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Although I've known him all these years and he is so proud of me that he calls me "Little Louis," I can’t get over the fact that he was grown up when I was small, and I still call him "Mr. Armstrong."
-	Valaida Snow, 1934

Valaida - pronounced "vah-LAY-duh" - is making some pardonable hyperbole here. She was in fact a contemporary of Louis. He was born in 1901 and she in 1904. So when Louis was "grown up" - that is, when he reached the age of 21 - Valaida was 18. Scarcely a little girl.

But Louis did praise Valaida's trumpet playing and supposedly he lauded her as the second best player he knew.¹ She also worked with some of the biggest names - Eubie Blake, Earl Hines, Ethyl Waters - and from an early age she toured abroad. Like Louis she was also an excellent singer, but unlike Louis her voice was smooth and high. From the 1930's she was regularly featured in the news, even landing stories about her on the front page.

And yet, from a perusal of a dozen of Louis's many biographies, only one mentioned Valaida at all. And even then she was cited only in passing by saxophonist Bud Freemen when he listed some of musicians in the bands of Chicago's Sunset Cafe. In biographies of other jazz figures, she's rarely mentioned.

So why was Valaida forgotten? The answer is - like the proverbial doctor's prescription - a combination of ingredients. Certainly Valaidia lived in a time when female jazz instrumentalists were rare. True, in some early bands the pianists might be women - such as Lil Hardin in King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band - and there were many female vocalists. But it was the guys who usually played the horns.² So it was too easy to dismiss Valaida as a novelty act.

But - and before we go further - it's best to learn a bit about Valaida herself.

Valaida was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Sources have given various dates ranging from 1900 to 1909. But 1904 is what the birth records and US Census attest. Her given name was Valada - no "i" - and it's presumed both spellings were pronounced vah-LAY-duh.

Valaida (as we'll continue to call her) was part of a performing family. Her mom and dad, Etta and John, were vaudeville performers³ who went from town to town taking whatever the audiences would pay. By the age of six, Valaida was a full-time member of the act and in 1919 they had moved west and were playing in Texas. Valiada had two siblings, a sister Lavada and a brother Aviator (their parents obviously preferred non-standard names). But the troop also included kids that had been adopted into the family.

The kids mostly sang and danced. On the other hand, Valaida was a musical prodigy and became what we now call a multi-instrumentalist. Among her skills were violin, piano, and trombone. But at some point she picked up the trumpet. It wasn't just the novelty of a small girl playing a brass instrument - even as an adult Valaida never broke much above five feet - but she played with a strong and mature sound that grabbed attention.

Valaida's performances went beyond her musical skills. While still young she was billed as "The Handcuff Queen" and performed a Houdini act. From the descriptions this may have been the "Metamorphosis" trick where she would be handcuffed, placed in a large bag, and then locked in a truck. Then another kid would stand on the trunk and lift a curtain over her head. Then when the curtain was lowered it would be Valaida standing free and the other kid would be found in the trunk, bagged and handcuffed.

Despite what seems like a fun way to make a living, it wasn't. Quite the contrary. The life was grueling and exhausting and Valaida never spoke well of her father and hardly mentioned her mother.

Her dad died - possibly killed in a dispute - before 1919. Soon Valaida married Sam Lanier, another vaudevillian. Valaida was only 15 and the marriage was not a success. Evidently their disputes were physical and after one particularly horrific episode, she left her husband. Her mother was then back living in Chattanooga and according to Valaida her mom had the marriage annulled.

Valaida returned to show business, again this was mostly singing and dancing, and appeared in touring shows that ranged from the Northeast to the Midwest. One of her acts was to set up seven pairs of different types of shoes - from slippers to tap shoes to Dutch wooden clogs to Russian boots - and dance in each pair.

But she also played the trumpet. It was probably in 1921 and when she was at the Grand Theater in Chicago that her playing came to the attention of a 19 year old Louis Armstrong, then seconding with King Oliver. By 1923, Valaida was being mentioned by the critics. If not the star of the shows, she was a major player.

