Update: Vio­la Smith sad­ly passed away this past week. You can read her obit­u­ary at The Guardian.

She may be the most famous jazz drum­mer you’ve nev­er heard of.

Vio­la Smith played with the NBC Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, per­formed for Har­ry Truman’s inau­gu­ra­tion in 1949, and played in the Kit-Kat Band (see them below on I’ve Got a Secret), in the first Broad­way run of Cabaret from 1966–70. These mark only a hand­ful of her career high­lights. She’s still thriving—and still playing—at the age of 106. While a fall has forced her to rely on a walk­er, she “looks like a sev­en­ty-five-year-old in ter­rif­ic shape!” writes Dan Bar­rett at The Syn­co­pat­ed Times.

Born Vio­la Schmitz in Mount Cal­vary, Wis­con­sin in 1912, Smith start­ed play­ing in the 1920s with her fam­i­ly band, the Schmitz Sis­ters Fam­i­ly Orches­tra (lat­er the Smith Sis­ters Orches­tra). Con­sist­ing of Vio­la, sev­en of her sis­ters, and one of her two broth­ers, they played the vaude­ville and movie the­ater cir­cuit on week­ends. Their father man­aged, direct­ed, and booked the band. An appear­ance on America’s Got Tal­ent, “the 1930s radio ver­sion,” notes Bar­rett, gave Vio­la and her sis­ters the con­fi­dence to form the Coquettes, who gar­nered a con­sid­er­able amount of fame after their debut in 1938.

In 1942, Vio­la wrote an arti­cle for Down Beat mag­a­zine titled “Give Girl Musi­cians a Break!,” sug­gest­ing that bands who lost musi­cians to WWII should hire women. Lat­er that year, when Mil­dred, Viola’s last remain­ing sis­ter in the Coquettes, got mar­ried, Vio­la moved to New York, “where I always want­ed to be,” she tells Bar­rett. She earned a sum­mer schol­ar­ship to Jul­liard, Ben­ny Good­man asked her to join his band (she turned him down), and she played with Ella Fitzger­ald and many oth­er greats. She record­ed film music and played with the Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. She appeared on The Ed Sul­li­van Show five times.

Though often com­pared to Gene Kru­pa, whom she con­sid­ers a “love­ly per­son” and an influ­ence, Smith had a very dis­tinc­tive style all her own, char­ac­ter­ized by a twelve-drum kit with two 16-inch toms mount­ed on either side of her head, as you can see in the clip at the top of the post, in a 1939 per­for­mance with the Coquettes. This was no mere gim­mick. Smith had stud­ied tym­pa­ni at Jul­liard and import­ed clas­si­cal train­ing into her big band sound. (She claims drum­mer Louis Bellson’s use of two bass drums was due to her influ­ence.)

Why isn’t Vio­la Smith bet­ter known? It may have some­thing to do with patron­iz­ing cov­er­age in the press, where she was described as “the girl Gene Kru­pa,” the “fastest girl drum­mer,” “the famous girl drum­mer” etc. Oth­er female instru­men­tal­ists were sim­i­lar­ly belit­tled as “girl” nov­el­ty acts, or ignored, even when they played with band­lead­ers like Ben­ny Good­man, whose orches­tra fea­tured trum­pet play­ers Bil­lie Rogers and Lau­rie Frink. (Smith her­self frowns on women play­ing brass instru­ments, for some odd  rea­son.) In her Down Beat arti­cle, Vio­la named a num­ber of oth­er top female play­ers of the day who deserved more work and recog­ni­tion.

She may for­get things here and here, but Smith still has a steel-trap mem­o­ry for a 106-year old who has lived such a rich life. Her inter­view with Bar­rett is full of detailed rem­i­nisces (she briefly dat­ed Frank Sina­tra, for exam­ple). She gives us a pic­ture of a musi­cian at the top of her game and in full com­mand of her career dur­ing the gold­en age of big band swing. We can cred­it Smith’s life­time as a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian with much of this con­fi­dence. Like all of her sib­lings she learned to play piano and read music from a young age, and she honed her skills as part of a hard-work­ing fam­i­ly “pit band,” as she says. But she was also dri­ven to suc­ceed above all else, leav­ing behind the con­ven­tion­al life each of her sib­ling band­mates even­tu­al­ly chose.

Smith did it her way—reportedly turn­ing down offers to play in Sinatra’s band and refus­ing band­leader Woody Her­man in order keep play­ing with the Coquettes. She played for the radio show Hour of Charm until she was 63, and has played con­certs recent­ly in Cos­ta Mesa, Cal­i­for­nia, where she now lives, tend­ed to by the staff of a quilt­ing sup­ply shop called Piece­mak­ers. Smith talks eas­i­ly about the sources of her musi­cal longevity—her fam­i­ly band, edu­ca­tion, and the tight-knit com­mu­ni­ty of musi­cians who embraced her.

