TRANSCRIPT
♪♪ -Just a minute.
Who do you want to see?
-I'm Hazel Scott.
We're here for the audition.
-Oh, Miss Scott.
Yes, they're waiting for you.
Go right in.
♪♪ -It's always bold for an artist to say that they want to step on the front line or be in the back of the line that urges the crowd to move forward.
And Hazel was always ahead of this curve, too.
-When I think of Hazel Scott, I think of her as a pianist, think of her as an actress, think of her as a singer, think of her as an activist.
And you add all those things up, she's absolutely unique.
♪♪ -You have someone, some 70, 80 years ago, who challenged the way blacks were portrayed in media, in Hollywood.
-She's at the forefront of what would happen in later decades with the civil rights movement.
-There had never been a black performer who had their own show ever in television.
And here's this glamorous black woman who's breaking all of these barriers with this one TV show.
-♪ Let me sing a lullaby ♪ ♪ A lullaby ♪ ♪ Of Birdland ♪ -She had incredible confidence, and that would sometimes get her in trouble.
-♪ Lullaby of Birdland, that's what I ♪ -She was targeted because of her outspokenness on civil rights.
-♪ ...could there be ways to reveal ♪ -She ripped them to shreds.
And it cost her everything.
-If you fight the establishment, you're not very popular with it.
-Meeting will come to order.
-And everything is done to remove you from public memory.
-♪ And there's a weepy old willow ♪ ♪ He really knows how to cry ♪ -Well, I'm kind of embarrassed to even say this.
But the first time I really heard of Hazel was during Alicia Keys' tribute at the Grammys when she was playing the two pianos.
[ Pianos playing ] -I've been thinking so much about the people and the music that have inspired me, and I want to give a shout-out to Hazel Scott, 'cause I always wanted to play two pianos.
♪♪ -I spent the last 15-some-odd years learning about music, and this was the first time I ever even came across her just by randomly seeing her video online.
And she just blew my mind.
-And I think that that really speaks volumes to what this documentary is really about.
It is always just so distressing to me the amount of hidden figures that we have within black America and its history.
♪♪ [ Applause ] [ Down-tempo piano music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -After my mother died, in her apartment, we discovered legal pads.
It must have been 12, 15 legal pads full of notes about her life, about her friends, about those who were not her friends.
She was simply writing down things as she remembered them or as she experienced them.
-They say I'm impossible.
I won't conform.
I've been heckled by some people who find it difficult to relate to a woman who insists on being herself.
A great many misconceptions are floating around, and I'd like to clear them up.
I think the time is right for me to say a few well-chosen words on the subject of Hazel Scott.
♪♪ [ Applause ] -"Dial M for Music" presents Hazel Scott.
And today's host, Father Norman J. O'Connor.
-After more than five years in France, Hazel Scott is at last back home, and we're delighted to have her and to welcome her to "Dial M for Music."
Where did you come from originally?
-I was born in Trinidad.
-One of those guys.
-I'm a West Indian, yeah.
[ Laughs ] ♪ Light among you ♪ ♪ Now your name gone abroad ♪ -She always loved Trinidad.
She left Trinidad when she was 3 years old, but she always thought of it fondly.
-Hazel was born into a very musical household, growing up with calypso music on the street and classical music in the house.
-I'd really like to go back a little ways and -- quite a way, actually, and ask you how you got started.
♪♪ -♪ Take me, take me ♪ ♪ Handle with care or break me ♪ -You know, they tell me I used to use my potty chair.
I'd sit on the floor and play on the potty chair.
And so -- -Now, that's a new one.
-[ Laughs ] I had to be young, right?
My mother was a teacher of piano, and it's a little sad because she was preparing to be a concert pianist.
She didn't know until she actually concertized for the first time that her wrists couldn't hold up for an entire concert.
They were too small, and she said, "Well, if they won't hold up, they won't hold up.
No tragedy.
I'll just have to teach."
-What tunes did you play then?
-Because it was Trinidad.
I started playing all the popular songs of the day, you know, all the little calypsos.
And then, of course, I couldn't reach the pedals, so it was all very percussive.
-There's a picture of her at age 3, and she has this expression on her face that's as if, you know, "Deal with me.
I'm here."
There she is at age 3.
It's already there.
-♪ You'll love the lady from Trinidad ♪ -You started when you were about 5, didn't you?
-No.
-Didn't you?
-I was a vet when I was 5.
I started playing at 2... -You started before that?
-...and playing in public at 3.
-My golly, and you were, I guess in a professional sense, 5.
So you have been at it for a while.
-Mm-hmm.
I was terribly secure.
I was very fresh.
I think a child prodigy is a -- is a little monster.
I was.
♪♪ -Her mother moves her to Harlem early in the '20s.
It's the height of the Harlem Renaissance.
And she's growing up in this community where there are artists, musicians, writers, poets, politicians, intellectuals.
♪♪ -You had black businesses.
You had entrepreneurs.
You had a black professional class.
You had a working class.
-An incredible, uh, powerful, contagious, electrifying blackness that was being shared, promoted, articulated, and promulgated from pulpits to street corners.
-You had the Cotton Club, where Duke Ellington is performing.
You had so many musicians that she could surround herself with that could help nurture her talent as a child prodigy.
♪♪ -Alma became her teacher and cultivated the gift.
She always said that her mother was the single most important person in her life.
-Alma was a proud West Indian.
She never accepted the idea of segregation and taught me to have nothing but contempt for its practitioners.
She was fond of saying, "Let's see just how inferior we really are."
-How about your dad?
What was he doing with us?
-He's a square.
My father's terrible.
He was an academic sort of man.
He -- Well, he taught English, you know.
And he had to be very -- Oh, he hated my English.
My English was always incorrect.
My grammar made him just cringe.
-Her father was there for a while, but the family was estranged.
So when he would come to visit Hazel at the family's brownstone, um, instead of taking her to the park or, you know, to the zoo, he would take her to Garvey meetings at Liberty Hall in Harlem.
She's 4, 5, 6 years old and listening to all of these speeches about black uplift and civil rights and social justice and what his aspirations were for his people.
And that was her first introduction to sort of a political consciousness that stayed with her throughout her life.
♪♪ -When I came here, I started playing in public immediately, all little concerts and things.
