The Ladies Who Sing with the Band.(Review)

By Betty Bennett. (Studies in Jazz, 36.) Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2000. [xvii, 141 p. ISBN 0-8108-3714-5. $35.]

"There are three sexes: men, women, and girl singers" (p. 91). It is likely that when Woody Herman made this remark, he was expressing the mystification band-leaders claimed was their shared reaction to the women who sang with them, but when Betty Bennett uses it, she blows wide open the whole question of how these women were perceived by the men who employed them. In fact, it is interesting that Bennett did not choose the quote as the title for her book, because beneath the story of her life, her narrative poses a series of questions about exactly why the female singer was seen and treated differently from the others by musicians, bandleaders, road managers, and audiences.

The singer was often perceived by the band members as perhaps less gifted, but more prominent, a situation that created resentment and difficulty; consequently, she often viewed herself from a negative perspective, conceding to the pressure to look, behave, and sing in a particular manner, often against her judgment of what repertory or technique suited her best. What Bennett conveys through her own story is that the girl singer had to be tough, independent, good-humored, and versatile --as well as beautiful and talented--in order to measure up to the expectations from within the industry, let alone those generated by audiences.

It becomes clear early in the book that the social conditions for girl singers were very exacting. Bennett engagingly relates how a new, often naive young female would have to learn to negotiate her way through the sexual minefield generated by her mere presence, as she traveled on a crowded tour bus for months at a time with a mixed-race party of raw young male instrumentalists and an older, wiser, and more experienced bandleader. With her frequent allusions to the casting-couch mentality, ...