![]() The girls of today are not the helpless creatures of an earlier generations. There are many girl trumpet players, girl saxophonists and girl drummers who can stand the grind of long tours and exacting one-night stands. “Many of the star instrumentalists of the big name bands are being drafted,” she wrote, under the title Give Girl Musicians A Break! “Instead of replacing them with what may be mediocre talent, why not let some of the great girl musicians of the country take their places? In the same year, as men were being drafted to war and women taking their place in factories, Viola wrote a now-famous article for Down Beat magazine, arguing for the inclusion of women in the big bands of the day. The band moved to New York in 1942, where Smith studied under the legendary snare-drum innovator Billy Gladstone. ![]() In 1938, Smith formed another all-female orchestra, The Coquettes, with her bass playing sister Mildred. The band soon found themselves in demand for weddings and state fairs. Smith took lessons from drummers in the orchestra pit. The band played in theatres during school vacations. “My dad said, ‘Now, we need a drummer!’ Thank God, I was it.” “Well, when they heard that, that was the end of the practicing, no more piano from then on at all!” Because she was the sixth daughter in the family, she said, her older sisters got the strings and brass. “We all played the piano, we had two pianos and an organ at home, my two brothers were practicing the piano and overheard my dad say he was going to have an all-girl orchestra. “There were 10 of us, eight of us were in the orchestra,” Smith told DrumTalkTV in 2017. We girls have as much stamina as men … girl drummers can stand the grind of long tours and exacting one-night stands Viola Smith Her showcase was The Snake Charmer, a jazzy arabesque with explosive drum-fills. Smith took up drumming as a teenager in Wisconsin, when her father assembled the Schmitz Sisters Family Orchestra with his eight daughters. Promoted in the 1930s as the “fastest girl drummer in the world” and credited with blazing a path for women in what had been a male preserve, Smith sat behind a giant drum set that included a double bass drum, an instrument that would years later become a tool for hard-hitting rock drummers.
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