Women in Blues and Jazz: Tracy Nelson • the Sweet Inspirations • Toshiko Akiyoshi

TRACY NELSON 1944-

Tracy Nelson

Called “a bad white girl” by Etta James, Tracy Nelson came into my radar in the early ’70s, when I heard a duet with her and Willie Nelson, singing “Ashes of Love.” I immediately wanted to know who this person was. That recording garnered her first Grammy nomination in 1974. She had such a big, powerful voice that, according to her, she was just born with. It immediately required her to sing and become a gigging musician.

Born in Madison, Wisconsin, she moved to the Bay Area at the height of the late ’60s hippie revolution. She founded and began singing with a band called Mother Earth, performing at the Fillmore on bills that included the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix, among others. They recorded six albums for the Mercury Reprise and Columbia labels, including Living with the Animals, with her signature tune “Down So Low.” She is a veteran vocalist, songwriter, pianist, and treasured member of the roots music community, who has appeared on hundreds of albums. She has had a career spanning over 60 years, so far!

In an interview, Tracy recounted that her favorite musical moments were when she got to harmonize with other singers. She has played and recorded with such groups as the Sweet Inspirations on an album called Sweet Soul Music, and the Blues Broads (featuring Angela Strehli, Dorothy Morrison, Tracy, and Annie Sampson). See the video of “Blue Highway,” with Tracy singing harmony with Dorothy and Annie, and Angela singing lead. She recorded a Grammy-nominated album with Marcia Ball and Irma Thomas, called Sing It, on the Rounder label, in 1998.

In 2011, my band, the Motel Swing Orchestra, was lucky enough to back her up at the San Diego Blues Festival. After a 10-year hiatus, she has released a new album, called Life Don’t Miss Nobody,” featuring many of the above people, including one with Willie Nelson again, called “Honky Tonkin.” At the age of 80 she is going strong and is indeed “a bad white girl.”

Tracy sings with Sue Palmer & her Motel Swing Orchestra at the San Diego Blues Festival, 2012.

THE SWEET INSPIRATIONS

The Sweet Inspirations

With the core group that included Cissy Houston (1933-2024), Myrna Smith (1941-2010), Sylvia Shemwell (1941-2010), and Estelle Brown (b. 1946), the Sweet Inspirations were founded by Cissy Houston in the mid 1960s as a group of session singers, initially. The group went through several variations and names over the years. Cissy grew up in Newark, New Jersey, in an incredible family of singers, including her daughter Whitney Houston, her nieces Estelle Brown and Dionne and DeeDee Houston, and cousin of soprano opera singer Leontyne Price. She apparently mentored, taught, and led many groups of singers and certainly everyone in her family. Houston began singing in a family group called the Drinkard Singers (her maiden name) and grew up singing gospel music, eventually morphing into the Sweet Inspirations: Cissy Houston, Myrna Smith, Estelle Brown, and Sylvia Shemwell. All four women had recorded as solo artists and in various combinations as background vocalists.

In early 1967, their union coalesced in New York, when Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler named them the Sweet Inspirations. They got off to a hot start, backing Aretha Franklin on “Natural Woman” in February 1967, and the next month, Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl.” They recorded five albums under their own name for Atlantic, with the song “Sweet Inspiration” being #5 on the soul chart and the group’s only crossover hit. For that they received a Grammy nomination for Best Rhythm & Blues Performance by a Duo or Group. They continued singing background for many other artists, including Jimi Hendrix, Dusty Springfield, the Bee Gees, Otis Redding, Lou Rawls, and more. Their association with Elvis Presley for eight years and 1,000 performances, from 1969-1977 until his death, was perhaps their most famous.

During the Elvis days.

By 1969, Houston had tired of being on the road as her children were growing up. She began pursuing a solo career. She would continue mentoring the group in her home in New Jersey and would occasionally reunite with them in recording sessions, usually backing Aretha, who was by now a family friend and honorary aunt to Houston’s three children, who called her Auntie Ree. You can hear Houston’s high descant (operatic high note on the bridge) behind Aretha on her song “Ain’t No Way” on the famous Lady Soul album, showing off her amazing range. All of the Sweet Inspirations can be heard on backing vocals, along with Aretha’s sister Carolyn Franklin, who wrote that song. Purportedly, the song became a lesbian anthem for unrequited love. Aretha is playing piano herself on that track.

All of the Sweet Inspirations continued singing in various combinations and as solo artists. They also continued doing Elvis Tribute shows. Estelle Brown remains the only one left. Their harmonies remain strong and timeless.

TOSHIKO AKIYOSHI 1929-

Toshiko with Duke Ellington.

Toshiko Akiyoshi was only 23 years old when the great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson heard her during a Jazz at the Philharmonic tour, in 1953, in Japan. He asked record producer Norman Grantz to record her, and he did, using Peterson’s rhythm section (Ray Brown on bass, Herb Ellis on guitar, and J.C. Heard on drums). After that, her career as a jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and band leader took off. Toshiko was born in Manchuria, China, but her family was forced to move back to Japan, following World War II. In 1955, she applied to the Berklee School of Music in Boston and received a full scholarship. She was the first Japanese student there.

According to her, in an interview, she was viewed as an “oddity” being a Japanese woman, who played like bebop pianist Bud Powell rather than for her piano skills. Soon afterward, she even appeared as a contestant on the CBS television show, What’s My Line?, in 1956. In 1967, she met and married her second husband, Lew Tabackin, and they put together a 16-piece jazz band called the Toshiko Akiyoshi Lew Tabackin Big Band. Tabackin was the featured soloist on sax and flute. In 1982, they moved to NYC and played at Birdland there, every Monday night for seven years, playing and recording their final performance there in 2003. Frustrated by her inability to get a recording contract for the Big Band, she began to concentrate on her solo and smaller group career.

Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band at Monterey Jazz Festival 1981

One reviewer of the live album, Road Time, said the music on Akiyoshi’s big band albums demonstrated a “level of compositional and orchestral ingenuity that made her perhaps two or three composer/arrangers in jazz whose name could seriously be mentioned in the company of Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Gil Evans.”

Toshiko conducting her jazz orchestra for “Long Yellow Road.”

She received 14 Grammy nominations and was the first woman to win Best Composer/Arranger awards in Downbeat Magazine’s annual Readers Poll in 1984. She is now 95 years old and apparently still active, although she has scaled back her performances. She was recently seen performing with her daughter, Monday Michiru, at the Blue Note in Tokyo. That is an impressive career! She is truly a world person.