Jazzwomen Speak

A woman in jazz. How was she treated on- and offstage? What was it like to play with Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker? What was the breakthrough moment in her career? How did she balance her personal and professional life? In six illuminating interviews, female jazz musicians answer these questions and more, discussing the challenges of being a woman in a scene historically dominated by men. Jazzwomen Speak gathers the voices of women whose careers highlight the bebop and post-bop era of jazz, as they share stories of their musical training and entrance into the jazz world, relationships and encounters with other musicians, limitations on the bandstand and in the recording studio, and how being a female musician has formed their musical performances over time.

Offers interviews of twenty-one women who are respected in the male-dominated world of jazz, including pianist Marilyn Crispell and singer-pianist Diana Krall.

A feminist publication on art and politics.

Brings together music criticism, fan experience, and performers' first person accounts from more that 60 women writers for 1960s to the 1990s.

Women have been involved with jazz since its inception, but all too often their achievements were not as well known as those of their male counterparts. Some Liked It Hot looks at all-girl bands and jazz women from the 1920s through the 1950s and how they fit into the nascent mass culture, particularly film and television, to uncover some of the historical motivations for excluding women from the now firmly established jazz canon. This well-illustrated book chronicles who appeared where and when in over 80 performances, captured in both popular Hollywood productions and in relatively unknown films and television shows. As McGee shows, these performances reflected complex racial attitudes emerging in American culture during the first half of the twentieth century. Her analysis illuminates the heavily mediated representational strategies that jazz women adopted, highlighting the role that race played in constituting public performances of various styles of jazz from “swing” to “hot” and “sweet.” The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Hazel Scott, the Ingenues, Peggy Lee, and Paul Whiteman are just a few of the performers covered in the book, which also includes a detailed filmography.