Clora Larea Bryant (May 30, 1927 – August 25, 2019) was an American jazz trumpeter. She was the only female trumpeter to perform with

Dizzy Gillespie John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie ( ; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer. He was a trumpet virtuoso and improvisation, improviser, building on the virtuosic style of Roy El ...

and

Charlie Parker Charles Parker Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird", was an American jazz Saxophone, saxophonist, bandleader, and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of beb ...

and was a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm.

Early life

Bryant was born in

Denison, Texas Denison is a city in Grayson County, Texas, United States, south of the Texas–Oklahoma border. Its population was 24,479 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, up from 22,682 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census. Denison is pa ...

to Charles and Eulila Bryant, the youngest of three children. Her father was a

day labor Day labor (or day labour in American and British English spelling differences, Commonwealth spelling) is work done where the worker is hired and paid one day at a time, with no promise that more work will be available in the future, and outside t ...

er and her mother was a

homemaker Homemaking is mainly an American English, American and Canadian English, Canadian term for the management of a home, otherwise known as housework, housekeeping, housewifery or household management. It is the act of overseeing the organizational ...

who died when Clora was only 3 years old. When Bryant was a young child, she learned to play piano with her brother Mel. As a child, Bryant was a member of the choir in a Baptist church. When her brother Fred joined the military, he left his trumpet, which she learned how to play. In high school she played trumpet in the marching band.

Career

Bryant turned down scholarships from

Oberlin Conservatory The Oberlin Conservatory of Music is a private music conservatory of Oberlin College, a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio. It was founded in 1865 and is the second oldest conservatory and oldest continually operating conservatory in ...

and

Bennett College Bennett College is a private university, private historically black colleges and universities, historically black liberal arts college, liberal arts Women's colleges in the Southern United States, college for women in Greensboro, North Carolin ...

to attend Prairie View College in

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

starting in 1943, where she was a member of the Prairie View Co-eds jazz band. The band toured in Texas and performed at the

Apollo Theater The Apollo Theater (formerly the Hurtig & Seamon's New Theatre; also Apollo Theatre or 125th Street Apollo Theatre) is a multi-use Theater (structure), theater at 253 125th Street (Manhattan), West 125th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of U ...

in New York City in 1944. Her father got a job in Los Angeles, and she transferred to

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

in 1945. Bryant heard

bebop Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo (usually exceeding 200 bpm), complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerou ...

for the first time on Central Avenue. In 1946 she became a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, an all-female jazz band, earned her union card and dropped out of school.

became her mentor and provided her with work. She joined the black female jazz band the Queens of Swing as a drummer, and went on tour with the band. In 1951 she worked in Los Angeles as a trumpeter for

Josephine Baker Freda Josephine Baker (; June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975), naturalized as Joséphine Baker, was an American and French dancer, singer, and actress. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in France. She was the first Black woman to s ...

and

Billie Holiday Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday made significant contributions to jazz music and pop ...

. Two years later she moved to New York City. The Queens of Swing performed on television in 1951 as The Hollywood Sepia Tones, in a half-hour variety program on

KTLA KTLA (channel 5) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship station of The CW. It is the largest directly owned property of the network's majority owner, Nexstar Media Group, and is ...

. They were the first women's jazz group to appear on television. After six weeks the show was dropped due to lack of a sponsor. During filming Bryant was about seven months pregnant. After her daughter's birth she was called onto Ada Leonard's all-girl orchestra show; however, she only stayed for a week after calls demanding to "get that nigger off there". In 1954 she briefly moved to New York because she had lost inspiration from playing in bands. In 1951, she was a member of an all-female sextet led by Ginger Smock that was broadcast for six weeks on

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

. Bryant recorded her first and only album, ''Gal with a Horn'', in 1957 before returning to the life of a traveling musician. She worked often at clubs in Chicago and Denver. In Las Vegas she performed with

Louis Armstrong Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several era ...

and

Harry James Harry Haag James (March 15, 1916 – July 5, 1983) was an American musician who is best known as a trumpet-playing band leader who led a big band to great commercial success from 1939 to 1946. He broke up his band for a short period in 1947, but ...

. She toured with singer

Billy Williams Billy Leo Williams (born June 15, 1938) is an American former left fielder and coach in Major League Baseball (MLB) who played from 1959 to 1976, almost entirely for the Chicago Cubs. A six-time All-Star, Williams was named the 1961 National L ...

and accompanied him on ''

The Ed Sullivan Show ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' is an American television variety show that ran on CBS from June 20, 1948, to March 28, 1971, and was hosted by New York City, New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan. It was replaced in September 1971 by the ''CB ...

''. During the 1960s and 1970s, she toured around the world with her brother Mel, who was a singer, and they had a TV show in Australia. In 1989 Bryant became the first female jazz musician to tour in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

after writing to

Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

. After a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery in 1996, Bryant was forced to give up the trumpet but she continued to sing. She also began to give lectures on college campuses about the history of jazz, co-edited a book on jazz history in Los Angeles titled ''Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles'', and worked with children in Los Angeles elementary schools. In 2002, she received a lifetime achievement award (the

Mary Lou Williams Mary Lou Williams (born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs; May 8, 1910 – May 28, 1981) was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded more than one hundred records (in 78, 45, and ...

Women in Jazz Award) from the

Kennedy Center The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, commonly known as the Kennedy Center, is the national cultural center of the United States, located on the eastern bank of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. Opened on September 8, ...

in Washington, D.C. Two years later a documentary about her was released. In an interview with ''

JazzTimes ''JazzTimes'' was an American print magazine devoted to jazz. Published 10 times a year, it was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1970 by Ira Sabin as the newsletter ''Radio Free Jazz'' to complement his record store. Coverage After a decade ...

'', Bryant said, "Nobody ever told me, 'You can't play the trumpet, you're a girl.' Not when I got started in high school and not when I came out to L.A. My father told me, 'It's going to be a challenge, but if you're going to do it, I'm behind you all the way.' And he was."

Personal life and death

Bryant married bassist Joe Stone in the 1940s and the couple had two children, April and Charles Stone. That marriage ended in divorce. Bryant had two additional children from her relationship with drummer Leslie Milton; Kevin and Darrin Milton. Bryant died at

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a non-profit, Tertiary referral hospital, tertiary, 915-bed teaching hospital and multi-specialty academic health science centre, academic health science center located in Los Angeles, California. Part of the Cedars ...

in Los Angeles on August 25, 2019, after suffering a heart attack at home. At the time of her death, she had nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Discography

* ''Gal with a Horn'' (1957) * ''The Billy Williams Revue (1960):'' Two solo tracks

Filmography

* 1968: ''The

Rosey Grier Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier (born July 14, 1932) is an American former football player, bodyguard, actor, singer, Protestant minister, and motivational speaker. He played professionally as a defensive tackle in the National Football League (NFL) ...

Show'' (TV show) season 1, episode 18 "Clora Bryant, Sam Fletcher" includes a featured guest appearance by Bryant * 2000: '' Mysteries and Scandals'' (TV show) season 3, episode 25 "Humphrey Bogart" includes a segment with Bryant * 2005: ''Trumpetistically, Clora Bryant'' (video short directed by

Zeinabu Irene Davis Zeinabu irene Davis (born April 13, 1961) is an American filmmaker and professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego. In 1985, she received her M.A in African studies at UCLA and went on to earn her M.F.A ...

) with Bryant as featured subject * 2010: ''

Leimert Park Leimert Park (; ) is a neighborhood in the South Los Angeles region of Los Angeles, California. Developed in the 1920s as a mainly residential community, it features Spanish Colonial Revival homes and tree-lined streets. The Life Magazine/Leim ...

Voices'' (documentary film co-directed by Paul Calderon and Alan Swyer) includes interview segment with Bryant * 2011: ''The Girls in the Band'' (documentary film directed by Judy Chaikin) includes Bryant as a featured musician * 2014: ''Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story'' (documentary film directed by N.C. Heiken) includes appearance by Bryant

References

External links

Central Avenue Sounds: Clora Bryant.
Interviewed by Stephen L. Isoardi, Department of Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
Interview with Clora Bryant
part o
Central Avenue Sounds Oral History Project
, Center for Oral History Research, UCLA Library Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
Clora Bryant Interview
NAMM Oral History Library (2003)
Clora Bryant at The Girls in the Band – The Official Site of the Music Documentary

(1992)
International Sweethearts of Rhythm Collection Spotlight, Because of Her Story, Smithsonian Institution
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bryant, Clora 1927 births 2019 deaths 20th-century American trumpeters 20th-century American women musicians 21st-century American trumpeters 21st-century American women musicians American women jazz musicians American jazz trumpeters Bebop trumpeters International Sweethearts of Rhythm members Jazz musicians from Texas People from Denison, Texas Prairie View A&M University alumni University of California, Los Angeles alumni 20th-century African-American women singers 20th-century American women singers 20th-century American singers Jazz musicians from Los Angeles Women trumpeters 21st-century African-American women 21st-century African-American musicians