INA RAY HUTTON

Ina Ray Hutton was born Odessa Cowan in 1916, and was the daughter of female pianist Marvel Ray. Ina Ray started performing herself as a child, and by age 14 she made her Broadway debut as a singer and dancer. At the age of 18 she became the first Big Band leader of an all girl band, called "Ina Ray Hutton and Her Melodears"! The band stayed together for five years until 1939, and she was called "The Blonde Bombshell of Rhythm", and she wore sexy outfits while conducting, and she was quoted saying "I'm selling the show as a music program, not on a sex appeal basis, but if curves attract an audience, so much the better." The band had appeared in some 1930s movies, and after it broke up Ina Ray headed an all-male orchestra for six years and they appeared in a movie in 1944 called "Ever Since Venus" which starred Ina Ray. In the 1950s she starred on TV in "The Ina Ray Hutton Show" with another "all-girl" band, and they won five Emmy Awards. She married and divorced four times, and she retired in 1968 and passed away in 1984. One source says her mom, who was born Marvel Cowan, but who performed as "Marvel Ray", was black or "mulatto", and that Ina Ray Hutton was either "one half black" or "one quarter black", but that Ina Ray "passed for white" her entire career (due to the massive racial prejudices of those times)! Hutton passed away in 1984 at the age of 67. It sure seems like someone could make a movie biography of her life!