Vet Boswell, Member of ‘30s Singing Trio, Dies; Led Swing Music Trends

Helvetia Boswell, the sole surviving member of the Boswell Sisters, a popular 1930s trio whose innovative vocal arrangements helped introduce swing music and paved the way for singing stars such as Ella Fitzgerald, the Mills Brothers and the Andrews Sisters, died Saturday in New York. She was 77.

Her daughter said she had been hospitalized for pneumonia.

Known to her fans by her nickname Vet, Boswell with her older sisters Connie and Martha performed with Benny Goodman and the Dorsey Brothers, singing “Whadja Do to Me?,” “The Music Goes Round and Round” and other hits. Their inventive use of scat singing became a model for Fitzgerald and others.

The trio broke up in 1936, after first Vet and then Martha got married and were largely forgotten. Then in 1981, their music and lives became the basis of a short-lived off-Broadway musical called “The Heebie Jeebies,” the title of one of their songs . Vet Boswell was a production consultant on the show.

She is survived by her daughter, Chica Minnerly, three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.