Allegro, the Journal of Local 802 AFM, March 2023
Women’s History Month Profile: HAZEL SCOTT
John Pietaro
By the time Hazel Scott reapplied for
membership in Local 802, she’d lived more in her 46 years than most could in a
lifetime. From child prodigy to renowned performer, she was a major recording
artist and noted film actor, as well as the first African American artist to
host her own programs on both radio and television. In a tragic turn, this
acclaim was followed in 1950 by a racist, red-baiting campaign by the forces of
reaction, particularly the House Un-American Activities Committee. Almost
immediately thereafter, her television show was canceled, and Scott suffered the
indignity of media blacklisting and a mental breakdown. By the late 1950s, her
prominent marriage to Adam Clayton Powell had eroded and she’d left New York
for Paris, returning only with her own healing and the racial advances of the
next decade. Still, her story is one that has rarely been told.
The Trinidad-born pianist and vocalist began her
prodigious career as a child, and in 1924, when she was four years of age, relocated
to New York City with her family. Scott’s perfect pitch and outstanding
instrumental ability led her mother Alma Scott (also a musician), four years
later, to bring her to the attention of Julliard professor Oscar Wagner who
provided Hazel advanced musical training. By the age of 11, she’d already made
her professional debut.
A performance at Roseland led to a contract with WOR
radio and, over the next few years, celebrated gigs at increasingly prestigious
nightclubs. When she was 19, Scott began a residency at Café Society, casting
an important series of Swinging the Classics, bridging the jazz she loved (and would
go on to perform with the likes of Charles Mingus and Max Roach) and the
classical music she’d showcased over the years. Barney Josephson, Café
Society’s owner and a virulent opponent of segregation, became Scott’s manager
and assured that her bookings were for integrated audiences, and supporting her
when racist incidents occurred along the way.
In such a climate, with neighborhoods (and the active U.S.
military) so coldly separated by race, one might assume that an artist like
Scott could never proliferate, yet she was called out to Hollywood and offered
a Columbia Pictures contract. Pridefully, she insisted on terms that were
shocking at the time, including the control of character and costume, making
several movies including one with Lena Horne. Following a successful protest
action when she refused for the other Black actresses in a film to be dressed in
soiled aprons (holding up production for three days!), Columbia head Harry Cohn
threatened to close Scott out of all film work; she returned to New York and
resumed her successful music career. Later, she markedly stated: “From Birth
of a Nation to Gone with the Wind, from Tennessee
Johnson’s to My Old Kentucky Home; from my beloved friend Bill
Robinson to Butterfly McQueen; from bad to worse and from degradation to
dishonor—so went the story of the Black American in Hollywood.”
In 1944, the FBI opened a file on Scott, citing her
involvement in the Civil Rights Congress and the ACLU’s American Committee for
the Protection of the Foreign Born as well as her professional association with
the openly left-wing Barney Josephson. Her marriage a year later to the
dashing, newly-elected Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr and the headlines
they achieved after protesting Scott being barred from performing at
Constitution Hall by the notorious Daughter of the American Revolution was
apparently what the festering right-wing was seeking. Scott was a force,
establishing a 1950 battle against the National Press Club’s racist admission
policy and a civil rights lawsuit against a Spokane WA restaurant that refused
to serve her (following a USO performance).
That same year, Scott’s successes in television guest
appearances led to the premiere of The Hazel Scott Show, a music and variety
series, historic as the very first for any African American performer. The
slanderous write-up of the pianist’s “communist sympathies” (i.e., her
activism) in the pages of archconservative “Red Channels” magazine put Scott
into the sites of the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee and the
myriad neo-fascist organizations who breathed life into it. Voluntarily, Scott
agreed to appear before the Committee and made all attempts to separate herself
from the Communist Party but used the occasion to speak out against the
influence of “Red Channels” on the industry, and the very blacklist she would
soon find herself in the midst of. A single week after her appearance before
HUAC, the network canceled her television show, meanwhile Scott’s performance
schedule was scrutinized and heavily strained. By ’51, the tension evolving in
her life led to a total breakdown and the need to be hospitalized.
Though she resumed aspects of her career, the wider
exposure of television proved more elusive. In 1957, Scott chose to leave the
country, moving to Paris where she continued to speak out against both racism
and the McCarthyism and the rightist politics that fuel them. With her marriage
to Powell apparently in distress, the couple formally separated by the close of
the decade. Yet, she stood strong, appearing with the great writer and voice of
liberation James Baldwin in support of civil rights.
In preparation for her relocation back to New York,
Scott reactivated her long-held 802 membership in June, ’66. She resumed
performances, with a highlight at the New York Paramount in in 1968, and with
the blacklist formally broken, she returned briefly to television. Scott
endeavored into the Ba’hai faith, performing for its various large events here
and abroad with Dizzy Gillespie, and continued being a voice of pride and
power.
Hazel Scott died of cancer at Mt. Sinai Hospital in
1981. She was just 61years old. But her legend remains and was recalled by
Alicia Keys during the 2019 Grammy Awards, and the latter-day memorials include
a Dance Theatre of Harlem celebration in 2022.
Hazel
Scott’s FBI file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xwdPLMZqxkSO8b-CkU3UQdKI8iXCAmlG/view
Hazel
Scott, Discography:
Prelude In C Sharp Minor, Op. 3, No. 2 /
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 In C Sharp Minor (1940)
Piano Greats - Andre Previn*, Earl Hines,
Hazel Scott, Matt Dennis, Barkley Allen, Hazel Scott - Prelude In "C"
Sharp Minor / Country Gardens (1941)
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 In "C"
Sharp Minor / Valse In "D" Flat Major (1941)
Ritual Fire Dance / Two Part Invention In
"A" Minor (1941)
Hazel's Boogie Woogie / Blues In B
Flat (1942)
Her Second Album Of Piano Solos With Drums
Acc. (1942)
People Will Say We're In Love /
Honeysuckle Rose (1943)
Body And Soul / "C" Jam Blues (1943)
A Piano Recital (1946)
Great Scott! (1947)
Swinging The Classics. Swing Style Piano
Solos With Drums - Volume 1 Swinging The Classics. Swing
Style Piano Solos With Drums - Volume 1 (1949)
Two Toned Piano Recital (1952)
Hazel Scott's Late Show (1953)
Grand Jazz album (1954)
Relaxed Piano Moods (1955)
Round Midnight (1957)
The Man I Love / Fascinating Rhythm (1945)
I'm Glad There Is You / Take Me In Your
Arms (1945)
Sonata In C Minor / Idyll (1946)
A Rainy Night In G / How High The Moon (1946)
Butterfly Kick / Ich Vil Sich Spielen (1947)
On The Sunny Side Of The Street (1947)
Take Me, Take Me / Carnaval (1957)
Hazel Scott Joue Et Chante (1957)
Im Mantel Der Nacht (1958)
Viens Danser
(1958)
Le Desordre Et La Nuit (1958)
Hazel Scott (1965)
Fantasie Impromptu / Nocturne In B Flat
Minor
Brown Bee Boogie
How High The Moon / I Guess I'll Have To
Change My Plans
Valse In C Sharp Minor / (A) Sonata In C
Minor (B) Toccata
Round, Fine And Brown / Noages
Always (1979)
For
more information on Hazel Scott:
https://broadcast41.uoregon.edu/biography/scott-hazel#paragraph-111
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/04/24/hazel-scott-jim-crow/
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