The O'Zone: Women's History Month Part 2: Hazel Scott
Women's History Month
Shouldn’t it be nine months?
From the back-line shadows of the Sweethearts of Rhythm,
where the bus was a fortress and the stage a battleground,
the lineage of the horn and the breath begins.
It is not just a melody;
it’s the refusal to be the "canary" in the cage,
the "girl singer" standing still while the men take the solos
Not Lady Day singing “Strange Fruit”
Or Ella standing alongside Pops
Not Sarah in her divine evidence
Queens at the microphone
Abbey, Nina, Betty, Carmen,
I dare you to call them “chick singers”
and walk away with your chops intact.
See Nubya Garcia slicing the air with a tenor sax,
splitting the London fog with a tone that remembers the islands,
while Hiromi strikes the keys with a physics that defies the "dainty,"
shattering the glass ceiling of the grand piano.
The voice is the instrument of the insurrection.
Jazzmeia Horn scatting through the red tape of the industry,
Andromeda Turre composing the scores of a new sovereignty,
each note a brick thrown at the wall of "not good enough for the canon."
Then the poets enter, the high priestesses of the word-riff.
Nikki Giovanni spinning ego-trips into cosmic truths,
Wanda Coleman—the L.A. Blues Queen—bleeding ink onto the sidewalk
to prove that jazz is a survival rhythm, not a cocktail hour.
The avant-garde rises in a storm:
Moor Mother haunting the frequencies with the ghosts of the middle passage,
Aja Monet breathing fire into the silence,
remaking the world with a syntax that doesn’t ask for permission.
They move from the margins to the center of the sun,
navigating the double-cross of sexism and the weight of the gaze.
From Artemis—the huntress collective—to the lone soloist,
they are the architects of the improvised future,
no longer the muses,
but the jazz masters of the sound.
The Prodigy: “The Darling of Café Society”
The Story of Hazel Scott is one of the most poignant and powerful triumphs and trials in jazz history— a woman who was once the highest-paid musician in the world, only to be erased from the narrative before her final dignified resurgence.
Born in Trinidad in 1920, Hazel Scott was a musical genius from the start. By age eight, she was accepted into Julliard after demonstrating perfect pitch. By the time she was a teenager, she was a sensation at New York’s Café Society (the first integrated nightclub in the United States), where she swung the classics: Blending Bach and Rachmaninoff with a fierce jazz beat. Her talent was so immense, so undeniable that by her early twenties, she was earning annually what would be over $1.1 million today.
Scott’s success came with a ferocious refusal to accept the indignities of segregation: She was one of the first performers to include a No Segregation clause in all of her contracts, adamantly refusing to play at any venue that didn’t allow integrated audiences.
She refused any film roles that depicted Black women in degrading, menial characterizations, stating she would never play a maid and only play a woman playing music in a dignified manner. She demanded “final cut” privileges over her wardrobe (she wore her own clothes in all five of her movies) and image to avoid stereotypical roles, insisting she appear as herself on screen: a sophisticated, dignified artist—to protect the image of Black women in the media.
Showdown at “The Heat’s On”
Hazel Scott’s legendary performance in the 1943 film
The Heat’s On is a definitive moment of musical genius and civil rights activism. Seated between two grand pianos—one black and one white— Scotty famously jazzed the classics by playing both instruments simultaneously with such breathtaking virtuosity that the moment remains a viral sensation to this day. However, the scene is equally important for her defiance off-screen.
During filming, Scott discovered that Black female dancers playing war brides were to be dressed in soiled work clothes while their white counterparts wore elegant clothes. Scott staged a strike, refusing to return to the set until the costumes were changed to floral dresses, famously arguing that no woman would see her husband off to war in a dirty apron.
For three days, the standoff continued. Each day, they tried to wear her down and threaten her with firing, but Hazel held her ground and won the battle. The women were redressed, but this act of resistance led to the petty tyranny of Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn, ostensibly putting her film career on ice in 1945.
As talented as she was as a musician, her stance as a civil rights leader was probably more influential for women of color than her vast musical abilities.
The Price of Truth: Silencing Courage
The Hazel Scott Show premiered in July 1950 on the DuMont Network, making her the first Black American to host a national television show. Due to her civil rights stances and unflagging courage, Scott wound up in a pamphlet called “Red Channels” in June 1950, which purportedly listed Communist supporters in entertainment.
She voluntarily appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee on September 22, 1950, to clear her name and to criticize the blacklisting process eye to eye and face to face on a very different television program indeed!
September 29, 1950, exactly one week after her testimony, her show was cancelled by the network despite no real evidence of her involvement in Communism. If anything, it appears that the show was canceled because she was part of a true African-American power couple.
From 1945 until 1960, she was married to Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a prominent Baptist minister and the first African-American from New York elected to Congress representing Harlem.
Their marriage ultimately ended after separation amidst Powell’s public controversies.
EXILE IN PARIS: 1957- 1967
With her television show unceremoniously taken away and her movie career flagging from her reputation for being difficult,
Paris was calling, as it did for many African Americans like
James Baldwin, Nina Simone, and Bud Powell.
Hazel Scott’s search for freedom and dignity led her to find
sanctuary as a star on The Left Bank, hosting a salon for fellow jazz expatriates: escaping McCarthyism for more racially accepting opportunities.
She led a march on the American Embassy in Paris, coinciding with the 1963 March on Washington D.C. led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., highlighting the civil rights movement in the United States to the rest of the world.
She returned to the United States in 1967 to join in the movement with Dr. King, returning to a vastly different sounding musical America than when she left.
In her later years, Scott held fast to her unyielding civil rights views and newly-found Bahá'í faith (she learned about the religion from Dizzy Gillespie in 1968). She also continued her career, playing in clubs and occasionally appearing on television shows such as Julia and One Life To Live until her death from cancer in 1981.
Perhaps because of the unjust consequences of her convictions, she is not as well known today as her contemporaries; but her trailblazing contributions both to American music and to civil rights demand a reappraisal of her genius.
Hazel and Bud: a fictional interlude
The Left Bank sunlight filters through the glass,
thin and pale like a worn dime.
They are a study in contrast at the upright piano:
Hazel, poised in silk, her spine a straight line
of New York Royalty; and Bud hunched over the keys
as if protecting a flickering flame from a sudden draft.
The cafe smells of chicory and the damp wool of coats.
Between them, a single plate of croque monsieur sits
cooling, ignored.
Bud’s fingers don’t eat; they ghost across the ivory,
chasing a bebop phantom that only he can hear,
a jagged construct of fifths and sudden silences.
Hazel reaches out, her hand a warm anchor on his shoulder.
She doesn’t ask him to speak; she knows the language
Is currently out of service.
Instead, she leans in and strikes a chord.
A lush, C-major resonance that fills the space between
the clatter of saucers.
Bud flinches, then softens.
His left hand finds a dissonant reply,
a bruised minor ninth that questions her clarity
They trade phrases like secrets.
A fork hits the floor, but neither hears it.
Here, in the shadows of the 5th Arrondissement,
The Atlantic is just a puddle they both stepped over.
For a moment, the frantic ticking in Bud’s head
Slows to the rhythm of her breathing.
Lunch is a melody they never finish,
A feast of black and white keys served cold
under the indifferent eyes of the French afternoon
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