Dorothy Donegan was a classically trained American jazz pianist and occasional vocalist, primarily known for performing stride and boogie-woogie, as well as bebop, swing, and classical. Donegan was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, and began studying piano in 1928. She took her first lessons from Alfred N. Simms, a West Indian pianist who also taught Cleo Brown. She graduated from Chicago’s DuSable High School, where she studied with Walter Dyett, a teacher who also worked with Dinah Washington and Johnny Griffin. She also studied at the Chicago Musical College and the University of Southern California.
She was known for her work in Chicago nightclubs. In 1942 she made her recording debut. She appeared in Sensations of 1945 with Cab Calloway, Gene Rodgers and W. C. Fields. She was a protege of Art Tatum, who called her “the only woman who can make me practice”. She said that Tatum “was supposed to be blind…I know he could see women.”
In 1943, Donegan became the first African American to perform at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall. She later said of this pathbreaking performance: In the first half I played Rachmaninoff and Grieg and in the second I drug it through the swamp – played jazz. Claudia Cassidy reviewed the concert on the first page of the Chicago Tribune. She said I had a terrific technique and I looked like a Toulouse-Lautrec lithograph.
Her first six albums proved to be obscure compared to her successes in performance. It was not until the 1980s that her work gained notice in the jazz world. In particular, a recorded appearance at the 1987 Montreux Jazz Festival and her live albums from 1991 were met with acclaim. Even so, she remained best known for her live performances. She drew crowds with her eclectic mixture of styles and her flamboyant personality. Ben Ratliff argued in The New York Times that “her flamboyance helped her find work in a field that was largely hostile to women. To a certain extent, it was also her downfall; her concerts were often criticized for having an excess of personality.”
Donegan was outspoken about her view that sexism, along with her insistence on being paid the same rates as male musicians, had limited her career. In 1992, Donegan received an “American Jazz Master” fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1994, an honourary doctorate from Roosevelt University.
