The New Negro of Jazz: New Orleans, Chicago, New York,

the First Great Migration, & the Harlem Renaissance, 1890-1930

A Dissertation submitted to the

Graduate School
of the University of Cincinnati
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Department of History
of the College of Arts and Sciences
2012
By
Charlie Lester
M.A., University of Cincinnati, 2008
B.A., Northern Kentucky University, 2004

Committee Chair: Professor David Stradling

UMI Number: 3518095

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Abstract
The New Negro of Jazz: New Orleans, Chicago, New York,
the First Great Migration, & the Harlem Renaissance, 1890-1930
By Charlie Lester
The Harlem Renaissance is often remembered for its cultural achievements, but scholars
often place too much attention on literary and visual artists with little regard for the musicians of
the period. When scholars do make the connection between jazz and the Harlem Renaissance, the
work of jazz artists in cities outside of Harlem play second fiddle. In fact, New Orleans and
Chicago could just as easily stake the claim as the nations jazz capital in this period, and so
many early jazz innovators emigrated to Chicagos South Side from New Orleans that the Windy
City could arguably boast a more vibrant music scene than Harlem. Thanks in no small part to
the First Great Migration, when over one million African Americans left the South to stake their
claim on the American Dream in the urban North, jazz transitioned from a regional to the
national music in the 1910s and 1920s. A number of scholars of the Great Migration have shed
light on the grass roots leadership that facilitated northern emigration. In the first few decades of
the 20th century, African Americans in scores of cities across the country were busy forging a
new collective identity, known as the New Negro, as expressed in the visual and performing
arts, political protest, and economic enterprise culminating in the Harlem Renaissance. Thanks to
several historians the political activism of the literary component of the Harlem Renaissance is
well known. Unfortunately, few have made the same connections in regard to the musicians of
the period. Jazz made its own Great Migration on the backs of a cadre of grass roots musician
leaders whose political awareness has yet to be fully appreciated. These considerations suggest
that a deeper analysis of jazz, the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance, and the political

iii

activism of musicians beyond 135th Street and Lenox Avenue is necessary to uncover the New
Negro of black music.
This dissertation examines the Great Migration through the lens of jazz to explore why
New Orleans musicians left the Crescent City at the turn of the twentieth century, why Chicago
and New York were such attractive places to ply their crafts, and what relationship New Orleans,
Chicago, the Great Migration, and jazz have to the Harlem Renaissance. As a result, this work
synthesizes the scholarly traditions of Urban, African American, and Jazz histories, and
challenges the traditional interpretations of the Harlem Renaissance. While jazz was a central
cultural component of life in Harlem, it was also crucial to scores of cities across the country as
African Americans journeyed north during the Great Migration. Jazz musicians were also just as
active politically as other migrants. Despite a common stereotype that characterizes musicians as
apolitical, my work seeks to demonstrate that the musicians of the period were no different than
their counterparts in the literary arts by shedding new light on the grass roots activism that
emerged alongside the music.

iv

Acknowledgements

Over the course of my academic career, I have been very fortunate for the high level of
support and assistance received along the way from a cadre of family, friends, mentors,
professors, colleagues, and archivists, and granting institutions. Though the work of writing a
dissertation is often a solitary experience, the work of becoming a professional historian is very
much a communal effort. I am pleased to have a number of all-stars on my team, and I would
like to recognize them for their advice, encouragement, support, and companionship throughout
this long and rewarding endeavor.
First let me thank the many professors and advisors I have been fortunate to work with
along the way. David Stradling has been a model mentor and friend. His advice, editorial skills,
and passion have strengthened this project every step of the way. Most importantly, I always
sensed he stood in my corner, and that assumption proved correct time and again. He provided
the proverbial pat on the back when I needed it and a kick in the ass when necessary. I am
equally grateful for both. Davarian Baldwin has been a welcome outside addition to this project.
His interest in my work from an early stage has been nothing short of phenomenal. Dr. Baldwin
pushed me to think about the subject of this dissertation in new and rewarding ways. Thank you
for reaching out to a young scholar with similar interests. Thanks also to Tracy Teslow and
Wendy Kline for serving on this committee and for all the advice and letters of recommendation
in my time at UC.
Outside this committee, I have been privileged to work both directly and indirectly with a
number of dedicated and gifted scholars at the University of Cincinnati and as an undergrad.
Nikki Taylor advised me on this project while it was still in its infancy and helped mold me as a

scholar. John Alexander and John Brackett taught the first classes I took as a graduate student
and placed my academic career on firm ground to conquer anything grad school could throw my
way. I should also recognize the influence of Fritz Casey-Leininger, Christopher Phillips, Wayne
Durrill, Mark Lause, Maura OConnor, Martin Francis, Willard Sunderland, James Ramage,
Michael Washington, Jeffrey Williams, Michael Ryan, and Al Pinelo. Zane Miller, though
retired from UC for several years, has taken an interest in my project and offered advice and
encouragement. I also need to thank Hope Earls for putting out many academic fires for me.
I received much needed assistance at several archives and libraries while researching the
project. Bruce Boyd Raeburn and Lynn Abbott were gracious hosts at the Hogan Jazz Archive in
New Orleans. Ed Berger, Vincent Pelote and the staff at The Institute of Jazz Studies in Newark,
New Jersey were always attentive to my many requests and made me feel at home in Newark.
Leslie and all the staff members at the Louis Armstrong House Museum Archive at Queens
College were tremendously helpful in pinpointing specific items of research. I would also like to
thank all the staff members at New York Universitys Tamiment Library, The Schomburg Center
for Research in Black Culture, The University of Chicagos Chicago Jazz Archive, The Carter G.
Woodson Regional Branch of the Chicago Public Library, and The Harold Washington Branch
of the Chicago Public Library. I also received funding from a number of sources that made these
research trips possible. Thanks first to the Department of History and to Roger Daniels and Zane
Miller for supporting graduate research. Thanks also to the Graduate Student Governance
Association for several travel reimbursement payments. Thanks also to the University Research
Council and the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center for major financial contributions and for
the fellowships that afforded me the time to research and write major portions of the dissertation.

vi

I would be remiss to leave out the many family members and friends who have helped me
along the way. First I would like to thank my parents, Charlie and Kate Lester, for instilling in
me a love of history, a strong work ethic, and a commitment to social justice. These values have
served me well, and without your assistance over the years, I would not be here today. My
grandparents on my mothers side, Robert and Madeline Rodger, have also provided support
(including financial assistance as an undergraduate, when in a moment of panic, I realized I
miscalculated my academic bill one semester). Thanks also to the Rodger and West clans for
encouragement. My paternal grandparents have been a particular source of inspiration. One
Christmas, the two of them bought me Miles Davis Kind of Blue album, and it set me on the
path of jazz addict ever since. My grandfather, a jazz pianist and one-time bandleader, and I have
had many conversations about jazz over the years (including a story about how Cab Calloway
and his drummer showed up at my grandfathers boyhood home one afternoon in Newark, New
Jersey during the Great Depression). I would also like to thank the extended Lester family for the
many great meals and over-the-top laughter over the years the food and foolishness have
provided both emotional and physical sustenance on far too many occasions to recount here.
Thanks also to my sister and brother-in-law, Fran and Chris Edwards and all my nieces and
nephews, for the many good times and for buying my first laptop as an undergrad. My in-laws
have made me feel a part of the family since day one. Thanks to Cecil, Nancy, Cheryl, Todd,
Becky, Jeremy, Mike, and Marissa for making me feel at home, always.
I forged a number of academic relationships in my time at UC. These friends made life
as a graduate student much more enjoyable. Thanks to Evan Hart, Matt Stanley, Zach Garrison,
Adam Rathge, Rob Gioielli, Feay Coleman, Jessica Biddlestone, Maribeth Mincey, Michelle
Semancik, Katy Cornell, Lance Lubelski, and Nate McGee for the camaraderie and fellowship. I

vii

would also like to thank Matt Brandt, my best friend of twenty-five years and partner in crime.
Thanks for always being there, brother. Along with Matt, I would like to thank Smitty, Blake,
Pete, Frank and all the fellas at the City Club. You have no idea how much you helped this
project.
Most importantly, I must thank my family. Susan and Nathan have inspired, motivated,
and encouraged me at every turn. I appreciate and am thankful for all the sacrifices you had to
make on my behalf. Without your love and support, I am not sure how I would have made it this
far. Thank you for everything; I am forever grateful.

viii

The New Negro of Jazz: New Orleans, Chicago, New York,

the First Great Migration, & the Harlem Renaissance, 1890-1930

Bound Noth Blues

Goin down the road, Lawd,
Goin down the road.
Down the road, Lawd,
Way, way down the road.
Got to find somebody
To help me carry this load.
Roads in front o me,
Nothin to do but walk.
Roads in front o me,
Walk an walk an walk.
Id like to meet a good friend
To come along an talk.
Hates to be lonely,
Lawd, I hates to be sad.
Says I hates to be lonely,
Hates to be lonely an sad,
But ever friend you finds seems
Like they try to do you so bad.
Road, road, road, O!
Road, road road road, road!
Road, road, road, O!
On the nothern road.
These Mississippi towns aint
Fit fer a hoppin toad.
- Langston Hughes (1926)

ix

Table of Contents
Abstract

iii

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Just Like Some Kind of a God:

Jazz, the Great Migration, & the Harlem
Renaissance Reconsidered

Chapter One

Jazz Demanded Cooperation:

The Americanization of the Gens De
Couleur Libres & the Evolution of Jazz in
New Orleans

19

Chapter Two

I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say:

The Culture and Activism of New Orleans Jazz

47

Chapter Three

You Just Cant Keep the Music

Unless You Move With It:
Jazz & The First Great Migration

88

Chapter Four

I Made It My Business to Go Out for a Daily

Stroll and Look This Heaven Over:
Chicago and the New Negro of Jazz

120

Chapter Five

An Attempt to Make the American Dream

Work, If It Were Going To:
New York, The Harlem Renaissance, and Jazz

159

Conclusion

This New Thing of Racial Mixing on an Equal Basis:

The End of the Great Migration, the Start of the
Great Depression, and the Dawn of the Swing Era

197

Bibliography

205

Introduction:
Just Like Some Kind of a God: Jazz, the Great Migration,
& The Harlem Renaissance Reconsidered
Later in life Louis Armstrong wrote about his first journey to Chicago in 1922, reflecting
on his motivations for the trip. Hillare and the rest of us kids who turned out to be good
musicians, migrated from New Orleans to Chicago, when times were real good. There were
plenty of work, lots of Dough flying around, all kinds of beautiful women at your service. A
musician in Chicago in the early twenties were treated and respected just like some kind of a
God.1 Louis Armstrongs brief recollection of post-World War I Chicago reflects the dream of
the Windy City as a land of hope and opportunity for African Americans during the Great
Migration. For jazz musicians in particular, South Side Chicago offered unique avenues to
openly ply their trade, advance careers, organize collectively, and achieve a social standing and
respectability unattainable in the South. However, the black elite would find little if anything
respectable about jazz north or south. The cabarets and theaters of Chicagos black entertainment
district, known as The Stroll, acted as incubators that nurtured jazz from its infancy to
adolescence. Here, the music matured into a distinct Chicago style that blended southern and
northern influences, cultures, and personalities to create a national, and uniquely American,
musical art form.
The New Orleans of Armstrongs youth, however, was a dangerous place. This was
especially so for the citys African American and Creole populations. The advancements made
by these two groups during the Reconstruction Era were all but rolled back as violent waves of
repression swept across the South and the Crescent City in particular. But New Orleans was
1

Louis Armstrong, The Armstrong Story, in Thomas Brothers, ed., Louis Armstrong In His Own Words: Selected
Writings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 74. The epigraph is from Langston Hughes, Bound Noth
Blues, in Arnold Rampersad, ed., The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 76.

Armstrongs home. Despite the hostile climate of the Big Easy and the allure of Chicago,
Armstrong was reluctant to leave behind his family, friends, and the only life he had ever known.
Joe King Oliver, Armstrongs mentor, left New Orleans in 1918, and he later
encouraged Armstrong to follow him to Chicago. Oliver was a respected and successful
bandleader in Chicago, and he assisted many musicians, including Armstrong, in leaving New
Orleans for good. As Armstrong explained, He kept sending me letters and telegrams telling me
to come up to Chicago and play second cornet for him. That, I knew, would be real heaven for
me. I had made up my mind that I would not leave New Orleans unless the King sent for me. I
would not risk leaving for anyone else.2 Cleary Armstrong thought long and hard about his
decision to leave New Orleans based on a variety of factors. Ultimately, he was swayed by the
advice of a close confidant. Though this particular element of Armstrongs story is telling, it is
far from unique.
By 1924, Armstrong would bring the Chicago style to New York City, intent on leaving
his own mark on the brand of jazz that was beginning to take Harlem by storm. For Armstrong
and fellow musicians, the migration experience opened new avenues for political activism
unavailable in the South. In the 1920s and 1930s, the young trumpet impresario became a dues
paying member in both the Chicago and New York musicians locals. Though he projected an
apolitical persona to the general public, he quietly channeled funds to civil rights organizations
like the NAACP, as his income grew more secure.3 Armstrong was not alone in his political
activities. Musicians in the north engaged in a number of organizing and political pursuits as a
product of the activism of the Great Migration period. Because of their experiences as both labor

2
3

Louis Armstrong, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (New York: Prentice Hall, 1954), 226.
Louis Cottrell, interview transcript, March 14, 1978, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.

activists and performing artists, jazz musicians remain a crucial yet underappreciated strain
within the larger narrative of the New Negro experience.
Armstrongs migration story challenges popular narratives about jazz that center on
Harlem as the nodal point of black cultural production in the first decades of the twentieth
century. Louis Armstrongs story also indicates that jazz musicians were a central but distinct
component of the Great Migration. Among possessions that Armstrong brought north was the
cultural baggage of New Orleans jazz. He checked that baggage and augmented it in Chicago
before making his way to Harlem. Once in New York, he was less than impressed with the citys
music scene. After joining Fletcher Hendersons band (one of the biggest and most sought after
acts in New York City), he found the group lacking the discipline and dynamism of its Chicago
counterparts. I stayed and tolerated them cutting up on the bandstand instead of playing the
music right. The fellows in Fletchers band had such big heads such big heads until even
if they miss a note So what. Furthermore, he believed Henderson cared little for his innovative
style. Armstrong returned to Chicago within the year. 4
Between 1915 and 1930, well over one million African Americans left the South for the
urban North.5 The motivations for such a journey are myriad and complex. Such factors include,
but are not limited to, economic opportunities and the desire for full rights as citizens.
Furthermore, many migrants consciously decided to move north based on the advice of family
and friends through what amounted to a grass-roots network of communication. The net effect of
this Great Migration resulted in an explosion of African American culture and entrepreneurship
concentrated in places like Chicagos South Side and New York Citys Harlem and in industrial

Louis Armstrong, Armstrong Tapes, CD 426, Disc 1, Track 7, Louis Armstrong Collection, Louis Armstrong
House Museum Archives, Queens College, New York.
5
Eric Arnesen, ed., Black Protest and the Great Migration: A Brief History With Documents (New York:
Bedford/St. Martins Press, 2003), 1.

cities throughout the Midwest, Mid Atlantic Region, and New England. Jazz music stood at the
vanguard of this cultural explosion. This study sheds new light on jazz, the First Great Migration,
and the Harlem Renaissance by examining the political activism of musicians in New Orleans,
Chicago, and New York City. In studying the work of black musicians during the Jazz Age it is
clear that these men and women were supremely talented, dedicated, and influential. Their
mobility spread jazz across the country and eventually forced American society to recognize the
power and genus of African American artists.
In terms of African American cultural achievement during the first few decades of the
twentieth century, the lions share of attention has been directed at the artists and literary figures
of what is commonly known as the Harlem Renaissance. Furthermore, historians have limited
their discussions of the Harlem Renaissance to the visual or literary arts, with the music of the
period, particularly jazz, thrown in as an afterthought. Additionally, when the connection is made
between music and the Harlem Renaissance, Harlem jazz is the beginning and end of the
conversation. By 1930 Harlem was emerging as one of the nations jazz capitals, but it was not
unrivaled or wholly unique in that regard. Indeed, jazz stood at the forefront of cultural
innovation in scores of cities from coast to coast by 1930. Furthermore, New Orleans, Chicago,
Kansas City and other jazz destinations could just as easily stake the claim as the nations jazz
capital in this period. In fact, so many early jazz innovators emigrated to Chicagos South Side
from New Orleans that the Windy City could arguably boast a more vibrant music scene than
Harlem.
Thanks in no small part to the Great Migration, jazz transitioned from a regional to the
national music in the 1910s and 1920s. A number of scholars of the Great Migration have
examined the grass roots leadership that facilitated northern emigration. Additionally, thanks to

historians like David Levering Lewis, the political activism of the literary arm of the Harlem
Renaissance is well known. Unfortunately, few have made the same connections in regard to the
musicians of the period. Indeed, jazz made its own Great Migration on the backs of a cadre of
grass-roots musician leaders whose political awareness has yet to be fully appreciated. As
clarinetist Sidney Bechet explained in 1960, You know, theres this mood about the music, a
kind of need to be moving. You just cant keep the music unless you move with it.6 This
movement of the music and musicians mirrored the exodus of millions of African Americans out
of the South, and it set the stage for the Jazz Age that followed. Consequently, by casting a wider
net on the political and artistic achievements of the period, the New Negro of jazz broadens our
understanding of New Negro activism so closely associated with the visual and literary artists of
the Harlem Renaissance. All too often, the accomplishments of the musicians of the period are
relegated to a supporting role in the cultural and political activism of the New Negro movement.
These considerations suggest that a deeper analysis of jazz, the Great Migration, the Harlem
Renaissance, and the political activism of musicians beyond 135th Street and Lenox Avenue will
uncover the New Negro of black music.
This work is an examination of the role jazz and jazz musicians played in forging cultural
and civic institutions in New Orleans, Chicago, and New York City in the first decades of the
twentieth century. To be certain, jazz was not a phenomenon exclusive to these three cities.
Actually, innovations in the music were made in places like Kansas City, St. Louis, Detroit, Los
Angeles, and in cities across the country. But the work of musicians and activists in New
Orleans, Chicagos South Side, and Harlem are particularly enlightening of New Negro activism
in relation to jazz artists. Furthermore, because jazz musicians were only one component of the

Sidney Bechet, Treat It Gentle: An Autobiography (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1960), 95.

migration northward, it is crucial to understand the larger narrative of the Great Migration. By
placing the musicians within the larger framework of the Great Migration, it becomes evident
that elements of the jazz musicians experiences were representative of the out-migration from
New Orleans. The migrating musicians share certain characteristics, such as their motivations to
journey north, which echo the stories of other migrants. A number of characteristics set them
apart from the typical African American who left the South during the Great Migration; jazz
musicians had an additional incentive to migrate north. They were hard pressed to find public
outlets to ply their craft. This dynamic pushed them from the region and on to places that were
receptive to the new musical form and the culture it fostered. In addition, the existence of black
benevolent societies coupled with the long history of Creole and African American activism in
New Orleans, conditioned musicians to political activism, which they continued in the North.
Once in Chicago, the African American musicians union protected jazz artists and fostered
greater political participation. Additionally, due to cultural innovations in language, styles of
dress, and demeanor, New Orleans musicians developed a consciousness that separated them
from other migrants. These developments created an environment of political activism that
sought to combat the repressive mechanisms that dictated the status of African Americans be that
of second-class citizens in American society.
The central argument of this study is that jazz musicians were not passive historical
participants either during or following migration. In his study of black working class culture and
politics, Race Rebels (1994), Robin D. G. Kelley argues that, all too often, conventional
scholarship only views legitimate forms of protest and resistance as those that take place
within the parameters of civil rights organizations or trade unions. Kelley asserts that by doing
so, scholars diminish disparate viewpoints within these groups and downplay resistance that

takes place outside of these institutions. Instead, he advocates redrawing the map of political
discourse by questioning common notions of what constitutes legitimate protest and resistance.
To do so, Kelley rejects the tendency to dichotomize peoples lives, to assume that clear-cut
political motivations exist separately from issues of economic well-being, safety, pleasure,
cultural expression, sexuality, freedom of mobility, and other facets of daily life. Politics is not
separate from lived experience or the imaginary world of what is possible; to the contrary,
politics is about these things. He further explains, Politics comprises the many battles to roll
back constraints and exercise some power over, or create some space within, the institutions and
social relationships that dominate our lives.7 Viewed in this light, the story of the development
of jazz in New Orleans, and the subsequent migration of black musicians out of the Crescent
City to northern locales, is one ripe with political overtones. Jazz musicians bolstered political
discourse in New Orleans, Chicago, and New York. Both before they left New Orleans and once
they arrived elsewhere, musicians attempted a number of mobilizing and organizing activities to
better their conditions and adjust to living in a new environment.8 Additionally, jazz music acted
as a vehicle for social change both in New Orleans and elsewhere. Finally, the distinct and
recognizable brand of jazz that developed in New Orleans became the national music as a result
of the cultural forces set loose by the Great Migration.
Given the extent of repression African Americans faced across the South and the lack of
respect and full equality they were accorded in the North, the fact that jazz, as a byproduct of
black culture, claimed a central place in American popular culture is no small feat. We often take
7

Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press,
1994), 4, 9-10.
8
Here, I am borrowing the concepts of mobilizing and organizing as outlined by noted civil rights activist Bob
Moses in the 1960s. Moses argues that mobilizing efforts relied on relatively short-term, large-scale public events,
while organizing efforts focused on the long-term development of leaders comprised of ordinary individuals. For
more information on this distinction see: Charles M. Payne, Ive Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing
Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 3-4.

for granted that the 1920s was known as the Jazz Age, without fully considering the implications
that had on American society. Though jazz did not tear down all racial barriers during the Jazz
Age, the 1920s saw black and white customers interacting on American dance floors, the first
nationally recognized and positively portrayed black celebrities, and white jazz artists clamoring
to emulate the latest innovations from men like Joe Oliver, Louis Armstrong, and Duke
Ellington. Black musicians developed a distinct brand of language that remains to this day
terms like gigs, chicks, and squares. Today, in music conservatories across the country,
students study the work of classical composers like Beethoven and Bach and the work of
Armstrong and Ellington. Black musicians shared their artistic achievements with the nation
during the Great Migration, and it forever altered American society. Few could have envisioned
such a transformation at the turn of the twentieth century.
In 1925 Alain Locke, one of the leading proponents of the Harlem Renaissance, edited a
collections of essays and literary works on the cultural contributions of African Americans
associated with the New Negro movement. In the foreword to The New Negro, Locke declared,
There is ample evidence of a New Negro in the latest phases of social change and progress, but
still more in the internal world of the Negro mind and spirit. Locke argued that through African
American cultural contributions American society discovers, in the artistic self-expression of
the Negro today a new figure on the national canvas and a new force in the foreground of
affairs.9 Jazz musicians were an important, though underappreciated, component of New Negro
activism on the national canvas. To fully demonstrate the connection between the activism of
the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance, and jazz a number of historical questions must be
answered. From what social and political environments did jazz emerge? In what specific ways
9

Alain Locke ed., The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1925),
xxv.

did early jazz music add to the political discourse in New Orleans, Chicago, and New York?
What factors motivated jazz musicians to leave the Big Easy and journey to places like the
Windy City and the Big Apple? Who filled the leadership roles that fostered the out-migration?
How does music relate to the Harlem Renaissance? Finally, how and why did this seemingly
regional blend of musical influences emerge on the national stage as a potent cultural force in the
1920s and 1930s? Ultimately, this is a story of the evolution of a new musical style, the activism
that fostered new forms of individual expression and resistance to repression, the artistic
community that nurtured innovation, the migration of musicians and the music, and the cities and
individuals that made it all possible.
Historiography
The work of several scholars loom large in this study, and without these existing
secondary sources this work on the political activism of jazz musicians over a broad geographic
region simply would not be possible. First, a firm understanding of the political and social
conditions in New Orleans just before the Great Migration picked up full steam is essential to
this study. In the last few decades a number of scholars have emphasized the complicated
dynamics of post-Reconstruction Louisiana politics. Steven Hahns A Nation Under Our Feet
(2003) and Adam Faircloughs Race and Democracy (1995) both frame, in part, the local
struggle for self-determination within the national story of civil rights activism.10 Together, Hahn
and Fairclough offer a wide lens view of social protest in the region. Hahn, in particular,
advocates reexamining the traditional definition of political activity. He clearly makes the case
that because African Americans were disenfranchised and politically marginalized following the
collapse of Reconstruction, they began asserting political independence in ways that were not
10

Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great
Migration (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003); Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy:
The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972 (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1995).

officially recognized by white society. Jazz musicians, therefore, fit the profile of clandestine
political activity in post-bellum New Orleans.
Additionally, the social, cultural, and artistic evolution of jazz was a crucial component
of New Orleanss role in the Great Migration. A number of scholars have correctly described the
origins of jazz as more of an evolution rather than a genesis, most notably Burton Peretti and
Charles Hersch.11 In The Creation of Jazz (1992), Peretti places the creation of jazz within the
great contexts of American culture- urbanization, race relations, individual development,
professionalization, and capitalism.12 While Peretti describes the conditions out of which jazz
emerged, in Subversive Sounds (2007), Hersch argues that jazz music and the cultural institutions
from which it emerged fostered integration and acted as an agent for social change. These
authors have painted a more complex picture of the development of jazz than the standard
account allows. Unfortunately, few authors have taken the same care to describe the complexity
of the Great Migration and its impact on spreading jazz across the country.
The historiography of the Great Migration has grown in recent years, and the causes of
the movement have been the subject of much debate among historians both then and now.
Thanks, in part, to the seminal work of James R. Grossman, our understanding of the Great
Migration and the urban experience has evolved quite dramatically in the past few decades. In
Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (1989), Grossman points to
the tradition within African American communities of mobility as an assertion of agency.
Following emancipation, Grossman contends, blacks found spatial mobility to be of the utmost
significance. Furthermore, Grossman asserts that a grass-roots network of information and

11

Burton W. Peretti, The Creation of Jazz: Music, Race, and Culture in Urban America (Urbana, Illinois:
University of Illinois Press, 1992); Charles Hersch, Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
12
Peretti, The Creation of Jazz, 1.

10

leadership emerged that was essential to the movement.13 In his recent book, Chicagos New
Negroes: Modernity, The Great Migration, and Black Urban Life (2007), Davarian L. Baldwin
argues that a black intelligentsia developed in Chicago not unlike the Harlem Renaissance of
the same period. Baldwins intellectual perspective reveals that a Garveyite, economic nationalist
agenda emerged in Chicago. The author argues that the rhetoric of the New Negro stood as an
assertion of the agency of new migrants.14 William Howland Kenney employs a cultural
perspective to discuss the evolution of jazz in Chicago. Kenney focuses primarily on the
development of the music and jazz culture. He pays particular attention to the South Side
community. The author also discusses, at length, the interactions between black and white
musicians and their patrons.15 Kenneys work is essential to understand the confluence of music,
race, and culture in Chicago during, and immediately following, the Great Migration.
In addition to the aforementioned work of David Levering Lewis, there are a number of
books on Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance that were useful to the project. Any discussion of
the Harlem Renaissance would be incomplete without some analysis of the landmark collection
of essays, The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (1925), edited by Alain Locke.16
James Weldon Johnsons Black Manhattan (1930) is another critical primary source on the
identity and culture of Harlem in the 1910s, 20s and 30s.17 Gilbert Osofskys Harlem: The
Making of a Ghetto (1963) studies the residential restrictions in New York that afforded African

13

James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1989).
14
Davarian L. Baldwin, Chicagos New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration and Black Urban Life (Chapel
Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 2-19.
15
William Howland Kenney, Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904-1930 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1993).
16
Alain Locke ed., The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1925).
17
James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930).

11

Americans little choice in where they could reside within the city.18 This dynamic restricted
residential mobility for African Americans, but ironically, it also concentrated artistic
achievement and innovation in Harlem. Finally, Nathan Irvin Hugginss Harlem Renaissance
(1971) illuminates the myriad personalities that called Harlem home in the 1920s and 30s
including, W.E.B. DuBois, Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, and James Weldon Johnson.19
Huggins clearly demonstrates the connection between politics and artistic expression as
embodied in the Harlem Renaissance.
There are a number of works on early jazz that offer a musicological perspective on the
development and dissemination of the music. Most notably, Gunther Schullers first volume on
the history of jazz, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (1968), traces the music to its
origins and bridges the gap between its evolution and the Swing Era that followed.20 Other
important musicological studies include Frank Tirros Jazz: A History (1977) and Ted Gioias
The History of Jazz (1997).21 These works offer critical assessments of jazz and its status as the
American art form. They also effectively demonstrate how location and particular moments in
history affected the style and variety of jazz played in a given locale. Therefore, these books are
crucial in understanding how New Orleans jazz morphed into Chicago jazz and the differences
between Chicago and New York styles. Finally, they foreshadow the emerging Swing Era that
catapulted Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington onto the national stage.
Despite the excellent work of these scholars, the story of black jazz musicians as both
activists and artists remains unfinished. My own work attempts to synthesize the above
approaches and challenge the traditional interpretations of the development of jazz, the Great
18

Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto (New York: Harper & Row, 1963).
Nathan Irvin Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971).
20
Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968).
21
Frank Tirro, Jazz: A History (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1977); Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997).
19

12

Migration, and the Harlem Renaissance. While jazz was a central cultural component of life in
Harlem, it was also crucial to scores of cities across the country as African Americans journeyed
north during the Great Migration. Jazz musicians were also just as active politically as other
migrants. Despite a common stereotype that characterizes musicians as apolitical, my work, then,
seeks to demonstrate that the musicians of the period were no different than their counterparts in
the literary arts.
Methodology
In addition to the work of scholars in the field, I also relied heavily on a number of
primary source material. The New Orleans and Chicago stories are largely the result of archival
research conducted at the University of Chicagos Archive of Chicago Jazz and Tulane
Universitys William Ransom Hogan Archive of New Orleans Jazz. These institutions contain a
number of oral histories recorded by early jazz innovators, like Louis Armstrong, that discuss the
development of jazz from New Orleans to Chicago and New York City. The Hogan Archive is,
perhaps, the largest single repository of primary source materials on the development and culture
of early jazz. Of particular interest to my project is the collection of oral histories. These include
interviews with Joe King Oliver, Sidney Bechet, and Jelly Roll Morton, just to name a few. In
these accounts, musicians often reflected on their motivations for leaving New Orleans for
Chicago and other northern and western locales during the time period.
The Chicago Jazz Archive also contains a number of oral histories of musicians who
came to Chicago during the period including Natty Dominique, Bill Davison, and George Dixon.
In addition, the archive houses microfilm collections of the most influential African American
newspaper of the period, the Chicago Defender. The Chicago Public Librarys Vivian G. Harsh
Research Collection of African American History and Literature is also of great interest to my

13

project as it contains a number of materials on both the Great Migration and the development of
Chicago jazz and blues. Lastly, the Harold Washington Branch of the Chicago Public Library
houses the remaining records of the black musicians union, Local 208.
I also conducted extensive research in New York City. Rutgers Universitys Institute of
Jazz Studies in Newark, New Jersey houses an oral history collection that contains interviews
with jazz greats Milt Hinton, Barney Bigard, and Zutty Singleton to name a few. There are also
the personal papers of the Harlem jazz piano impresario James P. Johnson. Additionally, the
Louis Armstrong House Museum Archives located on the campus of Queens College in New
York City, houses thousands of documents related to the life and career of the jazz great. Louis
Armstrong is a central character of the project. He not only represents an era of early jazz
innovation, but more importantly, he is the physical embodiment of jazz and the Great
Migration. Having grown up in New Orleans, Armstrong then moved to Chicago in the peak
years of migration before ultimately settling in New York. The Armstrong House Museum
Archive is a crucial repository of material that enabled me to contextualize Armstrong and his
work in this light.
In addition, New York Public Librarys Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
holds the remaining records for the New Amsterdam Musical Association (NAMA). NAMA was
an early attempt by African American musicians in New York to unionize and protect the
economic interests of its members. Finally, New York Universitys Tamiment Library and
Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive houses the remaining records of the biracial musicians union in
New York City, Local 802. These materials reveal much about the political acumen of the Big
Apples musicians during the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance.

14

In addition to the archival materials and oral histories, I utilized a number of

autobiographical accounts of those closely associated with New Orleans, Chicago, and Harlem
jazz. Louis Armstrong wrote three such memoirs. The first of which, Louis Armstrong: Swing
That Music, was published in 1936.22 He also wrote two other accounts in subsequent years:
Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (1954) and Louis Armstrong- A Self Portrait (1966).23 Bassist
Pops Foster, clarinetist Barney Bigard, drummer Warren Baby Dodds, and the banjo player
Danny Barker also left their recollections of the early days of jazz.24 Finally, two early jazz
innovators discussed the centrality of New Orleans to jazz music in their own accounts.
Ferdinand Jelly Roll Morton published Mister Jelly Roll in 1950, and Sidney Bechet published
Treat it Gentle a decade later.25 Like Armstrong, these two men were instrumental in codifying
the form jazz would follow for decades to come. Lastly, Duke Ellingtons autobiography, Music
Is My Mistress (1976), proved invaluable in discussing the Harlem scene.26
While it is reassuring to have so many first person accounts to rely on, I am well aware of
the potential risks of using oral histories. Memories change over time, unpleasant experiences
may get glossed over, and there is a definite tendency to paint ones self in a positive light in
many accounts. Not withstanding these pitfalls, there is also much useful information to be
mined from these memoirs. Furthermore, because few people took jazz very seriously until after
the Great Migration elevated the music onto the national stage, no one thought to record the
22

Louis Armstrong, Louis Armstrong: Swing That Music (New York: Da Capo Press, 1936).
Louis Armstrong, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (New York: Da Capo Press, 1954); Louis Armstrong with
Richard Meryman, Louis Armstrong- A Self Portrait (New York: The Eakins Press, 1966).
24
Pops Foster with Tom Stoddard, The Autobiography of Pops Foster: New Orleans Jazzman (San Francisco:
Backbeat Books, 1971); Barney Bigard with Barry Martyn, With Louis and the Duke (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1980); Warren Baby Dodds with Larry Gara, The Baby Dodds Story (New York: Contemporary Press,
1959); Danny Barker with Alyn Shipton, Buddy Bolden and the Last Days of Storyville (New York: Continuum
Publishing Group, 1998).
25
Ferdinand Jelly Roll Morton with Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New
Orleans Creole and Inventor of Jazz (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1950); Sidney Bechet,
Treat it Gentle: An Autobiography (New York: Da Capo Press, 1960).
26
Duke Ellington, Music Is My Mistress (New York: Da Capo Press, 1976).
23

15

details of its early development. Therefore, these oral histories and autobiographies are among
the few sources available on the subject. Consequently, I made every effort to cross reference
such accounts whenever possible.
The first chapter details the political activism of the African American and Creole
communities in New Orleans. Chapter one picks up the story of the development of jazz in postReconstruction New Orleans. Though African Americans and Creoles were often at odds in New
Orleans, the two groups found moments of both cooperation and competition. Out of one
moment of cooperation, jazz emerged in the Crescent City at the turn of the twentieth century.
The second chapter describes the formation of grass-roots networks in New Orleans that fostered
the out-migration of the musicians during the Great Migration. While jazz musicians were busy
codifying a new musical art form in the first decades of the twentieth century, they were also
engaged in a number of activities that pulled collective resources, created a semblance of job
security, and provided for the general welfare of the music community in the Crescent City. It
was the grass-roots networks that developed alongside the music that proved vital in launching
the jazz exodus from the nodal point of New Orleans.
The migration of musicians across the South is the subject of the third chapter. While the
jazz migration is often described in purely economic terms, the story of the jazz exodus was
much more complicated than that. Jazz musicians left the South for a variety of reasons, and they
all actively sought a better life for themselves and their fellow musicians. Furthermore, northern
migration was often not a one-way journey. Because of financial and artistic motivations,
musicians lived a life on the road for months at a time. This dynamic helped spread jazz to the
far corners of the country, and even the globe, in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. Consequently,
places like Memphis, Kansas City, Los Angeles, and even Paris, France became jazz destinations

16

in and of themselves. Furthermore, life on the road presented both perils and triumphs along the
way.
The fourth chapter discusses the Chicago scene. Chicagos South Side rivaled anything
Harlem had to offer in every respect. Black musicians found a vibrant scene to ply their craft.
They also found new opportunities for political expression. Chicagos musicians created the
largest black musicians union in the country. Finally, they worked alongside organizations like
the NAACP, the Urban League, and Chicagos Republican Party in the South Side
neighborhood. Consequently, the Great Migration fostered greater political participation and a
new musical art form that launched the careers of national black celebrities like Louis
Armstrong.
The fifth chapter focuses on jazz in New York City. Because so many early jazz
innovators lived in Chicago, New York jazz had some catching up to do in the 1910s and early
1920s. Piano players like James P. Johnson and Willie The Lion Smith dominated the Harlem
scene. These men influenced Duke Ellingtons style, and he applied the techniques he learned in
Harlem to the big band format. Thanks to Ellington and other Harlem jazz artists, New York
became a focal jazz destination in the late 1920s and 1930s. While Harlem jazz played catch up
to Chicago, New York musicians were just as politically active as their counterparts in other
cities. New York was home to the largest biracial musicians union in the country. Due to the
insistence and activism of black musicians in Local 802, the union was forced to recognize and
address the concerns of black musicians. Though it was a long fight for justice within the union,
Harlems jazz artists soon turned Local 802 into an advocate for the citys musicians, both black
and white.

17

The Great Migration had profound effects on American cities and American culture at
large. Jazz was one of the byproducts of the Great Migration. As musicians voiced their disfavor
with the South by leaving it en masse, along with their physical effects they also brought the
cultural baggage of jazz in the journey north. Soon the new music spread across the country and
gained new converts wherever it went. First in New Orleans, then in Chicago, and other cities
across the country, jazz held the power to affect change and influence public opinion. Harlem
was one of many sites of artistic innovation; by decentralizing Harlem as the sole capitol of
African American artistic achievement, it is clear that the music Renaissance of the Jazz Age
was clearly national in scope. Indeed, the New Negro of jazz was simultaneously crafting a new
art form and carving out avenues for greater political participation as the result of the Great
Migration. Consequently, it was the New Negro of jazz that taught the American people how to
swing during the Jazz Age.

18

Chapter 1:
Jazz Demanded Cooperation: The Americanization of the Gens De Couleur Libres
& the Evolution of Jazz in New Orleans
In the 1940s John Lomax, and his son Alan, began documenting American folk music
through a series of extensive interviews with noted pioneering musicians such as Woody
Guthrie, Molly Jackson, and Leadbelly. As part of his effort to document the life of Ferdinand
Jelly Roll Morton, the early jazz piano impresario, Alan Lomax interviewed Dr. Leonard
Bechet (brother of famed New Orleans clarinetist Sidney Bechet) about the social conditions
from which jazz emerged in the Big Easy. Bechet remembered that, initially, Creoles like
himself looked down upon this new music. When the settled Creole folks first heard this jazz,
they passed the opinion that it sounded like the rough Negro element. But, after they heard it
so long, they began to creep right close to it and enjoy it. Bechet believed that this change in
attitude facilitated the spread of jazz, not just in the Creole circles of New Orleans, but
throughout white America as well. Thats why I think this jazz music helps to get this
misunderstanding between the races straightened out, he claimed. You creep in close to hear
the music and, automatically, you creep in close to the other people. You know?1
Bechets observations demonstrate that New Orleans offered unique social and cultural
environments that nurtured jazz in its infancy. To be certain, around the turn of the twentieth
century when jazz emerged, there was a very real sense of antipathy between the American
blacks who lived in the uptown neighborhoods of New Orleans and the gens de couleur libres (or
free people of color) known simply as Creoles who lived downtown. The history of relations
between the two groups, like much of the history of New Orleans, is complicated and defies easy

Dr. Leonard Bechet, quoted in Jelly Roll Morton and Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll
Morton, New Orleans Creole and Inventor of Jazz (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1950),
98-99.

19

categorization. As Alice Dunbar-Nelson wrote in 1917, the history of Creoles is like the Mardi
Gras of the city of New Orleans, beautiful and mysterious and wonderful, but with a serious
thought underlying it all.2 It is in light of the complex and nuanced relationship between the two
groups that their conjoined pasts led to both moments of mutual cooperation and mutual
animosity. It is out of one particular moment of mutual cooperation that New Orleans jazz
emerged. Thus Alan Lomax observed, There was fear and hate on both sides; but jazz
demanded cooperation.3
To thoroughly understand the evolution of jazz, it is first necessary to contextualize that
moment of Creole/ Black collaboration within the larger framework of earlier periods of mutual
cooperation that were predicated on the changing political climates of Reconstruction Era
Louisiana. New Orleans jazz emerged as the byproduct of musical collaboration between Creoles
and African Americans. The two groups shared with one another their distinct musical traditions,
and the blending of the two styles made New Orleans jazz dynamic and appealing to a broader
range of listeners. It was not mere happenstance that jazz emerged in New Orleans around the
turn of the twentieth century out of dozens of cultural negotiations and compromises between
competing factions in the Crescent City. Unfortunately, jazz historiography often over-simplifies
the relationship between these two groups. A common mistake is to paint the relationship
between African Americans and Creoles as one centered on competition and mistrust, and only
after the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson the two groups began cooperating in earnest. The reality is far
more complicated than the above account suggests. Consequently, the story of the development
of New Orleans jazz begins not in a nightclub on Bourbon Street at the turn of the twentieth
century, but decades earlier in post-Reconstruction Louisiana.
2
3

Alice Dunbar-Nelson, People of Color in Louisiana, The Journal of Negro History (January, 1917), 78.
Morton and Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, 80.

20

We Think it is More Noble and Dignified to Fight

Danny Barker grew up in the Creole section of New Orleans at the turn of the twentieth
century. He learned to play guitar and banjo in the Crescent City under the tutelage of Creole
relatives and friends. Eventually his talents took him to Chicago and New York City where he
played with some of the most successful black and Creole musicians of the 1920s and 1930s. But
the New Orleans of his youth was a divided community. He remembered, The city was split by
Canal Street, with one part of the people uptown and the Creoles downtown. When people would
come into New Orleans, like gamblers and workers from Memphis, and theyd say Lets go
down to Frenchtown, that meant you went below Canal Street. Despite the residential divide,
cultural differences were more easily bridged through music. As he explained, The kids would
stand around and look at the great men like Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong and King Oliver.
You saw these people play, and they played to perfection. And you had a model of perfection
to shoot at.4 Jazz was first developed by the generation that preceded Armstrong and Bechet.
Yet, by the time these men made names for themselves as musicians in New Orleans, Creoles
and African Americans remained suspicious of one another. It is important to note that Sidney
Bechet (a Creole) and Armstrong and Oliver (both African Americans) were cited as influences
on Barker. Clearly, for Barker and musicians who came of age after jazz arrived on the New
Orleans music scene, cultural differences were less important than ones ability to achieve
musical perfection. Barkers recollections of his youth in New Orleans reveals that though
Creoles and African Americans were sometimes divided and at odds at the turn of the twentieth
century, moments of competition and mistrust were often punctuated with moments of

Danny Barker, interview transcript, 1988, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans; Danny Barker in
Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It (New
York: Dover Publications, 1966), 4; Danny Barker, interview transcript, July 22, 1974, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane
University, New Orleans.

