However, for many white intellectuals and bohemians, the Harlem Renaissance was not about raising black culture to the same level of white culture; rather, it was about the experience of descending into black culture as one would embark on an African safari. What the Harlem Renaissance provided was a safe way for these cultural voyeurs to experience the primitive in galleries, salons, and clubs that catered to white audiences. By 1927 Harlem was no longer an exclusively black neighborhood but had become an area in which many businesses embodying black culture catered to white patrons. Writer and physician Rudolph Fisher, after a five-year absence from Harlem to attend medical school, returned to find all his old haunts “had changed their names and turned white.” As he sat in one cabaret, he “suddenly became aware that, except for the waiters and members of the orchestra, I was the only Negro in the place.”37 Fisher contemplates the sudden vogue among white New Yorkers for black culture in his essay “The Caucasian Storms Harlem,” but he does not really provide any significant explanations for the phenomenon other than suggesting a possible reaction to the Broadway success of Shuffle Along (1921) and its many imitators.38 Even though Shuffle Along contained skits of the minstrel variety, what made it a sensation was the music and dancing. The play introduced white New Yorkers to the kind of music and dancing that could be found regularly in Harlem cabarets, and when the imitators failed to live up to the original, audiences sought out the authentic in Harlem. Catering to this white clientele was good business for club owners in Harlem, and since downtowners had to travel uptown to Harlem, the experience was more exotic than seeing a show on Broadway.
The best-known of these uptown hot spots was the Cotton Club, located on the corner of Lenox Avenue and 142nd Street. The club opened in 1923 when former heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson sold his Club Deluxe to New York gangster Owen “Owney” Madden, then in prison for manslaughter. Madden’s wealth came from selling Madden’s No. 1 (a beer) during Prohibition, and he also owned the Stork Club and the Silver Slipper. Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld’s set and costume designer, Joseph Urban, designed the interior to reflect downtown attitudes about uptown inhabitants, creating what has been called “a brazen riot of African jungle motifs, Southern stereotypology, and lurid eroticism.”39 Adding to the African colonial/southern plantation atmosphere was the club’s policy of white only patrons catered to by a black staff and black entertainers. Well-to-do patrons of the club were treated not only to an evening of illicit beverages and entertainment but also to an exotic experience in which black culture (or rather, white stereotypes of black culture) became an exciting, provocative, and safe diversion from everyday life. The club, and others like it, provided white patrons “the chance to act black and feel primitive personally without having to change their downtown, public lives.”40 Shows at the club rivaled the Broadway productions of Ziegfeld, and some, such as The Blackbirds of 1928, found their way to Broadway after their run at the club. In 1927 the Cotton Club received even more exposure when the newly created Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) radio network began broadcasting live performances from the club, and in December of that year, Duke Ellington brought his Washington, D.C.–based band, the Washingtonians, for an extended run.
Duke Ellington was, in many respects, a cross between the “hot” jazz players like Louis Armstrong and the conductor-showmen like Paul Whiteman, and his career in 1927 represents a synthesis of the more “authentic” black culture of “hot” jazz musicians and Chicago black-belt nightclubs and the symphonic jazz of Paul Whiteman and dance orchestras playing and recording for primarily white audiences. Twenty-three-year-old Ellington came to New York from Washington, D.C., with his band the Washingtonians in 1923. The band played gigs at various clubs and in various revues around Harlem, as well as on summer tours of the New England states. During this time, Ellington’s dance band began developing its unique style of playing, which included various percussion instruments and a heavy use of mutes on the brass instruments. By 1927 Ellington had begun recording and publishing as well as performing, primarily under the influence of manager Irving Mills, who entered into an agreement with Ellington in which each would own 45 percent of their joint corporation, with 10 percent going to Mills’s lawyer.41 Mills had started a music-publishing firm with his brother in 1919 and was known for finding and publishing such unknown but talented songwriters and composers as Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Fields, Jimmy McHugh, and Harold Arlen. Mills not only booked the Ellington band in New York and New England but also encouraged Ellington to record and publish original material, which not only would increase the profits on the sale of records and sheet music—since no royalties would need to be paid to someone else—but also would speed the development of Ellington as a composer, a role that is perhaps his greatest contribution to American music. In this sense, the relationship between Mills and Ellington, while primarily an economic one, was also artistically beneficial to Ellington. Mills did not dictate what Ellington wrote, but much of the material was directed at the type of audiences for which Ellington’s band performed, mainly white. Understanding that much of the attraction of black music for white audiences was its exotic nature, Ellington focused on compositions that represented aspects of black culture. “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” and “Birmingham Breakdown” were two of the first original songs recorded by Ellington and his band and were the first Ellington compositions to be published. Recorded in November 1926 and published in February 1927, “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” illustrates Ellington’s compositional philosophy as it sought to illustrate musically an experience out of black life. “Those old Negroes who work in the fields for year upon year, and are tired at the end of their day’s labour, may be seen walking home at night with a broken, limping step locally known as the ‘Toddle-O,’ with the accent on the last syllable. I was able to get a new rhythm from this.”42 Ellington later remarked, “Practically everything we wrote back then was supposed to be a picture of something, or represent a character.”43 In attempting “not so much to reproduce ‘hot’ or ‘jazz’ music as to describe emotions, moods, and activities which have a wide range, leading from the very gay to the sombre,” Ellington looked “to the everyday life and customs of the Negro to supply [his] inspiration.”44
