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Betty O'Hara would be the first to tell you how surprised she is that her career as a professional musician has spanned 50 years.
"I thought when I was a kid I'd quit playing when I was 30. Music just didn't seem like a thing for a woman to do," said O'Hara, 67, who plays a variety of brass instruments-among them, trumpet, cornet, slide trombone and double-bell euphonium-and sings.
"But now the stigma is off women, and I'm having a good time," she said. O'Hara toured USO facilities as part of Freddy Shaffer's Victory Sweethearts all-girl band in the '40s, played second trumpet in the Hartford, Conn., symphony in the early '50s, and was a studio musician recording the soundtracks to such prime-time television shows as "Hill Street Blues" and "Magnum, P.I." in the '70s and '80s. She also managed to raise three children along the way.
A native of Earl Park, Ind., she has lived in Southern California since 1960. These days, she spends her time playing jazz, for which she demonstrates no small affinity. Tonight she appears at Chadney's in Burbank, co-leading the Jazzbirds, an all-female, modern-leaning quintet, with trumpeter-flugelhornist Stacy Rowles.
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