International Sweethearts of Rhythm: The All-Women Swing Band That Made Music History

The surprising history the first racially integrated all-women swing band, following world-class musicians with larger-than-life personalities on their journeys through the Jim Crow south and throughout their barrier-breaking careers.

The International Sweethearts of Rhythm were one of the leading bands of the 1930s and 40s, playing to crowds of more than ten thousand on stages across the country. Count Basie admired their performances, Ella Fitzgerald shared the stage with them at The Apollo, and Louis Armstrong reportedly offered their trumpeter Tiny Davis ten times her salary to leave the Sweethearts and join him—she declined.

Wildly ahead of their time, the band had members of African, Chinese, Hawaiian, Mexican, mixed-race descent, later adding Jewish and Queer women. Defying the stringent Jim Crow Laws of the Deep South, the women slept, dined, and performed together. Though audiences lined up for concerts hours in advance, the band members were targeted by police, refused meal service at restaurants, and harassed by the KKK.

These women spent months away from partners and young children, played through pregnancies and divorces, all while making less than half of what their male counterparts made. And while the Sweethearts have garnered mentions in jazz history over the years, their story remains largely unknown.

In The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Megan Mayhew revives this story for a new generation, told in prose as riveting as her award-winning fiction. It’s the story of musicians who overcame the impossible to achieve the musical dream and life experience they wanted, and needed—together.