Then when I was 8, my mother took me to Juilliard, 'cause she said, "I can't teach you anymore."
-Hazel was about 8 years old.
Alma marches her into Juilliard and says, "You need to hear my daughter play the piano."
They said, "Well, students have to be 16."
She goes, "No, you need to hear her."
-I had the Rachmaninoff Prelude in C-sharp minor.
I couldn't stretch an octave.
I could only reach six notes.
So I had redone all the harmonies so that, you know, I could do it with six notes instead of eight.
And suddenly the door bursts open, and here's this man in an absolute rage.
He says, "Who is paraphrasing Rachmaninoff?"
And it was Walter Damrosch.
-How did you do it?
How did you paraphrase it?
-Instead of... [ Piano plays ] I did that.
I made the six.
-Oh, wow.
[ Piano playing ] -I put -- I put the sixth.
He was furious.
Then he said, "Oh."
And he said, "Alright, go over there."
He started training me immediately.
-Rachmaninoff, it starts with a kind of space.
Bom...bom...bom.
Right?
Like, it just starts there [ Piano playing ] Rachmaninoff's C-sharp minor prelude is one of the most pivotal pieces of piano history.
And it's difficult.
It's a difficult piece to play.
Right?
So the hands are going like this.
Unh, unh, wah, wah.
All on top of each other.
So her 8-year-old hands can't quite do that.
So she does a paraphrased version to play it like this.
Something like this.
♪♪ ♪♪ So much more soulful, actually, to play it like that.
-My mother was a musician.
She was a pianist.
And she taught herself how to play the tenor saxophone.
And she formed an all-jazz band.
-Is that right?
-Yeah.
-Was this here in the States at the time?
-Sure, sure.
-Here in New York?
-Mm-hmm, and I used to, uh -- After school, I'd go play with the band.
They couldn't get rid of me.
I was hanging around, you know.
-You had the mother playing jazz saxophone.
You had the little daughter playing piano, and the two of them just became a force of nature up in Harlem at the height of the Harlem Renaissance.
It was the two of them against the world.
-Alma starts to develop a relationship with a number of all-female bands that were very popular at the time.
And then she creates a band of her own that is all women.
Her mother being part of the music community at the time, her mother also being an incredible cook, the door was always open at the Scott family residence to Billie Holiday and Lester Young, Art Tatum and Fats Waller.
-♪ Got my fingers crossed ♪ ♪ Not that I'm superstitious ♪ ♪ I'm afraid it's too good to be true ♪ -Well, my idols were Fats Waller, Art Tatum, of course.
Well, Art Tatum was papa daddy.
-To be sitting as a young pianist, and then you see these artists sit at the same piano you practice on and all of a sudden make it sound like it's, you know, falling diamonds from the sky.
♪♪ -It's in her mother's band that Hazel starts to figure out how to work the stage, the stagecraft of her career.
She's a bit of a ham, and her mother has to kind of, like, scold her and bring her back from trying to steal the spotlight, because you're part of a band.
-Her mother had upped her age at the local musicians' union so that she could perform at jazz clubs.
-♪ I'm not attractive, not so well known ♪ ♪ Not even active when we're alone ♪ ♪ I've got a man ♪ -For a 15-year-old girl, 52nd Street was a miracle.
To be playing the piano between band sets was to be the lowest one on the totem pole, but it allowed one to be present at some fairly exciting goings-on.
-She's on 52nd Street playing as an intermission pianist, and the headliner was Frances Faye, the vocalist.
She started playing different jazz standards, and then every time she would start a song, the waiter would come and whisper in her ear, "You can't play that.
Frances Faye -- Miss Faye does that in her show."
So then she'd start playing another tune.
They said, "No, you can't play that, either.
Miss Faye does that in her show."
He did that three or four times.
-So finally I sat there one night and I said, "She is really giving it to me.
How can I get her?"
I said, "I know how.
I'll do the Bach inventions, the two- and three-part inventions, and I'll syncopate them and see if she does that in the show."
-Do a little bit of what you did.
[ Piano playing classical music ] -I'd play it all the way through straight, and then I'd go... [ Piano playing up-tempo classical music ] You know, up, really up-tempo.
And people started looking around, and she looked bewildered.
My mother hated it because she was a purist.
She liked her jazz straight, and she liked her classics straight.
And she said, "What are you doing?"
And I said, "Well, this is self-defense."
♪♪ -And that began her start of swinging the classics.
-One of the things that strikes me about Hazel Scott is the speed in which she plays a lot of these pieces that involve jazzing the classics and then how seamlessly she shifts into that improvisation.
-She had complete command of her instrument but then also her wit of being able to pull in those nuances that she would use in the classical context but then also at the same time take something in the jazz context and -- and find a way to cross over these things.
-It really places her into a conversation about virtuosity that doesn't surround women performers.
♪♪ -I started hanging around Billie Holiday after work instead of going straight home.
Billie tolerated me and watched over me when the musicians began to hover too closely.
♪♪ -♪ My man don't love me ♪ ♪ He treats me, oh, so mean ♪ -One night, Billie phoned to invite me to her birthday party.
-♪ He don't love me ♪ -She was appearing at a place called Café Society in Greenwich Village.
The birthday girl was in rare form and sang her heart out.
-♪ He's the lowest man ♪ ♪ That I've... ♪ -Café Society is the first integrated club in downtown Manhattan that really focuses on that idea, that its priority is the idea of integration.
-Barney Josephson, who owned Café Society, decided that black music was going to be the center of what he put on.
-Now, they could have been a wonderfully socially innovative place and had bad music or even had mediocre music.
They had the very best.
-♪ Southern trees ♪ ♪ Bear a strange fruit ♪ ♪ Blood on the leaves ♪ ♪ And blood at the root ♪ -It was the first time I heard the song "Strange Fruit."
As she sang, a picture took shape in front of me, a chilling portrait of a lynching.
It was a moment I can never forget.
-Billie Holiday and her performances of "Strange Fruit" kind of helped put Café Society on the map, but in a very short order, she has to leave.
-And when Billie Holiday wants to take off, she makes sure that Barney Josephson calls Hazel Scott.
So for the young, still teenaged Hazel Scott to take Billie Holiday's place at the number-one club in the world, actually, with that kind of social and historic cachet, you can't exaggerate.
