Klans were occasionally forced to turn to outside bands to provide music for these events. In Kansas City, the local police band played for a Klan convention. In California, the Downey Klan hired bandleader Caesar Mattei after determining he was both Protestant and a Mason. Klaverns even sometimes hired African American musicians to perform. At one event in Virginia, local members explained that they had “danced to the music of Negro musicians” only after ascertaining that the only other band available was from the Knights of Columbus. An Alabama Klan purportedly managed an accomplished African American bluesman, Burl “Jaybird” Coleman, and hired him out to play at events across the South.17
For the most part, however, the Invisible Empire found its musicians among its members. A survey conducted by the music trades in 1925 saw a remarkable increase in the sale of musical instruments, a development that they attributed to the twin phenomena of radio and jazz. More and more Americans aspired to become musicians, and Klan members were no exception. As musical entertainments at Klan events became ever-greater attractions, Klaverns around the country—including Junior Klansmen and members of the Women’s Klan—formed increasingly well-trained and professional bands. Resembling popular contemporary big band “jazz” acts like Paul Whiteman, these groups usually featured a mix of cornets, clarinets, drums, and even the dreaded saxophones. In a clear example of the separation between the organization’s rhetoric and the lived ideology of movement members, Klaverns openly referred to their groups as jazz bands without eliciting any comment. Members of the Women’s Klan of Clarksburg, West Virginia, for one, noted that they were on their way to forming “a fairly good jazz orchestra” but were still in need of “a good trombonist” and a trap drummer.18
Friendly rivalries sprang up as Klans competed to have the largest and most polished band in the area. Anything with less than twenty members was a disappointment. If the Klan was to play big band, then its bands would be the biggest. Popular Klans, such as those in Los Angeles and Detroit, formed groups with anywhere from sixty to a hundred members. The Women’s Klan of Texas organized a 150-piece band “credited with being the largest and best trained organization of its kind in the United States.” Chicago’s Mammoth Klan Band aspired to become “the world’s largest band” with six hundred members, although it does not appear that membership of the group ever reached more than a highly respectable two hundred.19
With Klannish musical performances continuing to gain favor, Klan bands increasingly represented the attractive public face of the Invisible Empire, garnering regional, and even national, popularity. Belatedly realizing the significance of this outreach, the organization’s leaders struggled to take control. By 1924, the national Klan had introduced a money-spinning regulation band uniform—an impressive variation on the usual robes, with gold silk–embroidered lyres and a purple satin cape, which could be purchased only through official channels (see fig. 7.1). By 1928, the organization had created the new official position of “Musiclad” to regulate musical entertainments. In all of this, though, the Klan’s leaders were trailing far behind the existing success of musical members at the local level.20
Figure 7.1. Band in official regalia, Klan Field Day, Ridgway, Pennsylvania, October 1924. Photographer unknown.
