Valaida Snow

Valaida Snow (June 2, 1904[1] – May 30, 1956) was an African American jazz musician and entertainer.

She was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Raised on the road in a show-business family, she learned to play cello, bass, banjo, violin, mandolin, harp, accordion, clarinet, trumpet, and saxophone at professional levels by the time she was 15. She also sang and danced.

After focusing on the trumpet, she quickly became so famous at the instrument that she was named "Little Louis" after Louis Armstrong, who used to call her the world's second best jazz trumpet player besides himself. She played concerts throughout the USA, Europe and China.

Her most successful period was in the 1930s when she became the toast of London and Paris. Around this time she recorded her hit song, "High Hat, Trumpet, and Rhythm." She performed in the Ethel Waters show, "Rhapsody In Black", in New York. In the mid-30s she made films with her husband, Ananias Berry, of the Berry Brothers dancing troupe. After playing New York's Apollo Theater, she revisited Europe and the Far East for more shows and films.

Later she became addicted to morphine. While touring through Denmark in 1941, she was arrested by the Nazis and probably kept at Vestre Fængsel[2], a Danish prison in Copenhagen that was run by the Nazis, before being released on a prisoner exchange in May 1942.[3] According to jazz historian Scott Yanow, "she never emotionally recovered from the experience".[4] She later married Earl Edwards. In the 1950s, she was unable to regain her former success.

Valaida Snow died of a brain hemorrhage on May 30, 1956 in New York City, backstage during a performance at the Palace Theater.

Valaida Snow in literature

Valaida Snow appears as a fictional character who threw herself on top of the protagonist when he was a child to shield him from a beating at the hands of the Nazis in a concentration camp. Snow is depicted as a strong, generous woman who proudly recalls that “They beat me, and fucked me in every hole I had. I was their whore. Their maid. A stool they stood on when they wanted to reach a little higher. But I never sang in their cage, Bobby. Not one note” (28).
A novel based on Valaida Snow's life story.
Biography. Both the Allen and Miller books contradict the assertion that Snow was held by the Nazis and instead place her in Danish custody at a Copenhagen prison.
Inspired by Valaida's life, but it is more fictitious than strictly biographical.

References

  1. ^ Hackman, Florence. Vaudeville, Old & New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America. ISBN 9780415938532. http://books.google.com/books?id=XFnfnKg6BcAC&pg=PA1051&dq=Valaida+Snow+Alvaida&as_brr=3&hl=en&cd=1#v=onepage&q=Valaida%20Snow%20Alvaida&f=false. . Other presumed birth years are 1900, 1901, 1903, 1905, and 1907
  2. ^ Lusane, Clarence. Hitler's Black Victims: The Historical Experience of Afro-Germans, European Blacks, Africans and African Americans in the Nazi Era. ISBN 9780415932950. 
  3. ^ Rye, Howard. "Snow, Valaida [Valada, Little Louis"]. In L. Macy. Grove Music Online. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/J418900. Retrieved [18 March 2008]. 
  4. ^ Scott Yanow (2003). Jazz on Record: The First Sixty Years. Backbeat Books. p. 228. ISBN 0879307552.