That gig, that's a huge one.
[ Piano playing ] -He offered me the salary of $65 a week.
Having just closed at a club on Broad Street in Philadelphia where I had earned $100 a week, my shock was evident.
When he saw my reaction, he declared, and I quote, "$65 a week is what I paid Billie Holiday.
Do you think that you are worth more than she is?"
I pounced.
"Do you think that Billie Holiday is worth only $65 a week?"
It was not until many years had passed by that I learned that she had deliberately quit in order to create the job for me.
-Hazel Scott and Billie Holiday, they considered themselves family.
She was a mentor to Hazel, yes.
She was almost like a big sister.
They were only five years apart.
-In an industry where there is so few of us, to have that support, to go into rooms where you may be the only one, because so often we're not seen, but we see each other, and that's something that's unmatched.
-And here is that promised piano and a selection you have heard many times before but never like this, Mademoiselle Hazel Scott brings us her own Café Society bounce version of Percy Grainger's "Country Gardens."
♪♪ -By 1939, she's the main breadwinner in the Scott family.
She's the one taking care of her mother, her grandmother, the whole family.
They bought a brownstone in Harlem, and she's really coming into her own.
And she's only 19 years old.
-She had started recording, so people were able to buy her records.
-On one of my travels to a secondhand store on a Saturday afternoon, I came across one of her Decca recordings.
Here was Miss Scott playing a style of music that really harkened back to the stride piano and boogie-woogie of the 1920s and early 1930s.
-Sometimes there is a mischaracterization of what Hazel does.
So when you hear sometimes people talk about her doing boogie, what she is actually doing is stride.
-Stride starts to go, womp, whop, womp, whop, womp, womp, womp, whop, womp, whop, womp, whop, womp, whop.
And it makes the piano sound like a drum, like a bass drum and a snare.
Boom-tap, boom-tap, boom-tap, boom-tap.
Boom-clank, boom-clank, boom-clank.
So the piano then becomes like a full band in that moment.
But then when we're playing boogie-woogie, the hand is staying kind of in one place.
Bom-bee-dubba-dubba-dubba, bom-bee-uddle-uddle, ompee-ompee-uddle-ee-up.
Or bum-ba-doddy umpa-doddy umpa-dubby umpa-dubby.
The left hand can be all of the landscape.
And the right hand is all the people, all the stories.
♪♪ Ah!
I can't actually do it.
I can't actually do what she -- what she does because she maintains a kind of freedom in her right hand and with a totally churning, totally grooving rhythm in her left hand.
And it takes the brain to be so soft and to make sure new neural paths are made for it to actually work together.
I can't do it, but that's my attempt at it.
♪♪ -Café Society, in many ways, became the wheels for Hazel Scott's journey.
She was making a lot of money.
She was meeting the finest people in New York.
And what had started out to be, I think, a one-week engagement turned into her being called the Queen of Café Society.
♪♪ -During the war years, there was a series of films put out by the armed forces that was shipped overseas for the morale of soldiers.
And there were various stories, and one of them, very often, was a musical piece.
-Hello, fellas.
I'm glad we could get together like this, because I have a song I want you to hear.
It's an awfully good song.
You men are writing new music to it, and the lyrics are in the headlines.
The bazookas sing it.
It's part of every longtime sonata you guys in the field artillery are writing all over Europe.
It's your song.
So listen to it, will you?
♪♪ ♪ When you're down and out, lift up your head and shout ♪ ♪ There's gonna be a great day ♪ ♪ Angels in the sky promise that by and by ♪ ♪ There's gonna be a great day ♪ -Miss Scott was an entertainer whose music would speak to black and white audiences alike.
And her fame was such that she was invited to perform in one of these wonderful film shorts.
-♪ Every chance we get makes it a sure bet ♪ ♪ There's gonna be a great day ♪ -She's encouraging our African-American soldiers to fight on despite Jim Crow segregation, despite lynching.
-Many African-Americans made a concerted effort to express their patriotism and their devotion to the United States as a strategy for securing civil rights.
-So her and Lena Horne are visiting army bases, encouraging soldiers to fight.
They reflect true patriotism, black patriotism.
-♪ Hey ♪ [ Song ends ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Her name recognition was slowly becoming broader and broader.
So Barney decided to open a second club called Café Society Uptown.
That became Hazel's club.
So when she goes to Café Society Uptown, that's when Hollywood came calling.
♪♪ [ Applause ] -Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, you're going to see "A Night in Café Society," starring the dynamic Miss Hazel Scott with Teddy Wilson at his band.
[ Applause ] ♪♪ -Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia, said, "Send for her.
I want to see more of her.
Enlarge her part."
The picture was "Something to Shout About" about a group of vaudevillians.
-During the 1930s and '40s, there was a glass ceiling.
And, boy, it was a thick pane of glass that not only prevented black artists from achieving their full potential on film, but black women in particular.
-Just a minute.
Who do you want to see?
-I'm Hazel Scott.
We're here for the audition.
-Oh, Miss Scott.
Yes, they're waiting for you.
Go right in.
-Hazel is offered four different roles in movies, and they're all servant roles.
And she says no to all of them.
-She had in her contract that she could only perform as herself or as a patron.
She wasn't going to play a tramp, a whore, a vixen, a temptress, a prostitute.
She was going to play herself.
She was going to play someone who's intelligent, who has a wonderful skill set, someone who deserves respect and demands respect.
-We've always been told as an actor in Hollywood that, "Well, you're lucky to be here."
You know, "You're lucky to even be considered for this.
Take whatever they're giving you."
But the fact that this woman in the '40s was like, "That's not the case for me.
I will look glamorous and beautiful and feature all of my talents the way I want to feature them, and you're going to pay me for it."
[ Applause ] -How's the piano, Hazel?
[ Piano notes play ] -I guess it'll hold up.
[ Notes play ] -For someone like Hazel Scott to break through, and to be very specific about the ways that she, as a black woman, wanted to be treated as an artist as well as represented to the larger public is radically important.
She believed that if people saw the richness of black culture and the incredible talents that they brought to the stage and to film, then perhaps there would be a move to change the way that black people are treated in everyday life.
♪♪ -It's representation.
And as we say, representation matters.
