Residential segregation separated Piedmont’s blacks, Irish, Italians, and Anglo-Saxons, but such divisions were not quite so obvious as in many coalfield communities. Different streets were home to different ethnic groups. While a number of black families lived on a single street, their European-American neighbors lived just above or below them. At the same time, schools and businesses were segregated, and blacks were reportedly denied the right to buy property until the 1970s (Gates 1994, 5–12).
According to one of its two most famous sons, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Piedmont’s black men mostly worked on the loading dock of the paper mill or for the B&O. A few might commute northeast to Cumberland, Maryland, to work in one of its factories. Though the black community was small—only 350 or so in the middle of the last century—not surprisingly it included a number of musicians, and if more were needed they could be found in Luke, Westernport, or elsewhere in the vicinity. Early evidence of the presence of active black musicians is found in a photograph taken around 1910 of the Piedmont City Band (see Fig. 4.1).
Of the fourteen men and boys included in this photograph, four merit special attention. The first of these is Piedmont’s other famous native son: Don Redman, arranger for Fletcher Henderson, subsequently leader of William McKinney’s Cotton Pickers and later his own band, and finally music director for Pearl Bailey. Born in 1900, he would have been around ten years old at the time this picture was taken on Main Street in Luke, Maryland. He stands in the front row fourth from the left holding a trumpet in his left hand, the smallest member of the group.
Mack Clifford, third from the left in the back row, was the principal music teacher in Piedmont and, according to his nephew Lester, was director of the town band. He could play a number of instruments, though which one he was holding during the taking of the photo cannot be determined for it was hidden behind Redman and “Shavey” Scott, the band’s drum major.
The other two individuals of importance to this study are James Gilmore, the future leader of the Midnighters, standing at the left end of the back row, and Hennis “Henny” Taylor, third from the left in the front row, who played saxophone and clarinet in that dance band. In the photo he holds an alto horn. Henny, who taught Lester Clifford the sax, was, like Mack Clifford, a multi-instrumentalist who also played and taught the violin. Clifford recalled Taylor playing square dances for white folk. Unknown is if he did so for blacks.
Gilmore’s Midnighters was a nine-piece ensemble, typical of a dance band at the beginning of the 1930s but smaller than average by the middle of the decade, when most bands included between twelve and fifteen musicians. Another increasingly anachronistic fact was the use of a tuba or baritone horn, a “brass bass” in the terminology of the time. Such instruments had become obsolete in most dance bands very early in the 1930s, replaced by the upright or string bass. The personnel of the band and their instruments appear below.
Lester Clifford
Alto Saxophone
Hennis “Henny” Taylor
Alto Saxophone
Clarence Walters
Tenor Saxophone
Lee Edmundson
Trumpet
Earl Allen
Trumpet
Charles Penn
Piano
Gene Balmer
Guitar
? Snowden
Brass Bass
James Gilmore
Drums and Leader
While most of the players lived in Piedmont, Lee Edmundson lived in Cumberland, Maryland, twenty miles northeast down the Potomac, and Gene Balmer lived and worked in Davis, West Virginia, almost fifty miles to the southwest. As was true of the musicians in the southern part of the state, none of the Midnighters depended on engagements for the major part of his income; all had day jobs, most on the loading dock of the Westvaco mill. Charles Penn, the pianist, taught at Howard High School, which served the black students of Mineral County. Gene Balmer’s occupation is unknown.
The band usually performed only on weekends and, moreover, did no touring but rather limited itself to “run-outs,” single gigs after which it returned home. The players traveled in Gilmore’s nine-passenger Buick, which seated three in front, three on the back seat, and three on folding seats that faced the back, which Lester Clifford referred to as “monkey seats.” To transport the band’s instruments, in addition to trunk space, Gilmore installed racks on both the roof and the top of the trunk.
