Swing Era Jazz

The Sting of Swing: Racial Tension in the 1930s

       Jazz during the early years of New Orleans and later throughout the 1920s in Chicago and New York was distinct from later evolutions of the music in that that music itself was a black-dominated scene. While it is true that many white musicians tried to emulate this new hot sound emanating from nighttime club performances, and even evident in that some such as the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and Bix Beiderbecke rose to prominence, creatively jazz was in the hands of black musicians. At this time, jazz was also a relatively moderate business, and, while the favorite of young lower-middle class dancegoers, not widespread amongst the larger world community. Thus while there was little money associated with it, there was little interest in the racial scheme within it. Therefore there was little engenderment of a competitive nature between races, and while there was some racial hierarchy, for example the white mob-owned speakeasies in Chicago, it was firmly ensconced and mostly ignored (Stewart). With the advent of the swing era however, including the big bands of Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and Benny Goodman, the scene changed. Jazz became a popular business as the larger ensembles adapted popular dance tunes and made them even more appealing, and with appeal came money, $80 million in 1937, and thus competition as well, “The creation of a truly nationwide mass medium in the form of radio catapulted a few jazz players to a level of celebrity that would have been unheard of only a few years before” (Gioia 128)(Swing Changes, 107). This nationalization of jazz music transformed it into almost an industry, with white bandleaders, recording artists, bookers, and even magazine writers moving in on the popularity, “The industry was dominated by celebrity bandleaders…” (Swing Changes, 101). The competition for space lead to a distinction in race, and white bands and black bands now became distinct units, “The conditions and prospects faced by African-American and white big bands had never been equivalent, and as swing became profitable business the disparity between the two groups increased” (Swing Changes, 122). One instance of this competition can be easily seen in big band battles throughout the swing era, one of the more famous being between Benny Goodman and Chick Webb. This highly anticipated event in the community featured a white celebrity bandleader coming to a respected black one at the Savoy in Harlem, the center of black-created music (Stewart).

        This general dynamic led to the acquisition of jazz music by ideological movements during the swing era, writers for a series of magazines began closely observing and commenting on the occurrences in jazz, mostly racial than musical, “…[jazz] served as both a symbol and a vehicle for cultural rebellion and, in a most indirect way, social protest. Although its musicians for the most part were unconscious of issuing such a challenge, the cultural establishment perceived their music as a direct threat to established cultural values” (Swing Changes, 53). This conflict sparked over the race in jazz rode on the controversy already in play through contemporary leftist ideals, giving another aspect and source for racial tension and conversation in the swing era. Ironically enough the self-propagating articles of the over-enthused writers served an important role in increasing the divide in jazz by reinforcing the separation of black and white bands.

      Not all entire racial buzz was about segregation and conflict. There are some notable moments of integration. While Benny Goodman was a product of the system creating white bandleaders of white bands, he made genuine efforts to increase equality. He created a separate quartet from his big band and by including drummer Gene Krupa from his band and hiring vibraphonist Lionel Hampton and pianist Teddy Wilson, both astute black players, made it a diverse group. This later allowed for Hampton to break an important color barrier by filling in for Gene Krupa in the band after the drummer left (Gioia, 142). This demonstrates that racial integration in jazz was a starting trend that would eventually serve to partially ameliorate the tension created in the swing era. The issue of race tension in the jazz scene then was created both by socioeconomic forces driven by white controlled commercialism and political issues written by liberally conscious journalism.

Commented on Brandon Smith

1920s Jazz

From Harlem to Henderson: New York Jazz in the 1920s

            The second decade of the twentieth century was an especially organic and prosperous time for jazz. The big cities of New York and Chicago provided the fertile grounds of both cultural intensity through a diverse demographic, and popular interest through a burgeoning white intrigue in the new ‘hot’ music. This ideal setting allowed for jazz to develop even more than it had in the previous years. Both cities played host to numerous jazz greats and engendered their own styles of the music, however it is New York that stands out as the eminent setting at which jazz cumulated the richest music and influential players in the 1920s.