21

cooperation and understanding. In light of Barkers youthful remembrances, it is necessary to

unpack the complex and nuanced relationship between African Americans and Creoles to reveal
earlier moments when the two groups worked together, and why suspicions were not so easily
cast aside.
The popular essayist George W. Cable famously asked in 1883, Who Are the Creoles?5
Cables account of Creole life in New Orleans painted an overly romantic picture of a unique
segment of American society whose history defied easy categorization. He declared that the term
Creole first applied to, any native, of French or Spanish descent by either parent, whose nonalliance with the slave race entitled him to social rank. Later, the term was adopted by- not
conceded to- the natives of mixed blood, and it is still so used among themselves. Besides
French and Spanish, there are even, for convenience of speech, colored Creoles.6 Cables
assessment reduced Creole identity to one based solely on ancestry, when in fact, it was not a
homogenous community in terms of cultural identity. Initially, the term Creole applied to
anyone of French or Spanish descent. It was not in wide usage in the colonial period, however.
French and Spanish notions of racial hierarchy were less rigid than the American one drop rule
which held that any percentage of African ancestry (no matter how small) deemed an individual
Black and, therefore, of a second-class legal and social status. It was not until the Louisiana
Purchase and the clash of American and Creole cultures that the term Creole began denoting a
sense of nativism and, therefore, privileged status.7 As the historian Arth Agnes Anthony
explains, Creole also grew to be used by blacks in reference to those who saw themselves as
culturally more French and Spanish than Afro-American. And as a result of the caste-like
5

George W. Cable, Who Are the Creoles?, Century Illustrated Magazine (January, 1883).
Ibid., 396.
7
Joseph G. Tregle, Jr., Creoles and Americans, in Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon eds., Creole New
Orleans: Race and Americanization (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 133-134.
6

22

status of free people of color, Creole culture was further differentiated into white and colored.8
Initially, in American society Creoles could be either white or black, but the term Creole
quickly changed. It was only after the turn of the twentieth century when Jim Crow increased its
grip on American society that white Creoles began identifying themselves as white (as
opposed to Creole). Consequently, in Jim Crow Louisiana the term Creole was reserved only
for African Americans with French or Spanish ancestry.9
In rudimentary form, the differences between Creoles of color and African Americans
in New Orleans was one not just of progeny but also one of culture. Essentially, Creoles were the
light-skinned descendents of French and Spanish settlers and enslaved Africans, who under
French and Spanish custom were accorded certain privileges in society. Once Louisiana became
an American possession following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, these traditions were
maintained by custom, though not always in law. They enjoyed property and inheritance rights in
the antebellum period and by and large were skilled tradesmen. They aligned themselves with
their European ancestry and culture; they received formal educations, spoke French, and
practiced Catholicism. They also lived downtown in the French Quarter in both the pre and postCivil War eras.
Creoles sometimes attributed a sense of status, both within Creole circles and in New
Orleans society in general, to the lightness of ones skin. Light skin tones denoted a sense of

Arth Agnes Anthony, The Negro Creole Community in New Orleans, 1880-1920: An Oral History. Ph.D.
dissertation, University of California, Irvine, 1978, 24.
9
It was not until the dawn of the twentieth century that the term Creole came to denote those with both African
and European ancestry. As Jim Crow laws in the South more strictly delineated lines of black and white, the
term came to mean only black at the turn of the century. Initially, as this transition unfolded, the term Creoles of
color was used to demarcate the differences. Eventually, in accordance with American notions of racial hierarchy,
the term Creole emphasized ones blackness rather than ones whiteness. For more information on this
dynamic see: Thomas Brothers, Louis Armstrongs New Orleans (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006),
171; Virginia R. Domnguez, White By Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana (New Brunswick, New
Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 146-147. As a point of clarity, henceforth, when using the term Creole I
am specifically referring to those individuals with both African and European ancestry.

23

perceived privilege, because it meant one was more French or Spanish than African American.
For Creoles who looked down on all things African American, European features were
celebrated and meant to separate themselves from black New Orleans. Consequently, by clinging
to such beliefs regarding a privileged status, light-skinned Creoles antagonized and alienated
African Americans in New Orleans. Some Creoles who were light skinned enough rejected all
ancestral ties by passing for white and blending into white society, thus avoiding Jim Crow
altogether.10
Creoles also studied music from the classical European canon. Violinist Charles Elgar,
clarinetist Barney Bigard, and cornetist Natty Dominique, for example, all studied under
classically trained Creole music instructors.11 The French Opera and European dance music like
waltzes, schottisches, and polkas heavily influenced the style of music played in Creole circles.
Prominent Creole musicians and composers who wrote and performed in classic European
idioms included Eugne Macarty, Edmond Dd, and Basile Barrs.12 The tradition of emulating
high culture lent a refined character to Creole music that resembled European popular music of
the day. Creole music sensibilities also reflected notions of privilege and status. Therefore, jazz
and the blues were initially frowned upon in Creole circles because of the relationship these new
musical forms shared with African American culture.
The African American population by contrast, lived on the other side of Canal Street in
the uptown ghetto following the end of slavery. They were Protestant, spoke English, worked in
10

Anthony, Negro Creole Community in New Orleans, 33, 56-57; Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes, Our History and
Our People (Originally published in 1911 as Nos Hommes et Notre Histoire) translated and edited by Sister
Dorothea Olga McCants (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 61-64.
11
Charles Elgar, interview transcript, May 27, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans; Barney
Bigard and Barry Martyn, With Louis and the Duke: The Autobiography of a Jazz Clarinetist (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1980), 14-17; Natty Dominique, interview transcript, May 31, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane
University, New Orleans.
12
Lawrence Gushee, The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Jazz, Black Music Research Journal (1994), 155, 172.
For more information on the Creole music tradition and its relationship with European classical forms see:
Desdunes, Our History and Our People, 82-89.

24

dangerous and labor-intensive jobs (often as dock workers or ditch diggers), and identified with
the African American music tradition of spirituals, work songs, and black folk songs that formed
the basis of what eventually became the blues. While Creole musicians were often formally
trained, African American musicians picked up knowledge wherever they could (sometimes
through a form of musical apprenticeship). This dynamic placed a high emphasis on individuality
and artistic expression. As Louis Armstrong remembered, We were always looking for a new
piano player with something new on the ball like a rhythm that was all his own. These fellows
with real talent often came from levee camps. Theyd sit on a piano stool and beat out some of
the damnedest blues you ever heard in your life.13 Thus developed a three-tiered caste system
unique to New Orleans in America: one group free, one in a state of almost perpetual servitude,
and one straddling the precarious line between the two. In light of the erosion of the political
rights Creoles previously enjoyed, they sought to maintain their unique status in Louisiana
society by separating culturally from African Americans in the Big Easy.14 But as Jim Crow
came to dominate southern society and the Crescent City in particular, total separation became
more and more difficult.
Despite the social and cultural differences between African Americans and Creoles in
New Orleans, the two groups shared moments of mutual political cooperation dating to
Louisianas Reconstruction period. Though the two factions often stood at odds politically, they
succeeded in drafting, arguably, the most radical and progressive State Constitution during
Reconstruction. The two groups successfully protested and ended the practice of segregation on
the citys streetcar system in 1867. New Orleans also had the largest population of any southern
13

Armstrong, Satchmo, 64.

Morton and Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, 83-90; Brothers, Armstrongs New Orleans, 170-176; Joseph Logsdon and
Caryn Cosse` Bell, The Americanization of Black New Orleans, 1850- 1900, in Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph
Logsdon eds., Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University
Press, 1992), 233-239; Anthony, Negro Creole Community in New Orleans, 44.
14

25

city, and the largest black population as well. As late as 1888, the number of black (including
Creole) registered voters slightly outnumbered white registered voters in the state, so it was
critical that Creoles and African Americans cooperate politically (though they did not always
agree as to the best course of action to take).15 This tradition of activism continued well into the
1890s as white supremacists sought to squelch any efforts of reform. Indeed, a radical faction of
Creole activists, led by men such as Rodolphe Desdunes, advocated for an agenda of social
equality for all men of African descent.16 Desdunes and his Creole allies had much to be
apprehensive about. As the progressive gains of the Reconstruction era were rolled back across
the South, Jim Crow laws were enacted at different times in different states depending on the
political conditions unique to each. It is clear that by the mid 1880s, the process was well under
way across the South. As the African American newspaper, The New York Freeman intoned in
March 1885, I warn the people in the New South to stand aloof of this coming hydra.17
Perhaps the best-known political mobilizing effort by Creole activists is the series of
cases known collectively as the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. This case proved pivotal to both
Creoles and African Americans, and it unintentionally impacted the development of jazz in New
Orleans. While the 1896 Supreme Court decision did not create the Jim Crow system in the
South, it did lend federal sanction to the coming hydra by proclaiming that separate but
equal accommodations were constitutionally permissible. In 1890, the Louisiana legislature
passed Act 111, which called for separate accommodations for blacks and whites on all
15

For more information on this legacy see: Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon eds., Creole New Orleans: Race
and Americanization (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1992); Steven Hahn, A Nation
Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003); Anthony, Negro Creole Community in New Orleans, 43.
16
Desdunes, Our History and Our People, 130-148.
17
St. John and the Color Line, The New York Freeman (March 7, 1885), 1. For more information on Jim Crow
and segregation in American society in general see: C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow 2nd
Revised Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966). For more information in Jim Crow in Louisiana
specifically see: Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972
(Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1995).

26

passenger trains in the state. In response, Rodolphe Desdunes launched the New Orleans
Crusader newspaper as a public platform to condemn the rising tide of Jim Crow in Louisiana
and across the South. In addition, a group of concerned Creoles, including Aristide Mary, Louis
Martinet, and Desdunes, formed the Comit de Citoyens, or Citizens Committee, to protest Act
111, boycott the Railroad Companies in compliance with the new law, and raise legal funds for
the campaign. However, it is clear that though the Committee opposed segregation in public
accommodations, official publications by the group were aimed strictly at Creole donors and
volunteers, and its membership was entirely composed of Creoles. African Americans need not
apply. The Committee was quick to distance itself from the larger African American community.
Arth Anthony explains that the committees initial appeal for support in September 1891 was
couched in terms that the Creole community could readily accept. Creole activists were
particularly concerned with negative portrayals of black New Orleanians in the press so,
Clearly, the Citizens Committee, its leadership, and its colored audience wanted to avoid
association with those types of Negroes. Therefore, Creole objections to the segregation
appealed to the cause of equal rights and American manhood, rather than highlighting the
inherent injustice of the system for African Americans.18
The committee soon realized that their efforts were in vain, so they turned to the courts as
a last resort. It was quickly decided that test cases were needed to challenge the constitutionality
of two key provisions in the Act. One provision regulated accommodations on trains passing
through the state of Louisiana while another regulated trains traveling only within the border of
the state. Desduness son Daniel volunteered to test the limits of the first provision in June 1892.
In accordance with the plans of the committee, Daniel was arrested for occupying the whites

18

Desdunes, Our History and Our People, 140- 143; Anthony, Negro Creole Community in New Orleans, 51-53.

27

only section of a train bound beyond state lines. At his trial, the district court ruled that the
provision was unconstitutional based on the commerce clause that granted Congress the right to
regulate commerce between the states.19
Homer Plessy, a man so light complexioned that he could have easily passed for white,
volunteered to serve as the test case for the second provision. As prearranged, Plessy was taken
into custody by New Orleans police in the whites only car of a train destined for a location
wholly within state lines. His arrest made the next days headlines in the Crescent Citys most
widely read newspaper. The heavily Democratic leaning Daily Picayune declared, Another Jim
Crow Car Case with the byline, Arrest of a Negro Traveler Who Persisted in Riding With
White People.20 When his case came to trial in the same district court as Desdunes, Justice
John Howard Ferguson upheld the provision arguing that the state had every right to regulate
accommodations on intrastate passenger trains.21
Plessys legal team, funded by the Citizens Committee, appealed the decision all the way
to the Supreme Court. The opinion of the court ruled against Plessy in a seven to one decision on
May 18, 1896. The majority opinion, penned by Justice Henry Billings Brown, declared
separate but equal public accommodations were constitutional based on the logic that
Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon
physical differences If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United
States cannot put them on the same plane.22 The irony of the courts decision lies in the fact that

19

Desdunes, Our History and Our People, 143.

Another Jim Crow Car Case, Daily Picayune (June 9, 1892), 3.
21
Brook Thomas ed., Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martins Press,
1997), 4-5; Desdunes, Our History Our People, 143-144.
22
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (May 18, 1896), in Brook Thomas ed., Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with
Documents (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martins Press, 1997), 51.
20

28

it upheld a law that mandated the separation of the races, yet Creoles like Plessy were visible
proof of the widespread mixture of races in the American past.
The Daily Picayune hailed the decision of the high court saying, if all rights were
common as well as equal, there would be practically no such thing as private property, private
life, or social distinctions This would be absolute socialism, in which the individual would be
extinguished in the vast mass of human beings, a condition repugnant to every principle of
democracy.23 Writing to the Nation magazine just a few years later, New Orleans resident,
Harry Prentiss Sneed defended the practice of social separation in his city as espoused in the
Picayune editorial. There is no door closed to the negro in the South, Sneed declared, except
the door to social equality.24 Both Sneed and the Piacyune made it clear that in the eyes of
white supremacists, Creoles held no special privileges in southern society and all peoples of
African descent were bound to the edicts of Jim Crow.
The reaction of New Orleans Creole community was a dire one. The Citizens Committee
disbanded not long after the decision was handed down. A once proud group of financial backers
of the Crusader distanced themselves from the papers cause and capital needs. Desdunes wrote
that Seeing that the friends of justice were either dead or indifferent, they believed that the
continuation of the Crusader would not only be fruitless but decidedly dangerous. We do not
share this reasoning. We think it is more noble and dignified to fight, no matter what, than to
show a passive attitude of resignation.25 Desdunes and his allies were clearly scarred by the
whole affair, but true to his radical spirit he vowed to fight on.

23

Equality, But Not Socialism, The Daily Picayune (May 19, 1896), 4.
Harry Prentiss Sneed, The Negro in New Orleans, The Nation (January 14, 1904), 30.
25
Desdunes, Our History Our People, 147.
24

29

The Plessy decision had swift and dramatic consequences for African Americans and
Creoles across the South. With the backing of the Supreme Court, state after state began enacting
even more draconian Jim Crow laws that separated the races in every facet of social life. Two
years after the decision was handed down, Louisiana added a grandfather clause to the voting
requirements of the state that stripped nine tenths of eligible black voters of the franchise.26 For
Creoles, the development of a Jim Crow Louisiana meant that their once privileged status was
now entirely removed by legal edict. They had become entirely Americanized whether they
liked it or not. Their secure positions as skilled tradesmen became even more tenuous, and most
were pushed out of their traditional livelihoods altogether.
You Got to Work For That
One of the unintended consequences of the further codification of the Jim Crow system in
Louisiana was the development of New Orleans jazz around the turn of the twentieth century.
Much like the nuanced relationship between Creoles and African Americans in New Orleans, the
history of the development of jazz is complicated. Scholars like Charles Hersch and James
Lincoln Collier contend that New Orleans served as the birthplace of jazz before spreading to the
far reaches of the country in the first decades of the twentieth century. Meanwhile, musicologists
like Gunther Schuller and Frank Tirro argue that jazz and the related idioms of ragtime and the
blues found audiences in a variety of locales across the country at roughly the same time New
Orleans jazz coalesced into a codified musical genre. Without discounting the validity of these
arguments, what is absolutely clear is that the artists and innovators who emanated from New
Orleans dominated the genre from the start.27 For our purposes, whether or not New Orleans

26

Ibid., 144.
Charles Hersch, Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2007), 16-17; James Lincoln Collier, Louis Armstrong: An American Genius (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1983), 46-55; Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (New York: Oxford
27

30

served as the birthplace of jazz is not as important as examining the Big Easy as a site of black
cultural exchange that lent its character to the development of jazz and the making of a black
modernity in the post-Reconstruction and Great Migration periods.
With the tightening restrictions of Jim Crow in New Orleans, the city became
increasingly segregated at the turn of the twentieth century. The grip of Jim Crow was never all
encompassing, however. Indeed, the Crescent City had a long legacy of interracial mingling that
could not be undone by legislation and intimidation alone. For example, sometime in the middle
of the eighteenth century, enslaved Africans began meeting on Sundays just north of the French
Quarter in Trem to congregate, socialize, and play music on their only day off.28 This public
space offered hundreds of bondsmen and women an opportunity to dance and sing to traditional
West African rhythms. Often practiced at these gatherings was the ring-shout, a traditional West
African dance that employed complex rhythms, blue tones, and call and response.29 These
Sunday performances attracted white audiences, and most disturbing to Creole elites, workingclass free people of color often joined the festivities.30 Since many different African and
European influences affected the rhythms played in Congo Square, many histroians believe it
was an important space serving as a precursor to the development of jazz, as evidenced by the
fundamental elements of the ring-shout also found in jazz.31
The music of Congo Square served as an early forerunner to New Orleans jazz in the
early nineteenth century. By the end of the century, the New Orleans style evolved out of dozens
University Press, 1968), 64-65; Frank Tirro, Jazz: A History (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1977), 96-97, 113;
Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 45.
28
LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Blues People: Negro Music in White America (New York: William Morrow and
Company, 1963), 71-72.
29
Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History 3rd Edition (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997),
181-184.
30
Hersch, Subservise Sounds, 39.
31
For more information on the relationship of the ring-shout to jazz see: Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture:
Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 95-96.

31

of cultural negotiations between the African Americans and Creoles as they were forced into a
shared identity following the Plessy decision. While Creoles and African American remained at
odds, the two groups began to share musical tastes and expertise during gigs at city parks, dance
halls, nightclubs, and in street parades. As Creoles lost social prestige and the economic security
of the skilled trades, many with formal music training sought to ply their skills to supplement
lost income. Beginning in the 1890s Americans increasingly frequented dance halls as a form of
entertainment with the music furnished by society dance orchestras. Black and white bands
played these affairs for the middle class and wealthy. But, the consumer marketplace provided a
level of steady employment that made music a viable (though not always lucrative) career path,
and Creoles were more likely to make a full-time living as a musician than their African
American counterparts.32
Beginning in the 1870s scores of African American former slaves began flocking to New
Orleans in search of greater economic and social mobility. As the black Louisiana newspaper the
Concordia Eagle noted in 1879, The negroes have caught the emigration fever, and only those
will stay behind who cannot possibly get away.33 The families of noted early jazz innovators
Willie Hightower and George Pops Foster were among this wave of emigration.34 These
migrants brought with them the African American musical traditions of spirituals, work songs,
the rudimentary elements of the blues, and what was known as ragging the tune (essentially a
form of embellishing and taking musical liberties with traditional Euro-American song
structures) that formed the basis of ragtime. Stella Oliver, the wife of the famed bandleader Joe

32

Morton and Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, 79; Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 257-259; Peretti, Creation of
Jazz, 29.
33
Concordia Eagle (March 27, 1879), 3.
34
Willie Hightower, interview transcript, June 3, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans;
George Pops Foster and Tom Stoddard, The Autobiography of Pops Foster: New Orleans Jazzman (San
Francisco: Backbeat Books, 1971), 4, 8.

32

Oliver, remembered her late husband incorporating elements of the songs sung by railroad
workers and dockworkers and blending it with religious hymns into his jazz repertoire.35 New
Orleans also had a long-standing tradition of brass marching bands that performed regularly on
the streets and in civic spaces like local parks, and groups like the Tuxedo Brass Band, the
Onward Brass Band, and the Excelsior Brass Band used to mix syncopated rhythms and
improvisation (both essential elements of jazz) into their street performances.36
By 1900, all of these divergent elements created a musical gumbo that retained their
distinct flavors while melding into a new music that became New Orleans jazz. Historian
Lawrence W. Levine concludes, the secular forms of folk expression that arose and became
central after emancipation were the product of many years and diverse influences.37 Ironically,
though, the term jazz was not widely used by New Orleans musicians until the mid-1910s at
the earliest. Crescent City musicians more often than not referred to their style of music as
ragtime or hot music, and the word jazz did not appear in print until 1913 in a San
Francisco newspaper. The origins of the word are unclear, but one explanation holds that it
derives from the French verb jaser which roughly translates to chatter or have an animated
conversation among diverse people.38 Sidney Bechet, the famed Creole clarinetist, offered a
different explanation: Theres two kinds of music. Theres classic and theres ragtime. When I
tell you ragtime, you can feel it, theres a spirit right in the word. But Jazz Jazz could mean

35

Morton and Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, 78; Mrs. Stella Oliver, interview digest, April 22, 1959, Hogan Jazz
Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
36
Louis C. Elson, Down in Dixie, The Musical Visitor (March, 1890), 67; Peter Bocage, interview transcript,
January 29, 1959, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
37
For more information on the divergent elements that coalesced to create jazz before the turn of the twentieth
century see: Lawrence Gushee, The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Jazz, Black Music Research Journal (1994);
Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought form Slavery to
Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 191.
38
Peretti, Creation of Jazz, 22; Tirro, Jazz,97.

33

any damn thing: high times, screwing, ballroom. It used to be spelled Jass, which was screwing.
But when you say ragtime, youre saying the music.39
Just one year after the Supreme Court decided the Plessy case, the City Council of New
Orleans enacted an ordinance that legalized prostitution within the confines of a regulated redlight district not far from the black uptown ghetto.40 Named after New Orleans City Councilman
Sidney Story, who proposed the measure, the district offered some employment opportunities to
aspiring musicians. Historians and musicologists often overstate the significance of Storyville to
the development of jazz, however. African Americans and Creole musicians did find limited
employment in Storyville, but no more than a few dozen musicians at any one time made a living
in the district.41 At roughly the same time, an all black red-light district developed in the uptown
African American ghetto known as Back O Town where musicians also found limited
employment. Early New Orleans jazz found audiences in city streets, public parks, and clubs in
Storyville and Back O Town, but it also could be heard in smaller working class venues called
honky tonks, on the riverboats, at resort spots along the shores of Lake Pontchartrain (places
like Bucktown, the West End, Spanish Fort, Milneburg), in many of the citys dance halls, and at
semi-public social gatherings like fish fries and lawn parties. The more lucrative jobs were
playing for white audiences in dancehalls, on riverboats, and at resorts like Spanish Fort or
Milneburg. In black working class venues, the audience often passed the hat and musicians
split the tips between the members of the band. At other venues, like Pete Lalas on the corner of
Iberville and Marais Streets in Storyville, the owner paid band member a nightly wage of a dollar
39

Sidney Bechet, Treat It Gentle: An Autobiography (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1960), 3.
Al Rose, Storyville, New Orleans: Being an Authentic, Illustrated Account of the Notorious Red-Light District
(Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1974), 1.
41
For more information on the extent of employment opportunities for musicians in Storyville and the relationship
between the red-light district and the development of jazz see: Gioia, History of Jazz, 31; Donald M. Marquis, In
Search of Buddy Bolden: First Man of Jazz (Baton Rogue, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), 5859.
40

34

and a half. With the array of opportunities for musicians to find venues to hone their craft, the
unique environs of the city of New Orleans lent an urban and modern character to the emerging
genre.42
Some spaces in New Orleans where jazz was played saw black and white audiences
enjoying the music. Like public venues such as Congo Square, city parks, public markets, and
street parades, New Orleans had a long history of interracial interaction in working-class
nightclubs and honky tonks. This tradition stretched back to the days of slavery, but the dictates
of Jim Crow threatened to undermine this legacy.43 Political Scientist Charles Hersch has noted
that the story of jazz and interracial listenership at these clubs is a complex one. Some whites
genuinely appreciated the new music and went to interracial clubs to enjoy familiar tunes and
company. While others frequented the clubs in a condescending manner steeped in racism and
class snobbery. How much of each existed is impossible to even guess. But in the emerging Jim
Crow era, such venues facilitated older, freer forms of social interaction for some.44 While Jim
Crow was threatening to dismantle this tradition in New Orleans, jazz acted as a counterweight
to increased segregation, and its broad appeal won new converts. Most saloons had two sides,
one for whites and one for colored, remembered Pops Foster. The colored had so much fun on
their side dancing, singing, and guitar playing, that you couldnt get in for the whites. It was the
same way at Lincoln Park for the colored; you couldnt tell who it was for, there were so many
whites there.45 Though the reach of Jim Crow increased exponentially in this period, jazz and its

42

Louis Armstrong and Richard Meryman, Louis Armstrong- A Self Portrait (New York: Eakins Press, 1966), 1213; Peretti, Creation of Jazz, 22-38.
43
C. Van Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow,15. Charles Hersch also cites Woodward in his discussion of
interracial nightclubs.
44
Hersch, Subservise Sounds, 41.
45
Foster and Stoddard, Autobiography of Pops Foster, 71-72.

35

wide appeal undermined the separation of the races by reminding New Orleanians of their
cultural commonalties more than their differences.
In the post-Reconstruction moment, with African American migrants arriving in the city,
Creoles facing the loss of status, and given the opportunities for musicians to find employment,
the New Orleans style of jazz emerged. While it is apparent that Creole musicians tended to have
more formal musical training, they often had much to learn from African American musicians in
order to sound authentic enough to please the black audiences of the dance halls and juke
joints in the black uptown district. On this subject Leonard Bechet asserted, You have to play
real hard when you play for Negroes You got to come up to their mark. See these hot
people they play like they killing themselves, you understand? Thats the kind of effort that
Louis Armstrong and Freddy Keppard put in there. If you want to hit the high notes those boys
hit, brother, you got to work for that.46 Louis Armstrong recalled one episode where he and a
few band mates were called to fill in with some Creole musicians to play music at a funeral. The
Creoles looked down at the African American musicians until after they heard Armstrong and his
mates play: They patted us on the back and just wouldnt let us alone. They hired us several
times afterward. After all, wed proved to them that any learned musician can read music, but
they cant all swing. It was a good lesson for them.47 As Armstrong noted, the popularity of jazz
rested not just with the notes on the page, but also with how those notes were played by
individual musicians.
Soon, the new hotter style of music prevalent in African American circles began to
dominate the emerging brand of jazz in the Crescent City. The Creole musician Louis Tio Jr.
remembered when they started off with jazz there were a lot of musicians that didnt know how
46
47

Morton and Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, 98.

Armstrong, Satchmo, 143.

36

to read music, and those that did know how to read music. Course the guy that didnt know how
to read music used his hearing, and by that he went in and he played what he heard. And thats
what made jazz. That sounded good to the publics ears and what made it it made it popular.
Everybody liked it.48 In similar exchanges between African American and Creole musicians, the
two groups learned from one another. Based on the account of Armstrong, Creole musicians
learned to improvise and explore unconventional methodologies. Similarly, African Americans
learned classic techniques from Creole colleagues. Over time, each shared with one another their
melodic sensibilities that diversified their musical resumes for respective employment
opportunities.49 Soon jazz bands, like the one fronted by Kid Ory and Joe Oliver in the mid
1910s, prominently featured both Creole and African American soloists. Thus, the development
of jazz was nurtured by a semblance of mutual cooperation between African American and
Creole musicians in New Orleans.
It should also be noted that what we know about early jazz is based entirely on oral
histories from musicians of the period, because there were no records made of New Orleans
musicians in the 1910s. The first jazz record was not made until 1917 when the all-white
Original Dixieland Jazz Band released Livery Stable Blues. The first black groups to cut
records did not do so until the 1920s after the Great Migration was in full swing. Consequently,
it is difficult to concretely establish the precise formula of early New Orleans jazz. The new
music was changing rapidly in its infancy, and northern influences surely changed the dynamics
48

Gioia, History of Jazz, 34; Louis Tio, interview transcript [excerpt], October 26, 1960, Hogan Jazz Archive,
Tulane University, New Orleans.
49
The New Orleans tradition of brass bands marching through the city streets emerged in the period following the
Civil War. This dynamic developed when scores of musical instruments were left in the city by military marching
bands during the occupation of the Crescent City. The surplus of instruments meant that they were relatively
affordable. Black and Creole musicians often picked up instruments second-hand and learned the craft through
formal or informal apprenticeships. For more information on the prevalence and affordability of brass and wind
instruments in New Orleans in this period see: Richard Brent Turner, Jazz Religion, the Second Line, and Black New
Orleans (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2009) and, Mary Ellison, African American Music and
Muskets in Civil War New Orleans, Louisiana History (Summer, 1994), 285-319.

37

of jazz once musicians emerged in new locales. Furthermore, recording engineers were limited to
cutting songs approximately three minutes in duration to fit the tune on one side of a record. This
meant that songs originally intended to carry on for ten or more minutes in juke joints and dance
halls had to be entirely altered to fit the constraints of the technology of the day and the dictates
of the recording industry that demanded tightly packaged performances for mass market
audiences. As a result, the closest approximation modern listeners are left with early jazz
records are closely related to, yet distinctly unique from the style of jazz prevalent in premigration New Orleans.50 Despite the difficulties in documenting the sound of early New
Orleans jazz, it is clear that jazz grew in popularity because it was accessible to a wide range of
audiences thanks to the influences of both African American and Creole musicians who blended
classical and folk idioms.
At the same time jazz began to enjoy a wider popularity, a younger generation of Creoles
grew to musical prominence who began to more fully embrace their African ancestry and
culture, while the older generation of Creoles turned increasingly inward to protect their eroding
sense of status. It was this younger generation that openly admired and started to emulate the
emerging hot style popular among African Americans and made their own mark on New Orleans
jazz. The members of the Creole Band (though not composed entirely of Creoles), for instance,
began playing in the hot style in the early 1910s, and they became so popular that they were the
first New Orleans group to take their brand of jazz on the road in 1914 playing in cities like St.
Louis, Cincinnati, Chicago, Detroit, and New York City.51 The famous piano player Ferdinand
La Menthe anglicized his name and went by the moniker Jelly Roll Morton. Morton, a Creole

50

Tirro, Jazz, 123-125; Schuller, Early Jazz, 70-73.

Lawrence Gushee, Pioneers of Jazz: The Story of the Creole Band (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005),
58-59, 272-276.
51

38

whose ancestors were in the city of New Orleans long before the Louisiana Purchase, declared
that he changed his name for business reasons when I started traveling. I didnt want to be
called Frenchy.52 Albert Dominique, another Creole, changed his name to Don Albert. He also
explained that he was always conscious of being what they call a Negro, and he devoted his
later years in life to fighting for civil rights and social justice.53 Sidney Bechet, another Creole
musician, proudly wrote in his memoir of his African ancestry and the influence that legacy had
on his life. He also credited his mother with instilling in him a sense of pride for his heritage.54
While it may seem like small gestures to emulate music styles from an unfamiliar culture, change
ones name, or speak proudly of ones ancestry, these episodes speak to the willingness of
younger Creoles to embrace the African branches of their respective lineages. Given the
increased separation of older generations of Creoles55 from the African American community,
the actions of the above individuals speak volumes. Changing ones name to an Anglican
spelling was unheard of in Creole society, and it signaled a professional, as well as symbolic
break with the mores of the past and a significant alteration of cultural identity. Since older
Creoles rejected African American music and ancestry as beneath them, the actions of the Creole
Band and Sidney Bechet strike a similar tone to the actions of Morton and Albert. Danny Barker,
another Creole, remembered, And as kids, most kids in New Orleans, they had a great interest
in jazz music because it was all around. There were dozens of bands in dozens of halls, of all
levels of society. And that inspired you to learn to play an instrument. And just about every

52

Morton and Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, 3.

Don Albert, interview digest, September 18, 1972, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans. I would
like to thank Bruce Boyd Raeburn of the Hogan Jazz Archive who brought the issue of anglicized names and an
increasing identification with African ancestry among Creole musicians to my attention in a conversation we had in
mid-September 2009.
54
Bechet, Treat It Gentle, 6-44, 51.
55
For more information on the increased separation of older generations of Creoles from African American society
see: Anthony, Negro Creole Community in New Orleans, 26-61.
53

39

kid in New Orleans at one time or another in his young days tried to play an instrument.56 New
Orleans jazz may well have developed without Creole participation, but the Creole influence
broadened the appeal for the music within the city. The blending of high brow and low brow
influences gave jazz a vibrancy that gained new converts as the music spread first within New
Orleans and later the country. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was the work of younger
Creoles, like the members of the Creole Band, that opened the door for further cooperation and
helped New Orleans jazz to flourish.
Despite the sense of mutual cooperation between Creole and African American
musicians, the old cultural rifts between the two groups persisted. For instance, drummer Warren
Baby Dodds remembered a sense of Creole superiority regarding African American musicians:
The musicians mixed only if you were good enough. But at one time the Creole fellows thought
the uptown musicians werent good enough to play with them, because most of the uptown
musicians didnt read music.57 Furthermore, the Creole pianist Jelly Roll Morton often taunted
the dark skinned cornetist Joe King Oliver by referring to him as Blondie.58 Louis
Armstrong recalled that because of Mortons light complexion, he was able to get jobs that the
darker skinned musicians were unable to obtain, and Morton often flaunted his perceived
privileged status. However, No matter how much his Diamond Sparkled he still had to eat in the
Kitchen, the same as we Blacks, Armstrong concluded.59
Additionally, New Orleans residents were reminded of a physical sense of the social
division as one crossed Canal Street, the traditional boundary between the uptown African
American ghetto and the downtown French District where Creoles lived. Morton himself
56

Danny Barker, interview transcript, July 22, 1974, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
Warren Baby Dodds and Larry Gara, The Baby Dodds Story (Los Angeles: Contemporary Press, 1959), 13.
58
Albert Nicholas, interview digest, June, 26, 1972, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
59
Louis Armstrong, Home Sweet Home, in Thomas Brothers ed., Louis Armstrong in His Own Words: Selected
Writings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 24.
57

40

remembered brass band processions as a child where the two factions fought over turf: You see,
whenever a parade would get to another district the enemy would be waiting at the dividing
line.60 Similar rivalries also occurred in northern locales during the Great Migration, as old
antagonisms once again came to the fore. As Dave Peyton, the Chicago Defender music
columnist, declared in 1927, In Chicago and New York they [Creoles] met with opposition
from the brother and at times things were very disagreeable for them, but they stuck together and
attended to their own business and finally won out in the battle, until the brother locked arms and
worked harmoniously with them. Today Creoles and the brother work together and nothing is
thought of it. They are all one, and it is a wonderful thing, too.61 The mutual cooperation of
Creole and African American musicians from which jazz emerged was tenuously held intact;
mutual cooperation could just as easily be disrupted by a decades old cultural rivalry.
In spite of the fragile nature of cooperation between New Orleans musicians, jazz
persisted and its popularity grew exponentially in both Creole and African American circles.
Given the greater affection than their African American counterparts that Creoles traditionally
enjoyed by white society, a few misconceptions have been perpetuated over the years about the
depth of the Creole contribution to the genre. The myth persists, both then and now, that Creoles
either invented or codified the form and substance that jazz would follow in subsequent years.
Part of the reason for this misconception stems from the period when many believed that the
African American folk music played in New Orleans was almost entirely the product of Creole
influence.62 Furthermore, many of the early jazz stars to emerge onto the national stage in this
and later periods were New Orleans Creoles. These stars included the likes of clarinetist Sidney
60

Morton and Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, 12.

Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (November 19, 1927), 6.
62
Morton and Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, xxi-xxii; Frances Robinson, Folk-Music, Current Literature (March,
1901), 350.
61

41

Bechet, trumpet player Freddie Keppard, and of course pianist Jelly Roll Morton. Morton
himself famously and vociferously claimed in the 1930s to have personally invented jazz as a
young adult in New Orleans.63
The truth of the matter is that no one individual invented jazz in any part of the country.
New Orleans jazz evolved slowly over decades of musical interactions among like-minded
musicians, and it picked up steam around the turn of the century due to competition and
cooperation. It is also evident that the greatest contributions to the early form and substance of
jazz came not from the classically trained Creoles, but from African Americans in New Orleans.
At first, Creole musicians looked down upon the rough and dissonant sounds formulated in the
uptown dance halls and juke joints. By the time Creoles came to the music, the rudimentary
formula of jazz was already established, and it was African American musicians (men like
Buddy Bolden, Bunk Johnson, and Louis Armstrong) who contributed the most stylistic
innovations to the early music. In fact, many credit Bolden as the first musician to play in the hot
style by blending the blues with ragtime and spirituals.64 While the depth of the contribution of
Creoles to early jazz is often overstated, it is safe to assert that Creole musicians offered a level
of technical proficiency and sophistication to the music that made it more attractive and
accessible to a wider audience, including fellow Creoles and white America.
Historians have all too often painted the story of jazzs development in broad strokes that
distorts the reality and complexity of life in New Orleans at the turn of the twentieth century. The
common pitfall is to treat the Plessy decision as the defining moment in early jazz that forced

63

Morton and Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, 62.

Brothers, Armstrongs New Orleans, 176-189. For more information on the contributions of Buddy Bolden to the
emerging genre of jazz see: Marquis, Buddy Bolden, 1-133. Peter Bocage and Louis Cottrell Jr., both Creole
musicians, believed Bolden deserves credit as the first to play what became jazz. Peter Bocage, interview transcript,
January 29, 1959, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans; Louis Cottrell Jr., interview transcript,
March 14, 1978, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
64

42

opposing factions into cooperation for the first time, and that jazz was a natural byproduct of that
cooperation.65 The reality is that Creoles and African Americans had a long history of both
mutual cooperation and competition, as evidenced by the Reconstruction and postReconstruction periods. Though political disputes remained between the two groups, in 1915
they worked together to form the New Orleans branch of the NAACP, and in 1927 the United
States Supreme Court agreed with the local branch that the citys ordinance that mandated
segregated communities was unconstitutional.66 The political dynamic between Creoles and
African Americans did not occur in a historical vacuum, nor was the development of jazz a mere
happenstance or preordained by fate. One of the cultural byproducts of cooperation between
these two formerly adversarial groups was the development of jazz. Given the legacy of mutual
animosity, punctuated by moments of mutual respect and cooperation, it should come as no
surprise that New Orleans jazz emerged in the unique urban environs of the Crescent City in the
1900s out of both cooperation and competition.
Indeed, jazz was so pervasive in New Orleans by 1918, and it had caused such a
sensation that the Times-Picayune editorialized: Why is this jass [sic] music, and therefore, the
jass band? ... All are manifestations of a low streak in mans tastes that has not yet come out in
civilizations wash. Its musical value is nil, and its possibilities of harm are great.67 The fact
that a paper like the Times-Picayune that was devoted to the principles of segregation and white
supremacy was so disturbed by the prominent position jazz assumed in New Orleans life, speaks
to the power of jazz as an instrument for societal change. It is what Dr. Leonard Bechet referred

65

Collier, Louis Armstrong, 14; Peretti, Creation of Jazz, 24-25. Both Collier and Peretti are quick to highlight
tensions between the Creole and African American communities, which was undoubtedly very real. However, by
doing so, these scholars oversimplify a rather complex legacy that defies easy categorization punctuated by both
moments of competition and cooperation.
66
Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 18-19.
67
Jass and Jassism, Times-Picayune (June 20, 1918), 4.

43

to as the power of folks creeping in to hear the music and, automatically you creep in close to
the other people. You know?68
The Death Knell of Reconstruction
Just before midnight on July 23, 1900, members of the New Orleans Police Department
assaulted two African American men, Leonard Pierce and Robert Charles. In a clear case of
police brutality, Charles was beaten with a nightstick while Pierce was rendered motionless at
the barrel of a gun. Charles fought back in self-defense until an Officer Mora unholstered his
revolver and fired a volley at the uncooperative suspect. Charles quickly ran for cover and
returned fire, wounding Mora, before absconding into the night. A mob soon formed, and a
manhunt ensued with the Police Department and Mayor Paul Capdevielle offering a reward of
$250 for the capture, dead or alive, of Robert Charles. The anti-lynching activist, Ida B. Wells,
wrote in the same year that the legal sanctioning of mob violence by the Mayor and the citys
police force, would have been no news to Charles, nor to any colored man in New Orleans, who
for any purpose whatever, even to save his life, raised his hand against a white man. It is now,
even as it was in the days of slavery, an unpardonable sin for a Negro to resist a white man, no
matter how unjust or unprovoked the white mans attack may be. Charles knew this, and
knowing to be captured meant to be killed, he resolved to sell his life as dearly as possible.69
Seeing the proverbial writing on the wall, Charles believed it was better to stand and fight, rather
than submit to the ruling of Judge Lynch.70

68

Bechet, in Morton and Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, 99.

Ida B. Wells, Mob Rule in New Orleans: Robert Charles and His Fight to the Death, in Jacqueline Jones
Royster ed., Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900 (New
York, 1997), 160-166. Pierce, with a gun pointed at his head, was arrested and taken into police custody. Eventually
a lynch mob formed and demanded Pierce be turned over, but the police held their ground and refused to release
him.
70
Charles was a follower of Bishop Henry Turner and other black nationalists. He was politically active advocating
African Americans to emigrate to Africa. Based on his political consciousness, it is not a coincidence that he
69

44

Just before dawn the police surrounded Charles home. In a matter of minutes, two police
officers lay dead and Charles escaped a second time. Within a twenty-four hour period, the allwhite mob of several thousand did not succeed in capturing Charles, but it had the city in its
hands. As Wells explained, Unable to vent its vindictiveness and bloodthirsty vengeance upon
Charles, the mob turned its attention to other colored men who happened to get in the path of its
fury. Even colored women, as has happened many times before, were assaulted and beaten and
killed by the brutal hoodlums who thronged the streets.71 For four days the mob attacked
African Americans and Creoles in the streets, destroying black property along the way.
The Creole guitar player, Louis Keppard, was a child at the time. He remembered having
to make his way to the restaurant his father worked at in the French Quarter while the riot was in
full swing: They were shooting down they were making humbugs in the streets. If they see a
colored man, theyd break him.72 The father of clarinetist Sidney Bechet only found safe
passage home from work when his employer summoned a friend who owned a funeral parlor to
hide the elder Bechet in a hearse.73 The white throng made no distinction between African
Americans and Creoles who were not light-skinned enough to pass for white. Anyone with
even the slightest recognizable, African features was subject to the violent, and often deadly,
whim of the mob.
Finally on the fourth day, Charles whereabouts were discovered by the horde of twenty
thousand white New Orleanians. A friend living at 1210 Saratoga Street, where Charles built a

decided to fight rather than submit to authorities. For more information on Charles political activities see: Joel
Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1984), 201-209.
71
Wells, Mob Rule, 169.
72
Louis Keppard, interview digest, August 4, 1957, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans
73
Bechet, Treat It Gentle, 56.

45

small arsenal for his own defense, had given him sanctuary. During the ensuing standoff, Charles
shot twenty-seven would be assailants, and he killed seven whites in total over the course of the
week.74 By the time he was finally killed and the mob quenched its thirst for revenge, twelve
African Americans lay dead, dozens were wounded, and thousands of dollars of black-owned
property (including a school) were destroyed.75
The Supreme Courts Plessy decision gave legal sanction to the American system of
apartheid known as Jim Crow. Just four years after the pivotal decision was handed down, the
Robert Charles riots sent a plain message to the African American and Creole communities in
New Orleans that anyone who challenged the Jim Crow status quo would be dealt with lethal
force. It also made clear that not only would individuals be held accountable for any perceived
threats against the system, but so would entire communities at large. In such a hostile
environment to African American independence, open and overt challenges of white power were
simply too dangerous. A new set of strategies for combating repression was needed. While no
overarching program replaced the activism of the Reconstruction Period, activism was
increasingly focused on the communal level centered on self-help organizations and small-scale
efforts that pooled collective resources. For African Americans and Creoles, the generation that
brought jazz to the forefront of black culture developed tactics that sought to protect the interests
of musicians and the jazz community in New Orleans.

74
75

Wells, Mob Rule in New Orleans, in Royster ed., Southern Horrors, 175.
Hersch, Subversive Sounds, 23.

46

Chapter 2:
I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say: The Culture and Activism of New Orleans Jazz
Ferdinand Jelly Roll Morton recalled a version of the Charles riots often repeated in
African American circles that Charles did not die but, in fact, escaped a third time only to die
years later of an unspecified illness. Charless defiance of the white supremacist power structure
in the Crescent City vaulted him to almost mythic status in the citys African American
community that was reflected in the culture of black New Orleans. Morton explained, like many
other bad men, he had a song originated on him. This song was squashed very easily by the
[police] department, and not only by the department but by anyone else who heard it, due to the
fact that it was a trouble breeder. I once knew the Robert Charles song, but I found out it was
best for me to forget it and that I did in order to go along with the world on the peaceful side.1
As a result, there is no surviving transcription of the Robert Charles song. With the traditional
avenues for seeking judicial and political redress closed for blacks and Creoles in the Big Easy,
the communities began to instill and fortify a spirit of resistance through more subtle means.
Often, these new forms of resistance were manifested through cultural production. This is not to
suggest that cultural resistance simply filled the void of political participation, but rather a
culture of resistance hinted that a greater avenue of political participation was possible. African
American cultural forms in New Orleans bolstered and reflected the formal political aspirations
of the citys black community.
New Orleans jazz enabled black musicians to navigate through a world dominated by
white cultural mores that viewed African American traditions and civilization in a negative light,
and the individuals who became some of jazzs early stars represented a break from the

Morton and Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, 57.