The Mammoth Band toured extensively throughout the Midwest and provided music for a wide variety of events. The Chicago Heights Klan Band claimed to be “the most famous musical organization in the Middle West.” The Junior Klan band of Evansville, Indiana, spent more than thirteen weeks on the road in 1925, traveling over four thousand miles and “giving concerts all along the route.” The two-hundred-piece Denver Klan Band, performing in full regalia, was popular enough to throw a public recital at the city’s ten-thousand-seat Cotton Mills Stadium in 1925, selling tickets for fifty cents. While contemporary rhetoric may have described bloc resistance, the reality was that Klan bands played jazz—and they did so for mass audiences.21
As this popularity might suggest, Klannish music was not limited to staid hymns and piously patriotic classics. These songs were certainly central to the Klannish catalog. “America” and “The Star Spangled Banner” were staples of Klan meetings. The official Musiklan was comprised exclusively of such standards, including “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Just As I Am,” and “Rock of Ages.” “Onward Christian Soldiers” was effectively adopted as the organization’s anthem. “The Old Rugged Cross” was an unsurprising favorite at cross burnings. Nonetheless, these selections represented only one small part of the Klan’s repertoire.22
At the most basic level, Klan members expanded their musical range by rewriting the lyrics to well-known tunes, allowing whole crowds to sing along. Many relied on traditional standards. “Onward Christian Soldiers” remained prevalent. “Let the Fiery Cross Be Burning,” an 1870s religious song adapted by North Carolina Grand Dragon (and superior court judge) Henry A. Grady, became a popular Klan number. With no apparent sense of irony, the abolitionist tune “John Brown’s Body” found itself twisted into “The Klansman’s Jubilee Song.”23
Other lyricists adopted less pious but no less classic melodies. “The Ballad of Casey Jones” was one of the most common choices, with interpretations including “A Friend Worth While,” which mocked evolutionary theory, and “The Klansman’s Friend,” which explained that the Klan “do not aim to harm” but only wanted law and order. “Mary Had a Little Lamb” similarly became the anti-Catholic ditty “Rome Has a Little Pope,” who was “full of dope” and planned to take control of the schools.24 “Huckleberry Doo” became “My Huckleberry Jew,” which accused its subject of greed, low morals, and trafficking in white slavery. “You,” the “Huckleberry Jew” was warned, “better keep a sheeny’s place.” Any tune that members could be assumed to know was put to use.25
What is perhaps most significant about these rewritten songs is how many used popular modern tunes. Contemporary hits like Billy Rose’s 1923 smash “Barney Google” (often adapted into “Barney Google, Klansman,” to criticize Google’s fat “Irish Jew” wife) were clearly familiar to Klan members. “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” first published in 1919, inspired a number of Klannish rewrites, most variations on “I’m Forever Burning Crosses.” By far the most popular of these songs was “Yes! We Have No Bananas.” Given its ubiquity in American life after being popularized in 1923, it is unsurprising that the melody to the novelty hit was well known to Klansmen. Spaeth called it the “all-time top in the school of musical nonsense.” Journalist Mark Sullivan noted that “Yes! We Have No Bananas” was heard “from almost every lip” and sung “more often than all the hymns in all the hymnals of all the churches combined.”26
Little wonder, then, that Klansmen contorted the nonsense song to their own ends, producing wide-ranging variations. “Yes! We Have Our Ku Kluxers” took a positive stand “for free speeches—free presses, White supremacy—Just laws and liberty.” “Yes! The Klan Has No Catholics” focused instead on criticizing “that Dago Pope in Rome.” The Badger American had condemned the song as the work of “two Jewboys,” containing “neither rhyme nor reason,” but Klannish songwriters apparently felt comfortable assuming Klan members knew the tune well enough to sing along. Although the rhetoric of the Invisible Empire might have decried the debauched “sewage” of modern music, its members were clearly listening.27
The Klannish movement was also creating music and, in doing so, reinforcing an imagined cultural community of white Protestant heroism. Simply bastardizing popular songs of the day to include commendations of Klannish virtue and condemnations of alien vice was not enough to satisfy a growing demand for Ku Klux Klan musical entertainment. Instead, the men and women of the organization turned progressively toward original Klan compositions. These songs promulgated the same tropes of virtuous self-image that were also enthusiastically promoted on page, stage, and screen. The only difference was that the message was set to an upbeat tune.
