FREE EVENTS | TICKETED EVENTS | PERFORMERS AND SPEAKERS
SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES | ABOUT THE BOSWELL SISTERS

THE BOSWELL SISTERS CENTENNIAL

November 30 — December 3, 2007
New Orleans, Louisiana

Martha, Connie and Vet Boswell emerged from New Orleans in the late 20s to become one of the great stars of 1930s radio. So popular and pervasive was the Boswell Sisters' style that they were imitated by sister acts for decades. Their early New York recording sessions were a training ground for the future kings of swing. Connie Boswell's softly sung contralto showcased a range of emotion that singers continue to emulate. Their arrangements, which they wrote themselves, showed their competence as musicians and their genius for completely reworking a song.

There are few women in jazz remembered today, fewer still whose popularity and influence approached that of the Boswell Sisters in the 1930s. In jazz revivals of the past the focus has been placed on many other deserving musicians. Unfortunately the Boswell Sisters were seldom singled out, and their role in the shaping of popular music was overlooked by many musicians and scholars.

But the Boswell Sisters' music speaks for itself. Now, with attention from performers, historians, academics, and a new generation of fans discovering the Boswells via the internet, their originality and hard swinging musicianship is gaining the respect and appreciation it enjoyed nearly eighty years ago.

Amazon Honor System Click Here to Pay Learn More

December 3, 2007 would have been Connie Boswell's 100th birthday. In honor of this milestone, the Boswell Sisters Centennial Committee is partnering with New Orleans Jazz National Park, the Louisiana State Museum, The Midlo Center at the University of New Orleans, Snug Harbor, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation, Inc., and Bozzies.com for a weekend of live music, seminars, labs and more to honor the innovation, influence and achievements of the Boswell Sisters.

Download printable schedule

FREE EVENTS

We want everyone in Southern Louisiana to have a chance to hear just what the Boswell Sisters are all about. With the generous assistance of the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, the Louisiana State Museum and a grant from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation, Inc., we are privileged to present a series of free seminars and performances during the weekend.

  • All’s Well That’s Boswell, The Pfister Sisters bring the music of the Boswells to life
    Saturday, December 1,

    New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park
    916 N. Peters Street
    2 - 4 PM
  • Presentations and Seminars on the Boswell's music and influence
    Sunday, December 2

    The Cabildo
    Louisiana State Museum
    701 Chartres St., The Arsenal Room
    9 AM - noon.
  • Bozfest
    Sunday, December 2,

    The Cabildo steps
    Louisiana State Museum
    701 Chartres St.
    Noon - 4:00 PM: featuring:
          The Stolen Sweets
          Shout Sisters
          The Pfister Sisters
          Jan Shapiro
          YazooZazz

TICKETED EVENTS

ALL-INCLUSIVE VIP TICKETS NOW ON SALE!

Admission to all ticket events included, plus passes to exclusive listening labs where rare, never released recordings and seldom seen film and video footage will be screened, Plus free happy hour hospitality suite on the balcony. Convenient online purhase with PayPal.