47

conventions of society. The cornet player Buddy Bolden, for example, defied musical convention
by employing improvisation and becoming an expert showman. As the trombonist Edward Kid
Ory remembered, Bolden was very rough. You have to give him credit for starting the ball
rolling, you know. But he wasnt really a musician He didnt study, I mean, he was gifted,
playing with effect, but no tone, you know. He played loud. Not high but loud. And people loved
it. They went for it.2 Orys Creole background in music emphasized standard music theory, the
study of instrumentation, and a pitch perfect tone. Bolden was not interested in such conventions.
Clarinetist Sidney Bechet remembered that it was these rebellious qualities that made Bolden a
star: everyone in New Orleans knew about him. He was a real walk-around man. He could play,
that was true; but, well, he was more a showman; he was a hell of a good showman.3 Bolden is
considered by many to be the first musician to play in the hot style that was so essential to the
development of early jazz in New Orleans. When you come right down to it, the man who
started the big noise in jazz was Buddy Bolden, the trumpet player Mutt Carey argued. Yes, he
was a powerful trumpet player and a good one too. I guess he deserves credit for starting it all.4
By defying musical convention with the use of improvisation, showmanship, a loud and unusual
tone, and a rejection of standard music theory, Bolden took the emerging hot style of ragtime and
elevated it into jazz.
Bolden also lived a lifestyle and created music considered on the margins of the dominant
society. Bechet, who played with Bolden, recalled that, Buddy used to drink awful heavy, and it
got to him in the end. He lived it fast Buddy did. And thats another reason why he was so
popular, why you hear his name so much: it was the way he lived his life. The things hed do,
2

Edward Kid Ory, interview transcript, April 20, 1957, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans
Bechet, Treat it Gentle, 83.
4
Mutt Carey in Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 35. For a larger discussion of the life and influence of
Buddy Bolden see: Marquis, In Search of Buddy Bolden, 1-133.
3

48

they got him a lot of attention.5 Boldens own theme song, known as Buddy Boldens Blues
or Funky Butt, was a barrelhouse blues that often brought the proverbial house down with
alternating lyrics that were sometimes whimsical and humorous and sometimes raunchy.
Sometimes the lyrics also exhibited political undertones:
I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say,
Youre nasty, youre dirty, take it away.
Youre terrible, youre awful, take it away.
I thought I heard him say.
I thought I heard Buddy Bolden shout,
Open up that window and let that bad air out.
Open up that window and let that foul air out.
I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say.
Thought I heard Judge Fogarty say,
Thirty days in the market, take him away.
Give him a broom to sweep with, take him away.
I thought I heard him say.
In this version of the song, the Judge in question was J. J. Fogarty of the First Recorders Court of
New Orleans. Several of the men in Boldens band appeared before Fogartys court on minor
infractions like public intoxication or loitering, and a common penalty for such violations was a
fine and an obligation to clean in and around one of the citys public markets. Other lyrics
replaced the protagonist, Bolden, with Abraham Lincoln- i.e. I thought I heard Abe Lincoln
shout.6 Much like the Robert Charles song, the political connotations of Buddy Boldens
Blues meant that the white establishment viewed the song as subversive and dangerous. Sidney
Bechet remembered playing the tune as a member of the Eagle Band. When we started off
playing Buddys theme song, I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say, the police put you in jail if
they heard you singing that song. Bechet once saw Boldens band play on the streets of New
Orleans as a child: Bolden started his theme song, people started singing, policemen began

5
6

Ibid., 84.
Marquis, In Search of Buddy Bolden, 109-111.

49

whipping heads. Therefore, when Bechets band played the tune, they employed a different
approach: The Eagle Band was good for the blues, they played every Saturday night. They
played Boldens theme song, but they did not sing any words to it.7 Both the Robert Charles
song and Boldens theme song were manifestations of cultural resistance within African
American circles each made the white power structure in New Orleans very nervous.
By breaking with convention, and receiving adulation from working class African
Americans due to his refusal to play by the rules, Bolden embodied the mythical Staggerlee
character.8 Staggerlee (sometimes referred to as Stack O Lee, Stack-a-lee, Stacker-Lee, or
Stagolee) is a trickster character from African American folklore that cheats death and the
authorities and somehow always comes out on top. As Greil Marcus has noted, Locked in the
images of a thousand versions of the tale is an archetype that speaks to fantasies of casual
violence and violent sex, lust and hatred, ease and mastery, a fantasy of style and steppin high.
At a deeper level it is a fantasy of no-limits for a people who live within a labyrinth of limits
every day of their lives, and who can transgress them only among themselves. It is both a portrait
of that tough and vital character that everyone would like to be, and just another pointless,
tawdry dance of death. Robert Charles also embodied the role of Staggerlee as he was
remembered in an almost mythical fashion. Like Staggerlee and Robert Charles, Bolden was
someone who refused to submit to authority and was not to be messed with.9
The lack of overt political activism following the collapse of Reconstruction in
Louisiana, the injustice of the Plessy decision, and the violence and carnage of the Robert
Charles riots did not signal that black New Orleanians were uninterested in public protest or in
7

Sidney Bechet, quoted in Ibid., 111.

For a more detailed discussion of the legend see: Greil Marcus, Mystery Train: Images of America In Rock N Roll
Music (New York: Penguin Books, 1975), 65-68.
9
Hersch, Subversive Sounds, 35.
8

50

challenging the oppressive mechanisms that dictated their status be that of second-class citizens.
Rather, it meant that acts of protest often manifested themselves in covert ways, much like the
cultural modes of resistance embodied in the Robert Charles Song and in Buddy Boldens
Blues. Certainly, black protest in New Orleans was not solely manifested through cultural
forms. But the work of jazz artists indicates that black culture in the Crescent City utilized the
new music to confront the injustices of Jim Crow in a manner that made sense to the jazz
community. Jazz culture rejected the values and tenets of the dominant white society one that
viewed the black community in negative terms, stressed white standards of beauty and success,
and above all else maintained a social hierarchy of white supremacy. In the aftermath of the
Charles Riots black New Orleans and the jazz community turned to an increased reliance on selfhelp strategies and on economic nationalism. Ultimately, African Americans in the Crescent City
would utilize grass-roots networks of like-minded individuals to uplift the race from within.
These networks would become instrumental in challenging Jim Crow in New Orleans, launching
the Great Migration, and spreading jazz to the far reaches of the country in the 1910s, 20s, and
30s.
In his 1994 study of black working class culture and politics, Race Rebels, Robin D. G.
Kelley argues that all too often conventional scholarship only views legitimate forms of protest
and resistance as those that take place within the parameters of civil rights organizations or trade
unions. Kelley asserts that by doing so, scholars downplay disparate viewpoints within these
groups and downplay resistance that takes place outside of these institutions.10 Instead, the
author advocates redrawing the map of political discourse by questioning common notions of
what constitutes legitimate protest and resistance. To do so, Kelley rejects the tendency to
10

Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press,
1994), 4.

51

dichotomize peoples lives, to assume that clear-cut political motivations exist separately from
issues of economic well-being, safety, pleasure, cultural expression, sexuality, freedom of
mobility, and other facets of daily life. Politics is not separate from lived experience or the
imaginary world of what is possible; to the contrary, politics is about these things.11 He further
explains that, Politics comprises the many battles to roll back constraints and exercise some
power over, or create some space within, the institutions and social relationships that dominate
our lives.12
When viewed in this light, the story of the development of jazz in New Orleans, and the
subsequent migration of black musicians out of the Crescent City to northern locales, is one ripe
with political overtones. This is not to say that every cultural manifestation is an overtly political
statement or that every jazz tune can be reduced to a core that tangibly reveals a political
underpinning, but given the social and economic repression African Americans faced at the dawn
of the twentieth century, it would be a mistake to assume that their collective political aspirations
were quashed altogether. In light of the activism of the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction
periods, when traditional avenues for activism were closed by Jim Crow, new forms of political
expression emerged that maintained a commitment to political activism and pointed to a greater
sweep of political possibility. Culture was one avenue for raising black consciousness, and the
tradition of cultural resistance was one that stretched back to the days of slavery.13 As jazz
became a dominant force in black culture, it is no coincidence that the new music showed signs
of black resistance. Therefore, jazz developed, in part, as a reaction against the values and tastes
of the dominant culture that viewed African American cultural expression in negative terms. This

11

Ibid., 9.
Ibid., 9-10.
13
Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, 239-240; Stuckey, Slave Culture, 3-97.
12

52

rejection of the aesthetics of the dominant culture manifested itself in the very manner in which
the music was played, the subculture of jazz that developed along with the music, and in the
locales from which jazz emerged.
A crucial component of early jazz was the use of syncopation. In the standard European
music canon the emphasis is on beats one and three (also known as the downbeat). Syncopation,
then, emphasizes the offbeat- beats two and four. In the case of a traditional march, for example,
beats one and three form a command to put one foot in front of the other on the specified beat.
As Charles Hersch has astutely recognized, Syncopation draws the listener away from the
downbeat, pulling him or her away from the insistence of the everyday routine. This tension
between upbeat and downbeat helps create the distinctive sound of jazz, and by playing with this
tension, beginning and ending phrases at different points in the measure, musicians create a fluid
sense of time.14 In the wake of emancipation, African Americans demanded the ability to
control their own schedules as an assertion of individual agency. This was a conscious reaction
to the desires of slaveholders to control nearly every minute of the day. Syncopation was also an
important element of traditional West African musical culture. Furthermore, on Sundays in
Congo Square at the beginning of the nineteenth century, syncopated rhythms were a prominent
component of the music created by first, second, and third generation bondsmen and women.
The use of syncopation by jazz artists harkened back to a collective African ancestral music
culture. Therefore, syncopation was already well established in New Orleans before the turn of
the twentieth century. The use of syncopated rhythms was not fully over determined by politics,
but came to be a musical reflection of a larger social desire for independence, the use of African

14

Hersch, Subversive Sounds, 47.

53

musical culture as a vehicle for artistic creation, and the ability to manipulate time as one saw
fit.15
Early jazz also employed dissonant notes to create distorted tones and timbres. This
technique ultimately formed the basis of what we know today as the blues. Musicians also
employed a variety of effects when playing that created new sounds. Often, these techniques
were described as growling noises. By playing blue notes and employing unusual techniques,
jazz musicians challenged standard music practices and violated the rules of the European
canon.16 The blues reflected the discordant nature of being unfree in a free land. As the drummer
Warren Baby Dodds explained, The only way the colored people could express themselves
was through blues, that perhaps nobody understood but themselves. The Negro had something
to be blue for. He could only go so far and then he was cut out, regardless of how good he
was. Its getting rid of your feelings within yourself. And it is expressed with a song. Ive
listened to Ma Rainey sing the blues time and time again. And she would sing blues with words
that coped with the situation.17 The blues was, at times, a music of social pleasure whose roots
date to West African music forms. The blues song structure already existed in rudimentary form
at the turn of the twentieth century, so political expression was not the original intent of the
music. However, in the example cited by Dodds, the blues offered both an emotional refuge from
repression and a means of resistance.
The use of improvisation was another unconventional technique that dates to West
African traditions. It also brought vitality to the music by the likes of Buddy Bolden: Well I
attribute it to Bolden, remembered Peter Bocage. They made their own music, and they played

15

Schuller, Early Jazz, 6-26; Hersch, Subversive Sounds, 47.

Hersch, Subversive Sounds, 43-44.
17
Dodds, The Baby Dodds Story, 30.
16

54

it their own way, you understand? So thats the way jazz started you understand just through
the feeling of the man, you understand? Just his, his improvisation, you see. And then the
surroundings at that time was mostly people of oh, you might say of a fast type, you
know exciting, you understand? And those old blues and all that stuff, you know just came in
there, you see.18 The use of complex rhythms, blue tones, improvisation, and other techniques
like call and response, and falsetto vocals evolved centuries earlier in West Africa.19 In this
manner, jazz embraced African traditions and applied those techniques to western instruments
and scales. Thus, jazz represented a simultaneous rejection of the musical values of the dominant
white culture and the embrace of a shared African past in New Orleanss black community.
Jazz developed a subculture all its own in this period that also rejected white aesthetics
and accepted notions of respectability. Soon, new standards of respectability emerged within jazz
that centered on the collective values and a shared formula for artistic expression. In its initial
phase of growth, however, jazz musicians, dressing stylishly became a means of expressing
ones individuality. Pianist Jelly Roll Morton was known to dress in fine suits and flaunt
expensive diamond jewelry.20 According to Manuel Manetta, Buddy Bolden dressed in rich
white mans clothes and always had a coat and tie on.21 William Baba Ridgley was a
founding member in the Tuxedo Jazz Band in New Orleans. He explained that when the band
began dressing in lavish tuxedos the money started rolling in, because they projected an air of
sophistication that made them popular with audiences in the Crescent City. From then on, our
band just went on like a blaze of fire, he remembered.22 In an era when the reining imagery of

18

Peter Bocage, interview transcript, January 29, 1959, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
Stuckey, Slave Culture, 95; Schuller, Early Jazz, 3-63.
20
Peretti, Creation of Jazz, 134-136; Morton and Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, 104-105.
21
Manuel Manetta quoted in Hersch, Subversive Sounds, 98.
22
William Baba Ridgley, interview digest, June 2, 1959, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
19

55

African Americans in popular culture was that of the minstrel show, black men dressing in this
manner challenged the role society designated for them. While it is clear that many musicians
dressed stylishly to keep up with the fashion trends of the day, the act of dressing lavishly should
not be taken lightly either. At roughly the same time black musicians in New Orleans began
dressing in ever increasing sophisticated attire, returning black veterans of World War I were
routinely subjected to harassment and violent intimidation across the southern United States for
the simple act of wearing their military uniforms in public. Therefore, it would be a mistake to
believe that dressing stylishly was only a matter of fashion. This is especially true given the fact
that in 1919, alone, eleven black veterans were lynched across the South. Military uniforms
exuded a sense of power and pride, and to white supremacists, seeing black men in uniform was
cause for violent reprisals. Expensive suits and tuxedos evoked similar notions of pride and
respect. Therefore, sophisticated fashion indicated the agency of self-expression and a
demonstration of racial pride. Well-tailored suits represented a clear break with the past as
represented in minstrelsy.23
A distinctive usage of language also became a critical marker of jazz subculture. These
musicians developed one of the most recognizable and integrative brands of speech in American
vernacular. Certain terminology was reserved for practical elements of playing music, like riffs
breaks and swing. The term gig denoted a type of employment, while cats, chicks, and
squares referred to the audience at their place of work. Historian Burton W. Peretti argues that,
The greatest American alternative language, though, had grown up among the slaves and free
blacks, dialogues of deception, opposite meanings, protective exaggeration, and veiling slang.24
Peretti traces the use of jazz slang directly to these African American traditions of breaking
23

Peretti, Creation of Jazz, 135; Chad L. Williams, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the
World War I Era (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 232-246.
24
Williams, Torchbearers of Democracy, 131.

56

white conventions of speech. Louis Armstrong asserted, there are more than four hundred
words used among swing musicians that no one else would understand.25 Baby Dodds attributed
many of these expressions directly to Armstrong.26 African Americans also played with language
in what amounted to a playful war of words between colleagues and rivals. The dozens was a
battle of insults between two or more individuals with the audience deciding the winner. As
Barney Bigard recalled that the dozens was often centered on nasty things about your family
such as, Your mothers so big, she has to have a tent for a Kotex.27 This back and forth
interaction and playful usage of language staked the musicians claim of ownership over the
English language.
While well-tailored suits broke conventions of white perceptions of black entertainers,
slang broke conventions of speech and signaled the agency of self-expression. It is interesting to
note that while each of these forms of expression represented a break with the standards of the
day, the paths of resistance moved in decidedly different directions. That is to say, slang was less
formal than conventional English, while styles of dress became more formal than societal
standards. Given the tradition of slang in African American circles, it can be surmised that
creative uses of language afforded musicians greater liberty of expression than in styles of dress.
Slang also served as a covert language to shield musicians from creative infringement. As Baby
Dodds recalled, We used to call white musicians alligators. That was the way wed describe
them when theyd come around and we were playing something that we didnt want them to

25

Armstrong, Swing That Music, 77-78. Armstrongs use of the term swing should not be confused with the use
of the term regarding the Swing Era of the 1930s. As noted in the first chapter, New Orleans jazz was referred to by
several names, including rag music, or hot music, and Louis Amrstrong referred to jazz as swing music and
himself as a swing musician in New Orleans. For more on Armstrongs explanation see: Armstrong, Swing That
Music,71-78.
26
Dodds, The Baby Dodds Story, 25.
27
Bigard, With Louis and the Duke, 29.

57

catch on to. Wed say watch out, theres an alligator!28 While dressing up conveyed a sense of
sophistication and respectability, slang offered a more expressive means of communication that
sheltered musicians from outside infiltration and provided greater creative liberty.
Another element of the subculture was defined by its nocturnal activities. Because
musicians made their living at night, many were well versed in behaviors associated with
nighttime living. Gambling, for example, was a ritual of backstage downtime. Furthermore,
many establishments that employed musicians also housed gaming enterprises of one form or
another. Some establishments in both Storyville and Back O Town featured illegal gambling,
prostitutes, and bootleg liquor, and the musicians who played in these venues were well
acquainted with each. Smoking marijuana was another nocturnal New Orleans tradition.29 Louis
Armstrong was apparently one of the more notorious pot smokers in jazz history, and he made
no apologies for this particular habit: Thats the one thing that I personally found out about
Gage, or Marijuana Sometimes names just the sounds can cause one, grief of somewhat
Maybe someday some big Authority on things anything, just as long as hes a big man and
has convincing words Then he can probably someday have Marijuana name changed to
Gage- Muta- Pot- or some of that good shit. On another occasion Armstrong stated, we
did call ourselves vipers, which could have been anybody from all walks of life that smoked and
respected gage. That was our cute little name for marijuana. We always looked at pot as a
kind of a medicine, you know? It wasnt no enemy or drastic shit. Marijuana was a kind of
medicine and a cheap drunk. I had to put it down because of legal shit. But the respect for gage

28

Dodds, The Baby Dodds Story, 25.

Peretti, Creation of Jazz, 129, 138-139; For a more detailed analysis of marijuana usage among jazz musicians
see: Eric C. Schneider, Smack: Heroin and the American City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2008), 17-24.
29

58

will stay with me forever.30 All of these illicit nocturnal activities signaled a rejection of the
values of respectable society as embodied in the Protestant work ethic and middle class
mores. That is not to suggest that black musicians did not work extremely hard. Competition for
jobs was fierce in New Orleans, and it took a high level of skill and dedication to play jazz. Jazz
proficiency required incredible dexterity, technical ability, and knowledge that could only be
achieved after years of refining ones talent and a willingness to apply those skills in innovative
ways to be successful. But because of activities associated with nighttime living, early critics of
jazz decried the new music as lascivious, unwholesome, and dangerous.
While the subculture of jazz rejected standard notions of respectability, the physical
settings where early jazz developed became, in essence, free spaces31 where African
Americans were able to express themselves culturally. Aside from the houses of prostitution,
early jazz developed in working class saloons and dance halls known as honky tonks. To be
certain, these were often very dangerous settings, but they did represent a space where African
Americans could intermingle, dance, discuss the latest news of the day, drink, gamble, and of
course play and listen to jazz. These spaces were not always free from police surveillance,
however. Danny Barker recalled that in New Orleans, the police had cart blanche to arrest

30

Armstrong was a prolific writer. He often improvised with language on the typewriter not unlike his
improvisatory techniques on the trumpet. He inserted punctuation marks and utilized capitalization in an
unconventional manner as a means of emphasizing certain syllables or phrases. The above quote illustrates this
affinity. Armstrong, Louis Armstrong in His Own Words, Brothers ed., xii. For a more detailed discussion of
Armstrongs writing style see: Thomas Brothers, Swing a lot of Type Writing, in Louis Armstrong, Louis
Armstrong in His Own Words, Thomas Brothers ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999),vii- xxiii; Louis
Armstrong, Armstrong Tapes, CD 426, Disc 1, Track 16, Louis Armstrong Collection, Louis Armstrong House
Museum Archives, Queens College, New York.
31
Francesca Polletta notes that the notion of free spaces has been used by a number of sociologists, political
scientists, and historians to describe small-scale settings within a community or movement that are removed from
the direct control of dominant groups, are voluntarily participated in, and generate the cultural challenge that
precedes or accompanies political mobilization. For more information on free spaces and political activism see:
Francesca Polletta, Free Spaces in Collective Action Theory and Society (1999), 1-38. Hersch argues that honky
tonks resembled what Michel Foucault calls heterotopias where politically marginalized groups find sanctuary
from and modes to express resistance to the mechanisms of repression. For a more detailed analysis of Foucaults
heterotopias see: Hersch, Subversive Sounds, 35.

59

anyone they deemed dangerous and suspicious and Most arrests were Negroes who
frequented barrooms and gambling joints during working hours.32 But it was in the honky tonks
that African Americans found alternative modes of expression and tested the boundaries of
covert political resistance.33 In addition, given the extensive reach of Jim Crow in this period,
these establishments represented some of the few places where New Orleans black residents
could spend their leisure dollars.
Most of the citys honky tonks were located in the black and white sections of Storyville,
along the river levee, or in the Back O Town neighborhood where Louis Armstrong grew up.
Louis Armstrong explained, Storyville was kind of divided Id say about middle ways of
the City of New Orleans Canal Street was the dividing line between the uptown and the
downtown section. And right behind Canal Street was Storyville And right off Canal Street
was the famous Basin Street which was also connected with Storyville. Armstrong explained
that in his neighborhood outside of Storyville Every corner had a honky tonk. According to
Armstrong, the first room in honky tonks like Spanos, Kid Browns, or Mantrangas was where
the bar was located followed by a room in the back for gambling. Another room was for
dancing doing that slow drag, close together, humping up one shoulder maybe throw a little
wiggle into it. Had a little bandstand catty-cornered, benches around the walls. Drinks were
cheap and strong. 34
Basin Street, on the edge of Storyville in the black section of the red-light district, housed
clubs that played early jazz. Spencer Williams remembered, All along this street of pleasure
there were the dance halls, honky tonks, and cabarets, and each one had its music. The largest
32

Danny Barker in, Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 5-6.
Hersch, Subversive Sounds, 35.
34
Louis Armstrong in, Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 4-5; Armstrong and Meryman, Louis
Armstrong, 19.
33

60

of the cabarets on Basin Street was Mahogany Hall, owned by my aunt, Miss Lulu White. The
saloons in those days never had the doors closed, and the hinges were all rusty and dusty. Little
boys and grownups would walk along the avenues, swaying and whistling jazz tunes.
Armstrong recalled, Around the corner from Lulu White was the famous Cabaret of Tom
Anderson [on the corner of Basin and Iberville Streets]. In those days a band who played for
those places didnt need to worry about salaries. Most of the places paid off the musicians
every night after the job was over instead of the weekly deal. That was because those places
were threatened to be closed any minute. The trumpet player Bunk Johnson boasted, That was
the Crescent City in them days, full of bars, honky-tonks, and barrel houses. A barrelhouse was
just a piano in a hall. There was always a piano player working. When I was kid, Id go into a
barrelhouse and play along with them piano players til early in the morning. We used to lay
nothing but the blues. At these establishments, jam sessions between musicians could last well
into the night. Danny Barker remembered all-night jam sessions at Pete Lalas Cafe on the corner
of Basin and Marais Streets: Why, you should have seen the sessions we had then. Pete
Lalas was the headquarters, the place where all the bands would come when they got off work,
and where the girls would come to meet their main man. Well, at Pete Lalas everybody would
gather every night and thered be singing and playing all night long. The piano players from all
over the South would be there and everybody would take a turn until daylight.35
With clubs like Mahogany Hall, Tom Andersons Annex, and Pete Lalas Caf, Basin
Street was the center of New Orleans jazz in the evenings. In 1926, Spencer Williams penned a
song about the famous jazz promenade. In 1928, another New Orleans native, Louis Armstrong

35

Spencer Williams in, Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 7; Bunk Johnson in, Shapiro and Hentoff,
Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 7; Danny Barker in, Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 12-13.

61

recorded the first widely popular version of the tune. The lyrics reveal what the avenue meant to
jazz musicians:36
Wont you come along with me
Down that Mississippi;
Well take a boat to the land of dreams,
Steam down the river down to New Orleans.
The bands there to greet us,
Old friends will meet us,
Where all people like to meet
Heaven on earth, they call it Basin Street.
Basin Street is the street
Where the elite always meet
In New Orleans, land of dreams
Youll never know how nice it seems
Or just how much it really means.
Glad to be, yessiree,
Where welcomes free, dear to me,
Where I can lose my Basin Street Blues.
The cabarets, dance halls, and honky tonks on Basin Street offered employment for New Orleans
jazz musicians. They also provided space where musicians could develop interpersonal networks
and associations that allowed the to navigate in a Jim Crow world. Such associations later proved
critical in finding employment and launching the Great Migration of jazz.
While the honky tonks and dance halls represented free spaces where early jazz was
nurtured, the streets of New Orleans were contested spaces among the citys residents, black,
white, and Creole. New Orleans has a long tradition of brass bands marching through the city
streets on Sundays, holidays, and when it just simply looked like a good day for a parade. This
dynamic developed following the Civil War when scores of musical instruments were left in the

36

Louis Armstrong, Basin Street Blues, (Williams, Spencer) [master W.402154-A] Okeh Records 8690
(December 4, 1928) Chicago, Illinois. This song can be found today in Louis Armstrong, Hot Fives & Sevens [Box
Set], JSP Records, 1999.

62

city by military marching bands during the occupation of the Crescent City.37 Thanks to a
particularly long Union occupation during the war (the city was captured by northern forces in
the spring of 1862) and a long tradition of music in public spaces, the surplus of instruments
created an environment that allowed brass bands to flourish like no other southern city. By the
turn of the twentieth century, this tradition was fully in place. By marching through city streets
with trumpets, drums, and trombones blaring, African Americans claimed a cultural stake in the
future of the city for themselves. Though disenfranchised and relegated to the status of secondclass citizenry, black musicians still maintained control of the aural foundations of city life. It
was one area where African Americans could assert their agency and dignity in a public setting.
City streets could also be dangerous at times. Fights often broke out between conflicting factions
in New Orleans. The drummer Paul Barbarin, Danny Barkers uncle, refused to let his nephew
follow brass bands parading through the city, because they often led to fights amongst whites and
those following the parade over territorial claims within and between New Orleans
neighborhoods. At times, parading musicians used their instruments as weapons to defend
themselves from angry crowds.38
While parading musicians faced territorial struggles on city streets, brass bands were also
widely popular. In fact, these brass bands became such a point of civic pride that the decidedly
Democratic and conservative Daily Picayune boasted in 1889 before jazz was formally codified,
The Onward Brass Band of this city, composed of young colored men, is making good
progress It has a membership of fifteen, a set of new instruments and is imbued with the

37

For more information on the development of brass bands in New Orleans see: Richard Brent Turner, Jazz
Religion, the Second Line, and Black New Orleans (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2009) and,
Mary Ellison, African American Music and Muskets in Civil War New Orleans, Louisiana History (Summer,
1994), 285-319.
38
Hersch, Subversive Sounds, 53.

63

proper spirit to soon make it a good and useful organization. We wish them every success.39
Peter Bocage remembered seeing the Onward Brass Band and the Excelsior Brass Band as a
young musician. He explained that when he was young brass bands played strictly traditional
marches. By the time he joined the Excelsior Brass Band the younger musicians began changing
the traditional format, we played a lot of marches, too, and we used to mix up a little jazz in
there, see? ...everybody put a little improvisation in, you know they played some kind of a
little head piece, or a little song they knew, you know something like that.40 Early jazz was
influenced by the brass bands in the Crescent City. Once jazz rose to prominence, the new music
began to influence the citys brass bands in turn.
With these brass bands in the lead, the parade following the music was known as the
second line. Simply put, if the band represented the first line of individuals in the parade,
members of the second line were average citizens following the parade. The second line was
comprised of New Orleanians who danced, sang, and played improvised rhythms to the beat of
the brass band. This grouping of the black working class was composed of neighborhood
children, drunks, prostitutes, day laborers, street vendors, music admirers, and anyone else with a
spare moment that could sometimes number in the hundreds. Louis Armstrong, for one, had fond
memories of second lining (parading) as a child through his neighborhood in The Battlefield.
Armstrongs neighborhood was considered so dangerous that New Orleanians believed the
streets more closely resembled a war zone than a place of residence.41
Brass bands and the corresponding second line also helped launch fledgling music
careers. Its a funny thing, recalled Lee Collins, you played in a orchestra, people didnt pay

39

Daily Picayune (October 29, 1889), 4.

Peter Bocage, interview transcript, January 29, 1959, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
41
Louis Armstrong, Satchmo, 24.
40

64

no attention to you, but as soon as you hit that street, everybody had their eyes on you42
Together, with the marching brass band, the second line formed a popular front challenging Jim
Crow for the aural control of New Orleans city streets. As Sidney Bechet recalled the members
of the second line would take off shouting, singing, following along the sidewalk, going off on
side streets when they was told they had no business being on the sidewalks or along the kerbs
[sic] like that, or maybe when the police would try to break them up. Then theyd go off one way
and join the parade away up and start all over again.43 The police often broke up second lines
and brass band parades for fear that they would touch off violence between black and white
neighborhoods. But, second liners like Collins, Bechet, and Armstrong joined the parade in spite
of the risks. Thus the second line was both a celebration of cultural expression, and a means of
staking a claim to contested ground in the city.
The contested nature of the citys streets can be seen in the prevalence of cutting
contests or bucking contests. Much like the dozens, cutting contests were music battles
between rival bands. As Sidney Bechet explained, One band, it would come right up in front of
the other and play at it, and the first band it would play right back, until finally one band just had
to give in. It was always the public who decided. You was always being judged.44 Often
these contests pitted Creole and African American groups against one another as each was
parading through the streets. Jelly Roll Morton recalled an African American band literally
drawing a line across which a Creole band was not supposed to step. A fight soon ensued that
required an ambulance: The fact of it is, there was no parade at no time you couldnt find a knot

42

Lee Collins, interview transcript, June 2, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
Bechet, Treat It Gentle, 62.
44
Bechet, Treat it Gentle, 63, 65.
43

65

on somebodys head where somebody got hit with a stick or something.45 Clarinetist Barney
Bigard remembered a cutting contest in which the rival bands traveled in horse drawn wagons.
When one group began besting the other, the crowd called for the wheels of the two wagons to
be tied together so the losing band could not escape the embarrassment of being cut: They [the
audience] would dance in the streets you see. And then, like, the one who had the nastiest lyrics,
like Ory used to play, If you dont like the way I play, kiss my fuckin ass. And theyd get
around the whores and that business, and theyd go for it. And they had another guy named
Frankie Dusen. He was a foul-mouthed man It was funny, he and Manuel Perez got in a fight
on the stage.46 If the parades of brass bands and the corresponding second line represented the
desire of black New Orleanians to claim the airwaves as their own, cutting contests reflected the
persistence of an age-old rivalry within the black community of New Orleans. White Americans
may have been able to relegate Creoles to a second-class status following the Plessy decision, but
that did not mean that all Creoles would see African Americans as their equals on the streets.
Indeed, the Crescent Citys streets remained contested ground for all citizens black, white, and
Creole. While New Orleanss streets remained contested ground, jazz musicians formed a
community of its own in second lines, public parks, and in the honky tonks on Basin Street. It
was those networks forged within the jazz community that began to look out for the interests of
musicians and laid the groundwork for collective activism in New Orleans just before the start of
the Great Migration.
Different Social Clubs in the City Would Hire Our Band

45

Morton and Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, 13.

Barney Bigard, interview transcript, in manuscript of Barney Bigard, With Louis and the Duke: The
Autobiography of a Jazz Clarinetist, Barry Martyn ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980). Manuscript
from the William Ransom Hogan Archive of New Orleans Jazz, Tulane University, New Orleans Louisiana.
46

66

At the turn of the twentieth century, African Americans and Creoles often chose to resist
repression in covert ways. However, they also turned to an increased reliance on self-help
strategies and on small-scale economic nationalist efforts. African Americans in the Big Easy
utilized communal networks of like-minded individuals to uplift the race from within. These
networks centered less on large-scale mobilization and more on grass-roots organization.
Instrumental in this organizing push was a focus on black-run enterprises and benevolent
societies.
Membership in benevolent societies and social and pleasure clubs was a traditional facet
of life in New Orleans for citizens of every stripe. The Big Easy boasted black-run benevolent
societies as early as the eighteenth century. In the Reconstruction era black membership in
mutual aid societies soared, and by the last few decades of the nineteenth century the only
voluntary organizations that saw greater black membership were local churches.47 These groups
served a number of organizing roles. Organizations provided members with health care,
insurance policies, burial services, and education when white run city institutions would not.
Musicians developed their own benevolent societies like the Inseparable Friends, Club Lyre, and
the Tammany Society Social Aid and Pleasure Club where they found employment opportunities
through fellow members. These organizations were for male musicians only, but other
organizations catered to female members. They also played dances for benevolent societies that
were not specifically designed for musicians. Social and pleasure clubs formed in a similar
manner in this period, but unlike benevolent societies, they were devoted to celebrating the joys
in life rather than planning for the unexpected. At the turn of the twentieth century, these

47

Claude F. Jacobs, Benevolent Societies of New Orleans Blacks During the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth
Centuries, Louisiana History (Winter, 1988), 22. Churches, neighborhoods, specific trades, or fraternal
organizations formed benevolent societies to provide insurance and health services for members by pooling
collective resources.

67

disparate organizations began to serve essentially the same functions.48 Like their counterparts in
the larger African American and Creole communities, jazz musicians enthusiastically created and
supported their own benevolent societies and social and pleasure clubs.
Health care was a fundamental service provided by these organizations. Often, societies
would employ a full time physician on either a quarterly or daily basis with the expenses drawn
from member dues. Louis Cottrell Jr. recalled, you had so many doctors and the doctors, most
of them belong to these different benevolent associations, some of these associations, they had
three or four doctors, that you had a choice of going to either one you want, and I mean very
good doctors beautiful doctors, doctors that trained, doctors that were trained even in
France.49 Generally, the position was an elected one, and each societys officer corps included a
doctor, pharmacist, and undertaker. Given the ever-tightening grip of Jim Crow in this period,
the value of these services cannot be underestimated. African Americans were simply denied
care in the citys hospitals. While African American residents did succeed in opening a black
hospital in this period, benevolent societies remained the greatest providers of medical care at the
turn of the twentieth century.50 Furthermore, given the fact that New Orleans is surrounded by
water on all sides, much of it swampland, the citys residents were more susceptible to diseases
than other metropolitan regions in this period. In fact, the cholera epidemic of 1917 hit the city
particularly hard. In such an environment, health care was of the utmost importance.51
Beyond the issue of being denied access to white health care institutions, cost was
another problem altogether. Black citizens in general faced extremely high rates of
48

Turner, Jazz Religion, 110.

Louis Cottrell Jr., interview transcript, March 14, 1978, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
50
Jacobs, Benevolent Societies of New Orleans Blacks, Louisiana History, 27.
51
New Orleans has a long history of sanitation and health issues based on the unique geographical location of the
city. For a more detailed analysis of these issues see: Ari Kelman, A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in
New Orleans (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2003); Craig E. Colten, An Unnatural
Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans From Nature (Baton Rogue, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2005).
49

68

unemployment and underemployment, and they often worked the most dangerous and low
paying jobs when they did find work. Closely tied to the need for affordable health care was the
ability to obtain a life insurance policy.52 Funerals were particularly expensive in the Crescent
City. New Orleans proximity to water poses difficulties for traditional burials. The water table is
so close to the surface that by digging just a few feet, one encounters water. Therefore, New
Orleans has developed cities of the dead, or cemeteries composed entirely of above ground
tombs, out of necessity. Due to this problem, land for separate black cemeteries and subsequent
funeral services were quite expensive and hit the African American community particularly hard.
Louis Armstrong knew all too well the difficulty of paying for funerals without the protection of
a mutual aid society; Ive seen that happen to many of em dont have no insurance or belong to
no club. While you laying out there in the wake, they put a saucer on your chest and everybody
who comes in drops a nickel or a dime or quarter to try and make up for the undertaker.53
Benevolent societies offered a means to overcome these financial hardships by pulling resources
to get the maximum benefit and return for members on their mutual investment.
Jazz musicians played a unique role in funeral services in New Orleans for deceased
members of benevolent societies. The traditional New Orleans jazz funeral developed in this
period as a means of celebrating the life of the departed. The roots of these funerals can be traced
to West African traditions.54 Essentially, a jazz band would escort the casket from the funeral to
the cemetery, while playing a slow, somber dirge. Once the deceased was in the ground, the band
would strike up a joyful song celebrating the life of the departed, rather than mourning death.
Sidney Bechet remembered that They would have a brass band and they would go from the

52

Jacobs, Benevolent Societies of New Orleans Blacks, Louisiana History, 22, 30-31.
Armstrong, Armstrong- A Self Portrait, 31.
54
Turner, Jazz Religion, 89-90; Stuckey, Slave Culture, 95-96.
53

69

club to the house of the member which was dead, and would play not dance music but mortuary
music. The members would all go see the corpse, and then they would take him out to the
cemetery with funeral marches. And theyd bury him, and as soon as he was buried they would
leave the cemetery with that piece Didnt He Ramble.55 While Baby Dodds recalled that It
became a tradition to play jazzy numbers going back to make the relatives and friends cast off
their sadness. And the people along the streets used to dance to the music.56 Thus, both
mourners and onlookers followed the band as it left the cemetery dancing in a second line
celebration.
Benevolent societies that catered to musicians also offered educational services. Creole
violinist Charles Elgar belonged to an organization known as Club Lyre that put on concerts to
raise money for educational endeavors: We used to give two concerts a year, and whenever we
found a talented person, we would sponsor them. I remember we sent one boy to Europe a
pianist. Then we sent a young violinist there, by the name of Edmond Dede, and he never
came back to America until he was an old man it was through that organization I got my first
training as conducting under Luis Tio.57 With limited finances, such assistance could prove
invaluable to prospective musicians. Louis Armstrong recalled that Things were hard in New
Orleans in those days and we were lucky if we ate, let alone pay for lessons. In order to carry on
at all we had to have the love of music in our bones.58 In this manner, education provided more
than just knowledge; it meant job security for musicians in stiff competition for employment, and
it was a fundamental organizing activity.

55

Bechet, Treat It Gentle, 63.

Dodds, The Baby Dodds Story, 17.
57
Charles Elgar, interview transcript, May 27, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
58
Armstrong, Satchmo, 187.
56

70

Though not officially under the auspices of a benevolent society, the other avenue for
music education was informal apprenticeships. Louis Armstrong owed his start in professional
music to Joe Oliver. The cornetist taught Armstrong both the latest techniques and how to
succeed in the business, while Roy Palmer learned to play a number of instruments under the
tutelage of his uncle, Charles Henderson.59 The tradition of learning an instrument while serving
in an informal apprenticeship was particularly important for cash-strapped members of the
African American community like Oliver, Armstrong, and Palmer. Though Creole musicians
were the most likely to receive formal training, some served apprenticeships as well. Trumpeter
Natty Dominique learned the craft from Manuel Perez; He didnt charge a dime. For it never
did. Didnt charge Sidney Vigne, didnt charge me, didnt charge none of the boys never.
Manuel Perez see a kid that he liked in the street, hed call him Hey. Come here. Hed say
Im gonna make a cornet player out of you.60 Barney Bigard also studied under a similar
arrangement.61
Benevolent societies and social and pleasure clubs also served as an integral instrument
for collective action among the citys black community at large. These organizations contained a
nucleus of socially conscious individuals whose collective efforts helped found the citys chapter
of the NAACP in 1915. The local branch was critical for organized resistance, because it
provided a shared avenue for political mobilization for both Creoles and African Americans.62
Even after the formation of the local NAACP, benevolent societies continued the fight for social
justice. Clarinetist Louis Cottrell remembered that an organization in 1932 a benevolent
association in New Orleans was the big reason and the big step forward what brought on in 1940,
59

Armstrong, The Armstrong Story, in Brothers, ed., Louis Armstrong in His Own Words, 53; Roy Palmer,
interview summary, September 22, 1955, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
60
Natty Dominique, interview transcript, May 31, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
61
Bigard, With Louis and the Duke, 10.
62
Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 18.

71

41, Negroes registered to vote in the city of New Orleans through these organizations. Not the
ones that had the money but these little organizations that contribute so much to carry it through.
Cause they were in the majority there they had it planned. Instead of passing the hat, they
got to organize.63 Even after the successful unionization of black musicians with the
establishment of Local 496 of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) in 1926, the
prevalence, persistence, and activism of benevolent societies like the Inseparable Friends, Club
Lyre, and the Tammany Society Social Aid and Pleasure Club, speaks to their ability to address
the needs and aspirations of the citys black community.
Benevolent societies also afforded musicians some semblance of job security. In many
respects, the benevolent societies of New Orleans black musicians mirrored early attempts to
unionize musicians nationally. Generally, these organizations more closely resembled labor
exchanges than modern unions. Musicians networked with fellow members to find employment,
and these organizations provided prospective employers with a mechanism for hiring bands.64
Often perspective employers were other social clubs. Baby Dodds remembered, Different social
clubs in the city would hire our band. They would have bands to turn out with a parade or some
other function.65 The banjo player Danny Barker concurred. He recalled a pleasure club known
as the Money Wasters that used to sponsor dances at Co-operative Hall: As was the custom at
balls held at the Co-operative, Economy, Globe, Perseverance and Olympia halls, the promoter
would hire a pianist or small combo to play next to the bar to give the ball a cabaret

63

Louis Cottrell Jr., interview transcript, March 14, 1978, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
James P. Kraft, Artists as Workers: Musicians and Trade Unionism in America, 1880-1917, The Musical
Quarterly (Autumn, 1995), 516.
65
Dodds, The Baby Dodds Story, 16.
64

72

atmosphere.66 In this manner, benevolent societies and social clubs provided entertainment
for members, and employment for musicians who belonged to societies of their own.
The Guys Never Tried to Cut Each Others Throat
Though a lasting, formal union did not protect black musicians in the first decades of the
twentieth century, jazz artists did manage to assert themselves collectively through grass-roots
networks, benevolent societies, and social and pleasure clubs in a manner that very much
resembled union activity. Pops Foster explained that The colored musicians in New Orleans
didnt have no union, but man, we stuck together. The guys never tried to cut each others
throat; it was better in those days without no union.67 The citys white musicians received union
protection beginning in 1902 (Local 174 of the American Federation of Musicians), but the local
refused to admit black members. In the 1880s the citys black musicians tried in vain to form a
lasting union. The struggle was again renewed in 1902, but by 1905 the local collapsed.68 It is
unclear exactly why these attempts at unionization failed, but there are several likely
explanations. First, the long tradition of benevolent and pleasure societies meant that there was a
level of familiarity and existing framework for collective action. Louis Cottrell Jr. remembered
the Musicians Social and Pleasure Club that was something like a fraternal organization, but it
wasnt with the American Federation of Musicians.69 Second, it reflected a national trend of
reluctance on the part of musicians to be recognized as workers rather than as artists.70 Finally,

66

Danny Barker, Buddy Bolden and the Last Days of Storyville, Alyn Shipton, ed. (New York: Continuum, 1998),
71.
67
Foster and Stoddard, The Autobiography of Pops Foster, 69.
68
Sue Fischer, American Federation of Musicians Locals 174 and 496 Records at the Hogan Jazz Archive, The
Jazz Archivist, VOL. XIX (2005-2006), 2.
69
Louis Cottrell Jr. interview transcript, August 25, 1961, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
70
In 1887 Samuel Gompers, of the American Federation of Labor, unsuccessfully sought to create a musicians arm
of the AFL, but the National League of Musicians rejected his overtures. The NLM was an early attempt at
unionizing musicians on a national scale, but it had little enforcement power and was decidedly segregated. The
NLM worried that by aligning with the AFL, musicians was suffer a loss of prestige by being associated with

73

organizing a union was a very dangerous proposition in New Orleans in this period, especially
for African Americans. In the depression years of the 1890s, labor strife turned particularly
violent, and a number of bloody riots erupted in the Crescent City over the issue of the
unionization and segregation of dockworkers and roustabouts.71 Given these considerations,
creating a formal union was not as viable an option as maintaining and strengthening the existing
organizations that protected the interests of musicians.
In June 1926, New Orleanss black musicians finally succeeded in forming their own
Local (496) in the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). After being denied jobs in New
Orleans and on the riverboats that passed the city on daily and weekly excursions, black
musicians made a concerted effort to form their own union. Pops Foster remembered having to
travel to Paducah, Kentucky on a riverboat, apply to the musicians local there, before
transferring to the St. Louis local in order to be eligible for any number of jobs on the riverboats.
Louis Cottrell Jr. recalled that black musicians were tired of being denied employment: And the
union began to get organized was because we were boycotted from playing some engagements
around here by not being union. And one of the reasons for the engagement on the Steamer
Capitol, Celestin was engaged to play the job, but by him not being union, he was boycotted
from it, and he was determined to organize a union then. And instead Sam Morgan played the
job because they had belonged to the union in Mobile.72 In order to expedite the process, and
avoid trouble with the white local in New Orleans, Oscar Celestin registered Local 496 at the

workers rather than being recognized as artists. For more information on this dynamic see: Kraft, Artists as
Workers, Musical Quarterly, 524-526.
71
For more information on the labor turmoil of the 1890s see: Eric Arnesen, Turning Points: Biracial Unions in the
Age of Segregation, 1893-1901, in The Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series in Louisiana History Volume XI:
The African American Experience in Louisiana Part B: From the Civil War to Jim Crow, Charles Vincent, ed.
(Lafayette, Louisiana: University of Louisiana Press, 2000), 450-500.
72
George Pops Foster, interview digest, April 27, 1957, Tulane University, New Orleans; Louis Cottrell Jr.,
interview transcript, August 25, 1961, Tulane University, New Orleans.

