Peggy Gilbert & Her All-Girl Band

Peggy Gilbert, born Margaret Fern Knechtges (1905-2007), arrived into a musical family and grew up hearing music in her house every day. Her father was a violinist who played in theater pit bands in Sioux City, Iowa, and her mother sang for touring opera companies whenever they appeared in town. Gilbert started taking piano lessons at age eight and soon after accompanied her father at stage shows. But it wasn't until after she turned eighteen that Gilbert took up the saxophone. At the time, there weren't many girls playing horns, but she immediately took a liking to the free and loose feeling the saxophone gave her. In the early 1920s, girl bands had become fairly common and the notion that one could make such a living intrigued the young musician. Gilbert soon organized The Melody Makers, the first all-girl band in Sioux City, where her group found success playing twice a day at the Martin Hotel. Before long, the band's music was heard nightly on KSCJ, a fledgling radio station in 1927, making Gilbert a broadcast pioneer.

Jeannie Gayle Pool, PhD, is a musicologist, composer, documentary filmmaker, and producer. An expert on music for motion pictures, she is a consultant for Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Music Department