One might assume that the sister of legendary Cab Calloway would stand in a mighty long shadow. Not Blanche Calloway. She basked in her own spotlight. For a time, her nightclub gigs earned Blanche more income than her little brother. She worked with Eubie Blake, and was accompanied by Louis Armstrong on two recordings. Her time with Andy Kirk’s Clouds of Joy Orchestra taught her much about the music business.

She used that knowledge to make history. Blanche Calloway and Her Joy Boys was the first big band led by a woman … and an African-American woman, at that. Over the course of its run, the Joy Boys featured such future jazz legends as Ben Webster, Cozy Cole, Bennie Moten, Andy Kirk, and Chick Webb. Newspapers hailed Calloway and Her Joy Boys one of the top ten Black bands in the country.

This success, however, didn’t come easy. She was arrested for knowingly using a whites-only restroom. She spoke her mind and wrote provocative lyrics to her music. And after several years of playing to segregated audiences, and fighting the singer-dancer stereotype of women in jazz, the gigs dried up.

Later years saw her enter the political arena. In 1958, she made history again, becoming the first African-American precinct voting clerk and the first Black woman to vote in Florida. She was active in the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality. In 1964, she stood with other African American women at the Hague in support of the NATO Women’s Peace Force.

“Soundtrack to the Struggle” is hosted by Hollis Monroe. Produced by Ron Adkins. Executive Producer is Dennis Green.

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1960. Black America’s struggle for civil rights reaches critical mass. In February, anti-segregationist lunch counter sit-ins began in Greensboro, North Carolina. Rallies and marches spread across the country like a brushfire, with Black and white musicians, dramatists, and visual artists adding their voices to the Movement. The question was no longer if a change was gonna come, but when.

Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Max Roach, Art Blakey, and many others declared public support for the Movement. Black musicians were also keenly aware of the growing wave of African independence. Pride swelled, and new compositions were titled with the names of these new nations.

One jazzman in particular became strongly involved in both American integration and African autonomy, as events affected the content and direction of a composition begun a year prior. Max Roach’s “Freedom Now Suite” featured a shifting cast of players. Three of the five movements – “Driva’ Man,” “Freedom Day,” and “All Africa” – feature lyrics by Oscar Brown, sung by Abbey Lincoln. Nigerian conguero Michael Olatunji accentuates Brown’s deep, eloquent poetry and Lincoln’s assertive, uncompromising delivery.  The result is a poignant statement that echoes still today.

“Soundtrack to the Struggle” is hosted by Hollis Monroe. Produced by Ron Adkins. Executive Producer is Dennis Green.

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It’s 1935 and vibraphonist Red Norvo and his wife, singer Mildred Bailey, host a party. Their living room fills with the brightest stars in jazz. Pianist Teddy Wilson is there, as is Benny Goodman and many of his cohorts.  

Before long, a jam session breaks out. Goodman, of course, had brought his clarinet to the party. Wilson makes his way to the piano and plays along. The guests are delighted. Goodman is so inspired that he hires Wilson for an idea he’d been pondering.

Goodman’s big idea became the Benny Goodman Trio – with Goodman, Wilson, and drummer Gene Krupa. This “band within a band” played during intermissions of his big band sets. And, it made history: It marked the first time a Black musician worked regularly, and equally, with his White counterparts.

Jazz critic Leonard Feather described the Trio as, “an historic precedent, the magnitude of which can hardly be appreciated today.” In an era when Black musicians performed in clubs, but couldn’t sit as patrons, Benny Goodman proved to thousands of Whites-only audiences that a Black musician could play just as well, and deserved just as much respect, as anyone else on the bandstand.

“Soundtrack to the Struggle” is hosted by Hollis Monroe. Produced by Ron Adkins. Executive Producer is Dennis Green.

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