As noted previously, as a rule black bands did not rely on newspaper advertisements to promote dances. They used more dependable and less expensive strategies: the handbill and word of mouth. James Gilmore patronized a printer in Westernport, Maryland, named Rip Lanniger, who regularly turned out dozens of handbills for each upcoming Midnighters dance. Gilmore would mail these to the promoter in the town where an engagement was scheduled, who could be relied upon to circulate them widely. After all, the promoter had a financial interest in a good turnout (Clifford 2001). Since most black communities were close both socially and physically, it would take little time, once someone had seen one of these advertisements in, say, a barbershop, tacked to a utility pole, or stuffed into a mailbox or under a windshield wiper blade, for word to get around that the band would be in town in the near future (Cranford et al. 2008).
Clifford recalled that the Midnighters played for black dances in the county seats of the northern coalfield: Clarksburg, Fairmont, and Morgantown. Of these, Fairmont was their most frequent destination; its central location drew dancers from the neighboring counties. In addition to playing at the Elks Rest in Fairmont, they also played at the black Dunbar High School. The black high schools in Clarksburg and Morgantown provided the venues for dances in those communities, along with black American Legion halls. The Midnighters also played for blacks closer to home, in Keyser, West Virginia, just five miles from Piedmont, as well as in Cumberland, Maryland. On one occasion, they traveled down south to Wyoming County in the southern coalfields to play in Mullins, the home town of their pianist.
Fig. 4.2. West Virginia territory in which Gilmore’s Midnighters performed. (West Virginia University–University Relations–Design)
The Midnighters frequently played for whites in northern West Virginia as well as in Maryland, mostly in high school gymnasia. Their destinations included Moorefield and Petersburg to the east and Davis, Thomas, and Elkins, West Virginia, to the south, the latter being the site of the annual Forest Festival to celebrate the timber industry that defined the economy of that region of the state. In essence, they worked a territory that extended little more than a hundred miles from Piedmont in any direction (see Fig. 4.2).
The band also performed in a different manner depending on the race of the dancers. As Clifford put it, for African Americans it played more “jump” music; whites reportedly wanted “smoother,” “softer” music. This introduces a topic to be discussed at greater length in chapter 9: the apparent dichotomy between music that is “hot,” i.e. in a jazz style, versus that which is “sweet.” In a number of discussions of big band dance music of this period, scholars have suggested that there were two cohorts of bands: jazz bands and sweet, or “commercial,” bands. It is true that when considering the entirety of their recorded repertories, many bands fall into one of these two categories: Duke Ellington was hot; Guy Lombardo, sweet (indeed, he claimed to play “the sweetest music this side of Heaven”). However, put those bands before a live audience, and one soon learns they could play at a variety of “temperatures,” depending upon the crowd’s disposition. Rather than dichotomous, “hot” and “sweet” represent the extremes of a stylistic continuum, with each band moving back and forth along that continuum in response to its customers’ preferences.
From Clifford’s description it seems clear that Gilmore’s band played “percentage dates,” accepting a portion of the admission fee paid by dancers to the venue. Typical of most black bands not under New York–based management, it operated on the same commonwealth principle that determined the pay of King Oliver�
�s musicians, as described in chapter 3. Clifford recalled that he earned six dollars for the first dance he played as one of the Midnighters and ten for the second.
When asked what the band played, Lester Clifford recalled that James Gilmore provided a large stack of commercial stock arrangements. In an effort to determine at least some of the repertory, I asked if he could recall any of the numbers they played. While he claimed the band did not have a theme song, he said that Gilmore liked to open and close a dance with Hoagy Carmichael’s 1929 hit “Stardust,” a practice that would imply that, for all practical purposes, this was the band’s theme song. I read off a list of songs regarded as the jazz standards of the time, and the numbers he indicated were in the band’s “book” are listed in Table 4.2.3
Knowledgeable readers can undoubtedly call to mind recordings of many of these numbers that each would regard as definitive. Among the more obvious associations would be Duke Ellington’s Orchestra and his three compositions: “Mood Indigo,” “Solitude,” “Caravan.” Is the ur-rendition of “I Got Rhythm” Ethel Merman’s performance with all those high C’s toward the end when she introduced the song in the Gershwins’ Girl Crazy in 1930 or the highly energized performance by the Benny Goodman Quartet on the stage of Carnegie Hall in January 1938? Whose performance of “Stardust” set the standard? Harry James’s or Louis Armstrong’s?
