Jazz History Remix: Black Women from “Enter” to “Center”

From history books and textbooks to documentaries and record catalogs, jazz history has been memorialized in ways that “invisibilize” women as productive cultural citizens. 6 Despite evidence of jazzwomen’s existence, the perception of jazz as a lineage of male geniuses overshadows community efforts that included both men and women and obscures the multiple entrances and long careers of trumpet players such as Dolly and Dyer Jones, Ann Cooper, Valaida Snow, Tiny Davis, and Clora Bryant; saxophonists such as Vi Burnside, Margaret Backstrom, and Bert Etta “Lady Bird” Davis; and trombonists such as Melba Liston.