“I’m wild, but I’m polished.”
Dorothy Donegan
Introduction
I love to trawl through the music archives. Hidden in this wealth of music are many black artists who have sadly been forgotten. Their genius deserves to be celebrated. These men and women combated extreme prejudice from society and, despite the odds, brought their music to the radio and television, and their voices remained intact on records. One lady who caught my attention was the multifaceted jazz pianist and vocalist Dorothy Donegan. Born in 1922 in Bronzeville, Chicago, Illinois, Dorothy was the daughter of a domestic and a chef on the Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad. She began piano lessons in 1928 with Alfred Simms for a dollar a lesson. An excellent teacher who enabled Donegan two years before the age of eleven to do recital work and professional work as an organist and pianist in churches, lodges and house parties around the neighbourhood. A student who could play all the music of Duke Ellington at the age of eight. Someone who devoured the works of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms when E. Sterling Todd tutored her. She was considered an excellent classical pianist and a good jazz piano player when she graduated from elementary school in 1935. A lady who learnt so much from Captain Walter Dyett at DuSable High School. He was a teacher who was fierce but channelled talent, describing him in later years.
“He could hear a mosquito urinate on a bale of cotton. He had such a terrific ear. Out of a 150-piece concert band, he could tell exactly which instrument had made a mistake, and you would know it because he would stare at you with that one good eye and make you feel smaller than a snail.”
An Amazing Life
Dorothy started her career being chaperoned by her mother and brother. They would play for fish fries and rent scuffles. The ladies at these parties couldn’t pay their rent, so they sold fish and chicken sandwiches for 15 cents. Dorothy then branched out to play at south-side clubs for a dollar a night. Here, she learned that she no longer wanted to be part of a band and preferred to be a solo artist, saying, “I like to steal a show mostly.” “I like to steal a show mostly.” 1942, she made her first commercial recordings, which Bluebird Records released. The hub label for “Piano Boogie” b/w “Every Day Blues” misspelt her last name as “Donigan.” In 1943, she became the first black artist to perform at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall—a mix of Rachmaninoff, Grieg and jazz. A brilliant review in Time magazine brought the pianist Art Tatum to her house to hear her play. He taught her some of his techniques, and his style continued to influence her music strongly. He respected her formidable talents and joked that she kept him on his toes. A 1983 issue of Ebony magazine quoted Tatum as having said Donegan was “the only woman who can make me practice.”
Dorothy would go on to play the cocktail piano scene in New York. In 1944, she landed a gig in the movie Sensations of 1945, where she’d appear alongside scat-singing star Cab Calloway and big-band leader Woody Herman. She left Chicago for Hollywood that year, taking her mother with her. Donegan appears in the film playing a barnstorming duel-slash-duet with pianist Gene Rodgers, backed by Calloway’s band. It would sadly be her only film appearance. Her agent at the time—later called him “Corkscrew Gervish” because she considered him so crooked—refused a seven-year movie contract with MGM for $750 per week of work. Instead he accepted $3,000 per week for the Sensationsproduction with United Artists, which lasted around ten days. Donegan would continue to release boogie-woogie 78s on the Continental label in the late 40s, including “Jumping Jack Special” and “Two Loves Wuz One Too Many for Me.” By the late 1950s, Donegan was gigging nationwide, perfecting her unrestrained, expressive style at clubs such as the Embers in Manhattan and London House in Chicago.
Yet her mix of brazenly mixed swing, boogie-woogie, ragtime, gospel, blues, classical, pop, and vaudeville left critics confused. They wanted her to fit neatly into a single box, trying to devalue her as an entertainer rather than an artist. They didn’t like that she shook her hips and stamped her feet when she performed, peppering the performances with off-colour jokes, allusions and history lessons. With a wealth of albums during the 1950s on record labels such as Capitol and Roulette, she seemed to disappear from the music scene in the 1960s. Her last big album was Swingin’ Jazz in Hi-Fi in 1963. Though she would appear on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1965, playing “The Man I Love,” she wouldn’t release another LP till 1975’s The Many Faces of Dorothy Donegan.
An artist more comfortable on stage than in a recording studio, Dorothy had a swansong in the 1970s and 1980s with a loyal fan base in New York. She broke attendance records with a 1980 appearance at the Sheraton Centre Hotel & Towers in New York. An artist who played club and festival dates across Europe and the USA and made notable appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Someone who even appeared on Sesame Street well into her 70s. Her last big show was in 1997 at the Concord Jazz Festival in the Bay Area. Dorothy died in 1998 from colon cancer at the age of 76. A truly remarkable woman whose life and career deserve to be celebrated.
