Feminist founded female jazz label

Rosetta Reitz, 84, an ardent feminist who was the founder and owner of Rosetta Records, the label devoted to keeping alive works by female jazz and blues artists, died Nov. 1 of cardiopulmonary disease at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City.

Reitz had been a stockbroker, owned a bookstore and a greeting-card business, written a book on menopause and a food column for the Village Voice when, at 67, she found her true calling and started the label with $10,000 she borrowed from friends.

By the early 1990s, she had built a catalog of 19 titles -- about half of them compilations -- from artists including jazz and blues divas Ida Cox, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith as well as Dinah Washington, Ethel Waters and even Mae West. But she also revived the work of dozens of lesser-known figures including Martha Copeland, Bessie Brown, Maggie Jones and Bertha Idaho. Her catalog also offered an album by the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, an all-female jazz band from the 1940s.

She was born Rosetta Goldman in Utica, N.Y., on Sept. 28, 1924. She attended the University of Wisconsin and later the University of Buffalo before moving to New York City, where she got a job in a bookstore. She eventually owned her own bookstore, the 4 Seasons, in Greenwich Village and taught a course called “Women in Jazz” at the New School. Her marriage to Robert Reitz ended in divorce.