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Artist
Melba Liston
12+ albums
jazz
about
Melba Doretta Liston (January 13, 1926 – April 23, 1999) was an American jazz musician (trombone, compositions, musical arrangements). Her collaborations with pianist / composer Randy Weston, beginning in the early 1960s, are widely acknowledged as jazz classics. Life and career Liston was born in Kansas City, Missouri. After playing in youth bands and studying with Alma Hightower and others, she joined the big band led by Gerald Wilson in 1943. She began to work with the emerging major names of the bebop scene in the mid-1940s. She recorded with saxophonist Dexter Gordon in 1947, and joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band (which included saxophonists John Coltrane, Paul Gonsalves, and pianist John Lewis) in New York for a time, when Wilson disbanded his orchestra in 1948. She toured with Count Basie for a time, and then with Billie Holliday (1949) but was so profoundly affected by the indifference of the audiences and the rigors of the road that she gave up playing. She took a clerical job for some years, and supplemented her income by taking work as an extra in Hollywood, including appearances in The Prodigal (1955) and The Ten Commandments (1956). She re-joined Gillespie for tours sponsored by the US State Department in 1956 and 1957, recorded with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1957), and formed her own all-women quintet in 1958. In 1959, she visited Europe with the show Free and Easy, for which Quincy Jones was music director. She accompanied Mr.B (Billy Eckstine) with the
top songs
albums
Melba Liston and Her 'Bones
Melba Liston & Her 'Bones
Melba Liston and Her Bones (Remastered. Stereo version)
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Melba Liston Her 'Bones
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And Her 'bones
You Don't Say
Volcano Blues
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Jazz Explosion - The Greats Volume Ten
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And Her Bones
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Dizzie Gillespie - Volume 10
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Melba Liston and Her Bones
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Dizzie Gillespie - Volume 1