Jazz and Justice. Gerald Horne
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in instrumentation could force more creativity in making lovely sounds.
Barnet had reason to know. A scion of wealth (the American Sugar Refining Company and the New York Central Railroad), he had relationships with various elites far surpassing those of his peers. Besides, he was married eleven times, providing him with entrees to even more relationships. To his credit, he was among the first Euro-American bandleaders who hired musicians of a different ancestry, and he has been credited with helping catapult Lena Horne, the songstress, to stardom.97
Trombonist “Trummy” Young saluted Barnet—“He would fight, man,” he enthused, speaking of battling Jim Crow and “so would Boyd Raeburn,” bandleader born in 1913. This contrasted with Benny Goodman, born in 1909, who “would [not] go too far for anybody. Not only us but nobody else.” Given the conditions musicians faced, few eyebrows were raised when Duke Ellington, according to an interviewer, “used to say that the only basis for racial prejudice is economic,” and sideman “Trummy” Young replied, “oh, he’s true,” both opinions placing them alongside the left and distant from those who saw this pestilence as an individualized psychological delusion.98 (Despite Young’s rosy memories, Barnet confessed that his band had “never played” the Palladium in Southern California “because of their policy of showing no black or mixed bands. So mine became a lily-white band in order that I might finally play the Palladium.”)99
AS THE 1930S WERE LURCHING to a close, practitioners of the new music had survived the continuation of Jim Crow, and the rise of the phonograph and radio: related opportunities abroad, assisted by the general growth of unions driven by the ravages of the Great Depression, seemed to augur better days coming. The rise of fascism generated a counter-reaction—anti-fascism—which bid fair to open further opportunities for talented musicians. Alongside the ascension of unions was the growing strength of ASCAP, which, inter alia, collected royalties that became more important with the advent of radio and the phonograph. ASCAP in some ways represented the Janus-faced opportunity—and oppression—of Negroes in that it contained the potential to aid the growing raft of African American composers, though it found it difficult to do so while adhering to a Jim Crow diktat. Jelly Roll Morton, for example, did not earn any royalties until 1939, when ASCAP finally allowed him to become a member. He had applied five years earlier but had been rejected. But indicative of the continuing pull of white supremacy, he was placed in the lowest category of membership, where he received a mere $120 annually. Oscar Hammerstein III said that those in the top category—for example, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin—received an average of $15,000 annually,100 yet another indication of the inflamed conjuncture where racism encountered economics.
4. Hothouse
OVERSHADOWING PERHAPS OTHER FACTORS impacting the music was the change in the music itself, that is, the arrival of the still fecund music known as “bebop,”1 a form that created rifts among musicians and audiences alike. It featured a fast tempo, complex chord progressions, syncopation, intricate melodies, and rapid changes. Still, this musical turn was not greeted with unanimous approval. When Dizzy Gillespie, born in 1917, and Charlie Parker played in Los Angeles in the early 1940s, they were treated like lepers, and even worse: “Communist lepers” according to critic Leonard Feather during a visit to the old “Billy Berg’s Club” on Vine Street. Their music was either laughed at or violently attacked, and one radio station officially banned it.2
Thus, in Los Angeles within the ranks of the Negro newspapers, the left-leaning California Eagle was supportive of this turn in the music, while the less progressive Sentinel was not.3 Tellingly, the latter has survived, and the former went out of business decades ago.
The forces that helped to ignite the decline of big bands then facilitated the rise of smaller combos suitable for the new turn in the new music. As will be seen, attacks on dancing also facilitated the bebop turn toward listening. The desire to escape the heavy hand of white supremacy as it purloined the work of Negro musicians in turn facilitated the ascension of bebop, which was more difficult to copy by pale imitators, for example, the appropriately named Paul Whiteman.
In any case, conditions had matured for a new musical paradigm to emerge in that according to producer John Hammond the recording industry was “absolutely broke” in the 1930s. Columbia Records, for example, was plunged into bankruptcy and “there was no money for jazz at all,” creating a wide opening for experimentation.4
The bard of Harlem, Langston Hughes, who had reason to know, says the evocative descriptor bebop stemmed from the 1943 rebellion in Harlem, symbolizing in onomatopoeia the sound made by police clubs on Negro heads. This assertion also underscores the revolt of this music, buoyed by contemporaneous events in Harlem.5 The dislocation delivered in the early 1940s by war not only served to generate bebop but emboldened U.S. Negroes to become more steadfast in confronting white supremacy in its various permutations. During the previous decade, a hallmark was the control of musicians exhibited by mob figures. A counterreaction was signaled in 1939 when the musician Shadow Wilson, born in 1919, was among those appearing in the Negro gangster musical Paradise in Harlem.6
That is, what emerged was symbolized by how Negro baseball league mogul William Augustus “Gus” Greenlee, an imperial force in Pittsburgh because of holdings in the numbers, boxing, and nightclubs, not to mention hijacking of beer trucks, came to play an increasing role in the music, including connecting Duke Ellington’s muse, Billy Strayhorn, to the bandleader and composer. Strayhorn, born in 1914, had similar ties, having played at a Pittsburgh club with whispered mob connections. He was also a Francophile, which facilitated the foreign ventures of Ellington’s band (Ellington said that Strayhorn spoke French “very well”). He was politically aware, backing the New Deal and later becoming close to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was fond of alcoholic beverages, making him (unfortunately) typical.7 According to pianist Cedar Walton he was also victimized by homophobic attitudes because of his sexual orientation.8
Though a focus on harder drugs understandably has marked most comment on the new music in the 1940s, alcohol continued to plague, and Strayhorn was not singular. Fats Waller, just before he passed away in 1943, was told by an associate, “Last night I came away from Philadelphia with a heavy heart. I had seen you in such terrible condition from drink that your performance suffered frightfully—you announced to your audience that you knew you were drunk—and your memory was so bad you had to be reminded that you had drawn money earlier in the evening…. Your drinking is undermining your health, your artistry and giving you a reputation which will interfere with your bookings and earning capacity.”9 Weeks later, Waller was found dead on a train heading east from California, discovered (ironically) in Kansas City.10
Strayhorn was not alone in his fondness for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. On the evening the president died in April 1945, Ben Webster—saxophonist born in Kansas City in 1909—singlehandedly closed down West 52nd Street in Manhattan, where bebop ascended. “Get off the stand,” he growled, “nobody’s gonna play tonight. Roosevelt’s dead.”11
In brief, the progressive atmosphere symbolized by FDR, reflected in his still remarkable perorations in 194412 combined with the continuing dissoluteness of the conditions in which artists were forced to toil, created a symbiosis contributing to a new departure in a music that ever involved a search for creativity and truth.
Neither Strayhorn nor Webster were atypical in terms of political predilections. There was much reason for discontent, including the simple point alleged by yet another writer, Claude McKay, who contended that “even the most famous jazz bands such as Duke Ellington’s, Claude Hopkins’, Fats Waller’s, Count Basie’s, Lucky Millinder’s, Cab Calloway’s, Jimmy Lunceford’s, and Louis Armstrong’s receive a remuneration on a lower scale than white jazz bands.”13 Then there were the other rich income streams that Black artists often were denied. “The payola game was hot and heavy,” according to bandleader Charlie Barnet. “Either by direct payment for playing a tune on the air or by payment for a special arrangement of the tune”: this “had begun long before with vaudeville,” he said, but with the