Valaida's marriages are difficult to keep track of and the reports have become garbled. In 1924, we read she married a second time to another performer, Billy Higgins, who was sixteen years her senior. But within a year there were reports of yet another spouse named Russel Smith. Both nuptials seem to have been particularly ephemeral and soon Valaida was back performing as a single woman.

In 1926 Valaida got a call from the famous band leader Jack Carter. She had sung with him before, and he now asked if she would like to perform at the Hotel Plaza.

That's the Hotel Plaza in Shanghai.

Shanghai China.

Naturally she took the offer (the pay was about $90 a week - and we're talking Roaring Twenties dollars). Except for a brief zip back to the States, the band remained in China until 1928. After the Shanghai show closed, they traveled through the Far East - Hongkong, Thailand (then called Siam), Singapore, Java, Myanmar (i. e., Burma), India, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka).

All in all Valaida remained in the Far East for over two years, and after leaving Asia she had hoped to stay in Europe. Bookings though were few, but at least she saw the sights of Paris with Ethyl Waters.

Fortunately Valaida never had to worry about grass growing under her feet and back in America she got an offer from producer Lew Leslie. She would have a five year contract, and she would not just be one star of the show. She'd be the star. This was her first really big break and she returned to New York on October 30, 1929.

The trouble was that the day before the US Stock Market had crashed. Lew decided his show had to be postponed for a year. Rather than wait around Valaida joined another tour. That kept her going for a year. Then came a call from Louis Douglas, yet another impresario. Did she want a job? And in France? Valaida headed out.

Once more Valaida was one of the stars and the critics reacted favorably - not only about her singing and dancing, but her trumpet playing. The show toured other countries including Belgium and the Netherlands. It closed in 1930, and Valaida returned to America.

The next year came one of her biggest shows to date. She was cast in another of Lew Leslie's productions, Rhapsody in Black (the title being obvious word play on George Gershwin's "symphonic" jazz composition Rhapsody in Blue). She was now billed as Valaida without the last name. Yes, like other stars that really hit the big time - Madonna, Cher, Charo, Liberace, Fabian, and (of course) Elvis - all you needed was her first name and you knew who she was.

But still Valaida wasn't the big star of the show. That was Ethyl Waters. Officially, that is. But much of the show had been crafted to showcase Valada's talents. She would dance, play the piano (while singing a song in Russian), conduct the band, and of course play the trumpet. Although Valaida's performances were well received, some critics pointed out that there needed to be more of Ethyl in a show where she was supposed to star. By all accounts Ethyl was no more amused than Queen Victoria, and the two women didn't get along well after that. Valaida left the show in 1932.

Valaida was now making big money. She always dressed to the nines and sported the finest adornments. She hired a chauffeur to drive her around in a Mercedes and she also bought a pet monkey.

It was in 1933 that Valaida began recording. Her first record was with pianist Earl Hines - and something to note for future reference - it was made in Europe. She and Earl became good friends and rumors started that they were very good friends.

As you may guess, Valaida's performances were quite physical and could be so vigorous that they were not always in her best interest. One of her dances was so well received the crowd demanded a repeat. After her encore, she went backstage and passed out.

Another time she had been in an accident where she had cut her head so badly that it required stitches. Earl Hines said she was back performing before the cut had healed and during a song she had been blowing the trumpet so hard that one of the stitches broke.

It was also in 1933 that Valaida married yet again to a young man named Ananias Berry - in fact, nine years her junior young. The marriage ceremony - this time it's better documented - was in Media, Pennsylvania, a suburb about ten miles west of Philadelphia. Nyas - as his friends called him - was the oldest of the famous Berry Brothers acrobatic dance act. From the remaining films clips, we see the act was pretty impressive, perhaps only overshadowed by The Nicholas Brothers.

But Ananias's dad wasn't so sanguine when his son married a - quote - "much older woman" - unquote, and he looked around for ways to sabotage the marriage. After some checking, he found that Valaida's first marriage with Sam Lanier had not been annulled after all. Therefore, he said, Valaida was guilty of bigamy, a federal crime.

From here the story becomes complex to say the least. You'll read some accounts that say Valaida was quickly acquitted. Well, yes, a court in Washington Heights in Manhattan did so. But she still had to appear in court in Pennsylvania. Evidently Sam himself was involved in this case and it appears that Valaida spent at least some time in jail pending trial. There she told the judge that she had thought Sam had died. It was only after she married Nyas that she learned her ex was not-so-ex.

