One of the first ladies of jazz, Melba Liston began studying the trombone as a child. Moving to Los Angeles as a teenager, she was classmates with other future notables such as Dexter Gordon and Eric Dolphy. She performed with big bands led by Dizzy Gillespie and Gerald Wilson as a teenager.

After a few years outside of music, Liston rejoined Gillespie's State Department big band, where she played trombone and wrote arrangements. She also served in this capacity for a similar band led by Quincy Jones. In the 1960s, she developed a close musical relationship with pianist Randy Weston, working as arranger/orchestrator on nearly all of his major projects through the 1990s.

Despite suffering a stroke in 1985 that left her partially paralyzed, Liston continued to work on a wide variety of projects all the way until her passing in 1999.