Secrets of a Blonde Bombshell

In the 1930s, Ina Ray Hutton conducted, tapped, and sang as the “blonde bombshell bandleader,” strutting her stuff in front of her all—female swing band, the Melodears. (You can’t make this stuff up.) She led bands through the 1950s – in clubs, in movies, on TV, on the USO circuit – and was the first female bandleader to be recorded and filmed. She wasn’t a legend or an innovator, but a hard—working musician who played a role in jazz history.
Decades later, a news reporter from KUOW in Seattle looked at one of her albums and felt something was odd: the blonde bombshell, she thought, might have been black. Phyllis Fletcher discovered that Ina Ray Hutton had been passing as white – hiding in the spotlight.   
  
  
  
Video: Ina Ray Hutton and her Melodears perform “Truckin'”