Melba Liston
Encyclopedia
Melba Doretta Liston was an American jazz musician (trombone, compositions, musical arrangements). Her collaborations with pianist/composer Randy Weston
, beginning in the early 1960s, are widely acknowledged as jazz classics.
. After playing in youth bands and studying with Alma Hightower and others, she joined the big band led by Gerald Wilson
in 1943. She began to work with the emerging major names of the bebop scene in the mid-1940s. She recorded with saxophonist Dexter Gordon
in 1947, and joined Dizzy Gillespie
's big band (which included saxophonists John Coltrane
, Paul Gonsalves
, and pianist John Lewis
) in New York for a time, when Wilson disbanded his orchestra in 1948. She toured with Count Basie
for a time, and then with Billie Holliday (1949) but was so profoundly affected by the indifference of the audiences and the rigors of the road that she gave up playing.
She took a clerical job for some years, and supplemented her income by taking work as an extra in Hollywood, including appearances in The Prodigal (1955) and The Ten Commandments
(1956). She re-joined Gillespie for tours sponsored by the US State Department in 1956 and 1957, recorded with Art Blakey
's Jazz Messengers (1957), and formed her own all-women quintet in 1958. In 1959, she visited Europe with the show Free and Easy
, for which Quincy Jones
was music director. She accompaignist Mr.B (Billy Eckstine) with the Orchestra of Quincy Jones ("At Basin Street East": original release, Oct. 1 1961 for Verve Records)
In the 1960s she began collaborating with pianist Randy Weston
, arranging compositions (primarily his own) for mid-size to large ensembles. This association, especially strong in the 1960s, would be rekindled in the late 1980s and 1990s until her death. In addition, she worked for a variety of leaders including Milt Jackson
, Clark Terry
, and Johnny Griffin
, as well as working as an arranger for various Motown records, even appearing on albums by Ray Charles
and others. In 1971 she was chosen as Musical Arranger for a Stax Records
recording artist named Calvin Scott whose album was being produced by Stevie Wonder's first producer Clarence Paul
. As Musical Arranger on this project she worked with Joe Sample
and Wilton Felder
of the Jazz Crusaders, blues guitarist Arthur Adams, and jazz drummer Paul Humphrey
. Due to the financial issues at Stax Records
when this album was released in 1972 the album did not chart, but Melba's arrangements on the album contains some of her finest works ever and is a must listen. In 1973, however, she once again took a hiatus from her U.S.-based musical projects, moving to Jamaica to teach at the Jamaica School of Music for six years (1973–1979), before returning to the USA to lead her own bands.
During her time in Jamaica, she composed and arranged the music for the classic 1975 comedy film, Smile Orange (starring Carl Bradshaw, who three years earlier starred in the very first Jamaican film, The Harder They Come
). The Smile Orange experience was probably her only known venture into composing Reggae music (which, in this case, she collaborated with playwright Trevor Rhone for the lyrics). Sadly, a soundtrack album release for Smile Orange was never released or made available.
She was forced to give up playing in 1985 after a stroke left her partially paralyzed, but she continued to arrange music with Randy Weston. In 1987, she was awarded the “Jazz Masters Fellowship” of the National Endowment for the Arts. After suffering from repeated strokes, she died in Los Angeles, California
in 1999, a few days after a major tribute to her and Randy Weston’s music at Harvard University
. Her funeral, held at St. Peter’s in Manhattan, featured extensive musical performances by Weston with Jann Parker (performing Liston’s composition, “African Lady”), as well as by Chico O’Farrill’s Afro Cuban ensemble and by Lorenzo Shihab (vocals).
(1963), both of which feature exclusively Weston’s compositions with Liston’s arrangements for large ensemble, are considered jazz masterpieces. Uhuru Afrika, as described in the liner notes by Langston Hughes
(who penned lyrics for the second movement), is “a composed composition...and an ordered and arranged composition”; the work, broken into four long movements, demonstrates Liston’s abilities to blend African-oriented rhythms and percussion with jazz horn-playing and orchestration in a large-scale form. In many respects, this album and Highlife three years later, can be seen as comparable works to those of Miles Davis
and Gil Evans
of roughly the same period, but oriented toward Africa and African musics instead of the European-influenced harmonies and melodies in the Davis/Evans works. These two Weston-Liston also presage the rising awareness of and explicit prominence given to African music in the 1960s, especially as part of the free jazz/”New Thing” movement.
