No rhyme, but copious reason, Little Melba & Her Big Trombone doesn’t read like kiddie lit. Melba Liston (1926-99) played, wrote, and arranged in a long, mostly unheralded career that included sharing bandstands with Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Quincy Jones, Randy Weston, Gerald Wilson, and more. Rather than dusting off that which barely rates a footnote in the great book of jazz, this first retelling of her life in the form of a children’s book takes love at first sight (“Melba eyes a long, funny-looking horn”) and gives it a happy, if abrupt, ending. A law professor and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations at the University of Florida, author Katheryn Russell-Brown writes in lawyer-ese: blunt prose. Pity, because when she indulges in tot tantalization, her gifts are obvious: “The thrum-thrum of a drum, the ping-pang of a piano.” Meanwhile, Frank Morrison’s illustrations hang like oils in a Kansas City jazz grotto. Even so, the true efficacy of Little Melba & Her Big Trombone involves its obvious $8.99 follow-up. That’s the cost of Liston’s sole available recording as a bandleader, 1959’s Melba Liston & Her ‘Bones, as an Amazon download. Swift, sly, swinging: Liston blows dance music as diaphanous as the age of jazz. (Sat., Oct. 17, 11am, Children’s Read Me a Story Tent at 10th & Congress)

Little Melba & Her Big Trombone

by Katheryn Russell-Brown/illustrations by Frank Morrison
Lee & Low Books Inc., 40 pp., $18.95

This article appears in October 16 • 2015.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

SUPPORT US

San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.