Big Band Jazz in Black West Virginia

by Christopher Wilkinson

  Within this social context, regular visits by name bands to black West Virginia takes on an added meaning. Surely, no matter how bad things might have been in the larger world, the combination of the music performed, the artistry of the musicians performing it, and the social environment created, albeit temporarily, in the gymnasium of a black high school, within a national guard armory, or in a nightclub rented for the occasion affirmed the values and interests of all who were present.

  The dances represented a sanctuary in which one was temporarily free of the burden not only of the day’s work but also the annoyances and inconveniences resulting from living in a segregated society of unequal opportunities. Furthermore, those dances were major social occasions, with at least two generations in attendance. No doubt, even as the music was playing, folks got caught up on each others’ news, courting by members of the younger generation took place under the watchful eyes of their parents, and solutions to the problems of the world were proposed and debated. Simply put, those dances provided a public space for the authentic expression of what it meant to be a human being on one’s own terms, and the music gave voice to that humanity. The more frequently the bands came, the more frequent the creation of this social environment, something that black Mountaineers valued highly, judging by the size of the crowds.1

  As a consequence, touring black bands as often as possible made certain that West Virginia was one of the important stops on their travels. The road, as shown in this study, was where lots of money was to be earned. Herbert Hall spoke of the highly favorable opinion bandleaders had of the audience for their music found among black Mountaineers. Paul Barnes’s gig book corroborates Hall’s memories.

  Beyond the seeming improbability of West Virginia being a magnet for African American dance bands during the years of the Great Depression, there is something almost miraculous in the fact that it was. All of the preconditions, like pieces of a puzzle, had to fit together to ensure this outcome. One “piece” was millions of years old, others dated from the late nineteenth century, and the last and in some respects most crucial was created through the cobbling together of public policies to energize America’s failing economy within the first one hundred days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency. The contingent nature of history is vividly illustrated by these developments. And almost as quickly as those pieces came together in 1933, they were pulled apart in 1942 by forces well beyond the power of black West Virginians to control.

  A subject that permeated this discussion of the music performed for black Mountaineers concerns connections between social class and stylistic preferences. The available evidence suggests these were independent variables in West Virginia. While upper-class whites in New York may have preferred the sweet sound of Guy Lombardo’s band at the Roosevelt Grill, and working-class blacks further uptown “naturally” took to the Lindy Hop and other modern dances performed to hot, loud jazz, this study demonstrates that assumptions about class-based tastes are at best overly simple and at worst prompted by unsupported assumptions about relationships between the race and social status of an audience and the choice of music it preferred to hear.

  Lewis Erenberg discussed the effect of the onset of the Depression and its impact on popular music in the United States in his monograph Swingin’ the Dream: Big Band Jazz and the Rebirth of American Culture. He argued that, by the early 1930s, the jazz of the 1920s was dismissed as symbolic of the crass materialism and overindulgence that characterized that decade, and that, accordingly, jazz bands (at least in white America) were compelled either to modify their styles or to go out of business. “As hotter jazz groups disbanded and live entertainment shrank drastically, sweet (melodic) bands took over the commercial air waves, content to comply with radio’s insistence on inoffensiveness and the audience’s desire for soothing sounds” (Erenberg 1998, 17–18).

  Erenberg’s attention was focused on developments in urban America, principally New York City, but the desire for soothing sounds was not limited to audiences residing in Gotham, as demonstrated by the continuing and favorable references by black Mountaineers to sweet music in reports and correspondence concerning black dance bands that performed in West Virginia. As counterintuitive as this may seem, the popularity of sweet music had an inescapable logic based on the realities of day-to-day life in the coalfields for the same reasons that certain types of sentimental, nostalgic country music appealed to white folks further west and south in the same period.

  In the preface to his study of country music and its relationship to the white southern working class, Bill C. Malone discussed his roots in east Texas and his family’s circumstances that attracted them to the “fantasy and escapism” that defined certain genres of country music in the 1930s: “Living in Smith County, Texas, during the Great Depression, and struggling to scratch a living from our cotton farm, was all the realism our family needed. Therefore, we seldom sought realism in our music but instead relished and cherished its capacity for deliverance” (Malone 2002, 7–8).

  One may observe that there was at least as much “realism” to be encountered both within a coal mine and within the adjacent company town. Coal mining was hazardous and dirty work. Accidents easily crippled and killed, and none was more common than the roof fall following the shooting down of coal but prior to the propping of the newly exposed roof. As attractive as it was, good pay was no protection against such catastrophes. Cheaply constructed, company houses were close together and small. Personal privacy in many instances was limited; next-door neighbors were quite possibly only a few feet away. Amenities were few.

