Laura Risk (Assistant Professor, Department of Arts, Culture, and Media, UTSC; Faculty of Music, UTSG) presents “Trouble is, we don’t make the rules”: The Las Vegas Years of Jazz and Classical Violinist Ginger Smock
Thursday, September 23 at 3:30 pm
This event will take place on Zoom. Please email Prof. Daphne Tan at daphne.tan@utoronto.ca or Prof. Lyndsey Copeland at lyndsey.copeland@utoronto.ca for the webinar link.
Abstract:
“I got tired of so many ‘doors’ being closed in my face, so now, I’m making myself content to be an orchestral musician,” wrote jazz and classical violinist Ginger Smock (1920-1995) to Canadian jazz violin collector John Reeves in May 1974. This letter, penned backstage between shows at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, marks the early months of a correspondence that would last for two decades. Smock was not merely a Vegas showroom musician, however; she had been a popular stage, radio, and television performer in Los Angeles in the mid-century, was the first African American woman to record hot jazz on the violin, and was one of the first African American women bandleaders on television. When she joined the Antonio Morrelli Orchestra at The Sands as a full member in 1972, one year after moving to Las Vegas, the Los Angeles Sentinel hailed another "first," suggesting that Smock may have broken the colour line in showroom orchestras. In this presentation, I draw on historical African American newspapers and recently unearthed archival sources, including home recordings and over 100 letters from Smock to Reeves, to map Smock's career in Las Vegas from the 1950s until the Musicians' Union strike of 1989-90, and to document her struggles — made more challenging by gender, race, and age — for increased recognition.
2021-2022 Series Lineup*
September 23: Laura Risk (Department of Arts, Culture, and Media, UTSC; Faculty of Music, UTSG)
October 21: Mark Campbell (Department of Arts, Culture, and Media, UTSC; Faculty of Music, UTSG)
November 25: Robin Gray (Department of Sociology, UTM)
December 2: Mitchell Akiyama (Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, UTSG)
*Note that each of our Colloquium speakers is a member of the University of Toronto; we are abiding by the CAUT censure and inviting only internal speakers until further notice. Please also note that our first Colloquium event will take place over Zoom. We will announce the mode of delivery of the remaining events as soon as possible.