On the Shoulders of Giants

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Classically trained Handy could only shake his head at the noise and enjoy his paid break. Until something unusual happened. The patrons began to throw money at the upstart band. Recalled Handy, “A rain of silver dollars began to fall around the outlandish, stomping feet. The dancers went wild. Dollars, quarters, halves—the shower grew heavier and continued so long I strained my neck to get a better look. There before the boys lay more money than my nine musicians were being paid for the entire engagement. Then I saw the beauty of primitive music. They had the stuff people wanted. It touched the spot.”

  The Blues Looks for the Green: The Jump to Making Records

  Indeed the people wanted it, but getting it to them was not that easy. Records were the best way to spread the music. In the 1920s, the United States was riding a wave of unparalleled prosperity. Homes were quickly filling with the latest products: 12 million homes had radios and 30 million automobiles roamed the streets. Record players were also flying off the shelves, creating a demand for more records. In 1927 alone, 100 million records were sold. Some of this prosperity even trickled down to the poorest homes. Much of the rural South did without electricity, yet by 1930, as many as a third of the families in these poor, remote areas owned a phonograph player, for which electricity was not needed. What was needed, however, was more records.

  Black composer and bandleader Perry Bradford (1893–1970) saw the need and did everything he could to meet it. Bradford tried to convince white executives from phonograph recording companies to let him record one of his own songs—using a black singer. His pitch to the executives was not based on racial indignation or a plea for artistic innovation, just pure marketing sense. “There’s fourteen million Negroes in our great country,” he told them, “and they will buy records if recorded by one of their own, because we are the only folks that can sing and interpret hot jazz songs just off the griddle correctly.” Record companies continued to be skeptical, rejecting his appeal. In his autobiography, Born with the Blues, Bradford recounts the combination of wile and humility required: “I had greased my neck with goose grease every morning, so it would become easy to bow and scrape to some recording managers. But none of them would listen to my tale o’ woe, even though I displayed my teeth to them with a perpetual-lasting watermelon grin.” Finally, Bradford convinced Fred Hagar of Okeh Records to take a chance. Despite the threats from disgruntled whites of a boycott of both Okeh records and phonograph machines, on February 14, 1920, Mamie Smith recorded Bradford’s “That Thing Called Love” and “You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down.” Though the songs were more pop tunes than blues, though the studio musicians were all white, this was the first time a blues singer was recorded.

  The record was a hit, prompting Okeh to return Mamie Smith to the studio to record Bradford’s composition “Crazy Blues.” This time the musicians, the Jazz Hounds, were black, and this time the song was authentic blues. The record surpassed expectations, selling an amazing seventy-five thousand copies in its first month of release. Bradford and Smith’s success started a stampede of record companies anxious to capitalize on this latest trend. The public was hungry for race music, and Northern recording studios were the only restaurant that served it. But the demand was so great that by 1923 the competition decided to do “field recordings.” Recording companies hauled their equipment down to the South, hobbled together makeshift studios in hotels, schools, and hired halls. Like some Andy Hardy version of American Idol, long lines of black performers waited to audition, and executives obliged by recording nearly any musician who had a woeful song.

  The blues has few rigid musical characteristics. Rather, its impact comes from the style of the performer. As the blues grew in popularity, the many variations of style came to light, providing a clearer demarcation between blues and jazz. Country blues usually featured a singer accompanied only by a banjo or guitar, or sometimes without any instrument. The most notable figures in country blues included Robert Johnson (whose guitar playing was so magnificent that he claimed his skill was the result of making a deal with the devil), Charlie Patton, Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Blind Blake. Often these musicians had little formal training and were unable to play with other musicians in a group setting. But that quality was more a strength than a detriment, because it allowed them to focus on their music as a personal testament. Indeed, Alberta Hunter declared, “The musicians that didn’t know music could play the best blues. I know that I don’t want no musicians who know all about music playin’ for me.”

  The Memphis blues style offered a more funky orchestration, including unusual instruments such as jugs, washboards, fiddles, kazoos, and mandolins. Notable artists included Memphis Minnie, John Estes, Robert Wilkins, and Joe McCoy. Memphis blues style is credited by some experts as being the first to separate lead and rhythm guitar into clearly defined roles, the precursor to rock ’n’ roll and pop music.

  Probably the most famous style was the city blues, which was more elaborate and featured many female singers such as Mamie Smith, Bessie Smith, and Victoria Spivey. In fact, it was the female singers who popularized the blues, while men desperately tried to play catch-up. At the forefront of these influential women was Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, known as the Mother of Blues. A stout woman with a mouthful of gold teeth, Ma Rainey was as beloved for her kindness as she was admired for her voice. She performed many of her own compositions as well as those of other writers. Working her way up through various minstrel shows, Rainey became, by the 1920s, Paramount Records’ biggest-selling star. (Owned by the Wisconsin Chair Company, Paramount Records, after failing to profit from white popular music, turned to “race music,” becoming one of the most influential recording companies in the field until its demise in 1932.) Ma Rainey retired in 1935, settling down to run her two theaters in Georgia and immerse herself with the Congregation of Friendship Baptist Church, of which her brother was deacon. When she died in 1939, her death certificate named her occupation as “housekeeper.”

