Melba Liston
b. 13 January 1926, Kansas City, Missouri, USA. Although she was born and spent her childhood in Kansas City during its hottest jazz years, Liston's entry into music began in Los Angeles where her family moved when she was 11 years old. At the age of 16, she joined the pit band, playing trombone, at the Lincoln Theatre and the following year, 1943, joined Gerald Wilson's orchestra. With Wilson's guidance and encouragement, she began arranging but remained an active performer, appearing on record with an old school friend, Dexter Gordon. When the Wilson band folded while on a tour of the east coast, Liston was hired by Dizzy Gillespie. This was in 1948 and the following year she toured briefly with Wilson who was leading a band accompanying Billie Holiday. The tour was a disaster and the experience led to Liston quitting music for a while. She worked as an educational administrator in California, played occasionally in clubs, and also worked as an extra in films. In 1956, and again in 1957, she returned to Gillespie for his State Department tours of the Middle East, Asia and South America. She then began a musical association with Quincy Jones, writing scores for his band and working on the show FREE AND EASY with which they toured Europe. In the '60s, she wrote extensively for Randy Weston and occasionally for Duke Ellington, Solomon Burke and Tony Bennett. Her arrangements were used on Johnny Griffin's WHITE GARDENIA. In the '70s she was involved in a number of jazz educational projects, especially in Jamaica where, for almost six years, she ran the pop and jazz division of the country's School of Music. She continued to write charts for the bands of Ellington and Count Basie and singers such as Abbey Lincoln and Diana Ross. At the end of the '70s she was persuaded to return to the USA as the headline attraction at the first Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival. There, she led her own band, with an all-woman line-up, and made a great impact. Her successful return to playing led to a revitalisation of her performing career and although her band later developed into a ‘mixed’ group, she has continued to play an important role in furthering the role of women in jazz. A sound section player whose ballad solos are particularly effective, Liston is one of the best latter-day arrangers in jazz. Unfortunately, the male domination of so many aspects of the jazz life has resulted in this enormously talented artist remaining little-known, even within the jazz community itself.