[Dixielandjazz] Maxine Sullivan honored - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 2, 2014

[Robert Ringwald]

Homestead to Celebrate One of Its Own at Jazz Festival
by Eric Slagle
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 2, 2014
Steel isn't the only product that poured out of the Mon Valley back in its heyday.
The region produced more than its share of great jazz artists in the early and mid-20th
century.
Homestead's Marietta Williams hit it big as a singer and star of the screen and stage
under the name Maxine Sullivan with a career that began in the mid-1930s and ended
just before her death at age 75 in 1987.
This weekend, Homestead will honor Sullivan at the Homestead Jazz, Blues and Arts
Festival. The free festival is set under the Homestead Grays Bridge on Saturday from
10 a.m. to 11 p.m. and on Sunday from 2-9 p.m.
The event is being organized by the neighborhood social and economic outreach organization
ANEW Community Institute and will feature a musical dramatization of the life of
Sullivan by singer Betty Asche Douglas at 5 p.m. on Saturday.
"I've divided her life up into different phases and I'll be doing songs that she
made famous," said Douglas, a retired professor of arts from Geneva College. The
tribute will look at Sullivan's years when she was a member of her uncle's Red Hot
Peppers band in Homestead and beyond, she noted.
Sullivan scored her first hit with a swinging version of the Scottish folk song "Loch
Lomond" in 1937 and went on to appear in several Hollywood films, including "Going
Places," which starred Ronald Reagan. She retired from show business in the late
1950s but then saw a revival in the 1960s and '70s. She was preparing to perform
in the Mellon Jazz Series the year she died.
"She got her start at the Homestead Carnegie Library. She sang 'I'm Forever Blowing
Bubbles,'" Douglas said, adding that she did a study of Sullivan's career in preparation
for the show.
Douglas and her band -- pianist Lou Schreiber, saxophonist Rex Trimm and drummer
John C. Smith -- will play about nine songs for the presentation.
On Sunday at 5:30 p.m., Sullivan's music will again be performed by Douglas and jazz
artists Michele Bensen, Anquenique Wingfield and the Pittsburgh Women in Jazz Orchestra.
Sullivan's cousin Darlene Taylor, 68, of Homestead said of the event, "It is quite
an honor."
Taylor said she considered Sullivan more an aunt than a cousin while she was growing
up because of their age difference. She said she visited Sullivan after she moved
to New York City and remembered her as a petite woman who was extremely musical.
In addition to singing, she played several brass instruments.
Sullivan's two children -- Paula Morris and Orville Williams -- live in New York.
Orville Williams said he still makes it back to Homestead and was in town for a tribute
to his mother about six years ago, though he won't be in for the festival.
"Homestead was a swinging town," said Williams, who spent his formative years in
the borough. While Sullivan was pursuing her career, Williams lived in Homestead
with his grandmother Gertrude French. When his mother would come back to town, he
recalled, "It was a celebration."
This weekend's event will include some of the region's top jazz and blues acts.
The lineup for Saturday includes Jay Donaldson and the Muddy Kreek Blues Band, Miss
Freddye Stover and Band and Roby Edwards and New Direction.
On Sunday the bill includes Velvet Heat 2 and the Gospel Roots of Jazz and Blues
presented by Pastor Deryck Tines and the Lemington Chorale. Roger Humphries will
close the event, taking the stage at 7:30 p.m.
Maryellen Deckard of ANEW said her organization plans to make the jazz and blues
festival an annual event.
"What we're trying to do is draw business into Homestead through the attraction of
arts and music," Deckard said. Doing so, she said, can spur economic development
on par with what's occurring in sections of Pittsburgh. "If we can bring in artists
and musicians it can be like what's happened in Lawrenceville or the South Side."
ANEW is in the process of applying for nonprofit status. In addition to fostering
the arts, the organization plans to introduce a home-renovation collective and other
community-oriented services.
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-Bob Ringwald
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