Valaida Snow

Valaida Snow (June 2, 1904 – May 30, 1956) was an American jazz musician and entertainer who performed internationally. She was also known as "Little Louis" and "Queen of the Trumpet," a nickname given to her by W. C. Handy.

Early life

Snow was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her mother, Etta, was a Howard University-educated music teacher and her father, John, was a minister who was the leader of the Pickaninny Troubadours, a group mainly consisting of child performers. Raised on the road in a show-business family, where starting from the age of five, she began performing with her father's group. By the time she was 15, she learned to play cello, bass, banjo, violin, mandolin, harp, accordion, clarinet, trumpet, and saxophone. She also sang and danced.

Career Snow's solo career began in 1921 when she joined a popular revue called Holiday in Dixieland, after exiting an abusive marriage. She then held a residency at a Harlem cabaret, which grew her profile.

After focusing on the trumpet, Snow quickly became so famous at the instrument that she was nicknamed "Little Louis" after Louis Armstrong, who called her the world's second-best jazz trumpet player, besides himself. W. C. Handy, who is known as the Father of the Blues, gave her the nickname "Queen of the Trumpet." Contemporary critics Krin Gabbard and Will Friedwald have commented on her approach to playing like Armstrong. Gabbard said she developed a "distinctly Armstrongian style" and Friedwald said she "mimicked" Armstrong. In a 1928 performance in Chicago at the Sunset Café, Snow played the trumpet, sang. Then seven pairs of shoes were placed in a row at the front of the stage, and she danced in each pair for one chorus. The dances and shoes to match were: soft-shoe, adagio shoes, tap shoes, Dutch clogs, Chinese straw sandals, Turkish slippers, and the last pair, Russian boots. "When Louis Armstrong saw the show one night, he continued clapping after others had stopped and remarked, 'Boy I never saw anything that great'." Despite her talent, she had fewer opportunities to hold residencies as a bandleader at clubs in New York or Chicago, like many of her male peers. Instead, she predominantly toured, playing concerts throughout the US, Europe, and China. In 1926, she toured London and Paris with Lew Leslie's Blackbirds revue and then from 1926 to 1929, she toured with Jack Carter's Serenaders in Shanghai, Singapore, Calcutta, and Jakarta.

Snow's most successful period was in the 1930s when she became the toast of London and Paris. Around this time she recorded her hit song "High Hat, Trumpet, and Rhythm". In 1931, she performed in the Ethel Waters show Rhapsody in Black, in New York. Snow directed the show's band and had a prominent role in the show, which had been designed by Lew Leslie to feature Snow. However, the show's credits did not reflect her role, as it was advertised around Ethel Waters, with the on-stage band's name remaining Pike Davis's Continental Orchestra.

In the mid-1930s, Snow made films with her husband, Ananias Berry, of the Berry Brothers dancing troupe. a Danish prison in Copenhagen that was run by the Nazis, before being released on a prisoner exchange in May 1942. It was rumored that her friendship with a Belgian police official helped her to board a ship carrying foreign diplomats. Snow's return to the U.S. was widely covered in the Black press.

In 1943 Snow again led a band at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and continued to perform and create recordings for the rest of her life. Her death came three days before her 52nd birthday.

Personal life Snow had 3 sisters Lavaida, Alvaida, and Hattie all of whom were professional singers. She also had a brother named Arthur Bush.

Snow married Samuel Lewis Lanier when she was 15, but she left him after he was abusive towards her. Berry was a dancer who performed in his family's act, the Berry Brothers. The bigamy charges had been initiated by Snow's first husband, Lanier, who claimed their marriage was never officially annulled.

Dr. Kernodle also said that Snow's legacy is important as she helped "shift the context of jazz away from the early Dixieland style" and "she [was] important in terms of helping us gain an understanding of the spread of jazz to Europe, particularly after World War I." Snow's biographer Mark Miller proposed that this jailing could have been the Danish authorities' method of protecting her during Nazi occupation. He reported that Snow spent a total of ten weeks in two different Danish prisons. September 23, 1945; First Cavalcade of Jazz concert in Los Angeles at Wrigley Field produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. along with Count Basie, The Honeydrippers, The Peters Sisters, Slim and Bam and Joe Turner.

In literature Earl Hines' oral autobiography, The World of Earl Hines (with Stanley Dance) includes several vignettes of Snow by her intimate friend.

Valaida Snow appears as a fictional character who threw herself on top of the protagonist when he was a child to shield him from a beating at the hands of the Nazis in a concentration camp. Snow is depicted as a strong, generous woman who proudly recalls that "They beat me, and fucked me in every hole I had. I was their whore. Their maid. A stool they stood on when they wanted to reach a little higher. But I never sang in their cage, Bobby. Not one note" (p. 28).

A novel based on Valaida Snow's life story.

Biography. Both the Allen and Miller books contradict the assertion that Snow was held by the Nazis and instead place her in Danish custody at a Copenhagen prison.

Inspired by Valaida's life, but it is more fictitious than strictly biographical. Valaida Snow, by Emmanuel Reuzé and Maël Rannou, comic strip, BDMusic, Paris, coll. " BDJazz ", 2012.

Discography 1940–1953 (Classics) Queen of Trumpet and Song (DRG, 1999) Until The Real Thing Comes Along (Monk – MK343 LP, Compilation)