This statement not only contradicted the account that her marriage with Sam had been annulled, but effectively acknowledged that the marriage was still current. Valaida was found guilty and fined $100. The judge cautioned her not to live with Nyas until the first marriage was officially dissolved. Valaida agreed to the stipulation but she and Nyas immediately went to Chicago where she was booked for three months at the Grand Terrace Cafe (also called the Sunset Cafe). According to some accounts, she and Nyas did officially marry, but whatever the circumstances, they later went their separate ways.

In 1935 and after the run at the Grand Terrace ended, Valaida went to London to appear in a new show. There she began calling herself "Satchmo's⁴ Pupil" and "Little Louis" saying that Louis himself had bestowed on her the titles. For his part, Louis, who was also in Europe, seems to have voiced no objection to her claims. Valaida also said that Louis would invite her to sit in with his band, and it was in England that she also made her first records playing the trumpet. She was billed - inevitably - as "The Queen of the Trumpet", and was back in New York in the summer of 1936 appearing at the Apollo Theater.

Almost as soon as her performances at the Apollo were over, Valaida was booked for another extended European tour. But she found times had changed. Europe in 1936 was a tense place. After the Olympics that year, the grandson of Maria Schicklgruber began making its infamous territorial demands. By 1938 Germany had invaded Austria and Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland and had instigated attacks against Jewish citizens of both Germany and Austria in the infamous Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) pogrom. Other ethnic minorities were being targeted including those of African descent. By the end of 1939, almost all European countries were occupied. One that was not was Denmark.

At this point, Valaida's story becomes very complicated.

One account gleaned from various newspapers is that Valaida was in Paris in early June, 1940. Fortunately she escaped four days before the Germans marched into the city. She then traveled to Egypt, Sweden, and then to Denmark. But there in 1941, she was arrested along with nearly 500 other Americans. She was imprisoned in a concentration camp, placed in solitary confinement, and each morning taken from her cell and given 15 lashes. She was placed on a starvation diet of three potatoes a day, and her weight dropped to 76 pounds. Then after 18 months of harrowing confinement she was part of a negotiated prisoner exchange. A story printed in October 1943 reported that she had been recently released from the camp and was back in America.

But then there's the following story. This is from a Chicago newspaper on June 29, 1941.

Deported — Valaida Snow, versatile actress, commedienne and musician, from Copenhagen after a Danish woman friend was reported to have been found dead in her room.

Hm. Something seems amiss.

Well, then, let's go back and look at some more contemporary newspapers and documents. Then perhaps we can come up with an alternative scenario.

And it seems we can.

As wasn't uncommon then or now, Valaida had been taking one of the prescription opoid pain killers. This was oxycodone which was marketed under the name Eukodal. Although she had obtained the drug legitimately and by prescription - remember her acts could be quite physical - a local pharmacist continued to give her the drug on credit even after the prescription had run out.

Then on February 15, 1941, dancer Henny Melander was found in Valadia's room and "in distress". Henny was alive - the news story was wrong on that account - but she died later in a hospital apparently by an overdose of oxycodone.

The official inquiry exonerated Valaida, but the irregular dealings of the pharmacist became known. Valaida was then taken into custody and held at Vestre Faengsel prison, Copenhagen's main jail. After some time she was sent to the Imperial Hospital, a transfer probably facilitated by the assistance of Danish police commissioner.

After a total of ten weeks in custody the police escorted Valaida to a ferry and took her across the Kattegat, the Danish-Swedish channel, to Göteborg, Sweden The Swedish newspapers specifically mentioned her presence there on May 25. Five days later, she and nearly 200 other Americans were placed on the SS Gripsholm and after a voyage of 12 days docked in New Jersey. Back in New York, in June 1941, Valaida gave an interview to reporter Julius Adams which appeared in Harlem's Amsterdam News.

Obviously there are some discrepancies in the timeline and the events reported.

We do know that in 1940 Valdaida was indeed performing in Denmark. And it was on April 9, that the Germans invaded the country. That times were tense is not to be denied. The German occupied the country and some Danish citizens who had voiced anti-Nazi sentiments (such as physicist Niels Bohr) were in danger of arrest.

