Bosom Bands were all-female bands, some led by females, some by males. The musicians in all these bands were very good and some were excellent. These women seem to have been more diverse musicians than many all-male bands.
It is interesting to consider that Blanche Callaway, a black musician, had a good band and was well known in the 1920s. This was before anyone had heard of her younger brother, Cab, yet when the Cotton Club in Harlem was setting up a new band, Blanche was ignored and Cab got the nod.
The other night while watching a Vitaphone short of the Ingenues (bosom band), I saw that besides the tacky dresses, they had a girl playing a sunburst tenor guitar. The tuners were on the back of the head but there were no slots, so for the date, I would think these were friction pegs. (I could not hear her.)
The Ingenues...their main feature was that every member seemed to play every instrument. They had two concert grand pianos, full-size harp, xylophone, a tuba on a stand ... the same girl also played the upright bass and a drum set (small by our desires today). The Ingenues seemed to have no leader or conductor.
Another bosom band was the Green's Twentieth Century Faydetts. (This is not to be confused with wonderful Hazel Green. She led an all-male band in the same period.) The Faydetts were a smaller jazz band and led by a floppy girl whose dance instructor might have been Ray Bolger. Good music but a little contrived. They had no guitar. The girls had some waxed fruit hanging down their dresses, with a staff of music and notes around the hems. And right on their chests was the outline of the main instrument they played...but a grand piano with the top up looked like a giant flea. The sax outline made those girls look like they had just dumped a chocolate malt down their fronts. (I said they were tacky.) But they were obviously a bunch of excellent musicians.
The Musical Queens was a very large orchestra with some really good talent. Pompous Phil Spitalny gestured out front pretending to lead the orchestra. But again, it was very much a gimmick band. They all played a lot of instruments and different types of music. They had an arch top guitar hidden back in the percussion session. Maybe the girls sitting on each side could hear it.
The Coquettes were a better, tighter band than the Queens and they were conducted by a very pretty blonde, Frances Carroll, who really showed some class...particularly, when compared to the marionette hopping around leading the Faydetts. Carroll really acted like the band needed her. They had a better integrated sound. They had no guitar but did have a tenor banjo.
But the best bosom band by far, was Ina Ray Hutton and the Melodears. The band members were dressed "nice" but not flashy or contrived. They didn’t switch instruments other than the reed section and then only to other reed instruments...not jump to a tenor banjo and then to an accordion.
Ina Ray Hutton
There was no doubt, Ina Ray lead the band...with baton and body. Every musician kept looking at her. (So did the audience.) Ina Ray was a knock-out, a good singer, excellent dancer, and she had some moves while conducting the band that...well, it sort of took a fellow’s breath away. "Downbeat" reported that she had over 400 gowns and she often changed between numbers. It took a lot of wire and a lot of Ina Ray to hold some of them up.
Her guitarist, Helen Baker, played a big archtop and you could hear that guitar (non-electric, of course) and her instrumental breaks were quite nice. She sat down front where she could be heard. One of Ina Ray's pianists, Ruth Lowe, wrote the beautiful, "I'll Never Smile Again," and Alize Wills, from the Chicago Women's Symphony, played 25 instruments; Virginia Mayers played trumpet, drums, saxophone, guitar, and clarinet.
Ina Ray Hutton was the most prominent female bandleader during the Big Band era. She was known as the ''Blonde Bombshell of Rhythm.'' Ina Ray started singing and dancing when only eight and was good enough that during the 1930s she appeared in both Ziegfeld Follies and George White Scandals -- the two biggest, on-going song/dance extravaganzas.
She fronted an all-girl orchestra in 1934, "The Melodears," and as such was in several Paramount musical shorts. The group was popular but got the usual response when seen on film. It was thought that there must have been a male orchestra somewhere because women couldn’t play that good...men thought.
She formed an all-male orchestra in 1940 which was very good but there were a lot of good bands then and its popularity had to come, in most part, from Ina Ray's singing and dancing...and moving.
Her only major film was Columbia’s "Ever Since Venus," which was made in 1944.
During the first half of the 1950s, she had another all-girl orchestra and was on regional TV from 1951 to 1956. For a year, she was a network band.
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As an interesting side note, Ina Ray’s half-sister was June Hutton who sang with a vocal group, the "Stardusters," with Charlie Spivak’s Orchestra in the early 1940s. She appeared with this group in the 1944 film "Pin-Up Girl."
When Jo Stafford left the vocal group "Pied Pipers," June took Stafford’s place. It was this combination that recorded the big hit, "Dream."
Then in the 1950s, June recorded for Capitol Records, with her husband, Alex Stordahl, and his orchestra.
These sisters were no kin to Betty Hutton, who was also billed as the "Blonde Bombshell." And it is interesting that Betty Hutton also had a singing younger sister. This was Marion Hutton – who sang with the Glen Miller orchestra as a soloist and with the vocal group the "Modernaires." The "Modernaires" and the "Pied Pipers" had a similar sound with similar music and were very competitive.
From these similarities come many confusing but inaccurate stories of the four "Hutton" women.
Ken Cashion(To see YouTube of Ina Ray and Band ; 1936. "Truckin'")
(To see YouTube of Ina Ray and Band ; 1936. "Doin' The Suzie Q")Return to Musings Index