Uploaded March 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Join the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Sextet in a performance of Melba Liston’s composition “Now, Ain’t It” in celebration of Women’s History Month. 

Melba Liston’s contributions in jazz can be traced through her formidable talent as a trombonist, arranger, and composer with generations of jazz greats. She also led an all-women quintet in the late 1950s that performed around New York. Liston’s career spanned over 50 years and was documented in 1996 for the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program.  

🎧 Listen to Melba Liston’s oral history from the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program: https://americanhistory.si.edu/smithsonian-jazz/collections-and-archives/smithsonian-jazz-oral-history-program#Liston

🎼 Check out “Now, Ain’t It” in the Duke Ellington Collection at our Archives Center: https://sova.si.edu/details/NMAH.AC.0301?s=0&n=10&t=C&q=*%3A*&i=0#ref43186

💻 Learn more about Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchesra and Smithsonian Jazz: https://americanhistory.si.edu/smithsonian-jazz/smithsonian-jazz-masterworks-orchestra

https://americanhistory.si.edu/smithsonian-jazz

#WomensHistoryMonth