Jazz and Justice. Gerald Horne
from there to Africa.81
WAR ERUPTED IN ASIA AND EUROPE in the 1930s, and these years were transformative for the new music, establishing patterns that continue to resonate, not unlike what had occurred previously in terms of the mass diffusion of phonographs and radios and the arrival of mass electrification, facilitating the popularity of the electric guitar. That is not all. In the midst of war, the major musicians’ union engineered a strike over royalty payments, which bandleader Charlie Barnet termed “one of the biggest nails in the coffin of the big band era, for it brought vocalists very much to the fore. Musical backgrounds were being recorded for them in foreign countries and a lot of records were even made with voices substituting for instruments. Before the strike was over, bands had received a lethal blow.”82
Simultaneously, the monopoly enjoyed by ASCAP in terms of music royalties and publishing was challenged increasingly by BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.), and, said pianist Dr. Billy Taylor, this “created important opportunities for many African American artists.” Dr. Taylor added that since vocalists “belonged to a different union,” the musicians’ strike opened doors for these songbirds. Moreover, a shellac shortage, due to Tokyo’s forces seizing the Malay Peninsula, created opportunities for smaller record companies.83
In addition, the eruption of war made exile abroad less attractive, increasing competition for work in the United States. “All jazz is dead in Europe!” it was announced tremulously in mid-1942: “In Switzerland now there are only two Negro musicians”; elsewhere on the continent Negroes were to be found in “concentration camp[s].”84 Trumpeter Arthur Briggs, born in 1899, spent four years in a Nazi internment camp after starring in Paris. With family in Long Island and California, this Negro artist once played with Noble Sissle. At the camp, he formed a six-piece orchestra, then another with twenty-five pieces that moved easily from “swing” to “classical.” He drew upon the talents of 2,000 internees to do so. He also formed a trio that sang Negro spirituals, which was bolstered by the fact that there were “50 colored boys in the camp,” according to journalist Rudolph Dunbar.85
In Manila one musician, Whitney Smith, wound up in a Japanese-administered internment camp, while another, Bob Fockler, wound up broadcasting for a so-called “Nazi radio station,”86 while pianist and arranger Sam Wooding, in contrast, said “the Nazi Party didn’t want any American music and especially the ragtime or jazz played by blacks. They didn’t honor blacks at all. So, they refused, they barred the contract, they discredited the contract.”87
In Shanghai, the new music was in shambles, with artists fleeing in all directions. After the band of Butch Larkin dared to play “God Bless America” in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in early 1943, he was jailed. Many “white” musicians there were replaced by Filipinos, accelerating an ongoing trend regionally. Bandleader James Albert Spears was found dead, an apparent suicide, and in the Philippines Bill Hegamin—described as a “veteran colored leader and ace pia-nist”—was, reportedly, “doing okay teaching music and voice and has a large studio,” while Ray Reynolds was “now dancing nightly” and doing well for himself.88 A favoritism toward Negroes was part of Tokyo’s wartime policy.89
As opportunities abroad dried up because of the exigencies of war, this lucrative outlet for Negro musicians was blocked, generating more intense competition for remaining jobs. This was occurring as the number of jobs for Negro musicians in, for example, Jim Crow Chicago declined by about 30 percent because of the disappearance of Negro-owned clubs in the years leading up to 1940, a process driven by the ravages of the Great Depression, the decline of Negro-owned clubs as a result, the demise of “swing” music, and the perennial: continuing racism.90
Consolidation within the industry was also a factor. The Club De Lisa in Chicago “wasn’t like any other club in the world,” wrote analyst Dempsey Travis. “You could buy anything you wanted within the De Lisa compound in the 5500 block on South State Street. The De Lisa brothers owned the hotel, the gambling operation, the liquor stores and dainty-looking girls who worked the bar stools inside the club.” Thus Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, and the other musicians who performed there were subjected to a kind of monopoly pricing power that could force down fees, as the club tended to drive competitors out of business, which was garnished by Jim Crow that placed these artists in a disadvantaged bargaining position.91
The ripples of instability extended southward, too. Arriving on these shores were a number of talented Cuban musicians who contributed to the richness of the music. Machito, the percussionist born Frank Grillo in 1908, had his first rehearsal in Harlem at 122nd Street and Seventh Avenue, the headquarters of the Negro evangelist Father Divine. “They charged us fifty cents an hour for the rehearsal,” he recalled. Yet despite his base in Harlem, when his orchestra played in Miami, a Jim Crow haven, they were advertised as hailing “from Cuba,” and although his band was “black and white,” they evaded local apartheid because they were Cuban. “We even have a bodyguard to take care of us,” said the bemused dark-skinned artist, “and they transport[ed] us to Miami Beach. I used to live in a white hotel. I never had [a] problem, we used to eat in Miami City [sic] in those white restaurants, as a matter of fact.” His band included an African American, but the wily bandleader sought to keep him from speaking with his betraying accent and that “made the difference,” as they were treated “very good…. There was no problem because we were from Cuba and they consider the Cubans … are not black,” meaning not descendants of enslaved mainland Africans, the perpetual antagonist of North American republicans. Yet when the band played at the Savoy in Harlem “95%” of the audience was black and they were “crazy” about the music. After all, he said, “We [were] playing for black and it was black music…. You didn’t have to make no explanation to a black person about rhythm because … they come from where the rhythm come from.” Machito was no stranger to the Savoy: “I used to go practically every day, every night, to the Savoy because [drummer] Chick Webb was there [and] Ella Fitzgerald [vocalist]” too and fellow Cuban Mario Bauza “was in charge of rehearsing the orchestra.”92
Machito had arrived on the mainland in 1938, while Bauza was already there, paving the way, having arrived more than a decade earlier. (He was to marry the percussionist’s sister.) It was on the mainland that Bauza heard the new music, and, he recalled, “I went back to Cuba and became a saxophone player. I came to New York to live in 1930 and I joined Noble Sissle’s band.” The trumpeter then joined Webb’s band, Webb telling him that, “if you can get the American Negro accent in your music you’re going to be great, because you’ve got the other side of the coin—the finesse, the technique.” He became Webb’s “musical director,” then it was on to Cab Calloway’s band.93 It was Bauza who was partially responsible for the discovery of Ella Fitzgerald. He also had short stints with the band of Don Redman and Fletcher Henderson. It was Bauza who was also partially responsible for the breakthrough that led Calloway to hire Dizzy Gillespie, where they made music together side-by-side. As world war was erupting, Bauza joined Machito’s band, but the influence he left on the music, as exemplified by Gillespie, was significant.94
The overall environment provided fertile soil for yet another rise of a phenomenon not unknown to the new music: a vast bubble of tiny enterprises run by what one commentator termed “dreamers, sharp operators, would-be tycoons and ambitious fans,” many more than willing to take advantage of a climate that facilitated rough exploitation of African American performers. For Lester Young, already familiar with Kansas City’s unscrupulousness, this development made it harder for him to trust people, especially Euro-Americans he didn’t know well, which had an ineluctable impact on his personality and ultimately his music.95
Young also accompanied Count Basie, which illuminates what bandleader Charlie Barnet observed. He encountered the touring band of Basie in New York City in the 1930s: “I never forgot the pitiful instruments some of his guys were playing when they first came into Roseland,” a local nightspot. “They were held together by rubber bands and I just could not believe it, although instruments like that were not uncommon in other black bands across the country.” This decrepitude influenced the music in that “when they got new instruments, they had grown accustomed to a horn that is out of whack”