Melba Liston           

"Melba Liston is one of the best jazz musicians, not just one of the best women in jazz." -- Junior Mance

Melba Liston Collection
1926–1999

WOMEN IN JAZZ SITE CONTENTS

  1. Toshiko Akiyoshi
  2. Geri Allen
  3. Andrews Sisters
  4. Angela Andrews
  5. Lil Harden Armstrong
  6. Dorothy Ashby
  7. Pearl Bailey
  8. Beverly Barkley
  9. Karen Briggs
  10. Ruth Brown
  11. Diane Cameron
  12. Betty Carter
  13. Joan Cartwright
  14. Kim Clarke
  15. Gloria Coleman
  16. Alice Coltrane
  17. Dorothy Donegan
  18. Ella Fitzgerald
  19. Rita Graham
  20. Jace Harnage
  21. Billie Holiday
  22. Bertha Hope
  23. Shirley Horn
  24. Lena Horne
  25. Alberta Hunter
  26. Jus' Cynthia
  27. Sandra Kaye
  28. Emme Kemp
  29. Vinnie Knight
  30. Lavelle
  31. Peggy Lee
  32. Abbey Lincoln
  33. Melba Liston
  34. Gloria Lynne
  35. Tania Maria
  36. Marian McPartland
  37. Carmen McRae
  38. Mabel Mercer
  39. M'zuri
  40. Sandy Patton
  41. Trudy Pitts
  42. Cheryl Porter
  43. Shirley Scott
  44. Nina Simone
  45. Bessie Smith
  46. Carol Sudhalter
  47. Sarah Vaughn
  48. Dinah Washington
  49. Ethel Waters
  50. Mary Lou Williams

DIVA JOAN CARTWRIGHT

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Melba Liston

Melba Liston was born on January 13, 1926, in Kansas City, MO. She made a reputation as an important jazz arranger, no small achievement in a field generally dominated by men. Much of her most important work was written for the pianist Randy Weston, with whom she worked for four decades from the early 60s.

Weston valued Liston's contributions to his recordings and concerts immensely, both for what he described as "the beauty, depth and sensitivity of her arrangements" and for her ability "to adapt to any situation, whether it's a chorus, or strings, or horns, or Africa."

She added creative layers of harmonic color and texture to Weston's memorable themes, a combination which proved highly effective from his great 60s albums like High Life and Uhuru Afrika through to recent recordings like Earth Birth (with Liston's string arrangements) and last year's Khepera.

She was born Melba Doretta Liston in Kansas City, but moved with her family to Los Angeles in 1937, where she played in a youth bands in high school before beginning her professional career working as a trombonist in a pit band in 1942. She began to write arrangements from that time, and joined the big band led by Gerald Wilson the following year.

She began to work with the emerging major names of the bebop scene in mid-decade. She recorded with saxophonist Dexter Gordon in 1947, and was the dedicatee of his tune "Mischievous Lady", and joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band in New York for a time, when Wilson disbanded his orchestra on the east coast after a tour.

She also toured with Billie Holiday in 1949, but decided in the early 50s that the rigors and privations of the touring circuit were not for her. 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 and The Ten Commandments.

Gillespie invited her to re-join his big band when the State Department funded tours to Europe, the Middle East and Latin America in 1956 and 1957, and took what is her best known recorded trombone solo on Gillespie's tune "Cool Breeze" on the album Dizzy Gillespie at Newport, recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1957.

She formed her own all-women quintet in 1958. She toured Europe with the theatre production Free and Easy in 1959, then worked for a time in the band led by the show's musical director, Quincy Jones. She worked with a variety of leaders in the 60s, including vibraphonist Milt Jackson and saxophonist Johnny Griffin, and began her long association with Weston. In 1973, she began a six-year teaching appointment at the Jamaica School of Music, and formed her own mixed band, Melba Liston and Company, after her return to the USA in 1979.

She was forced to give up playing in 1985 after a stroke left her partially paralyzed, but she continued to arrange music with Weston, contributing her imaginative, often strikingly dramatic arrangements to a succession of his albums in the 90s. She was afflicted by a further series of strokes in recent years, which eventually proved fatal.