It’s 1941 and drummer Gene Krupa steps between his bandmate, trumpeter Roy Eldridge, and the nightclub doorman who refuses to let him enter. Krupa points to the poster beside him, with he and Eldridge listed as headliners. The doorman doesn’t move. Furious, Krupa confronts the club owner. Fire that doorman or the band walks out … Continue reading

It’s the late 1930’s and Herb Jeffries, a popular singer in several big bands, saddles up to become the first African American singing cowboy.  Dubbed “The Bronze Buckaroo,” Jeffries starred in several low-budget Westerns, like Harlem Rides the Range, and Two Gun Man from Harlem. Every Saturday, children of all skin colors packed afternoon matinees, … Continue reading

It’s 1948 and the DuMont Television Network airs the first episode of its new program, The Laytons, starring jazz singer and actor Amanda Randolph. Little is known about this situation comedy, but Randolph made history in its mere ten episodes as the first African-American in a starring TV role. Despite The Laytons’s brief run, Randolph’s … Continue reading

Oscar Brown, Jr. was not a man easily defined. Labels like songwriter, composer, actor, singer, director, producer, playwright all fit, but not quite. He was also an activist, a visionary, and a social commentator. A vocalist whose technique was steeped in jazzy agility and swing, his performances were consistently witty, shrewd, musical and humane, and … Continue reading

1956, and Abbey Lincoln stood poised to become jazz music’s next glamour star. She had just appeared in the film, The Girl Can’t Help It, wearing Marilyn Monroe’s flaming red dress from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Her stage presence was honed to accentuate her looks and figure, rather than her voice. None of this sat well … Continue reading

They crowned Jack Johnson the first Black heavyweight champion in 1908, but the fight had just begun. The Black community was overjoyed, seeing Johnson’s title as a major step toward equality. Whites i n America, however, were often near panic. Even the New York Times wrote that “thousands of his ignorant brothers will misinterpret [Johnson’s] … Continue reading

Singer Dinah Washington and her sixth husband, football legend Dick “Night Train” Lane, were an unlikely pair. She wasn’t a fan of football, but she was madly in love with Night Train. They each fought bigotry in their own ways – Washington by challenging segregation in the music industry, Lane by changing the perception of … Continue reading

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 … Continue reading

Melba Liston performs on Art Ford’s Jazz Party, a television program broadcast from Newark, N.J., in 1958. 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 … Continue reading

1925, and Louis Armstrong hits the music scene with a splash. With trumpet in hand and a wonderfully unique voice, he took on popular songs and stretched the boundaries of their rhythms and melodies so profoundly that American music hasn’t been the same since.Indeed, Louis Armstrong was America’s first “pop star,” whose appeal ignored the … Continue reading