74

address of his summer home in Mississippi. Once the application was approved by the national
AFM, Celestin simply filed a change of address, and 496 was established in New Orleans.73
Though 496 was not formed until after the Great Migration sent many of the citys greatest talent
looking for greener pastures, the black local remained a reliable advocate for African American
musicians until the merger of Local 174-496 in November 1969.74
Given the tradition of collective action on the part of musicians in the Big Easy, it is not
surprising that the first successful attempt to unionize black musicians in Chicago was
spearheaded by New Orleans transplants. Charles Elgar joined Chicagos Local 208 of the
American Federation of Musicians in 1902: Ah, this local-208, had just been given a charter
that the July of that year. And this picture you see up there is a picture of all the presidents [of
the union]. The man in the upper left hand corner was the first president; his name was
Alexander Armand, originally from New Orleans himself. And I became a member here under
his administration and have been ever since.75 Barney Bigard was also active in Local 208 in
Chicago.76
Grass-roots networking77 was instrumental for musicians in finding and obtaining
employment. Similar networks also facilitated small-scale efforts at economic nationalism that
attempted to keep black leisure dollars in the black community. Jazz was an essential component
73

Lili LeGardeur, Call to Save the Hall, New Orleans Music Incorporating Footnote VOL. X No. 1 (March,
2002), 34.
74
Meeting of the Board of Directors, Local 174-496, November 4, 1969, Box 2, Folder 1, Hogan Jazz Archive,
Tulane University, New Orleans. For more information on the effectiveness and scope of Local 496s activities see:
Jack V. Buerkle and Danny Barker, Bourbon Street Black: The New Orleans Black Jazzman (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1973), 78-101.
75
Charles Elgar, interview transcript, May 27, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
76
Bigard, With Louis and the Duke, 32.
77
Charles M. Payne has pointed out that grass-roots organizing consisted of more than helping others find
employment or education. Often, efforts that provide an economic base within an oppressed community, or efforts
that offer food and shelter to those in need are overlooked. For more information on Paynes analysis see: Payne,
Ive Got the Light of Freedom, 276. Below, the definition of grass-roots networks takes into account this deficiency.
These activities not only include economic and educational considerations, but also activities that feed and shelter
fellow musicians.

75

that attracted patrons to places like fish fries, lawn parties, and dance halls. The music was
nurtured in these settings, and the music, in turn, provided customers for these establishments
who were more than happy to spend their hard earned cash. While many of the honky tonks
catered to African American clientele, very few if any were black owned establishments. Pops
Foster explained, In those days the Italians owned nearly all the grocery stores and saloons.
When I worked doing longshore work we used to hang out at Tonys Saloon at Celeste and
Chapatula. It was strictly for colored.78 Not only did African Americans have a finite number of
leisure options available to them under Jim Crow, but also there were few avenues to property
ownership. This meant that the odds against owning and controlling a leisure establishment were
very high. Consequently, would-be black entrepreneurs employed a number of creative strategies
to provide venues for entertainment and draw profits from these enterprises.
Two very similar enterprises, fish fries and lawn parties, were spaces of urban sociability.
They also provided labor for black musicians. These were closely related ventures, though
drummer Paul Barbarin noted that fish fries usually occurred on Saturday evenings while lawn
parties took place on Sundays..79 These social gatherings were semi-public affairs where guests
paid a small admission fee to listen and dance to music and eat home cooked food, drink
spirituous beverages, and socialize. The trombone player Edward Kid Ory began holding fish
fries as an entre into professional music; Well, I couldnt get a job [playing music], so I started
to promoting fish fries.80 Pops Foster explained, All over New Orleans on Saturday night
thered be fish fries. To advertise, youd get a carriage with the horses all dressed up, a bunch
of pretty girls, and then the musicians would get on, and youd go all over advertising for that

78

Foster and Stoddard, The Autobiography of Pops Foster, 71.

Paul Barbarin, interview digest, December 23, 1959, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
80
Edward Kid Ory, interview transcript, April 20, 1957, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
79

76

night. Foster further revealed, The wife usually did the cooking in the morning. Shed fry
catfish, cook gumbo, make ham sandwiches, potato salad, and ice cream to sell. The man would
get the beer, wine, and whiskey. When it got toward dark, youd hang a red lantern out on the
front door to let anybody going by to know there was a fish fry inside and anybody could go in.
Foster concluded, The fish fry that had the best band was the one that would have the best
crowd. Some guys were big stars on the mandolin and would draw a crowd to a fish fry.81
Louis Armstrong remembered a woman named Mrs. Cole who threw lawn parties two or three
nights a week. He believed she was successful, in part, because she employed Kid Orys band
that was one of the most popular in the city.82 These parties not only provided entertainment that
kept black dollars in the black community, they also helped the hosts pay the bills. This tradition
was also carried north during the Great Migration. In Chicago and New York City they were
referred to as rent parties, because the proceeds often meant the difference between having the
rent and being short for that month.83
Because the built environment in both Chicago and New York City was much more
heavily congested than New Orleans, the social dynamics and the music were also very different.
Rent parties were often crowded and more intimate affairs due to the lack of space.
Consequently, rent parties employed small combos, or sometimes simply a piano player. Fish
fries and lawn parties featured jazz ensembles and often large crowds. Usually, we do a lot of
that work, lawn parties. Giving dances out in the open air, recalled multi-instrumentalist and
arranger, Roy Palmer. Its a large space that you have surrounded with a large high fence. A
nice lawn, and theyd give a party. Theyd give it that way, and the dances would usually be

81

Foster and Stoddard, The Autobiography of Pops Foster, 16.

Armstrong, Satchmo, 30.
83
Foster and Stoddard, The Autobiography of Pops Foster, 16.
82

77

about 100 or 200 people dancing. It was very good.84 In this way the relative spaciousness of
New Orleans allowed promoters to hire a large band to play for large crowds. Consequently,
early jazz ensembles in the Big Easy at fish fries and lawn parties often featured five or more
instrumentalists. Therefore, access to urban space meant that the brand of jazz played at social
engagements like fish fries and rent parties differed from one city to the next.
Another venture that operated along similar lines was hall rentals. There were a number
of dance halls that were available to the general public, both black and white, to rent. All that
was required was an open date and a deposit for the evening. Kid Ory applied the same business
acumen he acquired promoting fish fries to booking dance halls. He would hire band members to
play along with him and then promote that evenings dance in the back of a horse drawn wagon
with the musicians playing in tow. He quickly built such a thriving business that he refused
offers to leave New Orleans for Chicago; I had an offer to go to Chicago, you see. And that
time I had the two halls, you know [that he was operating]. They offered me $50 a week in
Chicago, I was making between $300 and $400 a night off my dances, and working all the rest of
those stands, so I said why go out of business and go work for somebody for nothing, go to
Chicago.85 Louis Armstrong was a regular in Orys band at Economy Hall, and he was grateful
for the steady employment Orys dances provided.86 Fish fries, lawn parties, and hall rentals
provided African Americans with an opportunity to pass their hard earned wages around the
black community, rather than passing those dollars into white dominated New Orleans.
Musicians also utilized grass-roots networks to aid fellow musicians in need. When Louis
Armstrongs first wife fell ill, Joe Oliver offered his assistance; You need money for a doctor?

84

Roy Palmer, interview summary, September 22, 1955, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
Edward Kid Ory, interview transcript, April 20, 1957, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
86
Armstrong, Satchmo, 145.
85

78

Is that it? he said immediately. Go down and take my place at Pete Lalas for two nights. In
two nights I would make enough money to engage a very good doctor and get Irenes stomach
straightened out. Armstrong made sure he returned the favor by feeding Oliver when he was
unemployed just weeks later.87 Pops Foster remembered, If a guy was building a house, wed
show up and play and help him build it. When we were playing we were having fun; the pay
sometimes just made it a little bit sweeter.88 Baby Dodds recalled that once a new member
joined a band Everybody took him in as a brother, and he was treated accordingly. If a fellow
came to work with anything, even a sandwich or an orange, the new man would be offered a
piece of it.89 Though competition remained a very real part of a musicians life in New Orleans,
the above recollections attest to the strength of the grass-roots networks employed when a fellow
musician was in need. It was these networks that proved vital in facilitating the northern exodus
of musicians during the Great Migration.
Judge Dont Allow No Mixed Playing Here
On the eve of the Jazz Age, in 1918 the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran an editorial
decrying a new brand of music it viewed as a threat to artistic sensibilities and American values.
The editorial, which would one day become famous among jazz historians and critics, declared
that jazz was a manifestation of a low streak in mans tastes. The editor admitted, to his
chagrin, that jazz was born in New Orleans and in order to redeem the reputation of the city, we
should make it a point of civic honor to suppress it.90 Two days later, R. K. Armstrong wrote
the paper to second the position taken by the editors: The jass [sic] band is slowly dying a noisy
death. Such articles as yours should have an educative and deterring effect on any musical fad
87

Ibid., 102-104.
Foster and Stoddard, The Autobiography of Pops Foster, 65.
89
Dodds, The Baby Dodds Story, 15.
90
Jass and Jassism, Times-Picayune (June 20, 1918), 4.
88

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which the near future may have in store for us91 Such comments were indicative of a vocal
phalanx of critics and reformers who believed jazz reflected the eroding of American cultural
values and mores. While jazz saw its fair share of criticism in the first decades of the twentieth
century, it also enjoyed immense national popularity beginning in the 1920s. Part of the
attraction of the new music was the blending of high and low brow influences that made it
appealing to both black and white audiences. In a number of ways, this appeal opened the door
for limited social change. In other arenas jazz culture only reinforced the social conventions of
the day. Nevertheless, the power of jazz as an instrument of social change was carried north
during the Great Migration, and it had profound effects on American society and culture.
The lack of dry land in New Orleans meant that the city developed a population density
that created a dynamic of close interaction between the races from the outset.92 In the days before
Jim Crow, strict residential segregation, though certainly preferred by the white power structure,
was easier said than done for this reason. Furthermore, it was not always easy to segregate social
affairs. Big Bill Thompson remembered bands playing for interracial audiences in the citys
parks because, there was no segregation in those days.93 Even after the institution of Jim Crow
laws, social affairs were not always segregated. Some working-class neighborhoods, like the
Irish Channel for example, had a racially mixed population. In such an atmosphere, lawn parties
in places like the Irish Channel often became interracial affairs. Emile Barnes played several
lawn parties in the Irish Channel, and he recalled that, You were treated first class. White and
black were at the same table. No policeman would go up there unless he went as a gentleman

91

R. K. Armstrong, Jass and Jassism, Times-Picayune (June 22, 1918), 8.

For a more detailed analysis of the lack of dry land in New Orleans and its effect on urban geography see:
Kelman, A River and Its City.
93
Big Bill Thompson, interview digest, March 1, 1961, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
92

80

with his hat in his hand.94 It is no coincidence that many of New Orleans prominent white
musicians grew up in the Channel like Nick La Rocca, Happy Schilling, and Tony Sbarbaro.95 In
fact, many white jazz musicians came from working-class backgrounds, including recent
immigrants. Irish, Jews, and Italians, in some respects, were viewed as somehow not quite white,
and they were treated as outcasts in New Orleans. Consequently, some musicians felt a greater
affinity for their working-class counterparts in the African American community, than they did
for middle and upper class whites.96
This dynamic of racial comingling and the white power structure turning a blind eye to
such relationships stood in stark contrast to the segregated New Orleans that emerged in the
ensuing decades. Ernest Kid Punch Miller recalled playing with white musicians at a gig in
New Orleans in the 1950s. The Police quickly showed up and arrested the members of the band.
The next morning, Judge Edwin Babylon lectured the musicians before dropping the charges. He
told Miller he should know better. The judge then turned to the white musicians (from
Wisconsin) and declared, What you people are doing up there, you cant do it here. Theyre
trying to do it to us, but the only way they can do it, they got to ram it down our throats. The
following night, Miller changed the lyrics of the tune Mama Dont Allow It to fit the occasion
singing Judge Dont Allow No Mixed Playing Here.97 In 1959, Louis Armstrong told Jet
Magazine that he would not play in his hometown because interracial bands were not welcome in
the Big Easy even for the citys most famous native son. I aint going back to New Orleans
and let them white folks in my hometown be whipping on my head and killing me for me

94

Emile Barnes, interview digest, July 29, 1960, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
Hersch, Subservise Sounds, 83.
96
Ibid., 111.
97
Ernest Kid Punch Miller, interview digest, September 25, 1959, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New
Orleans.
95

81

hustle, he exclaimed. I dont care if I never see New Orleans again.98 Jim Crows grip on the
Crescent City increased exponentially in the decades following the development of jazz, as the
experiences of Miller and Armstrong became the rule, rather than the exception.
Segregation was not always the law of the land in New Orleans, as evidenced by the
experiences of Emile Barnes and Big Bill Thompson at interracial social affairs. To be certain,
prejudice remained, and some whites echoed racist sentiments toward black musicians. Nick La
Rocca, the trumpet player for the all-white Original Dixieland Jazz Band who recorded the first
jazz record in 1917, once famously claimed to have invented jazz. He declared, Our music is
strictly white mans music. My contention is that the Negroes learned to play this rhythm and
music from the whites.99 La Rocca, a self-described die-hard segregationist, also claimed
African Americans in New Orleans had little to no musical talent when jazz was emerging as a
new art form, saying, Nobody else played music but the syndicates, the negroes nobody
played music in New Orleans. As far as I know about the music, and if you want to know the
truth about it, the negro did not play any kind of music equal to white men at any time. Even the
poorest band of white men played better than the negroes in my days. LaRocca remained
adamant in the defense of his indefensible assertion that he alone invented jazz, and black
musicians like Louis Armstrong copied it from him. Later in life, LaRocca continually lashed out
at critics calling them alternately pro-negro, communists, pro-integrationists,
carpetbaggers, and liberals, and he once penned a letter to the segregationist Senator James

98

Louis Armstrong quoted in Collier, Louis Armstrong, 319.

Nick La Rocca quoted in Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, Jazz: A History of Americas Music (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 77.
99

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Eastland of Mississippi in the hopes that Eastland would tell LaRoccas story to the American
public.100
LaRoccas prejudiced views followed the status quo regarding race relations in the Big
Easy at the turn of the twentieth century. Furthermore, the Irish Channel, where LaRocca grew
up, was far from an interracial utopia. Kid Punch Miller often played in the Channel but was not
always met with open arms. They just didnt want you walking through there, he remembered.
After being threatened on one occasion, Miller found the man who hired his band for an
engagement in the neighborhood and asked the man for help with the hostile crowd outside the
establishment, I said, Well Im trying to get home. The white boys want to whip me up, up
there. And he come on out of there, and said, God damn, yall leave that fellow alone; that
fellow plays music for me every year.101 Consequently, Miller made it home without harm, but
it was clear the Irish Channel was no sanctuary from racialized violence.
Despite La Roccas racist sentiments and the unjust treatment of Punch Miller, many
musicians of different backgrounds interacted and respected one another immensely. Louis
Armstrong, for example, befriended a young Jack Teagarden: My last week in New Orleans
while we were getting to go up river to Saint Louis I met a fine young white boy named Jack
Teagarden, he recalled. The first time I heard Jack Teagarden on the trombone I had goose
pimples all over; in my experience I had never heard anything so fine. We have been
musically jammed buddies ever since we met.102 Punch Miller befriended several young white
musicians, including Joe Gondolfo who sat in with him on occasion to learn the trumpet.

100

Nick LaRocca, interview transcript, Jun 9, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
Ernest Kid Punch Miller, interview transcript, August 20, 1959, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New
Orleans.
102
Armstrong, Satchmo, 188.
101

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Gondolfo also often helped Miller draw crowds to listen to Millers band play.103 Though not a
panacea for racial prejudice, jazz offered musicians an avenue to make professional associations
across Jim Crow boundaries.
The power of jazz as an agent of limited social change also traveled north during this
period. Just before Louis Armstrong left New Orleans, he was hired by the bandleader Fate
Marable to play on the Streckfus Steamer for daily and weekly excursions up the Mississippi
River. Fate Marables Band deserves credit for breaking down a few barriers on the
Mississippi barriers set up by Jim Crow. We were the first colored band to play most of the
towns at which we stopped, particularly in the smaller ones, Armstrong remembered. At first
we ran into some ugly experiences while we were on the bandstand, and we had to listen to
plenty of nasty remarks. We were used to that kind of jive, and we would just keep on
swinging as though nothing had happened. Before the evening was over they loved us. We
couldnt turn for them singing our praises and begging us to hurry back.104 As Armstrong
indicated, jazz had an appeal that brought groups from disparate backgrounds together on
common ground.
Both in New Orleans and in northern cities like Chicago, jazz served as a counterweight
to increased segregation. But, musicians were not blanket reformers attacking social inequality in
all its forms. This was especially true when one considers the role of women in early jazz. New
Orleans jazz was decidedly male dominated, with a few notable exceptions. Sweet Emma
Barrett, for instance, began playing piano in New Orleans dance halls as early as 1910. She

103

Ernest Kid Punch Miller, interview transcript, September 25, 1959, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University,
New Orleans.
104
Armstrong, Satchmo, 188-189. For more information on the importance of Marable as a band leader and social
activist see: William Howland Kenney, Jazz on the River, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 37-63.

84

would later lead the famous Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans during the 1960s.105
Baby Dodds played in Sonny Celestins band with Barrett. He recalled, She was a very thin girl
but oh my God, she could play nice piano. She played like any man.106 Dodds account reveals
that in order for Barrett to gain the respect of her colleagues, she had to play like a man. What
is interesting is Barrett got her start in music at a time when the piano was increasingly becoming
a featured instrument in jazz bands. Often viewed as an instrument played predominately by
women prior to its appearance in jazz bands, the public perception of piano players shifted in this
period. According to Charles Hersch, once more and more men began playing piano, the
instrument was regendered by male musicians. Adopting hyper-masculine personas and
playing risqu tunes served as a means to regender the piano. For example, Jelly Roll Morton
was famous for both the sometimes-vulgar songs he played and his mistreatment of women.107
Though there were some notable early women jazz pioneers once the Great Migration
spread the new music across the country, such as Lil Hardin and Cora Lovie Austin, the most
acceptable role for women in jazz was as a vocalist. In fact, the leading black vocalists of the day
were blues singers Gertrude Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. The enormous appeal of these
women was groundbreaking given the rampant sexism and racism of the day.108 Furthermore, the
popularity of Rainey and Smith paved the way for later female vocalists, like Billie Holiday and

105

Liner notes to the album New Orleans Sweet Emma and her Preservation Hall Jazz Band (New Orleans, 2004).
Originally recorded October 18, 1964.
106
Dodds, The Baby Dodds Story, 19.
107
Hersch, Subversive Sounds, 49-50.
108
In this period the blues and jazz were almost interrelated. It wasnt until the emergence of the big band that the
two music forms found entirely different musical paths. The relative similarities between blues and jazz in this
period allowed female vocalists like Rainey and Smith to cross back and forth between the two genres with ease.
Angela Davis examined the life and work of both women and argues that each displayed a level of feminist activism
through their lyrics and public personas. For more information on this dynamic see: Angela Y. Davis, Blues
Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1998).

85

Ella Fitzgerald, during the Swing Era.109 Other women asserted their talents as instrumentalists.
Louis Armstrongs second wife, Lil Hardin, was a very gifted pianist who studied music at Fisk
University and played in Joe Olivers band in Chicago.110 Lovie Austin, an accomplished pianist
and songwriter transcribed songs written by Jelly Roll Morton onto paper for later publishing
because Morton could not read music. While Morton was happy to reap the benefits of having a
female friend who could read music and transcribe it for him, he never thought to extend
royalties or naming rights. As Austin explained, Morton would come in when he needed work
done, and then tell me that he was going out of town He thought I was the finest musician in
the world, and I felt that way about him. I remember taking down Wolverine Blues and two or
three other pieces for him.111 Barrett, Hardin, and Austin notwithstanding, the general exclusion
of women instrumentalists only reinforced conventional gender stereotypes in early jazz.112
While jazz musicians were not zealous reformers seeking to tear down all barriers of
injustice, jazz retained some power to affect limited social change before, during, and after the
Great Migration. Many white musicians and bar patrons, no matter how altruistic their feelings,
admired the innovations of black musicians. Consequently, the working-class honky tonks of
New Orleans, the public parks of the Big Easy where black and white audiences listened to jazz,
and the interracial lawn parties in the Irish Channel acted as counterweights to the increasing
grip of Jim Crow at the turn of the twentieth century. These venues represented the only leisure
spaces where white and black audiences could test the boundaries of racial segregation in New
Orleans. Jazz musicians themselves, both black and white, often took advantage of this dynamic
and developed camaraderie where they shared advice and musical knowledge to further their
109

Sally Placksin, American Women in Jazz: 1900 to the Present Their Words, Lives, and Music (New York:
Wideview Books, 1982), 8-9.
110
Armstrong, Swing That Music, 71.
111
Cora Lovie Austin, interview digest, April 25, 1969, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
112
Peretti, Creation of Jazz, 122.

86

individual careers. This development in the Crescent City should not be underestimated, because
it paved the way for similar racial intermingling in the North once the Great Migration was well
under way.

87

Chapter 3:
You Just Cant Keep The Music Unless You Move With It: Jazz & The First Great Migration
Sidney Bechet, a talented nineteen-year-old clarinet player, left New Orleans for the first
time in 1916. Bechet travelled first across the South and Midwest before ending up in Chicago in
1917. Once in the Windy City, he began playing with fellow New Orleans transplants Freddie
Keppard, Joe Oliver, and Kid Ory. Chicago was an enticing draw for young musicians. Bechet
explained, Back in New Orleans people were hearing a lot of excitement about what was
happening up North, and I had this idea in my head that I was to see other places. I wanted to go
North and see Chicago and I wanted to see New York. I guess I just wanted to see all there was.
Chicago and New York were certainly attractive locations for aspiring musicians, but Bechet
also left because, Wed heard all about how the North was freer, and we were wanting to go real
bad. Bechet was not alone in his desire to seek greener pastures and to escape political
repression during the First Great Migration. However, Bechet revealed that there were also
artistic motivations behind his decision an essential element of jazz that kept musicians on the
go, constantly seeking new avenues for artistic expression, cultural innovation, and receptive
audiences willing to pay their hard earned dollars to see the latest trends in the music. You
know, theres this mood about the music, a kind of need to be moving, he explained. You just
cant set it down and hold it. You just cant keep the music unless you move with it the
music, its got this itch to be going in it when it loses that, theres not much left. Those days I
was getting that itch pretty strong. I really wanted to be moving. And finally I saw my chance,
and I took it.1

Bechet, Treat It Gentle, 115, 95-96.

88

Millions of African Americans left their homes for the urban north in the 1910s, 1920s,
and 1930s. Migrants often cited motivations for leaving the South that included economic
opportunities and the desire for full rights as citizens. Bechets account indicates that musicians
left the South for similar reasons, and they actively sought a better life for themselves and fellow
jazz artists. However, Bechet left not for employment in a slaughterhouse on Chicagos South
Side, or a job in an automobile assembly plant in Detroit, or a position in the steel mills of
Cleveland, but for the possibility of making a new life for himself through artistic skill and the
technical mastery of a musical instrument. Furthermore, northern migration was, at times, not a
one-way journey, as musicians often made several stops along the way. Because of financial and
artistic motivations, musicians lived a life on the road for months at a time. Consequently, places
like Memphis, Kansas City, Los Angeles, and even Paris, France became jazz destinations in and
of themselves. Furthermore, life on the road presented both perils and triumphs along the way.
But musicians carried jazz to the far corners of the country, and in each jazz destination, slightly
different and unique brands of jazz emerged. Furthermore, musicians learned new techniques and
jazz styles on the road that enabled them to grow as artists, and one of the best ways to learn new
styles was to witness innovation on the spot in jazz clubs across the country. This dynamic made
the story of the jazz musician during the Great Migration unique, and it paved the way for the
Jazz Age that swept the nation in the 1920s.
It Got So Hot It Had To Burst Out
The clarinet player Albert Nichols first left New Orleans for Chicago in 1923 after being
offered a job in Joe Olivers band. He returned to the Crescent City, but left again the following
year to join Kid Orys band. Both Oliver and Ory were instrumental in securing employment and

89

providing assistance to Nichols in his journeys north.2 Nichols also had an additional incentive to
leave. As he explained in 1970, after returning to his native city for the first time in decades,
The city has changed in many ways, from its architecture to its spirit, and everything about its
spirit has changed for the better. First of all, theres less discrimination now. It used to be brutal.
Theyre human down there now. He further revealed that, I had my reasons for staying away
so long. After my previous visit [in 1937] I didnt care if I never saw the place again.3 For
Nichols, the combination of assistance from colleagues, economic opportunity in Chicago, and
racial discrimination in New Orleans meant that the decision to leave his hometown was an easy
one. It is no mere coincidence that Joe Oliver and Kid Ory were the ones encouraging Albert
Nichols to leave the South. Both men assumed crucial leadership roles that facilitated northern
migration at the dawn of the jazz age. Consequently, Nicholss flight from the South was not a
singular experience.
Between 1915 and 1918 roughly a half million African Americans left the South,
followed by another 700,000 in the 1920s. Southern blacks living on the eastern seaboard most
likely ended up in northern cities on the East Coast like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and
Pittsburgh. Those from the westernmost states of the former Confederacy often chose to migrate
to Midwestern cities like Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee. So many black
Alabamans moved to Cleveland that the black community of the city was nicknamed Alabama
North. More than half of the total number of migrants settled in five cities: Cleveland, Chicago,
Detroit, New York, and Pittsburgh. Chicago was, in many respects, the capital city of black
migration; by 1935, 250,000 African American migrated to the Windy City alone.4
2

Albert Nichols, interview digest, June, 26, 1972, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
Jazz Scene: New Orleans- Then & Now (Albert Nicholas talks to Max Jones) Melody Maker (5-16-1970) p.16.
4
Eric Arnesen, ed., Black Protest and the Great Migration: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford/
St. Martins Press, 2003), 1-37; Kimberley L. Phillips, Alabama North: African-American Migrants, Community,
3

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As recent scholarship suggests, the First Great Migration that witnessed the exodus of
more than one million African Americans out of the South before, during, and after World War I
was a crucial period of black activism. The causes of the movement have been the subject of
much debate among historians both then and now. Indeed, Carter G. Woodson famously asked,
in 1918, at the height of migration, What then is the cause?5 Woodson cautioned that the
migrants themselves offered the best explanations. Despite Woodsons admonishment, early
studies of the migration, including Clair Drake and Horace Caytons Black Metropolis, focused
primarily on economic factors.6 Certainly, economics played an important role in the Great
Migration, but it was far from the only factor. Given the lack of social justice and the legacy of
racialized violence in the South, it is clear African Americans were motivated to leave the South
on several fronts.7
A more complete analysis of the Great Migration appeared in the late 1980s. In Land of
Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration, James R. Grossman points to the

and Working-Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-45 (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 5, 17;
Davarian L. Baldwin, Chicagos New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life (Chapel Hill,
North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 14.
5
Carter G. Woodson, The Exodus During the World War, in Malaika Adero ed., Up South: Stories, Studies, and
Letters of This Centurys Black Migrations (New York: The New Press, 1993), 1.
6
What became known as the Push-Pull Theory argued that African Americans left the South to secure jobs in the
wartime industrial expansion of the North. Economic degradation in the South, coupled with foreign immigration
restrictions opened new opportunities for African Americans and forced them northward. Critics of the Push-Pull
Theory charge that by focusing too much on economic concerns it leaves the impression that African Americans
were passive historical actors. Consequently, Lawrence Levine argues that African Americans are, seen once again
not as actors capable of affecting at least some part of their destinies, but primarily as beings who are acted uponsouthern leaves blown north by the winds of destitution. Lawrence Levine quoted in Alan D. DeSantis, Selling the
American Dream Myth to Black Southerners: The Chicago Defender and the Great Migration of 1915-1919,
Western Journal of Communication, (Fall, 1998), 476.
7
A differing school of thought argues that social factors and kinship networks created a significant impetus for
migration. Advocates of the Socio-Emotional Theory believe that a lack of social justice in the South coupled with
a yearning to join friends and relatives already in the North compelled migrants northward. Both the Push-Pull
Theory and Socio-Emotional Theory have contributed a great deal to our understanding of the Great Migration.
However, neither of these theories offers a complete explanation for the causes and motivations of the Great
Migration. What is missing is a thorough discussion of the grass-roots organizational efforts and the leadership that
fostered the movement forward. For more information on the various theories of African American migration see:
Alan D. DeSantis, Selling the American Dream Myth to Black Southerners: The Chicago Defender and the Great
Migration of 1915-1919, Western Journal of Communication, (Fall, 1998).

91

tradition within African American communities of mobility as an assertion of agency. Following

emancipation, Grossman contends, blacks found spatial mobility to be of the utmost significance.
Furthermore, Grossman asserts that a grass-roots network of information and leadership emerged
that was essential to the movement.8 In addition, he contends that such a movement developed
despite the opposition of traditional middle-class black leaders.9 A key component of this grassroots network was the Chicago Defender. Chicago migrant, Robert S. Abbott, founded the
Defender in 1905. Abbotts newspaper quickly developed a popular appeal to African Americans
of both middle and working-class backgrounds. By 1916, it was the largest selling black daily in
the country.10
Prospective migrants often organized collectively to ease the burden of individual travel.
Migration clubs formed to gather information about possible employment, pool economic
resources (migration clubs were particularly aware of the advantage of discounted group train
tickets), and find housing in Chicago and other northern cities. These clubs sometimes shared
affiliations with local and northern churches. Southern congregants of the African Methodist
Episcopal Church may appeal to fellow AME members in Chicago, for example, to aid in the
procurement of employment and housing.11 The Bethlehem Baptist Association, located in
Chicago, advertised in the Defender that it would help new migrants get settled in the South Side
community. In response to one such ad, Mrs. J. H. Adams, writing from Macon Georgia in 1918,
asks, To the Bethlehem Baptist Association reading in the Chicago Defender of your help
securing positions I want to know if it is any way you can oblige me by helping me to get out
8

James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1989).
9
Ibid., 67. Grossman argues that the rank and file traditional African American leadership in the South, such as
educators, professionals, business and religious leaders, were opposed to migration because they stood to lose the
most from a mass exodus of constituents and customers.
10
DeSantis, Selling the American Dream Myth to Black Southerners, Western Journal of Communication.
11
Grossman, Land of Hope, 94-97.

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there as I am anxious to leave here and everything so hard here12 In addition to the aid of
religious groups, migration clubs were often largely comprised of women. This is significant
considering the traditionally male dominated ranks of the recognized African American
leadership in the South.13 Cleary, migrants were motivated by a variety of factors, and they
actively utilized a number of strategies to find a new home, seek employment and housing, and
help loved ones escape the South.
The narrative of the jazz musician shares several characteristics with the larger Great
Migration story. Like their migratory counterparts, musicians left the South during this period
for a variety of reasons. However, the migration of jazz musicians is often explained primarily in
economic terms.14 To be certain, economic opportunities were a significant contributing factor to
musicians journeying north. However, just as is the case with broader interpretations of the Great
Migration, the primary focus on economic motives diminishes the agency of jazz musicians.
Indeed, jazz musicians have a history of grass-roots networking with colleagues to find work.
The link between southern musicians and their counterparts in the North during this period is no
exception.15 Furthermore, the wide circulation of the Chicago Defender across the South
indicates its availability to musicians as well. The trumpet player Adolphus Doc Cheatham
12

Letter from Mrs. J. H. Adams, Macon Georgia, to the Bethlehem Baptist Association in Chicago, Illinois, 1918
Holograph, Carter G. Woodson Papers, Manuscript Division (119), Library of Congress,
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/images/adams.jpg
13
Grossman, Land of Hope, 97.
14
James Lincoln Collier argues that the simultaneous closing of the New Orleans vice district where early jazz was
played (known as Storyville) in 1917, coupled with the expanding vice and entertainment district in South Side
Chicago, forced black jazz musicians to migrate. James Lincoln Collier, Louis Armstrong: An American Genius
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 70-71, 86. Thomas Brothers, on the other hand, notes that recent
historians are divided about the effect of Storyvilles closing on migration. But, he does admit that the closing,
must have caused more than a few musicians to search for greener pastures. Thomas Brothers, Louis Armstrongs
New Orleans (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2006), 256. William Howland Kenney disputes the interpretation
that the shutting down of Storyville forced musicians north. Instead, he focuses on the opportunity Chicago afforded
musicians: Jazz musicians were not so much pushed from their many different homes throughout the country as
pulled to Chicago.William Howland Kenney, Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904-1930 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993), 3.
15
Grossman, Land of Hope, 95.

93

confirmed as much in a 1976 interview saying, We thought that was a great paper. Chicago
Defender really gave you all the news of the entertainment in Chicago at that time. Cheatham
believed the citys white papers had no interest in writing about the achievements of African
Americans. Therefore, he only read the Chicago Defender.16 In 1928 the cornetist Emmanuel
Perez wrote Dave Peyton, the Defenders music columnist, to let Peyton know Perez looked
forward each week for the paper to arrive.17 In the pages of the daily, musicians could read about
the scores of cabarets and the burgeoning nightlife in the South Side. For instance, a 1914 article
in the Defender promoted the virtues of the South Side entertainment district known as the Stroll:
At night it changes to the sublime. The street is ablaze with light, the sidewalks are
crowded and there is music and laughter everywhere. Nearly every block has a theater or
two and together with the buffets, with their entertainment of singing and dancing, the
Midway is outdone. Until the police curfew rings at 1 oclock the pleasure bent
populace enjoys life to the extent of their pocketbooks.18
These considerations suggest that a deeper analysis is needed to fully understand why musicians
came north. Therefore, the advice of Carter G. Woodson is most apt. By examining the reasons
musicians gave for coming to Chicago we can best ascertain their motivations.
The jazz exodus became possible only after a number of individuals assumed a critical
leadership role by encouraging fellow musicians to leave the South altogether. For example,
trumpeter Natty Dominique left New Orleans a few years before the closing of Storyville in 1917
to work as a cigar maker. Dominique had a job lined up before he left, thanks to a friend named
Casino. He said you want to come to Chicago? Dominique recalled. I said, all right, Ill get
ready. I got ready too, had my clothes, had my trumpet, and I got to Chicago. Dominiques oral
history indicates that he left New Orleans because of economic considerations, but he made the
16

Adolphus Doc Cheatham, interview transcript, April, 1976, Institute for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University,
Newark, New Jersey.
17
Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (October 27, 1928), 6.
18
State Street; Its Pains, Pleasures and Possibilities, Chicago Defender (May 2, 1914), 7. For a detailed
discussion of the cultural geography of the Stroll see: Baldwin, Chicagos New Negroes, 21- 52.

94

decision to leave based on the advice of a friend. Dominique utilized the same kind of grassroots support as dozens of other musicians in his journey to the Windy City.19 Like Jelly Roll
Morton, Sidney Bechet, Paul Barbarin, and the members of the members of the Creole Jazz
Band, Dominique left New Orleans before the closing of Storyville.20 The traditional
interpretation holds that musicians left New Orleans en masse after Storyville closed in 1917,
because there was no longer work for musicians in New Orleans. But, that interpretation does not
take into account the experiences of these important individuals. Therefore, economic
considerations, though important, were only one factor among many.
Chicago migrant and multi-instrumentalist, George Dixon made no mention of the kind
of grass-roots support enjoyed by Natty Dominique. Dixon did discuss the segregation of black
and white audiences listening to riverboat bands in Natchez, Mississippi, where he grew up.
Dixon revealed that African Americans in Natchez were not allowed on the riverboats. I could
go down to the levee and try to hear from there, he noted. Once in a while, theyd have bands
and shows and ferries in Louisiana, but I couldnt go over there. Dixon cites purely economic
motives for his move to Chicago in 1926, but the effects of segregation, as noted above, cannot
be underestimated. Though he did not explicitly attribute his coming north to segregation, it is of
no small significance that he mentioned this episode while narrating his tale of migration.21
Drummer, Floyd Campbell left his home in Helena, Arkansas, in 1922, for more dire
reasons than either Dixon or Dominique. Campbell explained to Timuel D. Black Jr. that, What
happened in Helena at that time is that they lynched a young boy. They caught him in the bushes
with some old white girl, and that broke up our band. That was more than we could stand, and so
19

Natty Dominique, interview transcript, October 24, 1981, Chicago Jazz Archive, University of Chicago, Chicago.
Morton and Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, 45; Bechet, Treat It Gentle, 115; Paul Barbarin, interview digest,
December 23, 1959, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans; Gushee, Pioneers of Jazz, 133.
21
George Dixon, interview transcript, August 15, 1990, Chicago Jazz Archive, University of Chicago, Chicago.
20

95

we all left and went our separate directions.22 Campbell moved to Memphis and then St. Louis,
Then I heard that up in Chicago guys like Erskine Tate and Billy Eckstine had big bands and
were paying their musicians seventy-five dollars a week. Clearly a number of factors went into
Campbells decision to come north. Racialized violence was a significant contributor for
Campbell to leave his home. Economic opportunity in Chicago was another factor. Furthermore,
the drummer heard through the musicians grass-roots network of communication about famous
and respected jazz musicians in Chicago. This reveals that for Campbell, Chicago was a place
not only to make money, but also a place to earn a degree of respect not available in St. Louis.
Campbells story also points to the fact that the Great Migration of jazz often involved multiple
stops along the way. In that respect, Campbells story is emblematic, for even after individuals
settled in a new community in the North, many still had to make a living on the road. Others
moved from city to city before finally establishing themselves in a particular community to their
liking.
While economic factors, a lack of social justice in the South, and a desire for greater
freedom both pushed and pulled African Americans northward, the emergence of a cadre of
leaders enabled dozens of musicians to join the northern migration. Both Joe Oliver and Kid Ory
assumed leadership roles that facilitated the jazz exodus. Ory actually turned down an offer to
move to Chicago in 1919, but he passed the opportunity to Oliver who gladly accepted. Oliver
had made up his mind to leave after a prohibition era police raid on a club the two were playing
in. The musicians were surprised to be taken in along with the customers. It was on that night
that Joe Oliver decided to leave for Chicago.23 After hearing that Ory turned down the offer,

22

Timuel D. Black Jr. Interview with Floyd Campbell in Timuel D. Black Jr. ed., Bridges of Memory: Chicagos
Second Generation of Black Migration (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2008), 155, 157.
23
Edward Kid Ory and Manuel Fess Manetta, interview digest, August 26, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane
University, New Orleans.

96

Oliver and another musician approached Ory; They said, Wed like to go to Chicago. I said,
You want the job? Heres the telegram. They went.24 Ory also gave Oliver a number to call
for assistance until he got settled in Chicago. Like Nichols, Oliver felt unable to openly ply his
craft, and he recognized the economic opportunity Chicago represented. He was also able to
make the journey with assistance from another musician.
Ory left New Orleans not long after Oliver, citing a concern for his health that
precipitated his move to Los Angeles.25 But, he also stated that the owner of Pete Lalas in New
Orleans was jealous of the money Ory was making promoting dances at Economy and
Cooperative Halls. Pete Lala was mad at Ory for not cutting him in on the deal. Pete then got,
about fifty cops to go around to his dances and run all the customers away, So I packed up
and left, came to Los Angeles.26 After spending five years in Los Angeles, Ory received a call
from Oliver to join him in Chicago, thus returning the favor.27 Like Oliver, Ory utilized existing
networks to facilitate his move to Chicago. He left New Orleans in the first place both because of
his health and because he was being intimidated by the local power structure.
Ory and Oliver facilitated the migration of dozens of individuals collectively including
Albert Nichols, Baby Dodds, Pops Foster, and Barney Bigard.28 In this vein, the work of Ory and
Oliver mirrors the efforts of those in the larger migrant community that enabled others to leave
the South. Grossman points to the tradition within African American communities of mobility as
an assertion of agency. Following emancipation, Grossman contends, blacks found spatial
mobility to be of the utmost significance, and from here a grass-roots network of information and
24

Edward Kid Ory, interview transcript, April 20, 1957, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
Ibid.
26
Edward Kid Ory and Manuel Fess Manetta, interview digest, August 26, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane
University, New Orleans.
27
Edward Kid Ory, interview transcript, April 20, 1957, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
28
Dodds, The Baby Dodds Story, 33; Bigard, With Louis and the Duke, 26; Foster and Stoddard, Autobiography of
Pops Foster, 53.
25

97

leadership emerged that was essential to the movement.29 A key component of the musicians
network was providing employment. This network also often provided musicians with train fare
to leave New Orleans, a place to stay upon arrival, and food to ease the transition to a new
home.30 The cost of travel was not cheap, so help in offsetting expenses was particularly
important. While most jazz migrants traveled a direct line from New Orleans aboard a car on the
Illinois Central Railroad to the Windy City, those most destitute could also make their way north
via riverboat to places like Davenport, Iowa before the final trek to Chicago.31 The most famous
musician to take advantage of this network was Louis Armstrong who, in August 1922, made his
own journey to Chicago. Oliver lured Armstrong north. He kept sending me letters and
telegrams telling me to come up to Chicago and play second cornet for him. That, I knew, would
be real heaven for me.32 Armstrong had the utmost confidence in Olivers advice, and he based
his decision to leave on his mentors recommendations. On August 8, 1922, Louis Armstrong
boarded the Illinois Central in New Orleans with his entire band at his side to see him off saying,
they were all glad to see me get a chance to go out in the world and make good. Armstrongs
account reveals that as a result of economic considerations and the aid of grass-roots networks,
the cornet player decided Chicago was the right fit for his future. Furthermore, the comment that
Chicago would be real heaven, coupled with Armstrongs belief that musicians in Chicago,
were treated and respected just like some kind of a God,33 indicates that economic motives
were only one part of the story. Armstrong believed that Chicago was a place where musicians
could openly ply their trade and achieve a level of respectability unthinkable in southern society.
29

Grossman, Land of Hope, 66-97.

Bigard, With Louis and the Duke, 26-30; Armstrong, Satchmo, 234.
31
For more information on the relationship between the Mississippi River and the development of jazz and the
proximity of Davenport to Chicago during this period see: Kenney, Jazz on the River, 119-128.
32
Armstrong, Satchmo, 226, 228.
33
Louis Armstrong, The Armstrong Story, in Thomas Brothers, ed., Louis Armstrong In His Own Words:
Selected Writings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 74.
30

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The first person accounts of Dominique, Dixon, Campbell, Nichols, Ory, and Armstrong
illustrate that a variety of considerations played a part in the decision to leave the South in search
of greener pastures. Musicians were not pushed out of the South due only to economic
considerations any more than the African American community at large was pushed north during
the Great Migration. Rather, musicians actively chose to improve their condition on their own
volition. To pursue that end, many utilized the kind of grass-roots networks employed by scores
of African Americans across the South during this period. Indeed, the same kinds of techniques
and grass-roots tactics employed in the journey northward would be summoned again once
migrants arrived in the Windy City. But, unlike their counterparts of the larger migration, these
musicians left their southern homes because of both the lack of creative outlets in the South, and
the opportunity for creative expression in the North. The added incentive of finding greater
avenues for creative expression set them apart from other migrants and made their story unique.
Thanks to the innovation of New Orleans jazz pioneers and the Great Migration, the
music seemingly burst onto the national stage in the 1920s. It soon became a cultural force to be
reckoned with. Consequently, in 1922 F. Scott Fitzgerald famously dubbed the decade the Jazz
Age.34 As Louis Armstrong put it, The men I knew as a boy started it all. Whatever its good
for, and however long it will live, swing music was born in my country; it seeded there in New
Orleans and grew there, and there it got so hot it had to burst out and it did, and spread to the
world.35 Jazz, therefore, made a Great Migration of its own on the backs of these musicians,
facilitated by a grass-roots network that was dedicated to mutual cooperation and crafting a new
art form.

34
35

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tales of the Jazz Age (New York: Scribners, 1922).
Armstrong, Swing That Music, 28.

99

Those Were Crazy Times

In 1978 Theodore Red Saunders reminisced about his experience as a jazz drummer in
the 1920s and 1930s. Saunders, who grew up in Memphis before migrating to Chicago with his
family as a teenager, spent many years playing in cities across the country. Life for black
musicians travelling on the road from town to town could be exciting to a young man like
Saunders. However, it was not always fun and games. Black musicians faced discrimination and
difficult conditions travelling Americas byways. Saunders remembered, I was on the road in
the early 1930s. And conditions were pretty bad, you know, during those days. Segregation was
real hard, real thick. And food was hard to get on the road, and you had to go in the back door
and things like that for your food. And accommodations were very, very poor. For Saunders, his
band mates, and scores of black musicians who made their living on the road, discrimination and
segregation were as much a part of their daily lives as the nightly encore at the end of shows.
Thats the way conditions were, Saunders recalled. Those were crazy times. Because you
were at the mercy of the law and the laws were maybe the Ku Klux Klan and all of that, so it
was just a mixed up period in the history of this country when you look back you wonder how
you made it.36 While scores of musicians left the South during the Great Migration for greener
pastures in dozens of American cities, Saunderss account reveals that life for jazz musicians was
rarely sedentary. In order to make a living as artists, musicians often dealt with the rigors of the
road and the subsequent discrimination that followed. However, the sacrifices made by
musicians like Saunders facilitated the spread of jazz across the country in the 1910s, 1920s, and
1930s, as travelling musicians showcased their artistic achievements in a number of emerging
jazz capitals across the country. As the musicians travelled from town to town, they encountered
36

Theodore Red Saunders, interview transcript, March 28, 1978, Institute for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University,
Newark, New Jersey.