It creates a new lane for black women.
♪♪ [ Applause ] -These are demands that a lot of people are afraid to make to this day because of the fear that they're going to get blacklisted or they're going to be called difficult or they're going to be called divas.
But ultimately, she was making these demands because you have to determine your own narrative as a black woman, or else it will get written for you.
♪♪ -What other entertainer during that time could have that written into their contract?
I'll wait a second.
No other.
No other.
No other entertainer at that time.
♪♪ -In that time where there was still so much racism and -- and segregation, it just showed that her talent... ...made everybody forget everything [Chuckles] and give her what was due for her.
♪♪ ♪♪ [ Applause ] ♪♪ -Hazel Scott really burns the piano up.
When you watch her play, then you understand that what she accomplishes at the instrument was not actually possible.
-In that scene where she's going back and forth between the two pianos, she's doing so much political work, cultural work, ideological work.
It's just amazing to watch her handle all of that at once.
And she's singing ♪ When the black keys meet the white keys on Piano Avenue ♪ -♪ Do they music?
They do ♪ ♪ They swing it in G corner of Keyboard Street ♪ ♪ The black and the whites do it all right ♪ ♪ Oh, yeah ♪ -She used every tool in her toolbox as knowingly as -- as anyone could to get the message across that she wanted to get across and to reach the goals that she wanted to reach.
-♪ The black and the whites do it all right ♪ ♪ Oh, yeah ♪ -It's really ironic that today, because of social media, the one clip that is the most popular clip of Hazel Scott is her playing the two pianos.
The film "The Heat's On" -- That was where she had the worst experience in Hollywood.
♪♪ -♪ Over hill, over dale, we have hit the dusty trail ♪ -The trouble didn't start until the scene where the women were saying goodbye to their husbands as they went off to war.
-Attention!
-It's a segregated army at that time.
So all black soldiers and their wives and girlfriends are there to see them off to war.
They've done the rehearsals, the scene's ready to shoot.
She walks onto the sound stage and an assistant director decides to change the costume.
♪♪ -And she notices that the black women have on soiled aprons.
And she goes, "What is wrong with their costumes?"
So the choreographer says, "Well, we sprayed a little oil on them and so they look more authentic."
-The blood rushed to my head.
Am I to understand that these young women are to see their sweethearts off to war, wearing dirty Hoover aprons?
The choreographer bellowed, "Why do you care?
What's it to you?"
With that remark, the lid blew off and I went absolutely mad.
The next thing I knew, we were screaming at each other and all work had stopped.
-The director was like, "How the other women are dressed on set is none of your business.
You can only control how you are dressed.
That's in your contract."
And she said, "Well, actually, I can control how you dress the other women because I'm not coming to work."
-So she stages a strike and all of the women follow her lead and she goes, "We're not coming back until this is fixed."
-Word gets up to the president of the studio.
Not that Hazel Scott is objecting to the maids uniforms.
Not that Hazel Scott is saying that black actresses are not being treated well.
The word is "Hazel Scott is holding up production."
Well, that's one of the deadliest phrases in Hollywood.
And he said, "That's it.
She's not going to make another movie as long as I live."
-Today, when pride in our blackness has become the order of the day, it is a bit difficult for me to make you understand how lonely it was then.
Until my fight at Columbia, no black person had ever dared to oppose the establishment.
No one was there to back me up.
There I was, out on the limb of race pride, and Harry Cohn swore that he would chop it off.
-She very much so was the only woman doing what she was doing the way she was doing it.
And she could have very much so just hoarded all that success to herself.
But in times that she didn't have to, she advocated for -- for black women.
-After three days of strike, they gave in.
The chance to see our people portrayed on screen as they never had before was heady wine for a 22-year-old crusader.
I told the girls, "Tonight, I want every one of you broads into the hairdressers tomorrow morning at nine.
I want you on this set immaculately turned out."
As the young women left my dressing room, they had an air of people passing a beer, viewing my last remains.
[ Up-tempo music plays ] -In the movie, you'll see these women in these beautiful floral dresses doing a dance number, and it's gorgeous.
And she stood up for them, but it cost her her entire movie career.
-♪ Attention ♪ -And it's just staggering to me that they did that to her.
Oh, it makes me so mad.
It makes me so mad.
[ Slow music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -If it became a question, as it did, of fame and fortune through acceptance of existing standards or oblivion due to my embattled stand, there was no contest.
There was never and there could never be enough money in the world to compensate for the loss of one's dignity.
-I think a lot of people think the civil rights movement, like, started in the '60s and ended in the '60s, and it's like, no, that was the culmination of decades, of centuries of people chipping away and chipping away in ways that people don't even realize.
Hazel making this decision was her own civil rights movement built into her work.
♪♪ -Is this the land of the free and the home of the brave?
[ Crowd shouting "No" ] Is this a land with liberty and justice for all?
-No!
-Is this one nation, indivisible, under God?
-No!
-Either let us practice the democracy we are preaching or shut up!
-Adam Clayton Powell -- dashing, handsome, articulate, fearless, in-your-face black politician.
-The first time I heard Adam Clayton Powell Jr. exhort a crowd, I tingled from head to toe and realized that I was in the presence of greatness.
-Adam Clayton Powell was an extraordinarily dramatic figure who, before Martin Luther King Jr., who, before Malcolm X, was conjuring rhetoric and controlling the masses of black people in terms of encouraging them to vote, to resist, to speak up for themselves and to constitute a force for progressive social change for black people in America.
-Son of the pastor of one of the most important congregations, Abyssinian Baptist Church, he would later inherit that pulpit.
He was an activist, challenging the lack of black-owned businesses, or that black people could shop on 125th Street but couldn't work there.
He was very handsome.
He married an actress and he was considered a kind of playboy.
He was a celebrated man about town.
♪♪ -By the time Adam came calling, Hazel was at the height of her fame.
She had just come back from Hollywood.
So people came from all over the world to hear Hazel Scott swing the classics.
And then in walks Adam.
-I met him on several occasions, but in 1943, I really caught his eye.
I think mainly because he hadn't caught mine.
Women made such total idiots of themselves over him.
It was refreshing, you know.
And that was what started the whole thing.
-I should try to cut my remarks down.