  The influence of the blues has been traced through some of the greatest icons in American musical history. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Tracy Chapman, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers have all recorded blues songs. Modern variations of the blues, such as the West Side blues, the Chicago style, the Texas style, American rock-blues fusion, and the British rock-blues produced blues-inspired music from musicians such as Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Cream, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Canned Heat, ZZ Top, and many others.

  In describing the unrelenting racism that produced a social and economic environment that spawned the blues, Richard Wright lamented, “The American environment which produced the blues is still with us, though we all labor to render it progressively smaller. The total elimination of that area might take longer than we now suspect, hence it is well that we examine the meaning of the blues while they are still falling upon us.” Although he said that in 1959, some argue that the edgier and more aggressive rap and hip-hop music of today merely continues in this same tradition. Even more important, perhaps the continuing appeal of blues is a testament to its artistry beyond its origins. Not a static monument to historical racism, the blues has become accepted as a universal language for expressing certain emotions, regardless of one’s cultural background. Its lasting value lies not only in the injustice it exposes about American history, but in the depths it reveals about the human heart.

  When Jazz Was Young: New Orleans

  Despite the blues’ popularity, the 1920s and 1930s are referred to as the Jazz Age, not the Blues Age. And though the blues strutted and fretted its hour upon the stage of the Harlem Renaissance, jazz was the showstopping main attraction. Jazz orchestrated the sophisticated yet playful attitude of the Renaissance. Blues and jazz musician B. B. King (b. 1925), who was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1984, acknowledged this difference when he said, “Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy’s playing
blues like we play, he’s in high school. When he starts playing jazz, it’s like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.”

  Jazz would school the country about the principles of the Harlem Renaissance.

  The New Orleans of the late nineteenth century where jazz was born was the perfect place for a new musical form that combined the music of various cultures. After all, since the city’s founding in 1718, New Orleans had been owned by the French, then the Spanish, then back to the French, then to the United States. Even the black population was diverse: some came from Africa, some from the Caribbean, and some were native born. All these cultural influences blended together to provide a fertile and receptive site. “You got something to offer,” the city seemed to say, “then toss it into the gumbo and we’ll see how it tastes.” That gumbo received its most flavorful spice from the culture of the American slaves. The eventual dish was jazz. Ted Gioia (The History of Jazz) describes the result: “Anthropologists call this process ‘syncretism’—the blending together of cultural elements that previously existed separately. This dynamic, so essential to the history of jazz, remains powerful even in the present day, when African-American styles of performance blend seamlessly with other musics of other cultures, European, Asian, Latin, and, coming full circle, African.” Of course, this tumultuous syncretism also defines the creation of the United States itself: the blending together of various cultures and nationalities that previously existed separately. This is why jazz is seen as symbolic of something greater than the sounds of the notes, why it is called America’s classical music.

  Although the musical ingredients to make jazz were already in place—the slave songs, work songs, call-and-response songs, gospel songs—these elements came together in New Orleans because that was the only open kitchen door. In most other states, which were dominated by Christianity, African music was considered pagan and therefore not allowed. Various states banned drums (which they feared would be used to signal slave uprisings), horns, or any loud instruments. However, Louisiana, with its confluence of so many cultures, permitted them. In fact, New Orleans featured Congo Square (today appropriately called Louis Armstrong Park), where slave dances were routinely held. These slave dances, called ring shouts, involved hundreds of dancers swaying, stomping, and chanting. The form of this ritual dance, which continued to take place well into the twentieth century, reveals the initial bridge of African music to American culture. As bandleader Paul Whiteman (1890–1967), known as the King of Jazz, said, “Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.” But in New Orleans, the rattle of those chains became the rhythm of a new age.

  New Orleans gave jazz not only its unique sound, but also its name. The word jazz is a derivative of jass, a slang term for sexual intercourse. Jass itself is thought to be a derivative of either jism (semen) or jasmine, the favored scent of perfume among local prostitutes in the brothels where some early jazz players performed. Because the audience at brothels seemed to be preoccupied with other matters than listening to music, these musicians overcame their own boredom by playing for each other, messing with the prescribed notes, bending them, slurring them, changing the emphasis, altering the rhythm—what they called “jassing it up.” In some way, their relationship with the music was similar to that of the brothels’ clients with the female employees. A joyful, playful intimacy resulting in a burst of inspired sound.

  African-American writer James Baldwin wrote, “It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.” Certainly it’s true that the history of jazz is also the history of African-Americans. Yet, while no one doubts the essential African influences that went into the creation of jazz, it is also clear that many other cultural influences contributed to shaping its personality. Many of the standard instruments used to play jazz—the trumpet, saxophone, trombone, and double bass, for example—came from Europe, as did some of the music theory that jazz musicians used as a jumping-off point. Jazz musicians used these elements the way master origami artists use a plain sheet of paper, folding it again and again, transforming it into an intricate shape that no longer resembles the original form, though that form still determines the structure. Nor can the influence of Spanish music be ignored. Famed New Orleans jazz musician Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton claimed that “if you can’t manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning…for jazz.”