Her arrangements, especially those with Weston, show a constant flexibility that transcends her musical upbringing in the bebop 1940s, whether working in the styles of swing, post-bop, African musics, or even Motown. Her strong command of rhythmic gestures, grooves, and polyrhythms is particularly notable (again, as illustrated especially in Uhuru Afrika and High Life). Her instrumental parts demonstrate an active use of harmonic possibilities; although her arrangements suggest relatively subdued interest in the explorations of free jazz ensembles, they certainly use an extended tonal vocabulary, rich with altered harmonic voicings, thick layering, and dissonance. Her work throughout her career has been well-received by both critics and audiences alike.
Melba Liston and Her ‘Bones (leader, soloist, composer/arranger, appears on all tracks; Fresh Sound 408, 2006 reissue of original 1958 MetroJazz Records
recording; recorded 1956, 1958)
Randy Weston/Melba Liston, Volcano Blues (arranger, all tracks; Verve/Gitanes 519 269-2; recorded February 1993)
As soloist/bandmember:
As non-soloing bandmember:
Gerald Wilson (leader), Gerald Wilson and his Orchestra: 1945-1946 (bandmember, appears on ? tracks; Arbors ARCD 671, 1997 reissue of Classics 976)
Discography, as composer/arranger:
Gloria Lynne, Lonely and Sentimental (Everest 90490)
Randy Weston, Uhuru Afrika/Highlife (Capitol CDP 7945102, reissue of 1960, 1963 recordings)
Randy Weston, Khepera (Verve 314 557 821-2)
Randy Weston, The Spirits of Our Ancestors (Antilles 314-511-892-2)
Randy Weston, Earth Birth (Verve 3145370882)
Calvin Scott, "I'm Not Blind, I Just Can't See" (STAX STS-2046) 1972
Melba Liston: Bones of An Arranger (NPR Music):
Melba Liston: A Sensitive and Daring Arranger:
Melba Liston and Her 'Bones (All About Jazz):
Melba Liston at All About Jazz:
Melba Liston at Hard Bop Homepage:
Melba Liston at Fuller Up:
Melba Liston Collection - Columbia College Chicago:
Melba Liston at Women in Jazz:
Melba Liston with Randy Weston:
Melba Liston at National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters:
Melba Liston at Jazz Institute of Chicago:
Melba Liston's Slide to Success:
Randy Weston
Randy Weston , is an American jazz pianist and composer, of Jamaican parentage.-Biography:Weston studied classical piano as a child. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he ran a restaurant that was frequented by many of the leading bebop musicians...
, beginning in the early 1960s, are widely acknowledged as jazz classics.
Life and career
Liston was born in Kansas City, MissouriKansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
. After playing in youth bands and studying with Alma Hightower and others, she joined the big band led by Gerald Wilson
Gerald Wilson
Gerald Stanley Wilson is an American jazz trumpeter, big band bandleader, composer/arranger, 8 time Grammy nominee, and educator. He has been based in Los Angeles since the early 1940s....
in 1943. She began to work with the emerging major names of the bebop scene in the mid-1940s. She recorded with saxophonist Dexter Gordon
Dexter Gordon
Dexter Gordon was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and an Academy Award-nominated actor . He is regarded as one of the first and most important musicians to adapt the bebop musical language of people like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell to the tenor saxophone...
in 1947, and joined Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...
's big band (which included saxophonists John Coltrane
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...
, Paul Gonsalves
Paul Gonsalves
Paul Gonsalves, was an American jazz tenor saxophonist best known for his association with Duke Ellington. At the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, Gonsalves played a 27-chorus solo in the middle of Ellington's "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue"...
, and pianist John Lewis
John Lewis (pianist)
John Aaron Lewis was an American jazz pianist and composer best known as the musical director of the Modern Jazz Quartet.- Early life:...
) in New York for a time, when Wilson disbanded his orchestra in 1948. She toured with Count Basie
Count Basie
William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...
for a time, and then with Billie Holliday (1949) but was so profoundly affected by the indifference of the audiences and the rigors of the road that she gave up playing.
