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S39E1: The Disappearance of Miss Scott | Clip

When Hazel Scott started jazzing the classics

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At just 15 years old, Hazel Scott was playing as an intermission pianist at 52nd Street for headliner Frances Faye. Because the club didn’t want her playing the same songs as Faye, she started “jazzing” or “swinging” the classics, or playing classic songs at an uptempo and with improvisation, displaying her mastery of the piano.

TRANSCRIPT

- [Narrator] 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, Ms. Faye does that in her show."

So then she'd start playing another tune.

They said, "No, you can't play that either.

Ms. Faye does that in her show."

He did that three or four times.

- [Hazel] 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 to see if she does that in the show."

- [Speaker] Do a little bit of what you did.

(upbeat piano music) - [Hazel] I played all the way through straight, and then I'd go.. (upbeat piano 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."

(upbeat piano music) - 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.

(upbeat piano music) - 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 find a way to cross over these things.

(upbeat piano music)