Table 4.2. Popular Songs played by Gilmore’s Midnighters as recollected by Lester Clifford, July 11, 2001
The purpose for posing these questions is to draw attention to the fact that in all instances they refer to soloists and bands whose reputations (and recordings) were first made in big cities, principally in the Big Apple. The composers of these great songs were also part of New York’s music industry. The performances cited above occurred either there or in a recording studio elsewhere as a result of a contract signed New York. Envision a jazz performance of any of these standards, and where would it likely have taken place? In a nightclub. Where would many people imagine that club was located? New York? Chicago? San Francisco? Los Angeles?
In sum, this music was (and remains) emblematic of urban life, urban tastes, urban sophistication. However, Gilmore’s Midnighters were never a part of that world; they brought the music of Hoagy Carmichael, Duke Ellington, George and Ira Gershwin, among others to life in West Virginia. They played these standards in ways that got black people out of their seats and onto the dance floor, people whose livelihoods came from, among other jobs, coal mining and lining track. They played it for whites the diversity of whose occupations were surely the equal of those of their African American neighbors. In doing so, they made this seemingly urban music part of the soundscape of the Mountain State. Neither banjos nor fiddles were involved; this was big band, not string-band, repertory. Its presence transformed the musical culture of black (and white) West Virginia.
Dance Bands at West Virginia’s Black Colleges
The discussion of the college dance bands is last because in one sense it provides a transition to the discussion in the following chapters of black big bands that came to West Virginia from out of state, those for whom the comparative prosperity of its mining industry was so attractive. Whereas one might imagine that students attending a college located in West Virginia would have been primarily Mountaineers, that was not the case with the state’s black colleges. West Virginia State in particular attracted a considerable number from elsewhere in the country, and Bluefield State did so as well, though apparently to a lesser extent. One consequence was that the college bands included students from both in and out of state; in a manner of speaking, these bands were not completely indigenous to West Virginia.
Dance bands at black colleges were a logical outgrowth of a longstanding tradition of academic musical ensembles intended not simply to provide an aesthetic experience for their members and to entertain the college community but also to promote their institution’s interests more broadly. Black collegiate dance bands contributed to the social life of a campus by playing for dances sponsored by fraternities and sororities as well as other campus organizations, and in their own way brought heightened visibility to their institutions when they accompanied the college’s football team to an away game or when hired by a chapter of their college’s alumni association to play for a dance. At least in the instance of West Virginia State, membership in the band was a form of work-study: the musicians may not have been paid directly, but their collective service to the college helped to lower their educational expenses.
These players embodied what it meant to be a collegian in a time when few blacks were able to obtain a higher education. Indeed, at that time, particularly in the segregated South, education beyond the eighth grade was unavailable to most African Americans. Thus, as a consequence of their pursuit of a bachelor’s degree, the musicians in these college bands might be said to have constituted yet another manifestation of W. E. B. DuBois’s vision of a Talented Tenth of the African American population; for by their collective artistry and formal appearance, they presented themselves as sophisticated, modern, ambitious young men. The term “collegian” appears in the names of two of the bands to be discussed: Edwards’ Collegians and the West Virginia State Collegians.4 Other bands were named the Campus Nighthawks and the Campus Revelers.
