Jazz Articles about Kit McClure Band

Kit McClure Band: Just the Thing

by Jack Bowers
July 19, 2006

Just the Thing is Part Two of the Kit McClure Band's warmhearted salute to the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, a groundbreaking all-woman ensemble that came out of a school for poor black children in Piney Woods, Mississippi, to become one of the most widely successful and admired big bands of the World War II era. Whereas Part One was devoted for the most part to faithful transcriptions of original charts played by the Sweethearts, this second component consists of updated ...

Kit McClure Band: The Sweethearts Project

by Elliott Simon
October 2, 2004

An historically accurate portrayal, The Sweethearts Project is a tribute to the all-woman big band known as the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, which kept the home front swinging during WWII. Using seventeen of her peers and former Sweethearts vocalist Carline Ray, bandleader and tenor saxophonist Kit McClure has produced a modern showcase for the finest contemporary female jazz musicians to strut their prodigious chops while highlighting an important but neglected part of jazz history. “Vi Vigor" kicks things ...

Kit McClure Band: The Sweethearts Project

by Jack Bowers
August 12, 2004

The Kit McClure Band The Sweethearts Project Redhot Records 2004

The subtitle of this new album by the New York-based Kit McClure Band is “A Tribute to the International Sweethearts of Rhythm." For those of you who weren't around in the '40s, that may require a few words of explanation. At a time when women in jazz were confined largely to singing, playing piano or simply looking good on the arm of ...