Female Jazz Guitar Players

**HRVW** · 08-26-2014, 07:45 AM

Who are some female jazz guitar players in Jazz history and on the scene at the moment? And what are some people's theories as to why there are so few female jazz guitarists?

**marcwhy** · 08-26-2014, 07:59 AM

Emily Remler (rip)
Mimi Fox
Sheryl Bailey

[For great blues, check out Laurie Morvan!]

I think women are smarter than men, so they avoid the abyss that is jazz guitar.

**nick1994** · 08-26-2014, 08:02 AM

Not too many big name female jazz guitarists, a lot of university lecturers are female, at least where I go. There are more female singers than male singers. I think it's just getting stuck in gender roles, but there's a few out there like Emily Relmer and Sheryl bailey that are pretty well known.

**339 in june** · 08-26-2014, 08:17 AM

Mary Halvorson ?

**wintermoon** · 08-26-2014, 08:36 AM

Mary Osborne

**SamBooka** · 08-26-2014, 08:37 AM

Keira Witherkay gets my vote!

EDIT: and Carole Kay was a jazz guitarist before she filled in on bass for someone.

**GuyBoden** · 08-26-2014, 09:00 AM

In the UK.

Kathy Dyson

Deirdre Cartwright

Here they are playing in the UK when Sheryl Bailey visited.

**AlsoRan** · 08-26-2014, 11:00 AM

Originally Posted by 339 in june

Mary Halvorson ?

339, are you trying to stir up trouble?

**docbop** · 08-26-2014, 12:27 PM

Originally Posted by AlsoRan

339, are you trying to stir up trouble?

Mary was listed in the Annual Downbeat poll and I believe she won an Jazz or composition award this year too. Her music is Avante Garde but she's has a growing audience. She's also working with some good musicians; Nel Cline, Marc Ribot, Anthony Braxton. She's come a long way fast.

**P4guitar** · 08-26-2014, 12:54 PM

Deirdre Cartwright tunes in fourths so you know she's highly intelligent

Deirdre Cartwright | Tuning in 4ths

**AlsoRan** · 08-26-2014, 01:26 PM

Originally Posted by docbop

Mary was listed in the Annual Downbeat poll and I believe she won an Jazz or composition award this year too. Her music is Avante Garde but she's has a growing audience. She's also working with some good musicians; Nel Cline, Marc Ribot, Anthony Braxton. She's come a long way fast.

No disrespect intended to Mary or the avante garde crowd. I just remembered the lively discussion that the Mary Halverson thread initiated..

https://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/playe...eneration.html

(This is a fine mess you've gotten me into, 339 in June)

**docbop** · 08-26-2014, 02:39 PM

Originally Posted by AlsoRan

No disrespect intended to Mary or the avante garde crowd. I just remembered the lively discussion that the Mary Halverson thread initiated..

(This is a fine mess you've gotten me into, 339 in June)

Oh I remember well just wanted to show some love for what's she's been doing.

**339 in june** · 08-26-2014, 02:57 PM

Originally Posted by AlsoRan

No disrespect intended to Mary or the avante garde crowd. I just remembered the lively discussion that the Mary Halverson thread initiated..

https://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/playe...eneration.html

(This is a fine mess you've gotten me into, 339 in June)

I just wanted to answer the original question .....
but TBH, I remember this discussion ....
... but don't want to revive it !

**AlsoRan** · 08-26-2014, 03:18 PM

Originally Posted by 339 in june

I just wanted to answer the original question .....
but TBH, I remember this discussion ....
... but don't want to revive it !

I am with you!

Please, oh please let's not start that argument again, fellow forum members!

**MarkRhodes** · 08-26-2014, 03:36 PM

Originally Posted by SamBooka

Keira Witherkay gets my vote!

EDIT: and Carole Kaye was a jazz guitarist before she filled in on bass for someone.

Yeah, she did her first studio gigs as a guitar player, not a bassist.

**jasaco** · 08-26-2014, 06:28 PM

Originally Posted by nick1994

...there's a few out there like Emily Relmer and Sheryl bailey...

Well, Sheryl anyway. Unfortunately, Emily left us in 1990.

**docbop** · 08-26-2014, 07:01 PM

Originally Posted by jasaco

Well, Sheryl anyway. Unfortunately, Emily left us in 1990.

We still have Emily's music, DVD's and a tribute website.

Sheryl's new organ trio CD is HOT, and its getting good press, definitely worth checking out.

I don't know what Sheryl is up to, but she recently had McCurdy build her a strat-like guitar and a video popped up of her burning some fusion lines.

**cosmic gumbo** · 08-26-2014, 07:15 PM

It's not just guitarists, it's jazz instrumentalists in general. Jazz was such a testosterone driven music that women were usually never comfortable with, or welcomed warmly into the jazz fraternity. We know in the bebop era it was just a macho d*ck measuring contest. I think times have changed, and women are accepted if equally talented, but the work climate, being on the road, is still essentially a male environment without much appeal to most women, they're too smart.

BTW, the big band I belong to has 5 female members.

**Greentone** · 08-27-2014, 09:09 PM

Mary Osborne. Guys...read up on Ms. Osborne. She was the great lady of the big bands. In the 40s she was THE big deal in archtop jazz guitar among the ladies. She played guitar in the Al Trent Band, originally. Later on, she played with everybody, including Gillespie, Tatum, and Hawkins. _Guitar Player_ Magazine did a feature on her in the late-60s. She played a Barker guitar, like Martin Taylor used to.

