International Sweethearts of Rhythm

My radio listening tastes are all over the board. Sometimes it's classical, sometimes is a Christian station (one that doesn't make me want to pull my hair out while driving), sometimes it's the BBC or the French Quebec station we get in the car so I practice my French, and sometimes it's NPR. If I have G. with me, our resident NPR junkie, as I did today, I'll probably turn on NPR... plus I like their Saturday programming. 

What I love most about listening to a wide variety of stations is that sometimes I come across things that I would never have known about. This is what happened today while G. and I were going on the exciting errand of getting cat litter. We learned about the musical group the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, who were an integrated, all-female jazz band who performed in the 1940's. 

It's a crazy story about a girl's high school marching band turned dance band turned jazz band after stealing the band bus and heading to New York. The white members of the band had to perform in black face because if it was known they were integrated they would never have been allowed to play anywhere. Read the transcript of the interview with the daughter of one of the members. It is a wild, wild story and someone really needs to write a book about it because I want to read it.

I love finding interesting stories about people that I had no idea existed, don't you? 

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