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE VIP TICKETS

  • Listening Labs: VIP ticket holders will enjoy a hospitality suite on Frenchmen Street as they listen to rare recordings and interviews of the Boswell Sisters and Connee Boswell.
  • Get Your Boz On Party: The Boswell Sisters Centennial is teaming up with the Steamboat Natchez to "launch" the weekend's events with a dinner cruise on the Mississippi. Enjoy the jazz of the Dukes of Dixieland along with the Stolen Sweets and the Pfister Sisters and dine on genuine riverboat cuisine. Vet Boswell said if she ever came back to New Olreans she wanted it to be via riverboat - so come on you old man river, come on! Reservations for individual tickets may be made at http://www.steamboatnatchez.com/index.html. Cruise tickets are available at our Lighthouse Ticket Office, located behind Jax Brewery in the French Quarter. Hours of operation are 10:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. Reservations can also be made toll free at 800-233-2628. All advance reservations must be prepaid with a credit card and cancellations require 48 hour notice.
  • Big Boz Bus Tour: The home they grew up in, the school they attended, the radio station where they made one of their first broadcasts, the Roosevelt Hotel where they entertained Hughey Long, the music store where they made the recording "I'm Gonna Cry", the ballroom where they made their triumphant return home in October 1932: these buildings have survived despite the ravages of Katrina. The story of the Boswell Sisters in New Orleans comes alive as we drive and walk through the streets they called home. David McCain and Cynthia Lucas will take you back through time in the comfort of a modern coach bus Saturday, December 1, 9 AM - Noon. Tickets are $25 and may be purchsed individually at the bus stop on North Peters Street across from the French Market from 8:45 - 9:00 a.m.
  • The Stolen Sweets at Snug Harbor: The Stolen Sweets, a hot new ensemble from Portland, Oregon, give a gypsy jump to the music and arrangements of the Boswell Sisters songs and more. Shout Sister, the original cast of the Old Globe Production of "The Boswell Sisters" will open with their homage to our ladies of Camp Street. Saturday, December 1, 8:00 and 10:00. Door price is $20. Please call 504-949-0696 to purchase advance tickets or visit them at 626 Frenchmen St.
  • Swing Cinema at Snug Harbor: The Boswell Renaissance started right here in New Orleans in the 1970s. This reunion unites Boswell Biographer David McCain with the Pfister Sisters in a night of song, movie clips, and blasts from the past. Randall Riley's Life is a Song: Connee Boswell, will be the featured flick. This event is not to be missed. Sunday, December 2. Door price is $15. Please call 504-949-0696 to purchase advance tickets or visit them at 626 Frenchmen St.
  • Connee's 100th Birthday Bash: The week before she died she wrote in a poem, "Remember me when the sun shone brightly." We are going to put the sun back in the sky as we celebrate the talent, the genius, the will and the courage of Connee Boswell on her 100th birthday. Luncheon at the Marigny Brasserie, 640 Frenchmen at Royal.

SPEAKERS AND PERFORMERS

We have gathered some of the top Boswell scholars and musicians in the world for the Boswell Sisters Centennial.

David W. McCain

David McCain first read about the Boswell Sisters before actually hearing them. But the description he read was intriguing enough to foster an almost lifelong interest. Richard Lamparski, author of the Whatever Became Of? book series, had described the Andrews Sisters as the most famous of all harmony groups, but noted they never matched the “perfect harmony” of their idols, the Boswells.

Born in 1953 in Portsmouth, Virginia but raised in New Orleans and nearby St. Charles Parish, David McCain was “knocked out” by the Boswell Sister's talent, soulful, quirky edge and their harmony. When McCain finished a stint in the US Navy and returned to Louisiana in late 1977, he wrote to Vet Boswell. Vet had seen an article he had written earlier that year about his discovery of the “Boswell Sound” in the New Orleans Jazz Club's quarterly, The Second Line. By that time, she was the only Boswell left, and she graciously agreed to a meeting at her home in Peekskill, New York. So began a long and harmonious friendship. Vet described the Boswell history directly to McCain, which he meticulously documented and further substantiated with his own research into all media—print, film, radio and television.

Currently collaborating with Vet's daughter, Chica Minnerly, on a Boswell Sisters biography, McCain is author of liner notes for several Boswell Sisters CDs, as well as notes and research for a CD on yet another jazzy Louisiana songbird, Miss Teddy Grace) and resides in northwestern New Jersey in the town of Washington, near the scenic Delaware Water Gap area.

Dr. Laurie Stras

Laurie Stras studied harpsichord, piano and singing at the Royal College of Music, and gained her doctorate from the University of London in 1995. Before returning to postgraduate studies, she pursued a freelance career as both singer and keyboard player, including four years in the Royal National Theatre Company as Musical Director for both touring and repertory productions. She has two main areas of research: sixteenth-century Italian vocal music and twentieth-century popular music. Her particular interests in both fields include female performers and vocality, performance practice and source studies. Current projects include a study of Connie Boswell and the Boswell Sisters, an edited book on 1960s girl singers, and a series of articles on the Ferrarese priest-composer Lodovico Agostini.

