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Ad in April 1, 1944 Billboard magazine, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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Dorothy Donegan: Queen of the Keys
“I’m wild…but polished.”
…..-Dorothy Donegan
Sensational
Largely unsung
Dorothy Donegan
Known by jazz insiders as
The female Art Tatum
His protégé
The one who made him say:
“She is the only woman who can
Make me practice.”
A band all by yourself, you’d swing
From Beethoven to bebop, from
Brahms and Bach to boogie woogie
From Rachmaninoff to ragtime
Queen of the keys
Impossible glissandos, regal on the keys!
A silver screen natural in Sensations of 1945,
One critic likened you to a Toulouse-Lautrec
Lithograph. “I like to steal the show,”
You boasted. And you did.
Who could follow you?
Eyes scanning the audience instead of
The keys, mugging like Cab Calloway
While critics deemed you too much!
Too over the top!
Wild but polished: Dorothy Donegan,
Who should’ve been a household name
Short-changed by a short-sighted agent
Who turned down a 7yr contract with
MGM, O fiery femme!
Burning up the keys as you’d swing from
Classical to the dirty blues and back again
Mostly confined to the cocktail piano scene
Effortless left-handed riffs, they compared
You to a royal lioness….bold!
Flashy showmanship: too much?
Demands for equal pay: too much?
Dorothy Donegan, a near-forgotten
Footnote; a brilliant gem:
Forever wild.
Forever polished.
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Listen to Connie Johnson read her poem
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Connie Johnson is a Los Angeles, California-based writer who has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poetry has appeared or will be forthcoming in Iconoclast, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Jerry Jazz Musician, San Pedro River Review, Cholla Needles 85, Shot Glass Journal, Voicemail Poems, Misfit Magazine, Mudfish 23,, Exit 13, Glint Literary Journal, Rye Whiskey Review and Door Is a Jar.
Click here to read In a Place of Dreams: Connie Johnson’s album of jazz poetry, music, and life stories (published by Jerry Jazz Musician)
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Watch a filmed performance of Dorothy Donegan playing “Caravan”
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Click here to read previous editions of The Sunday Poem
Click here to read “A Collection of Jazz Poetry – Summer, 2023 Edition”
Click here for information about how to submit your poetry or short fiction
Click here to subscribe to the (free) Jerry Jazz Musician quarterly newsletter
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Jerry Jazz Musician…human produced (and AI-free) since 1999
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