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1925N.O. Times Picayune: “'I suppose we couldn’t have done anything else but study music,’ says Martha, the oldest of the trio. ‘Our parents were on the stage before we were born; they, with our aunt and uncle, made the Boswell Quartette, and were quite well know in the nineties. Father used to be a juggler. He worked with Fred Stone. Mother was a dancer with Spenser’s Transoceanic Company. So of course we came by it naturally.’"--Getting Along With Their Work, Gwen Bristow; N.O. Times Picayune, Sept. 13, 1925
1930
1931
Boston Post: “What got us about the Boswell Sisters in the Camel Hour is the departure they represented last night from the usual frail sister act of that genre…These girls sounded to us as if they had, above all things, robust and rugged, well, tonal chambers. The soloist had a Sophie Tucker rhythm and ooze that’s just the thing for hot momma music.”—
Last Night on the Radio, O.M.Static, Boston Post, Feb. 12, 1931 Los Angeles Examiner: "Bing Crosby, unmistakably employing some of Connie Boswell’s technique, while everybody and his brother…are doing their darndest to imitate Bing."—Ray De O’Fan, Los Angeles Examiner, Oct. 9, 1931 Variety: "When the Boswell Sisters go commercial Oct. 16 with Baker Chocolates on CBS, they will be heard in New York as a sustaining broadcast. Rest of the CBS stations will carry it as commercial. Baker contracted for approximately 40 CBS stations all over the country, with the exception of CBS New York outlet, WABC. From reports, advertiser doesn’t want this station. Boswells will go on the Baker broadcasts from WABC, New York, with two announcing mikes in the studio. When the time for the announcements come, the commercial plug will be inserted for the entire CBS out-of-town hook-up, while through another mike the broadcast will be locally announced as sustaining. Said to be the first time CBS ever carried a broadcast of this nature."--Trick in Announcing, Variety, Oct. 13, 1931 1932
New York Evening Journal: "…the first broadcast of a typically American music program ever sent to Europe, transmitted last evening. Comments have been coming in by cable from various European points and they are all highly favorable. The program was sent to London, Berlin, Paris, Rome and Vienna and each of these cities re-broadcast it. It is estimated 20,000,000 Europeans heard it. The program, which lasted half an hour, included vocal music by Morton Downey, Kate Smith, the Mills Brothers, the Street Singer, the Boswell Sisters and a male quartet…"—New York Evening Journal, Jan. 12, 1932
Pittsburgh Press: "…the Boswell sisters, Vet, Martha, and Connie walked away with the first prize in the harmonizers’ class, rolling up a total vote of 21,249. The nearest rivals for the honor won by the Chesterfield stars polled 7,598 votes."—Pittsburgh Press, Nov. 12, 1932. 1933
The Boswell Legacy: "...the Boswells again placed first in the World Telegram Annual Radio Poll for 'feminine harmony team' on Feb. 11. The sisters had an amazingly quick success story and were now at the top of their profession, not only as celebrities but also as true American icons. It was a spectacular rise, but one based on years of preparation, dedication to the music, and constant attention to improvement.--The Boswell Legacy 2nd Edition, 2024, p150
Cab Calloway: "Please Sing It Don’t Mean A Thing If You Aint Got That Swing—Listening In In StPetersburg=Cab Calloway And Boys.—Telegram, March 12, 1933 Cleveland Plain Dealer: "We aren’t sopranos, contraltos and things like that. Vet’s voice is highest, but sometimes she sings lower than any one of us. Connie’s voice is lowest but sometimes she sings highest. Mine is between theirs, but sometimes I sing high and sometimes low.” –Martha Boswell as quoted by Ralph Kelly, Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 12, 1933 Detroit Sunday Times: “They can’t describe their method of singing. Connie calls it ‘passing harmony.’ One voice goes down, the other ascends. Perhaps Martha carries the harmony, Connie down-deeps it and Vet soars.”