WICN Artist of the Month, January 2025: Melba Liston

Melba Liston, a self-taught trombonist, arranger, and composer, represented one of the first mainstream gender breakthroughs in the 1940s after she stepped onstage with legendary bandleaders like Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie.

As a female jazz musician, Liston would face the inherent challenges of a male-dominated stage and recording industry in the genre. The “on-the-road” experience, already brutally difficult for Black musicians due to segregation, would leave her exhausted from the isolation and predicaments of being the only female member of a touring Big Band.

Following Liston’s decision to leave the touring lifestyle, she would evolve to become the primary arranger and musical partner with jazz pianist Randy Weston, who was seeking an African-based root and sound to his compositions.

Born in 1926 in Kansas City, Missouri, Liston moved to Los Angeles with her family at 10 years old; her early life in L.A. as a child and teenager showed off a natural gift and direction toward music, which was encouraged by her musical family. At sixteen, Liston was already playing professionally in the pit band at Lincoln Theater!

In 1943, Los Angeles-based Big Band leader Gerald Wilson would hire her, then all of 18 years old, to join his band, which went on to establish itself as a mainstay of the L.A. jazz scene. As an example of her early non-instrument-related contribution, she became assistant to the arranger and composer for Wilson’s first band formation. Through this association, Liston would have her first fully professional performance opportunity, including being recorded with Wilson’s band, touring locally, and performing at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

Coincidentally, her early musical connection with a high school classmate, a youthful and ambitious saxophonist named Dexter Gordon, would lead to a pre-bop influence for both. Liston recorded with Gordon in 1947 at a session in Hollywood, California, and he would later acknowledge a first in their recording partnership, as Gordon had envisioned only Liston for this counter-horn role, “Dexter Gordon had a record date for Dial Records and wanted Melba Liston there. Not only did he want her to play, but he also wrote a tune for her, aptly titled Mischievous Lady.” The lineup was Gordon on tenor saxophone, Liston on trombone, joined by Charles Fox on piano, Chuck Thompson on drums, and Red Callender on bass. As reviewed by JSTOR.org, “Liston was ‘the boss’ of an improvisational sound that made her, at the very least, first among equals and that won her a legendary status among jazz musicians. The recording date pays homage to an accomplished musician seemingly too modest to  acknowledge her musical influence or dominance.”

In 1948, when Wilson disbanded his orchestra, Liston came to the attention of the rising star of bebop, Dizzy Gillespie, who hired her based on both her reputation as a trombonist and her arrangement skills. With high-octane star band members John Coltrane, John Lewis, and Paul Gonsalves, Liston spoke about early intimidation to solo and make her mark musically with Gillespie’s band. Ultimately, her arrangement capability won deserved acknowledgment amongst an all-male dominated big band lineup, “she quickly earned their respect once they saw how engaging and complex her arrangements were. ‘Melba didn’t write easy,’ longtime friend and trumpeter Clora Bryant says.”

In 1949, as Gillespie’s band ended abruptly, she briefly joined Count Basie’s band. Liston would then connect with Billie Holiday’s traveling band during the legendary tour of a viciously segregated, racially divided, and violently hostile American South. A supportive friendship bloomed with Holiday, but the physical touring and ordeal of the extreme racism they experienced relentlessly caused Liston to leave the road altogether for about three years, choosing instead to teach in the education field.

Gillespie’s band would reform and in 1957 the bandleader would approach and convince Liston to return to his orchestra for an international tour through the Middle East and South America. During this period, Liston took what might be her most famous improvisation on record, on Gillespie’s Cool Breeze, from Dizzy Gillespie at Newport.

In 1958, Liston made her sole album recording, Melba Liston and her Bones, credited as a trombonist, arranger, and composer. AllAboutJazz reviewed the reissue from 2006, with applause: “Hard-swinging music firmly planted in the bop tradition, Melba Liston’s playing matches her compositional skills; she wrote four of the twelve pieces, and they shine with originality. Liston has long been ignored as a composer and horn player, in large part due to gender bias, and so this reissue is long overdue—not just because of its historical value, but also the quality of the music.”

During this same period, Liston would meet jazz pianist Randy Weston while playing with Gillespie’s orchestra in New York. This collaboration would spark a partnership that would last four decades. Her arrangements of Weston’s music remain the most significant and referential of her jazz career. As stated in NPR’s Jazz Profile Bones of an Arranger, “Weston had never heard a woman play trombone, let alone jazz trombone. The meeting sparked a creative partnership that lasted nearly 40 years, producing such critically acclaimed albums as The Spirits of Our Ancestors and Volcano Blues. Weston’s music from the 1960s onward often incorporated West and North African elements, and Liston frequently scored the works for large, distinct ensembles.”

Like Weston, Liston would seek out the cultural experiences and influences related to African roots in travels to Africa and the Caribbean. In the 1970s, she taught in Jamaica at the University of the West Indies and the Jamaica Institute of Music after the Jamaican government invited her to become the Director of Afro-American Pop and Jazz at the Jamaica School of Music. She stayed in Jamaica until 1979, during which time she also composed and arranged music for the 1975 movie Smile Orange as well as serving as composer, arranger, and musical director of The Dread Mikado, which was a theater production considered emblematic of the Jamaican cultural revolution underway during this period.

Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, Liston would intersect with a variety of top-tier jazz musicians and band leaders including Clark Terry, Milt Jackson, Johnny Griffin, Quincy Jones, and appeared on an album by Ray Charles. She also worked as an arranger for Motown Records and arranged scores for a variety of different musicians during this period, including the aforementioned Clark Terry, Marvin Gaye, Mary Lou Williams, and Gloria Lynne. In effect, she often worked as a ghostwriter during her career, and according to a Black Music Research Journal article entitled Melba Liston: Renaissance Woman, “Many of the arrangements found in the Gillespie, Jones, and Weston repertoires were accomplished by Liston.”

Liston retired from musical performance 1985 after suffering a stroke, though she continued to arrange music with Randy Weston. In 1999, after suffering a series of strokes, and she died on April 23 of that year.

Beyond her musicality, Liston’s biography and contribution to jazz history includes the additional challenges of gender and racial bias. Her personality spoke to her fierce independence, strength of character, and exceptional musical ability to overcome these substantial obstacles in her life. In an article on the subject of the Harlem Renaissance and the female jazz artists that followed generations after, Liston is cited as exemplifying “the racial self-awareness, self-respect, and self-pride that male recipients were praised for. In fact, like the men who were heralded with the accolade, she was innovative, resilient, and a leading voice among her generation, even in spite of the historical burdens of her traumatic past.”