One day she finally got a trombone and taught herself how to play and ended up touring the country making, and playing music on here trombone.
The book Little Melba and Her Big Trombone is about a girl who loves music and wants to play an instrument of her own. Women trombonists are still not all that common, especially not African American women trombonists, so it's awesome that this book exists. I'm going to have to seek out some of her recordings. I love that a discography is appended, as well. I love the "Hoooooooooonk!" that is the first sound she makes with her trombone (at the age of 7). I learned more about her life from the afterward, but the main story is charming. They remind me of the Harlem Renaissance paintings by Archibald Motley. I really like the illustrations by Frank Morrison, by the way. I like that these issues are brought up, though, in both the text and illustrations. I don't read a lot of picture books, so I don't have much to compare it to, but dang, it's hard to adequately address issues like racism and sexism in such a brief work. I'd never heard of Melba Liston before, but she was born in 1926 and grew into a professional jazz musician who composed and arranged music in addition to touring with the likes Billie Holiday and Quincy Jones. She composed and arranged for Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, and Bob Marley, to name a few, and continued composing and arranging though the 1990s, even after a stroke in 1985 left her partially paralyzed.I read this picture book biography because it's about a female trombonist. An afterword gives more detailed biographical information about her life and career, in which she played with Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, and Quincy Jones, among others. She encountered racism while touring the South with Billie Holiday (one full-page illustration shows Melba on the tour bus passing a hotel sign that reads "The Best Service for WHITES ONLY") but continued to perform as an in-demand instrumentalist, as well as compose and arrange music. It shows her passion for music and the trombone from age 7 - she played on the radio when she was only 8 - and how she toured the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. LITTLE MELBA AND HER BIG TROMBONE is a picture-book biography of jazz great Melba Doretta Liston, who was born in 1926 and died in 1999.
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