Word: lillian
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Sort of Beat. At first, back in Allentown, Pa., Lillian took up the trombone merely because it gave her a chance to get into local football games free, as a member of the Central Catholic High School band. What she thought she wanted then was to become a psychiatrist-largely because she had seen the movie Spellbound (in which Ingrid Bergman played psychiatrist to Gregory Peck's paranoid guilt complex). But then Lillian began to listen to such jazz artists as Baritone Saxman Gerry Mulligan and Trumpeter Chet Baker, and she became enthusiastic about her trombone...
After graduation, Lillian decided to look for a steady job. "I kept looking under 'female' in the want ads, which I thought was right, after all. But one day I read under 'male,' and there was an ad for a truck driver at the Hudsco Cleaners in Catasauqua." Being crazy about cars, and meeting no objections at home, Lillian found herself behind the wheel of a 2½-ton truck. She stuck to it for 14 months before she quit. "I felt tired, sort of beat up," she says. For a while, she worked...
Meanwhile, three years ago, Lillian managed to form her own all-girl orchestra, played clubs around Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Occasionally she would put on a "bop hat" and long plaid jacket with huge key chain and hoarsely sing her own lyrics to songs. "Sing! What am I saying?" she laughs now. "But it was the only singing I ever did until just lately...
Last October a manager offered to book her as a vocalist. "He told me I could never learn to sing, but I could sort of 'style' a song." Lillian Briggs began to get around...
Wonderful Business. In her dressing room between shows, munching a tired-looking sandwich and listening with one ear to cries of "Lillian!" from the street below, Entertainer Briggs surveyed her fast, dazzling rise. "It's wonderful! I love the whole business." The rough rock 'n' roll mob? They wouldn't hurt her-but she makes it a point to sneak out side doors, even though the cops are there to protect...