          The roots of jazz in New York city developed in the congested slums of Harlem, where blacks had moved after abandoning the hellish streets around San Juan Hill. The conditions of Harlem were dismal, with respectively high rent rates for cramped and decrepit rooms. The blacks living here were kept within their socioeconomic place by these high rents and low wages, such that “the earning differential between black and white was still an unbridgeable gulf” (Gioia, 90).  However, it was this poor lifestyle that brought people together, and where people were brought together, music could be born. Rent parties thrown to raise the money needed for living out the next month brought neighborhoods together to see the latest piano player and his innovations with the music, and so it was within these backstreet bacchanals that jazz was given the chance to evolve. Piano “ticklers” such as James P. Johnson and Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith were provided with the outlet to improvise the familiar tunes of ragtime, classical pieces, and popular dances into the jazz that soon permeated the night scene everywhere. Thus the New York style of jazz early on was very personalized and close-knit, born from community parties and informal competitive jam sessions among the players. This is contrasted against the style of early Chicago jazz, which was performed by blacks for whites in dance halls and clubs, the connection between the musician and the audience at a distance, a connection that is more or less required to create the productive and prolific dialogue between art and community (Stewart).

           The later players of New York jazz were distinguished in their ability to spread the word of jazz to the white populace as well as the black community. Fats Waller’s compositions were popularized enough that they made it to the Broadway stage and Hollywood screen (Gioia, 96). These songs exposed whites to jazz in great magnitudes in the big city, thus producing increased interest in the style and opening the way for big bands to dominate the music scene. The band that can perhaps best fulfill this description and perhaps also fulfill the description as the most influential band in New York during the 1920s is that of Fletcher Henderson’s. The Henderson band brought together a virtuosic cadre of musicians that would rise in alacrity of playing jazz music (Gioia, 102). The combination of great soloists together with an adept manager was a new concept used in big band, one that would provide the formula for jazz music for decades to come. However one final component of this formula that was missing was creative and innovative music, and the Henderson band would have failed in this regard had it not been for Don Redman. “Without Redman, the Henderson orchestra might have remained a finishing school for talented soloists, but under his influence it became something more: the birthplace of a new jazz sound and a repository for an emerging aesthetic” (Gioia, 103). This emerging aesthetic was swing, which would soon become the next big idea for jazz. Redman was able to create music for the band that marked it as the leading producer in the jazz idiom, a gift that was in part bestowed by Louis Armstrong. His introduction into the Henderson ensemble in 1924 was a “catalyst in accelerating the band’s evolution” (Gioia, 105). With his influence, “The flat-footed fox-trot rhythm that pervades the written ensembles is suddenly galvanized into something approaching swing, largely due to Armstrong’s facility in placing accents all around the beat in an ever-changing rhythmic pattern” (Fletcher Henderson, 110).

          It is worth noting that it was the New York style of jazz that allowed for the introduction of big band music in the form of Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra to pervade the music landscape and eventually evolve into swing. However, it is also important to note the impact of Louis Armstrong, originally a Chicago player, on the New York music scene. Although New York can be seen as the defining city in jazz, one cannot discount the interplay between cities within the development of jazz, and perhaps view it, in part, as a synergetic whole, “…when dealing with the topsy-turvy subject of jazz geography, be prepared for the strangest contradictions: just as much of the history of New Orleans took place in Chicago, so did sounds of Chicago jazz eventually find their most hospitable home in New York” (Gioia, 71). A hallmark of the jazz tradition is its spectacular quality of intense collaboration from all over cities, nations, and the world. However, within the 1920s, New York stands out as the major player within the jazz world, not only in bringing jazz to the most popular state it had yet been in, but also in the evolution of the music to be launched into the leading musical lexicon of the foreseeable future.

Commented on Dalton Klock