Twenty years after its publication it remains the primary history of women in jazz.

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Product Description

Lindha Dahl offers a carefully researched survey of female participation in the history of jazz with indepth interviews and profiles of representative individuals. Includes an extensive discography and index.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #585013 in Books
• Published on: 1989-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 371 pages

Review
The jazz scene in New Orleans, the Age of Swing, the Big Band Era of the 1940s and the ever present dark, smoky blues clubs have been the domain of men-but not entirely. Stormy Weather is a tribute to the women who made the scene, profiling the jazz and blues women from the turn of the century until now. Finishing off this work are interviews with ten women who have been part of the jazz industry and an extensive discography. Highly descriptive and enlightening, this engrossing reading brings alive a subculture that is as much a part of jazz as the music itself. Within these pages is the history and lives of women who often walked in its shadows. -- From The WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women; review by Ilene Rosoff

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Many people have seen [Billie] Holiday as a sacrificial brown beauty, a haunting victim-symbol, but some who knew her thought that the addictions that populated her life with pushers and police were inevitable, that she was too sensitive not to have been destroyed. Certainly her story raises some hard questions, chief among them: Could the America of her era have allowed a black woman of such sensuality and sensitivity to achieve success and wholeness? Lena Horne, another singer from the thirties who became a symbol of idealized black womanhood, poses this question as a kind of running theme throughout her autobiography. Horne says in effect that while it is indeed possible for a black woman to win through, she must also tote up the personal psychic and emotional costs in a society where racism and sexism exact enormous energies from the black woman artists. Carmen McRae, upon whom Billie Holiday made such a deep impression as a woman and singer, once analyzed her this way: "Singing is the only place she can express herself the way she'd like to be all the time. The only way she's happy is through a song. I don't think she expressed herself as she would want to when you meet her in person. The only time she's at ease and at rest with herself is when she sings."

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Customer Reviews

Excellent book
Linda Dahl's 'Stormy Weather' is one of the best among the many old and new books on jazz, women in jazz, etc. It is objective, well researched . If you want to learn about women in the jazz world , this is a must.

Includes Profiles of lesser known Jazz Women Greats!
From Back Cover:

"A panoramic survey, packed with rich anecdotes and musical and cultural analysis, of a century of women's experiences in, and contributions to, jazz, 'Stormy Weather, vividly illuminates an unjustly neglected part of the music's history.

Featuring, among many others:
*The blues royalty of the 1920s: Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ida Cox

*The immortal singers: Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horn, Carmen McRae, Billie Holiday, Betty Carter

*The great instrumentalists: Lil Hardin, Lovie Austin, Valaida Snow, Mary Lou Williams

*The bands: The Melodears, The International Sweethearts of Rhythm

*The composers: Carla Bley, Toshiko Akiyoshi


Part FIVE includes profiles of Willene Barton, Carla Bley, Clora Bryant, Dottie Dodgion, Helen Humes, Sheila Jordan, Helen Keane, Melba Liston, Mary Osborne, & Ann Patterson

Fantastic!
I found this book when i was writing a report on women in Jazz for my Jazz history class. It was fantastic and full of information. Sadly, it is mainly only the female jazz singers who gain any sort of fame while other talented musicians fall by the wayside. However, Stormy Weather does not leave out the many talented females in jazz history and clearly explains their importance and how much we miss if we leave these women out of the spotlight. (Don't worry, it does not leave out great singers either) Women musicians played with and even mentored the more familiar male names that mark the pages of most jazz histories but are paid little attention. Many jazz standards were composed and arranged by women. This book not only tells you the importance of the women but many the colorful details of their experiences in the jazz scene and the wonderful stories bring these women, and the men they played with to life, with all the depth of real people, not just distant gods of jazz. The book is as fascinating as it is educational. I must say it served as the perfect starting off point as I delved into the lives of many amazing Jazz women, but it also was the standard I kept coming back to in writing my report. It is written with a wonderful clarity that is too seldom found in any history texts. It aids understanding as to what happened when and the ways the various movements in Jazz evolved. I am only a student of Jazz but to me this book was a great introduction to some amazing women and also aided my understanding of Jazz in a more general sense. However, the best part of this book was how much life is brought to the page and the personal details that are so often left out of histories.