Among the bands with the most continuous histories was the Campus Nighthawks, which apparently merged with the other band on West Virginia State’s campus, the Revelers, to form the West Virginia State Collegians early in 1935. Made up of students at State, the Nighthawks’ leader changed more or less annually, suggesting that the senior having either the best leadership qualities, musicianship, or both held this position. Riley’s Nighthawks, led by “Aggie” Riley, broadcast over Charleston’s WOBU in March 1931 (YJ 3.27.31, 1). On February 19, 1932, the band, now led by “Red” Payne, who had been a sideman when Aggie Riley led the group, played in Mount Hope, near Beckley, for the Colonial Ball sponsored by the Mount Hope P.T.A. This dance coincided with a basketball game between DuBois High School and State’s high school team (PC 2.20.32, 2/3). That the college had a high school division reflected its intention to compensate for the absence of opportunities for secondary education for African Americans elsewhere. On March 25 the band played for a dance sponsored by the college’s faculty club (YJ 4.15.32, 3).
The other dance band located at State, the Campus Revelers, had been led early in the 1930s by Eddie Billups. Subsequently, it was taken over by Francis “Chappie” Willet, mentioned previously, a Philadelphia native and pianist who studied composition at the college with Joseph W. Grider, which no doubt prepared him well for a much later career as an arranger for big bands, Lucky Millinder’s among them. In June 1932 Willet secured an engagement for the Campus Revelers in Clarksburg in the northern part of the state, and at that time the Courier reported that it was “the official orchestra for dances at West Virginia State College” (PC 6.18.32, 2/6). That fall it played engagements at a Charleston country club and during the winter broadcast regularly over WOBU. No doubt Willet’s accomplishments caught the attention of Edwards for, shortly after graduation in 1933, Willet joined Edwards’ Collegians and by 1934 had become its leader (Wriggle 2007, 2–5).
By the end of 1934 the names Nighthawks and Campus Revelers ceased to appear in either the Pittsburgh Courier or the Yellow Jacket, the student newspaper of West Virginia State; Collegians took their place. On February 1, 1935, Bobby Smith and His Collegians played for a prom sponsored by the West Virginia State Scrollers, a social organization made up of the freshman pledge class of Kappa Kappa Psi (YJ 2.25.35, 3). On March 2 the band played for the Rhythm Club Ball, sponsored by another social organization with the obscure name P.O.N. (YJ 3.15.35, 3); on April 4 for the West Virginia State College Chamber of Commerce Dance; and on April 12 for the Omega Psi Phi fraternity’s annual dance (YJ 4.29.35, 3). The band continued to be active, off and on, during the second half of the 1930s and into the early 1940s, led at different times by Herman “Tubby” McCoy (YJ 6
.4.37, 3) and Gloster Current (YJ 2.25.41, 7). At the same time, the student newspaper documented increasing reliance on “adult” bands from the region by various social organizations that sponsored dances. This may reflect the comparative prosperity of the Mountain State (or, it must be conceded, the possible mediocrity of the college band).
The decision to adopt the name West Virginia State Collegians surely reflected not only the status that “collegian” presumably conferred upon the band, but perhaps as well the regional reputation of Phil Edwards’ Collegians, formed sometime in 1928 in Bluefield. This band was formed by pianist Phillip H. Edwards, a native of Ohio, who it is believed had enrolled in the secondary studies division of Bluefield State College during two terms in 1914 and 1915. Whether he completed the high school curriculum is unknown. The band included former members of Harry Watkins’s Serenaders (Edwards among them), which had broken up prior to 1925, other musicians from the vicinity of Bluefield, and others from West Virginia State College and Wilberforce College in Ohio (Wriggle 2007, 5–6). As of July 1929, the band consisted of ten musicians:
Leon Jackson
Saxophone/Director
Howard Abbott
Saxophone/Manager
Charles Moore
Saxophone
Joseph Branch
Cornet
Hugh Taylor
Cornet
Frank Fairfax
Trombone
Phil Edwards
Piano/Leader
Big Band Jazz in Black West Virginia Page 10
