The Boswell Legacy 2nd Edition
Kyla Titus & Chica Boswell Minnerly 2024, 332pp, Color Available in Hardcover or Paperback See the "Book" tab for more information Check out the Boswell Sisters Store on eBay, where you can find many items related to the careers and personal lives of Martha, Connie & Vet and their family. Some of the items being offered include: restored & original images; historic artifacts belonging to the sisters & their family, original celebrity autographs, printed material from their career, merchandise, and signed books including
"The Boswell Legacy 2nd Edition" and "Legacy: Images of a Family." |
July Birthdays
“So we arranged for Martha to hold a hoe and wanted her to act as if she were chopping grass. However, she only leaned on the hoe, calling her pose ‘southern style.’”—Emery Winn, Peekskill, N.Y. Press Union, Aug. 10, 1937
“Martha, the most talkative and dynamic of the three—a clever business-girl, a smiling and friendly personality.”—Those Boswells: Almost Too Clever To Succeed, Leonard Feather, Radio Pictorial, Sept. 6, 1935 Martha had a way of creating what Vet would call “a situation.” According to Vet, “she’d get flustered…look guilty. The more she tried to protest her innocence, the worse it looked.” Reminded Vet of Lucille Ball in 'Lucy.' “Martha reminded me a lot of Lucille Ball. Not in appearance, but the things Martha would get us into, the situations, she’d get flustered...This is when she was older, yet. They would go through everything Martha had because she looked guilty. The more she tried to protest her innocence, the worse it looked. Good thing they didn’t think she was crazy or they’d have put her in an insane asylum. They never would have believed her. You know the way Lucy gets into a spot very easily? That’s the way Martha was. “…a swell cook and wants to own a parrot. I know the two things don’t go together…but that’s how she told them to me and that’s how I’m telling them to you. She has an urge to write a book, but admits she probably never will. The thing she’d rather do more than anything else is sleep, except if there is someone to disturb early in the morning with a telephone call and a request to ‘guess who this is.’ She hates swimming…”—Jerry Wald of Meet Radio’s Nut Sisters, Phil. Sun, 1933 “’Do you know what we call Martha?’ queried Connie. ‘We call her the sap. Honest to goodness, Vet and I can go any place and no one ever bothers us. Someone always is selling Martha something. Out on the coast a salesman was going to help her make millions, whenever Vet and I would come around he’d vanish. But he finally got her name on the dotted line…and guess for what? Forty acres of oil land. And she wonders why she isn’t our manager…’”—Boswell Sisters Jilted Classical Music, Advertiser, Boston, Mass., Sept, 10, 1933 “Slight, very dark, bright-eyed and intensely ‘alive.’ Her personality is of the vivacious type, eager to be in on everything, chatting gaily about everything…Martha is the memory girl of the family—there is a famous joke among the girls about her beating all comers in a ‘competition’ for remembering all the past Presidents of The United States. One has only to say ‘Buchanan was the 15th President’ to be sure of raising a laugh.”—Melody Maker, July 1, 1933 “Martha will not remove a pendant on a delicate chain around her neck…Martha answers the fan mail and phone calls…”—Nona Benet, Radio and Amusement Guide, March 31, 1932, p.15 Laverne Andrews (b. July 6, 1911, Minneapolis - May 8, 1967, Brentwood, Calif.) was the eldest sister of the vocal trio the Andrews Sisters. Born in Minneapolis, all three Andrews girls idolized and, at first, emulated the renowned Boswell Sisters out of New Orleans.
"We copied the Boswell Sisters so much, and they were from New Orleans, that we developed Southern accents. If you listen to our first record, Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen, we sound like shrimp trawlers."—Maxene and Patty Andrews quoted by Rex Reed, ‘Apple Tree’ Blooms Again on B’way, New York Daily News, March 3, 1974, p. 5 "The Boswells were the best," Patty recalls. "In Minneapolis, as kids, we listened to their every radio broadcast and we had most all their records. Connee, Vet and Martha were our idols and we tried to sing like them. More than 40 years later I still think they were the greatest." —Dave Dexter, Jr. interview of Patty Andrews from LP liner notes: “The Best of the Andrews Sisters” (MCA2-4024) 1977 “We were influenced by the Boswell sisters," Laverne says. "Influenced! We did our best to copy them down to the last syllable!"—St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 5, 1954 "A model?" Maxene replied. "Did we ever! When we started out, we copied the Boswell Sisters all the way down to their New Orleans accents. People thought it was odd—three girls from Minneapolis talking like Scarlett O'Hara."—Chicago Sunday Tribune, June 24, 1962 "Without the Boswell Sisters there would be no Andrews Sisters."––Patty Andrews 
Robin Cunningham (b. July 8, 1952—) Robin Cunningham majored in music and composition and minored in voice at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has been singing professionally in and around Washington, DC, since 1983 as a soloist and in various vocal groups, doing most of her work with the Tom Cunningham Orchestra, Washington DC's premier big band.
Her vocal trio "Yazoo Zazz" performed with her husband Tom's orchestra at the Glen Echo Ballroom, performing the music of the various ‘sister’ acts, with an emphasis on the Boswells, but also little-known, rarely recorded groups like the Dandridge Sisters. They had begun an impressive resume with the orchestra, performing for approximately 7,000 people at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. They also sang regularly for public swing dances, concerts, and private performances. Yazoo Zazz, which included Robin and artists Jeanine Greene and Kathy Farmer, traveled to New Orleans in October 2014 to take part in activities that brought vocal jazz artists from around the world together to honor and celebrate the Boswell Legacy, including performing at the Louisiana State Museum’s Music at the Mint in “The Boswell Sisters Revue.”… 
Harold "Hal" Peary (b. Harrold Jose Pereira de Faria, July 25, 1908, San Leandro, Calif. - d. March 30, 1985, Torrance, Calif.), after a number of years in vaudeville and early radio, Peary signed a long-term contract with NBC in San Francisco in 1929. Is it possible he met the Boswells for the first time while they were at KGO from November 1930 through January 1931? Both acts worked for the NBC Pacific Network, although on different affiliated stations.
Peary moved to Chicago in 1935 where he became a regular on the well-known radio classic, "Fibber McGee and Molly." He would also feature in four "Great Gildersleeve" feature films during the 1940s. 
Dick McDonough (b. July 30, 1904, NYC – d. May 25, 1938, NYC) was a jazz guitarist and banjoist who recorded with the Boswell Sisters and the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra for Brunswick in New York City during the early 1930s. He was the guitarist on the iconic, groundbreaking "When I Take My Sugar To Tea," the song that garnered the trio a standing ovation by "the boys" in the orchestra.
McDonough played with Red Nichols in 1927 as a banjoist, and soon after played with Paul Whiteman. He began studying the guitar and eventually was in demand for session work, recording with The Dorsey Brothers, Red Nichols, and Miff Mole. In the 1930s, he performed in a duo with jazz guitarist Carl Kress (who also recorded a few songs with the Boswell trio) and cut several sessions with an orchestra under his own name, in addition to backing many other recording artists. Unfortunately, McDonough died young at age 34 of pneumonia in May 1938 after an operation. 
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Copyright © 2014-2026 Kyla M. Titus. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2014-2026 Kyla M. Titus. All Rights Reserved.