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Dorothy Ashby

Born Dorothy Jeanne Thompson, she grew up around music in Detroit where her father, guitarist Wiley Thompson, often brought home fellow jazz musicians. Even as a young girl, Dorothy would provide support and background to their music by playing the piano. She attended Cass Technical High School where fellow students included such future musical talents and jazz greats as Donald Byrd, Gerald Wilson, and Kenny Burrell.

While in high school she played a number of instruments (including the saxophone and string bass) before coming upon the harp. She attended Wayne State University in Detroit where she studied piano and music education. After she graduated, she began playing the piano in the jazz scene in Detroit, though by 1952 she had made the harp her main instrument. At first her fellow jazz musicians were resistant to the idea of adding the harp, which they perceived as an instrument of classical music and also somewhat ethereal in sound, into jazz performances. So Ashby overcame their initial resistance and built up support for the harp as a jazz instrument by organizing free shows and playing at dances and weddings with her trio. She recorded with Richard Davis, Jimmy Cobb, Frank Wess and others in the late 1950s and early 1960s. During the 1960s, she also had her own radio show in Detroit. Ashby's trio, including her husband John Ashby on drums, regularly toured the country, recording albums for several different record labels. She played with Louis Armstrong and Woody Herman, among others.

In 1962 Downbeat magazine's annual poll of best jazz performers included Ashby. Extending her range of interests and talents, she also worked with her husband on a theater company, the Ashby Players, which her husband founded in Detroit, and for which Dorothy often wrote the scores. In the late 1960s, the Ashbys gave up touring and settled in California where Dorothy broke into the studio recording system as a harpist through the help of the soul singer Bill Withers, who recommended her to Stevie Wonder. As a result, Dorothy was called upon for a number of studio sessions playing for such popular recording artists as Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Barry Manilow.

Her harp playing is featured in the song "Come Live With Me' which is on the soundtrack for the 1967 movie, Valley of the Dolls. One of her more noteworthy performances in contemporary popular music was playing the harp on the song "If It's Magic" on Stevie Wonder's 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life.

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Radio & Podcasts

String Along with Dorothy!

Read "String Along with Dorothy!" reviewed by Patrick Burnette


A music with as complicated and rich a history as jazz is always going to be subject to rediscoveries and reappraisals and we wouldn't want it any other way. This fortnight's episode focuses on a pioneering practitioner on that truly rare avis, the jazz harp. Yes, we're diving into the early work of Dorothy Ashby in honor of a new box set celebrating her first six albums. So throw aside those conceptions of cartoon animals going to heaven and bourgeoisie ...

10
Album Review

Dorothy Ashby: With Strings Attached, 1957-1965

Read "With Strings Attached, 1957-1965" reviewed by John Chacona


Imagine if Sidney Bechet, Charlie Christian and Jimmy Smith were barely remembered and recordings of their music were long unavailable and known only on the geekiest corners of Discogs. That is essentially the status of harpist Dorothy Ashby. Like the three figures cited above, Ashby essentially created a language for her chosen instrument, the harp, where virtually none has existed before and established it as a legitimate and expressive vehicle for jazz improvisation at the highest level. Just how brilliantly ...

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Dorothy Ashby: With Strings Attached, 1957-1965

Read "Dorothy Ashby: With Strings Attached, 1957-1965" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi


Questo lussuoso cofanetto di sei LP in edizione limitata dedicato all'arpista Dorothy Ashby è un importante contributo che colma l'attuale vuoto di registrazioni e rende giustizia a un'artista tanto importante quanto dimenticata. Non troverete il suo nome sulle massime storie ed enciclopedie del jazz, e la sua morte prematura dell'aprile 1986 (aveva 55 anni) fu data con mesi di ritardo in trafiletti di poche righe. Anche grazie al successo di giovani arpiste come Brandee Younger, oggi la ...

3
Radio & Podcasts

These Leos Are Jazz Lions

Read "These Leos Are Jazz Lions" reviewed by Mary Foster Conklin


Some heavyweight birthdays in this mid-August broadcast, which included new releases from saxophonist Ben Flocks, songwriter Mark Winkler and guitarist Paul Silbergleit with celebratory shout outs to songwriter Bernice Petkere, Benny Carter and organist Trudy Pitts in the first hour, Roberta Piket, Jeri Southern, Howard Johnson and Regina Carter in the second hour, Abbey Lincoln in the third hour and Dorothy Ashby for the final hour. Playlist Zoot Sims with Bob Brookmeyer “Lullaby of the Leaves" from Morning ...

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The Jazz Session

Unsung Heroes of Jazz Harp

Read "Unsung Heroes of Jazz Harp" reviewed by Dirk Sutro


Listen Saxophones and trumpets are familiar stars of modern jazz, but a few brave souls have utilized unlikely instruments such as accordion (Renzo Ruggieri), bagpipes (Rufus Harley), and bandoneon (Astor Piazzola), as well as the ethereal harp of Dorothy Ashby. In the 1950s, Ashby proved that this classical instrument could also swing. She wasn't the first jazz harpist, but she was the first to record as a leader, and to show how the harp, a relative of ...

243
Album Review

Dorothy Ashby: Afro-Harping

Read "Afro-Harping" reviewed by Joshua Weiner


Cue up “Soul Vibrations,” the first track on Verve’s reissue of Dorothy Ashby’s Afro Harping, and revel: a one-note syncopated bass line over a slamming drumbeat that you’re sure you’ve heard sampled somewhere. Enter the double-tracked theremins, followed by swoopy strings. Next, over the relentless beat, an echo-plexed harp solo by Ashby, during which the strings return with 16-notes; then the theremins run the groove into a fade-out. And there you have it: 3’15’’ of pure aural time capsule in ...

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51

Interview

Dorothy Ashby: Jazz Harpist

Dorothy Ashby: Jazz Harpist

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

With the introduction of the 33 1/3 LP in the late 1940s and very early 1950s, harpists began appearing with greater regularity on jazz albums. At first, harpists were tag-alongs on record dates—the whipped cream on the sundae known as “with strings." But as jazz arrangers grew more and more ambitious later in the decade, and the jazz and pop markets began to overlap, harpists who had been chained to symphony orchestras found themselves being called regularly for jazz dates. Except, ...

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