{"id":36229,"date":"2014-11-09T10:22:40","date_gmt":"2014-11-09T14:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=36229"},"modified":"2015-06-28T17:12:23","modified_gmt":"2015-06-28T21:12:23","slug":"little-melba-and-her-big-trombone-by-katheryn-russell-brown-illustrated-by-frank-morrison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/little-melba-and-her-big-trombone-by-katheryn-russell-brown-illustrated-by-frank-morrison\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Melba and Her Big Trombone by Katheryn Russell-Brown, illustrated by Frank Morrison"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2014\/10\/Little-Melba-and-Her-Big-Trombone.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-36233\" src=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2014\/10\/Little-Melba-and-Her-Big-Trombone-800x663.jpg\" alt=\"Little Melba and Her Big Trombone\" width=\"800\" height=\"663\" srcset=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2014\/10\/Little-Melba-and-Her-Big-Trombone-800x663.jpg 800w, https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2014\/10\/Little-Melba-and-Her-Big-Trombone.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a>Dizzy Gillespie. Billie Holiday. Quincy Jones. Duke Ellington. They&#8217;re all household names, right? The list goes on: Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and so many more. So why is Melba Doretta Liston, who not only played with, but also\u00a0composed and arranged music for, so many of these all-time\u00a0greats not remembered in the same easy breath?<\/p>\n<p>Thank goodness Florida law professor <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.ufl.edu\/faculty\/katheryn-russell-brown\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Katheryn Russell-Brown<\/a> decided to teach the children early about this vanguard genius (and multi-culti superpublisher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.leeandlow.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Lee &amp; Low<\/a>\u00a0gave her the platform). Born in 1926 in Kansas City, young Melba&#8217;s mind was filled with music day and night. She chose the trombone for herself at age 7, inspired by Grandpa John and his guitar and encouraged by Momma Lucille and her unlimited\u00a0pride. At 8, Melba\u00a0played on the local radio station. At 11, she moved to Los Angeles and skipped from sixth grade to eighth. By high school, she was the star player in the afterschool music club. At 17, with Momma Lucille&#8217;s hugs and blessings, Melba began touring the country with jazz trumpeter\u00a0Gerald Wilson and his new band.<\/p>\n<p>Life on the road was not always easy\u00a0\u2013 loneliness haunted her, envious\u00a0men taunted her, ignorant crowds\u00a0ignored her. Traveling in the South of the 1940s and &#8217;50s was never easy. The music, however, went on and on: &#8220;Melba and her music trotted around the globe, dazzling audiences and making headlines in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia &#8230; Melba Doretta Liston was something special.&#8221; Indeed.<\/p>\n<p>As groundbreaking as her performances were, the rest of Melba&#8217;s life was no perfect fairy tale. What Russell-Brown&#8217;s text mentions, illustrator <a href=\"http:\/\/www.morrisongraphics.com\/catalog\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Frank Morrison<\/a>\u00a0enhances: the &#8220;[j]ealous boys [who] called her bad names&#8221; in high school become slyly-turned\u00a0shrunken faces behind Melba&#8217;s exuberant playing; &#8220;lonely&#8221;\u00a0leaves Melba\u00a0standing small, apart, and\u00a0forgotten by\u00a0the laughing crowds; the &#8220;white folks [who] didn&#8217;t show good manners&#8221; are manifest in the\u00a0oversized signs emblazoned with &#8220;The Best Service for WHITES ONLY&#8221; that can&#8217;t be\u00a0ignored\u00a0even from the back of a bus. But Morrison also knows how to add soul-soothing\u00a0rhythm to the page: take that cover with young Melba barely grown enough to hold that instrument, then compare it to the final double-page spread in which an adult Melba takes the\u00a0same leaned-waaay-back, feel-the-stirring-sounds stance decades later and wows a sold-out\u00a0audience of thousands. She&#8217;s lost her pigtails, her short dress, her Mary Janes, but her\u00a0vitality and passion never leave her music.<\/p>\n<p>Russell-Brown&#8217;s &#8220;Afterword&#8221; fills in more of Melba&#8217;s seven-decades of collaborations, accomplishments, and honors. The &#8220;Selected Discography&#8221; and &#8220;Author&#8217;s Sources&#8221; encourage curious\u00a0audiophiles to listen and explore further. Given Melba&#8217;s\u00a0indisputable talent, one wonders what her career might have looked like had\u00a0she been born just a few decades\u00a0later. Perhaps all those who\u00a0benefited from her musical prowess then, might today be mere back-up for\u00a0the headliner known as Melba Doretta Liston.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Readers<\/strong>: Children<\/p>\n<p><strong>Published<\/strong>: 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dizzy Gillespie. Billie Holiday. Quincy Jones. Duke Ellington. They&#8217;re all household names, right? The list goes on: Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and so many more. So why is Melba Doretta Liston, who not only played with, but also\u00a0composed and arranged music&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,142,62,20],"tags":[6608,10,6028,11,36,24,6027,6026,672,28],"class_list":["post-36229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biography","category-black-african-american","category-children-picture-books","category-nonfiction","tag-bookdragon","tag-family","tag-frank-morrison","tag-friendship","tag-girl-power","tag-historical","tag-katheryn-russell-brown","tag-little-melba-and-her-big-trombone","tag-music","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.14 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Little Melba and Her Big Trombone by Katheryn Russell-Brown, illustrated by Frank Morrison - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/little-melba-and-her-big-trombone-by-katheryn-russell-brown-illustrated-by-frank-morrison\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Little Melba and Her Big Trombone by Katheryn Russell-Brown, illustrated by Frank Morrison - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dizzy Gillespie. Billie Holiday. Quincy Jones. Duke Ellington. They&#8217;re all household names, right? The list goes on: Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and so many more. So why is Melba Doretta Liston, who not only played with, but also\u00a0composed and arranged music...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/little-melba-and-her-big-trombone-by-katheryn-russell-brown-illustrated-by-frank-morrison\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-11-09T14:22:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-06-28T21:12:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2014\/10\/Little-Melba-and-Her-Big-Trombone.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"900\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"746\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@SmithsonianAPA\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Little Melba and Her Big Trombone by Katheryn Russell-Brown, illustrated by Frank Morrison - BookDragon","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/little-melba-and-her-big-trombone-by-katheryn-russell-brown-illustrated-by-frank-morrison\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Little Melba and Her Big Trombone by Katheryn Russell-Brown, illustrated by Frank Morrison - BookDragon","og_description":"Dizzy Gillespie. Billie Holiday. Quincy Jones. Duke Ellington. They&#8217;re all household names, right? The list goes on: Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and so many more. 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