—Pat Dennis, Detroit Sunday Times, Sunday, March 12, 1933 Louisville, Ky., Courier Journal, March 12, 1933: “The three young women from New Orleans who originated the 'Boswell rhythm' sing their own arrangements of popular songs in the same fashion that has made them one of the outstanding popular music units of recent years. An interesting fact about this 'Boswell rhythm' is that the girls never write a line of music when they are learning a song. They look it over and then begin at the end of the song and put chords together. After they have worked from the end to the beginning of number, they reverse the procedure and sing it through. This method of arranging a song is a puzzle to musical experts, many of whom do not see how it can be done—and yet the result is the 'Boswell rhythm.'"—Boyd Martin, "Piping the Play," Louisville Kentucky Courier Journal New York American: "But really this is what is uppermost in our mind this morning: For a week now we’ve been stretched out in bed, most worried and downhearted guy in the world. Awful thing to just lie quiet for a week with nothing to think about but the worst. Then suddenly we recalled that last sailing, the Ile de France and Connie Boswell of those gay singing sisters. She was laughing, joking, having lots of fun, always with the sweetest smile—she’ll be the life of the party during that crossing. And all that joy coming from a girl with a shrunken body, strapped to a wheelchair. Guess we aint’ so sick.—Harry Acton, On The Gangplank, New York American, June 26, 1933 1934
The Boswell Legacy: "...for the third year in a row the Boswell Sisters still won first place in the World Telegram Radio Poll for 'leading harmony group,' a category that now included both female and male groups and included the Mills Brothers in second place.--The Boswell Legacy 2nd Edition, 2024, p171
1935
Glasgow Evening News: “…gradually they hit on the idea of singing the parts set for violin, cello and piano in melodies, and sax, banjo and piano in ‘hot numbers, finding just how close they could get to each other without making a jangle of sound. For unusual rhythm they took all sorts of original material—rice shaken at random in a tin, the beat, beat felt when standing on the back of a U.S. train, the pat of an impromptu tap dance, the long-drawn out wail of U.S. fire engine, or police car, and so on and on. The accepted time values of a piece, of course, they ignore entirely, unless here and there where it suits them."--So now you know, Evening News, Glasgow, 1935
N.O. Times Picayune: “Blending, that explains it…If we sang according to orthodox musical traditions, Vet would be the high voice or soprano, I would be the middle or alto and Connie would be the low or contralto. But we don’t sing in the orthodox musical way. Instead, when we sing as a trio we achieve an unorthodox and unusual effect by deserting out own particular tone and singing in another tone. We call that blending. If you know anything about music, for example, you know that a soprano is rarely able to hit a low ‘C’ note effectively, but Vet can do that when we sing as a unit thereby producing an effect which is out of the ordinary and which accounts for our own peculiar type of individuality. Blending and cross-blending of voices achieved by a desertion at various times of the tones in which we would normally sing is an important factor in the production of the thing you have heard called ‘Boswell Rhythm.’ This blending takes various forms. Sometimes all three of us will strike a crescendo in the same tone. At other times we achieve a cross-blending effect as when the soprano sings contralto and the contralto sings soprano. If we sangout of tone separately it wouldn’t be so good, but doing it together produces the blending effect that goes over.”—Martha Boswell as quoted by James H. Gillis, N.O. Times Picayune, Jan. 6, 1935 1936
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...to the website dedicated to honoring the music, lives and times of the "World's Foremost Harmony Singers": The Boswell Sisters. Never heard of them? Well, this has to be one of the greatest musical crimes of the last century, because chances are their musical style and innovations influenced much of the popular music many of us have enjoyed since. But most importantly, if you have not heard their music, you are seriously missing out.
