Hazel Scott: The tragic tale of a jazz star destroyed by American society
Jazz music is an act of defiance.
Since the earliest days of the genre, its inventive sound has provided a voice to the forgotten, marginalised, and outcast members of society, and a select few musicians have been able to weaponise that defiant sound. Hazel Scott was one such figure.
No matter how hard the revisionists try, the horrific history of the United States cannot be buried. For centuries, the nation fostered a society which was built upon the oppression and subjugation of Indigenous and Black people, and the institutionalised racism at the heart of that society didn’t disappear with emancipation in 1865. Well into the 20th century, America was a nation of segregation, prejudice, public lynchings, and the Ku Klux Klan.
One of the prevailing ways in which Black Americans pushed back against that horrific state of affairs was through music. Jazz music, in particular, was the definitive sound of Black America during the early part of the 20th century, and even when it was eventually adopted by the musical mainstream, a multitude of jazz artists, including Hazel Scott, used their platforms to hold a mirror up to the abhorrent treatment of Black people in America.
Born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1920, Scott relocated to New York City at the age of four, providing her with a front-row seat to the golden age of jazz expression. Her mother was a classically trained pianist, and this mix of influences culminated in an incredible musical education for Scott, who became a piano prodigy during her childhood. At the age of eight, she was offered a music scholarship to Juilliard, and by 16, she was a regular fixture on the radio and at the legendary Café Society nightclub in Greenwich Village.
Scott rose through the ranks of the entertainment industry with effortless grace, making a name for herself as one of the most prominent names in American jazz. Her presence became virtually unavoidable during the 1940s, when she starred in a multitude of Hollywood films, often playing herself. This quickly led her to become the first Black woman to receive her own television programme, when The Hazel Scott Show premiered in July 1950, fostering a space for many other jazz artists to receive widespread exposure.
Despite all this unimaginable success, Scott always remained true to herself and her core values. She was an outspoken critic of segregation and routinely used her platform to advocate for civil rights and Black liberation. Most famously, the performer outright refused to play for segregated audiences, once telling Time, “Why would anyone come to hear me, a Negro, and refuse to sit beside someone just like me?”
This unwavering defiance against the racism at the heart of American society threatened the status quo of the nation at that time, so it is no surprise that she became the ire of many authority figures. Particularly, after the musician sued a restaurant in Pasco, Washington, for refusing service based on skin colour, Scott became a target for politicians and authority figures hellbent on maintaining that abhorrent status quo.
Ultimately, this led to the jazz star’s name appearing in the infamous publication Red Channels: A Report on Communist Influence in Radio and Television in 1950, which ushered in an age of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Scott was accused, wrongly, of being a communist, and despite her refusal of these claims, she was essentially blacklisted from the entertainment industry in America. Her film career dried up, her television show was cancelled, and she suffered a complete nervous breakdown as a result.
The United States destroyed Hazel Scott through a continued effort to subdue her activism and political defiance against racist segregation. In the wake of her blacklisting, the jazz prodigy relocated to France, where she was able to continue performing, recording, and appearing in various film projects.
Nevertheless, her promising career as one of America’s defining jazz artists of the 1940s was snuffed out, and it never truly recovered. By the time she returned to the US during the late 1960s, she was resigned to a few sporadic nightclub spots and the odd television appearance, a far cry from the pop culture icon she once was.