As for her phys­i­cal vig­or and sta­mi­na, this she chalks up to the rig­or of play­ing the drums, and to relax­ing with a drink or two on occasion—a life­time of activ­i­ty and mod­er­a­tion that has helped keep her sharp and healthy after all of her con­tem­po­raries have passed away. See Smith in inter­views at 100, fur­ther up, and 102, just above, and read her recent inter­view at 106 at The Syn­co­pat­ed Times here.

via McGill Media

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Women of Jazz: Stream a Playlist of 91 Record­ings by Great Female Jazz Musi­cians

The Women of the Blues: Hear a Playlist of Great Blues Singers, from Bessie Smith & Etta James, to Bil­lie Hol­i­day & Janis Joplin

New Web Project Immor­tal­izes the Over­looked Women Who Helped Cre­ate Rock and Roll in the 1950s

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Mar­tin Luther King Jr.’s dream of full inclu­sion for Black Amer­i­cans still seems painful­ly unre­al fifty years after his death. By most sig­nif­i­cant mea­sures, the U.S. has regressed. De fac­to hous­ing and school seg­re­ga­tion are entrenched (and wors­en­ing since the 60s and 70s in many cities); vot­ing rights erode one court rul­ing at a time; the racial wealth gap has widened sig­nif­i­cant­ly; and open dis­plays of racist hate and vio­lence grow more wor­ri­some by the day.

Yet the move­ment was not only about win­ning polit­i­cal vic­to­ries, though these were sure­ly the con­crete basis for its vision of lib­er­a­tion. It was also very much a cul­tur­al strug­gle. Black artists felt forced by cir­cum­stances to choose whether they would keep enter­tain­ing all-white audi­ences and pre­tend­ing all was well. “There were no more side­lines,” writes Ashawn­ta Jack­son at JSTOR Dai­ly. This was cer­tain­ly the case for that most Amer­i­can of art forms, jazz. “Jazz musi­cians, like any oth­er Amer­i­can, had the duty to speak to the world around them, and to oppose the bru­tal con­di­tions for Black Amer­i­cans.”

Many of those musi­cians could not stay silent after the mur­der of Emmett Till, the 16th Street Bap­tist Church bomb­ing in Birm­ing­ham, and a string of oth­er high­ly pub­li­cized and hor­rif­ic attacks. Jazz was chang­ing. As Amiri Bara­ka wrote in a 1962 essay, “the musi­cians who played it were loud­ly out­spo­ken about who they thought they were. ‘If you don’t like it, don’t lis­ten’ was the atti­tude.” That atti­tude came to define post-Civ­il Rights Black Amer­i­can cul­ture, a defi­ant turn away from appeas­ing white audi­ences and ignor­ing racism.

As jazz musi­cians embraced the move­ment, so the move­ment embraced jazz. While King him­self is usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the gospel singers he loved, he had a deep respect for jazz as a form that spoke of “some new hope or sense of tri­umph.” Jazz, wrote King in his open­ing address for the 1964 Berlin Jazz Fes­ti­val, “is tri­umphant music…. When life itself offers no order and mean­ing, the musi­cian cre­ates an order and mean­ing from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instru­ment. It is no won­der that so much of the search for iden­ti­ty among Amer­i­can Negroes was cham­pi­oned by Jazz musi­cians.”

Jazz not only gave order to chaot­ic, “com­pli­cat­ed urban exis­tence,” it also pro­vid­ed crit­i­cal emo­tion­al sup­port for the Move­ment.

Much of the pow­er of our Free­dom Move­ment in the Unit­ed States has come from this music. It has strength­ened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich har­monies when spir­its were down.

King’s take on jazz par­al­leled his artic­u­la­tions of the move­men­t’s goals—he always under­stood that the par­tic­u­lar strug­gles of Black Amer­i­cans had spe­cif­ic his­tor­i­cal roots, and required spe­cif­ic polit­i­cal reme­dies. But ulti­mate­ly, he believed that every­one should be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty and respect, and have access to the same oppor­tu­ni­ties and the same pro­tec­tions under the law.

Jazz is export­ed to the world. For in the par­tic­u­lar strug­gle of the Negro in Amer­i­ca there is some­thing akin to the uni­ver­sal strug­gle of mod­ern man. Every­body has the Blues. Every­body longs for mean­ing. Every­body needs to love and be loved. Every­body needs to clap hands and be hap­py. Every­body longs for faith.

Jazz music, said King, “is a step­ping stone towards all of these.” Wrought “out of oppres­sion,” it is music, he said, that “speaks for life,” even in the midst of what could seem like death and defeat. Read King’s full address at WCLK 91.9. And at the top of the post, hear the speech read by San Fran­cis­co Bay Area artists for a 2012 cel­e­bra­tion on King’s birth­day.

The 1964 Berlin Jazz Fes­ti­val (poster above) was the first in the illus­tri­ous annu­al event. See many oth­er stun­ning posters from the series here.

via JSTOR Dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.’s Hand­writ­ten Syl­labus & Final Exam for the Phi­los­o­phy Course He Taught at More­house Col­lege (1962)

The His­to­ry of Spir­i­tu­al Jazz: Hear a Tran­scen­dent 12-Hour Mix Fea­tur­ing John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Her­bie Han­cock & More

In the 1920s Amer­i­ca, Jazz Music Was Con­sid­ered Harm­ful to Human Health, the Cause of “Neuras­the­nia,” “Per­pet­u­al­ly Jerk­ing Jaws” & More