Introduction

The music needs all of us . . .

—Melba Liston, speaking to a class in 1982

Arranger, composer, jazz trombonist, and music educator Melba Liston (1926–1999) wrote for and played in the bands of Gerald Wilson, Dizzy Gillespie, and Quincy Jones (among others). Her work with Randy Weston has been compared to the collaboration of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington. Yet, she is frequently overlooked in scholarship that might include her. As a result, when scholarship does include her, we find ourselves starting and ending at square one. We explain who she is, list the well-known and well-researched figures with whom she was associated, and argue that she should not be overlooked. The purpose of this special issue is to push beyond the introductory framework and to approach Liston’s complexity and scope from many directions. She not only needs to be “included”—her contributions and career warrant the scholarly attention of many researchers from many disciplines, from musicology, ethnomusicology, African American and Africana Studies, transnational American Studies, gender studies, jazz studies, popular music studies, and history (of jazz, African-American women, jazz, and popular music), to name but a few.

The Melba Liston issue of the Black Music Research Journal (BMRJ) shares with previous special issues an impetus to focus on an important figure, moment, or piece of music that has been central to black music history, repertoire, or culture but has eluded sustained scholarly research. In his introduction to the special issue on Thelonious Monk, Mark Tucker emphasized the centrality of Monk’s music to jazz repertoire (and beyond) while noting that his career had surprisingly received very little scholarly attention until the late nineties (1999, 130). The Monk special issue was framed as part of a wave of new interdisciplinary scholarship on Monk. The special issue on Duke Ellington’s Black Brown and Beige focused its critical attentions on a specific work and its reevaluation on its fifty-year anniversary (1993). Though Liston’s career has not (sadly) received a belated flurry of interdisciplinary scholarship, the Liston issue is similar to previous special issues of BMRJ in that it, too, seeks to provide diverse perspectives in terms of topics, voices, and disciplinary orientation and to extend scholarly conversations about the issues’ subject. However, the collective approach of this special issue distinguishes it as unusual.

What is the Melba Liston Research Collective (MLRC)?

The MLRC grew from a series of separate discussions that took place at various conferences, meetings, and classrooms while we were working on other scholarly projects. Initially, we were engaged in our own individual efforts, operating out of a paradigm that would have been familiar to Liston—that of women working in isolation in a male-dominated field. Eventually, we realized that we were working toward a larger cause—the inclusion of women musicians and analyses of gender in the emerging jazz historiographical directions of “new” jazz studies.

Dee Spencer and Sherrie Tucker had bonded over Melba Liston in the early 1990s when they tried to bring her to San Francisco State. Tucker had started writing a book on all-woman bands and wanted to know more about improvisation—so she signed up for the “Combos” class. As a women’s studies major intent on writing feminist jazz history at a time when the idea was none-too-popular, she was fortunate to find herself at SFSU where Spencer was the director of jazz studies. Not only had Spencer conducted research on women jazz musicians; when she was at a career crossroads— deciding between a performance career or a career as an educator—she had worked as Liston’s copyist. Spencer had contacted Liston during the 1980s and expressed interest in Liston’s composition and arranging techniques. A conversation about big band arranging resulted in a music-copyist position during the summer of 1980 in Liston’s Harlem apartment/work studio. It was after that summer that Spencer decided to focus on jazz education. Spencer’s rigor as a jazz musician, open to all genres, and teacher, as well as her participatory ethic of facilitating playing opportunities...