She gave up music for a time and in her free time took a clerical job and even appeared as an extra in Hollywood appearing The Prodigal and The Ten Commandments. Gillespie invited her to re-join his big band when the State Department-funded tours to Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America in 1956 and 1957, and took what is her best known recorded trombone solo on Gillespie’s tune “Cool Breeze” on the album Dizzy Gillespie at Newport, recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1957. She formed her own all-women quintet in 1958. Additionally, Liston made Melba and Her Bones, the only album she recorded as a leader. In 1973, she began a six-year teaching appointment at the Jamaica School of Music and formed her own mixed band, Melba Liston and Company.