| They Document Our Living History
Steve Warren, Bay Area Reporter, Sept. 8, 1988
I’ve seen International Sweethearts of Rhythm
three times now and its spin-off, Tiny and Ruby: Hell
Divin’ Women, twice. They get better each time.
If you haven’t seen them yet, you’ve got some
catching up to do.
Directed by cameraperson/editor Greta Schiller and archivist
Andrea Weiss, the Before Stonewall team, International
Sweethearts of Rhythm is the story of the same-named
“all girl band that toured from the late 1930s through
the war years".
Though not as heavily publicized as the female aggregation
of Ina Rae Hutton (to be played by Better Midler in a biography
being filmed next year), the Sweethearts are at least
as fondly remembered today by those who saw them.
Some film footage and at least one album of music by the Sweethearts
still exist. Weiss has added other appropriate material to
establish the period and enhance Schiller’s interviews
with surviving band members and their fans. A male musician
means it as high praise when he says the Sweetheart’s
drummer “played like a man.”
A lot of ground is covered in a brief 30 minutes. The band
started in the Piney Woods School, 23 miles from Jackson,
Mississippi. They traveled in the summer to raise money for
the unique educational facility and finally broke away from
the school to travel full-time. Anna Mae Winburn became their
leader and vocalist after the war effort took most of the
men from the band she’d been leading. “I didn’t
know if I could deal with that many women,” she
admits. She could.
The women express the bonds of sisterhood in different ways.
One recalls, “We switched roommates every three
months… so you didn’t form any real tight, one-on-one
relationships.” Others speak innocently of their
communal love, but lesbian trumpeter Tiny Davis is more direct
about her affection for “all those yellow and white
and pretty gals… I just loved them gals too much.”
The International Sweethearts of Rhythm were interracial,
but on the road the white women would have to try to pass
for black to avoid trouble. One speaks amusingly of trying
different permanents and makeup “that would turn
my skin orange – I could never get it right.”
Though she’s featured sparingly to keep her from stealing
the show, Tiny Davis is the film’s most memorable character.
A self-described “little hustlin’ lady”
who earned extra money by selling sandwiches she made and
doing laundry for the band, she leaves you wanting to know
more about her.
And that’s why Schiller and Weiss have followed up with
another half-hour documentary, Tiny and Ruby: Hell Divin’
Women. This time it’s mostly Tiny, at home with
her lover of 42 years, Renei Phelan, aka Ruby Lucas. Ruby,
who played piano, bass, and drums, was never a Sweetheart
(except to Tiny), but became part of Tiny’s post-Sweethearts
band, Tiny Davis and Her Hell-Divers.
Ruby related how they met at a party after one of the Sweethearts’
appearances in Kansas City: “Tiny sold food and
drinks…” “And pussy,” Tiny interjects.
“Oh, Tiny,” Ruby sighs. It’s hard
for a gay woman to be a “straight man,” even with
42 years’ practice.
“Renei keeps me in line,” Tiny says,
but we know no one could.
With her bulging eyes, expressive mouth, and various oversized
body parts she uses for punctuation, Tiny contributes her
share of stories, including one about a gay bar Ruby ran in
the 1950s. Describing the distinctions of the day, she says,
“A daddy is a daddy, and a femme is a femme. I’m
a femme.”
Music isn’t neglected in this film, either. In a family
musicale, Ruby plays piano while Tiny, once billed as “the
female Louis Armstrong,” shows she still has chops (“I’m
only 76 years old, and I got what it takes, but nobody wanna
take it”) in a trumpet duet with her young great-grandson
on “Night Train”.
Cheryl Clarke puts some of Tiny’s thoughts into “narrative
poetry” in occasional voiceover, sometimes accompanying
animated graphics. But the irrepressible Tiny has to get the
last word herself:
“I always made my livin’ blowin’. Music.
Blowin’ music – get that right, gal!”
Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss have got it right in these
two films, as they continue to document our living history
while the people who can give first-hand accounts are still
around to do so.
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