Donegan Jams Way Past Gender Gap

Jazz players battle for recognition, even more so when they are women. After more than 50 years in the music business, critically acclaimed pianist Dorothy Donegan is receiving some of the attention that might have been accorded her years ago had she been male.

In January, Donegan, 69, was elected to the prestigious Jazz Masters Hall of Fame, an honor that carried with it a $20,000 grant Donegan can use as she pleases. Now, Sony/CBS is pursuing Donegan, who also sings, with hopes of recording both her vocals and piano.

And, last September, Donegan appeared on CBS’ “Sunday Morning” show, which has featured hundreds of legendary jazz performers invited by resident jazz legend Billy Taylor.

“He didn’t put me on as quick as I wanted him to,” Donegan confessed during a phone interview from Toronto, where she was playing last weekend. She had just returned from a department store, where she had commandeered a piano to play an impromptu version of the Billie Holiday tune “Strange Fruit.” “This is the first time I’ve been on the show, and I had asked him a long time ago.”

Even with the new celebrity, Donegan, who plays the Jazz Note in Pacific Beach this Friday through Sunday night, is not on a completely even footing with her male peers. She considers herself a disciple of the late, great jazz pianist Art Tatum, but she was passed up for a Tatum tribute festival last month. Featured pianists instead were Taylor, Ellis Marsalis and Ramsey Lewis. Lewis, who made his mark with a funky, laid-back style, was an especially unlikely choice.

“Of course I find there is sexist and maybe racial discrimination” in jazz, said Donegan, who considers Tatum her major influence. “I didn’t get to do the Tatum festival, which is headed by men. I felt more qualified than those people they invited. I was very hurt because I was Art’s pupil. I even called Art Tatum’s wife. She was ignored, too.”

But all is not gloom for the sunny, funny pianist, who breaks up her sets and her audiences with impersonations of Lena Horne and Eartha Kitt. She’s clearly pleased by her career’s new momentum and genuinely thankful to be earning a living with her art.

Donegan has a new release out that she considers to be one of her finest, recorded live in October aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean.

“Who isn’t a fan of Dorothy Donegan?” asked San Diego pianist and singer Jeannie Cheatham, who also performed on that cruise. “I don’t know any piano player that isn’t. She’s a living legend from now until the year 3,050! She does it all.”

Sony/CBS wants Donegan to sing, as she always has in her shows, but she considers herself a pianist first and foremost.

“That’s what’s been supporting me all these years. But everyone wants you to do something else. Nat Cole, they put a gun to his head,” she said of the prodigious pianist who became better known for his singing. “We haven’t signed yet. I guess they’re trying to make a Shirley Horn or Ida Cox out of me. They want me to sing some risque songs. I’ll try it; if it doesn’t work, I’ll just have to quit.”

Donegan’s piano style is eclectic, marrying the blinding speed and harmonic and melodic inventiveness of Tatum with boogie-woogie, classical influences and her own, idiosyncratic phrasing, which takes solos in surprising directions.

The full range of her talents is apparent on “Dorothy Romps,” a retrospective covering 1953 to 1979, released last year on Rosetta Records, available in Tower Records stores (for Rosetta’s complete catalogue of jazz and blues by women artists, write 115 W. 16th St., Suite 267, New York 10011).

“I’m a classical pianist first,” explained Donegan, who grew up in Chicago and studied classical music at the Chicago Musical College, the Chicago Conservatory of Music and the University of Maryland.

She still takes classical lessons and plays classical music at home in Los Angeles when she’s not out doing jazz dates, where her classical side occasionally surfaces.

“I sneak it in,” she said. “During my playing, I’ll sneak in an etude, and all through my playing, you can hear classical influences. I’ll do a little Bach, a little Gershwin. It never gets left out, and sometimes, I’ll throw in a lot. I do one whole etude by Chopin, but the rest is fragments.

Donegan’s mother ran a rooming house on Chicago’s South Side, and Donegan practiced piano often--her mother let her out of house-cleaning duties. By 12 and 13, she was playing house rent parties, and, soon after, heard the greats firsthand in local clubs.

“Earl Hines was a monster,” Donegan said. “Laura Crosby, she could really play. If she’d have been any heavier, she’d have been a threat to me. Teddy Wilson. Martha Davis was very good.”

In 1945, Donegan took at short shot at movies, visiting Los Angeles to duel pianist Eugene Rodgers in the movie “Sensations of ‘45,” which also featured Cab Calloway. She returned to Los Angeles in 1948 to get married.

From Tatum, Donegan soaked up every trick she could.

“I would hang out with him in Chicago and New York,” Donegan recalled of the time during the 1940s and ‘50s. “He would show you how to do something eight different ways. He said I was the only women who ever made him practice and who made Hazel Scott leave the country.” Scott was a pianist who moved to France during the late 1950s.

Donegan, who estimates she has made about 20 albums without becoming widely known, masks disappointments with her pointed sense of humor.

“Back in the ‘40s, I remember recording for Decca for three or four hours. They never did put it out. I guess they’re keeping it on a shelf until I die, then they’ll collect,” she said good naturedly. “Yes, I figure I’ve been ripped off, but God has let me live this long, so some of the money will come back before I die.”

Donegan’s romantic track record has been as unpredictable as her music. Married three times, she’s been single since 1974.

“I think artists should be by themselves,” she said. “They have to practice. Bein’ a wife, I don’t mind too well. She has to be submissive, cook, wash, iron and sew and bring the money home, too.”

Donegan is not getting wealthy off her music, but she is more financially secure than ever, no longer wary of creditors.

“I’m doing a little better financially,” she said. “I’m not an Oprah Winfrey yet, but I can open the mail now. I used to be afraid to.”

* At the Jazz Note, Donegan will be backed by bassist Marshall Hawkins and drummer John (Ironman) Harris. Shows are at 8 and 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday and at 7 and 9 p.m. Sunday.