  Clearly the creation of jazz required a lot of influences from a lot of different cultures. Although many white musicians are key figures in the development of jazz—including Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, etc.—there has always been some controversy about the role of non-African-Americans in jazz. Famed jazz trumpeter Roy “Little Jazz” Eldridge often claimed he could easily tell the difference between white and black musicians playing jazz. In 1951, British jazz critic Leonard Feather accepted this as a challenge and arranged a blind-fold test in which Eldridge would listen to jazz recordings and determine which musicians were black and which were white. In the end, Eldridge was wrong most of the time, finally admitting, “Couldn’t tell who was colored and who was white. They could be Eskimos for all I know.”

  Rather than indicting Eldridge, the results underscore what jazz scholar Jurgen E. Grandt refers to as “the apparent paradox that jazz music is at once a distinctly black American art form as well as a cultural hybrid.” Although the artists may express their own insights, pains, and joys born from their own unique experiences, once they send the art out into the world, it belongs to everyone. Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” may reveal her own oppressive relationship with her father, but once it is published, it becomes the articulation of anyone who identifies with it. One can claim paternity, but once the child is grown and on its own, the parent no longer controls the child. With an art form, no one gets to claim stewardship. In fact, the true mark of success may be when the art form can stand apart from the parent, when it bleeds into the collective unconscious of all society. Maybe this is what historian Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950), known as the Father of Black History, hoped for when he commented, “What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice.” A lofty utopian ideal that might just have become realized in jazz.

  When Jazz Was Hip: Harlem

  As jazz music evolved, the meaning of the word jazz also evolved from its origins as a crude reference to sexual intercourse; used as a verb, jazz now meant “to make enthusiastic, lively.” And when jazz came to Harlem, it “jazzed” the whole town. Harlem was remade in jazz’s image, transforming it into a bustling epicenter of entertainment. Though jazz was not born in Harlem, jazz was treated here like a favorite son. And jazz returned the favor by boosting the local economy. Most of the greats played Harlem, in every venue possible, from high-class nightclubs to smoky jazz joints to neighborhood rent parties. On any given night, one could enjoy the musical stylings of Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Fats Waller, Fletcher Henderson, Cab Calloway, Chick Webb, Louis Armstrong, Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson, William Grant Still, and many others. In Harlem, jazz developed into the jubilant, sassy, hopeful music that the rest of the country—including white America—would come to embrace as the sound track of not just a race, but an entire age. The Jazz Age.

  The Jazz Age in Harlem “officially” began on April 6, 1917, the same day the United States declared war on Germany and entered World War I. While American naval forces steamed toward Europe to engage the enemy, the Harlem Renaissance was engaging the enemy of racial stereotypes. Ironically, the first salvo fired by jazz in New York came from a white band: the Original Dixieland Jass Band. The band’s leader, Nick La Rocca, described their style: “Jazz is the assassination of the melody and the slap of syncopation.” Playing at the Paradise Room of Reisenweber’s Café on Columbus
Circle, they introduced this New Orleans–style jazz and started a chain reaction that created the Jazz Age, changing the way whites perceived blacks—and the way blacks perceived themselves.

  This chain reaction didn’t just happen; it was fueled in part by booze. Or lack thereof. Between 1920 and 1933, the Eighteenth Amendment outlawed alcohol. Prohibition wasn’t just the dour reaction of a few constipated party poopers, it was a reflection of the national mood of a lot of Americans. Individual states were already banning alcohol at an increasing rate: in 1905 alcohol was illegal in only three states, but by 1916 it was illegal in twenty-six of the forty-eight states. A lot of people wanted America to clean up its act. But there were two Americas: the one attempting to curtail the excesses of an increasingly indulgent society; and a society that was looking to increasingly indulge itself. One preached the practice of restraint; the other practiced the particulars of celebration. This latter group continued to indulge in alcohol, either homemade or purchased in “speakeasies” (so called because the patrons had to “speak easy” to convince the guard at the door to allow them entrance). The speakeasies that populated Harlem at the time offered illegal alcohol and unrepentant jazz, generating a partylike atmosphere that guaranteed the popularity of both.

  The Prohibition Era was the perfect dance partner for the Jazz Age because it created an irresistible Forbidden Fruit Syndrome. By wagging a stern parental finger, Prohibition made the booze all the tastier to the “hipsters,” who saw themselves as the fun, carpe diem half of society. While the 1960s declared itself the era of “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll,” the 1920s was more like “sex, booze, and jazz.” Although history has rightly elevated the jazz greats to the firmament where they belong, these musical movers and shakers weren’t saints. They were musicians playing music for people in the mood to party. And they didn’t mind partying themselves. When jazzman Tommy Dorsey (1905–56) was told his band had to arrive on a film set at 8 a.m., he replied, “Jesus Christ, my boys don’t even start vomiting until eleven.”