Female Jazz Group Hopeful of Finding an Equal Footing

A San Diego club owner once told bassist Lynn Copeland that her band would never play his place.

“He didn’t allow female musicians in his club,” she recalled.

Peggy Dodson, a former Miss Teenage Black America contender who is also a singer and saxophonist, says many men in the music business are more interested in her looks than her musical abilities.

But not all is bleak for women in jazz. Things have improved significantly the past 10 years, some female musicians say.

And, in a validation of just how far they have come, Dodson, Copeland and three other women have banded together as the featured act at tonight’s “Women in Jazz Night,” an annual event presented by KSDS-FM (88.3) at the San Diego City College Theater.

The band is called B Natural. The music is a mix of straight-ahead and Latin jazz, pop jazz and funk.

Copeland, who studied jazz at UC San Diego with Jimmy Cheatham, put the group together as a one-shot deal for tonight, but the six players (drummer H.B. Robinson is the only male) have hit it off so well that they plan to stick together and hunt for a recording contract.

These women, most of them in their 20s and 30s, started out amid sexism, but they believe they are pursuing their careers at a time when opportunities have never been better for women in jazz.

“It’s opening up more and more every day for women to be in the industry,” Dodson said.

San Diego multi-instrumentalist Turiya, who plays piano in B Natural, said: “When I went through the records at KSDS when I was a deejay four years ago, women artists were few and far between. Now you go through the CDs, there are all kinds of women. It’s scary, there are so many great players.”

Tonight is B Natural’s public debut. For the past month, the group has rehearsed a variety of music, much of it original.

Electric bassist Copeland wrote two tunes. “One” is a medium-tempo instrumental with an African beat. The melody line is carried by B Natural’s saxophonist Mindy Abair, a recent graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston. “Shufflyn” swings in a traditional, straight-ahead jazz direction.

Turiya penned a new Latin jazz number titled “Akilah,” after Copeland’s daughter.

Vocal numbers featuring Dodson will include ballads, an old Abbey Lincoln song and Mongo Santamaria’s “Afro Blue.”

The women of B Natural bring broad influences to the group. Because of the shortage of women instrumentalists in jazz, they often looked to men for inspiration.

“Carol Kay is the only female bassist I know of,” said Copeland, who doubles as the group’s musical director. “She did a lot of work for Motown in the 1960s.”

Copeland, 27, grew up in Los Angeles looking up to such bassists as Stanley Clarke, Larry Graham and Louis Johnson. At UCSD, Cheatham introduced her to seasoned master jazz bassist Ron Carter.

During the past few years, Copeland has honed her skills around San Diego, working with bands such as Split Decision and Turiya’s Immediate Freedom Latin ensemble.

Turiya, too, knew of very few female jazz players when she began making music seriously during the early 1970s, but she says women have made inroads in the last 20 years.

“When I started out, there were no women playing jazz. The only one I knew of was (trumpeter) Barbara Donald. When I went to New York during the late 1970s, there were women working. Carla Bley was around,” she said, referring to the pianist.

By the time Turiya returned to San Diego, women jazz musicians were starting to emerge here, too.

“During the late 1970s in San Diego, I lived in a house that was all women musicians at one point, including (the late singer) Ella Ruth Piggee, and there were even more women in jazz in the ‘80s.”

By contrast, female role models weren’t so hard to find for vocalist Dodson, 34, who grew up in Arkansas. There have always been women vocalists in jazz and pop, and Dodson names Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Diana Ross as among her guiding lights.

Dodson majored in music and business at the University of Arkansas. She moved to San Diego two years ago, after a period in New York singing with artists ranging from soul wrapper Kurtis Blow to the R&B; dance band Shades of Love.

“I was tired of being abused in New York,” said Dodson, who lives in Golden Hill. “The economy, the atmosphere, it’s not as conducive to creativity, there was too much violence and depression. The artists who have already made it have it all right, but the artists who are up and coming are struggling.”

It’s not just the lack of female heroes that has discouraged female players. They say jazz is an industry dominated by men, and many of them don’t treat women well.

“Sometimes I have problems with male musicians,” Copeland said. “They tend to tell me I play like a man, rather than just saying I’m a good musician. I guess I should take that as a compliment. A lot of them are jealous. Either they don’t take me seriously, or they take me too seriously and find me intimidating.”

Dodson added: “A lot of men look at you, if you’re a singer, as a sex object. But people accept women more in the industry now, because we have a strong role. A lot of women are musicians, and we’re also producing (movies and music) and directing (movies).

“I think it’s going to be fantastic in the next four to five years,” she said. “It’s not going to be male-dominated anymore.”

* B Natural will perform at 8 p.m. today in the San Diego City College Theater at 15th and C streets downtown. The show will be broadcast live on KSDS. Admission is free.