![]() ![]() Scott refused to perform in segregated venues when she was on tour. Scott had long been committed to civil rights. On the show, Scott performed with the jazz musicians Charles Mingus and Max Roach who were among the members of her supporting band. The show became so popular, it soon ran three times a week. Variety reported that "Hazel Scott has a neat little show in this modest package," its "most engaging element" being Scott herself. She was the first person of African descent to have their own television show in America, The Hazel Scott Show, which premiered on the DuMont Television Network on July 3, 1950. Hazel Scott on December 17, 1943, playing at Naval Station Great Lakes Her final break with Columbia Pictures' Harry Cohn involved "a costume which she felt stereotyped blacks." In the 1940s, in addition to her film appearances, she was featured in Café Society's From Bach to Boogie-Woogie concerts in 19 at Carnegie Hall. She appeared in five Hollywood films in all, always insisting on the credit line "Miss Hazel Scott as Herself", and wearing her own clothes and jewelry to protect her image. She performed as herself in the films I Dood It ( MGM, 1943), Broadway Rhythm ( MGM, 1944) with Lena Horne, in the otherwise all-white cast of The Heat's On (Columbia, 1943), Something to Shout About (Columbia, 1943), and Rhapsody in Blue (Warner Bros, 1945). When she began performing in Hollywood films, she insisted on having final cut privileges when it came to her appearance. She refused to take roles in Hollywood playing a "singing maid", and she turned down the first four roles she was offered for this reason. Īlong with Lena Horne, Scott was one of the first black women to gain respectable roles in major Hollywood pictures. Her performances created national prestige for the practice of "swinging the classics." By 1945, Scott was earning $75,000 ($1,128,882 today) a year. Thanks to the vision of Barney Josephson, the owner of Café Society, to establish a venue where artists of all races and ethnicities could perform, from 1939 to 1943, she was a leading attraction at both the downtown and uptown branches of Café Society. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Scott performed jazz, blues, ballads, Broadway and boogie-woogie songs, and classical music in various nightclubs. Her early musical theatre appearances in New York included the Cotton Club Revue of 1938, Sing Out the News and The Priorities of 1942. ![]() In the mid-1930s, she also performed at the Roseland Dance Hall with the Count Basie Orchestra. Hazel Scott during a visit to Israel, 1962īy the age of 16, Hazel Scott regularly performed for radio programs for the Mutual Broadcasting System, gaining a reputation as the "hot classicist". In 1933, her mother organized her own Alma Long Scott's All-Girl Jazz Band, where Scott played the piano and trumpet. A few years later, when Scott was eight years old, Professor Paul Wagner of the Juilliard School of Music accepted her as his own student. With her mother's guidance and training, she mastered advanced piano techniques and was labeled a child prodigy. īy now, Scott could play anything she heard on the piano. Her parents had separated by this time, and Scott lived with her mother and grandmother. In 1924, the family moved from Trinidad to the United States and settled in Harlem, New York City. Thomas Scott, a West African scholar from Liverpool, England, and Alma Long Scott, a classically trained pianist, and music teacher. Scott subsequently moved to Paris in 1957 and began performing in Europe, not returning to the United States until 1967.īorn in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, on June 11, 1920, Hazel Dorothy Scott was the only child of R. Her career in America faltered after she testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1950 during the era of McCarthyism. In 1950, she became the first black American to host her own TV show, The Hazel Scott Show. She was active as a jazz singer throughout the 1930s and 1940s. In her teens, she performed at Café Society while still at school. Scott was a child musical prodigy, receiving scholarships to study at the Juilliard School when she was eight. īorn in Port of Spain, Scott moved to New York City with her mother at the age of four. She used her influence to improve the representation of Black Americans in film. She was an outspoken critic of racial discrimination and segregation. Hazel Dorothy Scott (J– October 2, 1981) was a Trinidad-born American jazz and classical pianist and singer. The first black American to host her own TV show, The Hazel Scott Show
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