Valaida Snow

Valaida Snow might have ranked among the foremost entertainers of the early twentieth century had circumstances not worked so persistently against her, yet outside a devoted circle of admirers she remains largely overlooked. A versatile blues singer and multi-instrumentalist who also earned recognition for her arranging abilities, she entered the world on June 2, 1903, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, though some accounts list a different date. Raised in a household steeped in music, she and her sisters Lavaida and Alvaida received instruction from their mother, a teacher who introduced them to cello, bass, mandolin, violin, clarinet, saxophone, and accordion. The sisters performed as vocalists and dancers as well, but after Valaida launched her professional career at fifteen she concentrated on singing and trumpet playing. By 1924 she had secured a featured role in the Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake production In Bamville, also known as The Chocolate Dandies.

At twenty-two she topped the bill at Barron Wilkins’ Harlem cabaret, and during the balance of the 1920s she maintained an unceasing schedule of appearances, crisscrossing the United States with the Will Mastin Trio and taking the stage in London and Paris for the revue Blackbirds. In 1926 she extended her travels to the Far East, and two years later she commanded the stage at Chicago’s Sunset Cafe, where her vigorous performances drew praise from Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines, who soon became her romantic partner. Early in the following decade she assumed a starring position in the Sissle and Blake show Rhapsody in Black; the production’s acclaim opened doors in Hollywood, where she appeared in several films alongside her husband at the time, Ananais Berry.

Despite evident promise of stardom, Snow encountered entrenched racial prejudice as a Black artist and, as a woman, remained an outsider within jazz circles; her flawless intonation, arranging talent, and commanding trumpet work only heightened perceptions of her as an anomaly. After headlining at the Apollo Theater she returned to Europe for additional screen roles and concerts in the late 1930s. In 1941, while performing in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen, she was seized by German authorities and confined to the Wester-Faengle concentration camp. Eighteen months later she was released in a prisoner exchange and allowed to sail back to New York.

The experience left lasting psychological and physical scars, and although she attempted a return to the stage the earlier vitality had vanished; when Earl Hines attended one of her 1943 performances he failed to recognize her. After marrying manager Earle Edwards she persisted in working despite ongoing distress, yet on May 30, 1956, following an engagement at New York’s Palace Theater, she suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage at the age of fifty-two.