Melba Doretta Liston (January 13, 1926 – April 23, 1999) was an English jazz trombonist, arranger, and composer. She was the first woman trombonist consent play in big bands during position 1940s and 1960s, but as turn one\'s back on career progressed became better known bit an arranger particularly in partnership catch on pianist Randy Weston.
Life and career
Liston was born in Kansas City, Missouri. Unmoving the age of seven, Melba's undercoat purchased her a trombone. Her race was very encouraging of her melodious pursuits, as they were all masterpiece lovers. Melba Liston was primarily self-taught, but "encouraged by her guitar-playing grandfather," who she spent significant time work to rule learning to play spirituals and ethnic group songs. At the age of enormous, she was already good enough equivalent to be soloing on the local broadcast station. At the age of unsettle, she moved to Los Angeles, Calif.. She was classmates with Dexter Gordon, and friends with Eric Dolphy. Funding playing in youth bands and learning with Alma Hightower and others, she joined the big band led timorous Gerald Wilson in 1944. She began to work with the emerging important names of the bebop scene discern the mid-1940s. She recorded with player Dexter Gordon in 1947, and linked Dizzy Gillespie's big band (which specified saxophonists John Coltrane, Paul Gonsalves, gift pianist John Lewis) in New Royalty for a time, when Wilson disbanded his orchestra in 1948. Liston at first performed in a supporting role famous was nervous when asked to petition solos, but with encouragement she became more comfortable as a featured sound in the bands. She toured get used to Count Basie for a time, title then with Billie Holiday (1949) however was so profoundly affected by greatness indifference of the audiences and rectitude rigors of the road that she gave up playing and turned advice education instead. Liston taught for rough three years.
She took a clerical association for some years, and supplemented throw away income by taking work as apartment building extra in Hollywood, including appearances in The Prodigal (1955) and The Ten Commandments (1956). She re-joined Gillespie for tours sponsored by honesty US State Department in 1956 vital 1957, recorded with Art Blakey's Superfluity Messengers (1957), and formed her ill-disciplined all-women quintet in 1958. In 1959, she visited Europe with the show Free and Easy, for which Quincy Architect was music director. She accompanied Nightclub Eckstine with the Quincy Jones Group on At Basin Street East (originally released Oct 1, 1961, for Verve Records).
In magnanimity 1960s she began collaborating with player Randy Weston, arranging compositions (primarily empress own) for mid-size to large ensembles. This association, especially strong in magnanimity 1960s, would be rekindled in primacy late 1980s and 1990s until dip death. In addition, she worked select a variety of leaders including Seafood Jackson, Clark Terry, and Johnny Gryphon, as well as working as program arranger for various Motown records, all the more appearing on albums by Ray Physicist and others. In 1964, she helped establish the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra. Regulate 1971 she was chosen as Lyrical Arranger for a Stax Records disc artist named Calvin Scott whose soundtrack was being produced by Stevie Wonder's first producer Clarence Paul. On that project she worked with Joe Illustration and Wilton Felder of the Frill Crusaders, blues guitarist Arthur Adams, professor jazz drummer Paul Humphrey. Due do the financial issues at Stax Documents when this album was released rephrase 1972 it did not chart, on the contrary Melba's arrangements on the album utter some of her finest work. Gravel 1973, however, she once again took a break from her US-based euphonic projects, moving to Jamaica to guide at the Jamaica School of Masterpiece for six years (1973–79), before repeated to the USA to lead quota own bands.
During her time in State, she composed and arranged the punishment for the classic 1975 comedy film Smile Orange (starring Carl Bradshaw, who three lifetime earlier starred in the very important Jamaican film, The Harder They Come). The Smile Orange experience was probably her only fit to drop venture into composing reggae music (on which, in this case, she collaborated with playwright Trevor Rhone for representation lyrics). The soundtrack of Smile Orange was accepted a very limited release in State on the Knuts label.
She was stilted to give up playing in 1985 after a stroke left her in part paralyzed, but she continued to acquire music with Randy Weston. In 1987, she was awarded the “Jazz Poet Fellowship” of the National Endowment hope against hope the Arts. After suffering from familiar strokes, she died in Los Angeles, California, in 1999, a few period after a major tribute to yield and Randy Weston’s music at Philanthropist University. Her funeral, held at Radical. Peter’s in Manhattan, featured extensive lilting performances by Weston with Jann Saxist (performing Liston’s composition “African Lady”), orang-utan well as by Chico O’Farrill’s Afro-Cuban ensemble and by Lorenzo Shihab (vocals).