Who were The Boswell Sisters? They were three extraordinarily gifted musicians who emerged from the wellspring of the jazz movement in New Orleans in the early 1900s. They were icons, pioneers in music and early radio with influences that extend far beyond their own time. As Maxene Andrews once said, “They took the idea of jazz and did it vocally.” And they did it with such blending and precision that it has never been equaled since. Hard to believe? Perhaps if they were not pretty little white females, one of whom was unable to walk, it might be easier, and if not, they may have been included somewhere in the voluminous material on the history of American music. Instead, they have been excluded by all except those few scholars who know the truth about the Boswell Sisters, and are able to see past their own prejudices as well as an act name that makes them sound like just another cute "girl group." These few discovered that many of the giants of the swing era worked in orchestras for the Boswell Sisters, and even stood and applauded in honor of their musicianship at the end of a recording session with them. They know that Glenn Miller wrote down some of their arrangements for the orchestras because the sisters never wrote anything down, storing all their arrangements in their brains, and that he was credited on some songs with the arrangements the sisters themselves created. They know that Martha Boswell played the piano on the majority of their recordings, radio shows & live performances, alongside Tommy & Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman, Mannie Klein, Bunny Berigan, Joe Venuti, the Mills Brothers, Paul Whiteman, Russ Columbo, Eddie Lang, Joe Tarto, Victor Young, Jackie Taylor, Harry Hoffman, Jack Purvis, Red Nichols, Chauncey Morehouse, Dick McDonough, Carl Kress, Russ Case, Theo Uden Masman, Johnny "Scat" Davis, Stan King, Don Redman, Manny Weinstock, Art Grier, and Bob Effros to name a few, but yet her name goes unheralded in history as a jazz and swing great, unlike many of these men. They were musician's musicians, with a long list of those who admired them—such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Cab Calloway—and those who were influenced by their style, including Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Wynonna Judd, Bette Midler, Manhattan Transfer, Steely Dan, and a long list of "girl groups," including most notably the Andrews Sisters. They were the Beatles of the golden age of jazz, and in fact, they, along with Armstrong and Ellington, led a musical "invasion" of England three decades before the mop-tops invaded America. Believe it or not, today they continue to be widely imitated around the world by musicians and vocalists of all genders, races & cultures. If you enjoy vocal groups in particular, or popular music in general, then you owe a great deal of tribute to The Boswell Sisters. Listen to the timeless quality of their music and take a journey into the personal lives and career of these three musical prodigies of the South. This site—and in far more detail the new, second edition of The Boswell Legacy book—contains information on the Boswell Sisters that does not exist anywhere else, through meticulous study of their private letters, films, records, and other career and personal ephemera. Important information, because it not only gives us clues on the development of a unique and thoroughly enjoyable musical style, but an understanding of our American heritage and culture, and--ultimately--a better understanding of ourselves. The incredible story of The Boswell Sisters. Their story is a multidimensional one, imperative from a musical perspective, but from so many others as well. In addition to the music, this is also a story of rugged individualism and fierce adherence to a vision—despite their gender and the predetermined roles for white middle class females of the time. Consider their celebrity against the backdrop of the Great Depression, a time when their youthfulness, energy, optimism and fresh arrangements of old songs conveyed hope to their audiences. Their perfect harmony symbolized support and togetherness during hard times, as their sisterhood helped them through family tragedy and loss. Finally, there is also the theme of great strength and determination conquering disability. All of these themes echo down through generations of their ancestors. Yet through all their trials and tribulations, the sisters forged ahead for the love of their music—and established an enormously successful career in a very short time, as well as a well-deserved place in music history. As their ancestors before them, the Boswell Sisters were true pioneers--they came upon the new world of syncopated music in the early 1900s just as their families came upon the new world of America three-hundred years before. This new world of music was uniquely American, a melting pot of influences from all over the world—it is called jazz. And the Boswell Sisters’ important contribution to it and to virtually all other varieties of American popular music to follow needs to be noticed, understood and honored at the highest levels of the music and entertainment cultures. This recognition is long overdue. Quotes.
