On Saturday, May 30, NPR listeners around the country were treated to a story about the Darlinettes, a big band composed of students from Woman’s College (now UNCG) in the 1940s and early 1950s. The piece aired as part of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday. WFDD’s David Ford used resources in University Archives (as well as interviews with Darlinettes members and Steve Haines of UNCG’s Jazz Studies Program) to discuss the issues the Darlinettes faced as an all-woman jazz band during the 1940s and 1950s.
You can listen to the NPR piece online at http://www.npr.org/2015/05/30/410531268/a-band-of-their-own. The site also includes some photographs and a link to a recording of the Darlinettes’ original song “You Don’t Get it from Books.”
You can learn even more about the Darlinettes in this Spartan Stories blog post from September 2014: http://uncghistory.blogspot.com/2014/09/darlinettes-and-rhythmettes-big-band.html.