Melba Liston

Liston was born in Kansas City, Missouri. At the age of seven, Liston's mother purchased her a trombone and she began learning to play. Her family encouraged her musical pursuits, as they were all music lovers. Liston was primarily self-taught, but she was "encouraged by her guitar-playing grandfather", with whom she spent significant time learning to play spirituals and folk songs. At the age of eight, she was good enough to be a solo act on a local radio station. At the age of 10, she moved to Los Angeles, California. She was classmates with Dexter Gordon, and friends with Eric Dolphy. After playing in youth bands and studying with Alma Hightower for three years, she decided to become a professional musician and joined the big band led by Gerald Wilson in 1943.

Liston joined the Musicians Union (Local 474, the Colored Musicians Union) at the age of 16 in order to accept her first professional job with the Lincoln Theater pit band. She and Dexter Gordon began playing music together at the ages of fourteen and seventeen, respectively, and she recorded with Gordon in 1947. When Wilson disbanded his orchestra in 1948, Liston joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band in New York, which included saxophonists John Coltrane, Paul Gonsalves, and pianist John Lewis, after being sought out personally by the bandleader for her talents as both a trombonist and as an arranger. Liston performed in a supporting role and was nervous when asked to take solos, but with encouragement she became more comfortable as a featured voice in bands, though it was her innovative jazz arrangements that legitimized her presence in a very male-dominated environment. She toured with Count Basie, then with Billie Holiday (1949) but was so profoundly affected by the indifference of the audiences and the rigors of the road that she gave up playing and turned to education. Liston taught for about three years. She took a clerical job for some years and supplemented her income by taking work as an extra in Hollywood, appearing with Lana Turner in The Prodigal (1955) and in The Ten Commandments (1956). Liston returned to Gillespie for tours sponsored by the U.S. State Department in 1956 and 1957, recorded with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1957), and formed an all-women quintet in 1958. In 1959, she visited Europe with the show Free and Easy, for which Quincy Jones was the music director. She accompanied Billy Eckstine with the Quincy Jones Orchestra on At Basin Street East, released on October 1, 1961, by Verve. In the late 1950s, she began collaborating with pianist Randy Weston, arranging compositions (primarily his own) for mid-size to large ensembles. This association, especially strong in the 1960s, would be rekindled in the late 1980s and 1990s until her death. In addition, she worked with Milt Jackson, Clark Terry, and Johnny Griffin, as well as working as an arranger for Motown, appearing on albums by Ray Charles. In 1964, she helped establish the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra. In 1971, she was chosen as musical arranger for Stax recording artist Calvin Scott, whose album was being produced by Stevie Wonder's first producer, Clarence Paul. On this album she worked with Joe Sample and Wilton Felder of the Jazz Crusaders, blues guitarist Arthur Adams, and jazz drummer Paul Humphrey. She worked with youth orchestras in Watts, California before accepting an invitation from the Government of Jamaica in 1973 to become the Director of Afro-American Pop and Jazz at the Jamaica School of Music. She returned to the U.S. in 1979 where she was honored at the first Women's Jazz Festival in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Salute to Women in Jazz in New York, later forming a new band, Melba Liston and Company. During her time in Jamaica, she composed and arranged music for the 1975 comedy film Smile Orange, starring Carl Bradshaw, who three years earlier starred in the first Jamaican film, The Harder They Come (1972). She also served as composer, arranger, and musical director of The Dread Mikado, a theater production considered emblematic of the Jamaican cultural revolution. She was forced to give up playing in 1985 after a stroke left her partially paralyzed, but she continued to arrange music with Randy Weston. In 1987, she was awarded a Jazz Masters Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

After suffering repeated strokes, Liston died aged 73 in Los Angeles, California on April 23, 1999, a few days after a tribute to her and Randy Weston's music at Harvard University. Her funeral at St. Peter's in Manhattan featured performances by Weston with Jann Parker, as well as by Chico O'Farrill's Afro-Cuban ensemble and by Lorenzo Shihab (vocals).

Liston was already writing and arranging music while in high school and she viewed that work as the central contribution of her career, stating on numerous occasions throughout her life that she preferred writing music to playing and soloing. Her early work with the high-profile bands of Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie shows a strong command of the big-band and bop idioms. She worked as an arranger for numerous recording companies, especially Motown, and arranged scores for dozens of high profile musicians, including Clark Terry, Marvin Gaye, Mary Lou Williams, and Gloria Lynne. However, perhaps her most important work was written for Randy Weston, with whom she collaborated on and off for four decades from the late 1950s into the 1990. Her work with Weston has been compared to the collaborations of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington. Liston worked as a "ghost writer" during her career. According to one writer, "Many of the arrangements found in the Gillespie, Jones, and Weston repertoires were accomplished by Liston."

Liston's musical style reflects bebop and post-bop sensibilities learned from Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, and Art Blakey. Her earliest recorded work—such as Gordon's "Mischievous Lady" a tribute to her—her solos show a blend of motivic and linear improvisation, though they seem to make less use of extended harmonies and alterations. Her arrangements, especially those with Weston, show a flexibility that transcends her musical upbringing in the bebop 1940s, whether working in the styles of swing, post-bop, African musics, or Motown. Her command of rhythmic gestures, grooves, and polyrhythms is particularly notable (as illustrated in Uhuru Afrika and Highlife). Her instrumental parts demonstrate an active use of harmonic possibilities; although her arrangements suggest relatively subdued interest in the explorations of free jazz ensembles, they use an extended tonal vocabulary, rich with altered harmonic voicings, thick layering, and dissonance. Her work throughout her career has been well received by both critics and audiences alike.

Melba Liston and Her 'Bones (MetroJazz, 1959) Volcano Blues with Randy Weston (Antilles, 1993)

With Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers 1957: Art Blakey Big Band 1957: Theory of Art 1965: Hold On, I'm Coming With Betty Carter 1958: Out There with Betty Carter 1961: I Can't Help It With Ray Charles 1959: The Genius of Ray Charles 1962: The Ray Charles Story, Vol. 2 With Dizzy Gillespie 1955: Jazz Recital 1956: World Statesman 1957: Dizzy Gillespie at Newport 1957: Birks' Works 1957: Dizzy in Greece With Quincy Jones 1959: The Birth of a Band! 1960: Swiss Radio Days Jazz Series, Vol. 1 1960: I Dig Dancers 1961: Newport '61 1961: The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones: Live! 1962: The Quintessence 1963: Plays Hip Hits 1965: I/We Had a Ball 1965: Quincy Plays for Pussycats With Jimmy Smith 1963: Any Number Can Win 1966: Jimmy & Wes: The Dynamic Duo 1966: Further Adventures of Jimmy and Wes 1966: Hoochie Coochie Man 1969: Jimmy Smith Plays the Blues With Dinah Washington 1957: Dinah Washington Sings Fats Waller 1958: Dinah Sings Bessie Smith With Randy Weston 1958: Little Niles 1959: Destry Rides Again 1959: Live at the Five Spot 1961: Uhuru Afrika 1963: Highlife - Music from the new African nations featuring the Highlife 1973: Tanjah 1992: The Spirits of Our Ancestors 1997: Earth Birth 1998: Khepera With others 1957: Last Chorus, Ernie Henry 1959: Tales of Manhattan, Babs Gonzales 1960: Trane Whistle, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis 1961: African Waltz, Cannonball Adderley 1961: At Basin Street East, Billy Eckstine/Quincy Jones 1961: Rah, Mark Murphy 1961: The Chant, Sam Jones 1961: The Soul of Hollywood, Junior Mance 1962: Afro/American Sketches, Oliver Nelson 1962: Big Bags, Milt Jackson 1962: Bursting Out with the All-Star Big Band!, Oscar Peterson 1962: Rhythm Is My Business, Ella Fitzgerald 1962: The Complete Town Hall Concert, Charles Mingus 1963: For Someone I Love, Milt Jackson 1963: The Body & the Soul, Freddie Hubbard 1964: Mary Lou Williams Presents Black Christ of the Andes, Mary Lou Williams 1965: And Then Again, Elvin Jones 1966: Roll 'Em: Shirley Scott Plays the Big Bands, Shirley Scott 1967: A Mann & A Woman, Tamiko Jones/Herbie Mann 1967: Heads Up, Blue Mitchell 1968: Listen Here, Freddie McCoy 1970: Kim Kim Kim, Kim Weston 1973: That Lovin' Feelin', Junior Mance 1978: Skylark, Freddie Hubbard