Edna White’s Gloria Trumpeters
March is Women’s History Month. NY1920s always centers women’s history; this month we’ll do so a bit more emphatically.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 21 October 1921, p. 3. Newspapers.com.
One hundred years ago today, the Gloria Trumpeters, an all-women brass ensemble led by trumpet player Edna White, played an all-men event.
new York Tribune, 25 March 1922, p. 9. Newspapers.com.
We last featured the Gloria Trumpeters for our Memorial Day, 1920 post.
Edna White was a trumpet virtuoso who formed and led several all-women groups and recorded widely; most of these records have not been digitized. Sometime in 1921 or 1922 she was at Columbia Records, playing on “International Medley March,” which you can listen to here.
"Columbia matrix 87518. International medley march / Howard Kopp ; Edna White." Discography of American Historical Recordings. UC Santa Barbara Library, 2022.
The occasion was a “men’s conference” at the Bedford Y.M.C.A., at 1121 Bedford Avenue, northeast corner of Bedford and Monroe in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, as seen on the 1923 postcard, below.
Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. "Brooklyn: Monroe Street - Bedford Avenue" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1923.
The building is gone, though the (now called) Bed-Stuy Y.M.C.A. is still there.
Google Maps.
– Jonathan Goldman, March 26, 2022
TAGS: music, brass, women’s history, men, meetings