Although Melba Liston was a woman in a male-dominated profession, she excelled anyway. Some consider her an unsung hero and she is very highly regarded in and outside of the jazz community as a trailblazer, as a musician and as a woman.

Melba Liston selected the trombone as her instrument because she thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Only a year later, she was good enough to play a solo on a local radio station.

She broke barriers by joining the emerging major players of the bebop scene in the mid-1940s. She recorded with Dexter Gordon in 1947, and joined Dizzy Gillespie’s big band, which included saxophonists John Coltrane, Paul Gonsalves, and pianist John Lewis. She toured with Count Basie, and then with Billie Holiday. But the experience of touring the south, coping with the strains of limited income and limited audiences, was strenuous, disheartening and exhausting.

In later years, Melba spoke candidly about the extreme difficulties of being a Black, 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. Melba also dealt with larger issues of inequity in the industry. She had to continually prove her credentials and was not paid equitable scale.

In 1958, Melba Liston recorded her only album as a leader, Melba Liston and Her ‘Bones – a true gem in jazz history. From that historic recording, here’s “Blues Melba”.

This episode of “Soundtrack to the Struggle” was written by Hollis Monroe. Produced by Ron Adkins. Executive producers Dennis Green and George Dorman. Hosted by Hollis Monroe. 

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Early 1939. The lights go down at New York’s Cafe Society. The waiters hush the drinking audience, a single small spotlight shines on her face. And Billy Holiday begins to sing. “Southern trees, bears strange fruit blood on the leaves, blood at the root.” The song ends, and the spotlight goes out. Billy leaves the stage, the room is silent until one patron, then another, then finally the entire room begins to applaud. They rise for a standing ovation, but Billy doesn’t return for encores or vows.

Billy would repeat this performance many times in her last two decades, albeit only in clubs that would tolerate such a song. As with all forms of protest, Strange Fruit met with resistance. Columbia record refused to record it. So, she went to an independent label. It took months for radio stations to muster the courage to play it.

But Strange Fruit eventually grew to become more than an anthem on the horrors of torture and lynching in Jim Crow America. Leonard Feather hailed it as the first significant protest in words and music, “the first unmuted cry against racism,” Stud Turkels proclaimed it “a declaration of war. The beginning of the civil rights movement.” First sung 16 years before Rosa parks refused to yield her seat on a Montgomery Alabama bus. And as one Southern civil rights worker stated , “If Billy Holiday didn’t light the fuse, she unquestionably fed the flame.”

This episode of “Soundtrack to the Struggle” was written and produced by Ron Adkins. Executive Producers Dennis Green and George Dorman. Hosted by Hollis Monroe. 

Podcast (soundtrack): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS