Big Band Jazz in Black West Virginia, 1930–1942
Big Band Jazz in Black West Virginia, 1930–1942
Christopher Wilkinson
www.upress.state.ms.us
The University Press of Mississippi is a member
of the Association of American University Presses.
Copyright © 2012 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2012
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wilkinson, Christopher, 1946–
Big band jazz in black West Virginia, 1930-1942 / Christopher
Wilkinson.
p. cm. — (American made music series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61703-168-7 (cloth) — ISBN 978-1-61703-169-4
(ebook) 1. Jazz—West Virginia—1931–1940—History and
criticism. 2. African American coal miners—West Virginia—
Social life and customs—20th century. I. Title.
ML3508.7.W5W55 2012
781.65089’960730754—dc23 2011020889
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
To Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson,
Samuel Wilkinson, Bobbi Nesbitt,
Alexis Wilkinson, Jack Wilkinson,
and especially to the memory of my mother,
Jule Porter Wilkinson
Their patience and support made this book possible.
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Coal, Railroads, and the Establishment of African American Life in West Virginia
PART ONE The Economic Foundation of Big Band Dance Music in the Mountain State
CHAPTER ONE From the Coal Face to the Dance Floor: Black Miners as Patrons of Big Bands
CHAPTER TWO Validating Herbert Hall’s Contention: Paul Barnes’s Gig Book
PART TWO Big Bands in Black West Virginia: 1929–1935
CHAPTER THREE Newspapers and Radio Bring the World of the Big Bands to Black West Virginia
CHAPTER FOUR Local and Territory Bands in the Emerging Culture of Big Band Jazz and Dance Music in the Mountain State
CHAPTER FIVE Big Band Jazz Comes to the Mountain State: 1929–1933
CHAPTER SIX Comparative Prosperity Arrives, September 1933–April 1935
PART THREE West Virginia in the Swing Era, 1935–1942
CHAPTER SEVEN The Place of the Mountain State on the Road Traveled by the Big Bands
CHAPTER EIGHT The Big Bands’ Audience in the Mountain State
CHAPTER NINE The Dance Repertory Played in the Coal Fields
CHAPTER TEN The Party Winds Down
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Preface
Mention the state of West Virginia to many devotees of American music, and they would probably envision small ensembles of white musicians playing fiddles, guitars, banjos, and upright (that is, string) basses. Occasionally, a hammer dulcimer might be part of the sonic mix of such string bands, but no keyboards, rarely drums. Depending on a group’s preferred style or that of a particular piece, the music might be labeled old timey or traditional, bluegrass or country. The repertory could range from fiddle tunes of long ancestry and gospel hymns of the early twentieth century to songs by bluegrass masters, who began to define this style after World War II and brought it to prominence by the end of the 1950s, and more recent music by the singer/songwriters who call Nashville, Tennessee, home.
Such perceptions of this musical culture are overly simple. Most obviously, current technology has made an enormous variety of musical styles accessible to West Virginians, who may choose to engage with almost any musical tradition found in the world. Less obvious may be the fact that, despite what may seem at present to be a kind of stylistic and racial homogeneity within the musical culture native to the Mountain State, its musical past was more complicated.
The place of big band jazz in West Virginia during the 1930s and early 1940s has not been studied until now, nor, for that matter, has West Virginia’s place in the history of big band jazz of that time. These intertwined perspectives reveal a great deal not previously known about how this music was imported to the state from the major northern cities that were home to the leading bands of the period. While one encounters passing descriptions of the tours dance bands made during the Swing Era, until now those tours have not been closely examined from the perspective of the audience to be found along the routes the bands followed. Who were they? In a time of economic crisis, how did they acquire the financial resources to attend dances with great regularity? Where did the dances take place? Who organized them? How did word get out that a band was going to be performing in a particular location?
This study addresses not only these questions but also others more fundamental. How did there come to be so many African Americans living in West Virginia? What brought them to the Mountain State, and why did they stay? How did they become part of the national audience for big band jazz, and how did they stay up to date with its latest developments? What sort of music did they like to hear during a dance, and how did the bands satisfy those preferences? In what ways, if any, does the reception of this music in West Virginia enlarge previous understandings of the connections between a band, its style and repertory, and the audiences it encountered while touring the country?
The answers to these questions (and others as well) emerged as evidence presented itself in the newspaper record and in the scholarly literature on an array of subjects. In addition to the larger history of jazz in the 1930s, equally important are the parallel histories of the coal industry and the labor it required, of state politics and racial policy, and of the formation of a black musical culture in West Virginia prior to the arrival of the big bands. Finally, a number of African American informants, all of whom had resided in the coal fields of the state during the 1930s, provided invaluable insight into life in the state’s black communities and the place of music in that life.