Laurie acts as consultant to a number of performing groups in both early music and heritage jazz, and is co-director of the early music ensemble Musica Secreta. Her most recent publication, “White Face, Black Voice: Race, Gender, and Region in the Music of the Boswell Sisters,” is featured in this quarter's Journal of the Society for American Music.

The Pfister Sisters

The Pfister Sisters have delighted audiences with their sweet hot jazz harmonies since 1979. They were singled out in 1981 by Variety as one of the best new acts of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and 20 years later, their 2001 Jazz Fest appearance was dubbed “sublime” and “sparkling.”

Holley Bendtsen, Debbie Davis, Yvette Voelker and Amasa Miller comprise one of the few groups that represent the New Orleans swing era, with their recreation of The Boswell Sisters arrangements, and the only act featuring vocal jazz harmony.

The Pfisters have sung with the Neville Brothers at Angola State Prison, with Linda Rondstadt and Jimmy Buffet at the New Orleans Artists Against Homelessness and Hunger concerts, and with Maxene Andrews (yes, of the Andrews Sisters) on the wing of an airplane.

Jan Shapiro

Jan Shapiro is an experienced professional pop and jazz vocalist. She is presently the Chair of the Voice Department at Berklee College of Music in Boston, She will demonstrate her National Endowment for the Arts research project on Connee Boswell and the Boswell Sisters on DVD–including interviews with Maxene Andrews, Garvin Bushell and others. Last spring, Shapiro finally carved out the necessary time to plan a recording, her first since the late 90s. She tested the waters with a series of gigs in her native St. Louis, trying out material and getting her chops up. She arrived at a carefully chosen repertoire of standards by Gershwin, Ellington, and Berlin. And she enlisted several of her Berklee colleagues - Tim Ray on piano, guitarist John Baboian, bassist John Repucci, and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington - for the Boston session that resulted in her new CD "Back to Basics."

Shout Sister

They played Martha, Connie and Vet in the 2001 Old Globe production of "The Boswell Sisters." But even after the show closed, these three busy performers "Just Couldn't Say Goodbye." They began performing as "Shout Sister" and are headed back to the studio to record more of the of the tunes made famous by those syncopating sisters from New Orleans.

There was unanimous acclaim for the three performers who played the roles of the Boswell Sisters in the San Diego show. Veteran actresses and singers Amy Pietz (Martha), Elizabeth Ward Land (Connie) and Michelle Duffy (Vet) immersed themselves in the sound of the Boswell Sisters music and produced a “rich signature style, the period manners and the sisterly dynamic of the influential 1930s trio.”

Each of these women enjoys successful careers as entertainers that take them in very different directions. Michelle Duffy has played stages across continents and has sung in everything from the San Francisco Opera to Top 40s Dance and Funk bands. Land has appeared on and off Broadway, been a featured soloist with Michael Crawford in “The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber,” and recently finished a run of the musical “Sister Act”. Amy Pietz is probably best known for her work in “Caroline in the City” for which she received a SAG nomination for Best Actress, but she has made appearances in a score of other television shows and is taking a break from her current CW series “Aliens in America” to be part of the Centennial.

The Stolen Sweets

The Stolen Sweets perform vocal jazz arrangements inspired by New Orleans favorites, The Boswell Sisters, one of the hottest girl groups of the 1930s. Comprised of vocalists Jen Bernard, Lara Michell and Erin Sutherland and string syncopators Keith Brush, Pete Krebs, and David Langenes, The Sweets deliver a unique brand of vintage swing jazz, dishing up abundant doses of coy stage antics and sideways glances as they play.

The Sweets' ability to transport audiences to the early days of jazz has already earned them a sizable and colorful fan base in their native Portland and beyond. Their CD “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” was released last year and captures the unique and fun-loving spirit of this delightful west-coast ensemble.

