Connee Boswell

Connee Boswell ranks among the leading jazz vocalists of the 1930s. Ella Fitzgerald repeatedly named her the chief early influence on her own singing. Boswell first attracted widespread notice while performing with the Boswell Sisters, widely regarded at the time as one of the foremost jazz vocal ensembles. She had contracted polio in infancy and thereafter relied on a wheelchair, though the public saw little sign of this limitation during her stage appearances. As a young musician she took up cello, piano, alto saxophone, and trombone, yet she never documented any of these instruments on record. The three Boswell Sisters, with Martha at the piano and Vet playing violin, once joined forces with the New Orleans Philharmonic; before long, however, they set aside their instruments—Martha continuing on piano alone—to concentrate on vocal work. Their earliest sessions captured both “Nights When I’m Lonely” and Connee’s solo performance of “I’m Gonna Cry” in 1925, but regular recording and broader recognition did not follow until late 1930. Between 1931 and 1936 the trio enjoyed steady radio exposure, frequent concerts, and scattered film roles, most prominently in the 1932 feature The Big Broadcast. Connee devised the majority of the group’s inventive arrangements and also cut occasional solo sides during these years. When Vet and Martha married and withdrew from singing in 1936, Connee, who herself wed around the same time, began her independent career in earnest. Although she never attained major stardom, she remained a familiar figure and sustained steady work into the 1950s, appearing in the films Kiss the Boys Goodbye and Syncopation as well as on the short-lived television program Pete Kelly’s Blues. Her most memorable recordings include a 1937 date with Bob Crosby’s Bob Cats that yielded lively, swinging treatments of “Martha” and “Home on the Range.” She also participated in a notable 1956 jazz album, long out of print, featuring Billy Butterfield, Miff Mole, and Jimmy Lytell under the Original Memphis Five banner.