Episode 11 - Kay D Ray

This month’s guest is documentary filmmaker, Kay D Ray. Kay is the producer and director of the award-winning documentary Lady Be Good: Instrumental Women in Jazz, which features interviews with artists like Marianne McPartland, Vi Redd, Carline Ray, Roz Cron and Quincy Jones. She is also the producer and director of its more recent counterpart, In Her Hands: Key Changes in Jazz, which looks at women’s experiences in jazz today in the United States, and features artists like Anat Cohen, Grace Kelly and Ellen Seeling. Kay has also had decades of experience researching and producing content for museums, including her work as the senior film producer for Experience Music Project in Seattle, Washington, and as the co-curator and filmmaker for the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture’s 2010 project Jumpin' With The Big Bands. Kay and I caught up via Zoom in February to discuss what led her to filmmaking, and specifically to researching Women in Jazz; her experiences interviewing greats of the swing era like Marianne McPartland, Jane Sager and Lucille Dixon; what making her films taught her about the experiences of Women in Jazz in the 30s, 40s and 50s versus today; and some of the other great projects she’s had a chance to work on through her filmmaking career. For distribution of Lady Be Good: Instrumental Women in Jazz and In Her Hands: Key Changes in Jazz, you can contact Kay via her website (or Passion River Films for Lady Be Good: ) Check out Kay’s 25 minute Documentary “Ernestine Anderson: There Will Never be Another You” about the jazz and blues vocalist here: The majority of Kay’s museum work is archived, but if you’re stopping by Hawaii and are interested in submarines, you can check out some films she created in 2019 at the Pacific Submarine Museum in Honolulu! 😉 Sally Placksin’s American Women in Jazz: 1900 to the Present: Sherrie Tucker’s “Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s”: Kristin A. McGee’s “Some Liked it Hot: Jazz Women in Film and Television, 1928-1959”: Support the Show.

You can listen to Episode 11 - Kay D Ray online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Episode 11 - Kay D Ray is an episode from Women in Jazz by Earanee Niedzwiecki.

This episode is 69:34 long.

This episode was published on Mar 25, 2021.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Women in Jazz when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.