But after all, I'm a Negro Baptist preacher, you know.
[ Laughter ] Nobody can control the Negro Baptist preacher.
Even God sometimes can't.
[ Laughter ] But nevertheless, I will try to make them like a woman's skirt -- long enough to be respectable, but short enough to be interesting.
[ Laughter ] -Their love affair was something of a scandal when it was happening.
He was still married to Isabel Powell, and the two of them used to come to Café Society to see her shows.
-I'll never forget this.
He came in with his entourage and everything, and my son's godmother, Mabel Howard, told me that he stood in the corner with her and he said, "I'm going to marry that girl, but I'm going to go to Congress first because no one will ever call me Mr. Hazel Scott."
-Wow.
-Isn't that interesting?
♪ Who hit me ♪ ♪ Where am I and what's happened?
♪ ♪ I can't recall a thing since you came in view ♪ -They were the most high-profile black couple in America.
Their wedding in August of 1945 was covered by Life magazine, which was a major thing for a black couple in America at that time.
-They are aspirational.
They are beautiful.
They are smart.
They're sophisticated.
They're hip.
They're glamorous.
They are challenging every stereotype about what black Americans are.
-It was also incredibly important for their marriage to also represent the possibilities of the arts and politics coming together in a dynamic way to think about what was next for black America.
-Not only was black America fascinated with them, but also white America.
-Here is one of the very fine artists of the American stage.
Hazel Scott.
Let's have a nice hand for Hazel Scott.
[ Applause, up-tempo music plays ] Let's take a little peek.
-♪ If I am fancy free and love to wander ♪ ♪ It's just the gypsy in my soul ♪ ♪ There's something calling me from way out yonder ♪ ♪ It's just the gypsy in my soul ♪ -It's significant that it's not just she's the wife of a great man.
He's also the husband of the supremely gifted pianist and all the things that she is.
-♪ It's just the gypsy in my soooooooooul ♪ [ Applause ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -There's a deep poignancy that this couple experiences after Powell is elected to Congress.
He makes history when he comes to Washington, being elected from the northeast as a black congressman, and he is reminded that he is still a black person and he cannot enjoy the fullness of Washington, D.C., because of segregation, nor can he enjoy all of the privileges of being a member of Congress.
-She admired what he was trying to accomplish in the House of Representatives, but as a town she thought, "How can this city represent itself as the epicenter of democracy when we can't even get into a restaurant?
We can't even go someplace and have dinner because it's a segregated town."
-When you think Adam Clayton Powell, a warrior, a word warrior, a spokesman, a leader for black America, couldn't go to the barbershops, couldn't go to many of the clubs in Washington, D.C.
He fought that tooth and nail.
He didn't take it lying down.
-Adam was chairman of House Education and Labor.
And he said, "Sam Rayburn took me aside and said, 'Well, Powell, I know you're not going to offend any of our delicate sensibilities by coming into our barbershops and our restaurants and things.'"
He said, "I just patted him on the back just as he patted me on my back for luck.
I patted him on his for my share of luck, and walked away and decided to take 15 of the blackest men I could find into the Congressional Restaurant."
♪♪ -They were black elites.
They were the black blessed and the black fortunate.
As such, they took seriously their responsibility to do something for the masses.
-The fighters for freedom need encouragement.
For now, as I write this, the forces of reaction, those who preach hatred of man are becoming bolder with each new day.
Those who are for the right must take heart.
There is no need to falter.
There is no place for self-doubt.
♪♪ -A year after their marriage, Hazel becomes pregnant with their son, Adam Powell III, who they called "Skipper," and that was the joy of her life.
♪♪ Adam asked her to give up clubs.
Changed her entire career.
♪♪ He said, "It's the church.
They don't want the first lady of the church to perform where people smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol."
And she thought, "Well, that's the height of hypocrisy because when do you not have a cocktail in your hand?
And you met me in this very club."
She said, "I had to brush up the classics again because I had to start playing classical music just as much as I was playing jazz and really expand my repertoire so that I could appeal to a larger audience."
♪♪ -And so I went on concert tour after I left Café work.
I insisted on going south because we were a concert too.
You just can't stay in the north.
You've got to go south, right?
So I went south.
-You know, people were still being lynched in the South, and there was that famous flag that waved in Harlem that would tell the number -- you know, "30 people were lynched today," or, you know, it was like an update to the community to let them know what was happening down south.
-Oh, well, all are equal in the eyes of God.
How silly can you get?
Christ himself was the greatest teacher of segregation.
You never yet found a blackbird in a bluebird's nest unless he was there to steal the eggs.
-She is not traveling in a very welcoming America at all.
It's hard for us to imagine it right now, but every little town was a potential sore spot for someone like Hazel Scott and her band members, and it's not a given that the legal establishment would have protected them.
You know, the police would have been on the side of the mores of the communities that they traveled to.
-You had to make sure that you knew where you were going to stay, that you knew where you might be welcome, that you knew which roads you would be traveling on, because it could be very dangerous.
♪♪ ♪♪ -She's sort of emboldened to challenge many of those things that are traditional or even legal.
She's challenging them with her very being every time she steps into some of the places that she travels to.
-I tell you that I would break the law and have a non-segregated audience because I had the clause in my contract that if they segregated the audience, they would forfeit half my fee and I would not have to go on.
Dr. Martin Luther King told me that the first time he sat in a non-segregated audience in the South was at my concert.
-Because she would never perform before a segregated audience, it forced a number of venues to desegregate for the first time.
-To have the audacity to stand up for yourself 10 years before the bus boycotts, before the civil rights movement as we know it, for her to have that kind of sense of self-worth... Amazing.
-I had no trouble until I got to Austin, Texas, and sure enough, I was asking, "Is the microphone alright," or "Is the piano fine?"
440 concert pitch.
Fine.
The spotlights and the audience, of course, is not segregated.
What do you mean?
I said, "Oh, Lord."
And they said, "Well, there's only a red carpet down the center aisle."
I said, "How wide can the carpet get?
Now, how is somebody going to object to sitting next to somebody who looks just like me and paid good money to hear me play?
What is that?"
And they said, "Well, you know, well, alright, we'll have to cancel."
I said, "Beautiful."
And that night 7,500 people had had their money returned, plus the 200 standees.
