The only thing I was interested in doing was playing jazz on the harp.īeing a jazz harpist presented many challenges for Ashby. Nobody had ever told me these things shouldn't be done, or were not usually done on the harp, because I didn't hear it any other way. But she eventually acquired one and committed herself to one of the most unusual paths in jazz: I just tried to transfer the things that I had heard and the things that I wanted to do as a jazz player to the harp. Ashby also studied piano and music education at Wayne State University, and when she first made her way onto the Detroit jazz scene of the early 1950s, it was as a pianist "I didn't even own a harp," she told jazz historian Sally Placksin. She took up the harp while studying at Cass Tech, a legendary school that a number of other notable Detroit jazz musicians passed through, including a fellow future jazz harpist, Alice Coltrane. In a 1950 article for Metronome, jazz promoter Leonard Feather made the case for expanding the repertoire of instruments used in jazz, calling for a "Bud Powell of the harpsichord, a Charlie Parker of the flute, or an Oscar Pettiford of the bassoon." Eight years later Feather's article was invoked by critic Ira Gitler in the liner notes for an album called Hip Harp, and in Gitler's view, the Bud Powell of the harp, at least, had arrived, in the person of Dorothy Ashby.īorn in Detroit, Michigan in 1932, Ashby started out playing piano, and learned much about music from her jazz guitarist father.
On this edition of Night Lights we'll hear some of those recordings, ranging from late 1950s bop/modal contexts to late 1960s outings influenced by mysticism and soul. Throughout jazz history the harp has rarely been heard as a soloing or primary instrument, but in the 1950s and 60s Dorothy Ashby, a musician out of Detroit, made a series of albums that showcased her harp playing in big-league jazz settings, and which often featured her own compositions.
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