Валаида Сноу: Королева Трубы и Звезда Джаза

American jazz musician

Valaida Snow (June 2, 1904 – May 30, 1956) was an American jazz musician and entertainer who performed internationally. She was also known as "Little Louis" and "Queen of the Trumpet," a nickname given to her by W. C. Handy.

Snow was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her mother, Etta, was a Howard University educated music teacher and her father, John, was a minister who was the leader of the Pickaninny Troubadours, a group mainly consisting of child performers. Raised on the road in a show business family, where starting from the age of five, she began performing with her father's group. By the time she was 15, she learned to play cello, bass, banjo, violin, mandolin, harp, accordion, clarinet, trumpet, and saxophone. She also sang and danced.

Her solo career began when she joined a popular revue called Holiday in Dixieland, after exiting an abusive marriage. She then held a residency at a Harlem cabaret, which helped lead her to be cast alongside Josephine Baker in the musical In Bamville, a follow up to the enduring hit musical Shuffle Along. While the musical was itself not a hit, Baker and Snow both received positive reviews. In the year 1922, when she was 18 years old she gained national recognition, leading her to travel all over the U. S. to perform as a dancer, musician (Trumpet player), and singer. The following year, Valaida appeared in the black musical Ramblin Round. In the year 1923, she also appeared in Will Mastin’s Follow Me revue. By 1924 she became a key figure in The Chocolate Dandies a broadway musical along with Elizabeth Welch and Josephine Baker. After focusing on the trumpet, Snow quickly became so famous at the instrument that she was nicknamed "Little Louis" after Louis Armstrong, who called her the world's second best jazz trumpet player, besides himself. W. C. Handy, who is known as the Father of the Blues, gave her the nickname "Queen of the Trumpet." Contemporary critics Krin Gabbard and Will Friedwald have commented on her approach to playing like Armstrong. Gabbard said she developed a "distinctly Armstrongian style" and Friedwald said she "mimicked" Armstrong. In a 1928 performance in Chicago at the Sunset Café, Snow played the trumpet, sang. Then seven pairs of shoes were placed in a row at the front of the stage, and she danced in each pair for one chorus. The dances and shoes to match were: soft shoe, adagio shoes, tap shoes, Dutch clogs, Chinese straw sandals, Turkish slippers, and the last pair, Russian boots. "When Louis Armstrong saw the show one night, he continued clapping after others had stopped and remarked, 'Boy I never saw anything that great'." Despite her talent, she had fewer opportunities to hold residencies as a bandleader at clubs in New York or Chicago, like many of her male peers. Instead, she predominantly toured, playing concerts throughout the US, Europe, and China. In 1926, she toured London and Paris with Lew Leslie's Blackbirds revue and then from 1926 to 1929, she toured with Jack Carter's Serenaders in Shanghai, Singapore, Calcutta, and Jakarta. Her most successful period was in the 1930s when she became the toast of London and Paris. Around this time she recorded her hit song "High Hat, Trumpet, and Rhythm". She performed in the Ethel Waters show Rhapsody in Black, in New York. In the mid 1930s, Snow made films with her husband, Ananias Berry, of the Berry Brothers dancing troupe. After playing the Apollo Theater in New York City, she revisited Europe and the Far East for more shows and films. She was imprisoned in a Copenhagen jail during WWII when Nazi soldiers took over Denmark, where she was touring. a Danish prison in Copenhagen that was run by the Nazis, before being released on a prisoner exchange in May 1942. It was rumored that her friendship with a Belgian police official helped her to board a ship carrying foreign diplomats. According to jazz historian Scott Yanow, "she never emotionally recovered from the experience". She married Earl Edwards. In the 1950s, she was unable to regain her former success. Valaida Snow died aged 51 of a brain hemorrhage on May 30, 1956, in New York City, backstage during a performance at the Palace Theater. Her death came three days before her 52nd birthday.

According to an article posted in the Pittsburgh Courier in 1933, Snow was arrested and later acquitted of bigamy after eloping with her fiancé Ananias John W. Berry, Jr. Snow had 3 sisters Lavaida, Alvaida, and Hattie all of who were professional singers. She also had a brother named Arthur Bush. In the year 1934 Valaida married Ananias Berry who was a member of the Berry Brothers. In 1943 Valaida married Earle Edwards who later became her manager. as part of the "Overlooked No More" series. There are no commercial recordings of Snow as trumpeter made in the United States, all were recorded in Europe. Before her obituary was published, The New York Times wrote about her only once in a paragraph long review about a 1949 Song Recital at New York's Town Hall. Dr. Kernodle also said that Snow's legacy is important as she helped "shift the context of jazz away from the early Dixieland style" and "she [was] important in terms of helping us gain an understanding of the spread of jazz to Europe, particularly after World War I."

March 11, 1933; Earl Hines and Snow performed in Madrid ballroom in Harrisburg, PA.
September 23, 1945; First Cavalcade of Jazz concert in Los Angeles at Wrigley Field produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. along with Count Basie, The Honeydrippers, The Peters Sisters, Slim and Bam and Joe Turner.

Earl Hines' oral autobiography, The World of Earl Hines (with Stanley Dance) includes several vignettes of Snow by her intimate friend. Valaida Snow appears as a fictional character who threw herself on top of the protagonist when he was a child to shield him from a beating at the hands of the Nazis in a concentration camp. Snow is depicted as a strong, generous woman who proudly recalls that "They beat me, and fucked me in every hole I had. I was their whore. Their maid. A stool they stood on when they wanted to reach a little higher. But I never sang in their cage, Bobby. Not one note" (p. 28). A novel based on Valaida Snow's life story. Biography. Both the Allen and Miller books contradict the assertion that Snow was held by the Nazis and instead place her in Danish custody at a Copenhagen prison. Inspired by Valaida's life, but it is more fictitious than strictly biographical. Valaida Snow, by Emmanuel Reuzé and Maël Rannou, comic strip, BDMusic, Paris, coll. " BDJazz ", 2012.