Take-Off: American All-Girl Bands during World War II (review)

When the men shipped off to Europe and Asia in the second World War, women riveted ships, drove cabs, ran family businesses, and even stepped up to home plate. Bolden turns the spotlight on another golden opportunity that opened up for women: leading their own orchestras and—gasp!—thumping, banging, and wailing jazz that critics and audiences alike believed only men could play. In three well-focused chapters covering Ada Leonard's All-American Girl Orchestra (white), The Prairie View State College Co-Eds (black), and The International Sweethearts of Rhythm (racially mixed), readers follow the "orks" as they play in dance halls around the country, entertain the troops at home and overseas, and convince skeptics that jazz is a matter of talent, not gender. Bolden has a sharp eye for the details that bring the stories to life: the stale Fred Harvey sandwiches and flat tires and Jim Crow accommodations that made road trips a trial; the frilly dresses worn to appease the audience's sense of feminine aesthetics (and how those sax straps, worn with a strapless gown, did cut into the skin!); the hooting and pawing of love-starved GIs that became an occupational hazard. Bolden delivers her account with snap and sass ("Ina [Ray Hutton] sang okay. Other than her voice, the only instrument she played was her body"), and she slings slang that catches the mood of sidebar review clips from Metronome and The Beat. Plenty of photos, ads, and press clippings embellish the text, and the picture captions are comprehensive enough to serve as informative sidebars—Vilaida Snow's internment in a Nazi prison camp, white International Sweethearts passing as black. Information is documented in endnotes, lists of sources and recommended reading and listening for kids is included, and a glossary, index, and CD are forthcoming in the final volume. Once the fem cats start passin' this around the band room, look out, brother.