These highly localized creations were once again far removed
from any official oversight or control, yet promoted a largely uniform national communal identity. Many of the original compositions dealt with a range of issues important to the Klan movement. “The Klansmen’s Kall,” by George Zterb of Ohio, was a heartfelt ballad on the merits of public schooling. “We Are the Ladies of the Ku Klux Klan” added a feminist note, praising the WKKK fight against “the immorality of man.” A New York songwriter extolled the merits of the Klan’s fight against political graft, foreign agitators, and the “Boozeshevik” in “American Means the Klan (When We A-Marching Go).” The Frank Harding Music House of New York City published “The Ku Klux Klan Song,” which called for keeping the Bible in education. “I’m a Klansman (Hoo-Ray!)” from Emory Sutton of Los Angeles insisted simply that “we stand for all that’s right.”28
Others sounded the familiar refrain that the Klan was not responsible for the heinous actions attributed to it. As Francis Roy’s song “They Blame It on the Ku Klux Klan” had it, the Klan was wrongly found “responsible for ev’ry little thing that’s done” from “Florida to Oregon.” J. Owen Smith’s 1923 song “The Fiery Cross on High” stated that Klansmen stood “for obedience to the law and freedom.” New Jersey’s Kenneth Paterson similarly observed that the Klan stood for “respect for the home and laws” in his 1924 song, “KKK (If Your Heart’s True, It Calls to You).” Moving hesitantly away from some of the more hateful language that marked the co-opted popular tunes sung at Klan meetings, the movement’s lyricists attempted to reinforce the Invisible Empire’s self-image and public image as a “pro,” not an “anti,” movement.29
These original compositions were primarily produced and distributed as sheet music. Many were self-published, but the growing market for Klan music also gave birth to a number of larger publishing houses that specialized in Klannish odes. The profitable nature of this enterprise was reflected by the high quality of the sheet music that was published. Collections of rewritten songs were, for the most part, ramshackle affairs, clearly turned out by a local printing shop at the cheapest possible rate. Ku Klux Klan originals were an entirely different affair, boasting lavishly illustrated covers, predominantly in color. These covers often featured the Klan marching in lockstep with Uncle Sam, as in E. M. McMahon’s “We Are All Loyal Klansmen,” or rushing to his rescue. Many others depicted heroic visions of Klansmen, alone or in groups, or majestic burning crosses. The Thompson Music Company cannily consolidated its brand (and saved money) by repeatedly using the same cover of a Klansman astride a rearing horse, defiantly raising a fiery cross in his hand. The striking image was copied by a number of smaller publishers.30
The care taken in publishing these Klan songs meant that they would not—and did not—look out of place when placed on the rack next to non-Klan musical publications. In fact, the widespread sale of this sheet music offers a clear indication of the porous boundaries of American cultural life in the 1920s. The National Association of Music Merchants had bemoaned the use of “smut” and cursing in jazz music, but clearly did not consider “Klan” a four-letter word. Klan sheet music was available in stores across the country, with major suppliers of Klannish music located in Kansas City, Denver, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, and several upstate New York towns. For those who were not conveniently near a store, music was often sold at public events and Klan meetings. The sale of sheet music by mail was perhaps the most common means of distribution.31
Newspapers in towns and cities across the United States regularly carried advertisements for Klannish sheet music, both by individual songwriters and by larger publishing houses. Clearly, there was demand for these original Klan songs outside of those who read the Klan press and would have seen the advertisements there. Newspaper advertising was also hardly the only means used to sell sheet music by mail. The lucrative nature of this business, especially for larger publishers who carried a wide range of pieces, is suggested by the professional—and sizable—catalogs produced by two of the most prominent publisher-distributors: the International Music Company and Lutz Music Printing.
