Virtuosity Attracts Complaints Boswell Sisters – Phantom Dancer

Martha, Connie, and Vet studied classical piano, cello, and violin, respectively, under the tutelage of Tulane University professor Otto Finck.

They performed their classical repertoire in local recitals, often as a trio, but the city’s jazz scene swiftly won them over, personally and professionally. “We studied classical music…and were being prepared for the stage and a concert tour throughout the United States, but the saxophone got us,” Martha said in a 1925 interview with the Shreveport Times.

Connie’s other primary vocal influence was the legendary Italian opera tenor Enrico Caruso, whom she saw perform at the Athenaeum in New Orleans: “I used to sit and listen and be amazed by his breathing. Then I’d try and do what he was doing. I’d take a long breath and hit a lot of notes.”

As their older brother Clydie began breaking away from classical music to study jazz, he introduced his sisters to the syncopated style and to many of the young jazz players in New Orleans.

After becoming interested in jazz, Vet took up the banjo and guitar, and Connie the saxophone and trombone. Martha continued playing the piano but focused on the rhythms and idioms of ragtime and hot jazz.

The sisters performed as they would for virtually their entire career: Martha and Connie seated at the piano, with Vet close behind. This arrangement served to disguise Connie’s inability to walk, or stand for any length of time, a condition whose source has never been fully confirmed.

In March 1925, they made their first recording for Victor Records with a mobile recording unit. The session consisted of five songs, three of which were composed by Martha. Victor rejected three of the recordings and accepted “I’m Gonna Cry (Crying Blues)” and “Nights When I Am Lonely” for release (both by Martha).

The recording equipment used for this session was the primitive acoustic horn-style of sound capture, which tended to make vocals sound thin and tinny (and so singers were often forced to over compensate by singing at full volume into the horn). At the time of this first recording session Martha was 19, Connie 17 and Vet only 13 years of age. The Boswells would not record again until 1930.

“By 1929 the sisters were living in Los Angeles and had signed a contract with radio station KNX, owned and operated by the Los Angeles Evening Express newspaper and broadcast from the Paramount Pictures studios. The Boswells contributed to sponsored variety programs, such as The Navigator Hour and The Paramount Hour. In 1930 they signed with Warner Brothers Pictures’ station KFWB, which would also play a role in the early career of Bing Crosby.”

As the sisters gained regional notice through their radio appearances, the trio made as many as 50 broadcast transcription recordings for the Continental Broadcasting Corporation, which you’ll hear from today.

The Boswells received numerous mentions in various radio/stage/screen magazines of the period:

“It really isn’t fair to be both beautiful and talented, but nevertheless it goes right on happening as witness this page of fair harmonizers. The Boswell Sisters, with their soft Louisiana accent, began showing promise with Connie, who at seven, played the ‘cello in the New Orleans Philharmonic Orchestra. After making Victor records, appearing in vaudeville and moving pictures, the girls have more or less settled down to radio broadcasting from the San Francisco studios to the National Broadcasting Company. Connie shines as a “blues” singer; Martha plays all the accompaniments and sings her part and Vet harmonizes, plays several instruments and doubles for the ‘plunk’ of a banjo in an amazing manner.”

—”What Price Television?” from Radio Doings; The Red Book of Radio, December, 1930, p.18

“The Boswell Sisters vocal trio starred for some time on KFWB, appeared on the ‘California Melodies’ program this week, which is released nationally by the Columbia network. The hometowners in New Orleans made it a special Boswell night and stayed home to listen in on the girls who made good in Hollywood.” —Fred Yeates, Radioland, August 2nd, 1930

However, the trio’s unique approach to arrangements, which often involved reworking melodies and lyrics, altering tempos and keys in mid-song, as well as their improvisational style, did not always garner universal acclamation.

In their first year of radio broadcasting in California, “station employers received letters of opprobrium from outraged listeners voicing disapproval of the sisters’ new and unusual arranging and singing styles.”

One letter stated: “Why don’t you choke those Boswell Sisters? How wonderful it would be if they sang just one song like it was written. Really when they get through murdering it, one can never recognize the original.”

Another outraged letter from an angry listener read: “Please get those terrible Boswell Sisters off the station! You can’t follow the melody and the beat is going too rapidly. And to me they sound like savage chanters!”

During this period, the Boswells developed their signature recording technique somewhat by accident. Normally the sisters would sing into a large carbon microphone from a distance of about three feet, but on one particular day there was a problem: Connie was sick with a head cold and couldn’t project her voice as usual. They decided to sing together more softly and in a lower register, grouped close around the single microphone.

“…the Boswells left KGO— the flagship station of the NBC Pacific Coast network—in January 1931 to travel to New York where they had landed a 52-week network contract with NBC. They were to appear on several special broadcasts of the Pleasure Hour sponsored by not Chesterfield (that happened for the Boswells the next year and was their longest running commercial program, lasting 10 months) but by Camel cigarettes.” —David W. McCain, The King Sisters: A Chapter From the History of Harmony

After moving to New York City in 1931, the Boswell Sisters soon attained national attention and began making national radio broadcasts. The trio had a program on CBS from 1931 to 1933.

They signed a contract with Brunswick Records and made recordings from 1931 to 1935, widely regarded as milestone recordings of vocal jazz. For their Brunswick recordings, “the Boswells took greater liberties, regularly changing style, tempi, modality, lyrics, time signatures and voicings (both instrumental and vocal) to create unexpected textures and effects.”

The Boswells were among the few performers who were allowed to make changes to current popular tunes since, during this era, music publishers and record companies pressured performers not to alter current popular song arrangements.

The Boswell Sistersappeared in films during this time. They sang “Shout, Sister, Shout” (1931), written by Clarence Williams, in the 1932 film The Big Broadcast. They sang their 1934 song “Rock and Roll” in the film Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round.

The Boswell Sisters chalked up 20 hits during the 1930s, including the number-one record “The Object of My Affection” (1935).

Their 1934 recording of “Darktown Strutters’ Ball”, was issued only in Australia.

They had two successful tours of Europe, and appeared on the inaugural television broadcast of CBS.

The Boswell Sisters approached harmony in a manner different from most vocal groups of the 1920s and 30s. Rather than assign each vocalist to a particular range, such as contralto, alto, soprano, etc., the sisters were comfortable moving unexpectedly across one another’s natural ranges. Martha Boswell described it as “a desertion, at various times, of the tones in which we would normally sing”, but with the end effect being a “blending” of tones. This idea is supported by a later Vet Boswell comment that “whichever one the note seemed to fit the voice better, we left it that way. We never had a set tenor or alto.”

Allowing one another the freedom to choose a different pitch range, in the moment, and basically switch places, became a hallmark of their harmony style.

“The radio audience in California could only compare what they heard from the Boswells with known models, and up against the most popular white female voices of the period, the Boswell Sisters were, quite literally, something else. Connie and Martha’s ultra-low tessitura and the sisters’ informal and natural diction contrast sharply with Ruth Etting, Gertrude Lawrence, and Hollywood soprano Jeanette MacDonald.”