In her contracts, there was a written clause that required forfeiture if there was a segregated audience, stating, "Why would anyone come to hear me, a Negro, and refuse to sit beside someone just like me?" she told Time magazine. She was one of the first Black entertainers to refuse to perform for segregated or all-white audiences. She also starred in Café Society's "From Bach to Boogie-Woogie" concerts in 1941 and at Carnegie Hall in 1943. Scott was such an established force to be reckoned with by the time she starred in Hollywood movies that she was successfully able to challenge the studios' treatment of Black actors, demanding the same pay as her white colleagues and refusing to play subservient roles, which Black actors were constantly cast in. ![]() Like her dear friend Lena Horne, Scott was one of the first Afro-Caribbean women to star in major Hollywood roles, oftentimes playing herself, such as in "I Dood It" (MGM, 1943), "Broadway Rhythm" (MGM, 1944), "Rhapsody in Blue" (Warner Bros, 1945), and was the only Black woman, besides Lena Horne, in an all-white cast of "The Heat's On" (Columbia, 1943). According to Kristin McGee's "Swinging the Classics" in "Some Liked it Hot: Jazz Women in Film and Television," her performance of "Swinging the Classics" in the jazz scene reached national prestige. Barney Josephson's nightclub, Café Society (New York's first integrated club), debuted Hazel and further prompted her stardom. Her New York musical theatre appearances included "Cotton Club Revue of 1938," "Sing Out the News," and "The Priorities of 1942." Although she was not limited to a single genre or instrument, she is best known for being a trailblazer and eclectic virtuoso in jazz and classical piano. Shortly thereafter, she starred on Broadway in "Sing Out the News." Throughout the 1930s and 40s, Hazel performed jazz, blues, and boogie-woogie songs in addition to classical ballads and Broadway musical theatre. In addition to being a prodigious musician at 16, Hazel hosted her own radio show on WOR after winning a local competition and performed gigs at night, even landing a performance alongside the Count Basie Orchestra at Roseland Ballroom. Although the standard student had to be at least 16 years old, her performance of Rachmaninoff’s "Prelude in C-Sharp Minor" was enough for Professor Oscar Wagner to accept her into the school and take her under his tutelage. Child Prodigy: From Julliard to OnwardĪt the age of eight, Hazel was a child prodigy who auditioned for the world-renowned Juilliard School of Music. She was mentored under the tutelage of great jazz artists like Art Tatum, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, and Fats Waller, whom she stated she considered like family. In 1933, her mother organized the Alma Long Scott’s All-Girl Jazz Band where Scott regularly performed the piano and trumpet in. Thank you, Mama ScottĪlma’s involvement with music made the Scott household always inundated with cultured musicians and therefore beneficial for Hazel Scott’s budding passion for music. ![]() According to Smithsonian Magazine, Hazel Scott stated, “She was the single biggest influence in my life,” and the two were very close. While in the states, her mother Alma Scott worked as a maid and taught herself the saxophone enabling her to become a part of Lil Hardin Armstrong’s orchestra in the 1930s. Instead of becoming the concert pianist she thought she desired, Alma Scott soon decided to dedicate her life to cultivating her daughter’s talent. Hazel once described that she would scream anytime one of her mother’s piano students hit a wrong note and was able to start playing piano by ear. At the young age of just 3 years old, Scott began playing piano amazingly accompanied by her talented ear. ![]() Thomas Scott, a West African scholar from England, and mother Alma Long Scott, a classical-trained pianist, Hazel Scott was raised with vast intelligence and art and destined to embody it. Following the separation of Hazel Scott’s parents, she moved to Harlem, New York City in 1924 with her mother and grandmother where she was raised. Hazel Dorothy Scott was born in Port-au Spain, Trinidad on June 11, 1920. Who is the great Hazel Scott? Hazel Scott, referred to as the “Darling of Café Society” was a Trinidad-born multitalented woman who left her reckoning force in music, television, and politics.
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