Dorothy Ashby

Did You Know?

• In the 1990s, Pete Rock, Rahzel and Ugly Duckling sampled Ashby's harp music for their own works.
• Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Jay-Z, Mac Miller, J Dilla, Madlib, and many more sampled her work.
• In 2018, Drake included a sample of Ashby's rendition of 'The Windmills of Your Mind' in his song 'Final Fantasy' from the album Scorpion.

Early life and education

Ashby grew up in the Paradise Valley/Black Bottom Community in Detroit, Michigan. Her father, Wiley Thompson, a self-taught jazz guitarist, often brought home fellow musicians, and she supported them on piano as a young girl. She attended Cass Technical High School alongside future jazz greats Donald Byrd, Gerald Wilson, and Kenny Burrell. After trying saxophone and string bass, she took up the harp, studying classical style with Velma Froude. At age 17, she majored in piano and music education at Wayne State University.

Career

After graduating, Ashby began playing piano in Detroit's jazz scene, but by 1952 she made the harp her main instrument. Fellow musicians initially resisted the harp, seen as a classical instrument, but she built support through free shows and performances at dances and weddings with her trio. She recorded with Jimmy Cobb, Ed Thigpen, Richard Davis, Frank Wess, and others in the late 1950s and early 1960s. During the 1960s, she hosted her own radio show in Detroit, occasionally performing live with her husband. In 1962, she won Down Beat magazine's critics' and readers' awards for best jazz performers. Her first full jazz LP, The Jazz Harpist, was recorded for Savoy in 1957, mixing standards and originals; it was critically well received but ignored by the record-buying public. Her next album, Hip Harp (1958), on Prestige, featured Frank Wess, Herman Wright, and Art Taylor. She led 10 sessions between 1957 and 1970 for Atlantic, Cadet, and other labels, playing bop, soul, Brazilian, African, Middle Eastern, and free jazz. On her 1970 album The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby, she pioneered the use of the Japanese koto in jazz. In the 1960s, she and her husband formed a theatrical group to produce plays relevant to Detroit's African-American community.