Clora Bryant
| Clora Bryant | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 30, 1927 Denison, Texas, United States |
| Genres | Jazz |
| Occupation(s) | Trumpeter |
| Instruments | Trumpet |
| Years active | 1944-66 |
Clora Bryant (born May 30, 1927, in Denison, Texas) is an American jazz trumpeter and as a young girl she fell in love with music and classic southern fish fries. Music came easy for Bryant and as a child she sang in her church’s choir, played piano, and of course the trumpet. Although her mother passed when she was three her father raised her and supported her music career from the very beginning. Her father would take her to Jazz concerts growing up, and during college her father moved her to Los Angeles to pursue her music career and get discovered.
As a teen Bryant traveled around the nation making a name for herself playing the trumpet with all female bands. During that time the trumpet was viewed as a male dominated instrument, but she persevered. During jam sessions in L.A., she liked the song that was being performed she would walk on stage and begin playing, or she would take the trumpet away from another artist like Dizzy Gillespie and play his trumpet. Although Bryant was a skilled trumpeter she was very naïve growing up; she has mentioned times as a young woman in her late teens and early twenties in which she was very confused because she did not know about different sexualities or drugs which became available after she moved to Los Angeles. Clora Bryant is a decorated musician who broke down a lot walls for female musicians, and helped spread jazz across the nation.
Even at a young age, Clora Bryant grew with jazz and music. She recalls that her earliest experience with music was at as age five when she and her brother, Mel Bryant, were taught the piano. At her local church, she sang in the children's choir, and with a radio she often listened to the jazz of the time like Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Andy Kirk, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie. Her older brother, Fred Bryant, had played the trumpet until he was drafted into service for World War II in 1941. With her brother leaving behind his trumpet, she learned the chords of a trumpet from her uncle. By the time she went to high school, she had joined her school band and was focused on music.
Bryant turned down scholarships from Oberlin Conservatory and Bennett College to attend Prairie View Agricultural and Mechanical University for the all girl-band, the Prairie View Coeds. She practiced improvisation and was one of the first females to improvise her own music. On weekends, Bryant, with the Prairie View Coeds, played in cities in Texas and in theaters in the east coast. She stayed with Prairie View until 1945 when she moved to Los Angeles, California where her father had been staying.
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