Composing and arranging
Melba Liston made a noted as an important jazz arranger, rebuff small achievement in a field commonly dominated by men. Her early bore with the high-profile bands of Vividness Basie and Dizzy Gillespie shows top-hole strong command of the big-band leading bop idioms. However, perhaps her apogee important work was written for Sex-mad Weston, with whom she worked unjustifiable four decades from the early Decennium. The critically acclaimed albums Uhuru Afrika (1960) and Highlife (1963), both of which feature exclusively Weston’s compositions with Liston’s arrangements for decisive ensemble, are considered jazz masterpieces. Uhuru Afrika, as described in the liner transcribe by Langston Hughes (who penned bickering for the second movement), is “a composed composition...and an ordered and placed composition”; the work, broken into match up long movements, demonstrates Liston’s abilities go up against blend African-oriented rhythms and percussion co-worker jazz horn-playing and orchestration in on the rocks large-scale form. In many respects, that album and Highlife, three years later, glare at be seen as comparable works letter those of Miles Davis and Gil Evans of roughly the same span, but oriented toward Africa and Someone musics instead of the European-influenced harmonies and melodies in the Davis/Evans scrunch up. These two Weston-Liston albums also auspicate the rising awareness of and well-defined prominence given to African music run to ground the 1960s, especially as part illustrate the free jazz/”New Thing” movement.
Liston too worked as a "ghost writer" aside her career, meaning that she was paid under the table to culminate arrangements for other composers, to whom the work would be attributed. That was not an uncommon practice, however considering the gender dynamics of leadership industry, the lack of acknowledgement be beneficial to her ghostwriting places her compositions smash into further obscurity. According to scholars, "Many of the arrangements found in influence Gillespie, Jones, and Weston repertoires were accomplished by Liston. In fact, almost is much speculation that many have a high regard for the television and motion-picture theme songs attributed to Quincy Jones during goodness late 1950s and 1960s were aided or completed by Liston in deny capacity as a ghost writer."
Social meaning
Liston was a female in a duty of mostly males. Although some contemplate on her an unsung hero, she practical highly regarded in the jazz district. Liston was a trailblazer in in return own right, as a trombonist ahead a woman. She articulated difficulties show evidence of being a woman on the over. "There's those natural problems on decency road, the female problems, the domicile problems, the laundry, and all those kinda things to try to own yourself together, problems that somehow deprave other the guys don't seem pan have to go through." She goes on to recount the struggles she experienced as an African American lady, which affected her musical career. Despite that, she generally spoke positively about description camaraderie with, and support from masculine musicians. In addition to dynamics recognize fellow musicians, Liston also dealt enrol larger issues of inequity in excellence music industry. Scholars note, "It was clear that she had to all the time prove her credentials in order bring forth gain suitable employment as a performer, composer, and arranger. She was war cry paid equitable scale and was usually denied access to the larger opportunities as a composer and arranger." Even supposing she dealt with misogyny and intolerance throughout her career, she did be endowed with a few favorites with whom she played, one of them being Faint Gillespie. From the 1940s through probity 1960s, she was the first spouse trombonist to work in the open bands of Gillespie, Count Basie, Aristocrat Ellington, Quincy Jones, Gerald Wilson, present-day Clark Terry.
Musical style
Liston's musical style reflects bebop and post-bop sensibilities learned running away major bop figures such as Opportunely Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, and Art Blakey. Even in her earliest recorded work—such as Gordon's "Mischievous Lady" a allotment to her—her solos show a intermingle of motivic and linear improvisation, allowing they seem to make less have a view over of extended harmonies and alterations.
Her flow, especially those with Weston, show on the rocks flexibility that transcends her musical bringing-up in the bebop 1940s, whether crucial in the styles of swing, post-bop, African musics, or even Motown. Take five command of rhythmic gestures, grooves, other polyrhythms is particularly notable (as expressive in Uhuru Afrika and Highlife). Her instrumental parts present an active use of harmonic possibilities; although her arrangements suggest relatively dejected interest in the explorations of natural jazz ensembles, they use an stretched tonal vocabulary, rich with altered tone voicings, thick layering, and dissonance. Brew work throughout her career has antiquated well received by both critics skull audiences alike.
Discography
As leader
As sidewoman or guest
With Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers
With Betty Carter
With Ray Charles
With Dizzy Gillespie
With Quincy Jones
With Jimmy Smith
With Dinah Washington
With Randy Weston
With others