The Reverend Paul S. Wight, “nationally known Bible teacher and gospel singer,” ran the International Music Company of Buffalo, New York. Under the title American Hymns, the company printed a handsome collection of lyrics to Klan covers of popular tunes. Distributed at “special prices to Klaverns and dealers,” this was a canny piece of advertising disguised as altruism. The pamphlet contained not only lyrics for Klan sing-alongs but also a full listing of the thirty different songs that Wight sold as sheet music, alongside details on how to order. The Lutz Music Printing Company of York, Pennsylvania, run by H. A. Lutz, onetime “personal representative” of Imperial Wizard Simmons, focused more openly on self-promotion. Alongside the thirty different songs listed for sale as sheet music, Lutz printed gaudy advertisements. Most were for the compositions of the publisher’s most prolific songwriter, Abe Nace, owner of a local music store.32
Sheet music was not the only thing Wight and Lutz sold. While a printed score seems to have been the primary means of distributing Klan music, there was an increasingly large market for an alternative method of consuming these songs—the phonograph. Record players had a devastating impact on “the active piano-playing generation” in the 1920s. They offered music on demand, requiring no skill, no practice, and no effort. Sheet music sales had declined accordingly, and prices dropped precipitously. At the same time, the phonograph was becoming a multibillion-dollar business with the growth of a new recording industry—one that would propel the intersectional popularity of both jazz and Klan music.33
A Detroit-based effort to manufacture and sell Klan phonograph records was characterized by historian Kenneth Jackson as “amusing.” Certainly, the Cross Music and Record Company never actually produced a record. Detroit Kleagle Ira W. Stout seemingly organized the enterprise to fraudulently sell stock and bilk potential recording artists, although the group did also tour extensively and publish several original numbers in sheet-music form. Less “amusing,” though, were the remarkable number of musicians who did successfully record, market, and sell Ku Klux Klan phonograph records across the country. At the forefront of these endeavors, and emblematic of the cultural complexities of the 1920s, was the Gennett Records studio in Richmond, Indiana.34
Starr Piano, owned by the Gennett family, had begun manufacturing phonographs in 1916. A year later, to complement growing phonograph sales, the Gennetts established their own recording label. By 1920, the company was producing around three thousand phonographs and three million records annually. Although small compared to major record manufacturers like Victor and Columbia, the Indiana label carved out a profitable niche as one of the larger second-tier companies. Initially reliant on a Manhattan recording studio, Gennett built its own facility in Richmond in 1921.
As the preeminent chronicler of Gennett Records, Rick Kennedy, has noted, the majority of the studio’s recording artists were simply “obscure musicians passing through rural Indiana.” Not all would remain obscure. Native Hoosier Hoagy Carmichael originally recorded “Stardust” at the studio. Key figures in the nascent jazz and blues scene made early recordings at Gennett. Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and Blind Lemon Jefferson all recorded at the Indiana studio—as did members of the Ku Klux Klan. The sharing of physical space with the Klan was not limited to Paul Robeson. Some of the greatest African American jazz and blues musicians of the 1920s shared a recording studio with the Invisible Empire.35
Although these jazz and blues recordings were musically important, their significance did not necessarily translate into profits for the Gennett label. It was private contracts and commercial recordings that kept the company afloat. Clients included Sears, Roebuck & Company,36 the Salvation Army, and the Ku Klux Klan. Rick Kennedy has posited that this diverse client list reflected the family’s “business pragmatism.” One family member, Richard Gennett, recalled simply that the company released Klan recordings “because they paid us. That was all. We did a lot of vanity
records for all kinds of people.” The company’s location in the Klan stronghold of Indiana, combined with the fact that it employed (like many companies in Indiana at the time) a number of Klansmen, led Gennett to become a linchpin in the Invisible Empire’s musical efforts.37
Ku Klux Klan recordings made at the Gennett studio appeared under a number of different labels. Certainly the most prolific of the Indiana studio’s Klannish recording artists was singer-songwriter Wilbur Rhinehart. With the help of his brother Charles, Rhinehart ran the 100% label. Often with the backing of pianist Hattie Buckles, the brothers issued recordings of covers like “Barney Google, Klansman,” and “Onward Christian Klansmen” that continued to reinforce a unified cultural identity and community of Klannish virtue. A typical example, “There’ll Be a Hot Time, Klansmen,” an adaptation of “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” dedicated one verse to asserting that crimes the organization were accused of were “a fake” and another verse to exulting in the Klan’s 1924 political victories. Residents of nearby Muncie, the brothers also ran the 100% Publishing Company, one of the state’s most important Klan sheet-music publishers.38
Ku Klux Kulture Page 19
