Valaida Snow
"The Trumpet Star"
Young and Successful
Valaida Snow had limitless talent. stage charisma, beauty, and showbiz savvy. A hot trumpet player in the Louis Armstrong mode, she was billed as “Queen of the Trumpet'' or “Little Louis.” An all-around theatrical performer, dancer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist, Snow was a Vaudeville trouper before age ten; by age twenty-seven she had performed from the Deep South to Shanghai, China. Valaida had some noteworthy success in black musical theater, appearing in the roadshow version of Sissle and Blake’s “Shuffle Along.” In Lew Leslie’s “Rhapsody in Black” on Broadway in 1931 her phenomenal arranging, horn playing, singing, dancing, and choreography nearly stole the show from its big star, Ethel Waters.
Flamboyant Lifestyle
In Chicago, Snow was briefly mentored by Louis Armstrong and performed at the Grand Terrace Ballroom with pianist and bandleader Earl Hines, who was a paramour. The African American press and gossip columnists found Snow fascinating for her beauty, talent, and scandalous lifestyle. But her nearly unlimited gifts went largely unrewarded in America. Moving to Europe in the mid-1930s she made Paris her base of operations and was quickly embraced. The publication Jazz Hot declared in 1936, “We had the pleasure of finding in Valaida the temperament of the great black trumpeters . . . One is obliged to admire the fullness of her tone and the power that no European musician can even approach.” Traveling the Continent, she lived an expatriate life to the hilt, flaunting an opulent, even decadent lifestyle, cutting records in London, Stockholm, and Copenhagen. Her flamboyant affectations included a pet monkey, orchid-colored limousine, and chauffeur dressed in maroon livery.
Valaida Snow - Patience and Fortitude. (1946)
Trapped in Europe
Valaida’s European touring peaked in Summer 1937 with appearances on the French Riviera and in Holland, Zurich, and The Hague. Snow was among the handful of African American performers who stayed too long in Europe before the Second World War commenced. Detained by wartime authorities, she later falsely claimed that the Nazis had arrested, interned, and mistreated her. But she spent months in protective Dutch custody pursuant to drug possession charges. Barely escaping alive, Valaida returned home in June 1942. Quickly regaining her composure, she resumed performing but in increasing obscurity until her little-noted passing in 1956.
