Billie Rogers

Rogers was born Zelda Louise Smith on May 31, 1917, in North Plains, Oregon. Her family moved to Rainier, Washington, before she was 2 and remained there until age 13. She attended elementary school and first year of high school at Rainier, a small rural community 17 miles inland from Olympia. She skipped two grades and graduated from high school at Renton, Washington, on the day after her 16th birthday.

She was raised in a family of musicians. Her father, William Cody Smith (1885–1970), played violin, alto sax, and banjo. Her mother, Bertha Emde (née Fleming; 1892–1976) played ragtime piano and accordion. Her older brother, Lester Smith (1913–1936), was proficient on sax. Her younger brother, Kenneth Gaylord Smith (1920–2005), played sax. She also had a younger sister, Alice V. (Mrs. Olaf Hemnes; 1924–1996).

During the years in Rainier, the family formed a band called "Smith's Rainier Entertainers," composed of Billie's father, mother, her brother Les, herself, and a hired drummer. Billie played trumpet and sang through a megaphone.

She began studying piano at age 6. She also began playing trumpet when she was around 8, when her older brother, Les, decided he didn't care for that particular instrument. Les had learned to play several instruments by the time he graduated from the University of Montana in 1936, mainly piano, saxophone, clarinet and flute. Les was also a prolific arranger. He played baritone horn in the university marching band and was student director of the Missoula High School band. Over the years, her mother expanded her skills to playing organ, accordion, and double-bass; she learned soprano sax, but later had to make a decision as to which instrument to focus on. Trumpet prevailed.

Both she and her brother, Les, were born with perfect pitch, a fact that neither had realized until she was 8 and he was 12. They had both assumed that everyone heard music the way they did. Their parents were astounded and didn't even know what to call it.

Les began attending Washington State College at the age of 16, with a full scholarship. The depression hit and her parents had to bring him home. Les taught piano in Tacoma until he made connections with a local band in Missoula, Montana, and enrolled for his last two years of education at the University of Montana. Les died 3 months after graduation, in 1936, from a ruptured appendix, shortly before the discovery of sulfa and long before antibiotics. He had sent for his sister when she was 17. They shared an apartment and she played and sung in his band for the intervening years.[3]

She stayed in Missoula until 1941, married Guy C. Rogers (1918–1996) and worked with local musicians. At that time the couple, who had not children, decided to divorce and she ended up in California at the request of some musician friends.

When she transferred her union membership from Missoula to Los Angeles, Rogers was informed that she couldn't work a steady job for the first six months. However, since there was a shortage of female musicians, the union allowed her to work full-time if she worked with other women. She got a job with a quartet working in a bar in Culver City. They started with practically no business at all, but within a couple of weeks the place was packed every night and celebrities were dropping by. One evening Woody Herman's road manager, Jack Archer, stopped by and invited Rogers to audition for Herman, who offered her a job on the spot. She started out sitting in front of the band with the other girl singer, but eventually made her way to the trumpet section.

When she met Archer, he had recently received an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army (1943) and, that same year, had become the road manager of the Woody Herman Orchestra. Rogers stayed with Hermanfor more than two years; but traveling during the war years was difficult and demanding. While working with Herman, Archer and Rogers became engaged. She left the Herman band on October 27, 1943, and moved to Chicago, where she and Archer were married on April 21, 1944. Rogers then formed her own big band called the Billie Rogers Orchestra, which performed a couple of years on the east coast. Archer left Herman to manage Rogers' band, which he did from July 22, 1944, until the end of 1944, when the group disbanded. At the end of 1944, Rogers joined the Jerry Wald band and remained a member until October 1945, when she left to form her own sextet.

Rogers says that her most enjoyable gig was playing with the Tommy Pederson Band at the Hollywood Palladium on Monday nights, plus other miscellaneous gigs in Los Angeles area.

Jack Archer built a career as a booking agent, initially for big bands in the one-nighter category, but eventually moving into R&B.

Overlapping with his responsibilities managing Rogers' orchestra, Jack was handling bookings for Mills Music, staying on until January 8, 1944, when he then became head of the one-night band department at General Amusement Corporation, a position he held until July 22, 1944.

When Billie Rogers' band broke up, Jack Archer went back to booking bands at Frederick Bros. Music Corporation (up until January 1946), then William Morris (February 1946 to 1947), where he replaced Billy Shaw. Then in August 1947, Archer left William Morris to form his own booking agency with Milt Deutsch and Abe Turchen. It was called "Continental Artists" and was based in Hollywood. Continental began handling the bookings of Woody Herman, Noro Morales, and Miguelito Valdes. Archer served as head of Continental and ran its Hollywood office while Deutsch ran its New York office at 1650 Broadway.

In 1949, Rogers and Archer had a daughter, Joan Denise Archer.

After Continental, Archer handled bookings for Federal Artists Agency before joining Shaw Artists Corporation in 1950 to head-up its one-night department. Shaw Artists was founded in 1949 by Billy Shaw. When Shaw died on June 23, 1956, Archer took over as vice president and general manager. On April 1, 1957, he then left to form his own booking agency called "Archer Associates", located on West 57th Street in New York City. He sold that firm in December 1957 to Associated Booking Corporation (also known as ABC), a firm headed by Joe Glaser. Archer stayed on to focus on developing a strong R&B line-up, which included the Platters, Dinah Washington, and the Drifters. Archer suffered a slight heart attack in April 1958. He died in 1962.

Their daughter, now known as Denise "Dee" Archer, is an R&B singer, keyboard player, and guitarist, who also is a senior executive with a wireless telecommunications company.

I never ran across any good girl musicians.

— Billie Rogers
declaring "Women musicians" to be her pet peeve (1942)[4]