10 Stories of Women. (2) Melba Doretta Liston
Melba Liston - Blues Melba To
@[Taddi] But how do you give a trombone to a seven-year-old girl?
Sure, everyone in the family loved music, but that doesn’t explain much. Especially, it doesn’t explain Melba's reaction - "it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen" - she would say.
It's love, you can't call it anything else! Total, uncompromising, unstoppable love. It’s for love that the little girl carries that thing, which was taller than she was, and plays it day and night, putting in blood, saliva, and sweat. It's for love that she dedicates herself practically by herself, always for love she takes it with her, and as one can well imagine, it doesn’t make her the most popular girl in school (although having classmates like Dexter Gordon and Eric Dolphy helped her).
Anyway, in just under two years, that girl was already good enough to play at a radio station down in Kansas City. Then the family moved to Los Angeles, and Melba began her career.
She would be the first woman to play the trombone in a big band. And she would play with all the greats: from Dizzy Gillespie to Count Basie, she would perform with Coltrane and Paul Gonsalves and a whole bunch of others.
In '49 she was touring with the big band that accompanied Billie Holliday. A tour that would painfully mark Lady Day's career. Melba was also affected by those events and by the difficulties a woman faced living on the road as a musician. And she decided to quit.
She would make a few appearances in films, play at the Baptist church in her neighborhood, and teach music.
But for her – and our – luck, Love is stronger than everything.
Melba would start playing again, but she would focus especially on arranging and composing – thanks particularly to pianist Randy Weston, with whom she would collaborate for many years – and would try to play as few concerts as possible. She would record with everyone: from Gillespie to Art Blakey (who took her to Europe), from Quincy Jones to Ray Charles and many, many others. She would found an all-women quintet and even go to Jamaica to teach music.
From this incredible life and art remain countless recordings, but only one bearing her name "Melba Liston and Her Bones" (fantastic title!).
She would stop playing in 1985 due to the first of a series of strokes that would take her away in 1999.
The band that accompanied her on her final journey played for her her "African Lady."
