[Dixielandjazz] Peggy Gilbert Obit

[Steve Barbone]

Peggy Gilbert, reed player and leader of the "Dixie Belles" has passed away.
Times obit follows.

Steve Barbone


NY TIMES - February 25, 2007 - By MARGALIT FOX

Peggy Gilbert, 102, Dies; Led Female Jazz Ensembles

Peggy Gilbert, a noted jazz saxophonist and bandleader who for decades led
all-female ensembles in hot jazz, a daring venture when she began her career
more than 80 years ago, died on Feb. 12 in Los Angeles. She was 102 and had
lived there for many years.

The cause was complications of hip surgery, said Jeannie Pool, a friend. A
musicologist and filmmaker, Dr. Pool made a documentary about Ms. Gilbert,
³Peggy Gilbert and Her All-Girl Band,² narrated by Lily Tomlin and completed
last year.

Long before the proliferation of women¹s bands in the World War II era, and
long afterward, Ms. Gilbert presided over a series of jazz groups,
performing widely and appearing in Hollywood films like ³The Wet Parade²
(1932), ³Melody for Two² (1937) and ³The Great Waltz² (1938). She was also
known as an advocate for women trying to make their way in jazz, a culture
long hostile to female instrumentalists.

To contemporary audiences, Ms. Gilbert was best known for the Dixie Belles,
a Dixieland band of older women she formed in 1974, when she was 69.
(Reviewers said Ms. Gilbert blew a mean tenor sax until she was well into
her 90s.) The Dixie Belles, who performed together until 1998, were featured
on the ³Tonight² show and on several sitcoms, among them ³The Golden Girls,²
³Dharma & Greg,² ³The Ellen Show² and ³Married With Children.²

For most of the 20th century, Ms. Gilbert toured the country by station
wagon, plane, ship and even dogsled. She played on vaudeville stages and in
glittering nightclubs; on military bases and in millionaires¹ mansions; and
once, to her dismay, in what turned out to be a circus. Along the way, she
encountered incredulity, outright rejection and auditions at which band
members were asked to lift their skirts to prove they had good legs.

All this Ms. Gilbert endured, because from the time she was a schoolgirl in
Iowa, all she really wanted to do was play the saxophone.

When Margaret Fern Knechtges was born in Sioux City, Iowa, on Jan. 17, 1905,
her parents had a piano waiting. Her father, John Darwin Knechtges, was a
violinist and the conductor of the Hawkeye Symphony Orchestra, which
accompanied silent films. Her mother, the former Edith Gilbert, was an opera
chorister. Young Peggy dutifully learned the piano and the violin. At 7, she
toured the Midwest in a Highland dance troupe with the Scottish music hall
star Harry Lauder.

But by the time she was in high school, Peggy was yearning to play the jazz
she heard on the radio. After the school refused her request to learn the
saxophone ‹ large wind instruments, she was told, were not suitable for
young ladies ‹ she simply taught herself.

³The first time I picked up a sax, I said, ŒThis is it!¹, ² Ms. Gilbert told
The Los Angeles Times last year. ³I loved the feel of it ‹free and loose.²

In 1924, the year after she graduated from high school, Ms. Gilbert started
her first women¹s band, the Melody Girls, which played at a Sioux City hotel
and on the radio. In 1928 she moved to California, where she took her
mother¹s maiden name. No one could pronounce Knechtges anyway. (It was
pronounced kuh-NET-chiz.)

In Los Angeles she started a band that over the years performed under
various names, including Peggy Gilbert and Her Metro Goldwyn Orchestra,
Peggy Gilbert and Her Symphonics and Peggy Gilbert and Her Coeds. The band
toured the vaudeville circuit with stars like George Burns and Gracie Allen,
Jack Benny and Jimmy Durante. It also played in popular Los Angeles
nightclubs, sometimes sharing the bill with jazz titans like Benny Goodman
and Louis Prima.

In addition, Ms. Gilbert served as an unofficial employment agency for
female musicians, securing on-screen work for them in films. After the
United States entered World War II, she helped find places in military bands
for male musicians who had been drafted, sparing them combat.

³She just got on the phone and called every bandleader she knew who¹d
enlisted and said, ŒI¹ve got a 19-year-old trumpet player here ‹ can you
take him?¹ ² Dr. Pool, who is also writing a book about Ms. Gilbert, said in
a telephone interview on Thursday.

During the war, the heyday of women¹s bands, Ms. Gilbert toured Alaska with
a U.S.O. show starring the actress Thelma White. After the war, when men
returned to the bandstand, and the demand for women¹s bands dried up, she
worked as a secretary for the Los Angeles local of the American Federation
of Musicians, continuing to perform at night and on weekends.

Ms. Gilbert, who was divorced after an early marriage, is survived by her
companion of more than 60 years, Kay Boley, a former vaudeville performer
and contortionist whom she met when they appeared at the same nightclub.

With her Dixieland band, she recorded a CD, ³Peggy Gilbert and the Dixie
Belles,² produced by Dr. Pool for the Cambria label.

One of the very few obstacles it seemed Ms. Gilbert could not surmount was
the scarcity, early on, of women (or, in fact, anyone) skilled enough to
play jazz at the level she required.

³Sometimes, in a pinch, she¹d have to hire a man, because she didn¹t have
enough women players,² Dr. Pool said. ³In the ¹30s, she was doing four, five
and six jobs a day. The women would make fun of the guys, because they
couldn¹t read music. And they¹d say: ŒDon¹t ever hire that guy again. He¹s
not really a musician.¹ ²