YazooZazz

This Arlington, Virginia group has been singin' and swingin' since 1979 when two young singers "discovered" the perfect harmony of our ladies of Camp Street. One of the singers married a band leader and the group is now part of the Tom Cunningham Orchestra. This capital crew will entertain Sunday on the steps of the Cabildo with backing from a traveling troupe of TCO musicians. It will be their first appearance in New Orleans and they are jazzed to be in the city where it all began. The Boswell Sisters Centennial is equally excited to have the superb swing stylings of YazooZazz in its salute to Martha, Connee and Vet.

Randall Riley

Randall Riley has collected Connie Boswell's entire discography and had the good luck to procure her private collection including home recordings and safety acetates. It is a natural obsession for a man who has created a business, The Swing Shift, that specializes in the remastering of shellac and vinyl records. The multi-talented Mr. Riley has completed a short documentary about the life of Connie Boswell that was most recently shown at a Boswell Sisters symposium at the University of Texas. “Connee Boswell: Life is a Song” will be repriised for the Centennial.

SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES

Sponsorship opportunities are still available and tax-deductible contributions in support of the Boswell Sisters Centennial may be made to the University of New Orleans Foundation, Midlo Center. For additional information, please contact BoswellCentennial@gmail.com

ABOUT THE BOSWELL SISTERS

The Boswell Sisters (Martha, Connie and Helvetia) were three talented New Orleans musicians who parlayed a childhood of classical music education into a ground-breaking career as jazz harmony singers. Raised at 3937 Camp Street in Uptown, New Orleans, the sisters honed their craft by performing at schools, club events, Christmas parties and fundraisers, and the city's first radio stations. By 1925 they recorded their first songs for Victor Records in New Orleans and got their big break when a national act cancelled at the local Orpheum Theater and they were hired as a replacement.

The Boswell Sisters left New Orleans in 1928 and their jazz harmony singing catapulted them to international fame. Backed by musicians like the Dorsey Brothers, Bunny Berrigan, Venuti and Lang, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw and the orchestras of Victor Young and Jimmy Grier, the Sisters dominated the airwaves between 1931 and 1936.

Beginning with their own national radio show in 1930 and later alternating with the Mills Brothers as guests on Bing Crosby's syndicated show, they became the sound to lighten the heart of the Depression. They made movies, played Broadway and toured Europe. They cut hit songs on the Brunswick label and were among the small stable of stars that Jack Kapp used to launch Decca Records.

Their influence was acknowledged by artists as diverse as Crosby himself, the Andrews Sisters, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, Harry Belafonte and Wynonna Judd.

Although influential and universally appealing, the Sisters were anything but middle of the road. Their vocal style, repertoire, even their personal circumstances were potential stumbling blocks to success in a society that feared transgressions of gender roles, race, class and (for celebrities) physical perfection. The Boswell Sisters challenged norms with their musical knowledge, their arrangements, their choice of songs, and their performance of race and class. Connie's physical disability (polio-induced paralysis) made her an unlikely candidate for a career that included Broadway, Hollywood and more. They were the top trio in the world when Martha and Helvetia married and retired in 1936.

Connie Boswell continued to perform as a soloist and had many hit records during the late 30s and early 40s. She sang the Oscar nominated “Whispers in the Dark” in the film Artists and Models, and appeared in several movies. She made a great vocal partner with Bing on the Kraft Music Show and recorded a number of hits with him. She also launched the trend of “swinging the classics” with her hit recording of “Martha.”

Denied the opportunity to entertain troops overseas due to her disability, Connie served her country during World War II by singing to soldiers in stateside hospitals. Connie's career took off again in the early 50s with more hits and even a starring role in the 1959 NBC TV series, Pete Kelly's Blues.

By the time Connie retired in 1963, she and her sisters had recorded over 300 songs, sold 70 million records and changed American popular music forever.