[BITList] Bold and brass - Oxford DNB Life of the Day

[John Feltham]

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Cole,  Grace Elizabeth Agnes Annie  [Gracie]  (1924-2006), trumpeter, was born at Ivy Cottage, Rowlands Gill, co. Durham, on 8 September 1924, the only child of Albert Ernest Cole (1904-1986), miner and musician, and his wife, Elsie, nee Lee (1905-1972). Her four first names were those of two grandmothers and two great-grandmothers. Her father played cornet in colliery bands in Yorkshire and was also a popular children's entertainer, going by the name of Albertino the Clown, and whenever he changed bands the family moved, so that Gracie's schooling was somewhat unsettled. When she was twelve her father taught her to play the cornet, and within a few months she was playing in her first brass band, the Rossington Welfare, and in two years was playing alongside her father with Firbeck Colliery Band. In 1939 she made her first broadcast on Children's Hour when Brass Band News advised all bandsmen to listen, saying, 'they will be surprised to hear such fine playing from a girl'.

Gracie Cole was making brass band history in the 1930s when brass bands were very much a male preserve, with none of the top bands using female musicians. It therefore created quite a stir when, in 1940, an invitation to be guest soloist with the Besses o' th' Barn Band led to her being featured with them for the next three years. She was soon in demand by the noted brass band conductors of the day, including Harry Mortimer, broadcasting and performing with the likes of Fairey Aviation, Foden's, and Grimethorpe Colliery, whose band she joined in 1942, becoming the first female to compete in the Belle Vue championships. Another landmark was reached in 1942 when she competed for the Alexander Owen memorial scholarship, something no other woman had attempted, and which she won by an astonishing twenty-one points, the biggest winning margin in the history of the competition, not to be repeated for another thirty-eight years.

Later in 1942 Cole became eligible for call-up into the armed forces or 'war work'. On her father's advice she switched to the trumpet and joined Gloria Gay's All Girls Band, working with ENSA, followed by a brief spell with Rudy Starita's Starlites. In November 1945 she joined the Ivy Benson Band as lead trumpet and soloist at the start of the band's second European ENSA tour, and was featured on a live broadcast from Hamburg immediately following George VI's speech on Christmas day. She spent the next five years with Ivy Benson, the most famous 'girls' band in Europe, playing the Russian sector of Berlin and Egypt and the Suez Canal zone, as well as headlining variety theatres in the UK with summer residencies at Butlins holiday camps.

In 1950 the Ivy Benson Band was in Grimsby where a photo call was arranged with the George Evans Band, which was also appearing in town. So impressed was Evans with Gracie Cole's playing that he invited her to join his previously all-male band. She needed no persuading even though she would be taking a cut in salary, having fallen for Evans's trombonist William (Bill) Geldard (b. 1929), whom she married in 1951. It seemed like a dream ticket when both were invited to join the legendary Squadronaires, but male prejudice soon made life uncomfortable and Gracie left having decided to form her own 'girls' band. She continued fronting this until the birth of her first daughter in 1957. She led a male band for Mecca ballrooms in 1958 and then played with the Denny Boyce Band at Wimbledon Palais before joining Sydney Lipton at Grosvenor House in 1960. The birth of her second daughter later that year led to her playing on a freelance basis from then onwards. Together with her husband she did much to encourage local brass bands, and in 1990 she was made a freeman of the City of London. Having lived in Thames Ditton, Surrey, since the mid-1960s, she developed Alzheimer's disease towards the end of the 1990s and spent the last six months of her life in Westcott House, Guildford Road, Westcott, where she died on 28 December 2006. Her funeral at All Saints' Church, Weston Green, Surrey, on 19 January 2007 was followed by cremation at Randalls Park crematorium, Leatherhead. She was survived by her husband and their two daughters.

Gracie Cole, along with her contemporary, the Halle Orchestra's trombonist Maisie Ringham, was a prime innovator of the musical emancipation of women, changing the face of brass bands in the 1930s and 1940s, although it would be many more years before female musicians were finally accepted as the equals of their male counterparts.

Sheila Tracy 

Sources  The Guardian (20 Jan 2007) + The Times (23 Jan 2007) + personal knowledge (2010) + private information (2010) + b. cert. + d. cert.
Archives  SOUND BL NSA, documentary recordings
Likenesses  obituary photographs · photograph, repro. in www.ivybenson-online.com/Biographies/gracie_cole.htm · H. Smead, photographs, repro. in www.ivybenson-online.com/Press_cuttings/Blowing%20her%20own%20trumpet.htm · V. Wilmer, photograph, 1986, priv. coll. [see illus.]
Wealth at death  £326,588: probate, 23 March 2007, CGPLA Eng. & Wales