Billboard: “It is generally agreed that the originator of the modern trend of popular songs is Connee Boswell and her sisters, and after whom nearly all vocalists today pattern themselves. It was they who introduced and popularized the style that entails a rearranged second chorus. Almost without exception, popular singers today change the second chorus by pro arrangers to suit their style and a great many have so-called 'coaches' who teach them to do 'tricks' with their second choruses."—Billboard, May 15, 1937, p.13
Dave Dexter: “Born in Minneapolis, all three Andrews girls idolized and, at first, emulated the renowned Boswell Sisters out of New Orleans. ‘The Boswells were the best,’ Patti 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, liner notes from LP, The Best of the Andrews Sisters, MCA, 1977 Downbeat: “Few singers have influenced the development of America’s everyday songs more than Connee Boswell. Still fewer have left so deep an impression upon the interpretation of these songs. No singing group, not even the Rhythm Boys, has had such a hand in shaping our popular music as the Boswell Sisters. “Connee’s influence may be less readily apparent than some, but it has been more pervasive than most. Affecting more than ballads merely, or jump tunes alone, or just the blues, it has permeated every phase of our contemporary dance music. She has never been copied directly. Instead, her influence has been general. Most current singers testify, in one way or another, to the persuasion of Connee’s pioneer work. Won over unconsciously, not like the followers of Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday, her converts may never recognize an original source in Connee. This is largely because her singing depends on no pet tricks, on no favorite licks, thus making it almost impossible to identify any single feature of her style taken over by other vocalists. Whatever applies to Connee as a soloist applies also, of course, to all three girls as a trio. “The Boswell Sisters have never been given proper credit for helping to bring about the advent and subsequent acceptance of swing. …The intro to the trio’s platter When I Take My Sugar To Tea bears a striking resemblance to such later jump numbers as Christopher Columbus. Connee, reviving an old New Orleans memory, wanted to feature a full drum chorus on the trio’s Heebie Jeebies. She was laughed out of the idea, told it would never go….Some of the trio’s unison breaks on Way Back Home antedate the basic riffs of One O’Clock Jump...Yes, the Boswells were well ahead of their time. "No singing group, not even the Rhythm Boys, has had such a hand in shaping our popular music as the Boswell Sisters....The Boswell Sisters have never been given proper credit for helping to bring about the advent and subsequent acceptance of swing.—John Lucas, Cats Hepped by Connie’s Chirping, Downbeat Chicago, October 1944 “Her amazing versatility is the real indication of her ability….Connie can put over any type of tune…blues…ballads…and jump tunes…she uses no tricks….She has never needed them”—John Lucas, Visionary Scoring Put Boswells Over, Downbeat Chicago, Nov. 1, 1944 Goldmine Magazine: "The rapport between these [Boswells] girls and their tough, talented accompanists was, in its day, extraordinary…the trio…admired the men who could blow hot, and encouraged the recording chiefs to let them loose as much as possible…None of this was standard practice, remember in 1931…These were young, respectable white ladies who should have been crooning sweet treatments of innocuous ballads instead messing about with tunes by Clarence and Spencer Williams, Duke Ellington and Fats Waller, blues and interesting pop-songs, making up their own swinging arrangements, and asking for half-time passages here and double-time choruses there, while advising the studios to ‘let the guys alone.’”—Stephen Stroff, Goldmine Magazine, June 22, 1984 James Von Schilling: “Maybe you too will conclude, as I have, that the Boswell Sisters are to vocals what Shakespeare is to literature and Michelangelo is to art: simply the best.”—Jim Von Schilling, Editor, The Boswell Legacy 2nd Edition, March 2024 Melody Maker: “Without question, the Boswells were pioneers—though not the first hot vocal trio known—and streets ahead of all rivals. Their influence spread over subsequent female groups…It was their corporate charm and personality, the exceptional gaiety and variety of their vocal routines which drew me to the London Palladium in July of ’33, when they appeared here for the first time...Connie…was, in many different ways, a real originator of American Music…”—Max Jones, Melody Maker, Brit. Pub. Oct. 1976 Mel Torme: “What sets her scat singing apart from that of so many others is that she sang absolutely in tune. It is difficult to hold pitch when the notes form in your head at lightning speed and come tumbling out of your mouth in scat syllables a microsecond later. With Connee that was never a problem.”