Thelma Terry
Encyclopedia
Thelma Terry, née Thelma Combes (September 30, 1901 – May 30, 1966) was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 bandleader
Bandleader
A bandleader is the leader of a band of musicians. The term is most commonly, though not exclusively, used with a group that plays popular music as a small combo or a big band, such as one which plays jazz, blues, rhythm and blues or rock and roll music....

 and bassist
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...

 during the 1920s and 1930s. She fronted Thelma Terry and Her Playboys and was the first American woman to lead a notable jazz orchestra as an instrumentalist.

Early life

Terry was born in Bangor, Michigan
Bangor, Michigan
Bangor is a city in Van Buren County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 1,933. The city is located in the northeast corner of Bangor Township, but is politically independent....

 in 1901. Her parents divorced when she was very young and she moved with her mother to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, where the latter was employed as a servant for the wealthy Runner family. When the young woman was given the opportunity to receive musical training with the instrument of her choice, she chose to study the string bass. Her early years were spent on the road performing in Chautauqua
Chautauqua
Chautauqua was an adult education movement in the United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with...

 assemblies.

After graduating from Austin Union High School, she earned first chair in the Chicago Women's Symphony Orchestra. As this did not provide her with a living, she eventually turned to jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

.

In Chicago

In the early 1920s, Chicago had undergone a fateful transition. On one hand, the nation's second largest city at that time was noted for gangster violence as "Big Jim" Colosimo
James Colosimo
Giacomo Colosimo , better known as Big Jim Colosimo, was an Italian-American Mafia crime boss who built a criminal empire in Chicago based on prostitution, gambling, and racketeering. Immigrating from Italy in 1895, he gained power through petty crime and the heading of a chain of brothels...

, Al Capone
Al Capone
Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone was an American gangster who led a Prohibition-era crime syndicate. The Chicago Outfit, which subsequently became known as the "Capones", was dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor, and other illegal activities such as prostitution, in Chicago from the early...

, and Bugs Moran
Bugs Moran
George Clarence Moran , better known by the alias "Bugs" Moran, was a Chicago Prohibition-era gangster born in St. Paul, Minnesota. Moran, of Irish and Polish descent, moved to the north side of Chicago when he was 19, where he became affiliated with several gangs...

 fought for control of the city's illegal liquor trade. On the other hand, Chicago had also become a mecca for many of the finest artists of jazz, who migrated north from New Orleans. Through her contacts at Austin Union, Combes had found her way into Chicago night life. After playing in and around Chicago for some years, sometimes with her "all-girl" band ("Thelma Combes and her Volcanic Orchestra"), sometimes in a stringed quartet, she found her way into the house band of Colosimo's Restaurant (owned by Capone) in 1925. She played bass and sang at Colosimo's, sometimes on live radio.

In 1926 Combes was hired to play at the Vanity Fair Cafe, where she met jazz guitarist Eddie Condon
Eddie Condon
Albert Edwin Condon , better known as Eddie Condon, was a jazz banjoist, guitarist, and bandleader. A leading figure in the so-called "Chicago school" of early Dixieland, he also played piano and sang on occasion....

. Condon later said that he and Combes frequently went out on the town together during the winter months of 1926 and 1927. He added that he was impressed by her beauty, her musicianship, and the fact that no matter where they went, even in the roughest parts of town, Combes could find her own way home. Thelma's sister Helen disputed Condon's allegation that he and Combes dated, but the family insists that his words capture Thelma's strength of character.

Bandleader

A stint at a local Chicago theater in the spring of 1927 and an article in Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

 brought national attention to Thelma Combes. The newly formed Music Corporation of America
Music Corporation of America
MCA, Inc. was an American talent agency. Initially starting in the music business, they would next become a dominant force in the film business, and later expanded into the television business...

 took notice. They renamed her Thelma Terry and in April 1927 organized for her an all-male band (including a very young Gene Krupa
Gene Krupa
Gene Krupa was an American jazz and big band drummer and composer, known for his highly energetic and flamboyant style.-Biography:...

) called Thelma Terry and Her Playboys. Some sources state that the band's home was The Golden Pumpkin nightclub located at 3800 West Madison in Chicago, and that the Playboys may have been the house band. MCA billed Terry as "The Beautiful Blonde Siren of Syncopation", "The Jazz Princess", and "The Female Paul Whiteman". At least one musician, Bud Freeman
Bud Freeman
Lawrence "Bud" Freeman was a U.S. jazz musician, bandleader, and composer, known mainly for playing the tenor saxophone, but also able at the clarinet. He had a smooth and full tenor sax style with a heavy robust swing. He was one of the most influential and important jazz tenor saxophonists of...

, was so enthused by the quality of the band that he paid another musician to fill his seat in the Spike Hamilton Band so he could join the Playboys. The band was soon sent by MCA on a national tour that took them down the Eastern Seaboard and as far west as Kansas City
Kansas 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...

.

Terry found the day-to-day work of acting as a bandleader difficult. Bill Otto, a pianist who recorded with her in Chicago, recalled that she was a beautiful woman (in his words, "even voluptuous"), and that he got along with her because (unlike other band members) he did not make unwelcome advances to her. She also found that the male musicians were unwilling to follow her directions, and that the work itself, and especially the travel, was lonely and difficult to endure.

In 1929, MCA decided that Terry and her band would begin an international tour beginning in Berlin, Germany. However, by that time she had met Willie Haar, the owner of a Savannah, Georgia
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...

 winter resort at which the band played during their 1929 tour. Terry disbanded the Playboys and quit MCA to marry Haar and settle down in Savannah.

Later life

Terry married Haar in 1929 and had a daughter, Patti, in 1931. She divorced Haar in 1936 and tried to make a comeback in Chicago. Disappointed with her lack of success, Terry sold her string bass, turned her back on the music profession, and took a job as a knitting instructor. In the 1950s she moved to Michigan, where she met with Gene Krupa
Gene Krupa
Gene Krupa was an American jazz and big band drummer and composer, known for his highly energetic and flamboyant style.-Biography:...

, the drummer for the Playboys. Krupa told her that he was sorry she was not mentioned in his 1959 biographical movie The Gene Krupa Story
The Gene Krupa Story
The Gene Krupa Story is a 1959 biopic of American drummer and bandleader Gene Krupa. The conflict in the film centers around Krupa's rise to success and his corresponding use of marijuana.-Plot synopsis:...

. She spent her last years with Patti and her family in Michigan.

Terry died at the age of 64 on May 30, 1966 of throat cancer
Esophageal cancer
Esophageal cancer is malignancy of the esophagus. There are various subtypes, primarily squamous cell cancer and adenocarcinoma . Squamous cell cancer arises from the cells that line the upper part of the esophagus...

.

Discography

Like many jazz orchestras active in the 1920s, Thelma Terry and Her Playboys did not leave many recordings. Terry is known to have made six recordings, four in Chicago and two in New York City, between 1929 and 1931.

External links and references

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