Gracie Cole

Gracie Cole, who has died aged 82, was a cornetist, trumpeter and bandleader at a time when the best that women musicians could hope for was a gig as a dance band's "girl singer". A no-nonsense approach to her instrument and purity of tone made her a memorable soloist, and with her All-Star Girls Orchestra, she played bebop with audacity and led an ensemble that compared favourably with other big bands of the 1950s.

Brass bands provided her lifelong discipline. Born in Rowlands Gill, Co Durham, she was two when her father, a collier who also played flugelhorn, moved to Yorkshire seeking work. Brass bandsmen were in demand and her father gave her cornet lessons. A girl who wanted to play brass band music conflicted with the tradition by which musical contacts were handed down from father to son, but at 13, she was winning solo concerts throughout Yorkshire and the Midlands.

At Grimethorpe colliery the conductor thought Cole would make a useful band member. The musicians agreed, but on condition that she travel to contests separately. She did so, chaperoned by her father. Despite her mother's worries, at 15 she was broadcasting from Manchester, demonstrating the cornet with leading bands such as Foden's Motorworks and Fairey Aviation, while the BBC radio announcer proclaimed "even girls can play".

The second world war turned Cole into dance band trumpeter, a switch she never envisaged: "I love my fat little cornet, close to your face, close to your heart." Her father decided she could do her bit for the war via music, and at 18 she auditioned for Gloria Gaye's Glamour Girls. The job required a trumpeter but when Gaye saw her cornet, she told Cole not to worry, since it was "it was good enough for Louis Armstrong". For two years she played theatres with Gaye and forces entertertainment shows. She created a sensation when she joined American percussionist Rudy Starita's All-American band to entertain GIs. She saw liberated Europe before joining Ivy Benson, famed for her all-female ensembles, with whom she spent the next six years.

In 1951 she married trombonist Bill Geldard, who played with saxophonist George Evans. She was still with Benson when a newspaper united their bands for a photo shoot, and afterwards Evans produced an arrangement of Dizzy Gillespie's particularly hard bebop Shaw Nuff for the combined line-up. Cole "blew our fellows off the stand", Geldard recalled. She was invited to join Evans, sharing trumpet section lead. This, in an otherwise male band, was without precedent and an enormous accolade.

After 18 months, she and Geldard left to join the Squadronaires, the most respected big band of the day. There she again played lead trumpet, beside veteran brassman Tommy McQuater.

From 1952 to 1956 she had her own all-women band, playing jazz as well as pop. They made music press headlines with a performance at London's Jazz Jamboree, and broadcast with guest singers such as Carole Carr and Cleo Laine.

Leading an all-male band and stints with Denny Boyce and Sydney Lipton preceded a period from the mid-1960s during which Cole brought up two daughters. She was seen on television with Morecambe and Wise and also worked as a pianist -notably on the soundtrack of Dance with a Stranger (1984). In 1978, she had gone back to trumpet and returned to brass bands in Oxted, Surrey, and Horsham, West Sussex.

In the 1980s she met and played with musicians fostered by the women's movement. Their enthusiasm made her reassess her own pioneering role. She gave interviews, and welcomed the attention.

With the demise of commercially viable larger ensembles, rehearsal bands in which session musicians played jazz for pleasure became Cole's natural home. But six years ago illness forced her to abandon the trumpet. She continued to play piano in nursing homes until a few weeks before her death.

She is survived by her husband, Bill, and daughters Kim and Lois, both musicians.

· Gracie Cole (Grace Elizabeth Agnes Anne Geldard), musician and bandleader, born September 8 1924; died December 28 2006