[Dixielandjazz] Now A Black Female Orchestra? 'not really

[Bill Haesler]

Dear listmates,
I have been taken to task, Off Line, by Dixiejazzdata for supporting Bert Brandsma.
> There are many HIGH Yellow Black Americans  as a result of mixed breeding in those days
> and even today.  And in those days they would not be allowed to play in White Orchestras either.
> 
> There are however other statements in publications that also claim Chinese and whites,
>  however looking at the available youtubes and photographs I have been able to find,
> I am hard pressed to find an all White women in them.  Certainly not impossible but
> highly improbable that white musicians of that era would work and travel with a Black band
> given the conditions to which they were subjected.

So, once again, I should not have relied on my failing memory regarding a non-mouldy fig subject.
*>)
In checking Linda Dahl's 'Stormy Weather. The music and lives of a century of jazzmen) I found that
"The International Sweethearts of Rhythm got its start as a fund-raising for the Piney Woods School in Mississippi. Piney Woods was a boarding school for poor and orphaned children - mostly blacks but including other minorities.....'We had Mexicans, Chinese girls and others, so it was the "International" Sweethearts' emphasised Judy Bayron, an original member of the band......The increasing excellence of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm attracted not only good professional jazzwomen but also white players who wanted to work with this most prominent women's band. But integration brought the usual headaches; any obvious mixing of the races was virtually against the law in most of the South, where the band performed frequently."
'Jazzwomen. 1900 to the present. Their words, lives and music' by Sally Placksin tells a similar story. 
Kind regards,
Bill.