  Coal mining is a dirty business not only in the mines but in the immediate vicinity as well. Probably at least once a day, if not at the end of every shift, loaded coal hopper cars were hitched up to a steam locomotive to be hauled away. The engines were noisy; their smokestacks belched smoke and ash; their whistles at crossings could be heard for miles. Those engines and those cars filled with dusty coal often passed within a few feet of company houses in the steep-sided, V-shaped valleys of the coalfield counties. Keeping a house clean was undoubtedly a continuing and at times a seemingly futile struggle for the miners’ wives. Freshly washed laundry hanging on the line to dry would also have been compromised. The produce in the family garden could also be covered with a fine coating of coal dust. Under such circumstances, who would not welcome a program of quiet, soothing music broadcast from some faraway venue suggesting that somewhere life was more pleasant and relaxed?

  Added to that was the fact that, as Guy Lombardo noted, when William Paley purchased what would be known as the Columbia Broadcasting System, “one of his first moves was to bring live music to his affiliated stations, which were obligated to play whatever programs emanated from New York if he so ordered. He decided that the Royal Canadians’ broadcasts from the Roosevelt, though nonsponsored, would be carried by the eastern stations in the network” (Lombardo 1975, 94). Among those stations was WOBU in Charleston, which at night could reach all over the southern part of the state and beyond. As a result, the Royal Canadians’ sweet music undoubtedly became part of the soundscape of the coalfields, a source of entertainment for black listeners seeking some escape from the realities of coal camp life, and a baseline by which to measure the style and quality of black dance bands that toured West Virginia.

  An apparent interest in sweet music that crossed class boundaries was accompanied by a similarly broad-based interest in big band jazz. Just as young people at the Savoy Ballroom were drawn to Chick Webb’s big band swing, so too were college students in West Virginia drawn to similar styles played by various bands. A theme running through newspaper coverage of dances in Charleston, not twenty miles from the campus of West Virginia State College, concerned collegiate identity: the attendance of college students was noted, as was the role of college alumni associations in sponsoring dances. That Jimmie Lunceford was a college graduate as were most, if not all, of his sidemen was commented on in numerous stories of his engagements in the
Mountain State. To propose that perhaps this represents the boundary dividing middle- and working-class identity is to overlook the fact that dances were open to all. Attendance estimates in the hundreds, if not thousands, imply a wide variety of backgrounds and occupations among black Mountaineers. There simply were not enough college students in any one location to populate the dance floor in the numbers reported in the press. Jazz must have been as appealing as sweet music to the socio-economically diverse audiences for the black bands.

  Another fact challenges notions of class difference and, by implication, social distancing among black Mountaineers. For many African Americans, higher education was a common aspiration, if not for themselves, for their children. Every one of the informants for this study graduated from either Bluefield State College or West Virginia State College prior to or, because of military service, just after World War II. Without exception, they represented the first generation of college-educated members of their families. With the exception of George Morton, the fathers of these informants either mined coal or worked for the railroad. Their achievements exemplify Booker T. Washington’s vision of black self-reliance and “uplift,” and rightly so. At the same time, their aspirations for upward social mobility differ little from those of contemporary European immigrant families throughout the nation.

  A subject that merits some attention concerns the movements of those who became black Mountaineers beginning in the late 1860s and continuing into the 1930s. A central narrative of African American history in the twentieth century is that of the Great Migration of blacks from the rural South to the urban North beginning in the period of World War I and continuing into the 1950s at least. Its importance to the history of African American cannot be denied, but it is my belief that for several reasons the history that I have outlined is not part of that narrative.

  First of all, the immigration of black Virginians and North and South Carolinians began within five years of the end of the Civil War, during the period of Reconstruction, when freed men, women, and children were on the move throughout the South. That the promise of a better life in West Virginia attracted these former slaves well before the post-Reconstruction resurgence of white political and social domination places their migration well before twentieth-century population shifts.

  That the arrival of blacks continued unabated until the 1930s, as shown by the continuing rise in their numbers reflected in census data, is more likely to reflect the persuasive powers of those who had already established themselves in the Mountain State and then went back to tell their families and friends about the opportunities to be found there. Surely such conversations began in the early 1870s when, as Jedidiah Hotchkiss noted in his discussion of the blacks who built the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, “The contractors had but one complaint to make—that the colored men would go ‘home’ for Christmas. Home to them meant Eastern Virginia and we were told that many of them returned joyfully to the old plantations where formerly they were slaves and where... they are still made welcome on holidays” (Hotchkiss 1873, 289). Winter is obviously a period of comparative inactivity in agriculture. It is easy to imagine that during that season, having heard of the prospects for a better life in the Mountain State, many black Virginians or Carolinians decided that the time had come to pull up stakes and try another form of work, particularly if their previous summer’s crop had been poor or the owner of a farm on which they were sharecropping had shortchanged them one too many times at the end of the growing season.

  But what to make of the end of the period, when the Great Migration was well under way? Does the emigration of black Mountaineers who lost their jobs to the Joy Loading Machine and discriminatory practices by mine operators represent a part of that story? Perhaps, but unlike the migrants from the Deep South who made their way to northern cities and the promise of a comparatively better life both economically and socially, black West Virginians appeared to have been forced from better paying jobs in the mines to poorer ones in the heavy industries of the North. They gained no greater political power, on the contrary the kind of influence exerted by African Americans in the legislature of West Virginia was nonexistent in northern states. Finally, while immigration to the Mountain State represented a change from agricultural to industrial labor, the common denominator was a rural life, where the sort of recreational opportunities (hunting, fishing, gardening) known in the home place could be maintained in the company towns, and where, even if the company housing was densely packed, the outdoors was not far away.