Technically, though, the Danish government managed to wrangle favorable terms with the occupiers. Denmark was to be a "protectorate" of Germany and officially the German authority was limited to guarding against an invasion by Great Britain. Civil police administration was to remain under Danish control, and even more amazingly, Denmark was permitted to remain neutral in the War. The government was even able to resist German demands to pass anti-Jewish legislation. This gave time for most of the country's Jewish citizens to escape before the Germans changed their mind and instituted a full military occupation - which they did in 1943.

But - an important point to remember - in 1940 America and Germany were not at war. So American citizens in Denmark were not enemy aliens. As long as they behaved themselves, they were not to be detained or otherwise disturbed.

Yet in some papers we read that Valaida was made a prisoner and was only released not long before October 1943. But in others we read she returned to America in 1941 and gave an interview to a New York paper in June.

So actually was going on?

One historian has suggested what we see was a way for the Danish government to protect an American celebrity who was popular with the public and yet whose position was potentially extremely precarious. It was generally accepted that America would eventually be drawn into the war and the last thing anyone wanted was for Valaida to get stuck in a country where, favorable terms or not, the Germans could ultimately call the shots. So the Danish government took advantage of the situation to get her out of the country and fast. That she later publicly thanked the Danish police commissioner for his kindness adds some corroboration to his scenario.

What can't be denied is that back home Valaida worked hard for the war effort and didn't stop just because the war ended. In late August 1945, she appeared with Fletcher Henderson on the Armed Services Radio Network where she played the "St. Louis Blues". This was the last time she was recorded as an instrumentalists.

But the war was over and Valaida was famous - she was even featured in an ad for the popular Royal Crown (RC) Cola. She appeared at the major theaters, cut more records, and appeared in a short film, Patience and Fortitude.

OK. With all this, why isn't Valaida better remembered?

Well, as we said, there's a combination of ingredients.

A fact not always appreciated is that enduring fame for musicians arises because they've left recordings of sufficient quantity to reach the modern listeners. Earlier artists like Frederick Letsch (trombone), Arabella Goddard (piano), and even a superstar like Wilma Neruda (violin), are little known today. Performers who left no recordings like Frederich Chopin, Franz Liszt, and even a couple of chaps named Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Mozart remained famous mainly because they were also composers. Without his many and popular recordings, even the great Enrico Caruso would now be nothing more than a name dispersed throughout various masters theses.

But, but, you say. Valaida did leave us recordings. So surely their lack can't be why Valaida - as some put it - has been relegated to being one of the unsung stars of the Swing Era.

Well, it is true that Valaida did leave us some records, but not that many. One discography lists only 11 singles cut during her lifetime. Some of her records weren't even distributed in America. Her 1933 recording with Earl Hines was never released in the United States and her playing the "St. Louis Blues" on the Armed Service radio broadcast wasn't made available for fifty years. Her trumpet recordings were first made in Europe and the only American recordings released under her own name were produced after the War. So for all practical purposes when she finally signed a contract in 1945 with the Bel-Tome label, Valaida was just emerging as an American recording artist. And Bel-Tome was not a major producer. Instead it was - to quote a popular informational website - a small independent label, and for Valaida it only released six sides.

By why didn't Valaida record more? Well, just as she was getting off in this new phase of her career, the times were a-changing. For one thing at the end of the War came the demise of the Big Bands. Jazz soon became synonymous with Be-Bop, a convoluted and complex style that left singers, dancers, and musicians versed in the Swing tradition high and dry.

Then there was an even newer musical genre was in the works. The number of musicians in the band was drastically pared down and trumpet and other brass players started falling out of the lineups. This left the groups with a scaled down instrumentation of guitar, drums, string bass, and perhaps a saxophone. In the new music, called Rhythm and Blues, the musicians would still take solos, but the real stars were the singers.

Although by the late 40's R&B was becoming the new popular music, there was a difference in the common perception from the earlier Swing. Older Americans heard the new music and shuddered at the new and raucous sounds and - we have to be honest - at the adulation the young white fans were heaping on the many black R&B artists.

