Dorothy Ashby: The Queen of Harps

Despite the proliferation of high-profile contemporary harp players in jazz – Brandee Younger, Alina Bzhezhinska, Tara Minton – the instrument is still unusual enough in the music to spark comment.

But its links with jazz actually go back a long way. The first harpist to play jazz is usually reckoned to be Casper Reardon (1907-1941), a classically-trained musician who became interested in various forms of Afro-American music and worked out ways of using the harp to play jazz. He became known as ‘The World’s Hottest Harpist’. But Reardon died young and nobody took up the baton again until Adele Girard (1913-1993), who played harp in the Joe Marsala Band in the 1930s and 1940s. The band also included Shelly Manne and Buddy Rich. Adele formed her own trio, which toured successfully in the late 1940s and she made a number of movie appearances.

In the late 1950s, another female harpist, Corky Hale (born 1936) appeared on the scene, playing on albums by Chet Baker and Ella Fitzgerald; however she was primarily a session player, who later moved into pop, and her impact on jazz was small.

But at about the same time, another player emerged – Dorothy Ashby. She truly established the harp as a ‘serious’ instrument in jazz.

Dorothy Jeanne Thompson was born on 6 August 1930 in Detroit; her father and first teacher was Wiley Thompson, a locally-renowned big band jazz guitarist who bought her a secondhand piano when she was just five. By 1938, the young Dorothy was studying under a pioneering black music teacher named Bertha Hansbury and was demonstrating prodigious pianist talents, winning prizes at public recitals. But soon (nobody quite knows why) she switched from piano to harp, studying under famous teacher-musician Velma Froude at Cass Tech, America’s best-known harp school. It was here that she met future husband and collaborator, drummer John Ashby, and also started to immerse herself in the Detroit music (jazz, classical, pop) scene: “I tried to transfer the things that I had heard as a jazz player to the harp” she later said. “Nobody had 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. The only thing I was interested in doing was playing jazz on the harp”.

Thanks to this single-mindedness, in the late 1940s she was able to establish herself in a successful trio with John, despite the lack of interest in, and occasional hostility to – a black woman playing jazz harp. She also found plenty of session work, and by the late 1950s, attracted the attention of Savoy Records, for whom she recorded her debut as leader, The Jazz Harpist. A stream of LPs followed, all worthy of investigation, including: The Hip Harp and In A Minor Groove (both 1958), Soft Winds (1961), Dorothy Ashby (1962) and The Fantastic Harp of Dorothy Ashby (1965). These were made for a variety of labels including Prestige, Argo and Atlantic, mostly in collaboration with flautist Frank Wess. This fertile period was collected on last year’s superb box set on New Land, With Strings Attached.

Also in the 1960s, Ashby, together with John, formed a theatrical group, The Ashby Players of Detroit, to produce plays for the African-American community of Detroit; John wrote the scripts, Dorothy the scores.

In 1967 she signed with Cadet, a subsidiary of Chess Records, and home to Terry Callier and Marlena Shaw. It was here, in collaboration with arranger Richard Evans, that she made her two greatest records: 1968’s Afro-Harping (just reissued in a stunning package by Verve – see review on page 52) and The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby (a tribute to Persian polymath Omar Khayyam). On the latter she also sang and introduced the koto – a traditional Japanese string instrument – to her musical sound world.

Both albums are strikingly fresh today with their gritty-yet-hip sound. Key to this was her fearlesslessness in her musical choices; she played bop, soul, Brazilian, African, Middle Eastern and even free jazz. Although neither LP (along with 1969’s Dorothy’s Harp) met with universal acclaim at the time, both now stand as monumental achievements.

However Rubaiyat was her final album as leader. But Ashby later had a brush with pop fame: in 1976, on the recommendation of drummer Raymond Pounds, she appeared on ‘If It’s Magic’ one of 31 tunes on Stevie Wonder’s mega-selling double album Songs In The Key Of Life. Eight years later, thanks to Wonder’s lobbying, she made her big screen debut, playing a harpist in the hit Gene Wilder romcom The Woman In Red.

The future looked bright, but on 13 April 1986, aged just 55, Ashby died of cancer. Her death came way too early, but she left behind a priceless legacy of recorded music – which is only now getting its due. And although she didn’t live long enough to enjoy it, her position, along with her near-contemporary Alice Coltrane, as a jazz immortal is now assured, thanks to a small but groundbreaking catalogue of recordings.

Ashby, I would argue, is an important – and, with the rise of the likes of Younger and Bzhezhinska – a contemporaneously relevant figure in jazz history. As an African-American woman in a heavily male-dominated industry playing a decidedly unorthodox instrument, she led a successful career that stands as a triumph against adversity, providing inspiration for generations of first-rank musicians.

This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Jazzwise. Never miss an issue – subscribe to Jazzwise today