Elvira "Vi" Redd (born September 20, 1928) is an American jazz alto saxophone player, vocalist and educator. She has been active since the early 1950s and is known primarily for playing in the blues style. She is highly regarded as an accomplished veteran who has performed with Count Basie, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Linda Hopkins, Marian McPartland and Dizzy Gillespie.
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Redd is the daughter of New Orleans jazz drummer and Clef Club co-founder Alton Redd and Mattie Redd (née Thomas). She was born in Los Angeles.She began singing in church when she was five , and started on alto saxophone around the age of twelve, when her great aunt Alma Hightower gave her a horn and taught her how to play. She was deeply influenced during her formative years by her father, who was one of the leading figures on the Central Avenue jazz scene.
Around 1948 she formed a band with her first husband, trumpeter Nathaniel Meeks. She played the saxophone and sang, and began performing professionally. She had her first son when she was in her late twenties, and a second son with her second husband, drummer Richie Goldberg, a few years later. After working for the Board of Education from 1957 to 1960, Redd returned to jazz and her popularity as a saxophonist/singer peaked.
The Los Angeles Sentinel's coverage of her musical career starts in August 1961, when she had a weekly gig with Goldberg and an organ player at the Red Carpet jazz club. In the same year, Redd appeared at the club Shelly's Manne-Hole. In 1962 she performed at the Las Vegas Jazz Festival with her own group. Regardless of her exposure at public concerts during the 1960s, she did not have many opportunities to be recorded, but she led albums for United Artists (1962) and Atco (1962–63). Her 1963 album Lady Soul features many prominent jazz figures of the day, including Bill Perkins, Jennell Hawkins, Barney Kessel, Leroy Vinnegar, Leroy Harrison, Dick Hyman, Paul Griffin, Bucky Pizzarelli, Ben Tucker and Dave Bailey. In 1964 Redd toured with Earl Hines in the U.S. and Canada, including engagements in Chicago and New York.
Here’s “Salty Papa Blues” from above album.
In 1966, she played at the Monterey Jazz Festival with her own band, and the next year she traveled to London by herself to play with local musicians at the historic Ronnie Scott's jazz club. She was initially invited there as a singer and was scheduled to perform for only two weeks, but due to popular demand her performance was extended to ten weeks. Typically, Ronnie Scott's featured an instrumental group with a lesser-known vocalist as an opening act. Bassist Dave Holland, who played with Redd, recalled that she both played and sang and was enthusiastically accepted by the London audience.
The summer of 1968 was another high point in Redd's music life. She made a guest appearance with the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet at the Newport Jazz Festival in early July. Later in the summer of 1968, Redd traveled to Europe and Africa with the Count Basie Orchestra as a singer. One of the songs out of this collaboration was "Stormy Monday Blues" that brought together her strengths both as a vocalist and as an instrumentalist. The orchestra gave her plenty of space to play with soulful singing and the effervescent chord progressions that made her music so pleasing. She performed publicly at several prestigious clubs and jazz festivals, attracting writers' attention and eliciting passionate reaction from audiences.In 1969, she joined the recording session of multiinstrumentalist Johnny Almond's jazz-rock album, Hollywood Blues, playing alto sax on two tunes.
Redd graduated from California State University, Los Angeles, and earned a teaching certificate from University of Southern California. She taught and lectured for many years from the '70s onward upon returning to Los Angeles. Around 1970, she started to perform less in order to stay home with her children and teach at a special education school. About five years later, at the age of forty-seven, she gradually resumed her performing career. Her last recording was on Marian McPartland's Now's the Time.
In 1977 Redd was appointed as a Consultant Panelist to the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities in Washington, DC. For the next thirty years she has been working as a musician and educator, giving concerts, touring abroad, and lecturing at colleges. In 2001, she received the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Award.
Vi Redd's illustrious career in being one of the first female jazz instrumentalists to be accepted and respected within a male-dominated field as well as a strong vocalist is worthy of celebration. Her dedication to and mastery of jazz music has paved the way for many other talented ladies.
(Edited from an article by Yoko Suzuki, University of Pittsburgh, All About Jazz & Wikipedia)