The International Sweethearts of Rhythm

The International Sweethearts of Rhythm were organized at Piney Woods Country Life School in Piney Woods, Mississippi. The founder, Dr. Laurence C. Jones, sent the group out to earn money for the school, which had been created to give a basic education to black children.

The Sweethearts were phenomenally popular, but they got to keep very little of the money they made. Out of their earnings, all but $8 per week went back to the school--and they were expected to buy their own food.

In the spring of 1941, band manager Rae Lee Jones was approached by bookers from Washington, DC, who convinced her that the band should leave the school. After the band broke with the school, it hired professional musicians including tenor saxophonist Vi Burnside and trumpet players Jean Starr and Ernestine “Tiny” Davis, as well as Boston saxophonist Roz Cron.

The band’s personnel included African-American women, mixed-race women whose ancestry included Asians and Native Americans, and a few white women. The International Sweethearts disbanded in 1949; a six-member spinoff group, Anna Mae Winburn’s Sweethearts of Rhythm, operated for another few years. In 1986, a thirty-minute film, The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, directed by Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss, brought the story of the Sweethearts to receptive audiences at women’s music festivals.

Listen below to an interview with Sweethearts’ saxophonist Rosalind Cron

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Copyright, Artemis Media Project, 2007. All rights reserved.