As evidence accumulated, answers to the questions cited previously began to present themselves. As I will show, during the 1930s West Virginia provided a unique economic and social environment in which African American music could flourish. There were two reasons for this. First, West Virginia’s coal industry responded positively and proactively to the Roosevelt administration’s New Deal legislation that created the National Recovery Administration (NRA), resulting in high levels of comparatively well-paid employment. Second, West Virginia had from the early 1870s forward guaranteed blacks’ voting rights, and their relatively large numbers assured sufficient influence upon state policies to guarantee a freedom of action not found in adjacent southern states. This included creating their own cultural environment without interference.
The economic conditions created by the policies of the NRA and, after it was ruled unconstitutional, subsequent legislation intended to maintain many of its policies enabled black coal miners in the state to earn wages not only considerably higher than those earned by sharecroppers and other African American agricultural workers in the Deep South, but substantially more than those of blacks working in the heavy industries of the North as well. Thus they had more discretionary income at their disposal than did black folk in surrounding states and further south.
Though the styles of big band jazz and dance music so admired by African American Mountaineers originated principally in the black communities of northern cities (of which the most prominent was New York), black West Virginians were almost as well informed about this music as anyone livi
ng in one of those urban areas. This was due in part to the fact that they read the coverage of black music in one of the leading black newspapers of the time, the Pittsburgh Courier, and like most Americans they listened to live performances of this music on the radio. Black West Virginians were knowledgeable about the styles of individual bands, had very strong preferences for one style of dance music or another, and their spectrum of tastes was broad.
I have concluded that, beyond its entertainment value, the principal reason for the popularity of big band jazz and dance music among African American Mountaineers was that it served as a source of racial identity and pride. Unlike the music of many of their white neighbors that was embedded within the folk traditions of the central Appalachians and was thus a marker of place, the music of black dance orchestras was a marker of race, more particularly of racial pride and achievement. It provided occasions in which black West Virginians could socialize in their own company and on their own terms without fear of either intrusion by or criticism from the majority population of the state. Moreover, it was modern in style, urban in origin, and sophisticated in content: the antithesis of the folk traditions brought into the Mountain State by black immigrants from states further south as well as those traditions that many associate with white Mountaineers even today.
The study is organized in three broad sections preceded by an introduction with a substantial discussion of four developments predating the 1930s that were key to the establishment of the culture of big band jazz in the Mountain State: its geological history; the construction by thousands of African American men of the three railroads that served the southern coal fields; the musical life of black Mountaineers before the years of the Great Depression; the nature and consequences of public policies (both state and national) that determined the quality of life and the level of economic prosperity for black West Virginians before and during the 1930s.
Following the introduction, Part I, in two chapters, is devoted to an examination of the close economic connection between the work of the thousands of black miners in the state’s coal fields and their enthusiastic attendance at dances for which leading dance bands provided the music, including those led by Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Erskine Hawkins, Andy Kirk, and the most frequent visitor of all, Jimmie Lunceford.
Part II looks closely at the period from the start of the Great Depression to the year 1935, by which time black West Virginians were participating with great enthusiasm in the Swing Era. It is in this section that the role of newspapers and radio in bringing big band music to the attention of black Mountaineers is analyzed and the place of local and territory bands in introducing the music to this audience is documented. Also discussed are the earliest documented performances by bands based in New York who would become icons of big band jazz in the latter part of the 1930s. The final topic in this section concerns the evidence of the comparative prosperity enjoyed by black Mountaineers following the implementation of New Deal policies as reflected in a dramatic increase in the number of public dances, many of which attracted many hundreds of fans, some traveling great distances to attend.
Part III looks at the period from 1935 to 1942 from three perspectives. The first examines the connection between the bands and their New York–based managers and entrepreneurs in the Mountain State who organized and promoted dances, arranged for venues in which those dances would occur, and booked the bands to perform. Chief among the latter group was George Morton, who was associated with one of the leading managers of black bands in New York, Joe Glaser, and who was the principal figure in the cultivation of big band jazz in the southern coal field in the second half of the 1930s.
The second perspective concerns the demography of the audience for this music: who they were, where they resided, what they did for a living. Relying on census data as well as the memories of my informants, I discuss the place of both middle- and working-class black Mountaineers in the cultivation of big band dance music.
Finally, I take up the complex issue of the repertory of music played by the touring bands at the numerous dances for which they were engaged. There is unmistakable evidence of a diversity of tastes in dance music: those who were adamant in their preference for hot, swinging jazz, and others as strongly in favor of sweet styles. As I will show, the two audiences were not defined by class. Equally apparent is that whatever their place in jazz history might be, all of the black bands were prepared to perform arrangements running along the spectrum of style from sweet to hot and did so with great regularity.