She took a clerical job for some years, and supplemented her income by taking work as an extra in Hollywood, including appearances in The Prodigal (1955) and The Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments (1956 film)
The Ten Commandments is a 1956 American epic film that dramatized the biblical story of the Exodus, in which the Hebrew-born Moses, an adopted Egyptian prince, becomes the deliverer of the Hebrew slaves. The film, released by Paramount Pictures in VistaVision on October 5, 1956, was directed by...
(1956). She re-joined Gillespie for tours sponsored by the US State Department in 1956 and 1957, recorded with Art Blakey
Art Blakey
Arthur "Art" Blakey , known later as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, was an American Grammy Award-winning jazz drummer and bandleader. He was a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community....
's Jazz Messengers (1957), and formed her own all-women quintet in 1958. In 1959, she visited Europe with the show Free and Easy
Free and Easy
Free and Easy is a 1941 film directed by George Sidney. It stars Robert Cummings and Ruth Hussey.-Cast:*Robert Cummings as Max Clemington*Ruth Hussey as Martha Gray*Judith Anderson as Lady Joan Culver*C. Aubrey Smith as Duke Colver...
, for which Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones
Quincy Delightt Jones, Jr. is an American record producer and musician. A conductor, musical arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend...
was music director. She accompaignist Mr.B (Billy Eckstine) with the Orchestra of Quincy Jones ("At Basin Street East": original release, Oct. 1 1961 for Verve Records)
In the 1960s she began collaborating with pianist Randy Weston
Randy Weston
Randy Weston , is an American jazz pianist and composer, of Jamaican parentage.-Biography:Weston studied classical piano as a child. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he ran a restaurant that was frequented by many of the leading bebop musicians...
, arranging compositions (primarily his own) for mid-size to large ensembles. This association, especially strong in the 1960s, would be rekindled in the late 1980s and 1990s until her death. In addition, she worked for a variety of leaders including Milt Jackson
Milt Jackson
Milton "Bags" Jackson was an American jazz vibraphonist, usually thought of as a bebop player, although he performed in several jazz idioms...
, Clark Terry
Clark Terry
Clark Terry is an American swing and bop trumpeter, a pioneer of the fluegelhorn in jazz, educator, NEA Jazz Masters inductee, and recipient of the 2010 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award...
, and Johnny Griffin
Johnny Griffin
John Arnold Griffin III was an American bop and hard bop tenor saxophonist.- Early life and career :Griffin studied music at DuSable High School in Chicago under Walter Dyett, starting out on clarinet before moving on to oboe and then alto sax...
, as well as working as an arranger for various Motown records, even appearing on albums by Ray Charles
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...
and others. In 1971 she was chosen as Musical Arranger for a Stax Records
Stax Records
Stax Records is an American record label, originally based in Memphis, Tennessee.Founded in 1957 as Satellite Records, the name Stax Records was adopted in 1961. The label was a major factor in the creation of the Southern soul and Memphis soul music styles, also releasing gospel, funk, jazz, and...
recording artist named Calvin Scott whose album was being produced by Stevie Wonder's first producer Clarence Paul
Clarence Paul
Clarence Otto Pauling , better known as Clarence Paul, was a songwriter and record producer for Detroit's Motown Records....
. As Musical Arranger on this project she worked with Joe Sample
Joe Sample
Joseph Leslie "Joe" Sample is an American pianist, keyboard player and composer.He is one of the founding members of the Jazz Crusaders, the band which became simply The Crusaders in 1971, and remained a part of the group until its final album in 1991 .- Biography :Sample began playing the piano...
and Wilton Felder
Wilton Felder
Wilton Lewis Felder is both a saxophone and bass player, and is best known as a founding member of The Crusaders, initially called the Jazz Crusaders. Felder, Wayne Henderson, Joe Sample, and Stix Hooper founded the group while in high school in Houston...
of the Jazz Crusaders, blues guitarist Arthur Adams, and jazz drummer Paul Humphrey
Paul Humphrey
Paul Nelson Humphrey is an American jazz and funk/R+B drummer.He worked as a session drummer in the 1960s for jazz artists such as Wes Montgomery, Les McCann, Kai Winding, Charles Mingus, Lee Konitz, Blue Mitchell and Gene Ammons.As a bandleader, he recorded under the name Paul Humphrey and the...