Of course, Carol Kaye started out as a jazz guitarist. She only became a bassist when her husband failed to show up for a session date. She picked up his Fender Bass and the rest is history. However, Kaye gigged, taught, and did sessions all around LA as a jazz guitarist with her ES-175 back in the 50s.

**Cunamara** · 08-28-2014, 12:15 AM

It's sad that we have to *ask* about female jazz guitarists and that, outside of classical music, female musicians other than singers face an uphill battle. They are often treated as a novelty. As great as Emily Remler was, in some of her videos she makes it clear that she was often not treated as a peer. It's the Ginger Rogers thing- Fred got the top billing even though she had to know all of his moves backwards and to be able to do them in heels...

Mary Osborne was a great guitarist- not a great female guitarist but a great guitarist. Ditto Emily Remler. There's a nice list to get started on the Emily tribute site:

http://allthingsemily.com/ladies-of-jazz-guitar/

There are some ass-kickin' girls playing shred, which is not my cup o' tea by a long shot, but you can find a bunch of 'em on YouTube. A couple months back at one of our regular gigs the first band was a bunch of high school kids called "Ageless," doing solid covers of tunes popular when I was in high school and college (which was a little weird). The lead guitarist was a 15 year old girl who played way better than I did when I was 20. More power to 'em!

**HRVW** · 08-28-2014, 07:09 AM

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'm doing a research paper on this topic for my jazz degree in guitar performance. If I graduate, I will be the first female guitarist to graduate from my institution so this is how I became interested in this topic. There are some things I have found from history that strike me as pretty sexist and ridiculous.. but I was wondering what others thought of these comments:

watch the comments made from approx. 3.50.

Also in DownBeat magazine:

“…good jazz is hard, masculine music with a whip to it” – downbeat from 1944 April

Down Beat published an article “Why Women Musicians are Inferior” in 1938. The writer wrote that women were, “as a whole, emotionally unstable” and “could never be consistent performers on a musical instruments”.. that they would never blow on brass or reeds for fear of looking unattractive.. they only had a few years playing experience behind them, while men had a whole history.. they did not have the “time, ambition, or patience” or the economic motivation to woodshed. Piano and strings were “empathetic instruments more in keeping” with the temperaments of women, concluding, “If more girl drummers has cradle-rocking experience before their musical endeavours, they might come closer to getting on the beat.” - quotes from the Down Beat article, paragraph paraphrased from Sally Placksin's 'Jazz Women - 1900 to the present. Their words, lives and music.'

“This attiude, presented in a musical microcosm, reflected the prevailing thought and popular late-thirties psychology which accused women of suffering from what Freud had labeled ‘masculinity complexes’ if they felt the desire to aspire to anything outside their traditional roles as wives and mothers.” – p. 88 fromJazz Women – 1900 to the present. Their words, lives and music. Author: Sally Placksin.

What are people's thoughts on this?

**RoboTom** · 08-07-2018, 06:22 PM

Originally Posted by HRVW

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'm doing a research paper on this topic for my jazz degree in guitar performance. If I graduate, I will be the first female guitarist to graduate from my institution so this is how I became interested in this topic.

<snip>

Down Beat published an article “Why Women Musicians are Inferior” in 1938. The writer wrote that women were, “as a whole, emotionally unstable” and “could never be consistent performers on a musical instruments”.. that they would never blow on brass or reeds for fear of looking unattractive.. they only had a few years playing experience behind them, while men had a whole history.. they did not have the “time, ambition, or patience” or the economic motivation to woodshed. Piano and strings were “empathetic instruments more in keeping” with the temperaments of women, concluding, “If more girl drummers has cradle-rocking experience before their musical endeavours, they might come closer to getting on the beat.” - quotes from the Down Beat article, paragraph paraphrased from Sally Placksin's 'Jazz Women - 1900 to the present. Their words, lives and music.'

“This attiude, presented in a musical microcosm, reflected the prevailing thought and popular late-thirties psychology which accused women of suffering from what Freud had labeled ‘masculinity complexes’ if they felt the desire to aspire to anything outside their traditional roles as wives and mothers.” – p. 88 fromJazz Women – 1900 to the present. Their words, lives and music. Author: Sally Placksin.

What are people's thoughts on this?

I'm obviously rather late to this post, having more recently joined this forum and also looking for music by female jazz guitarists to listen to.

I'm sorry that you had no reply to your post and maybe the lack of reply is revealing in itself—male jazz musicians don't have the regular reinforcement of lived experience as targets of misogyny and we have a vastly different stake in women's advancement in jazz. I think the quote from Down Beat is pretty revealing too—unfortunately, a kind of perfect storm of biological determinism, sexism, and rigid gender roles to literally domesticate women.

I hope you graduated from your degree and that more women have followed you since.

**Cunamara** · 08-07-2018, 07:47 PM

RoboTom, you point out The obvious and uncomfortable – that no one replied to HRVW's question. I too hope that she graduated and is doing well.

With the exception of vocals, publicly performing music has in general tended to be a masculine art. In classical music this is less prominent and even in folk music, but in rock and jazz the predominant gender of the musicians is male. And indeed in many professions one sees the exact same pattern. This seems to be pretty common feature in societies around the world.