Mary Osborne

Mary Osborne ( born July 17, 1921 in Minot, North Dakota, † April 3, 1992 in Bakersfield, California ) was an American jazz musician (guitar, vocals).

Life and work

Osborne is the daughter of a dance and ragtime musician. They first played violin and double bass, then guitar in the school orchestras. After hearing Charlie Christian in the orchestra of Alphonso Trent, she switched to electric guitar. They began in the late 1930s in the band of KDKA radio station. From 1941 she played with Joe Venuti, then with Buddy Rodgers, Terry Shand and Russ Morgan. In 1945, she moved to New York City. There she founded his own trio, but also played with Mary Lou Williams, Charlie Shavers, Louie Bellson, Tyree Glenn and Mercer Ellington and recorded with Coleman Hawkins, with Beryl Booker and Ethel Waters.

In 1951, the Down Beat the story, she had retired and was only a housewife. But only a year later she was back on the scene: with Billie Holiday, she went on tour in Europe. Between 1952 and 1963 she appeared regularly in the Jack Sterling Radio Show of Columbia. In 1959 her album A Girl and Her Guitar. Subsequently, she worked as a guitar teacher and went in 1968 as a contractor to the West Coast, where she headed the Osborne Guitar Company, from which the amplifier company Osborne Sound Laboratories developed. Occasionally they came to continue, probably in 1969 with Venuti, 1978 Marian McPartland or 1981 when Kool Festival in New York. In 1977, she submitted the album Now 's The Time (1977, with saxophonist Vi Redd and McPartland ), in 1982, Now and Then followed. In 1991 they played their last concert at the Village Vanguard.

Osborne was married to trumpeter Ralph Scaffidi and mother of three children.