Continuing the topics of musicians and July birthdays, today we pay tribute to one of the lesser-known masters of 20th century music and jazz: guitarist, vocalist and guitar builder Mary Osborne.
Born on July 17, 1921 in Minot, North Dakota, Mary Osborne is a legend of the guitar, an under-recorded but mindblowingly talented musician. Here's Mary, on the 1958 DuMont Television Network program, Art Ford's Jazz Party, backing none other than Billie Holiday.
In his excellent article, Mary Osborne: Queen Of The Jazz Guitar, author David Brent Johnson elaborates: It’s perhaps too easy to say that Mary Osborne is an unsung heroine of jazz history, though there's certainly a large degree of truth to such a statement.
A disciple of Charlie Christian, she played with her own subtlety and fire, negotiating the swing-to-bop era of the 1940s with deceptive ease, running the gamut from big bands to R and B and the Nat King Cole-influenced jazz-pop stylings of a trio setting. Some of her finest moments came in all-star and all-women small combos playing the modern jazz of 52nd Street in its Forties heyday.
From the 1950s on Osborne would record as a leader on only a handful of occasions, but her playing only gained in luster, especially on a 1959 date with pianist Tommy Flanagan and drummer Jo Jones. Put the whole notion of gender aside; Mary Osborne was, first and foremost, simply a superlative jazz guitarist.
Wikipedia adds: Osborne was born in Minot, North Dakota, the tenth of eleven children. As early as 3 years of age, she showed an interest in music. Osborne's earliest instruments included piano, ukulele, violin, and banjo. At age nine, she first played the guitar. At ten, she started playing banjo in her father's ragtime band. She also came to be featured on her own radio program, which she would continue to perform on twice weekly until she was fifteen. At twelve she started her own trio of girls to perform in Bismarck, North Dakota. The music she was playing during this time period was largely "hillbilly", or country music, in which the guitar was simply used to accompany her own vocals.
At the age of fifteen, Osborne joined a trio led by pianist Winifred McDonnell, for which she played guitar, double bass, and sang. During this time, she heard Charlie Christian play electric guitar in Al Trent's band at a stop in Bismarck. She was enthralled by his sound, at first mistaking the electric guitar for a saxophone. She said of it, "What impressed everyone most of all was his sense of time. He had a relaxed, even beat that would sound modern even today." Osborne immediately bought her own electric guitar and had a friend build an amplifier.[4] She sat in with Christian, learning his style of guitar.
Later, McDonnell's trio was absorbed into Buddy Rogers's band, after Rogers heard them play in St. Louis. But within a year of the band moving to New York in 1940, the trio broke up and left Rogers's band, having found husbands. She married trumpeter, Ralf Scaffidi in 1942 and had her own radio program on NBC in 1948.
She contributed brilliant jazz guitar to The Beryl Booker Trio, Coleman Hawkins' 52nd Street All Stars, Stuff Smith, and bandleader/pianist/composer Mary Lou Williams.
In the 1940's, she also led her own group, The Mary Osborne Trio, which even sounds fabulous on scratchy 78s!
First read about her on the excellent Unsung Women Of Jazz and Jazz Women Advocates websites. Let's hear more of her sonorous six-string superheroics!
Mary didn't make many records, but those she waxed are incredible.
On the following track, Oops My Lady, she sounds particularly Charlie Christian like; her style reflects the bite and snap in the Benny Goodman Orchestra's guitarist's playing and adapts it into her own sound.
Love Mary's 1960 Warwick Records masterpiece A Girl & Her Guitar. Rocking the 6-string with authority are Mary Osborne (lead) and New Orleans legend Danny Barker (rhythm), backed by Tommy Flanagan (piano), Tommy Potter (bass) and stalwart from Count Basie Orchestra and Lester Young Quintet recordings and tours "Papa Jo" Jones on drums.
Mary played on most of an album by quite the duo of power-packed percussionists: The Mighty Two - Gene Krupa and Louis Bellson.
Ace pianist, bandleader and host of the outstanding NPR radio program Piano Jazz Marian McPartland pays tribute.
Here, in its entirety, is the September 18, 1958 episode of Art Ford’s Jazz Party.
Don't know if any recordings exist of Mary Osborne making the jazz guitar sing on The Jack Sterling Show on NBC radio, or of her appearances on the Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts TV show.
The Mary Osborne IMDB page, is wrong regarding the number of Art Ford’s Jazz Party appearances, claims she was on the 1949 Adventures In Jazz series and ABC-TV's late-night program The Joey Bishop Show. Don't know if Mary made any other television appearances. Maybe video footage of these programs does not exist.
While there are not very many instances of Mary Osborne records in the 1960's and 1970's, luckily Ms. McPartland induced her to join an all-star band on one of her albums and record the following tres cool versions of "In A Mellow Tone" and "Now's The Time" live at the Monticello Room in Rochester, NY on June 30, 1977.
Mary and her husband relocated to Bakersfield, CA in the early 1960's and formed a company, first known as Rosac Electronics Company, then Osborne Guitar Company and Osborne Sound Laboratories, that built guitars, electric basses and amplifiers. I'll bet these guitars sound great.
For more info, read, in addition to the aforementioned article by David Brent Johnson (prolific jazz program host of WFIU Public Radio), the following musical career overview and bio penned by Jim Carlton for Vintage Guitar.com.
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