—Mel Torme, quoted in First Ladies of Swing, Roy Blount, Jr.; Oxford American magazine, July/August 2000 Michael Brooks: "The Boswell Sisters single-handedly (if a trio can be single-handed) revolutionized close-harmony singing, taking it out of the barbershop and creating a style that is still being followed by the best rock groups of the '70s. For the first time they employed the human voice as a section of the orchestra and not as the means to force musicians into the secondary role of accompanists. "The Boswells never seemed to be satisfied with a song as it was written. Instead, they dug to discover the pure core, slowed it down, speeded it up, worried it between their teeth, fooled around with key changes. They were alchemists who changed base metal into gold and no one else has been able to do it the way they did. Listen, for such a happy blending of talents comes only once in a lifetime.—Michael Brooks, liner notes from The Boswell Sisters, Biograph Records, Inc. LP BLP-C-3, 1972 "And that's where the Boswell Sisters have a firm place in musical history. There were female groups before them and good ones, according to the standards of the day: The Keller Sisters and Lynch, the Brox Sisters, the Ponce Sisters, the Williams Sisters, but they were separate voices singing together. The Boswells were three voices singing as one, three musical brains acting and itner-reacting on one another, revolutionizing the principles of close-harmony vocals.—Michael Brooks, liner notes from Connie Boswell: Sand in my Shoes, MCA/EMI Records, MCFM 2739, 1976 Michael Steinman: "'The Boswell Legacy' does the best job possible of making the mysterious accessible. And it does so from the inside, rather than assembling rumors and constructing hypotheses. It has the depth and intelligence of a scholarly biography with no academic dryness...I don't think a better or more informative book on the Boswells can be written."—Michael Steinman, Jazz Lives, Dec. 14, 2014 Music Charts Magazine: "...Titus has written a valuable book. Because it is based on archival research, it is the most reliable source of information about the sisters' lives and careers... Reading her study in conjunction with listening to the music will lead to an understanding of the sisters' innovations and of why the group was so popular and influential. The recordings of the Boswell Sisters are of lasting value, as is 'The Boswell Legacy.'"—Benjamin Franklin V, Music Charts Magazine Book Review, Nov. 29, 2014 New Liberty Magazine: “I think that Artie Shaw’s rendition is excellent. The double side record on Victor by Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey—one on each side—is also very interesting, but I think one record in particular has been lost in the shuffle and that is one by Victor Young and his Orchestra with the Boswell Sisters. It has a distant and dissident stardust quality.”—Hoagy Carmichael as quoted by Keith Knowlton, The Stardust Trail, New Liberty Magazine, June 1948 Nostalgia Magazine: “Forever after, sisterhood--through all the generations of Andrews, McGuires, and Lennons to come--would attempt to live up to the great Boswellian ideal. Forever after, any three sisters who wanted to make a living in front of the microphone would mimic the close, creamy, all-contralto Boswell sound....Although the Boswell Sisters could live up to their own expectations, nobody else could quite manage it."--Austin Brooke, All in the Family, (Joe Franklin's) Nostalgia Magazine, May 1991 Oxford American Magazine: “…the Bozzies almost never sing the same stanza or chorus of a song the same way twice. They slow down when you think they’re going to rattle along, and vice versa. They seem to be extemporizing merrily, all three of them together, with inimitable fuzzy precision. …On recordings you can hear them trading parts and combining seamlessly in various swinging permutations of one alone, any two together, or one up front with the other two behind…..they could cook with no accompaniment except Martha on piano…..In an era that, compared with ours, was chaste and euphemistic, they could be sweetly, but by no means stickily, spicy and naughty.”--The First Ladies of Swing, Roy Blount, Jr., Oxford American magazine, July/August 2000 Paul Chiten: “This book is the best, most authentic source for getting the scoop on the fascinating Boswell saga, from true insiders. The Boswell Sisters narrative is not just a fascinating and compelling insight into their enormous musical footprint but is testimony to an extremely important and quintessential American story.”