And the students at the University of Texas marched out and lit a bonfire and burned the demon effigy.
That was 1948, and an out-of-town agitator named Scott got out of town in a hurry because I didn't want to go to jail.
-Once again, here was Hazel Scott using her celebrity, using her notoriety to shine a light on discrimination in the United States.
-This is a time when black people were still not seen as full human beings.
This is a time where slavery is a memory.
It's not something that we're looking at in history books.
This is the time when people's grandfather was an actual slave.
She showed other folks, "You can fight.
You can do this, too."
-People asked, in all sincerity, what I hoped to accomplish by deliberately flouting the law of Southern states for a temporary victory of an integrated audience for one night.
My reply was simple.
"It was necessary to begin somewhere with someone."
-She modeled for so many women who, in the '60s, fell into that same role -- using their music, using their celebrity, having relationship with movement organizations.
♪♪ -This is the DuMont Television Network.
♪♪ ♪♪ -Hello there.
I'm Hazel Scott.
♪ I was a stranger in the city ♪ -She was the first person of African descent to have a television show.
A lot of people don't know that.
We talk all the time about Nat King Cole being the first person to have an actual TV show.
It was Hazel Scott.
-♪ A foggy day in London ♪ -It was amazing that a black woman could have a television show in 1950, and that she was hosting it.
-This was a time when there was a black person on TV, you called all your family and said, "There's one black person on TV."
-It wasn't a variety show.
There weren't any other acts.
It was just Hazel at the grand piano, swinging the classics, playing classical music straight, playing jazz straight, swinging them when she wanted to.
And then her house band was none other than Max Roach on drums and Charles Mingus on bass.
So not too shabby.
-It allowed African-Americans the opportunity to see themselves in a realistic light.
It received critical acclaim.
It was the dignified, intelligent and respectable representation of blackness that was missing on television.
-Just as soon as she thought, "I've got the dream gig, I can see my little boy, I can have the happy home, I can cook dinner for my husband, I can have this perfect life, still play music, have a great show and have this wonderful life," enter McCarthyism and the blacklist.
-In recognizing a communist, physical appearance counts for nothing.
If a person supports organizations which reflect Communist teachings or organizations labeled communist by the Department of Justice, she may be a communist.
♪♪ -A group of former FBI agents published a book called "Red Channels."
In it, it had a list of entertainers or people in the entertainment industry that were considered to be subversives.
And it just so happens that Hazel Scott was listed in "Red Channels" and that she was attached to at least 10 or more subversive organizations.
-Black politicians, black activists, black artists were always vulnerable to the accusations that they were communists, not because of their political ideologies, but because of the threat that their demands for change inspired in the very forces that were trying to suppress black political and economic power.
-They were very committed to policing the color line in television in those early days of the medium.
She was black, she was brilliant, and she was brave.
And that was a heady mix in 20th-century America and very threatening to people who wanted to uphold the racial status quo.
-Fear of communists' subversive activities has developed into hysterical frenzy, which grows daily.
-If I had my way about it, they'd all be sent back to Russia or some other unpleasant place.
[ Applause ] -She said, "I've worked all my life on my career.
My name is all I've got, and I'll be damned if these people are going to scandalize my name."
-Over my father's objections, she was determined to go public with statements, plural, including a statement in front of the House un-American Activities Committee.
And my father said, "You're crazy.
You can't win.
You can't win with these people."
-If I believe that I'm in the right, I will die before I allow myself to be dissuaded.
It has never been my practice to choose the popular course.
When others lie as naturally as they breathe, I become frustrated and angry.
-Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
-I have told you that I will fight for my beliefs, my affiliations, and I shall... -Stand away from the stand!
-...fight for the Bill of Rights, which you are trying to destroy.
-Officer, take this man away from the stand.
♪♪ -Hazel was nothing if not sure of herself, and if she thought she was right about something, she would follow through that conviction, even if it was not politic to do so.
[ Gavel bangs ] -Meeting will come to order.
-She wrote a 50-page statement explaining to them who she was, what she did for a living, that she was not a communist, that she was not a communist sympathizer, and she did not appreciate being called either.
-This is the day for the professional gossip, the organized rumormonger, the smear artist with the spray gun.
A few cunningly contrived lies, some false statements, an impressively long list such as "Red Channels" and the years of preparation, sacrifice, and devotion are killed.
We should not be written off by the vicious slanders of little and petty men.
♪♪ -One of the mistakes that Hazel Scott made was volunteering to appear before HUAC.
She wanted to clear her name, but they had already made up their minds.
-I don't think that anyone at that point in time understood the connection between the people who had created the tract "Red Channels" and the House un-American Activities Committee.
They shared the same belief in what they called 101% Americanism, which was basically the racial status quo.
♪♪ -She came back from testifying in Washington.
Her audience and the ratings was very good.
The reviews were very good.
In fact, the audience may have been growing, but the sponsors were nervous and the network was nervous, and they eventually canceled the show.
-If you fight the establishment, you're not very popular with it, and everything is done to remove you from public memory.
-One of her real regrets was learning that the network tried to destroy all the copies of the show, and she was told, dumped in the Hudson River.
-It became kind of lost to history.
I mean, people in the industry knew that Hazel Scott had had the first nationally syndicated show.
And, you know, as many historians would say, could have changed the course of television history too.
-The shorthand way of saying what happened was that Hazel Scott was blacklisted.
Hazel Scott couldn't get a job in show business.
And this was a very real problem.
-And instead she toured.
She played in concerts all over the country.
-This is a lovely tune by Prevert and Kosma, and it's known in America as "Autumn Leaves" and in Europe as "Les Feuilles Mortes."
♪♪ ♪ Oh, je voudrais ♪ ♪ Tant que tu te souviennes ♪ ♪ Les jours heureux quand nous etions amis ♪ -What she would do each week -- have her schedule typed up, and she would post the carbon copy on the kitchen cabinet next to the phone, so I could always come home from school and look up and see where she was that day.
♪♪ -Having to do more travel really pushes Hazel and Adam apart in some ways, because she's not spending as much time at home.
♪♪ -When a love affair begins to fall apart, you look at your beloved and he literally comes unglued in front of your eyes.
What you once thought was commanding becomes mere bullying.
Inside of your voice is saying forever was very short.