  If much of the life of black Mountaineers was defined by the rural setting in which most lived, the arrival of big band dance music added to the quality of their lives while, in a sense, connecting them to the northern cities in which that music originated. At the same time, this audience blended it into their already established musical culture and absorbed it into their daily lives. While perhaps emblematic of urban, industrial life in the North, in the Mountain State it was more of an ornament to life in the coalfields.2

  Given the focus of this study on the black musical experience in the Mountain State, the reader may reasonably wonder about black–white interactions regarding big band dance music, since whites were attracted to this music to such an extent that by the late 1930s it had become the prevailing popular musical style of the nation. The newspaper record indicates that the principle of racial segregation defined most of those encounters. In a few instances, a band might perform on one occasion for a black audience and within a few weeks circle back to the same community to play a dance for whites, or vice versa. As noted in chapter 2, King Oliver’s band regularly played separate engagements for black and white dancers in various West Virginia communities.

  There were occasions when the interest of members of one race in a band playing for the other led to a curious compromise: whites would be admitted as “spectators” to a black dance and vice versa. Don Redman’s band played for a “colored” dance at the armory in Fairmont on October 4, 1934. According to an article in the local newspaper, “Because of Redman’s local popularity among the white folks, arrangements have been made to seat approximately 100 spectators in the balcony” (WV 10.3.34, 5). In at least one instance, such an occasion led to a subsequent engagement for the band. On February 15, 1934, Noble Sissle played for whites in Wheeling because, according to a report in the Pittsburgh Courier, “when Sissle and his Sizzling Orchestra played in Wheeling several months at a colored dance, more than 500 white people stormed the balcony and raved over his music. At the dance in Wheeling, colored spectators will be given an opportunity to hear Sissle again” (PC 2.3.34, 2/6).

  Not every white dance was so accommodating. A social organization, the Dice Club, advertised a dance for which Duke Ellington was booked to play at the armory in Charleston on April 16, 1935. At the bottom of the advertisement were the words “For White People Only” (CDM 3.24.35, 2/2). One wonders if this were not a preemptive strike against black Mountaineers showing up at the door to ask if they could watch. The newspaper record of the period reveals no comparable declarations by promoters of black dances.

  In sum, although the color line proved to be occasionally porous, it was never challenged by members of either race. Racial segregation of the dance floor was a given, but we may never know if some of those spectators in the balcony did not seize the opportunity to do a little dancing of their own while looking over the crowd for whom the music was intended.

  Today, Price Hill, West Virginia, may be found on a detailed map of Raleigh County, but no road sign identifies it. If one did not know its history, the collection of aging mobile homes, a couple of churches, and a sewage treatment plant would be presumed to be an extension of the neighboring town of Mount Hope. The railroad line that served the mine was taken up long ago and only here and there can its roadbed be detected.

  Oswald Road, on which resided the black miners and their families, is now heavily wooded, revealing nothing of its past. All that is to be seen is a creek on one side and a small stream r
ed with iron oxide presumably from an old mine on the other. The steep side of the valley comes within four or five feet from that stream. Locating the site of the company housing for the African American community of Price Hill is virtually impossible, though about twenty feet up from the road, it does appear that someone had carved out level land. Perhaps that was where the housing was situated, though absent the information from the 1930 census there would have been no reason for a stranger even to anticipate finding such a location in the settlement today, a reality replicated widely throughout the coalfields of the Mountain State.

  The current condition of Price Hill serves as a metaphor for the musical developments discussed in this study. One may find documents of this part of American musical history, and one may listen to the recordings of the big bands who brought jazz and other dance styles to the black West Virginians of the state’s coalfields. But just as the evidence of day-to-day life during the 1930s and early 1940s in those coalfields—the mines, the railroad lines, the company houses—have vanished and their locations have returned to a state of nature, so too has this once flourishing musical environment disappeared, leaving behind only a distant memory of what had been.

  Notes

  Introduction

  1. It is important to note that while rural blacks were migrating from Virginia and the Carolinas to West Virginia, a parallel migration of rural whites was occurring within those three states during the period from the 1880s to the 1920s. Their destination was the burgeoning textile industry. As evidence of that development, Patrick Huber notes in the Introduction to Linthead Stomp: The Creation of Country Music in the Piedmont South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008) that in North Carolina, whereas there were 49 textile mills employing more than 3,300 workers in 1880, by the mid-1920s there were 556 mills with a total workforce of more than 97,500 workers. Significant is the fact that 98 percent of those workers were white. Except for menial jobs, blacks were excluded from this workforce. This may explain the migration of African Americans from the Piedmont to West Virginia: it represented an opportunity for economic progress denied them in their home states.