Peggy Gilbert
Peggy Gilbert, born Margaret Fern Knechtges, was an American jazz saxophonist and bandleader.
She was born in Sioux City, Iowa. When she was seven years old, she played piano and violin with her father's band; she later discovered jazz and started to play the saxophone. After high school, she performed in local theatres and resorts and became a performer on radio and television.
In 1928, she moved to Hollywood, where she appeared in movies and toured with Fanchon and Marco vaudeville shows. In 1933 she founded her all-female jazz band, whose name often changed from "Peggy Gilbert and Her Metro Goldwyn Orchestra" to "Peggy Gilbert and her Symphonics". She performed on saxophone, vibes, piano, and vocals. In the 1930s and 1940s, Gilbert and her band performed in the most famous nightclubs in Hollywood, including the Cocoanut Grove. At one of these clubs, she met and fell in love with Kay Boley, a vaudevillian and contortionist.
During this period, she appeared in films, toured Alaska with a USO troupe, and began to be an advocate for women musicians. After a difficult period following the Second World War, Gilbert had success on radio and television programs in the 1950s. In 1974, at 69 years old, she created her last great all-female band, The Dixie Belles, with musicians from vaudeville and the Big Band era. The group performed on TV and at jazz festivals, appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Golden Girls, and in the 1980 Rose Parade. In 1985, the band recorded the album Peggy Gilbert & the Dixie Belles. Gilbert lived until the age of 102 and died in Burbank, California.
Life and career
Early years
Peggy Gilbert was born Margaret Fern Knechtges Gilbert on January 17, 1905, in Sioux City, Iowa. Her father, John Darwin Knechtges, played in theater pit bands in Sioux City as a violinist, and her mother, Edith Ella Gilbert, sang for the opera house in Sioux City. Gilbert "was raised to respect all types of music and to love all kinds of music". She began to take piano lessons at age eight, and frequently accompanied her father to stage shows, playing piano in her first performance with his band.Gilbert lived in a nurturing home environment. She and her brother Oral Lloyd Knechtges, who was born in 1900, were always encouraged to listen to music, and they lived a very comfortable life. In addition, her parents did not tolerate prejudice, and they "learned right from the beginning to treat everyone with respect and consideration, regardless of race or ethnicity." Gilbert admired her father and his musical ability and took much of her inspiration from him.
At age seven, Gilbert landed her first professional job as a dancer for the touring group of the Scottish cultural ambassador Sir Henry Lauder. She and six other young girls toured Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Iowa, performing the Highland Fling dance.
From a young age, Gilbert was aware of the injustice that came along with gender preference, and she learned that she would have to work hard in order to achieve what she wanted. For example, although her brother Orval encouraged her in her studies, she realized that people treated him differently; she was very aware of the fact that she was "just a girl."
Gilbert attended Sioux City High School where she took secretarial courses, as well as weekly piano lessons. When she graduated in 1923, she attended Morningside College for six months before leaving and going into the music business. Part of this decision was based on the fact that in the 1920s, her father became ill, so Gilbert was needed to help support her parents. At this time, she self-taught herself the alto saxophone, as she was told it was not suitable for young women, and joined the Musicians Union in Sioux City.
The Melody Girls
Gilbert organized her first band in Sioux City, a group that was composed of Gilbert on the saxophone and clarinet, Marjorie Kelley on piano, Dorothy Kelley on banjo and accordion, Orval Knechtges on drums, Ruth Dubnoff on violin, and two other men on trumpet and bass. The Melody Girls, also formed in Sioux City, was made up of five or six pieces and was formed with some of the musicians from her first band. The band played all around the city, in all of the clubs, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Martin Hotel, where they played for two years and were broadcast every night on the local radio station KSCJ.When Gilbert's father died in November 1927, she decided she needed to start a career in the entertainment business in order to support her mother and grandmother. In 1928, the family moved to Los Angeles but had to return to Sioux City to help a suddenly widowed Orval. The family, now including Orval and his children, all moved to Los Angeles with Gilbert. The move to Los Angeles, and the promise of fame, prompted Gilbert to adopt her mother's maiden name because "Knechtges" was too difficult to pronounce. At this time, there wasn't too much competition in Los Angeles because women jazz musicians were still finding their place in the business. Gilbert's first job in the city was with the vaudeville performers Irene Franklin and Juanita Connors.