—Paul Chiten, The Boswell Legacy 2nd Edition, March 2024. Richard Lamparski: "'The Boswell Sound,' as it is still called in the music business, created a sensation. There had been sister acts before, and many since, but it was these three Southern girls who were able to blend their voices in a way the public never heard before--they merged harmnoy, rhythm and feeling to produce a musical togetherness that has been imitated but never equaled.--Richard Lamparski, Whatever Became Of...? (Volume 1, Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, 1967) Robert Bamberger: "The approach of the Boswell Sisters is so highly inventive and stylized that one may wonder why it continues to delight and to retain such sparkle. Doesn't stylization carry the seeds of its own destruction because its appeal cannot be everlasting? Stylization for its own sake, for the sake of novelty and ephemeral fashion, does indeed pale with time, but stylization founded on sincere expression does not. As well-honed as the music of the Boswells may be, it is not pretentious or contrived, nor did it pander to an image of what anyone supposed jazz singing to be. It is not the shell, but the stuff itself of jazz feeling and expression that time cannot eclipse--and because this is so, the Boswell Sisters are jazz singers for all times.--Robert Bamberger, liner notes from The Boswell Sisters (Volume Two), Biograph Records, Inc., LP BLP-C-16, 1982 Second Line: "The greatest harmonic strength of the trio and, oddly, the greatest weakness…With a slightly curious voice, somewhat sharp and pointed, Martha’s type of vocal stridency was responsible…for the success of the Boswell sound…[it] added or detracted to the overall Boswell blend depending on her voice placement in the arrangements…you can hear Martha’s voice at work in making an arrangement work, her voice placed perfectly in There’ll be Some Changes Made the opening segment. The overall brassy texture is Martha is perfect form…”—Dennis Yancey, Second Line, Summer 1980 Storyville: “The changes of tempo, choruses in minor keys, and plenty of space left for their consistently first class accompanists to show off their prowess, all became Boswell trademarks.”—Chris Ellis, Storyville, 1976 Will Friedwald: “Shout, Sister, Shout’ has been analyzed here not because of its complexities—actually, by Boswell standards, it’s a comparatively simple chart—but because it’s one of the first of seventy-odd masterpieces by the greatest of all jazz vocal groups, the Boswell Sisters. It represents a high-water mark in that most misbegotten of musical forms, a pinnacle that singers had worked for years to attain and would, after 1935, never reach again. “The Boswells start with three gorgeous voices that sound even better when raised together. If you listen to isolated bars of a Boswell performance, you’ll hear these three separate lines whenever they want you to, while at other times they mesh into one indistinguishable ensemble. The standard road map of their voice, which makes the claim that Vet sang the high parts, Martha the low ones, and Connee assuming the lead and solo voices, doesn’t always work since the blend is so flexible the sisters don’t have to stay in the same places. “They can move between the strict trio, the trio with Connee firmly in the lead, Connee in solo while the other two do something else or drop out entirely, Connee with one of the other sisters (such as Connee and Martha’s give-and-take on ‘Whad’ja Do to Me?,’ an even finer female duet than Bessie and Clara Smith’s ‘Far Away Blues’), and endless variations on these ideas. Their shifting parts never jar the listener or sound anything less than completely natural, even when they revoice their material to the point where they all but totally reharmonize their songs. The harmonic substitutions often incorporate blue notes, with one of the three girls hitting a minor third or an augmented fourth that just wouldn’t be there if they were paying the strictest attention to European harmonic theory (this at a time when even most classic blues singers avoided the blue notes entirely). “Too bad no group came along to succeed the Boswells as succinctly as the Bozzies took up where the Rhythm Boys left off. Too bad that in the fifty years since then no group has ever replaced them or beat them at what they did best.”—Will Friedwald, Jazz Singing, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990 |
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Copyright © 2014-2026 Kyla M. Titus. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2014-2026 Kyla M. Titus. All Rights Reserved.