The first all-female jazz band to recruit women of any race equally was the International Sweethearts of Rhythm (ISR). They were originally all-black and remained majority black throughout their existence but recruited Puerto Rican, Chinese and, finally, white musicians into their ranks. In fact, the reason they used “International” in their name was as a code phrase that some of the light-skinned women in the band were not white. These women often found themselves in strange situations. When the band played in the South, white policemen, enforcing the Jim Crow laws, sometimes dragged them off the stage believing them to be white even though they were technically “colored.” Other times, the cops would get between them and the black audience believing they were protecting white womanhood. In other cases, these women were treated no differently than the black women but, when playing in white bands, were treated no differently than the white women. Clearly, Southern society itself was unable to decide whether light-skinned women of Asian or Indian descent were “colored” or not. So they were colored when they were with colored people and white when they were with white people. They had no other identity than by the whites or blacks they kept for company.
Overall, ISR had little trouble with the cops, recalled baritone sax-player Willie Mae Wong, until they recruited white members in 1943. The first to join was Toby Butler who was legally white but raised in a black family after she was orphaned at seven. The family that raised her was very poor but did so because she had no place else to go and she never forgot their kindness and loved them with all her heart. She went to the same school that ISR was spawned from—Piney Woods Country Life School in Virginia. She loved and deeply admired ISR and longed to join them. She eventually became a trumpet-player in the band. When she joined (convincing the whites around her that, despite her undeniably white appearance, that she was “colored”), the band became her new home—one she was determined never to leave—although she did play stints in other all-female bands. She was quite good.
Toby Butler.
The band had some great talent in the ranks. Trumpeter Ernestine “Tiny” Davis was one of the best in the business. Drummer Pauline Braddy had been a clarinetist but moved over to alto sax and hoped to join ISR playing that instrument. She made the mistake of mentioning her good sense of timing at her audition and was promptly put behind the drums which she did not know how to play and did not want to play. She was told the band had all the reed players it needed but not a drummer so if she wanted to gig in ISR it would have to be as a drummer. She accepted and went onto become a terrific drummer whose solos were so good that she won praise from Big Sid Catlett and Philly Jo Jones.
The next white musician to join was saxophonist Rosalind “Roz” Cron. Unlike Toby Butler who grew up as a black in the South and knew its racism well, Cron was from Boston and played in either white bands or in black bands that toured in the North. A veteran of big bands and an expert sight-reader, she was a seasoned professional as a musician when she joined ISR but got into trouble in the South because she didn’t realize that there were actual laws that said she could not walk or talk with a black person in public. She could not sit on the same park bench, drink from the same fountain or eat with one. When she walked down the sidewalk, she was disturbed that all the black people stepped into the street as she passed—they had to, it was the law (Moe Howard of the Three Stooges had the same thing happen to him when the Stooges toured through Jacksonville after he walked an elderly black man to his home which resulted in a cancelled gig as the Stooges and their entourage were chased out of town).
Cron got into trouble one day when she and fellow band member, Millie Jones (African- and Native American), had walked into a Woolworth’s and Cron sat at the lunch counter and ordered a coke for herself and her friend. Jones squeezed Roz’s arm and ran out of the store. Cron ran after her, completely unaware of what was wrong with her friend. Later that day, the band’s manager, Rae Lee Jones (no relation to Millie) read Roz the riot act. She was to henceforth try to pass as a light-skinned “colored” girl if she wanted to stay with the band. They could not afford to have these kinds of slip-ups which could ruin the band literally overnight. Cron thereafter dyed her hair black and permed it and wore dark makeup in an effort to pass for black. She even worked out an elaborate (i.e. couldn’t be verified) but believable story of her half-black origins should anyone ask. She loved being in ISR and was not going to let Jim Crow or anything else louse it up for her. In fact, all the ladies were instructed as to what to say if a cop should ask something like, “What’s a white girl doing behind the drums?” They were to respond, “She’s a mulatto, her father’s white, she’s never net him.” Under no circumstances were they ever to reply that the girl’s mother was white.
ISR’s sax section—(Standing L to R) Helen Saine (3rd alto), Roz Cron (lead alto), Vi Burnside (jazz tenor). (Seated L to R) Grace Bayron (4th tenor), Willie Mae Wong (baritone).
The third white member of ISR was Maxine Fields. Jones told her before the Southern tour even started to learn how to pass for black because white women cannot play in a band with black women without being arrested where they would be hauled off to jail and beaten with rubber hoses which don’t leave behind any marks. Roz Cron realized the full extent of it when she was separated from the band in El Paso, Texas during the war and a black soldier tried to help her find a taxi. The sheriff arrested them both for nothing more than standing on the sidewalk together as the soldier attempted to hail her a cab.
The irony of whites “browning down” as they called it was that while blackface minstrels were reviled for the practice, whites playing in black big bands had to do it in order to survive. The white men who played for Fletcher Henderson, for example, put on blackface when touring the South (and Henderson himself might have considering how light he was). Another irony was that white Southern cops had their roles as defenders of white female purity challenged when white women had to brown down to protect themselves from those same cops. Yet another irony occurred when light-skinned, but legally black, women were hauled offstage by Southern cops who thought they were white while leaving legally white women onstage because they were darker! Suddenly, the one-drop rule—the linch-pin of Jim Crow—did not matter a wit. This supposedly stalwart segregation policy so essential to the well being of Southern whites was being exposed by the police themselves as unworkable, unenforceable and asinine.
The International Sweethearts of Rhythm:
The International Sweethearts Of Rhythm " Jump Children " !!! - YouTube
The International Sweethearts Of Rhythm "I Left My Man" !!! - YouTube
In 1950, Anna Mae Winburn, the band’s singer, reorganized the Sweethearts with herself as bandleader and they were very good and rather popular but suddenly rock and roll was upon them and there was no place for the big bands anymore. The Sweethearts broke up in 1955. They reformed from time to time with Willie Mae Wong always eager to rejoin. Willie Mae loved ISR and would have done anything to stay in. She remained with the band until her death in 2013.
The ladies in their heyday.
Roz Cron solos.
Ada Leonard’s All-Girl Swing Band:
Ada Leonard's All-American Girls - YouTube
Jeanne Hackett Girls:
Soundie: Southland Swing - YouTube