-Thank you.
♪♪ ♪♪ -This is Bill Blitzer speaking to you from Paris.
The divider is one of the world's most beautiful nightclubs, and it's here that America's own Hazel Scott has been playing for the Parisian public.
No need to tell you that Hazel Scott has been a sensation here in the French capital, as she is in her own USA.
First of all, Miss Scott, is this your first appearance in France?
-Yes, this is the first time in Europe for me.
-♪ Si tu viens dans ma danse, si tu me prends bien la main ♪ ♪ Tu me porteras chance et nous irons tres loin tous les deux ♪ -For the summers of 1951, '52, '53 and '54, we went to Europe.
Congress would go out of session in May.
My mother would have concerts booked in Europe.
Big venues in France and Italy.
And my father would do surprise inspections of American military bases.
-♪ Viens danser ♪ [ Singing in French ] -Tell us one other thing, Miss Scott.
How about Paris itself?
How do you like being here?
How do you like it?
-Good heavens, I wish I could stay for a long time.
It's wonderful here.
♪♪ -She really enjoyed performing in Europe.
She thought that the reception was better, that the fans were better, that racism was different.
-I was in the middle of an unhappy marriage.
I'm an independent person.
Every year I'd go overseas, and just as it was getting interesting, I'd have to come back.
-There was a grapevine, and she heard things.
As the rumors of infidelity increased, she became more and more disenchanted with the marriage.
-I have a terrible temper and I make a very poor doormat.
Our marriage had become very physical, very early.
He went to wife-beating school.
Lumps flew with regularity, and a great deal of precious china was destroyed.
[ Scoffs ] Whenever Adam flaunted a woman publicly, he was really attempting to prove just how little he cared that I had turned him out of the conjugal bed.
-The fights, she said, were just nonstop.
You know, they were really going at it.
And she admitted that, you know, a lot of their fights were fueled by alcohol.
-♪ Quand elle s'ennuie dans sa mansarde, Lola vient écouter ♪ ♪ Le murmure des fontaines qui bavardent a travers ♪ ♪ Les prés et les rosaies ♪ -In the summer of 1954, my mother's European manager said, "Hazel, let your husband and your son go home.
Stay one more week.
I can get you Salle Pleyel," One of the big, big venues in Paris.
Huge, huge venue.
It'd be a lot of money.
She said, "Okay, I'll stay another week."
-♪ How do you translate ♪ ♪ N'oublie pas les paroles?
♪ ♪ Lullaby of Birdland ♪ ♪La légende du pays aux oiseaux ♪ -So she would send telegrams.
"Felix wants me to stay another week.
He can get me this.
Felix wants me to stay another week.
He can get me this."
And finally, my father said, "Son.
I don't think your mother's coming back.
Because look at the telegram she just sent."
It was a telegram asking to ship her piano to Paris.
-♪ I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love ♪ -[ Speaking French ] -♪ Lay the branches down along the ground ♪ ♪ And cover me ♪ [ Conversing in French ] ♪♪ [ Singing in French ] -And she was wildly popular all over again in Paris.
So she was able to live her life out loud in Paris in a way that she couldn't here anymore.
♪♪ -And of course, the French, they loved that she could perform and speak to them in their language.
She said, "My goodness, here in Paris, I'm a queen.
They treat me royally."
Which, of course, she felt was only her due.
-My years out of America were years of much needed rest.
My son became proficient in French.
He enjoyed life in France and we enjoyed our apartment together.
My Paris is like the very first time you realize you're in love.
-[ Singing in French ] ♪♪ -She's trying to reassess and -- and start this new life.
Adam shows up and he says, "You know, we need to give this another try."
And so he tries to rekindle the romance and the marriage.
And for a hot minute, it worked.
-I guess I'm not entirely surprised that my father would fly to Paris and try to have a reconciliation.
They told me they were trying to have another child and I'm thinking, "Hmm.
Does this compute?"
-As they started spending time together in Paris, some of the old hurt and the old pains and the old accusations of infidelity, all of that stuff started to come to the surface, and all of the old arguments began anew.
And by the time he left Paris, she was completely distraught, and it was at that time that she attempted suicide.
[ Engine buzzing ] [ Siren wailing ] ♪♪ -One has to be driven by an inordinate sense of guilt and self-hate in order to resort to such desperate and final measures.
My inability to face a return to that home created a huge guilt within me, with which I was totally unable to cope.
My son wanted it.
My husband wanted it, and I knew that I would rather die first.
-Now I know how much she did struggle emotionally.
At the time, she did her best.
It was pretty good to keep that from me.
-When she came out of that experience, Billie Holiday, who had always been, you know, her right hand -- she was always her big sister.
Billie came to her and said, "Look, get it together.
Because if nothing else, you've got your son."
♪♪ [ Woman speaking French ] [ Applause ] [ Woman speaking French ] ♪♪ ♪ Mon espoir et ma crainte ♪ ♪ C'est ton pas dans la rue ♪ ♪ Mon amour viendra tu ♪ ♪ C'est toujours viendras tu ♪ ♪ Et j'en fait ma complainte ♪ [ Singing in French ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Applause ] -[ Speaking French ] ♪♪ -[ Singing in French ] ♪♪ -She was watching the civil rights movement unfold while living in Paris, and she had a tremendous amount of guilt about being away from the fight, as she called it.
-You see, when Dr. Martin Luther King came backstage to see me many times in Europe and he would say, "Hazel, come home because there's another generation growing up that knows nothing about what you did."
♪♪ This is where I got a prominent knot in my stomach.
♪♪ -Last summer, we took the show over and did it from the Cannes Film Festival in the south of France, and at the same time discovered a gal was in town that I hadn't seen or really heard of in years.
Although I'd had been a great fan of hers, and I'm proud to say she's back now in America and here she is, live on our stage.
Here's Hazel Scott.
[ Applause ] -There was profound transformation in the society by the time she returns in '67.
It was a dramatically different America.
-Gosh, we missed you.
And it was such a nice surprise to see you.
-That was wild, wasn't it?
-Yeah.
What did you go over to France for in the first place?
-For three weeks.
