Swinging the Classics

Hazel Scott’s unique background provided opportunities to develop notable musicianship.

“My stuff is hybrid. I’m not grim enough for the classics. As for swing—well, I’m not sufficiently aboriginal.” [1]

Classically trained Alma and Hazel Scott entered a flourishing jazz scene, where legendary singer Billie Holiday, saxophonist Lester Young, and pianists Fats Waller and Art Tatum became their jazz mentors and family. Hazel gained attention and employment as her jazz advanced.

"Bach to Boogie"

“. . . I started playing around . . . a place called the Yacht club on 52nd street, and I was 15 by then. I would play cocktails for dinner, and the star of the show would come in . . . and she’d say, ‘Tell her she can’t play that because the star does it in her show.’ . . . [A]ny tune that I would go into, ‘You can’t play that one.’ . . .

So finally I sat there one night and I said, ‘She is really giving it to me, how can I get her?’

I said, ‘I know how, I’ll do the Bach Inventions, . . . and I’ll syncopate them and see if she does that in the show.’

. . . It became a game and then I started doing it.” [2]

[3]

[5]

“Public reaction to [swinging the classics] . . . has fallen roughly into three categories. There are those who condemn it unreservedly on the grounds of its bad taste, offensiveness and unsuitability; there are others who accept it as a good joke; and there are, of course, the group who . . . approve and encourage the idea . . .” [4]

Despite being a novelty style, combining classical and popular boogie-woogie styles required diverse skills making Scott one of the first to perform it successfully. Its commerciality popularized Scott in a white, male-dominated world that might have otherwise ignored her talent.

“[I]t’s a little knack which earns this very talented young woman nearly twenty thousand dollars a year. It comprises the main attraction of one of New York's most successful night clubs [sic] and is stock in trade for several phonograph-record companies, who are very happy about it.” [6]

Excerpts of “Country Gardens” from Swinging the Classics, 1940, YouTube

[7]

“[W]here others murder the classics, Hazel Scott merely commits arson. Classicists who wince at the idea of jiving Tchaikovsky feel no pain whatever as they watch her do it. She seems coolly determined to play legitimately, . . . [b]ut gradually . . . [s]trange notes and rhythms creep in, the melody is tortured with hints of boogie-woogie, until finally, happily, Hazel Scott surrenders to her worse nature and beats the keyboard into a rack of bones. The reverse is also true: into Tea for Two may creep a few bars of Debussy's Clair de Lune. Says wide-eyed Hazel: ‘I just can't help it.’” [8]

"Darling of Café Society"

Upon Billie Holiday’s recommendation, Scott headlined at Café Society, the first racially integrated nightclub.

“In the eyes of the proprietor of the club she was all right for a three-weeks fill-in engagement. However, when he planned on that short shift for her, he had never heard her play her syncopated classics. The first time he did, he rushed up to her and said, ‘Hazel! Hazel! Hazel! You have a job for life.’” [6]

Scott was becoming a star.

[9]

STARRING HAZEL SCOTT: TAKING A SWING AT SEGREGATION

STARRING HAZEL SCOTT: TAKING A SWING AT SEGREGATION

SWINGING THE CLASSICS

"Bach to Boogie"

"Darling of Café Society"