Meet Tiny Davis: The Lesbian Jazz Trumpeter That Even Louis Armstrong Was a Fan of
The animated trumpet player performed with all-women bands throughout the 1930s and 1940s and even opened a queer bar with her partner in Chicago.
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Ernestine “Tiny” Davis could play the trumpet with the best of them.
“Her power on the trumpet and strong vocals drew frequent comparisons to Louis Armstrong,” according to the Smithsonian.
The jazz musician known for her stage presence and energy played in all-woman bands in the 1930s and 1940s, including the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, which the Smithsonian notes was the first multi-racial all-women jazz band to tour the U.S. nationally. Eventually, Davis formed her own all-woman band called Tiny Davis and Her Hell Divers.
The queer Trumpet legend was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on August 5, 1909.
Davis began her career in Kansas City, Missouri, after moving to the city for her then-husband Clarence Davis’s career, Kansas City Magazine reports. But as Clarence performed, so did Davis.
She joined the touring Black woman jazz band the Harlem Playgirls before moving on to the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, which, the Kansas City Magazine reports, was more established. Davis even toured across military bases in Europe with the USO during World War II.
Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald were fans of hers, according to the Jazz Women Archives.
“Louis Armstrong was so impressed with Davis’ playing that he reportedly tried to hire her away from the Sweethearts; Davis turned him down,” according to Smithsonian Magazine.
It was in between tours that she met Ruby Lucas and left her husband.
But Kansas City eventually chased the queer women out.
“We got ran out of town,” Lucas said in the 1988 documentary Tiny and Ruby: Hell Divin’ Women, according to the Kansas City Magazine.
The two moved to Chicago, where Davis founded Tiny Davis and the Hell Divers, with Lucas also in the band.
The magazine reports that after World War II, as work dried up for many women entertainers, Davis and Lucas opened up a queer bar on Chicago’s South Side.
The not-so-subtle name? Tiny and Ruby’s Gay Spot.
Davis continued to play in Chicago jazz clubs and the lesbian bar because a fixture for the LGBTQ+ community in the city at the time. It was torn down in the late 1950s.
Davis and Lucas were together until Davis died in 1994, according to the Archives.