100

new techniques of playing that were unique to each setting. Consequently, new styles of jazz
emerged in cities across the country.
By the 1920s, thanks to the work of travelling musician like Saunders, scores of
American cities boasted vibrant jazz scenes. Several early jazz capitals emerged along riverboat
routes and rail lines. The crossroads city of Memphis has long enjoyed its reputation as the
Home of the Blues. The musical traditions of Beale Street (the citys African American
cultural and economic center) influenced the sound of Memphis jazz from its earliest days.
Given the Bluff Citys location along the Mississippi River and with its close proximity to rail
lines, Memphis emerged as a critical commercial center in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century. African American roustabouts who toiled in the citys shipping industries imparted the
influence of the blues in Memphis culture. This meant that Bluff City jazz retained a blues
inflected quality in the music. In this period, jazz and the blues were closely related. The twelve
bar [AAB] song structure, so prevalent in the blues, worked its way into jazz forms, and by the
1920s it was a staple for jazz composers. The call and response AAB format allowed musicians
to improvise freely within the space of the song by offering a simple and adaptable harmonic
progression. It wasnt until the emergence of the big band that the two music forms found
entirely different musical paths. The relative similarities between blues and jazz in the 1920s
allowed female vocalists like Gertrude Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, the leading black singers
of the day, to cross back and forth between the two genres with ease.37
Memphis musicians, well acquainted with the blues structure, used it readily in jazz
compositions. Memphis Blues composed in 1909 by W.C. Handy was originally entitled Mr.
Crump. Handy wrote the tune as a campaign song for the mayoral election of Edward Hull

37

Schuller, Early Jazz, 37-38; Placksin, American Women in Jazz, 12-21.

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Crump. Handy, a transplant from Alabama who was a classically trained musician, was heavily
influenced by the music of the citys roustabouts who worked on the banks of the Mississippi.38
Handy recalled that, The melody of Mister Crump was mine throughout. On the other hand,
the twelve-bar, three-line form of the first and last strains, with its three-chord basic harmonic
structure (tonic, sub-dominant, dominant seventh) was that already used by Negro roustabouts,
honky-tonk piano players, wanderers and others of their underprivileged but undaunted class
from Missouri to the Gulf. Handy later enjoyed the moniker The Father of the Blues after
penning several famous songs, including Memphis Blues, based on the music forms he
discovered in Memphis. Handy explained that, My part in their history was to introduce this, the
blues form, to the general public, as the medium for my own feelings and my own musical
ideas. Handy remained in the Bluff City as a bandleader, director of dance orchestras, and
music publisher until 1918 when he and Harry Pace, his business partner, moved their publishing
firm to New York City.39
While men who worked along the banks of the Mississippi heavily influenced Memphis
jazz, men who worked on the river itself largely influenced St. Louis jazz. By 1920, St. Louis
was one of the main stops for the riverboat excursions of the Streckfus Line. Bands like the ones
fronted by Fate Marable, Louis Armstrong, and Baby Dodds played in The Gateway to the
West in the first decades of the twentieth century. The Streckfus Steamers spent the winter
months in New Orleans before heading north in the spring each year. The drummer Zutty
Singleton remembered that, There was a saying in New Orleans. When some musician would
get a job on the riverboats with Fate Marable, theyd say, Well youre going to the
conservatory. Thats because Fate was such a fine musician and the men who worked with him
38

Kenney, Jazz on the River, 88-91; Southern, Music of Black Americans, 338-340.
W.C. Handy quoted in, Dr. Leonard Goines, Father of the Blues, Allegro: Associated Musicians of Greater
New York, Vol. LXXV, No. 9 (October, 1975), 4; Southern, Music of Black Americans, 338.
39

102

had to be really good. Singleton played on the steamer the Capitol with Marable and
Armstrong. The boats would spend the winter in New Orleans and then, around April, go up to
St. Louis, stopping at Natchez and other places for a night or two, recalled Singleton. The way
it worked on the boats was Monday night the dances were for colored. Every night the boats
would travel up and down the river for a while and then come back.40 Because of the influence
of riverboat musicians, St. Louis boasted a vibrant jazz scene that catered to dance enthusiasts
like those that travelled on the Streckfus Line.
St. Louis also had a long tradition of blending music styles associated with the theater
and concert hall with folk music. Consequently, St. Louis jazz lacked the blues-centric elements
found downriver in Memphis. However, St. Louis was also a center of ragtime in the 1890s, and
Scott Joplin, perhaps the most famous ragtime composer and musician, called the city home.
Ragtime evolved from traditional marching tunes in the Midwest often played in double time on
the piano. African American musicians, like Joplin, embellished marching tunes by adding
syncopated rhythms and thematic variations within the song structure. Ragtime was a more
structured format than the blues and played at a faster tempo, and as such, it lacked the sort of
improvisation so prevalent in the blues idiom. As a result, St. Louis jazz was up-tempo, piano
driven, and more structured in comparison to Memphis jazz.41
Like Kid Ory and Joe Oliver, Marable assumed a leadership role that fostered the exodus
of jazz from New Orleans and other southern cities during the Great Migration. As historian
William Howland Kenney notes Marable used his position as leader of the best black dance
bands on the leading excursion boats on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to personally recruit
ambitious musicians who were looking for a way to explore the more northerly reaches of the
40
41

Zutty Singleton quoted in, Shapiro and Hentoff, eds., Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 76.
Kenney, Jazz on the River, 92-93, 97; Schuller, Early Jazz, 32-38.

103

Mississippi valley as professional dance band musicians. Once Marable had them on board, he
insisted that they carefully prepare themselves for success in the modern music business.
Marable also encouraged his band mates to join the American Federation of Musicians, learn to
sight-read music scores, and he recommended them to some of the most prominent bandleaders
in the country for jobs in groups fronted by Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and Jimmie
Lunceford.42
On the western border of Missouri, along the Toledo, St. Louis, and Western Railroad
line, stood another emerging jazz capital. Kansas City was an influential center for black musical
development dating to the height of ragtimes popularity in the late nineteenth century. The 18th
and Vine neighborhood was home to the citys African American flourishing cultural and
economic institutions. Traveling blues and ragtime musicians often made their way through
Kansas City, and by the 1920s, the city boasted a number of promising bands that turned the city
into a destination for aspiring musicians in the years to come. The gifted vocalist Mary Lou
Williams remembered, In those years around 1930, Kaycee was really jumping so many great
bands having sprung up there or moved in from over the river. I should explain that Kansas City,
Missouri wasnt too prejudiced for a midwestern town. It was a ballin town, and it attracted
musicians from all over the South and Southwest, and especially from Kansas. The vibrant
neighborhood of 18th and Vine attracted black business leaders and black artists. This dynamic
made the community a hotbed of black culture. So I found Kansas City to be a heavenly city
music everywhere in the Negro section of town, and fifty or more cabarets rocking on Twelfth
and Eighteenth Streets, recalled Williams. Yes, Kaycee was a place to be enjoyed, even if you
were without funds. People would make you a loan without you asking for it, would look at you

42

Ibid., 38.

104

and tell if you were hungry and put things right. There was the best food to be had the finest
barbecue, crawdads, and other seafood.43 Dozens of noted jazz musicians, like Mary Lou
Williams, got their start in Kansas City in the 18th and Vine neighborhood.
Benny Moten grew up in the 18th and Vine neighborhood, studying piano under the
tutelage of a former student of Scott Joplin, the noted ragtime innovator. After playing piano in
several local groups, Moten formed his own band in 1918. By the mid 1920s Moten took his
increasingly popular band on the road playing and recording in Chicago and other northern
locales.44 Moten did his best to keep the band in the public eye by booking the group in clubs as
far north as Minneapolis, as far south as New Orleans, and as far west as Denver. Motens group
remained the most popular jazz band in Kansas City, but on the road they faced stiff competition
from other traveling territory bands like Walter Pages Blue Devils. After suffering an
embarrassing defeat in a music battle between Motens group and the Blue Devils, the bested
bandleader tried to buy out Page. The plan did not succeed, but Moten eventually plucked some
the best musicians from the rival Blue Devils, including a young piano player from New Jersey,
named William Count Basie. The Count Basie Orchestra formed from a nucleus of former
Moten musicians, after a Basie led internal revolt relieved Moten from his position as bandleader
in 1933. The Basie Orchestra became one of the most popular big bands of the 1930s and 1940s
recording hits like One Oclock Jump, Lester Leaps In, and Taxi War Dance.45
Further west, the City of Angels grew into a jazz metropolis at an earlier stage than other
west coast cities. Part of the reason for this early introduction to the new music was due to the
work of the Creole Jazz Band in Los Angeles in 1914 (though they soon took their act on the
43

Mary Lou Williams in, Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 284-285, 287, 293.
Frank Driggs and Chuck Haddix, Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to BebopA History (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005), 25, 31, 43, 53-54.
45
Ibid., 63, 93-96, 123-124; Schuller, Early Jazz, 295-296, 317.
44

105

road), and particularly to Kid Orys trip to the city in 1919. Ory explained that he left New
Orleans for Los Angeles, Because I wanted to do better, to have I felt like I was going to lose
my health down there. I had plenty of work; I was doing alright I had close to $500 deposit on
different jobs I refunded on back to the promoters, told them I was sorry. Told them I was
losing my health; that was the only way I could get out of the contract, which I wasnt lying
about. Just taking a vacation [in Los Angeles], looking around. Soon as they found out I was
in town, then a guy opened up a nightclubNear to the Union Station, on Central Avenue. I
wired Manuel Manetta. I sent for him.46 Ory chose California over Chicago (where he was to
join Joe Olivers band) because he heard about the good climate in Los Angeles, and that sealed
the deal.
Ory left New Orleans on the Texas and Pacific Railroad line, and once in Los Angeles he
met up with a dude they call Lee Locking from Galveston, Texas. Together the two men
reopened a club called the Cadillac located near the train depot. Orys new group was an instant
sensation in the City of Angels. Manetta believed the reason for their immediate success was the
large number of New Orleans transplants in Los Angeles who were excited to see familiar faces
and to listen familiar tunes. Kid Orys in town, gee and man, recalled Manetta, That was
enough advertisement. Ory also used some old promotional tricks from New Orleans to
advertise the band on the west coast. He obtained two mules and a wagon and loaded the
instruments on the back. The band played on the truck, throughout town advertising for the
evening show at the Cadillac. According to Manetta people, come out, busting the door down,
to hear the music in the street. We didnt get to Hollywood, recalled Manetta, but the news

46

For more information on the time the Creole Jazz Band spent in Los Angeles see: Lawrence Gushee, How the
Creole Band Came to Be, Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1988), 88; Edward Kid Ory, interview
transcript, April 20, 1957, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.

106

got out there, you know. The band played that night at the Cadillac. The venue was packed with
a lively audience so the group, played and played, late into the night.47
Orys stay in Los Angeles was fruitful. He found steady work in the citys night clubs
and once made as much as six hundred dollars in one day working on a marathon recording
session with Gertrude Ma Rainey and Lil Hardin. Ory remained in the City of Angels until
1925 when he finally joined Oliver in Chicago. Ory left Los Angeles because he wanted to see
the country. I had work there. Oliver was waiting for me and I disbanded. Once in Chicago, Ory
got in touch with old friends from New Orleans: Louis [Armstrong] wrote to me, told me he
was going to leave Fletcher [Henderson], he heard I was coming to Chicago, would I record with
them, you know. Then I worked at Dreamland with Louis after that. After Dutray got well, and
Oliver was waiting for me.48 Oliver and Armstrong repaid an outstanding debt to Ory once he
arrived in Chicago, as he extended a helping hand to fellow musicians throughout the 1910s and
1920s. Like Floyd Campbell, Orys migration involved several stops along the way, before he
finally settled in Chicago. But for many musicians migration was a way of life. Many
experienced an initial phase of travel that involved leaving the South followed by itinerate
migrations across the country playing in jazz clubs in a travelling band. For these musicians, life
on the road presented moments of success and moments when their lives were literally in peril.
Because of their dedication and determination, they brought jazz to new places and made new
converts along the way.

47

Edward Kid Ory and Manuel Fess Manetta, interview digest, August 26, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane
University, New Orleans.
48
Edward Kid Ory and Manuel Fess Manetta, interview digest, August 26, 1958, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane
University, New Orleans; Edward Kid Ory, interview transcript, April 20, 1957, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane
University, New Orleans.

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In Europe We Were Royalty; In Texas We Were Back In The Colored Section

Thanks to travelling musicians like Ory, Moten, and Marable, jazz soon found receptive
audiences in San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cincinnati, Louisville,
Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and dozens of other urban locations across the country. The new music
enjoyed such intense popularity that new frontiers for jazz emerged in Europe. In late 1918 Will
Marion Cook, the noted New York City bandleader, visited the Deluxe Caf to hear a young
clarinet player from New Orleans. Cook persuaded the clarinet player, Sidney Bechet, to join the
Southern Syncopated Orchestra in the Big Apple. Shortly after arriving in New York, the group
set sail for London. Shortly after the grueling fifteen days at sea, the Southern Syncopated
Orchestra played an engagement at the Royal Philharmonic Hall in June 1919. At a music store
in London, Bechet discovered a straight soprano saxophone and fell in love with the instrument.
The unique tonal qualities of the soprano sax helped Bechet achieve his signature sound in
subsequent decades. The groups stay in London was so successful that the Southern Syncopated
Orchestra was invited to play a private reception at Buckingham Palace for the royal family.49
In 1920, the group travelled to post-war Paris, and their European tour made a lasting
impression on Parisians and Londoners. Writing in the Revue Romande in 1919 ErnestAlexandre Ansermet, the noted French conductor, declared that, Today, rag-time has conquered
Europe; we dance to rag-time under the name of jazz in all our cities. Ansermet praised
Cooks band declaring, The first thing that strikes one about the Southern Syncopated Orchestra
is the astonishing perfection, the superb taste, and the fervor of its playing. He also singled out
Bechet for his command of his instrument: I wish to set down the name of this artist of genius;

49

Bechet, Treat It Gentle, 125-128.

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as for myself, I shall never forget it it is Sidney Bechet.50 Thanks to the work of artists like
Cook and Bechet, jazz conquered Europe, and it was a short campaign.
The successful tour ended abruptly for Bechet as he found himself in trouble with British
authorities and was deported back to the United States. Bechet enjoyed himself so much in
Europe that he lived off and on in Paris over the course of his long musical career. In an
interview with Bechet at his Paris apartment in 1957, Scoop Kennedy declared, There is no
doubt, whatsoever, in the minds and hearts of most people of Western Europe that Sidney is one
of the great men of America. When he plays a concert, you have to buy tickets, weeks in advance.
When he was married recently, on the Riviera, admirers from all over Europe came down to wish
him good luck.51 Bechet enjoyed life in France. However, the irony for artists like Bechet, Will
Marian Cook, James Reese Europe, Duke Ellington, and dozens of African American musicians
who travelled to Europe over the course of the twentieth century, was that they received a level
of praise that they could not get in their home country. In 1926 Dave Peyton, the Chicago
Defender music columnist intoned his readers, Dont become discouraged over the fact that in
this country our opportunities are limited by many avenues being closed against us by race
prejudice, and I further advise all to properly equip themselves, theoretically and practically, to
win this battle: and if we dont get what we want right here, right to the south of us is South
America, and across the briney is the great continent of Europe, where everyone is given an
equal opportunity to display what he knows. Today these continents are standing with
outstretched arms to welcome whatever we have to offer intellectually.52 The contrast to the
treatment black musicians received in the South could not be starker. In Paris and other European
50

Ernest-Alexandre Ansermet quoted in, Robert Gottlieb, ed., Reading Jazz: A Gathering of Autobiography,
Reportage, and Criticism from 1919 to Now (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 741- 742, 746.
51
Bechet, Treat It Gentle, 129-132; Scoop Kennedy quoted in, Sidney Bechet, interview transcript, 1957, Hogan
Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
52
Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch: Our Musicians in Europe, Chicago Defender (January 2, 1926), 7.

109

capitals, African Americans were respected as artists not just as performers.

Black musicians also enjoyed a freer lifestyle abroad than was possible in the United
States. In the late 1940s, Miles Davis made his first journey to Europe. Davis encountered a
similar dynamic his predecessors knew all too well: This was my first trip out of the country
and it changed the way I looked at things forever. I loved being in Paris and loved the way I was
treated. Davis explained that, I had never felt that way in my life. It was freedom of being in
France and being treated like a human being, like someone important. Anyway, everything
seemed to change for me while I was in Paris. When Davis left France where he, understood
that all white people werent prejudiced, he returned to the world of Jim Crow America. That
rude awakening changed Davis social consciousness: I had never been too political, but I knew
how white people treated black people and it was hard for me to come back to the bullshit white
people put a black person through in this country. To realize you dont have any power to make
things different is a bitch.53 Like earlier generations of jazz musicians, Davis experienced a
modicum of freedom in Europe not readily available in the United States.
While Davis did not experience European life until decades after the first wave of jazz
musicians left American shores, there is some indication that his experience and sentiments were
not vastly different from his predecessors. In fact, Benny Carter believed that in Europe there
was a decided difference in the acceptance of you just on the basis of you as a human being,
rather than on the basis of the color of your skin as far as the racial situation was concerned, I
knew what I was returning to, so there were no surprises, you know, and Ive always been kind
of able to live within a situation that I know exists, and at the same time, do everything that I can

53

Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 125-129.

110

do to change it.54 Carter was not the only musician who experienced an altogether different
world in Europe.
After a European tour in the early 1930s Duke Ellingtons band played an extended tour
of the American South. Harry Carney, a saxophone player in the band, remembered that, Of
course all the places we played down there, they were happy to hear the band. The drag was
theyd be screaming and applauding and afterward youd have to go back across the tracks. In
Europe we were royalty; in Texas we were back in the colored section. It was some adjustment,
but we were young and could take it.55 The indignity of being treated as second-class citizens
affected the way Ellington and his band travelled from then on. As a result, Ellington arranged
on subsequent trips across the South for the group to travel by train in a private Pullman car. Red
Saunders explained that Ellingtons band avoided Jim Crow because Ellington, hired a whole
Pullman car, and they would pull off to the side and this was their place of sleeping and
everything. Not only did the band travel and sleep on the car, they also took their meals there.
Barney Bigard remembered, We had two Pullmans and a baggage car. They had sleepers and a
diner. A couple of us got together and bought a little hot-plate stove and from then on we did our
own cooking right on the train. Sonny Greer, Ellingtons long-time drummer, reminisced about
how the Pullman cars made life on the road much easier for the band: We never had to run to
get no rooms, we paid an extra fare to have our car parked in the station. We had our own
Pullman porter and conductor. Given the extent of segregation, the Pullman car removed the
band from the daily indignities of Jim Crow. Now we went south, recalled Greer, a lot of
them cats down south, you know, in order confliction, we had the colored over this side, like

54

Benny Carter, interview transcript, October 13, 1976, Institute for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New
Jersey.
55
Harry Carney quoted in, Burns and Ward, Jazz, 202.

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you know, segregation. We pull up, baggage car in the yard and pay extra to park it. We didnt
have to go through that junk. Cab Calloways band also used Pullman cars. The trumpet player
Adolphus Doc Cheatham spent many years on the road, Sleeping in buses, eating cold cuts,
being run out of places, being run out of town and all this stuff. With Cab it was first class all the
way. Slept on Pullmans sidetrack to sleep. Eat the best we could.56 While the Pullman cars
gave Calloways and Ellingtons bands more flexibility in navigating segregated America, not all
black musicians were quite as fortunate.
For the vast majority of black musicians, life on the road was hazardous both north and
south. While scores of musicians moved north during the Great Migration, relocation was not
always a one-way journey. Many musicians viewed life on the road as less than ideal but
necessary in order to maintain a livelihood in jazz.57 African American jazz artists who travelled
for a living faced discrimination, segregated accommodations, police harassment, intimidation,
and dangerous conditions on the road. Don Albert, who grew up in New Orleans, spent many
years on the road and often had trouble finding a place to stay and restaurants that would serve
him and his band mates. Albert faced so many indignities on the road that he did not like to talk
about it because the memories are nauseating. The first time Albert crossed the Mason-Dixon
Line he thought, Hell, man this is heaven.58 But he soon found out discrimination respected no
geographical boundaries, as the North was no racial utopia. Navigating in a Jim Crow world
could be very daunting in every region of the country.
Milt Hinton and Benny Carter found alternative accommodations on the road. Hinton
56

Theodore Red Saunders, interview transcript, March 28, 1978, Institute for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University,
Newark, New Jersey; Bigard, With Louis and the Duke, 68; Sonny Greer, interview transcript, January 15, 1979,
Institute for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey; Adolphus Doc Cheatham, interview
transcript, April 1, 1976, Institute for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey.
57
James N. Gregory, The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners
Transformed America (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 139.
58
Don Albert, interview digest, December 30,1969, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.

112

recalled, Now all over America, every black musician in every band knew where to go to eat
would have to eat in places like Uncle Henrys in Cincinnati. Wilson recalled that on the road
certain cities were, loaded with little Negro restaurants, where we would risk getting refused in
white restaurants when we travelled, so the best bet was just to go to the ghetto district where we
knew the hotel situation, or rooming house or restaurant to eat and sleep. In addition to eating at
Uncle Henrys in Cincinnati, the two stayed at the riverfront Sterling Hotel that was, like home
to us, and the first time I saw those giant rats, as big as cats and dogs, recalled Wilson. On one
extended stay at the Sterling, Wilson and his band mates named one rat Jerry. We would go
on the road and go out for a few weeks, and wed come back and Jerry was still living in the
hotel, just like everyone else.59 The experiences of Hinton and Wilson attest to the separate and
unequal accommodations black musicians faced on the road both north and south.
Segregated and unequal accommodations were demeaning and frustrating. Worse yet,
was the harassment and threats musicians faced in cities and towns across the country. Police
harassment, particularly in the South, was common. In one southern city Barney Bigard
remembered, You couldnt be downtown after ten or they would take you in and beat the hell
out of you. We didnt know any better and we decided to walk back to the railroad station. There
was about five of us and these cops stopped us and looked us over. One big cop looked us up and
down and said, Well. These niggers are different from the niggers down here. They just let us
go about our business. In 1927 Roy Eldridge and his band mates stopped in Little Rock,
Arkansas to play an engagement. The week before they arrived a black man was lynched and his
burned body dragged through the streets of the citys black neighborhood. When Eldridge
arrived in town, he approached a local police officer to ask how to get his equipment into town.
59

Teddy Wilson and Milt Hinton, interview transcript, October 2, 1979, Institute for Jazz Studies, Rutgers
University, Newark, New Jersey.

113

The policeman replied, Oo-ooh. Youre up there from where the niggers cuss the white folks,
eh If I catch you out after twelve oclock, Im gonna lock you up. During an engagement in
Georgia, the local police arrested Don Alberts band and threatened to shoot him. When the
group arrived at the station, the police seized the bands pay for that evening. The officer
justified seizing the bands pay, because he was setting a fine where he was sure the local judge
would level it. When Albert demanded a trial before a judge the officer called him a smart
nigger from New York. The policeman then told Albert and his band to get out of town
immediately. During another trip through Florida, Albert was travelling with his band. The driver
of his vehicle was caught speeding by a local law enforcement official. To avoid harassment,
Albert (a light-skinned Creole) jumped into the drivers seat so the police officer would think he
was a white man. The gambit worked, and the band escaped further hassles.60 Unfortunately,
these were not isolated incidents.
At times, local police were called in to protect musicians from violent crowds. Doc
Cheatham recalled an incident in Memphis, Tennessee when a white girl asked for Cab
Calloways autograph and the singer obliged he request. That simple gesture touched off a brawl:
Chairs, bottles, everything, the biggest fight you ever saw in your life in the ballroom freefor-all, throwing at the band, fighting the band. Chairs I got behind a table. Cops came and
hustled Cab out, took him out the back and put him in a car, and we didnt see Cab anymore until
we got on the train. During another incident a rowdy crowd at the end of a show, just started
throwing things. They threw a bottle up there and it hit the drummer in the head, knocked a hole
in his head. That was in Miami, we had to be hustled out of there. Barney Bigard stated that
even though Duke Ellington was a big star, his band was not immune to intimidation from local
60

Bigard, With Louis and the Duke, 69; Roy Eldridge, interview transcript, June 15, 1982, Institute for Jazz Studies,
Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey; Don Albert, interview digest, August 6, 1973, December 30, 1969, Hogan
Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.

114

crowds. I mean Duke was a big name, even in the South, but they always had to have four cops
stationed at each corner of the place so that the local people wouldnt get any ideas.61 The irony
that local police, who by and large did not hold a favorable view of travelling black musicians,
were called in to protect jazz musicians is rich. This is particularly true given the harassment
faced by Bigard, Eldridge, and Albert.
Though local police were often reticent protectors of black musicians from violent
crowds, jazz artists also faced threats from groups with a history of violence and murder. In the
1920s violinist George Morrison (whose travels through Kansas City influenced Bennie Moten
and Count Basie) opened a club with an Irish Catholic in Golden Colorado. The nightclub did
very well during prohibition so well it attracted the attention of local white supremacists:
Well, in those days we had the Ku Klux Klan out here. They used to meet up on old
Table Mountain at Golden, Colorado. Every Tuesday night youd see them in a line five
miles long cars one right behind the other going up Table Mountain. One night we had
the windows all open while we were playing and here comes a big tall rawboned guy and
a little guy they looked like Mutt and Jeff. They stood right there by that window
where we were playing. Suddenly I hear that tall guy say to the little fella, This is the
first goddam place we gonna blow up. And Im playing my fiddle and listening. The
little guy asked, Why? Because its run by a goddam nigger and a Catholic. I heard it!
I said to myself, Anytime a man joins that organization theres something wrong up in
the head. And if hes fool enough to join that organization, he is fool enough to come in
here and set a bomb under this place. And Im not worried about myself, but I dont want
him to hurt my fiddle! I think its moving day for me.62
Morrison quickly left town making his livelihood on the road. Given the extensive reach of the
KKK in American society in the 1920s, it is hard to imagine Morrison was the only travelling
musician to face threats from white supremacists and terrorist organizations.63
Other dangers on the road revolved around grueling schedules, demanding booking

61

Adolphus Doc Cheatham, interview transcript, April 1, 1976, Institute for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University,
Newark, New Jersey; Bigard, With Louis and the Duke, 69.
62
George Morrison quoted in, Schuller, Early Jazz, 370.
63
Gregory, Southern Diaspora, 290-302.

115

agents, and long hours travelling between destinations. Earl Hines remembered that by the 1920s,
white theater owners, promoters, and record companies, began to realize the talent Negroes had,
and they began scheming how to commercialize it. One avenue for the exploitation of black
artists was the Theatre Owners Booking Association. Black artists like Doc Cheatham and Red
Saunders remembered that the initials T.O.B.A. stood for alternately Tough On Black Artists,
Tough On Black Actors, Tough On Black Acts, or Tough On Black Asses. The T.O.B.A. booked
shows in white-owned theaters across the South, and it earned its nefarious reputation through
discriminatory policies, low wages, and grueling touring schedules.64 Cuba Austin believed that,
There isnt anything that can ruin a band quicker than a booker who keeps jumping it all over
the country for one-nighters. He explained that, You play nine to three, then hop in a bus and
ride. You pull into the next stop maybe around sunset the next day. No time to get a rest in a bed
or even to clean up and get the grime off of you. You get a hot meal someplace and then its back
on the stand. That goes on night after night. The difficult circumstances of constant touring with
little to no down time took its toll on jazz artists. Youve seen boys on the stand making out
they were laughing and talking with each other during the numbers thats all in the game,
Austin revealed. You never know when you see them up there that any of those men might be
in pain. No, Im not fooling he might be sick or tired he might be worried about his family
or a lot of other things, but he has to smile and make the crowd think he is happy. Thats the way
with us. We had to pretend on the stand but instead we were sick inside with hate for Moore and
his booking us all over at whistle stops.65 The account of Austin calls to mind a poem found in
Louis Armstrongs personal scrapbooks that document his life on the road and early career as a
64

Earl Hines quoted in, Peretti, Creation of Jazz, 148; Adolphus Doc Cheatham, interview transcript, April 1,
1976, Institute for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey; Theodore Red Saunders, interview
transcript, March 28, 1978, Institute for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey; Southern, The Music
of Black Americans, 298; Baldwin, Chicagos New Negroes, 39, 99.
65
Cuba Austin quoted in, Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 191-192.

116

jazz musician in the 1920s and 1930s:

A-Eatin of is Eart
No one knows the pangs I feelOnly I.
No one perceives the regrets I haveOnly I.
No one sees the smile-covered tears I shedOnly I.
For I alone must glory in my sadness
And surround myself with bitterness.66
For Armstrong, Austin, Hines, and dozens of jazz artists, the T.O.B.A. made a tough life on the
road all the more difficult.
Finally, the life of a travelling musician could be potentially life threatening due to the
dangerous conditions associated with highway travel. The constant touring associated with the
T.O.B.A. only exacerbated the problem. In the late 1920s Fletcher Henderson was involved in an
automobile accident while on the road. His wife Leora remembered that, Believe me Fletcher
was never the same after he had that automobile accident down in Kentucky. Fletcher was the
only one who got hurt. He had an awful hit in his head and his left shoulder bone was pushed
over to his collarbone. You know, it was the left side that got paralyzed later on. That was the
only accident he ever had, and after that why, he just changed. Red Saunders recalled an
incident when Cecil Irwin, the saxophone player for Earl Hines band, died in an automobile
accident on the road. In spite of the tragic loss, the band still had to play the engagement. Travel
that did not take place over and could also be dangerous. Sidney Bechet missed an opportunity to
play in Europe in 1921, but it turned out to be potentially life-saving: The band was going over
to play in Ireland when the ship they were travelling in got hit and sunk. And eight of the band

66

Scrapbook #2, Louis Armstrong Collection, Louis Armstrong House Museum Archives, Queens College, New
York. It is unclear if, but highly likely that, Armstrong penned the poem. Given Armstrongs writing style that
closely matches the writing in the poem, and the fact it was found in his personal scrapbooks, it is almost certainly
his work.

117

got drowned, and they lost all their instruments. It was a terrible thing. If I hadnt been back in
America, God Knows, I might have gone on too with those poor boys who were drowned.67
Life on the road was dangerous for all musicians due to the hazards of travel. For African
American musicians, however, the hazards of road travel were one of many dangers along the
way.
Conclusion
The exodus of more than one million African Americans out of the South in the 1910s,
1920s, and 1930s was the result of many factors. Some left for purely economic reasons, while
others sought the full rights of citizenship they had so long been denied in the South. Jazz
musicians shared some characteristics with other migrants in their motivations to travel north.
However, the desire to express themselves artistically separated them from fellow migrants.
Once musicians voted their displeasure with southern society with their feet during the Great
Migration, the grass-roots networks that jazz musicians fostered in the Big Easy and elsewhere
became instrumental in facilitating further migration. However, migration was not always a oneway journey.
Due to economic necessity, many musicians lived a life on the road. The rigors of
constant touring took its toll on jazz artists. The vast majority faced discrimination, segregation,
second-class accommodations, police harassment, violent and threatening crowds, exploitive
booking agencies, and dangerous conditions on the road. As Red Saunders marveled, when you
look back you wonder how you made it.68 Yet, the sacrifices made by musicians like Saunders

67

Leora Henderson quoted in, Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 222; Theodore Red Saunders,
interview transcript, March 28, 1978, Institute for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey; Bechet,
Treat It Gentle, 133.
68
Theodore Red Saunders, interview transcript, March 28, 1978, Institute for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University,
Newark, New Jersey.

118

facilitated the spread of jazz across the country in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, as travelling
musicians showcased their artistic achievements in a number of emerging jazz capitals across the
country. In two crucial jazz metropolises, Chicago and New York City, the music reached new
heights of innovation and artistic mastery. Consequently, the Windy City and the Big Apple
assumed dominant positions in the forging of new styles and artistic achievement that dictated
the direction and range of jazz as an art form well into the 1920s and 1930s.

119

Chapter 4:
I Made It My Business To Go Out for a Daily Stroll and Look This Heaven Over:
Chicago and the New Negro of Jazz
In 1919 Buster Bailey, a young clarinet and saxophone player, made his way to Chicago.
Bailey explained that he was inspired to start a new life in Chicago because of the success of
fellow Memphis musicians: Lil Hardin is from my home town. She caused me to want to go to
Chicago. We had been neighbors. She left and went to Chicago where she worked at the
Dreamland and Pekin Gardens. She was making a hundred-fifty a week salary. Compared to the
$2.60 a night wage Bailey made in Memphis, Hardins salary seemed enormous. In a matter of a
few months word reached Memphis of the success of Chicago musicians. Bailey made up his
mind, to go to Chicago to get some of that money. So I left even before I finished those last two
weeks of high school. Like dozens of other jazz artists, Bailey was allured by the opportunities
Chicago offered. For Hardin, Chicago was unlike anything she new in Memphis: In the summer
of 1918, my folks moved from Memphis to Chicago, and I made it my business to go out for a
daily stroll and look this heaven over. Chicago meant just that to me its beautiful brick and
stone buildings, excitement, people moving swiftly, and things happening.1 The accounts of
Bailey and Hardin of post-World War I Chicago reflects the dream of the Windy City as a land
of hope and opportunity for African Americans during the First Great Migration. For jazz
musicians in particular, South Side Chicago presented unique avenues to openly ply their trade,
advance careers, organize collectively, and achieve a social standing and a kind of respectability
unattainable in the South (certainly the black elite would find little if anything respectable about
jazz North or South). The cabarets and theaters of Chicagos black entertainment district, known

Buster Bailey in Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 91; Lil Hardin Armstrong in Shapiro and Hentoff,
Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 91.

120

as The Stroll, acted as incubators that nurtured jazz from its infancy to adolescence. Here, the
music matured into a distinct Chicago style that blended southern and northern influences,
cultures, and personalities to create a national, and uniquely American, musical art form.
The net effect of this Great Migration resulted in an explosion of African American
culture and entrepreneurship concentrated in Chicagos South Side. Jazz stood at the vanguard of
this cultural explosion, and Chicago was the place to be for musicians from 1915 to 1930. Once
the musicians arrived on the South Side scene, just like their counterparts in the migrant
community at large, they engaged in a number of activities designed to improve the standard of
living in their new home. Musicians were not only representative of the migrants; they also
served as civic promoters of the benefits of Chicago living. As Dave Peyton, the Chicago
Defender music columnist and ardent supporter of the local black musicians union, explained in
1926, The Chicago musicians are away ahead of musicians of our group in other cities of the
country. Their achievements have been wonderful. Peyton not only extolled the
accomplishments of individual Chicago musicians, but also the African American union Local
208 of the American Federation of Musicians: They own their own building for the
organization that is officered entirely by members of the Race. Musicians in other places should
follow the Chicago gang. Wake up and do something. Let us make the world respect us. Ours is
an art. Organize yourselves. Work together, acquire real estate and then you will be
independent.2
Peytons comments reveal that for musicians, the social conditions in the city encouraged
economic opportunity and independence, upward mobility, and community organizing activities
not found in other regions of the country. Because of these conditions, southern transplants like

Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (June 12, 1926), 6.

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Buster Bailey and Lil Hardin, found Chicago particularly alluring. Chicago attracted black
musicians from around the country. Consequently, the Windy City emerged as a critical center of
innovation for the new music and a center of activism in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s.
The South Side Was Together
In Duke Ellingtons autobiography, first published in 1973, the accomplished bandleader
remembered, Chicago always sounded like the most glamorous place in the world to me. In
1931 he arrived in the Windy City for an extended engagement, and he marveled at the vibrant
South Side community. Ellington explained that, The most impressive aspect, I think, was that
the South Side was together. It was a real us-for-we, we-for-us community. It was a community
with twelve Negro millionaires, no hungry Negroes, no complaining Negroes, no crying
Negroes, and no Uncle Tom Negroes. Ellington was struck by the sheer array of black-run
enterprises and institutions: It was a community of men and women who were respected, people
of great dignity doctors, lawyers, policy operators, bootblacks, barbers, beauticians,
bartenders, saloonkeepers, night clerks, cab owners and cab drivers, stockyard workers, owners
of after-hours joints, bootleggers everything and everybody, but no junkies.3 Ellingtons
description of the South Side community paints a picture of black entrepreneurship and the range
of economic enterprises African Americans engaged in. Perhaps Ellingtons depiction of the
South Side is a bit overly romantic, as jazz musicians of his stature were respected in the South
Side unlike rank and file residents. However, the accomplishments of South Side residents were
hard earned, and Ellingtons glowing account stands as a testament to the sacrifice, dedication,
and achievement of Chicagos African American community.

Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington, Music Is My Mistress (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1973), 131.

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Between 1910 and the middle of the 1930s, approximately 250,000 newly arrived African
Americans settled in Chicagos South Side community. In a four-year period alone, beginning in
1916, some fifty to seventy thousand southern blacks moved to Chicago.4 The migrants soon
found out that the Windy City was no land of milk and honey. The expanding African American
population was cordoned off into a small strip of South Side real estate known as the Black
Belt. Restrictive covenants, a series of racially motivated bombings, and a bloody race riot in
1919 effectively segregated the recent arrivals into an area that contained some of the citys
worst housing. Furthermore, the restriction of residential mobility, coupled with a constant influx
of new migrants, created overcrowded conditions in the limited available housing. Despite these
setbacks, the South Side community took advantage of the opportunities that their new, urban,
northern environment afforded them. As a result, black Chicagoans employed a number of
strategies to help new migrants adjust to the urban landscape, including self-help organizations.
Additionally, a spirit of economic and cultural nationalism and entrepreneurship emerged, and
became a source of community pride. Just as jazz musicians were representative of the larger
participants in the Great Migration, once settled in the South Side, they became representative of
what the community had to offer. Jazz and jazz musicians contributed to the success of the
burgeoning cabaret business in the South Side. The economic institutions that developed as a
result of the Great Migration signaled the growing political and economic clout of the South
Side.
As southern African Americans poured into the Black Belt, they increasingly occupied
vacated rooming houses and hotels hastily constructed for the Worlds Columbian Exposition in
1893. In 1915, the African American enclave on the South Side was bound between Twelfth and
4

Baldwin, Chicagos New Negroes, 14; Grossman, Land of Hope, 4. For more information on the South Side
community see the work of the preceding authors and Robin F. Bachin, Building the South Side: Urban Space and
Civic Culture in Chicago, 1890-1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 247-297.

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Thirty-ninth Streets. State Street represented the western boundary, with Lake Michigan to the
east. The expansion of the Black Belt, fueled by the Great Migration, pushed the southern
boundary to Forty-seventh Street. As blacks moved in, whites vacated much of the original
housing stock, and they moved to suburban neighborhoods outside of downtown.5
The construction of new housing in the Black Belt halted during the war years. This
period also represented the height of the Great Migration and South Side expansion. A severe
housing shortage developed and was only exacerbated by the return of soldiers at wars end.
Whites in neighboring Hyde Park and Kenwood sought to exclude African Americans from
moving into the neighborhood; residents formed the Hyde Park and Kenwood Property Owners
Association with the intention of maintaining residential racial segregation. White residents
placed restrictive covenants on properties in Hyde Park and Kenwood that ensured the properties
were not sold to African American buyers.6 The restriction of residential mobility left black
Chicago residents with some of the citys most dilapidated housing. Furthermore, restrictive
covenants allowed absentee landlords to extract the highest rents for the worst housing from the
most economically disenfranchised population, notes historian Davarian Baldwin. The South
Side faced dire housing shortages by wars end, while other parts of the city reported housing
surpluses.7
When African Americans attempted to procure housing in restricted neighborhoods, they
often met intimidation and violence. Between mid 1917 and the early part of 1921, fifty-eight
racially motivated bombings occurred in the South Side. The bombings targeted African
Americans who moved into white neighborhoods and the real estate agents, both black and

Bachin, Building the South Side, 250-251.

Ibid, 251-252.
7
Baldwin, Chicagos New Negroes, 23.
6

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white, who brokered the sales.8 Consequently, Chicago experienced extreme racial tension by the
close of the decade of the 1910s. In the summer of 1919, the tense atmosphere in the Windy City
erupted in racialized violence, concentrated in the South Side. In July, a young African American
named Eugene Williams was lounging on a raft in Lake Michigan at the black public beach.
When his raft drifted too close to the whites only beach, an angry white mob drowned him. For
a period of several days, between July 27th and the 31st, armed white youths attacked African
Americans in the streets and public spaces across the South Side. Because the Chicago Police
were either unable or unwilling to stem the bloodshed, sporadic violence punctuated the ensuing
days. By the time the Illinois National Guard finally quelled the fighting, twenty-three African
Americans and fifteen whites were dead. In addition, more than 530 residents were injured as a
result of the conflict.9 The riot also brought an abrupt end to the Chicago Defenders campaign
promoting black migration to the Windy City. The conflict exposed the problems migrants faced
in the North, and it was, therefore, increasingly difficult to portray Chicago as an ideal place to
settle. As Alan DeSantis argues, Chicago simply had become yet another place where the black
American Dream was deferred.10 This episode also stood in stark contrast to Ellingtons rosier
depiction. The end of the migration campaign did not, however, mark the end of the promotion
of Chicagos civic and economic institutions on the Stroll.
Despite the setbacks, the South Side community employed a number of strategies to help
new migrants assimilate into the northern urban landscape. One strategy was the development of
a number of self-help organizations. Just as their role was crucial in the organization of migration
clubs, African American women were heavily involved with organizing and promoting self-help

Ibid., 25.
Grossman, Land of Hope, 179; Bachin, Building the South Side, 290; Baldwin, Chicagos New Negroes, 207.
10
DeSantis, Selling the American Dream, WJC, 31 (Fall, 1998), 503.
9

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programs. Ida B. Wells, the nationally recognized anti-lynching reformer, was a major player in
this movement. Having migrated herself from Memphis due to threats on her life, Wells founded
the Negro Fellowship League in 1910. Wells organization focused its efforts helping young
African American men find housing and employment in the South Side. Wells also collaborated
with Jane Addams and Mary McDowell, of the settlement house movement, to lobby for a
number of reforms on both the national and local stage. Additionally, black women in the South
Side opened their own settlement houses to help new migrants adjust to Chicago living. Places
like the Frederick Douglass Center, the Emmanuel Settlement, Bethel AMEs Institutional
Church and Settlement, and the Phyllis Wheatley Club attempted to instill in the migrants the
middle-class values of cleanliness, thrift, hard work, and piety by creating wholesome
recreational spaces free from the snare of vice. These black settlements offered a range of
services including day care, education, domestic arts training, libraries, employment counseling,
playgrounds, and gymnasiums.
In 1913, the Wabash YMCA opened to much fanfare in the epicenter of the South Side.
Wells had long lobbied for a black YMCA because African Americans were denied access to the
citys other venues. In response, a fundraising campaign solicited donations from some of
Chicagos most prominent citizens, including Cyrus McCormick, Julius Rosenwald (of the Sears
& Roebuck Co.), and Mrs. Charles Swift. Once completed, the five-story building housed a
dormitory, swimming pool, gym, reading room, bowling alley, and a restaurant. The Wabash
YMCA sponsored both mens and womens clubs to promote wholesome recreational
opportunities. The YMCA was not without its critics, however. While some were upset that such
a source of civic pride was underwritten with significant contributions from the citys white
upper crust, many more charged the institution was elitist. In fact, Wells herself asserted that the

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cost of membership alone denied significant portions of the community from reaping any
benefits from the YMCA.11
This episode illustrates a larger divide between the values and sensibilities of a
developing old settler versus new settler schism. On one side of this dynamic, old settlers
used settlement houses and the promotion of middle-class values to lure impressionable migrants
away from the vice and illicit activities associated with the Stroll. Old settlers of the self-defined
better class sought to distinguish themselves from the sort of irreparable behavior that they
believed reinforced stereotypes of African American inferiority. New settlers, on the other hand,
often embraced the Stroll and its social byproducts as an avenue for economic advancement and
cultural nationalism, whether these opportunities were deemed respectable or not.12 Southern
migrant and bass player Milt Hinton remembered old settlers, got the better jobs, and these
people had a better chance at education. They became doctors and lawyers because people would
send them on to school. And they started what they called a National Negro Music
Association, all black musicians not jazz, this was no jazz, this was the church and the
classical kind of a thing that we had going.13 Old settlers often looked down on jazz as less than
respectable. The old settler/new settler rift also affected Chicago musicians. Orchestral musicians
often identified with old settler mores and standards of respectability, while jazz artists often

11

Bachin, Building the South Side, 260-262. For more information on the activism and reform efforts of Ida B.
Wells see: Ida B. Wells, Alfreda M. Duster, ed., Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1991); Paula J. Giddings, Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign
Against Lynching (New York: Harper and Collins, 2008); Royster, ed., Southern Horrors and Other Writings.
12
Old vs. new settler ideologies did not necessarily follow strict rubrics. For example, one may be a new migrant
but identify with the old settler mind set. On the other hand, one may have lived in Chicago for several decades but
still supported the institutions of vice in the South Side. Most often one identified with either the old or new settler
ideology based on both their income level (i.e. middle vs. working-class) and where one made that income (i.e. the
vice district vs. the pulpit). For more information on this dichotomy see: Baldwin, Chicagos New Negroes, 28-30.
13
Milt Hinton, interview transcript, November 1976, Institute for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New
Jersey.

