Media
A curated playlist, five audio lessons on the Boswell sound, and chart positions and reviews that recognized them.
A living archive of the Boswell sound
Everything the Boswell Sisters left behind, arranged so you can hear it. New material lands here as the archive grows.
Music Playlist
The Boswell Sisters Collection Volume One
Five keys to the Boswell sound
Cynthia Lucas, one of the best-known Boz historians, narrates five audio lessons that unpack how the Sisters actually did what they did.
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Lesson 01
The Blend
Cynthia Lucas walks through the first, and most immediately recognizable, element of the Boswell Sound: three sisters singing so closely blended that they sometimes read as one voice.
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Lesson 02
The Tempo
The Boswells' signature four-to-five tempo shifts within a single arrangement, executed with the kind of precision that most trios would never even attempt.
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Lesson 03
The Riffs
The instrumental-style rhythmic figures the Boswells pulled off with their voices — riffs that would sound at home coming out of a horn section.
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Lesson 04
Melody? Words? Who Needs ’Em!
What happens when the Boswells decide the melody as written is only a starting point — reharmonizations, unexpected returns to the verse, lyrics rendered in something resembling pig Latin.
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Lesson 05
Scatting, Hand Trumpets, Gibberish and Gulling
The Boswell bag of tricks — scat lines, hand trumpets, blues refrains, gulling, and whatever else they felt like throwing into an arrangement.
Listen
On Screen
Video Features
Documentaries and video essays about the Boswell sound.
- 01
Alexander's Ragtime Band
- 02
The Boswell Sisters — A Documentary Feature
- 03
Connee Boswell Double Feature — with the Brian Sisters
- 04
Constructing YOU-DLE-EE-OO-DE-OO
- 05
Crazy People (from "The Big Broadcast")
- 06
Falling Star (from "Syncopation")
- 07
Lou'siana Waddle (in "Ramblin' Round Radio Row")
- 08
Martha (M'appari)
- 09
Sleepy Time Down South
- 10
Harlem Hop (in "Under Montana Skies")