While Ellington’s approach to music was very much in line with what Harlem Renaissance writers and artists sought to do, he was not attempting to use black culture as inspiration for elite art music or symphonies. Ellington was very aware of the fundamental economic reason for the songs, as dance music and as records, and therefore his songs had danceable rhythms and he paid close attention to creating compositions that not only fit the 78-rpm records (three minutes per record side) but also took full advantage of the recording process, especially the use of electric microphones (as opposed to the older style ear-trumpet-like recording devices). Ellington paid close attention to the placement of instruments around the microphone to achieve a balance on a record that was not always possible for a live audience to hear. His recordings are technically superior to those of other bands, such as Fletcher Henderson’s and Paul Whiteman’s. Ellington also sought to create compositions that would both cause a live audience to dance and keep a record listener engaged in the song from beginning to end over multiple listenings. He wrote many pieces with varied introductions, interludes, and codas to keep the listener interested. Again, the demands of commerce reinforced the artistic ambitions of Ellington and his band, since recordings of original music made it possible for Ellington to showcase his players to the fullest extent, and since many of his players stayed with him for years and even decades, he was able to take advantage of his knowledge of their abilities as he composed. Ellington showed the ability to increase both the marketability and aesthetics of jazz without compromising either.
“Black and Tan Fantasy” (1927) is a perfect example of a song that is interesting in its structure, as a formal composition based on the blues, and still spontaneous in its feeling, since it is constructed around a
series of improvised solos. The dirgelike song begins with an introduction that presents the main melody played by trumpeter and cowriter Bubber Miley with harmony by trombonist Joe Nanton, accompanied by simple drums, banjo, and piano. The introduction of the first theme is followed by the introduction of a second theme, this time by alto saxophonist Otto Hardwick and featuring a more lively and unique melody because of the blues-tinged playing with sliding notes and glissandos. The bulk of the song consists of a basic twelve-bar blues structure in which the first two choruses are devoted to a solo by Miley, the third to one by Ellington on piano, and the fourth to one by Nanton. The last chorus consists of a call-and-response sequence between Miley and the rhythm section, with the rest of the band entering near the end. An added coda features a “quotation” of Frédéric Chopin’s “Funeral March” from his Sonata no. 2. Structurally, the song is basic blues, and while the feeling is melancholy, the overall feel is impressionistic. Without lyrics, the song does not tell a specific story, but it does convey a feeling of fantasy. Different moods and characters are suggested by the individual soloists, who utilize such unique elements as the use of mutes, sound effects, and growls in their playing. The final quotation ends the fantasy, like life, with death. “Black and Tan Fantasy” evokes the feeling of a fantastic and surreal night at a black-and-tan club (a club with a racial mix of patrons), while expanding the structure of jazz music with elements of classical arrangement, all within a three-minute song with a continuous danceable beat. The piece served the demands of dance music, tone poem, and marketable record. While more economically motivated musicians like Paul Whiteman diluted, or “whitened,” jazz for record buyers and concertgoers, and elite black artists like James Weldon Johnson and William Grant Still “elevated” authentic black music for a sophisticated audience, Ellington made music that elevated black music not by adapting it to white styles and forms but by evolving it into a viable commercial yet authentic product.
This product, along with Ellington’s shows, reinforced the image of black culture maintained by Harlem Renaissance artists and writers and sought out by white New Yorkers. When Ellington debuted at the Cotton Club in December 1927, the African jungle/southern plantation style of the club influenced the music played. While the initial show did not feature any Ellington originals, the band did play dance music between the midnight and 2:00 a.m. shows. Every six months, the Cotton Club would produce an entirely new show, with Ellington supplying much of the music. While Ellington’s band was featured in only a few of the fifteen numbers making up most shows, it did provide accompaniment for the singers, dancers, and actors who performed as part of the shows. Such acts as dancer-contortionist Earl “Snakehips” Tucker, bawdy singer Edith Wilson, and dancers Mildred Dixon and Henri Wessell fronted a line of light-skinned, young (all under twenty-one years old), and tall (at least 5 feet, 11 inches) chorus girls dressed in exotic and erotic costumes. For the Cotton Club gig, Ellington’s band changed its name from the Washingtonians (also sometimes called the Kentucky Club Orchestra because they had several engagements there) to Duke Ellington’s Jungle Band. Ellington’s music also started reflecting the jungle motif with such titles as “Jungle Jamboree,” “Jungle Blues,” “Jungle Nights in Harlem,” and “Echoes of the Jungle.” While much of this music has little or no jungle derivation, the unusual rhythms and unique sounds produced by Ellington and his band led people to refer to his sound as “jungle music.”
