an all-women jazz band in the Bronx
One hundred years ago today … The Daily News reported that the all-women “Rag a Dor Jazz Band” played a benefit at the Bronx Church House, 171st Street and Fulton Avenue, and provided documentary evidence:
The lineup:
Frances Smith, drums
Dorothy Martin, percussion (?)
Tessie Martin, banjo
Dorothy Thattell, piano
Georgiana Schroeder, fiddle
[Editor’s note: This is the first jazz band featured on this site so far, and it is apparently comprised of white people. The irony of this—especially here in the midst of African American History month—is not lost on us; there is of course, a long history of white people becoming the public faces of African American musical forms.]
Information about this band is hard to find, as is information about the musicians. You can see what is likely Tessie Martin’s grave here. Thattell seems to have had a short career in theater, most notably appearing in the original cast of Song of the Flame (1925), produced by Arthur Hammerstein, whose creative team included George Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein II.
Was the band a one-off? These apparently white (impossible to tell for certain) women—were they serious practitioners of jazz, a musical genre considered risqué by the mainstream? Or was something else going on?
The News title, “Devil in Jazzland Aids Chapel” does not make it clear.
The venue: The Bronx Church House was built in 1907.
The Bronx Church House, 1907. Architectural Record, Vol. 22.
According to The Architectural Record, the building’s purpose was “to serve as a clearing house of church work, a headquarters for the religious, sociological and settlement work of all the Episcopal parishes of the Bronx …” It may be that the building still stands.