Anyone know of Clora Bryant?

[jmjk]

I've seen some references to her, but I'm not sure I've heard her.

Could she be the only female singer/trumpeter?

[jazzbo]

I seriously doubt she's the only female trumpeter/singer! The world is a big place!

She's an interesting player. What I have heard of her work is quite nice.

[EKE BBB]

Here´s an interesting piece of information:

Lady with a Horn

The Osgood File (CBS Radio Network): 11/29/02

75-year old jazz pioneer Clora Bryant still forges the path for women jazz players.

One of the last living musicians of the Be-Bop jazz era is a 75-year old woman who mentors the next generation of jazz players. Clora Bryant toured with Billie Holiday, and she is the only woman trumpet player who ever recorded with Dizzy Gillespie and played with Charlie Parker. Though she was honored last May at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Bryant has never become well known to the general public.

Despite a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery in 1996 that left her unable to play her trumpet, Bryant continues to exert her influence on the world of jazz. She still sings and lectures on jazz history at several Los Angeles-area colleges. She also mentors several young female jazz musicians, encouraging, inspiring and teaching them. Bryant says the younger generation needs to learn from older players, as she did from greats like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Louis Armstrong. "When I grew up there were legends everywhere, and now the legends don't make themselves available to young people anymore…these days people just get in their limos and away they go, and it hurts my heart."

Bryant's love affair with the trumpet started when she was a high school junior in 1941 in Denison, Texas. After her brother was drafted into the army, Clora Bryant picked up the trumpet he left behind and started playing day and night. Since then, her 59-year career has been full of firsts. In the 1940s, most women in jazz either sang or played piano and avoided the male-dominated horn section. Bryant was the first woman to play with Charlie Parker. She recorded with Dizzy Gillespie and played with other greats like Louis Armstrong, Carl Perkins, Dexter Gordon and others. Later, in 1989, Bryant was the first woman to travel to the Soviet Union to perform jazz, on the invitation of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Part of Bryant's ability to break through gender barriers came from the strength she got from her father, whom she calls her "knight in shining armor." She clearly remembers, as a little girl, her father telling her that she could do anything she set her mind to, and that he was behind her all the way. Bryant does the same for other young ladies searching for their own place in the mostly male world of jazz.

Bryant says it's essential for experienced musicians to foster the creative growth of young artists, technique and history and offering encouragement. She says she feels sorry for young musicians these days, because they don't have the access to jazz legends like she once had with her mentor Dizzy Gillespie, or the one-on-one friendship she had with Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Louis Armstrong. She says its still especially important to mentor women players, teaching them not just technical skills but also how to survive as a woman in a field that has vastly improved since she started out but is still dominated by men. She says women jazz players need to excel technically and musically in order to be taken as seriously as their male counterparts. And as her father used to tell her, Bryant still teaches her female protégées, "If you want to be respected, you have to act like a lady. And to me that is what it's all about, being a lady."

CONTACTS

Clora Bryant

C/O The Durfee Foundation

1453 Third Street, Suite 312

Santa Monica, CA 90401

Phone: (310) 899-5120

Fax: (310) 899-5121

[JSngry]

Clora seems to be about 4-5 years older than Booker Ervin. I wonder if they knew each other in Dennison? On the one hand, that's a bit of an age gap in social terms, but Dennison ain't that big, and with the segregation of the time, families in towns like this all knew each other a lot of times. Maybe Booker had a secret crush on Clora! What if Booker's patented moans had their roots in an unrequited prepubescent love for Clora? Or what if Booker was the precocious type and actually DID knock boots with the young Miss Bryant, fell in everlasting love, and was crushed beyond repair when Bryant's family moved to L.A. in 1945? Somebody should investigate, maybe Toni Morrison could write a novel, a seqel to "Jazz" entiled "When Booker Met Clora". The mind reels at the possibilities...

Shoot, Dennison is just up the road, why don't I just drive up there and ask somebody? Who's got gas money?

[brownie]

Valaida Snow was another trumpet playing woman.

Clora Bryant was in fine form when she recorded (with Walter Benton on

tenor) for Mode back in 1957. I have the VSOP LP reissue somewhere.

This was more than a novelty album. She could really play.

Glad to see she is still around.

[Joe]

An album cover easy on the eyes, an album easy on the ears...

[Christiern]

Clora Bryant is by no means unique--there have been quite a few female trumpet players on the jazz scene, and some of them also sang.

[jmjk]

Clora Bryant is by no means unique--there have been quite a few female trumpet players on the jazz scene, and some of them also sang.

Can you give us some names?

I can imagine there are others, but I still think Clora is unique in this respect.

I'll seek out her V.S.O.P. record.

Edited June 19, 2003 by jmjk

[Vincent, Paris]

Clora Bryant is one of the 7 musicians featured in the book "Central Avenue Sounds/Jazz in Los Angeles" published by University of Columbia Press

There is a 25-page interview in which her career is detailed.

Edited June 19, 2003 by Vincent, Paris

[Christiern]

Can you give us some names?

I can imagine there are others, but I still think Clora is unique in this respect.

I'll seek out her V.S.O.P. record.

Someone already mentioned Valaida Snow, but there was also Flores Jean Davis, Una White, and Izola Fedford, all of whom--like Clora Bryant--played with the Prairie View Co-Eds in the early 40s; Dolly Jones, whose real name was Doli Amenra. Her mother, Dyer Jones also played trumpet. Thelma Lewis played with Frances Grey's Queens of Swing in the early 40s.

Others were Florence Shefte, Jane Sager, Elizabeth Thomas, Norma Carson (whom I heard play in Iceland in 1955 or 6), Delores Gomez, Fran Shirley...

...the list goes on.

[jmjk]

Thanks for all that info, Chris.

Who woulda thought? Too bad more of them aren't (weren't) household names, especially during the time of their activity.

[Christiern]

You're welcome. Here are Louis and Lil...

[pryan]

That's (the Lil', Louis photo) a great one, Chris. The saying "a picture can mean a thousand words" applies in that photo, for sure.

[SEK]

Clora Bryant is one of the 7 musicians featured in the book "Central Avenue Sounds/Jazz in Los Angeles" published by University of Columbia Press

There is a 25-page interview in which her career is detailed.

I really enjoyed reading that book, published by the University of California Press. It contains a lot of interesting information and insights concerning the social and music scenes during the first half of the 20th century in L.A. (and nationally) that I had never come across elsewhere. Most of the interviews of the various musicians are quite well done. That's how I first became acquainted with Clora Bryant.