Martha Boswell (1905 - 1958),
Connee Boswell (1907 - 1976)
Helvetia
“Vet” Boswell (1911 - 1988)
Growing up, Martha, Connee and Vet were
equally exposed to classical "white" music and
black jazz music. Their renditions of
popular songs blended whiteness and blackness,
exposing a wide white world to the wonders of
jazz.
I
could try to explain what they did in my own
words, but here’s some anonymous Wikipedia
source who’s perfectly summed up the elements
of their vocalizing:
“The group blended intricate harmonies and
song arrangements featuring effects such as
scat, instrumental imitation, ‘Boswellese’
gibberish, tempo and meter changes,
major/minor juxtaposition, key changes, and
incorporation of sections from other
songs.”
If there was a glass ceiling confining vocal
creativity, The Boswell Sisters shattered it.
Here are some examples:
When
I Take My Sugar to Tea
Connee’s
vocal arrangements were SO avant garde that
radio listeners wrote into the stations to
complain and begged the station to "make
those girls sing songs the way they were
written."
They
were enormously influential. Their
session musicians were then unknowns, like
Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and a
host of future swing and big band
legends. (Connee used to dictate her
complex arrangements to a musician named
Glenn Miller).
And the musicians were crazy about the
Boswell Sisters' sound. When they led
their own bands and recorded in the
following years, it was with the Boswell
innovations.
The Boswell Sisters' vocal pyrotechnics are
on full display in “It’s the Girl”:
It's
the Girl
“It’s
the Girl” was re-used 50 years later in
1981’s “Pennies From Heaven” (a musical
drearfest of a movie) with Steve Martin and
legendary Hollywood/Broadway dancers Tommy
Rall and Bob Fitch lip-synching to the
Boswells.
Martin really dances, keeping up with those
gods of terpsichory:
It's
the Girl
The
Boswell Sisters were practitioners of
extremely close harmony. As sisters,
their voices were so similar that, in the
middle of a song, they would seamlessly
trade off the parts each of them was
singing.
There'll
Be Some Changes Made
The
group started singing when they were very
young, first locally in New Orleans and
then regionally before making forays
touring the country.
Because
they didn’t sound like other “girl
groups”, it took a while before audiences
— and venues - embraced them.
Radio gave them their first fame around
1930 and, for the next six years, they
were nationally -- and internationally --
famous.
Here’s the only song they recorded to hit
#1 on the hit parade:
The
Object of My Affection
and one of their few filmed numbers, “Rock
and Roll”
Both
Martha and Vet got married in 1936 and
retired, leaving Connee to forge a solo
career, which she did successfully for the
next quarter-century. And she did so
with a disability.
Connee
had infantile paralysis as a child (we now
call that Polio) which left her unable to
walk (and she could only stand for a short
period of time).
The sisters’ created a placement when
performing that de-emphasized Connee’s
limitation: Martha played piano with
Connee seated next to her. Vet stood
behind the two. And this is how they
were most often photographed
Here’s
Connee Boswell solo on The Ed Sullivan
Show:
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