This emphasis on the primitive reinforced the stereotypes and ideas about African Americans and Harlem already held by most of the white audience, however benign, while the distinct color line separating the management, the production staff (show producers, choreographers, writers), and the audience from the wait staff and the performers reinforced notions of segregation and black inferiority. As a result, black culture was simultaneously desired and denigrated in the simple act of attending a nightclub. This ambiguity toward black culture was not unique to clubgoers but can be seen in the culture at large between the intellectual celebrations of the “new Negro,” and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, southern lynchings of black men, and the treatment accorded to African American flood victims in the Mississippi Delta. The ambiguity extended beyond issues of race to attitudes toward the changes in American society as a whole. African Americans, like movie stars, sports celebrities, women, and other famous and infamous people, bore the brunt of Americans’ anxieties about modern life.
the possibilities and practicalities of radio
Jazz music and the idea of a jazz culture (modern, yet primitive; technologically driven, but emotionally based) spoke to the ambiguities Americans felt about modern life and became the symbol of the age. However, a better, more pervasive symbol for the times is radio, since radio brought the events and trends of the era to individual Americans. In 1927 several developments occurred that ensured the widespread use and influence of radio in America. Radio for the home became more affordable and practical with the introduction of receivers that ran on AC power instead of bulky batteries. The need for organization in the industry, mainly to reduce interference among broadcast stations, prompted a series of radio conferences organized by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and resulted in the passage of the Radio Act of 1927, which created the Federal Radio Commission (FRC, later the Federal Communications Commission, FCC) and regulated the industry. Demand on the part of consumers, as well as the benefits of sharing broadcasting content, led to the creation of national networks of stations disseminating across the country programming that emanated from New York City. The National Broadcasting Company (NBC), formed in late 1926 by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), was quickly followed by the creation of CBS in 1927. Networks enabled people around the country to engage in a shared culture alongside their own individual cultures.
But more than cheap radios, federal authorization, and access to networks, radio programming brought a national culture to Americans. While this national culture developed according to the sometimes conflicting needs and demands of an industry, its acceptance by the population proved the most crucial aspect of radio’s development. Radio programming, in many ways, defined the parameters of discourse about modern America by shaping the way the public perceived events. Every major event in 1927, whether in politics, entertainment, or sports, whether natural disaster or human achievement, was broadcast over radio to more people than could have witnessed them in person. To a great degree, radio shaped what people knew about their society at large, but it did not present a modern or unified message. While radio technology symbolized the modernity of the nation, program content reinforced traditional notions of society, especially about race. Radio, like almost everything else in 1927, expressed the ambiguity Americans experienced in their search for modern America.45
In September 1927, RCA introduced a new line of radio receivers ranging in price from $69.50 to $895. The Radiola 17 model sold for around $150, was compact and easy to operate, ran on house current (AC), and could be used with an attachable loudspeaker to allow more than a single listener with headphones. Demand for these sets outpaced production throughout the late 1920s, and radios such as the Radiola 17 enabled many Americans, both urban and rural, minority and majority, rich and not so rich, to experience what radio had to offer. “With the completion of the changeover to A.C. operation, the whole radio industry experienced the same kind of explosive release that follows removal of the key log in a jam, and into discard along with headphones and batteries went the last barrier between radio reception and a mass market.”46 One of the main suppliers of radio batteries was the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company, known as Philco, which developed a “socket-power” unit allowing radio operators to supply power to their radio sets by plugging into a light socket instead of hooking up to a large battery. Sales of “socket-power” units brought Philco over $15 million in 1927. Philco had also become very involved in advertising on the radio, sponsoring the weekly Philco Hour every Friday evening over twenty-six stations na
tionwide in 1927. Once AC power for radios became cheap and accessible, Philco found itself without a market, and in early 1928 it turned to the manufacturing of radio sets. By 1930 Philco was the number one producer of radios.47
While the spread of radio technology helped increase the number of radio listeners across the country, it also multiplied the number of problems experienced by radio operators and listeners, mainly problems of interference caused when different radio stations transmitted on the same or similar frequencies and when stations changed frequencies in order to produce a clear transmission. The Radio Act of 1912, which had been put in place as part of U.S. participation in the first international radio treaty, signed in April 1912, loosely regulated radio broadcasters and amateurs. Early radio was used primarily for marine and ship-to-shore communications, and regulations became necessary to control interference from amateur radio operators, especially after the Titanic disaster, which occurred the same month the treaty was enacted. The Radio Act of 1912 specified the operating requirements for a license, which was to be issued by the secretary of commerce, but the act did not grant the secretary any discretion in granting licenses. No attempts were made to specify in the licenses at which frequency an operator might broadcast, and no enforcement was provided to stop unlicensed operators from broadcasting. Both these deficiencies created the potential for interference. With the beginning of commercial broadcasting in the early 1920s, interference became an even bigger problem as owners of radio receivers sought regular programming at predictable frequencies.
1927 and the Rise of Modern America Page 21