. Due to the financial issues at Stax Records
Stax Records
Stax Records is an American record label, originally based in Memphis, Tennessee.Founded in 1957 as Satellite Records, the name Stax Records was adopted in 1961. The label was a major factor in the creation of the Southern soul and Memphis soul music styles, also releasing gospel, funk, jazz, and...
when this album was released in 1972 the album did not chart, but Melba's arrangements on the album contains some of her finest works ever and is a must listen. In 1973, however, she once again took a hiatus from her U.S.-based musical projects, moving to Jamaica to teach at the Jamaica School of Music for six years (1973–1979), before returning to the USA to lead her own bands.
During her time in Jamaica, she composed and arranged the music for the classic 1975 comedy film, Smile Orange (starring Carl Bradshaw, who three years earlier starred in the very first Jamaican film, The Harder They Come
The Harder They Come
The Harder They Come is a 1972 Jamaican crime film directed by Perry Henzell.The film stars reggae singer Jimmy Cliff, who plays Ivanhoe Martin, a character based on Rhyging, a real-life Jamaican criminal who achieved fame in the 1940s...
). The Smile Orange experience was probably her only known venture into composing Reggae music (which, in this case, she collaborated with playwright Trevor Rhone for the lyrics). Sadly, a soundtrack album release for Smile Orange was never released or made available.
She was forced to give up playing in 1985 after a stroke left her partially paralyzed, but she continued to arrange music with Randy Weston. In 1987, she was awarded the “Jazz Masters Fellowship” of the National Endowment for the Arts. After suffering from repeated strokes, she died in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
in 1999, a few days after a major tribute to her and Randy Weston’s music at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. Her funeral, held at St. Peter’s in Manhattan, featured extensive musical performances by Weston with Jann Parker (performing Liston’s composition, “African Lady”), as well as by Chico O’Farrill’s Afro Cuban ensemble and by Lorenzo Shihab (vocals).
Composing/Arranging
Melba Liston made a reputation as an important jazz arranger, no small achievement in a field generally dominated by men. Her early work with the high-profile bands of Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie shows a strong command of the big-band and bop idioms. However, perhaps her most important work was written for the Weston, with whom she worked for four decades from the early 60s. The critically acclaimed albums Uhuru Afrika (1960) and HighlifeHighlife
Highlife is a musical genre that originated in Ghana in the 1900s and spread to Sierra Leone, Nigeria and other West African countries by 1920...
(1963), both of which feature exclusively Weston’s compositions with Liston’s arrangements for large ensemble, are considered jazz masterpieces. Uhuru Afrika, as described in the liner notes by Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
(who penned lyrics for the second movement), is “a composed composition...and an ordered and arranged composition”; the work, broken into four long movements, demonstrates Liston’s abilities to blend African-oriented rhythms and percussion with jazz horn-playing and orchestration in a large-scale form. In many respects, this album and Highlife three years later, can be seen as comparable works to those of Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
and Gil Evans
Gil Evans
Gil Evans was a jazz pianist, arranger, composer and bandleader, active in the United States...
of roughly the same period, but oriented toward Africa and African musics instead of the European-influenced harmonies and melodies in the Davis/Evans works. These two Weston-Liston also presage the rising awareness of and explicit prominence given to African music in the 1960s, especially as part of the free jazz/”New Thing” movement.
Musical style
Melba Liston’s musical style reflects bebop and post-bop sensibilities, not surprising given her stints working with such major bop figures as Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, and Art Blakey. Even in her earliest recorded work-—such as Gordon’s “Mischievous Lady,” a tribute to her-—her solos show an apt blend of motivic and linear improvisation, though they seem to make less use of extended harmonies and alterations. Her well-known solo on Dizzy Gillespie’s version of Debussy’s “My Reverie” shows her strong sense of lyricism, as well.Her arrangements, especially those with Weston, show a constant flexibility that transcends her musical upbringing in the bebop 1940s, whether working in the styles of swing, post-bop, African musics, or even Motown. Her strong command of rhythmic gestures, grooves, and polyrhythms is particularly notable (again, as illustrated especially in Uhuru Afrika and High Life). Her instrumental parts demonstrate an active use of harmonic possibilities; although her arrangements suggest relatively subdued interest in the explorations of free jazz ensembles, they certainly use an extended tonal vocabulary, rich with altered harmonic voicings, thick layering, and dissonance. Her work throughout her career has been well-received by both critics and audiences alike.