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rejected old settler standards of acceptable music practices and adopted new settler attitudes
regarding the nighttime Stroll.
Dave Peyton, the bandleader and violin player, often praised and promoted Chicago
musicians in his weekly columns for the Chicago Defender. His thoughts on jazz, however, often
reflected old settler tastes that placed a high value on spirituals and the classics and relegated
jazz as a lesser brand of music. In 1926 he wrote, Some writers have said that jazz music is
here to stay. That may be true, but jazz music will never put to rout and oblivion the good old
songs of yesterday such as Gimme Dat Old-Time Religion, Roll, Jordan, Roll, Saved By
Grace and many others too numerous to mention that will always live to teach their great morals
to those who are to come. Peyton often used his music column to lecture musicians on what he
viewed as the proper music techniques and professional demeanor. On one occasion, Peyton
crafted a list in his weekly column of Donts for Musicians. Items on the Donts list
included, Dont use profane language on the stand, Dont hang around places of ill fame after
work hours, and Dont be untidy on the job. It is easy to keep clean. Peytons list reflected old
settler concerns that adhered to W.E.B. Duboiss notions of a talented tenth of African
American leaders who lived exemplary lifestyles that all African Americans were expected to
emulate. Peyton was also very critical of Louis Armstrongs Hot Five band that made some of
the most influential recordings in jazz history. Peyton was not initially a fan of the groups
innovations: Louis knows how to play the cornet and he plays it well, but he should let
orchestras alone. This orchestra of Louiss is way out of gear. It is noisy, corrupt, contemptible
and displeasing to the ear. Louis will learn in time to come that noise isnt music. At other

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times, Peyton offered praise for the music and jazz musicians, but he was reluctant to rate jazz
the equal of spirituals and the classics.14
Peytons criticisms of Armstrong particularly reveal his old settler sentiments. The Louis
Armstrong Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings included such notable tunes as Georgia Grind,
Heebie Jeebies, and West End Blues. In the recording studio the group pioneered new vocal
techniques, known as skat singing, and they codified the role of the jazz soloist in ensemble
performances that bands followed thereafter. The success of the Hot Five and Hot Seven
recordings launched Armstrongs career to a national stage. Peytons old settler tastes were not
interested in innovation, as much as following the standard rules of the western canon.15
The dynamic of restricted African American residential mobility ironically concentrated
economic entrepreneurial talent and artistic achievement in the South Side. Consequently, both
old and new settlers lived in close proximity to one another and the Stroll. This relationship
created two interdependent incarnations of the South Side entertainment district: the daytime
Stroll and the nighttime Stroll. Both versions featured institutions of economic and cultural
nationalism that reflected an entrepreneurial spirit and communal pride. The daytime and
nighttime Stroll represented the previously ignored buying power of the African American
consumer.

14

Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (May 8, 1926), 6; For Peytons Donts list see: Dave
Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (June 11, 1927), 6; For more on W.E.B. DuBois concept of the
Talented Tenth see: W.E.B. DuBois, The Talented Tenth, in The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by
Representative American Negroes of Today (New York: James Pott & Company, 1903), 31-76; For Peytons
criticisms of Armstrong see: Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (March 19, 1927), 6; Peyton
could be critical of jazz and praise jazz in the same article. For an example of this dynamic see: Dave Peyton, The
Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (March 10, 1928) 6. Peytons attitudes reflected an old settler elitism that
viewed jazz as a lower brand of music than spirituals and the classics. For more on Peytons elitism see: Baldwin,
Chicagos New Negroes, 138; Peretti, Creation of Jazz, 70.
15
For more information on the influence of the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings see: Gene H. Anderson, The
Original Hot Five Recordings of Louis Armstrong (New York: Pendragon Press, 2007).

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The real estate and banking empire of South Side entrepreneur Jesse Binga was a
significant element of the economic nationalism of the daytime Stroll. Binga, one of the most
prominent old settlers, first arrived in Chicago in 1893. By 1908, he had acquired enough real
estate to become the largest black broker in the city. Simultaneously his connections in the
business allowed him to become the leading bank owner in the South Side. Due to discriminatory
practices of white businesses, Bingas financial institutions helped new and old settlers gain both
an economic and residential foothold in the South Side. Furthermore, the banks profits stayed in
the community. Bingas real estate developments helped fuel the geographic expansion of the
Black Belt, and his empire grew at such a pace that he was the target of several racially
motivated bombings.16 In light of the less than desirable reputation the Stroll garnered in
Chicago, a 1912 Defender article sought to paint the strip in a good light by extolling the virtues
of South Side entrepreneurs. Not the least in contributing to this Great Light Way is the
shoemaker, the expressman, the restaurateur and other dealers in the necessity of life who lend
their money to make their part of State Street not only business producing but a part of the socalled life destroyer. So away with the State Street bugaboo, away with the odium against 31st
and State Streets. Let the light of intelligence come in, let the natural spirit of making merry have
full vent, and life will run smoother.17 Other successful business enterprises associated with the
daytime Stroll included Oscar Micheauxs film company, Andrew Rube Fosters Chicago
American Giants baseball franchise of the Negro National League, Madam C.J. Walkers black
beauty products empire, and Robert S. Abbotts Defender.18 The wide array of business ventures

16

Bachin, Building the South Side, 252-254.

J. Hockley Smiley, State Street The Great White Way, Chicago Defender (May 11, 1912), 8.
18
Baldwin, Chicagos New Negroes, 141-154, 209-217, 53-90; Grossman, Land of Hope, 74-81.
17

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attests to the ability and creativity of Chicagos black entrepreneurs that made the South Side
such a vibrant community.
The Defenders coverage of the nighttime Stroll was one example of the dichotomy that
both affirmed and challenged middle-class values. Many old settlers denounced the activities of
ill repute associated with the Stroll and its main artery along State Street. The Defender echoed
these sentiments when it stated that, Nightly crowds of men and half-grown boys sit in
unsightly positions in front of the [pool hall] or line up along the curb and walls Vulgarity of
the worst is freely used as peaceful women wend their way past the low dives No section of
South State Street is exempt.19 Earlier in the same month, however, the paper reported, If the
Afro-American would take advantage of their present opportunity they could make this street the
greatest mart in the world There is an opening along State Street for every legitimate line of
business. Follow the crowd. The crowd is going south. Go south with it.20 J. Hockley Smiley, in
another Defender article, entitled State Street The Great White Way declared that, The
Rialto for progressive pleasure seekers on the South Side not as bad as painted reputable
business men and women make up this wonderful thoroughfare.21 Smileys assessment speaks
to the new settler attitude that viewed the licit and illicit activities of the nighttime Stroll as a
legitimate avenue for economic mobility.
In fact, the line between respectable business establishments and vice was long blurred in
the South Side. In 1911, the Chicago Vice Commission rezoned the citys vice district, from its
close proximity to downtown businesses near The Loop, to the Black Belt. This development

19

Chicago Defender (May 23, 1914) quoted in Bachin, Building the South Side, 281.
State Street; Its Pains, Pleasures and Possibilities, Chicago Defender (May 2, 1914), 7.
21
J. Hockley Smiley, State Street The Great White Way, Chicago Defender (May 11, 1912), 8. For more
information on nighttime activities in urban America and reform efforts associated with these activities in this period
see: Peter C. Baldwin, In the Watches of the Night: Life in the Nocturnal City, 1820-1930 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2012).
20

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meant that activities of business and leisure, both legal and illegal, occurred in one common
residential and commercial area.22 Furthermore, African Americans were routinely denied access
to mainstream lending institutions and traditional upwardly mobile employment. Consequently,
many legitimate South Side businesses were underwritten by vice related enterprises.23 The
burgeoning cabaret business in the South Side was one of many examples of this relationship. In
part, the revenue from illegal gambling funded some of the Strolls most famous black owned
clubs, where jazz was played, like the Pekin Theater, The Elite No. 1, The Elite No. 2, the
Deluxe, and the Dreamland Cafe. African American owned cabarets, known as black and tans,
served as highly lucrative institutions of economic and cultural nationalism. The cabarets
of the South Side employed not only jazz musicians, but also scores of cooks, bartenders,
waiters, waitresses, doormen, and managers. To new settler sensibilities, these businesses were a
source of cultural pride.24
South Side cabarets were very popular, especially for new settlers, and the events staged
at these establishments were regularly advertised in the Defender. In August 1924 the Grand
Theater at 3110 South State Street staged Big Syncopation Week featuring Robinsons Ten
Syncopators and other Big-Time Acts An All-Star Bill. The event was so popular the theater
staged two nightly performances with three shows on Saturday and Sunday. When the Savoy
Ballroom opened on the corner of South Parkway Boulevard and 47th Street in 1927, Charles
Elgars band played the inaugural ball. The Defender declared, When the new million dollar
Savoy Ballroom opens next Wednesday evening there will be men and women from all walks of
22

Baldwin, Chicagos New Negroes, 26.

Ibid., 45-47. Jesse Bingas banking empire, for example, was partially solidified by his marriage to Eudora
Johnson in 1912. Eudora was the sister of longtime South Side illegal gambling magnate, John Mushmouth
Johnson. When Johnson died, Eudora received sixty percent of his fortune. Those assets were transferred to Bingas
bank after their famed wedding, thus ensuring its economic stability. For more information on this relationship see:
Bachin, Building the South Side, 271-273.
24
Kenney, Chicago Jazz, 10, 18.
23

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life there to make merry until the wee hours of the morning. Dance lovers will be given thrills
galore when they hear them [Charles Elgars Band]. The Savoy is really a combination of a
theater and ballroom, for there will be a regular program nightly of vaudeville and special
features. In addition to advertising engagements at South Side cabarets, the Defender also
frequently advertised the sale of records cut by South Side musicians who played on the Stroll.
When King Olivers Jazz Band recorded their first songs for Okeh Records the Defender was
elated: For years King Olivers Band has served up jazz to thousands, yes many thousands, at
Lincoln Gardens, Chicagos dazzling cabaret. But, man alive, cant those boys play it, say it in
true blues harmony. Why, they are the ones who put jazz on the map. In another advertisement
from the same newspaper edition, the Defender declared, Erskine Tate, well known as the
leader of Tates Vendome Orchestra, from Chicagos finest theater, has also become an Okeh
record star. Drummer Charles Walton remembered that the South Side community
affectionately referred to the neighborhood as Bronzeville. Walton explained, Chicagos
South Side became the center of black entertainment in America. Night clubs, theaters, and
lounges multiplied especially in the black community there was live music everywhere in
Bronzeville.25 Clearly, new settlers were proud of the cultural milieu of the South Side, as
evidenced by Walton and the glowing coverage the Defender delivered of cabarets and the
recordings by the musicians of the Stroll. Because the activities of the nighttime Stroll, the
entertainment strip provided a variety of employment options for the community. Consequently,
the line between licit and illicit activity was thin.
Former heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Johnson, opened his Caf de Champion in

25

Advertisement, Chicago Defender (August 16, 1924), 7; Elgars Band Set For Savoy Inaugural Ball, Chicago
Defender (November 19, 1927), 5; Advertisement, Chicago Defender (August 18, 1923), 7; Chicago Orchestras
Make Okeh Records, Chicago Defender (August 18, 1923), 11; Charles Walton, Bronzeville Conversations, Box
1 Folder 2, Charles Walton Papers, Vivian Harsch Collection, Carter G. Woodson Branch, Chicago Public Library.

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1912, to huge fanfare. His cabaret, at 41 West 31st Street, featured a grand ballroom where jazz
musicians, singers, and dancers practiced their crafts. Johnson intended his club to be a venue for
respectable entertainment catering to both blacks and whites in the South Side. However, when
federal investigators visited the club seeking to find evidence of wrongdoing to undermine
Johnsons credibility, they found prostitutes working as waitresses at the Caf de Champion. The
boxers high profile relations with white women made him a coveted target of federal scrutiny.
Despite Johnsons statements that he in no way profited from any illicit behavior, and that they
were only employed as part of the wait staff, he was arrested in violation of the Mann Act.
Johnson eventually fled the country and his cabaret closed as a result. This episode attests to the
blurred line between vice and respectability, and the difficulty of creating separate spheres in
such close spatial proximity.26
In spite of the disillusionment African Americans faced following migration, South Side
residents employed a number of strategies to adapt to the urban landscape, including self help
organizations and institutions of economic and cultural nationalism. Just as jazz musicians
shared certain motivating characteristics with fellow migrants, once they arrived in Chicago, they
helped support institutions of economic and cultural nationalism like other new settlers. These
institutions became a source of community pride, and they signaled the growing economic clout
of the South Side. Residents of the Black Belt, and jazz musicians in particular, were also adept
at channeling economic clout into collective opportunities for racial uplift.
After the Union Showed Its Strength Thats What Did It
In 1928 Chicagos black musicians union, Local 208 of the American Federation of
Musicians (AFM), launched a public relations campaign against theater owners in the Windy

26

Bachin, Building the South Side, 269-270.

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City. That summer a number of owners had installed new sound systems that replaced theatre
orchestras with recorded music. The AFM and Local 208 applied public pressure on them to
reverse the trend. In Chicago, the battle centered on the larger theaters on the South Side that
replaced large orchestras with canned music. The Defender proclaimed, The Musicians union
has urged upon the theaters in our district to install orchestras Sept. 5. The public deserves this
consideration for the money they pay to go into the theaters. In a series of Defender columns
from July to September in the, Dave Peyton (a staunch union man) appealed to South Side
residents to stand with Local 208: Conditions are bad in the theaters, many of them have
dispensed with their orchestras and it is the intention of the union to appraise the public of the
true facts in the case and the unfairness certain theatrical promoters are heaping on the
community musicians. The South Side theaters have always had fine orchestras in them and the
proprietors have always recognized the fact that music was their chief asset and that it was what
the public wanted. The public is the judge. It is now in their hands. In another column Peyton
railed against a group that owned four of the largest theaters in the South Side. He declared,
This syndicate controls four theaters in the district and they are patronized mostly by members
of our Race, probably 99 percent. But the boys feel that an injustice has been heaped upon
them and they are ready to go down fighting for a principle. They want orchestras in the theaters
patronized by their own people and they are satisfied that public support will be given them in
their fight for art perpetuation. By late October Peyton wondered how long new sound
technology in movie theaters like the Vitaphone would last: Fads never last long and this is just
what the Vitaphone is, a modern fad nothing can be invented which will substitute for the
musicians and when it is all over, we are going to have larger orchestras in the theaters.27 While
27

Chicago Theatrical News, Chicago Defender (August 25, 1928), 6; Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch,
(September 1, 1928), 6; Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, (September 22, 1928), 6. Peyton was an orchestra

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Peyton and the union tried to convince the public that they were being sold an inferior product
with the use of canned music, employment for musicians, and therefore the political and
economic clout of Local 208, was really at stake in the Vitaphone fight.
Thanks to pressure from Local 208 and the national AFM, Chicago musicians succeeded
in gaining concessions form large theater owners: The large theatrical interests in Chicago and
elsewhere see this point and have not disturbed their orchestras and in many instances they have
increased them to large proportions, giving the public the benefit of the augmented entertainment
and at the same admission price. Orchestras have been dispensed with only in the smaller houses,
but this class of theaters will have their troubles in time.28 Unfortunately for orchestral
musicians who played in movie theaters, sound systems like the Vitaphone were not a fad; Local
208s victory over the large theater owners was short-lived.29
Bandleader and long time Local 208 Officer, William Everett Samuels, remembered the
fight between the local union and South Side theater owners over the use of canned music.
Samuels remembered with pride that, They tried to come up with a number of gimmicks back
then to put the musicians in their place. They brought jukeboxes into the theaters [vitaphones],
but we [the union] stopped that. It never did get off the ground. See, we could stop people then.
He was also involved in a strike of the Vendome Theater in 1932 because the owner refused to
sign a contract with Local 208. Samuels recalled, We had a quick small strike and he fell in
leader who played in South Side theaters, and he was an ardent supporter of Local 208. In July Peyton wrote his first
column decrying the use of canned music, and he informed his readers by moves from the national AFM against
the practice. For a closer reading of these articles see: Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, (July 21, 1928), 6; Dave
Peyton, The Musical Bunch, (August 18, 1928), 6; Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, (October 27, 1928), 6.
28
Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, (October 27, 1928), 6.
29
Local 208s stand against the Vitaphone renewed once again in 1936. In that year the American Federation of
Musicians called a general strike of theater musicians in Locals across the country to protest the installation of
Vitaphones in large movie theaters from coast to coast. The strike proved ineffective, but it highlighted the dual
nature of professional musicians as both workers and artists. For more information on the general AFM strike of
1936, and its impact on theater musicians see: Robin D. G. Kelley, Without a Song: New York Musicians Strike
Out against Technology, in Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labors Last
Century (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), 119- 156.

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line. After the union showed its strength thats what did it. It also helped membership. Local
208 was also well versed in getting their message out, as the columns of Dave Peyton attest.
Since the activities of the union were advertised in the Chicago Defender, There was no
problem in getting the Black musicians to see the need for the union. We didnt have that
problem. They wanted to join. They knew what the problems were, according to Samuels.30 The
organizing activities of Local 208 were one of many political strategies African American
musicians employed in the Windy City.
The political expression of jazz artists most often centered on African American owned
cabarets and the black musicians union. Consequently, the mobilizing and organizing activities
of musicians serve as a benchmark of their political acumen. In addition, the cabarets served as
incubators for social change, and they afforded musicians opportunities to intermingle with other
races in a manner previously impossible. This dynamic impacted American culture at large.
Compared to the repression of overt political activism in the South, Chicago afforded jazz artists
a variety of avenues for political expression. South Side musicians took advantage of these
opportunities and carved out political domains that catered to the aspirations and needs of the
jazz community.
Jazz musicians helped convert the emerging economic clout of the South Side into
political capital. In 1915 the Second Ward elected Oscar DePriest to represent the South Side and
serve as Chicagos first black Alderman. After a political scandal involving DePreist supporters
threatened the viability of the aldermans reelection campaign, Major Robert R. Jackson defeated
DePreist in the Republican primary in 1918. Jackson, who garnered the nickname Fighting
Bob because of his readiness to battle for the Race, was a member of Local 208 (though it is
30

Donald Spivey Interview with William Everett Samuels in Donald Spivey ed., Union and the Black Musician:
The Narrative of William Everett Samuels and Chicago Local 208 (New York: University Press of America, 1984),
38, 53, 119.

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unclear what instrument he played or how often he worked as a professional musician), and he
received the unanimous endorsement of the union. Local 208 members also pledged in the
motion to endorse Jackson to, not only do their duty toward Major Jackson by voting for him,
but that they get out, get busy and try to secure the word of their neighbor that he or she would
do the same. He also garnered the endorsement of the Chicago Defender. In its coverage of the
Jackson primary victory the newspaper declared, It would have been a sorry plight to see the
man [DePriest] nominated by the Race for a seat in the city government to be suddenly brought
to trial and more rot and filth thrashed out in the daily papers, not one of whom endorsed him.
That fall Louis B. Anderson and Major Robert R. Jackson became the second and third African
Americans elected to Chicagos City Council from the Black Belt. The newly emerged visibility
and influence of African Americans in City Hall meant increased attention to the black vote by
white politicians. Because of the overwhelming support of South Side residents, three-term
Mayor, William Hale Big Bill Thompson made several black political appointments.
Thompson also provided political protection for the South Side cabarets closely associated with
illicit activities.31 In November 1928 Oscar DePriest narrowly defeated Henry Baker, the white
Democratic candidate, to represent the First Illinois Congressional District in the United States
House of Representatives. With his inauguration in 1929, thanks to the political power of the

31

Kenney, Chicago Jazz, 5, 9-10, 28-29. Cabaret owners Tennan Jones and Robert T. Motts funneled money into
the political campaigns of South Side politicians. Both Jones and Motts built their fortunes, in part, on illegal
gambling enterprises. Jones was indicted for conspiracy in 1917. In the ensuing investigation Jones admitted to
providing money to both Oscar DePriest and Police Captain Stephen K. Healy. The prosecution viewed these
contributions as political hush money to ensure the police did not raid Joness club. Jones claimed his
contributions to DePriest were strictly campaign contributions. DePriest was eventually acquitted of charges related
to the investigation. Coverage of Jacksons endorsement by Local 208 can be found in, Mrs. Blanch Smith Walton,
Maj. Jackson Indorsed, Chicago Defender (February 9, 1918), 6; Coverage of Jacksons defeat of DePreist and the
meaning behind the nickname Fighting Bob can be found in, Jackson Wins Over DePriest, Chicago Defender
(March 2, 1918), 1.

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South Side electorate, DePriest served as the first African American in Congress outside of the
South, and the first since the collapse of Reconstruction.32
While the union was busy endorsing black candidates for local office, black cabaret
owners helped to channel the political power of the South Side electorate. The owners of some of
the most prominent cabarets in the South Side were themselves black Republican Party
organizers who, according to historian William Howland Kenney, used the musicians, their
music, and popular entertainers to attract and to focus the attention of potential black voters.
Robert T. Motts, the prominent black politician, for example, paid his Pekin Inn customers of the
to register voters in the Second Ward. Furthermore, jazz musicians were often the featured
entertainment at ceremonial political events for local and national politicians, both black and
white. In 1919, when Mayor Thompson landed the Republican National Convention in the
Windy City, the black owned Royal Gardens hosted some of the entertainment for visiting
delegates.33 Musicians often provided entertainment at political events. Chicago Defender
columnist Maude Roberts George helped recruit musicians to play events in the election year of
1924: During the political campaign there is a demand for musicians for the programs and it is
to be hoped that the chairmen of the large meetings will include some of our foremost musicians
in these opportunities where there is compensation. There is great opportunity for interracial
contrast and impressions at these affairs.34 Political events connected musicians with Chicagos
political machine, provided employment, and showcased their talent to an interracial clientele.
Jazz musicians and cabaret owners were also involved in other mobilizing efforts. Motts
offered the Pekin Inn at 2700 South State Street, shortly after conducting extensive renovations,
32

Election of DePriest in Doubt, Chicago Defender (November 10, 1928), 1; Bulletin, Chicago Defender
(November 10, 1928), 1; DePriest Stirs U.S. Senate by Visit, Chicago Defender (March 9, 1929), 1; Chicagoan is
Sworn in as Makers of Laws Assemble, Chicago Defender (April 20, 1929), 1.
33
Kenney, Chicago Jazz, 5-6, 29.
34
Maude Roberts George, News of the Music World, Chicago Defender (March 22, 1924), 8.

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to Ida B. Wells to hold a fundraiser for the Frederick Douglass Center.35 In July 1926, Chicago
was the home for the seventh annual convention of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People. The Plantation Caf at 338 East 35th Street provided a hall for
delegates, and Joe Olivers Orchestra provided entertainment. Dave Peytons band also played
for NAACP delegates. In June 1927, the South Side hosted a victory ball at the Eighth Regiment
Armory for Chicagos Republican Party. Alderman Louie B. Anderson was honored at the
reception along with party organizer Daniel Jackson because, Under the guidance of these
gentlemen the Second Ward swung solid for the present administration. Every cabaret in the
district was dark on that night and they all sent their floor shows and orchestras to do honor to
the occasion. Dave Peytons orchestra from the Caf De Paris played the victory ball along with
jazz bands led by Sammy Stewart from the Dreamland Caf, Erskine Tate from the Vendome,
and Louis Armstrong from the Sunset Caf. The show stopping performance came from
Armstrongs band: The Sunset show and orchestra followed with a thunderous show, speed and
plenty of it. They danced, they black bottomed, they strutted and did everything else to make
merry. Musicians also joined political organizations like the Urban League and the NAACP. In
1928 Dave Peyton promoted the work of the Urban League in his column and encouraged fellow
musicians to join: The Chicago musicians are joining the Urban League. It is wonderful that the
musicians see the point. They are not only helping themselves, but at the same time doing good
for others. A.L. Foster, executive secretary, is having no trouble lining up the musicians. The
organization has functioned well for many years. It has done much good and will continue. It is
going to help the musician to break down the barrier of prejudice that is arrayed against them.
In 1930 the Board of Directors of Local 208 passed a resolution favoring and endorsing the

35

Bachin, Building the South Side, 273.

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practices and activities of the NAACP, and they encouraged members of Local 208 to join the
civil rights organization. From 1928 to 1944 Chicago musicians worked in collaboration with the
Defender, the Urban League, the NAACP, and the white owners of the Regal Theater staged
several concerts to benefit South Side charitable organizations.36
In 1924, black policemen in the South Side formed a street band, not unlike the street
bands of pre-migration New Orleans. The Chicago Defender explained that, This band was
organized as a protest to the treatment afforded our policemen who were refused admission to
the white band under the regime of the former chief. Oscar DePriest lobbied Chief Morgan A.
Collins for the consent to form a separate band, and the officers paid tribute to DePriest with a
banquet in his honor in January of that year. The work of the police band attests to the ability of
South Side musicians to utilize political connections to their benefit.37 Whether joining the Urban
League, providing services for the NAACP, or playing for South Side political functions,
Chicago musicians took advantage of the opportunity to express political sentiment in public
arenas that were simply not available in the South.
In addition to mobilizing efforts, jazz musicians were involved in a number of organizing
activities in the South Side. Education was a fundamental organizing activity. The musical
training of jazz musicians followed two distinctive and often complimentary trajectories. The
first of these was formal education in music conservatories and local high schools. Some
musicians arrived in Chicago having already been trained at Black Colleges. For example, Louis

36

Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (July 3, 1926), 6; Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch,
Chicago Defender (June 19, 1926), 6; Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (June 18, 1927), 6;
Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (July 14, 1928), 6; Minutes of the Board of Directors
Meetings for Local 208 of the AFM (November 20, 1930), American Federation of Musicians File, Harold
Washington Library Center, Chicago Public Library; Clovis E. Semmes, Charitable Collaborations in Bronzeville,
1928-1944: The Chicago Defender and the Regal Theater, Journal of Urban History (November 2011) Vol. 37 No.
6, 975- 991.
37
Members of Chicago Police Band, Chicago Defender (January 12, 1924), 4.

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Armstrongs second wife, pianist Lil Hardin, was educated at Fisk University where she majored
in music and graduated Valedictorian. Others received training after arriving in Chicago.
Bandleader Charles Cooke earned his PhD in music from the Chicago College of Music. In
addition, the National University of Music in the South Side specialized in the training of
aspiring black musicians. Another important source of training in the South Side were the music
programs at both Wendell Phillips and DuSable High Schools. Headed by one time Tuskegee
Institute Music Director, Major N. Clark Smith, the program at Wendell Phillips produced such
noted jazz greats as Milt Hinton and Lionel Hampton. Captain Walter Dyett ran DuSables
program. Trombonist, Morris Ellis recalled that, Cap taught us in fact he prepared us to be
ready to go out into the professional music world. When the guys left DuSable, they were
ready to go out into the world and play professionally, and I dont mean just still learn.38 The
other avenue for music education was informal apprenticeships. Louis Armstrong owed his start
in professional music to Joe Oliver. The cornetist taught Armstrong both the latest techniques
and how to succeed in the business. Some musicians complimented their formal education with
apprentice studies. Armstrong asserted that Lil Hardin expanded her range by learning from,
Joe Oliver, Freddie Keppard, Sugar Johnny, Lawrence Dewey, Tany Johnson, in fact all of the
pioneers from New Orleans. Lil, in turn, helped mentor Armstrong by sharing elements of her
formal training.39
Hardin was a central figure in the early career of Armstrong in Chicago. While Joe Oliver
served as Armstrong musical mentor in New Orleans and his first days in Chicago, Hardin

38

Kenney, Chicago Jazz, 52; Louis Armstrong in, The Armstrong Story, in Brothers, ed., Louis Armstrong In His
Own Words (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 50; Chicago Defender (August 9, 1924), 2; Timuel D.
Black Jr. Interview with Morris Ellis in, Timuel D. Black Jr. ed., Bridges of Memory: Chicagos First Wave of Black
Migration (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2003), 178.
39
Armstrong, The Armstrong Story, in Brothers, ed., Armstrong in His Own Words, 50, 53; Collier, Louis
Armstrong, 113.

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pushed Armstrong in new directions that elevated his career to stardom. Armstrong and Hardin
became intimate while members of Olivers band. They married in 1924, and Hardin challenged
Armstrong to seek new opportunities apart from Oliver. Hardin knew Oliver was intentionally
holding Armstrong back on the bandstand. Armstrong remembered, Joe Oliver. He said [to
Hardin], As long as little Louis is with me, he cant hurt me. Right away Lil thought Oh God.
Right away Lil got behind me when she told me this, and said With a thought like that in
King Olivers mind, as much as you idolize him, daddy, you must leave him, immediately,
because King Oliver, and his ego and wounded vanities may hurt, and may hurt your pride Its
all indications that King Oliver is trying to hold you back. It proved all indications that the
woman was in my corner. Hardin knew Armstrong was talented enough to make a name for
himself in jazz:
At first when he was working with King Oliver he wanted to play as King. The idea
came to me that as long as he was with Joe he would never bring himself out. I said to
Louis, Now look. We married now. See I dont want you playing second trumpet. You
got to play first you will have to quit Joe and find you a job playing first. You cant
be married to Joe and married to me too. Ollie Powers hired him and they took the
band in the Dreamland. And he had to be first because he was the only trumpet player
they had. Thats when Louis started to playing and showing what he had in himself.
Because as long as he was with King Oliver, he was second to Joe and trying to play
Joes solos and which he couldnt play because it wasnt his style at all.
Due to Hardins advice, Armstrongs reputation in Ollie Powers band spread across the country.
He soon received an offer to join Fletcher Hendersons band in New York City. When Hardin
learned her husband received second billing in Hendersons band, she lined up a new group in
Chicago and booked an engagement at the Dreamland Theater: I had him [the booking agent at
the Dreamland] make a sign that said Louis Armstrong: The Worlds Greatest Trumpet Player.
I wrote Louis and said Give Fletcher your two weeks notice because I have a job for you for $75
a week. Louis didnt want to leave because he kind of liked playing with Fletcher. Louis

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wasnt anxious to be a star you know, he just enjoyed playing. And he thought I was crazy all
that name stuff putting his name out. He thought I was just silly.40 Thanks to Hardins advice
and encouragement, Armstrongs career took off. Within a year of leaving Olivers band he was
fronting his own group with top billing. The group, Louis Armstrongs Hot Five (and later Hot
Seven) cut some of jazzs most influential records in Chicago. Though Armstrong remained
grateful for Olivers early assistance, Lil Hardins promotional talents and prodding launched
Armstrongs celebrity to new heights.
Louis Armstrong was not the only jazz artist to receive advice, encouragement and
assistance from fellow musicians. The grass-roots network that facilitated the jazz migration
continued to work on behalf of musicians in the North based on a foundation of mutual
cooperation.41 Multi-instrumentalist, George Dixon remembered receiving tutelage, advice, and
encouragement form bandleaders Dave Peyton and Erskine Tate. Ikey Robinson, a banjo player
from Virginia, recalled a jazz promoter named Stomp King who helped a number of
musicians. Stomp King not only fed and housed musicians, but he also helped them find work:
He had a list that was calling him for jobs, you know. He would call you up today and be
working tonight. Not all musicians found full time employment as musicians. Natty Dominique,
for instance, supplemented his income working in a cigar factory, and Paul Barbarin worked in
Chicagos stockyards. Other musicians worked grueling schedules to avoid another line of work.
At times it was necessary to begin the work day playing in a theater pit orchestra for a matinee
40

Louis Armstrong, Armstrong Tapes, CD 426, Disc 1, Track 6, Louis Armstrong Collection, Louis Armstrong
House Museum Archives, Queens College, New York; Lil Hardin Armstrong, Armstrong Tapes, CD 563, Track 1112, Louis Armstrong Collection, Louis Armstrong House Museum Archives, Queens College, New York.
41
The grass-roots network used by musicians in Chicago was similar to the network employed by musicians who
journeyed north. Charles M. Payne has pointed out that grass-roots organizing consisted of more than helping others
find employment or education. Often, efforts that provide food and shelter are overlooked. For more information on
Paynes analysis see: Payne, Ive Got the Light of Freedom, 276. Below, the definition of grass-roots networks takes
into account this deficiency. I define organizing activities as those efforts that improve the lives of the musicians
community. These activities not only include economic and educational considerations, but also activities that feed
and shelter fellow musicians.

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show, followed by an evening shift in a restaurant or dance hall, before finishing the night in an
after-hours club that stayed open until after dawn. Given these difficulties, the musicians
network proved as important in the North as it had in enabling individuals to leave the South.42
Grass-roots musicians networks not only aided with housing, meals, education, and
employment, they also helped pay the bills. A staple of this network was the Rent Party. Just
like fish fries and lawn parties, northern rent parties employed musicians and provided spaces for
urban sociability. In Chicago, due to limited space, the music was limited to one piano player or
a small combo. The brand of jazz played at rent parties was considered a lower grade than that
played in dance halls due to the lack of instrumentation and refined arrangements. Despite this
perception, rent parties remained popular among Chicagos black working class, and due to their
charisma and promotional skills, a select group of women ran the most successful parties. Danny
Barker remembered that one successful businesswoman was very popular because she supplied
great entertainment, good whiskey, and excellent food. Chicago jazz artists were involved in
many more undertakings than formal political activism. Musicians were also building a jazz
community in the South Side that looked out for the interests of its members outside of party
offices, political rallies, community mobilizing meetings, and the union hall. The rent parties and
the grass roots network of musicians exemplifies the community building efforts of jazz artists in
the South Side.43

42

George Dixon, interview transcript, August 15, 1990, Chicago Jazz Archive, University of Chicago, Chicago;
Ikey Robinson, interview transcript, July 25, 1988, Chicago Jazz Archive, University of Chicago, Chicago; Natty
Dominique, interview transcript, October 24, 1981, Chicago Jazz Archive, University of Chicago, Chicago; Paul
Barbarin, interview digest, December 23, 1959, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans.
43
Kenney, Chicago Jazz, 13-14; Danny Barker, interview transcript, May 30, 1980, Institute for Jazz Studies,
Rutgers University Newark, Newark, New Jersey. Chicago musicians were involved not just in political activities,
but also in building a jazz community in the South Side that looked out for the interests of its members. Often labor
histories are institutional in nature and lack the sense of community beyond the walls of the union hall. For
examples of labor histories that focus on community building see: Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial
Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); David Montgomery, Fall of the

145

Jazz musicians also organized collectively in the black Chicago musicians union. Local
208 of the American Federation of Musicians was formed in 1902 because Chicagos Local 10
refused to admit African American members. Though membership increased only incrementally
in its first few years, the countrys first black local managed to survive by meeting in pool halls
and barbershops. By the end of World War I, at the height of Black Belt expansion, the local
purchased a three-story building on South State Street to serve as the unions offices and meeting
place. Local 208 soon exerted enough clout to force club owners to accept wage scales for
member musicians. Between 1918 and 1929, the locals membership more than doubled from
three hundred to over six hundred. The union fell on hard times during the Great Depression, but
it still managed to increase its membership to over nine hundred by 1939. The rolls of dues
paying members read as a veritable whos who of early jazz innovators, including Erskine Tate,
Joe Oliver, and Louis Armstrong. Local 208 and Local 10 remained racially segregated until the
two merged in 1966. The merger did not go over well with Chicagos black musicians. Drummer
Floyd Campbell remembered, We did not benefit, in my opinion, by merging. But it was a thing
to do. We had our treasure, our secretary, our clubroom and everything. We gave all that up
when we merged. We owned a building over on Drexel and all of that went into the white union.
We dont have the work we had when we had the colored union.44 Unfortunately, the

House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925 (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1989).
44
Clark Halker, A History of Local 208 and the Struggle for Racial Equality in the American Federation of
Musicians, Black Music Research Journal, (Autumn, 1998), no. 8, 211-212; Floyd Campbell. interview transcript,
Box 3, Folder 1, Charles Walton Papers, Vivian Harsch Collection, Carter G. Woodson Branch, Chicago Public
Library. The issue of merging the two Chicago locals was very contentious and debate continued for several years
before the merger took full effect. The Presidents Annual Report of Local 208 in the fall of 1963 discusses in detail
the concerns of members and what union officials hoped to gain from the merger. A copy of the Presidents Annual
Report can be found at: Box 4, Folder 33, Charles Walton Papers, Vivian Harsch Collection, Carter G. Woodson
Branch, Chicago Public Library. Charles Walton also interviewed a number of musicians involved in the merger.
The accounts collected by Walton are revealing of a cross section of musicians. The interviews can be found at: Box
4, Folder 1, Charles Walton Papers, Vivian Harsch Collection, Carter G. Woodson Branch, Chicago Public Library.

146

integration of the two locals eventually destroyed the black power base that Local 208 fought so
long to create.
In the 1920s and 1930s, however, the union was adept at protecting the interests of its
members and its economic turf. George Dixon recounts a story where shortly after arriving in
Chicago, and knowing nothing of union activity, he and some band members were physically
removed from a gig when they failed to produce union cards to a rather large representative of
208. Local 208 members were also involved in the public relations campaign against theater
owners over the issue of replacing musicians with Vitaphones in 1928. The dispute over the use
of Vitaphones was not the first fight with local theater owners. In a separate incident in 1926,
Local 208 took part in a national strike of musicians against theater owners. The national AFM
demanded theaters employ a minimum of four musicians for season long engagements. Theater
owners initially balked at the AFMs request. In mid September the AFM responded with a
nationwide strike. After four days a settlement was reached. Members of Local 208 walked
picket lines in Chicago. Dave Peyton asserted that, The only way to get what you want is to go
after it. In our immediate district things are not just what they should be. Greater vigilance
should be exerted in regards to working conditions. Gradually the present administration of
Local 208 is washing away many evils brought about politically by preceding administrations.
In 1932 Local 208 staged the strike of the Vendome Theater that William Everett Samuels
described previously.45

45

George Dixon, interview transcript, August 15, 1990, Chicago Jazz Archive, University of Chicago, Chicago;
Samuels, in Spivey ed., Union and the Black Musician, 38, 53; Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago
Defender (September 11, 1926), 6; Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (September 18, 1926), 6.
For more information on other segregated locals and the policy regarding race of the national AFM see: Jacob C.
Goldberg, Swinging the Color Line: African American Musicians and the Formation of Local 802, 1886-1946,
M.A. thesis, Amherst College, 2008; Stephen Laifer, Merged Locals are Windows on Changing Times,
International Musician (March 2003); Leta E. Miller, Racial Segregation and the San Francisco Musicians Union,
1923-60, Journal of the Society for American Music, (2007), Vol. 1 No. 2, 161-206.

147

The majority of the locals activism centered on employment issues. The union helped
members secure jobs, draw up contracts with prospective employers, enforce contracts, and set
wage scales for members. Unfortunately, a fire destroyed the majority of Local 208s files dating
to 1930. However, contract enforcement and wage scale issues dominate the remaining records
from the early 1930s. When club owners violated contracts or failed to pay the appropriate wage
scale, they were placed on an unfair list by the union. Once on the unfair list, club owners had
trouble securing musicians to fill their nightly lineup. Conversely, musicians who played in
establishments on the unfair list faced stiff fines and possible expulsion. William Everett
Samuels recalled, Contracts and wage scale is the big thing. You have to have a contract. We
would watch over our people. Club owners who violated signed contracts were the subject of
Local 208s Trial Board. Samuels explained, Then, of course, if they lost the case, if the
company lost, their name was placed on the national defaulters list, and then no member of the
American Federation of Musicians could render service to this employer. So that was effective
alright These tactics served as primary weapons through which Local 208 sought to guard the
economic interests of its members.46
Chicagos black musicians union also worked to protect its territory in the city in disputes
with the white local. The relationship between Local 208 and Local 10 was often contentious.
Increasingly the tension arose from complaints over jurisdiction. Dave Peyton explained that,
The charter granted Local 208 gives it the right to extend its activities anywhere in Cook
County. If our contractors secure engagements out of the Race districts, the white local pulls all
sorts of tricks to get the brother out. It is always some sort of technicality that they base their
46

Samuels, in Spivey ed., Union and the Black Musician, vii, 56; Charles Walton, Bronzeville Conversations,
Box 4 Folder 1, Charles Walton Papers, Vivian Harsch Collection, Carter G. Woodson Branch, Chicago Public
Library. The remaining records of Local 208 can be found at: American Federation of Musicians File, Harold
Washington Library Center, Chicago Public Library. The collection houses minutes of Local 208s Trial Board from
1928- 1965 and the Minutes of the Board of Directors beginning in 1930.

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argument on. William Everett Samuels remembered jurisdiction disputes between Local 208
and Local 10; long time Local 10 President James C. Petrillo spearheaded efforts to keep African
American musicians from playing jobs downtown: Well, here on the South Side back then
we couldnt go downtown because it was segregated downtown. Paul Ashe wanted to hire Louis
Armstrong while he was at the Roosevelt Theater and Petrillo wouldnt let Louis he wouldnt
let Louis play there. The same thing with Eddie South. He had a job over on Rush Street. They
wanted him; they wouldnt let him so he didnt work over there. The issue of jurisdiction
grew in intensity in the fall of 1926 that by the spring of 1927, the dispute was presented to the
national AFM for a proposed resolution. Peyton declared, If square justice is meted out by the
high tribunal, the Race local will be victorious. If the answer is adverse to the Race local, well, it
might as well pack up and go for itself. Fortunately, square justice was meted out for Local 208.
Peyton boasted at the end of 1927 that, In Chicago Local 208 operates under its own charter,
has its own officers, and has the same sovereign power in the jurisdiction as the white locals. The
jurisdiction of Local 208 is the entire Cook County.47
Just a year and a half after the jurisdiction disputes in Chicago, President William Green
of the American Federation of Labor (the AFL was affiliated with the AFM) addressed delegates
from the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. He called on all workers affiliated with the AFL
to unite for the good of all members. In his plea fro unity, Green declared, I can mention some
of the organizations affiliated with the American Federation of Labor that admit colored workers
freely, heartily and cordially into membership. The great union of which I am a member and of
which I have been a member the greater part of my life has ever admitted, from the beginning,

47

Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (September 18, 1926), 6; Samuels, in Spivey ed., Union
and the Black Musician, 39-40; Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (April 2, 1927), 8; Dave
Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (December 3, 1927), 8.

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the colored workers. I refer to the United Mine Workers of America Motion Picture Players
Union, American Federation of Musicians, American Federation of Teachers accept colored
workers into membership. Green further revealed, I was very proud only a few days ago when
I was privileged to listen to the most charming rendition of music by a colored orchestra. All of
them were artists and I was proud to look upon them and see the great artistic progress which
they had made. They rendered music that touched me deeply and charmed me. But I was more
proud when I was told that every one of them was a member of my great organization, the
American Federation of Labor.48 Despite Greens rosy assessment of race relations within the
AFL, Local 10s effort to bar black musicians from the higher paying jobs downtown reveals that
Chicagos musician workers were not united.
In addition to its efforts to protect the economic turf of black musicians, Local 208 also
pulled collective resources to raise money and awareness for its activities. Beginning in 1923 the
local held an annual ball with the proceeds going to the unions daily operations and the locals
Building Improvement Plan. That year Local 208 staged the gala at the Eighth Regiment
Armory in the South Side. The evenings entertainment featured Joe Olivers band from the
Royal Gardens and Erskine Tates group from the Vendome Theater. By 1926 the event outgrew the Eighth Regiment Armory and moved to the Chicago Coliseum on the corner of 15th St.
and Wabash Ave. on the near South Side. Dave Peyton declared, This is the biggest thing that
has happened in the history of the local. Just think of it! Fifteen bands will play for the expected
20,000 who will be present on the night of June 12. These bands are all topnotchers, such as
Elgars, Stewarts, Olivers, Peytons, Cookes and many others of equal prominence. By 1928
the union raised enough money from the annual event that they bought a new building at the

48

Workers Must Unite for Good of All, Says Wm. Green, Chicago Defender (July 27, 1929), 1, 3.

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corner of 51st Street and South Michigan Avenue, that once was the mansion of Chicago White
Sox owner Charles Comiskey.49
While Local 208 remained an advocate for jazz musicians throughout the 1910s, 1920s,
and 1930s, it should also be noted that some musicians were critical of what they saw as elitism
on the part of the local regarding proficiency standards to obtain a union card that were based on
the unions perception of what constituted acceptable music. William Everett Samuels
remembered that, If you cant read music they just ignore you and dont give you any work.
On another occasion Samuels recalled, You had to play; you had to be able to play, to read. If
you didnt you just got you a job as a porter or something and got by the best way you could.
They [the non-readers] would work, but they would work in second-class places. Weve always
had cheaper places like taverns we called em toilets. There were also internal politics in
Local 208 that dictated who got the best and worst jobs. James Mack remembered, I had seen a
pattern of behavior and conduct which didnt give young musicians, coming up, a chance to
make money unless they played a certain kind of game with the officials. I can distinctly
remember, you could call Local 208 asking for some information on a given musician, or how to
get in touch with him or his group and be told, Oh you dont want him, Ive got somebody else
to offer you.50 Given the fact that many jazz musicians learned the craft through informal
apprenticeships, union proficiency tests often relegated talented artists to second-class
establishments like the ones Samuels described. It is ironic that the artists who hewed the most

49

Chicago Defender (May 19, 1923), 4; Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (June 12, 1926), 6;
Chicago Opens Doors to Music Festival, Chicago Defender (June 12, 1926), A5; Dave Peyton, The Musical
Bunch, Chicago Defender (September 1, 1928), 6; Chicago Theatrical News, Chicago Defender (September 8,
1928), 6.
50
Samuels, in Spivey ed., Union and the Black Musician, 95, 37; James Mack interview, Box 4, Folder 1, Charles
Walton Papers, Vivian Harsch Collection, Carter G. Woodson Branch, Chicago Public Library.

