal Fields, released in 1995 on the ENJA label.
As a dedicated and impressive jazz educator, Jensen taught trumpet at the University of Michigan and Peabody Conservatory, performing and lecturing as a guest artist with the Thelonious Monk Institute High School group featuring Herbie Hancock, and performing and teaching at the Centrum Jazz Workshop, The Dave Brubeck Institute, the Banff Centre Workshop in Jazz & Creative Music and the Stanford Jazz Camp and the Geri Allen Jazz Camp for young women. She is currently on faculty at both Purchase College in New York and serves as Interim Associate Dean and Director of Jazz Arts at Manhattan School of Music. All the while, she still finds time to record.
From Jensen’s 2016 Infinitude, released on the Whirlwind Recordings label with her sister Christine Jensen and Ben Monder, here is Blue Yonder:
And from her 2018 Invisible Sounds For Kenny Wheeler, also released on the Whirlwind Recordings label, here is Where Do We Go From Here:
And one more for the road. Jensen plays in a fine supergroup called ARTEMIS that was founded in 2020 with their Blue Note self-titled debut album ARTEMIS. Their latest release, from this year and also on the Blue Note label, is In Real Time. They close out that album honoring the legendary Wayne Shorter with a stunning version of his beautiful ballad Penelope, which Shorter first recorded in 1965 for his Blue Note album Et Cetera, which surprisingly was not released until 1980. Here is a wonderful live performance from earlier this year of Penelope:
I have always loved the late and great Wayne Shorter’s work. He was probably the greatest composer in my lifetime. You can read more about him here:
Also, I highly encourage you to watch Zero Gravity, a wonderful “3-portal” documentary about his life and music.
Next week, we’re back on that Big River called Jazz. We’ll dig our paddles in and explore the world of the American composer Cole Porter.
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