Clora Bryant
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Clora Bryant' (born May 30, 1927 in Denison, Texas) is a jazz trumpeter who has been called a "pioneer" for women trumpeters.
She started in music as a singer in her Baptist church, but took up the trumpet after her brother left it on going to the military. She studied improvisation intensely, using a wire recorder to record her own soloing along with jazz records, and studying the results. She became adept at a variety of genres, from jazz to classical, and performing versions of famous jazz solos of the day. In addition, she honed her own unique improvisational skills in jam sessions along Central Avenue in Los Angeles, the center of the mid-forties West Coast African American jazz scene. Bryant performed in high school bands, and in the early 1940s did tours of Texas with an all-female band, the Prairie View Co-Eds. The Prairie View Co-Eds came into New York in 1944 for a successful gig at the Apollo Theater, where Bryant scored a hit on with her version of a solo by trumpeter Harry James. Bryant also spent a week with the legendary all-woman International Sweethearts of Rhythm, and in 1948 toured with the all-woman, all Black Queens of Swing. She married that year and started a family, continuing to perform while pregnant and as a young mother. Later she attended UCLA where she became influenced by bebop and gained the attention of Dizzy Gillespie. She was the only female musician to perform with Charlie Parker, at the Lighthouse Cafe in [[Hermosa Beach, California]. Later she toured with singers Billy Daniels and Billy Williams. In 1957 her album Gal With A Horn came out. Then in the mid-1960s she briefly did duo work with her brother who was a vocalist. That stated she had an on/off career where she took time off to spend raising her four children.
She also had some notice in television, appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show. In later life she became the first American female jazz musician to play in the Soviet Union on a request from Mikhail Gorbachev.
After her heart attack in 1996 she became unable to play, but still sings and lectures on jazz.
[edit] Further reading
- Central Avenue Sounds: Clora Bryant. Interviewed by Stephen L. Isoardi, Department of Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
- Tucker, Sherrie. Swing Shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8223-2485-7
