Chilton talk celebrates Scott’s unique sound

Although Hazel Scott was raised in a Harlem brownstone just a few blocks from the Columbia gates, it is safe to assume that she is relatively unknown among its undergraduate population today.

Seeking to change just that, Columbia’s Center for Jazz Studies hosted an event in Philosophy Hall on Wednesday. The event, “The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist,” featured Karen Chilton, a New York-based writer and actor whose biography of Scott was recently published to high critical acclaim. The 50 or so audience members listened intently as Chilton spoke in detail of the life and times of one of America’s most loved but often forgotten Jazz Age musicians.

Chilton spoke in warm, measured tones as she described how Scott, who was born in Trinidad, received her big break when she filled in for the singer Ida Cox at a New York nightclub. “The audience did not get what they expected,” she said with a laugh. “They heard music that was enigmatic and complex.”

Combining elements of swing and the classics, Chilton said, the music’s seemingly contradictory elements stemmed from Scott’s refusal to bend to the standards of popular music.

The statement seems an apt description for Scott herself. Even today, few know what to make of her, and most have reduced her to many labels, including “black activist,” “suspected communist,” “Hollywood darling,” and “American expatriate,” as well as “Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.’s wife.”

Chilton diplomatically declined to delve into the details of her initial affair with and eventual marriage to America’s first black congressman, and instead asked audience members to get to know Scott on her own terms—as a woman whose Hollywood contract stipulated that she would always play herself in films and insisted on wearing her own costumes when those provided on-set were not up to her standards.

In an effort to allow audience members to do so, clips of Scott’s films and performances were screened. Lounging on the couches and chairs strewn casually about the room, the audience laughed when Scott flashed the camera her signature smile or played the piano single-handedly, the old film and unsteady recording incapable of concealing her love and joy for the music.