No differently than the male musicians, the female swing and jazz artists took an early interest in music and began playing an instrument or two (or three or four) usually while still in elementary school. Many came from musical families and so grew up playing in ensembles. By high school, most had either started their own bands or were playing in someone else’s. Sometimes they played in ensembles with males but were often excluded and so formed all-female bands. One of these was Joy Cayler who was dubbed the Queen of the Trumpet.
Cayler formed her first band at age 16 in Denver in 1940. By 1943, she was already taking her band on the road having signed with a booking agency. At 19, Cayler wrote the band’s arrangements, laid down and enforced the rules, did all the hiring and firing and had the added burden of protecting her girls from unscrupulous men and unwanted pregnancies. Since most of her girls were no older than her, she had to promise their apprehensive parents that she would keep their daughters out of trouble on the road.
Female musicians in orchestras faced ridiculous criticisms and stereotypes that male musicians never had to worry about. For example, if two women in a band were tight with each other and liked to go out together to hit the town, they had to be careful not to do this too much or the rumors would start flying that they were lesbians. While this may not be a big deal nowadays, such innuendos could and did ruin careers back in the Swing Era. While male musicians on the road left a lot of illegitimate children behind, the female musicians had to be careful not to get pregnant. Unwed pregnant women were highly stigmatized in American society up until the 1970s. Abortions were out of the question. If a girl got pregnant, she had to go live somewhere out of sight until she had her baby which would then be put up for adoption. In some cases, the girl’s mother would tell people the baby was hers and the girl would take on the roll of older sister to her own child. In an all-girl swing band, the members had to appear to the public as “good girls” and if any got pregnant, there was an abortion doctor or midwife in Europe that she would be secretly sent to see whose name was well known among the female musicians.
Sometimes, though, the ladies made things work in their favor. Cayler recalled that train travel during the war was exceedingly difficult for bands—especially black bands and all-girl bands. Train cars were always reserved for servicemen first, then people in wheelchairs, then pregnant women. Needing desperately to get her band to their gigs, Cayler would have some of the girls grab whatever wheelchairs they could find and get in them while other band members posed as their caretakers. Still other girls wadded up their clothes and put them under their jackets and posed as pregnant women. The ruse worked every time. Another time, two of her girls were stranded and to get them to the next gig, Cayler used her feminine wiles on a Parcel Post driver to go get them and bring them to town for the gig and he did.
Joy Cayler:
The sexualization of female musicians and singers has always gone on. Cayler claimed her publicity shots “make me look like a stripper…but that that was the mode of the day.” Here she wears a gown with a fully open bosom and holds her instrument as though she was merely posing with it rather than being able to play it. Female musicians had to contend with costume changes even more than their instruments. Many sax players complained that the strap of the instrument cut into their skin while they wore the low-cut dresses. Also standing for long periods in heels was debilitating and female bassists bore the brunt of that as did female drummers who found working the kick drum and high hat pedals quite a challenge. Some drummers changed to flat shoes after sitting behind the traps but some actually played with their heels on—no one knows how. Why did they do this? Because they had to look feminine—that was of the utmost importance even more than the music. This was the reality for female musicians in a society that “looks first and listens second.”