Jazz and Justice. Gerald Horne
of New Orleans people would cause complete silence and attention. The word was so very powerful that it carried the impact of catastrophes, destruction, hell, earthquakes, cyclones, murder, hangings, lynchings, all sorts of slaughter….” But it was not just the Magnolia State since tales of “Alabama, Florida, Texas and Georgia were equally fearsome.”75
The climate in which this music was forged was also unhealthy in terms of the violence often inflicted upon denizens. African Americans were a frequent target but indicative of the hostile climate that spilled over to ensnare others, Italian Americans, too, were targeted at times. It was in 1891 that this latter group was subjected to what has been described as the “largest lynching in American history,” referring to almost a dozen men who were murdered in one fell swoop in response to allegations concerning their presumed attack on local law enforcement. As noted, these Italian Americans were primarily of Sicilian origin, “some 70 percent” of the total according to one estimate, and, it was said, they were “unconsciously … tolerant” of Negroes, “even friendly with them,” displaying an “indifference to American racism,” a blatant violation of dominant norms that was bound to spark retaliation. The “White League,” known to torment African Americans, was also accused of “waging war against Italians.” Reputedly “50 percent of the major American papers in every section of the country … approved” of the lynching. Theodore Roosevelt called it “a rather good thing.” Opinions began to shift when it was reported that a substantial Italian fleet was making its way across the Atlantic with the aim of attacking U.S. coastal cities. The fact that African Americans had no such patron to intervene on their behalf helped to spur a “Pan African” Congress to cure this defect with the aim of strengthening the ancestral continent. Also, Negro musicians began at this juncture to migrate abroad where they were in a position to lobby on behalf of those left behind.76
Retrospectively, the attack on Sicilians and Sicilian Americans and Italians and Italian Americans seems to have been designed to drive a wedge between them and their African-American neighbors and co-workers, at a time when one contemporary scholar has spoken of a “General Strike” in the Crescent City in 1892, “the first inter-racial strike in the country.”77
As noted, anti-Italian pogroms were an extension of what was befalling Africans. New Orleans had one of the largest concentrations of Negroes in North America, which impelled the rowdiest of their antagonists to seek to bludgeon them.78 At the time of the most significant anti-Negro explosions of this era, in New Orleans in 1900, “Big Eye” Louis Nelson Delisle, a multi-instrumentalist, was playing bass at a club, accompanying Buddy Bolden, when his father was killed and himself nearly so. He was prompted to make the strategic decision to give up on the cumbersome bass and focus on the clarinet; as one analyst put it, this smaller instrument “would be easier to run with if another mob was chasing him”—yet another example of how racism and the political economy shaped the music. Whatever the case, Bolden’s cornet was smashed during the riot, sending a contrary message. Likewise, a staggered Lorenzo Tio left the city altogether.79
The crucible in which this new music emerged was often rife with dangers of various sorts—cheating employers not least—which in turn shaped the art form. Taking risks and improvisation nestled near the heart of the music.
Ineluctably, an increasingly popular music identified with African American men was designed to incur wrath in a racist society. At the same time, the perhaps not coincidental arrival of jazz with the rise of U.S. imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century contributed to seeing this new music, as one astringent critic put it, as the “natural accompaniment to the death march of Western civilization as a whole.”80 It was an unwelcome trend in the United States, exacerbating the preexisting Negrophobia.
On the other hand, there was the proliferation of electricity, feeding the popularity of the phonograph and recorded music. Thomas Edison’s device marked the onset of the modern music industry and allowed musicians to reach into the most obscure corners of the planet.81 The critic Leonard Feather argued that Kid Ory’s “Sunshine Blues” and his “Creole Trombone” were the first genuine recordings of “black jazz,” recorded, interestingly enough, in Los Angeles rather than New Orleans.82 Ironically, recorded music simultaneously opened an income stream and yet another opportunity for exploitation. Electricity also facilitated the popularity of certain musical instruments—for example, the electric guitar—which transformed the music. The rise of electricity also dovetailed with the rise of radio, yet another device that propelled the new music.83 But these technological advances also buoyed the increasingly strident critics alarmed by the popularity of music produced mostly by Negro men.
The critic identified as Mrs. Marx E. Oberndofer of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs asked plaintively, “Does jazz put the sin in syncopation?” The answer was an emphatic yes. This music, it was said accusingly, was that “expression of protest against law and order, that Bolshevik element of license, striving for expression in music.” Concurring, Fenton T. Bott found that “jazz is the very foundation and essence of salacious dancing.” This alarmism grew as the sales of phonographs surged to 158 million by 1919, allowing for further dissemination of the music. One poster blared ominously, “STOP HELP SAVE THE YOUTH OF AMERICA DON’T BUY NEGRO RECORDS.” “If you don’t want to serve Negroes in your place of business,” it was advised, then “do not have Negro records on your juke box or listen to Negro records on the radio.” A radio station in Chicago was scorned for playing this music by Negroes.84
This new music was compelled to assume an “outlaw” mantle, forcing musicians to constantly peer over their shoulders for angry antagonists. An improvisatory spirit stuck with the music even as it migrated northward to Chicago and New York and Kansas City.
At any rate, in southern Louisiana, there was the difficulty of dealing with a police force that seemed to prey on Negro men; it was rare for a jazzman not to have spent at least one night sitting in a precinct lockup after a gig that somehow had gotten out of hand. One night in 1915 Sidney Bechet and “King” Oliver were enjoying a drink in a local tavern when a customer was shot dead right in front of their eyes, a riveting experience not designed to inspire confidence. Another time, an Oliver-Ory band was raided by the police, and band members who could not come up with what today seems like a pittance in bail money had to spend a night in jail. A disenthralled Oliver fled to Chicago, which created an opening for Louis Armstrong, who soon joined him there, this after working as a bellboy, carpenter, coal cart driver, and stevedore.85
One hypothesis suggests that as Storyville began to close during the late stages of the First World War (1914-1918), a “Jazz Diaspora” was incited, though there is evidence to suggest that musicians were departing the Crescent City even earlier. (Edmond “Doc” Souchon, guitarist and writer, born in 1897, claims that less than 5 to 10 percent of the musicians played in Storyville.)86 Then there came the impact of the Great War. This titanic conflict that saw numerous Africans in arms, often led to many being compelled to fight in Europe. Willie “The Lion” Smith earned his nickname in France during the war after manning what were called “Big French 75 guns” for forty-nine days straight.87
St. Louis, just up the river and already a capital of sorts of ragtime, benefited from this scattering from New Orleans. Trumpeter Clark Terry, an early influence on Miles Davis, recalled the showboats plying the Mississippi River, while pointing out that “a lot of the cats got off there,” meaning the Missouri city, especially since this town “was always known for beautiful, fine ladies.” Besides, not unlike New Orleans, in St. Louis “any days of the month, you’d have three or four parades” in which musicians could display their talents.88
There were other disincentives that argued against Negro musicians remaining in New Orleans. By 1902, Local 174 of the American Federation of Musicians was chartered and was strictly reserved for musicians defined as “white.”89 Dancing to this beat, bandleader “Papa Jack” Laine, born in New Orleans in 1873, said of one musician, “When I found out he was a nigger, that’s when I stopped hiring him…. I saw his daddy and that was enough.” As for the trombonist Dave Perkins, he did not realize he was a Negro since he was “fair as a lily” with blue eyes, the implication