The final chapter discusses the principal forces that by the summer of 1942 brought to a close the lively engagement with big bands that black Mountaineers had enjoyed for a number of years: the increasing mechanization of mining operations, which led to reductions in the labor force starting with black miners; and wartime policies concerning rationing of rubber and petroleum, materials vital to the war effort.
The chapter concludes with an examination of several issues embedded within the history of this musical culture. I discuss the reasons why this culture flourished in West Virginia to an extent not to be observed in states lying to its east, west, or south. This is followed by reflections on the meaning of the dances themselves as social occasions within the African American world of the Mountain State. The available evidence of white Mountaineers’ interest in the music of the black bands, and how that interest was accommodated in a state that by custom, though not by law, required the racial segregation of dances is another topic of discussion. I propose reasons why middle- and working-class black Mountaineers embraced a broad range of musical styles that might seem otherwise inexplicable, with particular attention to why those living in coal company towns might find a musical style associated with Guy Lombardo’s Royal Canadians to be particularly appealing. Finally, I consider the patterns of immigration to West Virginia that established the significant black presence in the coalfield counties beginning in the early 1870s and the departure of many black Mountaineers beginning in the late 1930s and accelerating in the decade to come. Whereas their arrival was part of the larger movement of African Americans in search of a new life following Emancipation in 1865, in migrating out of the state beginning just before World War II, black West Virginians might be said to have joined the Great Migration that defined much of African American history in the first half of the twentieth century. Unlike those who made their way from the economically and racially hostile southern states to northern cities with a realistic prospect of a better life, for black Mountaineers who were deprived of well-paying jobs in the mines as well as the benefits of life in a rural setting, that trip did not promise improvement in their condition but rather a decline in quality of life.
This study is a revelation of the unexpected. Who would associate West Virginia with black history in general or with jazz history more particularly? At the same time, it serves as an introduction to big band jazz seen not from the perspective of its creators or from that of the cities that many of those musicians called home, but from that of an audience for this music that resided far from New York, Chicago, or Kansas City. Who constituted that audience, and the connections between their daily lives and jazz in the Swing Era, are the focus of this book. Their story reveals much about the reception of jazz throughout African America.
A project such as this is the result of invaluable assistance from many individuals to whom I am extremely grateful and for whom my words of thanks are barely adequate. I must begin by thanking the wonderful and generous black Mountaineers who welcomed me into their homes and shared with me their recollections of life before World War II. They include June Glover of Williamson in Mingo County, West Virginia, who put me in touch with friends of hers from throughout the southern coalfields: Mr. and Mrs. E. Ray Williams of Welch, McDowell County; Thomas Mack of Bluefield, Mercer County; and Mrs. John Flippen and her son Bryan, both now residing in Florida but for whom Beckley, Raleigh County, was home. I must also thank Joel Beeson of the Perley Isaac Reed School of Jour
nalism, West Virginia University, for facilitating a wonderful conversation with another group of black West Virginians: Marcus Cranford of Morgantown, Monongalia County; Hughie Mills, formerly of Charleston, Kanawaha Country; and John Watson, formerly of McDowell County. James Roderick of Cumberland, Maryland, introduced me to Lester Clifford of Piedmont, Mineral County, with whom I had two informative conversations in the summer of 2001. My first conversation took place in May 2000, with the late Geraldine and Horace Belmear of Morgantown, whose recollections gave me the first clues of the breadth and depth of this musical culture.
It goes almost without saying that historical research of any sort is beholden to the expertise of librarians and library staff members. The West Virginia and Regional History Collection of the West Virginia University Library provided a goldmine of information and documents thanks to Harold Forbes, Kevin Fredette, and Christy Venham. Catherine Rakowski and Frank Tovar prepared a number of the photographs and other documents that appear in this book from that archive. Christine Chang facilitated my examination of several important government documents. The creation of maps and the final preparation of all of the illustrations was ably handled by Sue Crist, manager of design in the University Relations department of West Virginia University.
A particular word of thanks is due Ellen Ressmeyer, Archivist at the Drain-Jordan Library of West Virginia State University in Institute, West Virginia. Over a period of several years she painstakingly collected as many issues as she could locate of the student newspaper, the Yellow Jacket, from the period when West Virginia State College, as it was formerly known, was one of the principal black colleges in the nation. Thanks to her efforts, it was possible to reconstruct the social and musical life of this institution in a time of racial segregation. In too many instances, racial integration in the state in the mid-1950s was quickly followed by the destruction of documents that would have told the story of African American higher education with great precision. Her work ensured that not all of that story was lost.
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