[ Laughter ] ♪ There's something about New York ♪ ♪ That explains the way I feel ♪ ♪ There's something about New York ♪ ♪ There's good reason for all that talk ♪ ♪ If you knew her, you would love her as I do ♪ -By the mid to late 1960s, we have a rise of a new generation, a militant generation, a generation that is not always kind to its predecessors because they want to be seen as the first ones to militantly confront American racism.
It's a generation gap, a big difference.
-We want black power.
We want black power.
-She had a particular kind of sensitivity about anybody that thought her becoming an expatriate, that she was running away from the fight.
-25 years ago, when I put myself out of work, when I was called, among some other kind of things, a black Joan of Arc, a communist, a radical, a professional black lady, an apologist for my race.
I was told that I waved my color like a banner.
I'm not about to sit still now and let anybody tell me that nothing has been done until these new Negroes started letting their hair grow long.
♪♪ -♪ My ship has sails ♪ ♪ That are made of silk ♪ -Music had changed.
-In the number 10 spot, The Mamas & the Papas, Peaches & Herb, The Doors, the Soul Survivors.
Number 6 is Neil Diamond.
The Temptations, the Cowsills.
Stevie Wonder holds number 3.
Strawberry Alarm Clock moving to number 2.
And this is the number 1 record.
♪♪ -♪ Looking out on the morning rain ♪ -There's all these new sounds that are popular, and her sitting behind a grand piano singing jazz standards was just not the order of the day.
[ Piano playing rapidly ] -You've been away too long.
-I agree.
-You've been -- Where are you now, at the Playboy?
-Yes, I'm at the Playboy in Hollywood.
-How much longer will you be there?
-Through Saturday night.
-It was a different life.
It wasn't the concert hall.
It was clubs.
-And to just come back to America to find an industry that had dried up for her.
A woman who literally stuck to her principles so much that it actually cost her her place in history is so incredibly sad.
I feel like it was a -- a perfect storm of erasure.
♪♪ -Hazel Scott's career is, sadly, interesting in that it has a trajectory that goes up and sort of stops with her political blacklisting, and certainly in this country, it never really recovered from that stop.
If she harbored any resentment or bitterness about her treatment, especially her blacklisting in the 1950s, she never let it show.
♪♪ -She made a lot of records as a singer, as a pianist, with some great musicians and great orchestras.
But I would go back to "Swinging the Classics," that very first album, because that's really the one that ignited the fuse to let the world know that there was a Hazel Scott.
-One of my favorite albums of hers is "'Round Midnight."
♪♪ "'Round Midnight" has been recorded by many, many people.
But her interpretation of "'Round Midnight" has to be a classic in her repertory.
-I was listening just today to one of my favorite albums, whether I'd known Hazel or not, "Relaxed Piano Moods," and she's playing with two of the greatest musicians in the history of jazz, Max Roach, the drummer, and the bassist Charles Mingus.
To play at that level, she had to have not only the chops, but she also had to have the intellectual and emotional range to work with them.
♪♪ -Max Roach and Charles Mingus in '55 -- They learned from her model about what it is to be activists, what it is to stand up and be proud and proclaim something.
It's heard in her touch alone.
♪♪ A kind of defiance, a kind of boldness, a directness.
And that is threatening to people.
It's threatening when you hear someone who is unshakable, and she is unshakable.
♪♪ -Would you ever have any plans to retire from what you're doing or not?
-I can't even understand that word.
First of all, everyone I ever knew that retired died six months later.
♪♪ -So, she called me at my office and said that "Your mother has her dream job.
It's going to be a club off Times Square.
I can perform there 30 weeks a year, 40 weeks a year.
I'll be here all the time and I'll be home."
And then she paused.
"Oh, no."
"What's the matter?"
She said, "The show business superstition.
Don't you know the show business superstition?"
I said, "What's the superstition?"
"When you get your dream job, you're about to die."
I said, "Oh, come on, you're -- You're not going to die.
You're in great shape."
♪♪ ♪♪ The last of her friends to come and see her was Dizzy Gillespie.
And he put a mute in his trumpet, and he played her favorite song.
So you hear bleep, bleep.
And he finishes playing the song.
And she opened her eyes and smiled and closed her eyes.
[ Imitates flatline ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -She was only 61.
She died tonight at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
She had cancer.
Hazel Scott was a well-known jazz pianist.
She had appeared at the old Café Society downtown in Greenwich Village.
She was also in movies and on Broadway.
♪♪ ♪♪ -We're in a new moment of civil rights and women's rights and, you know, now speaking up and being political is the norm.
Now, because we have social media, online activism is very kind of easy to do.
She was doing it when it wasn't easy.
And I think that we owe so much to her without even knowing it.
-She teaches us to not put boundaries or barriers among the various parts of who we are, that when you integrate them and when you make them full, that you can make an incredible difference.
-What we do as artists, we can't just take it lightly.
It's not about us.
It's about something bigger and beyond us.
And if the art is not serving that purpose, you're wasting your time.
-Generations that follow her have to re-establish her significance, her importance, and see the way she really does lay the groundwork and is a foremother for an Alicia Keys, for young women musicians who are also trying to make it in the entertainment industry.
-Don't let anybody ever dim your light.
That's what we can take from Hazel Scott.
To be an activist, even in a small form and making black people feel seen, that is how you can learn from Hazel.
[ Applause ] -Do you know a little girl by the name of Skippy Powell?
-A boy!
-A little boy rather.
-You did that on purpose.
-No, I didn't.
I just wanted to get the extra line in.
Uh, he just called up.
-He did what?
-He said he was watching his favorite mother playing on "Toast of the Town."
He wanted to know if you would play for him and the audience two choruses of "How High the Moon."
-Oh!
-Would you do that?
-I'd be very happy to.
-This is for her little boy.
[ Applause ] -Each day that I have lived thus far has taught me something.
The sharing of pleasure.
The loneliness of pain.
The long hours of waiting for evidence of love.
The brief bitter horror of hate.
The fact of my own fallibility.
The greatness that has momentarily been mine.
[ Chuckles ] I've been brash all my life, and it's gotten me into a lot of trouble.
But at the same time, speaking out has sustained me and given meaning to my life.
♪♪ -If you were to ask her what her legacy was, I think she would say something which she said often to me, which is, "If you're right, don't back down.
If you're right, fight for what is right."
[ Applause ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪
