The International Sweethearts of Rhythm was the first integrated all-women's band in the United States. During the 1940s the band featured some of the best female musicians of the day. They played swing and jazz on a national circuit that included the Apollo Theater in New York City, the Regal Theater in Chicago, and the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C. After a performance in Chicago in 1943, the Chicago Defender announced the band was "one of the hottest stage shows that ever raised the roof of the theater!" They have been labeled "the most prominent and probably best female aggregation of the Big Band era". During feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s in America, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm became popular with feminist writers and musicologists who made it their goal to change the discourse on the history of jazz to include both men and women musicians. Flutist Antoinette Handy was one scholar who documented the story of these female musicians of color.
History
Early years
The original members of the band had met in Mississippi in 1938 at the Piney Woods Country Life School, a school for poor and African American children. The majority who attended Piney Woods were orphans, including band member Helen Jones, who had been adopted by the school's principal and founder (also the Sweethearts' original bandleader), Laurence C. Jones. During a 1980 Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival interview, band member Helen Jones said that the existence of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm was the result of Jones's vision. In the 1930s he was inspired by Ina Ray Hutton's Melodears to create an all-female jazz band at Piney Woods. Having been an entrepreneur when it came to fundraising, in the early 1920s Jones supported the school by sending an all-female vocal group called the Cotton Blossom Singers on the road. Following the fundraising successes of the band and other Piney Woods musical groups, he formed the Swinging Rays of Rhythm led by Consuela Carter. The band toured throughout the eastern U.S. to raise money for the school. According to the saxophonist and bandleader Lou Holloway, the Swinging Rays of Rhythm became the resident all-female swing band at Piney Woods after April 1941 when the Sweethearts began traveling cross-country. Holloway said the Swinging Rays were understudies for the Sweethearts, performing for them when the Sweethearts had to attend school after missing too many classes. In 1941 several girls in the band fled the school's bus when they found out that some of them would not graduate because they had been touring with the band instead of sitting in class.
Leaving Piney Woods
In 1941 the International Sweethearts of Rhythm became a professional act and severed connections with Piney Woods. The band settled in Arlington, Virginia, where a wealthy Virginian supported them. Members from different races, including Latina, Asian, Caucasian, Black, Indian and Puerto Rican, lent the band an "international" flavor, and the name International Sweethearts of Rhythm was given to the group. Composed of 14- to 19-year-olds, the band included Pauline Braddy (tutored on drums by Sid Catlett and Jo Jones), Willie Mae Wong (sax), Edna Williams and thirteen others, including Helen Jones Woods, who was the daughter of the Piney Wood School's founder. Anna Mae Winburn became bandleader in 1941 after resigning from her position leading the Cotton Club Boys in North Omaha, Nebraska, which featured guitarist Charlie Christian and Fletcher Henderson. Winburn led the band until her retirement.
The first composer for the band was Eddie Durham, with Jesse Stone replacing him in 1941. Durham left the Sweethearts to form Eddie Durham's All-Star Girl Orchestra, taking some of the Sweethearts with him. Stone brought in professional musicians to help bridge the gap between experienced and inexperienced players. Two of Stone's professionals were trumpeter Ernestine "Tiny" Davis and saxophonist Vi Burnside. Both were members of the all-black Harlem Playgirls during the 1930s. The sixteen piece International Sweethearts of Rhythm included a brass section, heavy percussion, and a deep rhythmic sense, along with many of the best female musicians of the day. About the group's self-titled recording, Lewis Porter wrote, "The sixteen recordings here reveal the dynamic blues playing and driving riffs for which the band was noted, as captured in Armed Forces Radio Service broadcasts of 1945 and 1946."