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innovative brand of music in the 1920s and 1930s did not receive just recognition from an
organization dedicated to protecting the interests of Chicagos black musicians.
The camaraderie of the informal musicians network and Local 208 coalesced into a form
of emerging race consciousness in that certain black musicians, like Charles Elgar, felt a sense
of responsibility to help fellow African American musicians in need. This emerging
consciousness was also evidenced by the fact that Joe Oliver, Dave Peyton, and other Chicago
musicians began playing events for civil rights groups like the NAACP in the 1920s. Peyton, the
Chicago Defender music journalist, often promoted the accomplishments of black musicians as
both artists and community activists with an air of racial pride in his weekly columns, All
factions are functioning 100 percent for a progressive future. When it comes to music and
musicians Chicago leads.51 Musicians also engaged in consciousness-raising through their art.52
Take for example the lyrics to the 1926 song The Bridwell Blues by Nolan Welsh and Louis
Armstrong:53
I was standin on the corner
Did not mean no harm
I was standin on the corner, mama
Did not mean no harm
When a policeman grabbed me by my arm
And the prosecutor questioned me partner
The clerk he wrote it down
The prosecutor questioned me partner
The clerk he wrote it down
He told me Ill give you one chance Nolan, but you will not leave this town
51

Danny Barker, interview transcript, April 1980, Institute for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University Newark, Newark,
New Jersey; Dave Peyton, The Musical Bunch, Chicago Defender (July 3, 1926), 6.
52
Here I am borrowing the analytical framework for studying the consciousness raising effects of blues lyrics as
articulated by Angela Davis. For a more detailed explanation of this method see: Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies
and Black Feminism, xi-xiv, 54-57.
53
Nolan Welsh with Louis Armstrong, The Bridwell Blues, (Welsh, Nolan; Jones, Richard) [master 9727-A]
Okeh Records 8372 (June 16, 1926) Chicago, Illinois. This song title can be found today in Louis Armstrong,
Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, Sony Records, 1994. Many thanks to Will Buckingham from Tulane
Universitys School of Music for bringing this song to my attention, providing me an MP3 file of the tune, and a
transcription of the music and lyrics.

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And Ive got too many problems

Bent down on my knees
And Ive got too many problems
Bent down on my knees
Go on kill me jailer, jailer kill me please
And they sent me to the stone quarry
Im standin in the door
They sent me to the stone quarry
Im standin in the door
Its just that way people, you know Ive been here before
Welsh and Armstrongs song about the harsh conditions at Chicagos Bridwell prison and the
overt lack of equity for blacks in the American legal system reminded jazz and blues listeners of
the injustices faced in their own lives. In that vein, the call and response between the artist and
listener served as a rhetorical call for further action in combating repression during the age of the
New Negro. Welsh and Armstrong also utilized their talent and position of influence as strength
to publicize issues of unequal justice in Chicago and raise awareness within the community to
combat these problems.
Its How You Sound
The mobilizing and organizing activities of jazz musicians challenges a common
perception that early jazz innovators were apolitical. In fact, these activities illustrate the wide
variety of political arenas jazz musicians participated in, and they attest to the political acumen
of the jazz community in Chicago. Though the political activities of jazz musicians were not a
panacea for discrimination and segregation in Chicago, jazz helped facilitate cultural integration
in the South Side. The interracial black and tan clubs actively courted white patrons, and quite
often their dance floors were the only socially acceptable locales for blacks and whites to
interact. Consequently, South Side black and tans acted as incubators for limited social change as
white gawkers and admirers flocked to see the latest innovations in dance and music. After the

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clubs closed at night or in the early hours of the morning, jazz musicians, both black and white,
often congregated and exchanged ideas. This interaction represented the first time Chicago jazz
musicians interacted on personal levels, and the interaction fostered the development of the
Chicago Style of jazz.
Black and tan clubs pursued varying policies with respect to the segregation of their
customers. Some smaller black-owned cabarets admitted white customers but largely served the
local African American community. Some of the largest South Side black and tans were
specifically designed for interracial clientele, while a few white owned clubs in the Black Belt
employed black musicians but catered to white customers. Some clubs maintained strict
segregation in seating arrangements and others simply ignored such social conventions. The
degree of integration or segregation was left to the individual whim of the club owner, and these
whims changed from week to week and from one establishment to the next.54
Often, once the ritzier uptown clubs associated with white jazz closed for the evening,
their customers flocked to South Side cabarets to experience authentic African American
music and dancing. Clubs like the Dreamland, Sunset, and Royal Gardens specialized in
presenting unprecedented spectacles of interracial contacts in social dancing, according to
historian William Howland Kenney. The taboo-breaking atmosphere of black and tans
constituted the citys only leisure spaces to experiment with both racial and sexual boundaries.
Certainly, not every white customer was an altruistic reformer. Many whites viewed an evening
at a black and tan as a form of intra-city tourism, where they could experience a night of what
they believed to be primitive entertainment. However, the art jazz musicians created on a
nightly basis was anything but primitive. In fact, it was the cutting edge of artistic innovation. In

54

Kenney, Chicago Jazz, 17.

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the Progressive Era, however, venues that hosted interracial entertainment were increasingly
concentrated in black neighborhoods and considered immoral by elitist reformers, and often
these establishments were the focus of anti-vice campaigns. Such establishments were generally
tolerated so long as the venue adhered to a strict racial double standard regarding its clientele.
This meant that interracial dancing was tolerated if a white man danced with a black woman, but
not vice versa. Therefore, based on the racial fears of the period, external forces governed the
level of interracial mingling in black and tans.55
Many white musicians, including the famous Austin High Gang, ignored racial norms
altogether and sought advice and camaraderie of famous black musicians working in the South
Side. As a result, black and white musicians interacted not just in cabarets but after hours as well.
Trumpeter, Wild Bill Davison made friends with Louis Armstrong, Zutty Singleton, and Earl
Hines. Davison recalled a story where he invited Armstrong to an after hours party where
Armstrong was the only African American in attendance. Armstrong, feeling uncomfortable,
refused to leave the kitchen, so finally Davison and his friends moved the party to the kitchen.
Davison remembered that once he was known to be acquaintances with Armstrong there was
nowhere in the South Side he was not welcome: Here comes Louiss friend. You know what I
mean? I never even had anybody make any fancy remarks my way. I can thank those guys for
a lot of things I did in town. Davison also alluded to the fact that whites and blacks in South
Side cabarets did not always receive equal treatment. But he did concede that white people
received the best treatment because the clubs stood more to gain from the white influx of cash.56
Bassist, Milt Hinton also recounted interacting with white musicians:
55

Kenney, Chicago Jazz, 24; Bachin, Building the South Side, 279-280; Kevin J. Mumford, Interzones: Black/White
Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press,
1997), 20, 26-27, 30-32.
56
Burton W. Peretti, Jazz in American Culture (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1997), 58; Wild Bill Davison interview
transcript, September 10, 1981, Chicago Jazz Archive, University of Chicago, Chicago.

155

Well the rule said that we could not play together but it had nothing to do with our
respect for each other as musicians. So after hours, when the clubs would close the
musicians, black and white, would get together. We would trade choruses, and we
would get some of the academics from the white musicians, and theyd get some of the
creativity from the black musicians. Wed have this big jam session going on. This is
why Chicago was the basis for really putting this together, because we found out that
music was in all our hearts. We didnt care what color you were, or where you came
from, its how you sound.57
The interracial camaraderie of Hinton and his white friends and Louis Armstrong and Bill
Davison were motivated by artistic, not political concerns. Indeed, few white musicians from the
early period of Chicago jazz became civil rights advocates. However, such associations, and the
musicians that courted them, signaled the emergence of the biracial swing era a generation
later.58
While jazz musicians were not zealous reformers seeking to tear down all barriers of
injustice, jazz retained some power to affect limited social change before, during, and after the
Great Migration. In an era when the dominant portrayal of African Americans in pop culture was
that of the minstrel show, the emergence of national black celebrities leading jazz bands was
groundbreaking. Though his celebrity was only just being recognized by white America in 1929,
Louis Armstrongs status as the best musician in the country was not something the black
community took lightly. To residents of the South Side in particular, he was a hero, and at a time
when there were no nationally recognized black celebrities, Armstrongs influence was
tremendous. In the 1930s Armstrongs fame steadily increased in white America. Audiences,
both black and white, respected Armstrong for his talents across the country. In 1931, Charlie
Black, a white college student from Texas, saw Armstrong for the first time. He was the first
genius I had ever seen, Black recalled. It is impossible to overstate the significance of a

57
58

Milt Hinton in Ken Burns, Jazz (PBS Home Video, 2000).

Peretti, Jazz in American Culture, 58.

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sixteen-year-old southern boy seeing genius, for the first time, in a black. Charlie Black went on
to become a distinguished professor of constitutional law, and he volunteered his services in the
case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka to end segregation in American public
schools.59 As Blacks account testifies, Louis Armstrongs national influence as a positive black
celebrity of unmatched talent helped transform the attitudes of white America. While elitist
critics of jazz believed the new music violated traditional American tastes and sensibilities, the
unsurpassed talents of the musicians themselves slowly gained wider recognition and praise. The
appreciation of black genius moving beyond just the admiration for talent was something
altogether new in American society.60
The influx of at least 250,000 African Americans to Chicago in the 1910s, 1920s, and
1930s was the result of many factors. The explosion of population in Chicagos South Side
created unprecedented opportunities for economic and cultural nationalism. Jazz musicians were
representative of these nationalist activities. Not only were they respected by many in the
community, the clubs they were employed in were sources of racial pride in the Black Belt. The
South Side, and jazz musicians in particular, became adept at channeling their economic
resources into political clout, as a result. They engaged in a number of mobilizing and organizing
activities that attest to their political acumen. Jazz musicians not only helped South Side
politicians get elected, they also improved their own condition through educational opportunities
and union organizing. They utilized grass-roots networks to procure employment, housing, food,
and pay the rent. These efforts fostered the collective economic and social uplift of the jazz
community in Chicago.

59

Collier, Louis Armstrong, 199-200; Charlie Black quoted in Ward and Burns, Jazz, 2.
For a more complete analysis of jazz genius see: Farah Jasmine Griffin, If You Cant Be Free, Be a Mystery (New
York: The Free Press, 2001), 15-16.
60

157

Many white musicians and bar patrons, no matter how altruistic their feelings, admired
the innovations of black musicians. Consequently, the black and tans of Chicagos South Side
acted as counterweights to the increasing grasp of Jim Crow across American society. These
venues represented the only leisure spaces where white and black customers could test the
boundaries of racial and sexual mores in each city. Jazz musicians themselves, both black and
white, often took advantage of this dynamic and developed camaraderie where they shared
advice and musical knowledge to further their individual careers.
Due to the confluence of individuals, personalities, and styles in Chicago the foundation
for a new musical art form were laid. At the forefront of these innovations stood Louis
Armstrong. His contributions to jazz music paved the way not only for the Swing Era of the
1930s and 1940s, but it also marked the beginning of the national black celebrity. Without the
cultural and political forces set loose by the Great Migration, it is difficult to see a figure like
Louis Armstrong rising to such prominence and jazz music becoming a national phenomenon on
such an unprecedented scale. Chicago Jazz, then, was the cultural byproduct of a decades long
struggle for economic, social, political, and artistic freedom that was introduced to the world by
the Great Migration.

158

Chapter 5:
An Attempt to Make the American Dream Work, If It Were Going To:
New York, the Harlem Renaissance, and Jazz
In 1963 the poet Amiri Baraka published a seminal study of African American musical
culture. In Blues People he asserts that the blues and jazz reveal parts of the collective African
American psyche. According to Baraka, because African cultural traditions were passed down
orally, jazz and the blues reflected an African worldview and transmitted the history of a culture
based on the oral record. African Americans assimilated into American culture, but it was not a
complete process. The blues and jazz adapted new languages, instruments, and music structures
but these art forms continued to express a uniquely African outlook. Complex rhythms, call and
response, rough vocal techniques, and improvisation were all fundamental African cultural
elements that remained strong components in both jazz and blues.
Baraka believes that as the music evolved its new forms reflected changes in African
American culture at large. The emergence of jazz out of the blues tradition and song structure,
for example, marked the beginning of the urban experience for African Americans. As African
Americans moved north during the First Great Migration, the music reflected the shifting of the
collective black psyche as the new music was faster paced, more complex, and increasingly
dissonant. All the while, the blues and jazz retained essential African elements that reflected the
collective aspirations and experiences of African Americans in the western hemisphere: What
seems to me most important about these mass migrations was the fact that they must have
represented a still further change within the Negro as far as his relationship with America is
concerned. It can be called a psychological realignment, an attempt to reassess the worth of the
black man within the society as a whole, an attempt to make the American dream work, if it were
going to. While African Americans were attempting to reassess the worth of the black man

159

within the society, members of the black middle class had their own ideas about how to best
implement racial acceptance. Baraka contends that the middle class leaders of the Harlem
Renaissance were too concerned with white approval and struggled for racial acceptance dictated
on white terms. Baraka asserts that, The rising middle class-spawned intelligentsia invented the
term New Negro and the idea of the Negro Renaissance to convey to the white world that there
had been a change of tactics as to how to climb onto the bandwagon of mainstream American
life.1 Members of the black intelligentsia worked within the confines of the artistic traditions of
Europe. Jazz musicians, on the other hand, chose a different path; they consciously crafted an
artistic vision rooted in African musical traditions, but applied to a modern, urban world-view.
While middle class African Americans of the literary component of the Harlem Renaissance
largely emulated established artistic traditions, jazz musicians were busy forging new music
styles and techniques that launched the New Negro of jazz onto the world stage.
Certainly, the New Negro aesthetic as an ethos encompassed an array of activities that
included politic activism and cultural production, but it was not limited to these endeavors.
Furthermore, it was not defined solely by what happened in the limited geographic space on the
northern corner of Manhattan Island, as is evidenced by the work of musicians from New
Orleans to Kansas City, to Chicago and beyond. Over emphasizing the role of Harlem jazz in the
cultural flourishing of the New Negro movement is nothing new. This misconception emerges
not from cultural critics of a later generation, but from contemporary admirers and practitioners
of the Harlem arts scene. For example, in 1930 James Weldon Johnson wrote of the centrality of
Harlem to the jazz craze enthralling the nation in the 1920s and 1930s saying that, New Yorkers
and people visiting New York from the world over go to the night-clubs of Harlem and dance to
1

Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Blues People: Negro Music in White America (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood
Press, 1963), 95-96, 134.

160

such jazz music as can be heard nowhere else; and they get an exhilaration impossible to
duplicate.2 Certainly Harlem was a crucial center for the early development of jazz, but
Johnsons assessment is overstated. By 1930 Harlem was emerging as one of the nations jazz
capitals, but it was not unrivaled or wholly unique in that regard. By casting a wider net on the
political and artistic achievements of the period, the political engagement and cultural
contributions of jazz musicians broadens our understanding of New Negro activism so closely
associated with the visual and literary artists of the Harlem Renaissance. All too often, the
accomplishments of the musicians of the period are relegated to a supporting role in the cultural
and political activism of the New Negro movement. Consequently, jazz is consigned to the mere
soundtrack of the Harlem Renaissance, leaving the impression that as Alain Locke, James
Weldon Johnson, and J. A. Rogers discussed critical theories of racial integration in Harlem
cabarets, the greatest contributions jazz musicians made was in providing background music to
the conversation. Jazz artists were very much part of the debate, and their music and activism
spoke volumes. Jazz musicians carved out cultural spaces for racial interaction that traversed Jim
Crow boundaries, and they challenged American cultural ideals through their art.
This is the Place Ive Wanted to be All My Life
While still a teenager, the trumpet player Cootie Williams left his home in Mobile,
Alabama to try his hand in the music business. The aspiring musician was staying with a friend
of his fathers in Jacksonville, Florida when a group of white men shot Williams host to death
on his front porch, because he beat them in a game of poker. After the murder Williams made his
way to Miami where he found work in a successful band. The all-black orchestra was so popular
that a local radio station located on Miami Beach contracted them to play on the air, despite

James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930), 160.

161

whites only Jim Crow restrictions on South Beach. During one radio performance in 1928, the
group caught the attention of the owner of the Rosemont Ballroom in Brooklyn who sent for the
band to play a two-week engagement in the Big Apple. The orchestra made its way to Savannah,
Georgia before boarding a boat for Manhattan Harbor. Williams recalled, I didnt care how I
got to New York. I didnt care how I got there. I was coming.3 Williams had no intention of
spending any more time in the South than he had to.
After the Rosemont Ballroom engagement was over, the band prepared to return to the
Sunshine State. Williams had other plans; I said, Not me. This is the place Ive wanted to be
all my life. Im not thinking about going back to no Florida. Though Williams was making a
comfortable living as a musician in Florida, and though he had no jobs lined up in New York
beyond the initial run at the Rosemont, he was determined to make a better life for himself in the
Big Apple no matter what the odds. When the young trumpeter found work with Chick Webb in
Harlem, he made far less than he was making in Florida. But that did not seem to matter much to
the new Gotham resident; income was only one consideration.4 Williams story echoes those of
other migrant musicians who left their southern homes for a variety of reasons. Though the
experiences of migrant jazz musicians in Chicago and New York were often very different, there
are a number of similarities. It was the migration experience that informed subsequent activism
and introduced Harlem to the New Negro of jazz a New Negro whose dedication to combating
repression mirrored the dedication to ones instrument.
Unlike Chicago, which attracted migrants primarily from the Mississippi Valley region,
New Yorks migrant community was comprised of mainly southern transplants from the Atlantic

Cootie Williams, interview transcript, May, 1976, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New
Jersey.
4
Ibid.

162

seaboard and the Caribbean.5 As James Weldon Johnson noted in Black Manhattan, Harlem had
not always been the center of the black community in New York City; around the turn of the
twentieth century its largest African American community was located on West Fifty-third
Street. Because of residential segregation in Manhattan that afforded African Americans little
choice in where they could reside within the city, the community was overcrowded, and new
housing was in great demand.6 In 1904, black real estate magnate Philip A. Payton formed the
Afro-American Realty Company, and the company worked to open properties in Harlem for
African American home-owners and tenants. Harlem offered relatively affordable housing for
would-be African American property owners and landlords. Paytons company engaged in overspeculation by purchasing more properties than was financially feasible. Due to these problems
the Afro-American Realty Company folded in 1908. White realtors and investors assumed
control of Paytons former properties, but the African American tenants who recently moved to
Harlem remained in the community. By 1914 50,000 African Americans lived in Harlem. Part of
the increase was the result of shady real estate practices. Some landlords opened their properties
to African American tenants, but due to restrictive residential mobility, they charged black
renters the highest rates for properties that were poorly maintained. Others used the threat of
selling homes to African American buyers to scare neighbors into selling their properties at
below market rates. Once properties were purchased at below market rates, real estate
speculators either rented or sold the same properties at above market rates to prospective African
American buyers or tenants. The result was the rapid transition of the neighborhood from largely
white to largely black. At the same time, whites in Harlem formed community organizations to

Johnson, Black Manhattan, 151-153.

Gilbert Osofskys work on Harlem remains a critical work on residential segregation in New York City. For more
information on the mechanisms that dictated a lack of residential mobility for black New Yorkers see: Gilbert
Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).
6

163

halt the expansion of black enclaves. In 1913 John G. Taylor of the Harlem Property Owners
Improvement Corporation declared, We are approaching a crisis. It is the question of whether
the white man will rule Harlem or the Negro. Once a critical mass of the black community
moved into the neighborhood, white resistance was met with an organized front of African
American real estate, business, and residential interests. By 1930, when the torrent of the Great
Migration slowed to a trickle, Harlems black population stood at nearly 165,000, which
amounted to an increase of 115,00 in fifteen years. The black community in Harlem represented
72% of Manhattans African American population.7
Like Chicago, Harlem residents developed an entrepreneurial nature and channeled the
spirit of the Great Migration into political activism. James Weldon Johnson wrote in Black
Manhattan, At the beginning of the year 1917 Negro Harlem was well along the road of
development and prosperity. The community was beginning to feel conscious of its growing
size and strength. It had entirely rid itself of the sense of apology for its existence. It was
beginning to take pride in itself as Harlem, a Negro community. In the years since the turn of
the twentieth century, Harlems population exploded and the community began to exercise its
political strength. In 1900, however, the picture was much different. In that year, a bloody race
riot consumed New York City, and African Americans were indiscriminately attacked in the
streets over the course of three days. But the riot of 1900 woke Negro New York and stirred the
old fighting spirit, noted James Weldon Johnson. In the immediate aftermath, black New
Yorkers led by religious, business, and community leaders formed the Citizens Protection
League to demand police officers be prosecuted for their role in aiding and abetting rioters and
for actively participating in the violence. As a result of the political mobilization of the

Johnson, Black Manhattan, 145-155; Osofsky, Harlem, 92, 96, 102-105, 107, 130.

164

community, new groups formed to unlock the political potential of black New York. In 1905 a
group of black activists headed by W.E.B. Dubois met in Buffalo New York. Out of that
meeting, the Niagara Movement formed to combat racial oppression in America. In 1910
members of the Niagara Movement along with black and white liberals formed the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People with offices in New York City. In that same
year, black and white reformers founded the National League on Urban Conditions Among
Negroes (later the organization adopted the name the National Urban League) to provide social
services for African Americans living in urban centers. Like the NAACP, the national
headquarters of the Urban League were also in New York City.8 The NAACP and the Urban
League provided a means for interracial cooperation to solve problems of racial inequality and
segregation in America. Those organizations were also decidedly middle class in composition.
In the late 1910s a new organization formed that attracted the attention and allegiance of
the black working class in Harlem. Inspired by the work of Booker T. Washington, Marcus
Garvey organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in his native Jamaica
in 1914 intent on the uniting and blending of all negroes into one strong, healthy race.9 In 1917
Garvey moved to Harlem and moved the headquarters of the UNIA to the neighborhood in 1918.
The UNIA was widely popular among the black working class in Harlem, because of Garveys
calls for economic nationalism and pride in a shared African cultural heritage. The UNIA stood
for complete racial separation in the United States and for the founding of a black republic in
Africa. Garvey was a Pan-Africanist who called for all peoples of African descent to unite and
immigrate back to the land of their forefathers: We are striking homeward toward Africa to
make her the big black republic. And in the making of Africa the big black republic, what is the
8

Johnson, Black Manhattan, 126-129, 134-135, 141-143, 231.

Marcus Garvey, What We Believe, (January 1, 1924) in Arnesen, ed., Black Protest and the Great Migration,
108; Johnson, Black Manhattan, 252-254.
9

165

barrier? The barrier is the white man; and we say to the white man who dominates Africa that it
is to his interest to clear out now, because we are coming 400,000,000 strong and we mean to
retake every square inch of the 12,000,000 square miles of African territory belonging to us by
right Divine.10
After procuring close to $200,000 from UNIA members and admirers, in 1919 Garvey
established the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation with the purpose of using the steamship
line to affect the mass emigration of all peoples of African descent back to Africa. In 1921 the
Black Star Line was in financial trouble and collapsed by the end of the year. All the while,
Garvey and the UNIA frightened middle class black leaders in Harlem, but he retained a large
following of loyal supporters. But in June 1922, he made an error that cost him the support of his
followers when he attended a secret meeting with leaders from the Ku Klux Klan and pledged his
support for racial separation. Certainly, the two groups had no interest in racial integration, but
sitting down with the KKK was treasonous in the eyes of many black Harlemites. Shortly
thereafter, the NAACPs magazine, The Messenger, published an account of the meeting and
they soon launched a Garvey Must Go campaign to publicize his misdeeds. In early 1923
Garvey was arrested on federal charges of mail fraud. In February 1925 he entered a federal
penitentiary and was deported back to Jamaica in 1927.11 Regardless of Garveys mistakes, the
feud between the Garvey and the leaders of the NAACP speaks to the sort of class divisions
between old and new settlers so apparent in Chicago. The drummer Sonny Greer remembered,

10

Marcus Garvey quoted in, Johnson, Black Manhattan, 254.

Johnson, Black Manhattan, 255-259; David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (New York: Penguin
Books, 1997), 35-45 (originally published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1979). For more information on Marcus Garvey
and the UNIA see: Tony Martin, Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and
the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Dover, Massachusetts: The Majority Press, 1976); Tony Martin,
Marcus Garvey: Hero A First Biography (Dover, Massachusetts: The Majority Press, 1983); Stanley Nelson,
Marcus Garvey: Look For Me in the Whirlwind, American Experience (PBS Home Video, 2001),
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/index.html.
11

166

the better class of colored we call them the dicties, thats what, all over in New York the
doctors wives, the doctors, and all. Pullman porter was a celebrity because he roamed all over
the country with his pockets full. Pullman porter he was much more than us. We was down here
and them cats was up there. And they wouldnt fail to let you know it.12 Class divisions within
the black community remained a fact of life in Harlem, just as in Chicago.
The dynamic of restricted African American residential mobility during and after the
Great Migration centered political activism in Harlem and, ironically, concentrated artistic
achievement and innovation in the neighborhood. The concentration of business leaders, political
figures, activists, literary luminaries, and artistic talent in the community culminated in what
cultural critics and historians have since dubbed the Harlem Renaissance. Nathan Irvin
Hugginss Harlem Renaissance (1971) illuminates the myriad personalities that called Harlem
home in the 1920s and 30s, including W.E.B. DuBois, Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, and
James Weldon Johnson. David Levering Lewiss When Harlem Was in Vogue (1979) details the
literary component of the Harlem Renaissance and the personalities that promoted the work of
black artists. Together, Lewis and Huggins clearly demonstrate the connection between politics
and artistic expression as embodied in the Harlem Renaissance. Both men argue that the goals of
the New Negro movement that sought to harness black art as a means of affecting social change
was a failure.13 Failure, however, is in the eye of the beholder, as neither author devoted

12

Sonny Greer, interview transcript, January 1979, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New
Jersey.
13
For Hugginss assessment on the success or failure of the Harlem Renaissance see: Nathan Irvin Huggins, Harlem
Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 7-12. Huggins also argues that the black elite relegated
jazz to a supporting role in the Renaissance saying, Harlem intellectuals promoted Negro art, but one thing is very
curious, except for Langston Hughes, none of them took jazz the new music seriously. Anyway, the
promoters of the Harlem Renaissance were so fixed on a vision of high culture that they did not look very hard or
well at jazz. Huggins argues that by overlooking jazz, black intellectuals of the period overlooked a promising
avenue of New Negro expression. However, he does not explore, in depth, the effect jazz and jazz musicians had on
American society through their activism. For Lewiss take on the movement see: Lewis, When Harlem Was in
Vogue, xxi-xxiv (originally published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1979). Jon Michael Spencer refutes the interpretation

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considerable attention to the effect jazz had on American culture. In fact, jazz fostered social
interaction across racial boundaries, and in this respect, it embodied the goals of the New Negro
movement that utilized black cultural production to affect social change.
Certainly jazz stood at the forefront of innovative forms of black cultural expression in
the 1920s and 1930s. Yet opinions vary widely as to the extent jazz played in the Harlem
Renaissance, both then and now. When Alain Locke announced that a new day dawned for
African Americans with the 1925 volume The New Negro, he included little coverage on jazz
and the blues. J. A. Rogerss essay Jazz At Home was the lone exception, but his take on jazz
reflected an elitism that associated the new music with vice, immorality, and primitivism.
Rogerss final assessment of jazz advocated reforming rather than eradicating jazz; It has come
to stay, and they are wise, who instead of protesting against it, try to lift and divert it into nobler
channels.14 Lockes own essay on black folk music focused entirely on the spirituals, which he
dubbed the most characteristic product of the race genius as yet in America.15 At the height of
the Jazz Age, it is striking that Locke overlooked the genius of jazz musicians or popular music
in general.
In 1936, Locke published a follow-up volume that sought to widen the lens of black
cultural achievement in music. The Negro and His Music, while discussing jazz and the blues in
greater detail than The New Negro, retained a qualified view of jazz and jazz musicians. Lockes
taste for music excellence was rooted in European standards that placed high value on the
that the Harlem Renaissance was a failure. Spencer cites innovations in music and the effect black vocalists and
composers like Roland Hayes, Harry T. Burleigh, and William Grant Still had on American culture to dispute the
claims of Huggins and Lewis. For a more detailed discussion of his critique see: Jon Michael Spencer, The New
Negroes and Their Music: The Success of the Harlem Renaissance (Knoxville, Tennessee: The University of
Tennessee Press, 1997).
14
J. A. Rogers, Jazz at Home in Alain Locke ed., The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (New York:
Albert & Charles Boni, 1925), 224. See also Arnold Rampersads critique of Locke and Rogers on pages xix-xx in
the 1992 edition of The New Negro published by Simon and Schuster.
15
Alain Locke, The Negro Spirituals in Alain Locke ed., The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance
(New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1925), 199.

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classics, thus his analysis is more akin to the proverbial comparison between apples and oranges.
For example, Locke is complimentary of Louis Armstrong, but his praise is tempered by
claiming that the trumpeters music appealed to a racier taste.16 Contrast that with his analysis
of Duke Ellington, whose refined manner and middle class upbringing more closely fit Lockes
mold for the New Negro. He declared that singular praise of Ellington becomes something quite
different when echoed here and there independently by the most competent European and
American critics and composers. Duke Ellington is the pioneer of super-jazz and one of the
persons most likely to create the classical jazz toward which so many are striving.17 By basing
his assessment of jazz on European aesthetics, Locke failed to judge jazz on its own merits.
The elitism expressed by Rogers, Locke, and other figures of the Harlem Renaissance
was not lost on jazz musicians. The saxophone player, bandleader, and composer Benny Carter
believed jazz was not entirely accepted by the literary and artistic community as an art form in its
own right during the Harlem Renaissance: I wasnt, I feel, involved in it. I think the people
that were involved in the Renaissance; I think jazz was looked down upon. I think they felt it
lacked dignity. Though Carter and his fellow musicians were well aware of the burgeoning
artistic and political achievements of the New Negro movement, they were given little respect
for their own contributions: We in music knew there was much going on in literature, for
example, but our worlds were far apart. We sensed that the black cultural as well as moral
leaders looked down on our music as undignified. According to Carter, the lone exception to the
lack of respect for jazz and jazz artists by the literary component of the Harlem Renaissance was
Langston Hughes. Carter called Hughes, the poet laureate of the Renaissance, and a man who

16
17

Alain Locke, The Negro and His Music (New York: The Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1936), 98.
Ibid., 99.

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had much respect for an understanding of this music.18 Hughes wrote glowingly about jazz,
adopted blues phrasing in a series of poems in the 1920s, and made a conscious effort to create
Afro-centric art.
In fact, Hughes and the Harlem jazz piano impresario, James P. Johnson, once
collaborated on an operetta called De Organizer. In a letter to Johnson discussing the project,
Hughes wrote, I am happy to have your letter and would, of course, be glad to work with you on
an opera libretto sometime in the future. In late February or early March I will be in New York
and we can get together and talk about it. I have long known and admired your work, and once
met you some years ago. When we meet, Id like very much to hear the ideas you have in
mind. I think we could work out something really Negro, modern, and interesting.19 Hughes
knew well the challenges African Americans faced creating art in a white world. In June1926
George Schuyler wrote an essay in The Nation, and he was dismissive of a segment of the
Harlem Renaissance for attempting to create Afro-centric art based on folk influences, rather
than on established artistic standards he viewed as high art. Writing in The Nation, Hughes
responded,
One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, I want to be a
poetnot a Negro poet, meaning, I believe, I want to write like a white poet; meaning
subconsciously, I would like to be a white poet; meaning behind that, I would like to
be white. And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid
of being himself. And I doubted then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his
race, this boy would ever be a great poet. But this is the mountain standing in the way of
any true Negro art in Americathis urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to
pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little
Negro and as much American as possible.

18

Benny Carter, interview transcript, October 13, 1976, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New
Jersey. Benny Carter, liner notes for Benny Carter: Harlem Renaissance, Music Masters Jazz Label, 1992.
19
Letter from Langston Hughes, January 24, 1937, James P. Johnson Collection, Scrapbook 3, Scan 024, Institute
of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey.

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In concluding the essay Hughes proclaimed, Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and the
bellowing voice of Bessie Smith singing the Blues penetrate the closed ears of the colored near
intellectuals until they listen and perhaps understand. We younger Negro artists who create
now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people
are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. We build
our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free
within ourselves.20 In the following weeks, the debate continued in the pages of The Nation. In
the July 14th issue Shuyler wrote, Negro propaganda-art, even when glorifying the
primitiveness of the American Negro masses, is hardly more than a protest against a feeling of
inferiority, and such a psychology seldom produces art. The following month, Hughes replied,
But until America has completely absorbed the Negro and until segregation and racial selfconsciousness have entirely disappeared, the true work of art from the Negro artist is bound, if it
have any color and distinctiveness at all, to reflect his racial background and his racial
environment.21
Hughess assessment of the black middle class intelligentsia who looked down on art
based on African cultural influences echoes the critique of Amiri Baraka. Hughes and the jazz
artists transforming American music in the 1920s were not as concerned with white artistic
standards as they were with musical and literary innovation and artistic mastery. Often
innovation involved creating Afro-centric art by applying African song structures to a jazz
format. As Duke Ellington explained in a 1936 interview with Downbeat, I always try to get a
20

Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, The Nation, Vol. 122, No. 3181 (June 28, 1926),
692-94.. Schuylers essay can be found at: George Schuyler, The Negro Art Hokum, The Nation, Vol. 122 No.
3180 (June 16, 1926), 662-663. Harlems black newspaper, The New York Amsterdam News covered the debate and
printed both essays in their entirety. The Amsterdam Newss coverage of the debate can be found at: Two New
Negroes Discuss Negro Art in the Nation, The New York Amsterdam News (June 23, 1926), 16.
21
George Schuyler, Negroes and Artists, The Nation, Vol. 123 No. 3184 (July 14, 1926), 36; Langston Hughes,
American Art or Negro Art? The Nation, Vol. 123 No. 3189 (August 18, 1926), 151.

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lift in my music that part of rhythm that causes a bouncing, buoyant, terpsichorean urge. My
idea of real Negro music is getting the different Negro idioms in cluster forms, and the
distribution of those idioms in arrangement and still retain their Negroid quality.22 Though jazz
stood at the vanguard of black cultural innovation in this period, due to the lack of recognition
for the talents and artistry of jazz musicians, the music played second fiddle to the more
acceptable artistic contributions of black writers and visual artists.23 Unfortunately, Hughess
affinity for jazz and the artistry of jazz musicians was the exception, rather than the rule, among
the literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance.
While jazz was relegated to the supporting cast of artistic achievement, Harlem jazz
dominated the discussion when the talent of black musicians was recognized. By insisting on the
centrality of Harlem to the music, cultural observers like James Weldon Johnson devalued the
vitality of jazz in regions outside New York City. To be certain, Harlem was an emerging center
of jazz innovation by 1930, but in the 1910s and 1920s, New York jazz was playing catch-up to
the dynamic brand of jazz developed first in New Orleans and refined in Chicago.24 Innovations
in the new music were made in cities from coast to coast by the 1920s, and New York was
simply one of many jazz metropolises. Furthermore, while cities like Chicago and Memphis
infused blues tonality and song constructions into heavily improvised arrangements, the brand of

22

Duke Ellington quoted in, Carl Cons, A Black Genius in a White Mans World, Downbeat (July 1936) in Frank
Alkyer and Ed Enright, eds., DownbeatThe Great Jazz Interviews: A 75th Anniversary Anthology (New York: Hal
Leonard Book, 2009), 5.
23
Recently, a number of authors have reassessed the role music, and jazz in particular, played in the Harlem
Renaissance. A collection of essays edited by Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. initiated a long overdue scholastic dialogue on
the influence of music on the period. For a more thorough analysis see: Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. ed., Black Music in the
Harlem Renaissance (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1990). Since the publication of the above volume,
Paul Allen Anderson took up the mantle for an expanded dialogue of the music of the period. Anderson discusses
the writings of W.E.B. DuBois, Alain Locke, Zora Neal Hurston, Langston Hughes and a number of jazz critics to
flesh out the relationship of music to the Harlem Renaissance. For the complete analysis see: Paul Allen Anderson,
Deep River: Music and Memory in Harlem Renaissance Thought (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press,
2001).
24
Baraka, Blues People, 151; Buster Bailey in, Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 206-207.

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jazz played in Harlem in the late 1910s and early 1920s still largely followed the ragtime model
of playing that was more structured in format. The pianist Willie The Lion Smith described the
piano-infused, ragtime-influenced jazz of New York City by declaring, A good pianist had to be
able to play with both hands, performing in perfect unison. It was like learning to walk
correctly a good walker goes forth with balance and dignity.25 The New York style practiced
by Smith, Fats Waller, and James P. Johnson, known as stride piano, heavily influenced piano
players of the Swing Era like Duke Ellington. In that respect it laid the foundation for Harlem as
a hub of jazz innovation in the late 1920s and early 1930s. However, in the decades preceding
the 1930s, New Orleans, Chicago, Kansas City and several other cities could just as easily claim
the mantle of Americas jazz capital.
The stride style emerged out of the rent parties of Harlem where piano players engaged in
nightly cutting contests. Barney Bigard remembered, So in those days they used to call them
cutting contests. And this night was piano night. James P. Johnson, Willie the Lion. They had
Duke in there and Fats Waller. All the biggies, you know. And Mexico had his little bar, and on
back of the bar was all the hammers to hit the strings, you know, in the piano, because when the
Lion would get up there, hed the Lions going to roar and hed bang the piano and all these
hammers would fly out there and theyd pick them up and start putting them back in there. Ethel
Waters learned a lot in Harlem about music and the men up there who played it best. All the
licks you hear, now as then, originated with musicians like James P. Johnson. Men like him,
Willie The Lion Smith, and Charlie Johnson could make you sing until your tonsils fell out.
Because you wanted to sing. And youd do anything and work until you dropped for such

25

Willie the Lion Smith with George Hoefer, Music on My Mind (New York: Doubleday, 1964), 3.

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musicians.26 The cutting contests and rent parties of Harlem were legendary in the community,
and the pianists involved inspired a generation of Harlem musicians. Just as in Chicago, jazz
artists were busy building a community beyond the walls of the NAACP offices or the union hall
that was responsive to the needs of the jazz community in Harlem.
David Levering Lewis explains, Saturday nights were terrific in Harlem, but rent parties
every night were the special passion of the community. Their very existence was avoided or
barely acknowledged by most Harlem writers, like that other rare and intriguing institution, the
buffet flat, where varied and often perverse sexual pleasures were offered cafeteria-style. With
the exception of Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman almost no one admitted attending a
rent party.27 Because New York City was densely populated, rent parties were in compact
residential spaces. Due to limited space, the piano served as the primary instrumentation in
cutting contests. Consequently, New Yorks piano players were among the best jazz had to offer,
and New York jazz featured the piano more than in cities like Chicago and New Orleans.
The New York stride style grew in popularity in the mid to late 1920s. Duke Ellington
emulated stride players and incorporated it into his big band arrangements. Duke Ellington
recalled fondly, The Lion has been the greatest influence on most of the great piano players
who have been exposed to his fire, his harmonic lavishness, his stride what a luxury! Fats
Waller, James P. Johnson, Count Basie, Donald Lambert, Joe Turner, Sam Ervis, and of course I
swam in it. By infusing stride piano into big band arrangements, Ellingtons group gained wide
popularity for its unique sonic textures and melodic inventiveness. The Duke Ellington Orchestra
captured the attention of the American public with live national radio broadcasts from the Cotton

26

Barney Bigard, interview transcript, July 1976, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New
Jersey; Ethel Waters in, Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 176.
27
Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue, 107.

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Club beginning in 1927.28 Ellingtons band brought Harlem Jazz into the living rooms of
American households every Saturday night, and the groups big band sound paved the way for
the Swing Era of the 1930s and 1940s.
Ill Feed the Boys Whatever They Want
In 1924, thanks to the insistence of his wife, Louis Armstrong left Chicago to join
Fletcher Hendersons band in New York City. Though his place in the band was secure,
Armstrong and his fellow musicians often went without work for extended periods. Luckily, he
had a base of support in the Big Apple. Armstrong remembered, Sometimes we had to wait
around 2-3 months before we could find a job. Charlie Johnsons wife was serving meals there at
135th St. between Lennox Ave. and 7th. And she said, Ill feed the boys whatever they want.
Johnson and his wife also took up a collection to help all the members of the band pay their
bills.29 Armstrongs experience in New York was not far afield from the sort of assistance he
received from Joe Oliver in his journey north, or the assistance scores of jazz artists received
from the grass-roots musicians network that lent a hand to fellow artists in need.
Armstrong spent close to a year in Gotham before he grew tired of his role in the
Henderson band. While the group was one of the most respected jazz acts in the city,
Armstrongs talents were not utilized to the fullest potential, and the group lacked the discipline
and dedication he was accustomed to. Armstrong remembered, I stayed and tolerated them
cutting up on the bandstand instead of playing the music right. I stayed until I finally gave

28

Ellington, Music Is My Mistress, 92, 80-82. For more information on the life and career of Duke Ellington see:
James Lincoln Collier, Duke Ellington (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); John Howland, Ellington
Uptown: Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and the Birth of Concert Jazz (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of
Michigan Press, 2009). For an analysis of Duke Ellington as emblematic of a New Negro artist see: Mark Tucker,
The Renaissance Education of Duke Ellington, in Samuel A. Floyd, ed., Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance:
A Collection of Essays (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1990), 111-128.
29
Louis Armstrong, Armstrong Tapes, CD 17, Track 6, Louis Armstrong Collection, Louis Armstrong House
Museum Archives, Queens College, New York.

175

Fletcher my notice and joined Lil at the Dreamland in Chicago. The fellows in Fletchers band
had such big heads boy you talk about big head motherfuckers such big heads until even
if they miss a note So what. After Armstrong complained to his wife, Lil devised a plan to
help her husband and elevate his career at the same time:
When I talked to Lil on the phone and told her what was happening she immediately said
Come on home. I have a good job for you playing first cornet in my band. Which was an
elevation to me. Fletcher only let me play third cornet in his band, the whole time I was
in his band dig that shit. Hed only give me 16 bars at the most to get off with. He
would say, Boy that was wonderful. You know one thing? Youd be very good if you go
and take some lessons. I said Yes sir. And in my head you know, to myself Im
saying, Man you go fuck yourself. Fletcher was so carried away with that society
shit and his education he slipped by a small timer and a young musician me, who
wanted to do everything for him musically. I personally didnt think Fletcher cared too
much for me anyway. Tush, tush. Aint that some shit? You never miss your water till
your well goes dry.30
In 1929, thanks to the popularity and success of the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings,
Armstrong made a triumphant return to New York City under his own terms. Zutty Singleton,
Armstrongs drummer, recalled that on the trip to New York in every big town wed come to,
wed hear Louis records being played on loudspeakers and stuff. Louis was surprised he
didnt know he was so popular. Now he was a featured musician, vocalist, and soloist playing
with the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra. The group played nightly engagements at the famed jazz
club, Connies Inn, on the corner of 131st Street and 7th Avenue. Armstrongs growing celebrity
forced the group to change the name to reflect the status of its new leader: The name of the
orchestra that has taken New York by storm is none other than our own Louis Armstrong and his
recording orchestra, formerly the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra of the Savoy Ballroom, Chicago.
The boys are intact just as they left the Windy City. The only change is the name of the band.
Carroll Dickerson is the leader as of yore, but the New York exhibitors thought that the name
30

Louis Armstrong, Armstrong Tapes, CD 426, Disc 1, Track 7, Louis Armstrong Collection, Louis Armstrong
House Museum Archives, Queens College, New York.

