. The Ingenues was a vaudeville all-female jazz band based in the

American Midwest The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...

, which toured the United States and other countries from 1925 to 1937. Managed by Edward Gorman Sherman (1880-1940), the orchestra performed with great popularity in variety theater, vaudeville and picture houses, often billed as "The Twenty Paul Whitemans of Syncopation." They performed many songs in the

Ziegfeld Follies The ''Ziegfeld Follies'' was a series of elaborate theatrical revue productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 to 1931, with renewals in 1934 and 1936. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as ''The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air ...

of 1927, ''Glorifying the American Girl'', including the first act finale, "Melody Land," featuring 12 pianos. Other Follies numbers featured violins, banjoes and saxophones from The Ingenues. The group performed popular songs, light classical works and novelties. They were celebrated for their versatility, as most members, including star soloist and "trick trombonist" Paula Jones, doubled on both novelty (accordions, harmonicas, banjos) and symphonic instruments. The group toured Europe, South Africa, Asia, Australia and Brazil (where they also recorded for

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...

). The band appeared in film shorts including ''

The Band Beautiful ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

'' and ''

Syncopating Sweeties In music, syncopation is a variety of rhythms played together to make a piece of music, making part or all of a tune or piece of music off-beat. More simply, syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm": a "place ...

'' (

Vitaphone Vitaphone was a sound film system used for feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects made by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone was the last major analog sound-on-disc system and the only one th ...

1928) and ''

Maids and Music A maid, or housemaid or maidservant, is a female domestic worker. In the Victorian era domestic service was the second largest category of employment in England and Wales, after agricultural work. In developed Western nations, full-time maids ...

'' (RKO, 1937). ''Maids and Music'' was produced independently by

Milton Schwarzwald Milton Edward Schwarzwald (1891–1950) was a film director and musical theater composer and producer. In the 1930s, he directed numerous Mentone Productions comedy musical variety films before departing to produce musical theater in 1939. Leo ...

's Nu-Atlas Productions and released as a 16mm home movie by Pictoreels. Sequences from this and other Schwarzwald short subjects were also re-edited into Soundies; in the case of ''Maids and Music'' the Soundies excerpt was titled "Ray Fabing's Versatile Ingenues".

External links

Brown Family Papers
at the

Newberry Library The Newberry Library is an independent research library, specializing in the humanities and located on Washington Square in Chicago, Illinois. It has been free and open to the public since 1887. Its collections encompass a variety of topics rela ...

American jazz ensembles from Illinois Vaudeville performers All-female bands Musical groups established in 1925 1925 establishments in Illinois Musical groups disestablished in 1937 1937 disestablishments in the United States {{US-jazz-band-stub

Further reading

External links