[Dixielandjazz] Betty Smith

[Marek Boym]

Another great voice silenced.  Sictransit gloria mundi.
I first came across Betty Smith on a Best of British Jazz LP many
years ago (it is the name of the band, not a compilation).  I was not
very impressed by her singing "Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner," but
her solos sounded hot and inspired.  She also plays - very well - on a
number of tracks on A Freddy Randall CD I have.
May she rest in peace.
All the best to all of you,
Marek

On 28 January 2011 11:28, Steve Voce <stevevoce at virginmedia.com> wrote:
>
>  Betty Smith: Saxophonist and singer hailed for her improvisational panache
>
> /Friday, 28 January 2011/
>
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> Smith: 'I would have been a trombonist but my arms were too short'
> <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/betty-smith-saxophonist-and-singer-hailed-for-her-improvisational-panache-2196497.html?action=Popup>
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> Smith: 'I would have been a trombonist but my arms were too short'
>
>   * PhotosENLARGE
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> <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/betty-smith-saxophonist-and-singer-hailed-for-her-improvisational-panache-2196497.html?action=Popup>
>
>
> It was rare to find a woman jazz musician in the Fifties. Even more rare to
> find one who played hotter jazz than her colleagues. The tenor saxophonist
> Betty Smith was one such.
>
> "There was a trombone tradition in my family," she said. "They were all
> trombonists except me. I would have been one too, but my arms were too
> short."
>
> Wartime austerity still lingered in 1950. The uniforms of the musicians in
> trumpeter Freddy Randall's Dixieland/Chicago-styled band looked more
> appropriate to attendants at a caravan park than to a leading jazz band.
> Certainly they did Betty Smith no favours, and when we first saw her on
> stage she looked chunky and without glamour. And then she played...
>
> Randall's band toured the well-worn circuit of one-nighters covered by trad
> and Dixieland bands around Britain. The audiences felt sentimental about New
> Orleans jazz and it was a time for mawkish, tear-stained clarinet rather
> than efficient and swinging saxophone. In fact, Betty's was virtually the
> only tenor sax ever seen on the circuit. With the exception of those led by
> Humphrey Lyttelton and Chris Barber, the bands were mainly technically
> inept. But in Randall's band the standards were much higher and while he was
> a trumpet virtuoso Betty Smith swung and improvised with all the panache of
> her American counterparts Bud Freeman and Eddie Miller.
>
> Unlike the callow youths of the trad bands, Betty Smith had a professional
> career behind her before she turned to small-group jazz. She'd begun playing
> the alto sax when she was nine in Archie's Juveniles and began concentrating
> on jazz in her early teens.
>
> In 1947 she had toured the Middle East with pianist Billy Penrose and then
> joined Ivy Benson's evening-gown clad Girls' Band. She had flown to Germany
> to play for officials off duty from the Nuremberg trials and in 1948, at the
> very beginning of the Berlin Airlift, she was flown into the city with Rudy
> Starita's All Girls Band to play for the troops.
>
> "I'm still owed 40 quid for that gig," she sniffed.
>
> In 1950 she joined Randall's band and a few years later went to the States
> with the band in exchange for Louis Armstrong's visit to Britain. Randall
> became ill soon after and broke upthe band in 1957. Betty Smith then formed
> her own quintet, which included her husband, the bassist Jack Peberdy, and
> another jazz virtuoso, the pianist Brian Lemon.
>
> Her trip to the States had whet her appetite and she returned with the
> quintet, touring on the same programme as Bill Haley's Comets. Her record of
> "Bewitched" reached the American hit parade. She proved skilled at finding
> work and the quintet played summer seasons in Guernsey and other places. The
> group had a residency on the liner Franconia and she played and sang -- for
> she was a good vocalist -- with the Ted Heath Orchestra. She did a lot of
> radio and television work and for a while had her own radio programme on
> Radio Luxembourg.
>
> The high quality of her playing brought her into the orbit of another
> trumpet virtuoso, Kenny Baker, and they worked together often over the rest
> of her career. When Baker and two more ex-Ted Heath musicians, trombonist
> Don Lusher and drummer Jack Parnell, formed a sextet called the Best of
> British Jazz in the early 1970s she was a founder-member and remained the
> only saxophone player in the band until she became ill in 1985.
>
> Baker waited until 1992 to see whether she would recover; when she did not
> he reformed the band. In the 1980s she appeared with Eggy Ley's Hotshots and
> at several jazz festivals, but her illness persisted and herhusband Jack
> looked after her for the rest of her days. She continued to sing and play
> the piano until a week before her death.
>
> /Steve Voce/
>
> *Betty Smith, tenor saxophonist, vocalist, bandleader: born Sileby,
> Leicestershire 6 July 1929; married 1950 Jack Peberdy; died Kirby Muxloe,
> Leicestershire 21 January 2011.*
>
> 1digg
>
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