Discography
As leader/principal artist:Melba Liston and Her ‘Bones (leader, soloist, composer/arranger, appears on all tracks; Fresh Sound 408, 2006 reissue of original 1958 MetroJazz Records
MetroJazz Records
-Discography:...
recording; recorded 1956, 1958)
Randy Weston/Melba Liston, Volcano Blues (arranger, all tracks; Verve/Gitanes 519 269-2; recorded February 1993)
As soloist/bandmember:
- Dexter Gordon (leader) and others, Bebop Revisited, Vol. I (soloist, bandmember, appears on tracks 1-4; Xanadu 120, 2001 reissue of original 1947 Dial/Spotlite recordings)
- Dizzy Gillespie (leader), Birks Works: The Verve Big-Band Sessions (soloist, bandmember, solos on track 13, disc 1, appears on all tracks; Verve 527900, 1995 compilation of 1956-1957 sessions)
- Dizzy Gillespie, Newport Live (soloist, bandmember, appears on all tracks; Polygram 46LR, 1992 reissue of 1957 live recording)
- Art Blakey, The Jazz Messengers Plus Four (soloist, bandmember, appears on all tracks; Cadet LP4049; recorded 1957)
- Art Blakey, Big Band (?; Riverside 1957)
- Ernie Henry, Last Chorus (soloist, bandmember; OJCCD1906, reissue of 1957 Riverside recording)
As non-soloing bandmember:
Gerald Wilson (leader), Gerald Wilson and his Orchestra: 1945-1946 (bandmember, appears on ? tracks; Arbors ARCD 671, 1997 reissue of Classics 976)
Discography, as composer/arranger:
Gloria Lynne, Lonely and Sentimental (Everest 90490)
Randy Weston, Uhuru Afrika/Highlife (Capitol CDP 7945102, reissue of 1960, 1963 recordings)
Randy Weston, Khepera (Verve 314 557 821-2)
Randy Weston, The Spirits of Our Ancestors (Antilles 314-511-892-2)
Randy Weston, Earth Birth (Verve 3145370882)
Calvin Scott, "I'm Not Blind, I Just Can't See" (STAX STS-2046) 1972
As sideman
With Shirley ScottShirley Scott
Shirley Scott was an American hard bop and soul-jazz organist. She was most known for working with her husband, Stanley Turrentine, and with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis...
- Roll 'Em: Shirley Scott Plays the Big BandsRoll 'Em: Shirley Scott Plays the Big BandsRoll 'Em: Shirley Scott Plays the Big Bands is an album by American jazz organist Shirley Scott recorded in 1966 for the Impulse! label.-Reception:...
(Impulse!, 1966)
External links
Melba Liston Tribute Page: http://www.myspace.com/melbalistonMelba Liston: Bones of An Arranger (NPR Music):
- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92349036
Melba Liston: A Sensitive and Daring Arranger:
- http://www.jazzhouse.org/gone/lastpost2.php3?edit=925680527
Melba Liston and Her 'Bones (All About Jazz):
- http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=21952
Melba Liston at All About Jazz:
- http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=8795
Melba Liston at Hard Bop Homepage:
- http://members.tripod.com/hardbop/liston.html
Melba Liston at Fuller Up:
- http://elvispelvis.com/melbaliston.htm
Melba Liston Collection - Columbia College Chicago:
- http://www.colum.edu/CBMR/Library_and_Archives/Melba_Liston_Collection.php
Melba Liston at Women in Jazz:
- http://www.fyicomminc.com/jazzwomen/melbaliston.htm
Melba Liston with Randy Weston:
- http://www.randyweston.info/randy-weston-sidemen-pages/melba-liston.html
Melba Liston at National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters:
- http://www.nea.gov/national/jazz/jmCMS/master.php?id=1987_02
Melba Liston at Jazz Institute of Chicago:
- http://jazzinchicago.org/educates/journal/articles/melba-liston
Melba Liston's Slide to Success:
- http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3812/is_200003/ai_n8890639