Hazel Scott: Jazz star and barrier breaker
A Trinidad-born pianist and singer who wowed America with her talent but whose progressive views were held against her.
A child prodigy on the piano, then a glamorous jazz and popular music entertainer, a civil rights campaigner and the first black American woman to host her own TV show: for the first three decades of her life, Hazel Scott鈥檚 rise to fame was vertiginous.
Born in Trinidad in 1920, Scott was the headliner in some of New York鈥檚 most fashionable clubs by the time she was twenty. A couple of years later she became one of Hollywood鈥檚 highest paid entertainers and then married one of the most high-profile US Congressmen of her day. Their celebrity lifestyle regularly featured on newspaper front pages, Scott鈥檚 records were selling well and her syndicated TV show was given double airtime because it was so popular. And then, almost overnight, she vanished from public view. What happened?
That's one of the questions Rajan Datar discusses with Scott's biographer and actor Karen Chilton; Loren Schoenberg, saxophonist, bandleader and Senior Scholar of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem; and playwright, lyricist and broadcaster Murray Horwitz.
(Image: Hazel Scott in the 1950s. Credit: Archive Photos/Getty Images)
Last on
More episodes
Clip
-
America's trailblazing celebrity couple
Duration: 02:54
Broadcasts
- Thu 7 May 2020 09:06GMT麻豆社 World Service
- Thu 7 May 2020 23:06GMT麻豆社 World Service
- Sun 10 May 2020 13:06GMT麻豆社 World Service East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa only
- Sun 10 May 2020 14:06GMT麻豆社 World Service except Americas and the Caribbean, East and Southern Africa, South Asia & West and Central Africa
- Mon 11 May 2020 03:06GMT麻豆社 World Service
- Thu 6 Apr 2023 09:06GMT麻豆社 World Service
- Thu 6 Apr 2023 23:06GMT麻豆社 World Service
- Sun 9 Apr 2023 00:06GMT麻豆社 World Service
- Sun 9 Apr 2023 19:06GMT麻豆社 World Service
Featured in...
Music and musicians—The Forum
Why does the world sound like it does?
Revolutionary women—The Forum
Warriors, scientists, visionaries: women who changed the world
Do you use US dollars even though they are not your country鈥檚 official currency?
Podcast
-
The Forum
The programme that explains the present by exploring the past