Fanchon and Marco
In 1928, Gilbert auditioned for the vaudeville producers Fanchon "Fanny" Wolff Simon and Marco "Mike" Wolff, first touring with Rudy Wiedoeft and a sextet of saxophone players in a show titled "Saxophobia Idea." The show opened in October 1928 in Los Angeles, and toured San Diego, Hollywood, San Francisco, Salem, Seattle, Denver, Buffalo, Hartford, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and many other cities. The tour was very well received and widely covered by the press.After the "Saxophobia" tour, Gilbert returned to Hollywood. She spent the spring and summer of 1929 as a saxophone player for an all-female group performing at El Mirador Hotel in Palm Springs.
In October 1929, Gilbert performed in another Fanchon and Marco tour, the "Jazz Temple Idea." This yearlong tour helped Gilbert provide for her mother through the stock market crash of 1929. The show, which followed the same itinerary as the "Saxophobia" tour, was considered "a novelty." The next Fanchon and Marco tour in which Gilbert performed was the "Busy Bee Idea," a tour that traveled through the United States and Canada in 1930 and 1931. After this tour, Gilbert returned to Los Angeles, where she was doing studio work for MGM.
Early 1930s
By the end of the "Busy Bee" tour, the Great Depression was in full swing, and it was much more difficult to earn a living in show business. Gilbert started promoting herself as a bandleader, using connections to appear in several movies with her all-female band. They appeared as sideliners and usually did not receive screen credit, so it's hard to know exactly how many films they appeared in at MGM. However, Gilbert began promoting the band as Peggy Gilbert and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Girls. Known film appearances include Politics, Wet Parade, and That's My Boy.In 1932, Gilbert traveled throughout California, taking up various jobs with various bands. During this time, Gilbert made sure her bands were heard on the radio because she knew it would build them an audience. They were broadcast both live from nightclubs and ballrooms and from the radio stations.
In 1933, Gilbert joined Boots and Her Buddies. She traveled with them for about three months, then returned to Los Angeles, where the rest of the women from the band joined her a few months later. With their arrival in May 1933, Gilbert saw the opportunity to form her own big band. The band played in Las Vegas and at all of the major theater chains in the area: Warner Bros. Theaters, Pantages Theaters, and West Coast Theaters. In October 1933, Gilbert took her band to Hawaii with E.K. Fernandez, the man who began the entertainment business in Hawaii in 1903.
After the band returned from Hawaii in 1934, there were plenty of jobs available for musicians in Los Angeles. Gilbert always had a gig lined up for the band, and they played in popular nightclubs all over L.A., including the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel, the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, and the Club New Yorker.
Late 1930s
The Hollywood music scene continued to flourish in 1935, despite the Great Depression. Gilbert and her band played in clubs and ballrooms all over Hollywood, San Diego, and Southern California. They also took over the radio, as they were broadcast over KFWB, KFOX, and KFXM. They played on KFOX regularly, according to radio listings, and performed regularly at the Italian Village in Los Angeles during the cocktail hour primetime. These radio performances and club gigs led to Gilbert's continued popularity in the mid-1930s.In March 1936, the band performed at the 41 Club's 35th anniversary celebration, the Annual Dinner Dance of the California Yacht Club, and the Albert Sheetz Circus Café. The band at this point consisted of Kathleen McArtor on drums, Bunny Hart on guitar, Mable Hicks on trumpet, Caryl Agnew on piano, and Gilbert on saxophone. These performances were "rated tops as exponents of modern harmony and swing rhythm."
In 1937, the band played at the Zenda Dance Café in Los Angeles five nights a week and appeared in the Second Hollywood Swing Concert at The Palomar. They were considered "one of the finest bands of its type in the country." In January 1938, Gilbert and her band returned to the Zenda Ballroom, where their two-week contract ended up extending to two years.
The band continued to play in films during this time. They appeared in Melody for Two, The Great Waltz, Rhythm of the Saddle and Reckless Living.
In 1939, Gilbert and her band continued to be featured in many clubs and events, including the New Hollywood Café and the 15th Annual Policemen's Ball in Phoenix, Arizona. In 1939 and 1940, the band was broadcast on KMPC as "The Early Girls and Three Chirps." The group did the regular morning and afternoon programs, as well as additional programs that were requested by commercial sponsors. They still played late nights at clubs and worked sidelined in films. Gilbert then returned home in order to live a "normal life," but, quickly realizing that she couldn't stay in Sioux City, returned to Los Angeles.