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Current Issue - Winter 2009-10

Sweethearts of Jazz | Norm Bobrow’s Northwest All Star Concert, 1946. Left to right: Al Turay, guitar; Ira "Skeets" Savill, drums; Bill Rinaldi, bass; Ernestine Anderson, vocals; Jabo Ward, tenor saxophone; and Bob Russell, trumpet. | Courtesy of Al Turay

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Norm Bobrow’s Northwest All Star Concert, 1946. Left to right: Al Turay, guitar; Ira “Skeets” Savill, drums; Bill Rinaldi, bass; Ernestine Anderson, vocals; Jabo Ward, tenor saxophone; and Bob Russell, trumpet. | Courtesy of Al Turay

Arts & Entertainment

Sweethearts of Jazz
The Women of Seattle’s Black Musicians’ Unions.

GERTRUDE HARVEY WRIGHT was a member of Seattle’s first African American musicians’ union during its brief and rocky existence from 1918 to 1924. Virginia Hughes, a "Mrs. Austin," and Edythe Turnham are the other female members listed in the rolls of the American Federation of Musicians’ Local 458. These trailblazing women worked with their male counterparts both at union headquarters and on the bandstand. Following the demise of the short-lived local, they joined and helped run Seattle’s follow-up segregated union, Local 493, which endured for over 30 years, from 1924 to 1958. In addition to their trade union activities, these female musicians helped keep jazz alive from the 1910s through the World War II glory days and on to the fabled bebop era of the 1950s. All four women learned to maneuver their musical careers within a complicated Jim Crow union system. This is their story. More...