But if they thought that was bad ...

In 1952 a group of country and western singers from Philadelphia called the Saddlemen doffed their cowboy hats and boots for prom jackets and bow ties. Although a lot of their songs were pretty much the same music, they changed their name to Bill Halley and His Comets.

Yes. Rock and Roll had arrived.

Today with octogenarian rockers gyrating across the outdoor stages, it's easy to forget how rock and roll helped brew a generation gap - a gap widened by the rise of a new phenomenon - the American teenager.

You may read that the word "teenager" was invented in the 1950's - maybe even the late 1950's. But a perusal of popular publications reveals the word was actually being used in the modern sense as early as the 1940's.

But teenagers in the closing days of the Swing Era wanted to be like their parents. So when the girls got gussied up, they would wear the most fashionable blouses and stylish dresses. The guys would don their best suit coats and ties (they also wore trousers, of course).

The dress-like-the-grown-ups practice continued into the 50's but then things began to change. Guys switched to duck-tail hair styles and crewcuts. Ties came off and blue jeans went on. The girls began tying back their hair into ponytails and squeezing themselves into tight slacks and pedal pushers.

And the music had changed for sure. In 1940 the top song of the year had been "I'll Never Smile Again" by Tommy Dorsey. In 1950 it was "Goodnight Irene" by the folk group The Weavers. In 1955, it was "Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White" by Perez Prado, "The Mambo King".

And in 1956?

It was "All Shook Up" by - yes - Elvis Presley.

So as the second half of the 50's moved in, kids no longer wanted to be like adults. Not in the way they looked, not in they way they talked, and especially not in the music they listened to. Jazz and Swing? That's old hat and corny - and for grown-ups.

And Valaida - who was over 40 - was a grown-up.

Still, things might have turned out differently. In 1943 Valaida married Earl Edwards, who was one of the innovators of Rhythm and Blues. A writer as well as a performer, he co-wrote "Duke of Earl" which reached #1 when sung by Gene Chandler. So who knows? Even though she was a grown-up, maybe Valaida would have become one of the top R&B singers.

But on March 30, 1956, age 51, while Valaida was singing at the Palace Theater in New York she suffered a brain hemorrhage . She collapsed and was taken backstage. But she died before she could be transferred to a hospital.

References and Further Reading

High Hat, Trumpet, and Rhythm: The Life and Music of Valaida Snow, Mark Miller, Mercury Press, 2007.

Louis Armstrong: An American Genius, James Lincoln Collier, Oxford University Press, 1983.

The World of Earl Hines, Stanley Dance, Scribners, 1977.

"Valaida Snow, A Sensation in Europe", Black German Cultural Society, February 7, 2014.

"Valaida Now Held on Bigamy Charge", Ivan Sharp, Detroit Tribune, June 24, 1933, p. 1.

"Fiery Facts About Valaida Snow, The Unsung Jazz Heroine", Paul Pitura, Factinate.

"What's In the News", Sunday Chicago Bee, June 29, 1941, Section 1, p. 3.

"Bruatlity of Nazis Told by Valaida Snow", The Michigan Chronicle, September 25, 1943, p. 17.

"Nazi Victim", The Michigan Chronicle, September 25, 1943, p. 17.

"Valaida Snow", Jackson [Mississippi] Advocate, October 16, 1943, p 7.

"Bowery Torch Songstress Tells of Nazi Prison Story", Detroit Evening Times, December 5, 1944.

"Valaida Snow", Discogs.

"Valaida Snow", Jayna Brown, Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory Volume 16, 2006.

"How Django Reinhardt Survived World War II", Lisa Wade, Sociological Images, March 12, 2012.

"Teen-age Girls: They Live in a Wonder World of Their Own", Life Magazine, December 11, 1944, p. 91.

"Rock-'N'-Roll: A Frenzied Teen-Age Music Craze Kicks Up a Big Fuss", Life Magazine, April 18, 1955, pp. 166 - 168.

"Bill Haley and The Saddlemen", Discogs.

"Bill Haley and His Comets", Discogs.

"Valaida Snow", Internet Movie Database.

"Valaida Snow", Find-a-Grave, May 9, 2003.