Viola Smith

Viola Smith ( born November 29, 1912 in Mount Calvary, Fond du Lac County) is an American drummer and is known for her role in orchestral music, swing bands and pop music of the 1930s and 1940s. She was one of the first professional female percussionists.

• 2.1 film appearances
• 2.2 TV appearances
• 2.3 Broadway musicals

Life

Biography

Viola Smith grew up in Wisconsin in Mount Calvary. She had seven sisters. Her parents conducted a concert hall in Mount Calvary.

In the 1920s and 1930s played viola in the Schmidt Sisters, a family orchestra, which had founded her father in Wisconsin. With the growing popularity of the band, they received offers for ever greater performances throughout the country. According to her nephew Dennis Bartash her ​​breakthrough came when she and her sisters in the 1930s played in the Major Bowes Amateur Hour radio show.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Smith played in Coquettes, an all-women orchestra, along with her sister Midred Bartash who played the clarinet and the saxophone.

At the height of her career, she played with musicians such as Ella Fitzgerald and Chick Webb and in films at the side of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. In 1942, she joined Phil Spitalnys Hour of Charm at, a commercially successful women 's big band of the swing era.

She played with the Kit Kat band, which was part of the original Broadway production of the resulting musical Cabaret in 1960.

Private

Viola Smith celebrated on November 29, 2012 its 100th anniversary in Costa Mesa after she was last year from New York, where she had lived for the last 65 years, moved to there. She lives in Costa Mesa at the Piecemakers, a Christian group that was founded by her cousin Marie Kolasinski.

Work

Film appearances

• When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1942 )
• Here Come the Co - Eds (1945 )

TV appearances

• I've Got a Secret ( CBS)
• The Ed Sullivan Show (5x ) ( CBS)

Broadway Musicals

• Cabaret