176

should be changed owing to the tremendous popularity of the famous cornetist, Louis
Armstrong. Armstrong gave another rousing performance at the Lafayette Theater that June.
The Amsterdam News declared, The audience simply rose and cheered as this remarkable
cornetist drew from his golden trumpet music such as has seldom been heard before here
rousing, snappy jazz and sweet tender melody. Armstrong is certainly a genius.31 Armstrongs
rise to fame was nurtured every step of the way but a cast of supporting characters who lent
assistance, advice, encouragement, food, money, and much more along the way. Indeed, without
the musicians network, the journey could have been more rocky and difficult. Armstrongs New
York experience echoes the story of dozens of musicians, in that grass-roots organizing was
essential in carving a niche for jazz artists to thrive.
As the account of Armstrong indicates, musicians often felt a responsibility to aid one
another in times of need. In 1923 Edward Duke Ellington arrived in New York City from
Washington D.C. to try his luck as a professional jazz artist. On the way to New York, Ellington
spent every dime in his pocket. However, he had a job lined up, and his band arrived ahead of
him, so he was not worried. When he reached his band mates, Ellington realized they too were
broke, and the job fell through. But, the group found aid from fellow jazz artists. Ellington
recalled, Everything had gone wrong, and there was no job. Yet there were friends waiting to
help us and show me the way. Willie The Lion Smith was one of them, and Freddie Guy used
to let us sit in for him at the Orient and, most important, split the tips.32 Just as in Chicago, New
Orleans, and elsewhere, grass-roots networks performed organizing tasks when traditional self-

31

Zutty Singleton in, Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 170-171; Louis Armstrong, Armstrong Tapes,
CD 426, Disc 1, Track 7, Louis Armstrong Collection, Louis Armstrong House Museum Archives, Queens College,
New York; Louis Armstrong Collection, Scrapbook 83, Louis Armstrong House Museum Archives, Queens
College, New York; Louis Armstrong Collection, Scrapbook 2, Louis Armstrong House Museum Archives, Queens
College, New York; At Harlem Theaters, The New York Amsterdam News (June 26, 1929), 12.
32
Ellington, Music Is My Mistress, 69.

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help organizations were unable or unwilling to fill the void. The relationships forged in the jazz
community proved essential when musicians branched out into more formal political
organizations like the American Federation of Musicians and the NAACP.
New York jazz musicians were also as astute activists as their counterparts in Chicago
and New Orleans. The Big Apple has a long history of union activism on the part of the citys
musicians. New York musicians were among the first to create a formal union; in 1864 the
Musical Mutual Protective Union (MMPU) was organized. In the organizations charter, adopted
on April 11, 1864, members proclaimed that the MMPU was formed with the object of, the
cultivation of the art of music in all its branches, and the promotion of good feeling and friendly
intercourse among the members of the profession, and the relief of such of their members as
shall be fortunate, so far as their means, in their opinion, will permit. The MMPU sought to
protect the interests of its members, set wages, and promote the work of musicians as a
respectable profession. It was also a decidedly elitist organization that favored rigid standards of
musical mastery and professional deportment. Nothing in the MMPUs constitution or by-laws
barred black membership. In fact, in 1886 an African American violin player named Walter
Craig was the first to join the MMPU. By 1910 three hundred of the organizations eight
thousand members were black. Though African Americans were not officially barred from
membership, the small number of blacks in MMPU was no accident. First, the elitism of the
organization placed a high premium on orchestral and classical music. Since the proficiency tests
were rigidly enforced and based on knowledge of classical music, and few black musicians
received the sort of formal musical training in the classics, African Americans membership was
kept to a minimum. Secondly, the membership fees were financially prohibitive. In the revised
laws of 1878, the initial admission fee was $20 with additional dues to follow. The result was

178

limited black membership. The MMPU officially joined the AFM in 1902 and became known as
Local 310.33
Because of the difficulty African American musicians faced in joining the MMPU, in
1904 the citys black classical musicians formed their own organization, The New Amsterdam
Musical Association (NAMA). NAMA like the MMPU, had high music standards based on
European classics and enforced by rigid proficiency tests. Beginning in 1907, and again in 1909,
NAMA sought the consent of Local 310 to form their own all-black union. In December 1909,
Local 310 notified NAMA that their request was denied. Although NAMAs request for a charter
in the AFM was denied, they continued to enforce membership requirements as though they
were a formal union. The organization, which counted the composer and violin player Will
Marion Cook as a member, did not admit those who could not site read music and who did not
play the classics. In December 1913 fifteen men attempted to take the proficiency test that did
not play classical music. The event caused a debate within NAMA: These men although they
were most all good readers, they handled a certain quality of work which is not handled by this
association. A member by the name of Foster advocated for the admission of the fifteen men,
though they did not perform the proficiency test as fluently as previous members. A Mr. Prime
objected to the proposal saying, the association has gradually built itself and grown, it would,
therefore, be a bad precedent to his mind to have men in the association who cannot play it
would be a decidedly backwards step to let the barriers down and take in failures. This town is

33

Musicans Mutual Protective Union, Constitution and By-Laws of the Mutual Protective Union, p.3, 10,
Records of the American Federation of Musicians Local 802, Box 2, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Tamiment
Library, New York University, New York; Goldberg, Swinging the Color Line, 11, 15.

179

full of so called musicians; let them keep their way and we ours.34 NAMA had no intention of
admitting black artists who played Afro-centric music like jazz and the blues.
NAMAs elitism was evident to recent migrants and the Afro-centric music they
cultivated. In 1910 southern transplant James Reese Europe organized an all-black musicians
union known as the Clef Club, and served as its first President. The Clef Club functioned as a
quasi-union part booking agency and part fraternal organization. The club bought property on
West Fifty-third Street, and during the course of one business year garnered $120,000 for its
members. Not long after its founding, the Clef Club enjoyed wide success and sought permission
from Local 310 to form an all-black union of their own. As was the case with NAMAs request
for a charter, the Clef Clubs attempt to unionize was denied by Local 310. While the Clef Club
was denied its request, the organization soon had trouble with NAMA. In late 1913 NAMA
officers complained that Europes Society Orchestra, comprised largely of members of the Clef
Club, employed NAMA members at an event in New York City without recognizing NAMA in
promotional advertisements. Mr. Prime asked, if it was the sense of this board that outsiders
were to use our men, get credit for good work, and we sit down like a bunch of dummies. A Mr.
Tate responded that, the reason the association could not control its men was the men were
playing for outsiders who gave them better pay and thus the men had no regard for the

34

Goldberg, Swinging the Color Line, 22-23, 29; New Amsterdam Musical Association Board Minutes,
November 24, 1907, Box 3, Samuel E. Heyward Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New
York Public Library, New York; New Amsterdam Musical Association Board Minutes, December 5, 1909, Box 3,
Samuel E. Heyward Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, New
York; New Amsterdam Musical Association Board Minutes, April 28, 1907, Box 3, Samuel E. Heyward Papers,
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, New York; New Amsterdam Musical
Association Board Minutes, December 28, 1913, Box 3, Samuel E. Heyward Papers, Schomburg Center for
Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, New York.

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association. The Clef Clubs challenge to NAMA signaled the emerging demand for black
musicians who played ragtime, jazz, and other Afro-centric art forms.35
The Clef Club grew as an organization throughout the 1910s adding new members and
securing new jobs along the way. In 1917, however, the organizing activities of the Clef Club
took a back seat when the United States entered the conflict already raging in continental Europe.
During World War I, James Reese Europe was a Lieutenant in the 369th Infantry, the most
decorated American unit of the conflict. The 369th earned the nickname the Hellfighters from
French soldiers because of their ferocity in battle. Europe led the regimental band. The music of
the Hellfighters closely resembled jazz, in that it featured syncopated rhythms based on ragtime.
The Hellfigthers made a lasting impression on European audiences, and it helped fuel the French
appetite for jazz. The Hellfighters played music unlike anything European audiences ever heard.
After playing for the French military band, The Garde Rpublicain, the bands leader was
intrigued by the artistic talent of the Hellfighters: I took an instrument and showed him how it
could be done, and he told me that his own musicians felt sure that my band had used special
instruments. Indeed, some of them, afterward attending one of my rehearsals, did not believe
what I had said until after they had examined the instruments used by my men. Like Sidney
Bechet and Harry Carney, Europe enjoyed a celebrity and appreciation for black artistry that was
missing in the United States. Europe recalled, I have come back from France more firmly
convinced than ever that negroes should write negro music. We have our own racial feeling and
if we try to copy whites we will make bad copies. We won France by playing music which

35

Tirro, Jazz, 102-103; Johnson, Black Manhattan, 123; Goldberg, Swinging the Color Line, 29-31; New
Amsterdam Musical Association Board Minutes, December 28, 1913, Box 3, Samuel E. Heyward Papers,
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, New York; For more information on
New York nightlife and the opportunities it presented for African American artists see: Lewis A. Erenberg,
Steppins Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890-1930 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1981), 251-259.

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was ours and not pale imitation of others, and if we develop in America we must develop along
our own lines.36 Following his experience in France, Europe articulated a vision for African
American artistic expression based on Afro-centric influences that Amiri Baraka and Langston
Hughes later believed was so essential to the vitality and success of jazz. Europes racial pride
and activism is only reinforced with his work with the Clef Club in the decade of the 1910s.
Unfortunately, he was unable to fully implement his vision for the future of jazz after being
fatally stabbed by an estranged band mate in mid-1919. Europe was the first African American
granted a public funeral by the city of New York, and thousands of mourners turned out to watch
the funeral procession as it made its way through Harlem.37
Despite the loss of the revered bandleader and activist, New Yorks black musicians
continued their struggle for social justice. In 1925, the Clef Club gathered to celebrate its
fifteenth anniversary. In its coverage of the event, The Amsterdam News declared, On the roll of
the club are some of the names of the races most famous and accomplished musicians. Clef
Club members are regularly employed, and it is said that nowhere in the country is there a
similar musical organization that can rank with the one made famous through the idea of the late
James Reese Europe. The Clef Club remained active in the New York area throughout the
1920s. They enjoyed great success, and they became increasingly elitist, as a result. Because of
the clubs success, Local 310 sought to recruit their members. When individual recruitment of
Clef Club members proved too slow, Local 310 offered to waive proficiency tests and allow the

36

James Reese Europe, A Negro Explains Jazz, in Eileen Southern, ed., Readings in Black American Music, 2nd
Edition (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1983), 238, 240.
37
Ward and Burns, Jazz, 70; Samuel B. Charter and Leonard Kunstal, Jazz: A History of the New York Scene (New
York: Doubleday and Company, 1962), 63-72.

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payment of initiation fees in installments to all Clef Club members. After incorporating with
Local 310, the power of the Clef Club greatly diminished.38
In 1921 a dispute between Local 310 and the AFM forced the leadership of the New York
union to disband. Shortly thereafter, a new local was formed. Local 802, at first, had trouble
convincing significant segments of the citys African American musicians to join. In 1927, the
Chicago Defender music columnist, Dave Peyton (himself a staunch union man), received a
letter from a black activist in Local 802 complaining about the lack of African American
membership in the union. Ed Brown wrote, Our Race musicians will be given another chance to
qualify and join the American Federation of Musicians of Greater New York, Local 802. A
similar opportunity was offered the musicians here several years ago, but our group neglected to
join at that time. Cubans, West Indians, South Americans and all other races joined the union in
large groups, but our Race musicians held out, only a few getting in line. All the while, NAMA
and the Clef Club remained in existence, and they began to relax their stringent membership
policies in the mid 1920s. As jazz rose in popularity and jazz artists garnered prestigious jobs,
NAMA started to admit jazz musicians along with classical musicians, and Local 802 started
accepting more and more black musicians.39
In 1925 black activists within Local 802 pushed the union to join the Trade Union
Committee for Organizing Negro Workers (TUC). The TUC was the brainchild of Harlem labor
leaders, A. Phillip Randolph and Frank Crosswaith, and the two envisioned the TUC would
function as an umbrella organization that sought to protect the interests of New Yorks black
workers and encourage black union participation. As the TUC was busy trying to protect the
38

Famous Clef Club to Stage Big Celebration at Manhattan Casino, April 15, The New York Amsterdam News
(March 18, 1925), 6; Goldberg, Swinging the Color Line, 31.
39
Goldberg, Swinging the Color Line, 36-38, 58; John Koegel, Music in German Immigrant Theater: New York
City, 1840-1940 (Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press, 2009), 367; Dave Peyton, The Musical
Bunch, Chicago Defender (April 9, 1927), 6.

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interests of its affiliated members, nine black motion picture operators appealed to the committee
to obtain help in joining Local 306 of the Moving Picture Operators of America. The men
explained that they were licensed operators by the state of New York, yet 306 refused to admit
them on anything but a temporary basis, and thus were ineligible for union protection. In a letter
to the American Fund for Public Service, Crosswaith complained that The tragedy of this
particular case will be more easily grasped when we bear in mind that the strength of Local #306,
Moving Picture Operators of America is derived from the well organized Musicians Union, a
large percentage of whose membership are Negroes. On the basis of the latters strength the
Operators Local is able to win agreements from the Theater Owners. Crosswaith further
explained, In Negro Harlem there are eight Theaters catering solely to Negro patrons. Yet, these
Theater Owners cannot employ Negro Operators because they are not Union men and the Union
will not accept them because they are Negroes. Despite the work of black activists within Local
802 that compelled union leaders to join the TUC, the New York musicians union remained only
nominally active in the committee.40
In the late 1920s a new organization formed that more closely guarded the interests of the
citys recently arrived black musicians. Bert Hall, a recent migrant to Gotham by way of
Chicago, founded the Rhythm Club on West 132nd Street. It functioned as meeting hall, booking
agency, and community center. Duke Ellington explained, The Rhythm Club was the great
hangout and sure enough if you landed a gig and wanted to hire some guys to work it with you,
youd walk down that way and find enough good guys to work another three jobs. Danny
Barker recalled, It was a little gambling house two pool tables, in fact had three or four
different games. And in this club, all musicians who came from New York, hung around the
40

Goldberg, Swinging the Color Line, 59; Frank Crosswaith, Letter to the American Fund for Public Service,
June 19, 1925, Trade Union Committee for Organizing Negro Workers, Negro Labor Committee Records,
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, New York.

184

Rhythm Club. Both day and night, they hung around there. We were around there waiting to see
whats happening. Like where longshoremen hang out. What do you call them houses union or
local? Same kind of thing this was a social hall of musicians. Mario Bauza illustrated, In
there, the Rhythm Club, they open in there, sometimes dont close at all. And on the floor, you
walk in and they had a piano, baby grand, so different guys come in there and play, sometimes
theyd jam. In back they had a billiard table and they had a poker table too, like a casino. Sonny
Greer described the Rhythm Club where theyd have different jam sessions and it was a place to
hnag out after you would get through work. A lot of guys would come in there and sit down and
jam. It was just like a social club for the musicians. It got so popular. But the guys would go
down and if they feel like playing, theyd play.41 Musicians at the club formed a community of
like-minded individuals who looked out for the interests of one another. The Rhythm Club
helped black musicians find employment, and it served as counterweight to the more
exclusionary organizations that held a less than favorable view of jazz. The Rhythm Club
utilized the musicians network to aid fellow musicians in need. In this manner it filled a self-help
void when NAMA and Local 802 were not responsive to the needs of the jazz community. The
Rhythm Club also helped channel members into Local 802, and it pushed the union to recognize
the issues and concerns of black artists.
Bert Hall was an outspoken advocate for black musicians and jazz artists in the New
York City. He joined Local 802, and according to Mario Bauza, Hall convinced a large number
of black musicians from the Rhythm Club to join the union. Hall was the man that brought the
Negro musician to the 802 local. I came with that bunch too. So they brought all this colored
41

Goldberg, Swinging the Color Line, 76; Duke Ellington in, Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 168;
Danny Barker, interview transcript, July 22, 1989, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans; Mario
Bauza, interview transcript, December 1978, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey;
Sonny Greer, interview transcript, January 1979, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey.

185

musicians from the Rhythm Club into 802. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Hall twice ran for
a position on the Governing Board of Local 802. He lost in the first campaign but was successful
in his second attempt. However, members of the Board refused to work with an African
American, so Hall was denied the opportunity to serve the union. Hall continued to agitate for a
notable African American presence within the union. In 1931 he was the first black business
chairman appointed by the local. Hall used his position of leadership to enact reforms regarding
black musicians, according to Danny Barker. Unfortunately, Hall died before his vision was
complete. Several black musicians followed the trail blazed by Hall and fought for a greater
African American presence in Local 802. Thanks to the work of Hall and black leaders that
followed, African Americans soon joined the local and staked their claim on the political
landscape of New Yorks music stages. Due to their insistence and agitation, black musicians
could no longer be ignored in New Yorks musicians union.42 The Rhythm Club utilized the
cultural formation of the jazz community as political strength to push the union to address their
interests.
With the influx of active black members, Local 802 became the countrys largest biracial
musicians union. At the time, Detroit was the only other major city with an integrated musicians
union, and given the fact that Chicagos musicians unions did not integrate until 1966, biracial
cooperation in New York City was no small feat. However, biracial cooperation was hard fought
on the part of black activists; it was not until the 1930s that biracial unionism was achieved on
equal grounds. Furthermore, the continued activism and existence of NAMA, the Clef Club, and
the Rhythm Club speaks to the lack of commitment of Local 802 regarding black members

42

Mario Bauza, interview transcript, December 1978, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New
Jersey; Goldberg, Swinging the Color Line, 76-78.

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throughout the 1920s. It was through the work of black activists like Bert Hall and others that
forced 802 to recognize black membership and speak to their concerns.
Just as in New Orleans and Chicago, jazz musicians in Harlem also engaged in a form of
consciousness-raising through their art. Ethel Waters was one of the most influential jazz singers
of the 1920s and 1930s. She pioneered an approach to singing that emphasized the strengths of
the individual vocalist. In an interview with Downbeat in the 1950s she clarified, I was one of
the first to show people that there was an individual way of doing things with lyrics and
rhythms. I want to tell that story. I want you to feel and live it. Waters vocal range was
exceptional. She was immensely popular with both white and black audiences due to her ability
to sing both the blues and popular standards of the day.43 In 1930 she recorded a song for
Columbia Records in New York City entitled, (What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue. The
lyrics paint an evocative picture of the daily degradations faced by African Americans across the
country:44
Out in the street, shuffling feet
Couples passing two by two
While here am I, left high and dry
Black, and 'cause I'm black I'm blue
Browns and yellers, all have fellers
Gentlemen prefer them light
Wish I could fade, can't make the grade
Nothing but dark days in sight
Cold, empty bed, springs hard as lead
Pains in my head, feel like old Ned
What did I do to be so black and blue?
No joys for me, no company
Even the mouse ran from my house
All my life through I've been so black and blue

43

Ethel Waters quoted in, Placksin, Women in Jazz, 24; Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, 153-154.
Ethel Waters, (What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue, (Razaf, Andy; Waller, Fats; Brooks, Ernie) [master
2184-D] Columbia Records (April 1, 1930) New York, New York. This song title can be found today in Ethel
Waters, The Incomparable Ethel Waters, Sony Records, 2003.
44

187

I'm white inside, it don't help my case

'Cause I can't hide, what is on my face, oh!
I'm so forlorn, life's just a thorn
My heart is torn, why was I born?
What did I do to be so black and blue?
'Cause you're black, folks think you lack
They laugh at you, and scorn you too
What did I do to be so black and blue?
When you are near, they laugh and sneer
Set you aside and you're denied
What did I do to be so black and blue?
How sad I am, each day I feel worse
My mark of Ham seems to be a curse, oh
How will it end? Ain't got a friend
My only sin is my skin
What did I do to be so black and blue?
Waters impassioned performance reminded jazz and blues listeners of the injustices faced in
their own lives. In that vein, the call and response between the artist and listener served as a
rhetorical call for further action in combating repression. Louis Armstrong also recorded a
version of the song and played it often in live performances. In a 1966 interview he explained
that when he first started playing the tune in the late 1920s and early 1930s, I used to sing it
serious like shame on you for this and that.45 Waters and Armstrong utilized their talent and
position of influence as strength to publicize issues of unequal justice in New York City and
beyond and to raise awareness to combat these problems.
New Yorks jazz artists also engaged in mobilizing activities like their counterparts in the
Windy City. In February 1925, Fletcher Henderson volunteered his orchestra to play a benefit for
the New York branch of the NAACP. That fall, Hendersons band played an election night event
in Harlem. The New York Amsterdam News declared, We understand that special arrangements
have been made for this occasion in keeping with the nature of the night, which will be observed
45

Armstrong and Meryman, Louis Armstrong, 42.

188

with unusual interest because of the bitter fight being waged between the dominant parties with
Negro candidates in the field. Hendersons group was one of the most popular jazz acts in the
city, and the events organizers were overwhelmed with requests for reservations because,
Henderson will try out some new wrinkles in jazz stuff that will take the audience by storm and
this is saying a great deal, as even Fletcher will have to go some to surpass what he has already
contributed to jazz entertainment in the past. Henderson remained active in the Harlem
community playing engagements for The Amsterdam News to benefit Harlems poor, a
fundraiser for Harlems Martin-Smith Music School, and the Brotherhood Fraternitys 1926
Decoration Day Dance.46
Other Harlem musicians engaged in mobilizing efforts. In 1929 the American Negro
Labor Congress staged a fundraiser for its organizing activities. The Amsterdam News declared
that at the event, Vernon Andrades Renaissance Orchestra will, broadcast the weirdest jazz
Harlem can turn out. Prominent race leaders, well known writers and artists, hundreds of
members and officers of fraternal organizations will be on hand to lend color to the occasion and
Harlems flappers and matrons will have the opportunity to dance with men known throughout
the Negro and labor worlds. That fall the Harlem branch of the NAACP staged a benefit that
featured a program designed by the black artist Aaron Douglas and featured poems by Langston
Hughes, Nella Larsen, and Jessie Fauset. Duke Ellington, Eubie Blake, and other black
performing artists provided the evenings entertainment. The Amsterdam News declared the night
a success, but not without reservations: The chief objection to the benefit was the trend toward

46

Sub-Debs to Usher at Big Spring Dance, The New York Amsterdam News (February 25, 1925), 4; Henderson
and Orchestra Returning to Renaissance Casino Election Night, The New York Amsterdam News (October 21,
1925), 7; Election Night Dance at Renaissance Casino Attracting Wide Attention, The New York Amsterdam News
(October 28, 1925), 6; Baskets for Poor of Harlem Benefit At Rockland Palace Friday Night, The New York
Amsterdam News (December 18, 1929), 8; Henderson, Smith to Play for Martin-Smith Benefit, The New York
Amsterdam News (April 21, 1926), 5; Side Lights on Society, The New York Amsterdam News (June 2, 1926), 10.
189

sameness in the vocal jazz selections.47 Criticism of the event aside, jazz musicians received
equal billing with the literary and visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance at this particular
engagement, and they played an active role in Harlems political arenas.
With Musicians Its Always Been Alright
Harlem was a vibrant community by all accounts. James Weldon Johnson described, A
visit to Harlem at night the principal streets never deserted, gay crowds skipping from one
place of amusement to another, lines of taxicabs and limousines standing under the sparkling
lights of the entrances to the famous night-clubs, the subway kiosks swallowing and disgorging
crowds all night long gives the impression that Harlem never sleeps and that the inhabitants
thereof jazz through existence. Johnson noted that while the reputation of the neighborhood was
built on its nocturnal activities, the community was filled with hard-working residents, most of
whom have never seen the inside of a night-club. Duke Ellington argued that in Harlem, there
were more churches than cabarets, and that the people were trying to find a more stable way of
living, and that the Negro was rich in experience and education. Johnson also described the
social dynamics of the community that coalesced on city streets: Strolling in Harlem does not
mean merely walking along Lennox or Upper Seventh Avenue or One Hundred and Thirty-fifth
Street; it means that those streets are places for socializing. One puts on ones best clothes and
fares forth to pass the time pleasantly with the friends and acquaintances and, most important of
all, the strangers he is sure of meeting.48 In addition to the previously described political
activities, Harlem boasted a number of black businesses, churches, and fraternal organizations
that made the community a hub of black culture, entrepreneurialship, and activism. Johnson and
47

Labor Congress in Classic Night, The New York Amsterdam News (January 2, 1929), 7; Broadway
Headliners Volunteer for NAACP Benefit Show, The New York Amsterdam News (November 20, 1929), 5;
NAACP Sponsors First Sunday Night Benefit at Downtown Theatre, The New York Amsterdam News (December
11, 1929), 5.
48
Johnson, Black Manhattan, 160-162; Ellington, Music Is My Mistress, 182.

190

Ellingtons descriptions speak to the vibrancy of Harlem. While, these accounts focus on the
daytime community, Harlem was most famous for what took place in the community at night.
Just as in Chicago, jazz retained the ability to cross racial boundaries in New York City.
The cabarets of Harlem were not unlike the black and tans of Chicago. Though many whites
flocked to cabarets as voyeuristic tourists to see what they considered primitive entertainment,
others were genuine admirers of the music. However, Harlems cabarets were often more
segregated than in Chicago. The Cotton Club on the corner of Lennox Avenue and West 142nd
Street notoriously drew a strict color line between the audience and black performers. Danny
Barker explained that the Cotton Club was a white club, with black performers but they didnt
cater to black people. It was real late before blacks could only important people would go to
the Cotton Club. People like uh, Harry Wills, Paul Robeson generally theyd always go with
their agent or somebody but the average black person didnt care about the Cotton Club
because it was too staid. Sonny Greer, Duke Ellingtons drummer, remembered black
celebrities like Bill Robinson sitting in the audience of the Cotton Club, but black customers
were the exception rather than the rule. Benny Carter recalled, Connies Inn, and the Cotton
Club, they really did not welcome the black customer. Black musicians were effectively barred
from playing the higher-paying clubs in downtown Manhattan. Carter explained that according
to the AFM they would have a higher scaled downtown, you know, like maybe a place like the
Roseland would be a Class A and someplace else would be a Class B, and maybe the Harlem
clubs would be a class B and a Class C, you know. I dont know if there were any Harlem clubs
that they considered Class A. Many whites frequented places like the Cotton Club as intra-city
tourists who wanted to experience an authentic night of African American entertainment.

191

However, African American entertainers playing to lily-white audiences was anything but
authentic.49
Just as in the Windy City, Harlems integrated cabarets represented the only spaces where
whites and blacks could openly interact in social settings, but not everyone was pleased with the
activities of the cabaret. Writing in The Amsterdam News, Edward M. Grey declared, In Harlem
thousands of people earn a living from the activities of the community after dark. Through
these clubs and cabarets thousands of white people are drawn to the community weekly for the
purpose of seeking amusement and diversion. Many aristocratic whites who would resent being
near a respectable colored person in a sleeping car or in a restaurant will sit for hours at tables
touching elbows with colored persons and join them as dancing partners. Grey concluded, Not
even a Puritan should object to the presence of well regulated night clubs in Harlem for
amusement and diversion of its population, but even a vulgar moron must see, if he has half an
eye, that the present night clubs are a decided moral liability to the community. Edgar Grey was
not alone in his criticisms of Harlem cabarets, and his stance echoes sentiments from the black
middle class that associated jazz and jazz clubs with vice and immorality. Indeed, Dr. E. Elliot
Rawling, M.D. warned, The form of music called jazz is just as intoxicating as morphine or
cocaine; it is just as harmful, and yet its use is not determined by law. Jazz is killing some
people; some are going insane; others are losing their religion. The young girls and boys, who
constantly take jazz every day and night, are becoming absolutely bad, and some criminals.50
Certainly, the black middle class saw few positives in jazz and jazz clubs.

49

Danny Barker, interview transcript, July 22, 1989, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans; Sonny
Greer, interview transcript, January 1979, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey; Benny
Carter, interview transcript, October 13, 1976, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey.
For more information on white tourism in Harlem see: Mumford, Interzones, 148-156.
50
Edgar M. Grey, Harlem After Dark, The New York Amsterdam News (April 6, 1927), 16; E. Elliot Rawling,
M.D., Keeping Fit, The New York Amsterdam News (April 1, 1925), 16.

192

Other observers believed integrated cabarets served important functions in the

community. As, New York Amsterdam News columnist, George S. Schuyler opined in 1927,
Puritans and other such disagreeable ninnies around Harlem are given lustily to cursing the
cabarets and dance halls as sinks of iniquity, breeding places of crime and hotbeds of
immorality. They vociferously wail about the ruin of the younger generation and clamor to the
gendarmes to suppress these places that offend their righteousness. Schuyler declared that
contrary to the concerns of critics, One great point in favor of the cabaret and dance hall as
social assets is they afford a meeting place for the individuals of the two races where they can
know each other on a plane of equality and good-will. In many ways they are more valuable in
breaking down racial barriers than all the whooping of the inter-racial leagues from one end of
the country to the other.51 Ethel Waters, the famous jazz and blues singer believed blackperforming artists retained the power to affect public opinion from the stage. I realize the good
work that I and all of us colored artists have been doing. Many white people who would not
listen to any other side of Negro life will gladly hear a Negro jazz artist or blues singer. All that
helps pave the way by making them more sympathetic to our race.52 While jazz did not tear
down the walls of racism and segregation in New York, the testimonies of Schuyler and Waters
reveals that it helped chip away at the barriers of Jim Crow.
While jazz was chipping away at Jim Crow, black and white musicians continued to
interact away from the bandstand. Sonny Greer recalled, after all the other clubs closed the
musicians would come to ours, and often you would see forty or fifty name musicians in there at
a time. There was just a small dance floor and there wasnt much dancing, but everybody could
sit in. At three or four I the morning, you would see Bix Beiderbecke, Tommy Dorsey, Miff
51

George S. Schuyler, The Soap Box, The New York Amsterdam News (August 23, 1927), 4.
Ethel Waters quoted in J.A. Rogers, Ethel Waters Selected as First Subject From Pen of Gifted Writer and
Author, The New York Amsterdam News (November 27, 1929), 9.
52

193

Mole, Paul Whiteman, and musicians like that. White musicians like Beiderbecke, Dorsey,
Mole and Whiteman actively sought the advice and camaraderie of black musicians like Greer.
Greer remembered, Because the Negro musicians, those days, they were gods to the white
boys. In 1929 Louis Armstrong made friends in New York with many of the white musicians
who played downtown. One night, on a Sunday, all of the White Musicians from Down on
Broadway, came up to Connies Inn gave me a big party certainly a Swell Affair. Ben
Pollack Presented me with a Beautiful gold Wrist Watch, that was from the Boys from Down
Town. The inscription on the watch Read as follows GOOD LUCK ALWAYS TO LOUIS
ARMSTRONG FROM THE MUSICIANS ON BROADWAY. And did we have a Ball. My
My My.53 A particularly important site of black and white musical exchange in New York City
was Smalls Paradise on the corner of 7th Avenue and 135th Street. Duke Ellington revealed,
Smalls was the place to go, the one spot where everybodyd drop in. And a lot of musicians
from downtown too. Jack Teagarden used to bring along his horn, and Benny and Harry
Goodman, Ray Bauduc, and a gang of others. Then on Sundays, Small used to hire a guest band,
the best he could get, and thered be a regular jamboree. The trumpet player Roy Eldridge
recalled that black and white musicians shared a mutual respect for one another: with musicians
its always been alright, you know.54 Musicians used the cultural interactions of the jazz
community to push the boundaries of integration in Harlem social circles. They used their
positions of influence as social capital to set an example for the rest of America regarding race
relations. White and black musicians continued to interact at places like Smalls Paradise
53

Louis Armstrong, The Goffin Notebooks, in Brothers, ed., Armstrong in His Own Words, 106. Louis
Armstrong often wrote in his personal papers in a style that improvised with the English language in a manner
reminiscent of his trumpet playing. The punctuation above is emblematic of his ability to emphasize certain phrases
by bending the rules of language not unlike his ability to emphasize certain music phrases with his trumpet.
54
Sonny Greer in Gottlieb, ed., Reading Jazz, 53; Duke Ellington in, Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya,
169-170; Roy Eldridge, interview transcript, June 15, 1982, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark,
New Jersey.

194

throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and these interactions paved the way for the biracial Swing Era
a decade later. By the end of the Great Depression, interracial bands playing for interracial
audiences were common, and it was the work of jazz artists in the 1920s that laid the
groundwork for future successes. Though biracial musicianship was no panacea for segregation,
artistic cooperation across racial boundaries signaled the dawning of a new chapter in the
development of jazz.
African American art retained the power to affect change. Though American society was
not transformed overnight, jazz helped pave the way for future progress. Furthermore, Harlem
was not the lone site of cultural innovation; it is clear that jazz was a truly national phenomenon,
thanks in no small part to the Great Migration. Thanks to the dedication to artistic innovation,
African American performing artists introduced the New Negro of jazz to the world. Most
importantly, it was the activism of the migration experience that informed subsequent activism in
new locales, and in this regard jazz musicians were just as politically active as other black artists
of the period. Jazz artists in New York engaged in a number of mobilizing and organizing
activities that attest to their political acumen. Though several attempts to form an all-black union
proved unsuccessful, black musicians forced Local 802 to recognize and address their concerns.
Because of their insistence, black musicians assumed an active role in the countrys largest
biracial union by the decade of the 1930s.
Some segments of the Harlem Renaissance did not take jazz seriously, but black
musicians reached larger portions of white America than the more heralded literary artists of the
period. Jazz, therefore, had the potential to affect American public opinion in ways that less
accessible art forms could not. Most importantly, it was a self-consciously Afro-centric art form.

195

In the words of Langston Hughes, jazz artists built the temples of tomorrow, and stood on
top of the mountain, free within themselves.

196

Conclusion:
This New Thing of Racial Mixing on an Equal Basis:
The End of the Great Migration, the Start of the Great Depression,
and the Dawn of the Swing Era
The economic situation for black musicians in New Orleans was desperate at the outset of
the Great Depression. Danny Barker, a young guitarist and banjo player, left the Crescent City
because, A lot of musicians were leaving here because there werent no money around here
man. Barkers uncle, the drummer Paul Barbarin, suggested Barker join him in New York City
where there was a better chance to find work. Barker was not alone. He remembered, the
Depression had set in and musicians were coming up from all over the United States and the
Caribbean Islands to New York City because that was the place that you heard jazz played and
you heard it on the radio Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Cab Calloway black bands
who played on the radio nationally so you heard it. And that was encouraging for inspiring,
working musicians to go to New York City. Barker received assistance and found potential
leads for jobs at the Rhythm Club. However, life was difficult despite the assistance: the
Depression in New York man, it was a bitch.... Some mornings wed make seventy-five cents,
other mornings wed get twenty-five. Everybody cooperated because there was nowhere else to
go and, in fact, nobody had nothing. Coleman Hawking echoed Barkers sentiments saying,
You know what used to happen during the Depression? We used to play a lot of jobs and didnt
get paid. Everybody belonged to the union and everything, but it seemed like there wasnt
anything we could do about it when it happened. I was still with Fletcher then and we used to do
quite a few nights for which we didnt see any money.1 While the 1920s was a decade of
1

Danny Barker, interview transcript, July 22, 1974, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans; Danny
Barker, interview transcript, Fall 1988, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New Orleans; Danny Barker in,
Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To Ya, 196; Coleman Hawkins in, Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin To
Ya, 198.

197

newfound political, social, and economic freedom for black Americans and jazz musicians in
particular, the economic malaise of the 1930s threatened to undermine the foundations of the
hard-earned gains of the Great Migration period.
The Great Depression ended the Great Migration and had profound effects on the jazz
community across the country. In the year before the Stock Market Crash, the total membership
of the AFM stood at just under 150,000. By 1934, at the height of the depression, the number
declined to just over 100,000. Approximately 12,500 of the AFMs dues paying members in
1934 also qualified for relief employment from the Works Progress Administration.
Furthermore, with less disposable income, Americans generally first abandoned the sorts of
social pleasures like an evening at a nightclub, dance hall, or record shop in favor of putting food
on the table. As a result, the record industry and businesses that catered to nightlife crowds in
cities across the country struggled mightily. Like many other Americans, jazz musicians suffered
from a loss of income and job security in the 1930s.2
At the local level the situation was dire. The New Orleans AFM local struggled to
survive, and according to jazz historian William Russell being a member of the local wasnt
very important in the middle of the Depression. In Chicago Local 208 fared better than its New
Orleans counterpart, but members had a hard time finding steady employment. William Everett
Samuels recalled, The union had a very difficult time in the Depression. They did. Membership
declined. They couldnt pay their dues. Say 1931, the month of June, I think I made eight
dollars. The whole Month! I seen the sign at the WPA and stuff and I applied for relief. Since
New York was the center of what remained of the recording industry many musicians, like
Danny Barker, moved to the Big Apple in search of work. New York emerged as the de facto

Peretti, Creation of Jazz, 165-167.

198

depression-era jazz capital, because many of the leading bands in the country relocated there in
the 1930s to eke out a living as professional artists. In fact, so many musicians lived in New
York during the Depression that in 1934 Local 802s membership represented close to twenty
percent of the total membership in the AFM nationwide. Increasingly, musicians turned to a life
on the road to make ends meet.3
In the 1930s AFM locals across the country suffered as some members could no longer
afford monthly fees and annual membership dues. At the national level, the AFM was fixated
with fighting the issue of Vitaphones in movie theaters. The AFM was convinced that a public
relations campaign would educate the public about the advantages of live, in-house music during
feature films. The AFM believed the audience would see the superiority of live music and
demand an end to canned music. Audiences were not convinced by the AFMs public relations
campaign, and by 1937 it was clear that the union was fighting a losing battle.4
While the national AFM was ineffectual, unions at the local level focused their energies
at finding employment for members to little avail. In New York members of Local 802, led by
James Collis and David Freed, promoted a plan known as One ManOne Job. Essentially the
plan was an effort to spread employment among a larger pool of members. Two or three
musicians were intended to play jobs that used to require half a dozen or more members. In
theory the proposal would have provided more employment opportunities for all members. Local
802 ultimately did not adopt the proposal for fear that established and more recognizable
musicians would reap inordinate benefits. Similar proposals were adopted in Los Angeles and
Chicago, but proved ineffective in providing employment relief. Locals across the country also

William Russell quoted in, Peretti, Creation of Jazz, 166; Samuels, in Spivey ed., Union and the Black Musician,
47; Peretti, Creation of Jazz, 167, 172.
4
Kelley, Without a Song, in Three Strikes, 129-133, 144-149.

199

lowered fees, but a union card was often not enough to put food on the table. Locals also did
their best to provide relief to members, but most branches were on the brink of financial
solvency and in no position to dole out substantial benefits. In New York Local 802 appealed to
the citys wealthy arts patrons to create the Musicians Emergency Fund. The fund provided
assistance to roughly four thousand musicians, but it was a temporary measure.5
In the dismal economic climate of the 1930s labor organizations and workers in a variety
of fields across the country turned increasingly militant. The Communist Party (CP) made
political inroads with black and white workers during the Depression as a result. The CP gained
black support in particular by advocating an agenda of racial equality and by supporting a group
of nine young black men falsely accused of rape in Scottsboro, Alabama who stood on death row
as a result. The case of the Scottsboro boys gained national attention that revealed southern
racial injustice to the nation. In 1931 and 1932 the CP and NAACP sought to provide legal help
to the wrongfully accused, and, ultimately, the CPs legal arm, the International Labor Defense
(ILD), took up the case. In Harlem the CP set up the Scottsboro Unity Defense Committee to
raise funds for the ILD. In the spring of 1932 the Unity Defense Committee hosted a fundraiser
at the Rockland Palace Ballroom at 155th Street and 8th Avenue in Harlem that featured Duke
Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, and Fats Waller among others. A member of the ILD approached
the Board of Directors of Local 208 to request the services of members to play a similar benefit
in Chicago. The CP member, named Mr. Johnson, Stated that he had been approached by
individual musicians and was referred to the Board by them. Mr. Johnson was instructed by
Board to report activities to Local Office and that there is no doubt will be cooperation given

David Freed and James Collis, Why One Man- One Job? 1938, Records of the American Federation of
Musicians Local 802, Box 1, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Tamiment Library, New York University, New
York; Kelley, Without a Song, in Three Strikes, 137-138.

200

from this Local.6 In this manner, jazz artists offered their services in the most galvanizing issue
for African Americans in the mid 1930s.
New York attorneys Samuel Leibowitz and Joseph Brodsky handled the Scottsboro case.
After six years and numerous trials and appeals, Leibowitz and Brodsky secured the acquittal of
four defendants, but five others were sentenced to anywhere from seventy-five years to life in
prison. Brodsky was a high-ranking member of the CPs leadership, and later served as the
attorney for Local 802 for four years in the late 1930s. Some New York musicians joined the CP
and others, like Albert Walters, regularly attended party meetings but never formally joined.
Local 802s more militant members remained committed to showing solidarity with fellow
laborers in trades across the Big Apple, and they marched in the citys annual May Day parade
alongside members of New Yorks other unions. While the leadership of Local 802 was
lukewarm to the interests of its more militant members, the work of black musicians as activists
within the union, with the Scottsboro case, the CP, and in showing solidarity with other labor
unions signaled that jazz artists were as committed to the radical politics of the Depression Era as
their counterparts in left-leaning social struggles. These activities also demonstrated that though
the Great Migration effectively ended with the economic collapse of the Great Depression,
musicians remained committed to political activism in a variety of fields unleashed by the
migration experience.7

Goldberg, Swinging the Color Line, 69-70; Minutes of the Board of Directors Meetings for Local 208 of the
American Federation of Musicians, February 11, 1932, American Federation of Musicians File, Harold Washington
Library Center, Chicago Public Library.
7
David B. Freed letter to John Galsel President of Local 802, December 31, 1990, Records of the American
Federation of Musicians Local 802, Box 1, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Tamiment Library, New York
University, New York; Goldberg, Swinging the Color Line, 70-71; Kelley, Without a Song, in Three Strikes,
148. For more information on the Scottsboro case see: James R. Acker, Scottsboro and Its Legacy: The Cases that
Challenged American Legal and Social Justice (New York; Praeger, 2007); Robin D.G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe:
Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina
Press, 1990) 78-91; Barak Goodman, Scottsboro: An American Tragedy, American Experience (PBS Home Video,
2001), http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/scottsboro/.

201

Though jazz musicians as individuals suffered from the economic downturn, the genre
itself thrived; the work of black musicians captured Americas popular imagination and became
the national music in the 1930s. While black musicians remained politically active throughout
the Great Depression, jazz retained the power to affect limited social change and bring separate
groups together in unprecedented ways. By 1935 black and white audiences increasingly
clamored for the big band style of jazz first made famous by Fletcher Henderson and Duke
Ellington in Harlem in the mid to late 1920s. Groups led by Henderson, Ellington, Louis
Armstrong, and Count Basie and white bands led by Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and Tommy
Dorsey kept the record industry afloat. These bands dominated the Swing Era and remained the
public faces of jazz throughout the Great Depression.
In 1936 a new jazz trio began playing for large crowds of curious spectators in Chicago.
The group featured Benny Goodman on clarinet, Gene Krupa on drums, and Teddy Wilson on
piano. At the height of the big band era, a trio was certainly out of the ordinary, but that is not
what piqued the crowds curiosity. The remarkable thing about the Benny Goodman Trio was
that it featured a black musician on stage with white musicians. Though black and white
musicians recorded together as far back as the 1920s, no one dared take such an act on the road.
The Benny Goodman Trio was the first to break with social convention and defy Jim Crow a full
decade before Jackie Robinson famously broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball.
Teddy Wilson was not relegated to a supporting role in the ensemble, but rather he was
featured as an equal partner to his white band mates Goodman and Krupa. Wilson remembered,
When the Goodman Trio came out of the recording studio, where there had been many mixed
bands in the recording studio for years, but nobody played it live. When we played and the
public spotlight was really on me, and Krupa and them. We had a tremendous, big audience

202

watching this new thing of racial mixing on an equal basis.8 The trio soon added two more
African American artists, Lionel Hampton on vibraphone and Charlie Christian on guitar, to
form one of the most popular bands of the decade for both black and white listeners. Sonny
Greer, Duke Ellingtons drummer, credited Goodman with challenging the status quo with
respect to interracial bands: He was the first one to present the colored musicians with his band.
Because before then it wasnt heard of wasnt heard of. But a band with that reputation with
colored musicians it was a high honor. I give Benny very much credit. He kind of opened the
door. It eased open a little bit, you know. Goodman was not the only bandleader to hire
musicians of both races. Benny Carter, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and other notable
bandleaders employed members of both races.9 It was a trend that continued, as jazz musicians
of all stripes finally had the freedom to create art with anyone they wished.
While David Levering Lewis and Nathan Irvin Huggins argue the Harlem Renaissance
did not progressively alter American society, the accounts of Teddy Wilson and Sonny Greer and
the accounts from previous chapters by Ethel Waters, Milt Hinton, and Bill Davison tell a
different story. African American art retained the power to affect change. Though American
society was not transformed overnight, jazz helped pave the way for future progress. Thanks in
no small part to the Great Migration, scores of musicians across the country contributed to a
flourishing of African American culture that introduced the New Negro of jazz to the world.
Most importantly, it was the activism of the migration experience that informed subsequent
activism in new locales, and in this regard jazz musicians were just as politically active as other
black artists of the period.
8

Teddy Wilson, interview transcript, October 2, 1979, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New
Jersey.
9
Sonny Greer, interview transcript, January 15, 1979, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New
Jersey; Buerkle and Barker, Bourbon Street Black, 106-107.

203

Though jazz was not a panacea that cured Americas racial ills, it held the power to bring
disparate groups together on common ground and change the attitudes of segments of white
America. But jazz musicians were not content to wait for their reward in heaven. When the rate
of progress was too slow, they took matters into their own hands. From small scale economic
efforts like fish fries, lawn parties, and rent parties to organizing efforts like forming benevolent
societies in New Orleans or unionization in Chicago and New York, black musicians actively
sought to make the American dream work, in the words of Amiri Baraka. When the American
dream was not working, they pursued greener pastures during the Great Migration, and brought
America swinging into the Jazz Age.

204

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