This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And in this program, my faithful listeners, I've been telling you numerous times about that one ugly thing in American history that was so instrumental in defining African-American music - that is segregation. And for today's show, I'm gonna tell you about the rare occasions that white and black musicians worked together - and of course you'll get to hear the rare outcome of it.
And I dig deep in history with the first one, with a story that I told you a few weeks ago, about a Virginia pharmacist and in his childhood days - and we're talking the mid-1900s - he'd learnt to play the banjo from the slaves on his father's plantation. Fascinated by their music throughout his life, he decided to hand over his business to his son at age 48, and form a quartet with a few African-American singers to revive the old folk songs and spirituals of the mid-1800s. With them he toured all of the country performing in everything between the poshest venues and African-American churches. That was in the 1890s up to 1912 - one year before Miller died.
In 1909, the quartet did some recordings on Edison cylinders and a few weeks ago when I played a 1928 record with re-united members of this quartet, I had promised you, listerers, to track down such a recording. Well here it is, and it's the oldest record I ever played here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. From 1909 here is Polk Miller's Old South Quartette with What A Time.
01 - Polk Miller's Old South Quartette - What A Time
Well in the early 1900s that was quite something - a white man playing the banjo and performing Negro spirituals and folk songs together with three African-Americans. Miller kept a scrapbook where he wrote down about his tours and the difficulties he encountered with his group while touring the nation and especially in the Deep South. As I told you, they performed for the poshest social clubs where the music will have been welcomed as very interesting, to churches in black communities where the older folks will have been brought back memories of old times with the songs of their childhood.
Miller was the lead singer - billing himself as The Old Virginia Plantation Negro - but he never appeared in blackface, as was common when white people impersonated African-Americans. Now - it wasn't out of respect for African-Americans that Miller did so. He apparently was fascinated by their culture and music, but at the same time, he'd been a plantation owner's son, a confederate soldier and he was an outspoken slavery apologist. This is what he said about the slavery time: As an entertainer, it has been my aim to vindicate the slave-holding class against the charge of cruelty and inhumanity to the negro of the old time.
You can also say - next to his interest for African-American culture, he was a product of his time. One thing's for sure though - in his way he very much helped revive the interest for old-time African-American culture and his Edison recordings are the very rare survivors of the songs that were sung on the cotton plantations of the slavery era.
Now don'tcha ever complain that I'm not educating you with interesting history, listeners. But for the next one I'll go to some later years, the years that I normally cover on my show - that I dedicate today to what I call defying the segregation - white and black musicians working together. So here is from 1937 on the Brunswick label, the orchestra of Harry James fronted by Helen Humes with Jubilee.
02 - Harry James & Helen Humes - Jubilee
03 - Benny Goodman - My Daddy Rocks Me
Maybe the best and most famous example of a racially integrated band - the combo of Benny Goodman featured Benny Goodman of course on the clarinet, Lionel Hampton on vibes, Charlie Christian with the electrical guitar, Johnny Guarnieri on the ivories, Artie Bernstein on the double bass and drummer Nick Fatool. For Goodman race was no issue - he simply employed the best musicians. This was his arrangement of the early twenties blues of Trixie Smith, My Daddy Rocks Me, and quite some arrangement that is.
Goodman had proven to be a great band leader - but he started as a sideman like many of these band leaders did. There's a session he done for Vocalion a few years before, that for this show, where I feature racially integrated music, is to be mentioned. We're talking 1933, in the deepest of the Great Depression, and the session leader was a guy named Steve Washington, a singer and banjo player who's been overlooked for a long time. It wasn't until the re-discovery of the recordings of a loose aggregation of studio musicians, best known as the Washboard Rhythm Kings, that this singing genius somewhat got back in the picture.
And I say genius, listeners, for the way he sang was at least 25 years ahead of its time. Steve Washington had a delivery that no-one did in the thirties - his singing style was pure soul. He mainly done popular tunes of the day, cause that still sold in the hardest years of the Depression, but he could make any ditty sound significant.
Next to that, he was probably the first African-American to lead an all-white studio combo, that included Benny Goodman on the clarinet, Joe Venuti on the violin, guitarist Dick McDonough and Artie Bernstein on the upright bass. Four pop songs came from that, and here is Steve Washington and his orchestra - as billed on the label - with Blue River.
04 - Steve Washington - Blue River
05 - Blind Willie Dunn's Gin Bottle Four - Blue Blood Blues
The Blue Blood Blues of Blind Willie Dunn and his Gin Bottle Four on the Okeh label. Now Blind Willie Dunn may sound like some delta bluesman and the Gin Bottle Four could well have been a local jug band. But the ensemble consisted of King Oliver on the cornet, pianist J.C. Johnson, Lonnie Johnson and Eddie Lang on the guitar and the scat vocals and percussion were done by Hoagy Carmichael. This was marketed as a race record, and so they had to conceal that two of the musicians were white guys - and just if the name of Eddie Lang don't convince you, his real name was Salvatore Massaro - he was an Italian-American. Combinations like this were rare in 1929.
Next what was probably the first white band hiring a black singer to front them. The band of Jan Savitt recorded for Bluebird and Decca some popular swing songs with George Bon Bon Tunnell - a versatile singer but for some reason he never made great fame. Here is on the Decca label, 720 in the books.
06 - Jan Savitt feat. George BonBon Tunnell - 720 In The Books
07 - International Sweethearts of Rhythm - Tuxedo Junction
The Tuxedo Junction of the all female band International Sweethearts of Rhythm from an AFRS Juiblee show - radio transcription records distributed to the armed forces overseas during and shortly after the war years. The band was started as an all-girl band on a highschool for African-American orphans, but once they got national fame, the band also featured Asian, Latina, Indian and white members.
They drew large crowds but mainly at African-American venues and while touring through the nation they often got problems for their mixed-race organization. It was nearly impossible to sleep in inns and eat in even the simplest places so they had to live on the bus they toured with. While in the south, the plain fact they worked together defied the Jim Crow laws. One of the girls had to swear to the sherriff of El Paso that one of her parents was black, and she got arrested when they found out she had a picture of her parents in front of their house in New England.
The girls were in fact discriminated twice - for being in a mixed race band and for being female. For years each of them made no more than a dollar a day for food, and one dollar a week for allowance.
Next pianist Erskine Butterfield and in his recordings for Decca and Joe Davis, he had a few white session musisicians in his combo - clarinettist Jimmy Lytell and on the guitar Carmen Masren. Hear them as Erskine Butterfield and his Blue Boys, in this 1942 Decca recording, The Devil Sat Down And Cried.
08 - Erskine Butterfield & His Blue Boys - The Devil Sat Down And Cried
09 - Etta Jones - Blow Top Blues
On the Black & White label, from their 1944 New York sessions, the band of Barney Bigard fronted by Etta Jones with the Blow Top Blues, a composition of Leonard Feather and he also did the piano on this goodie. Feather was from England, born in a Jewish family and he got hooked up with jazz as a teenager, and he moved to New York, where things were happening. Feather well understood the jazz and the blues and composed many great classics, like the Evil Gal Blues, made famous by Dinah Washington, and How Blue Can You Get that was a hit for Louis Jordan and for B.B. King.
For the next one, we go to one of the two musicians I want to mention for getting so much involved with the African-American scene that they made themselves self-proclaimed blacks. First is Mezz Mezzrow and for sure he was a colorful person. First of all, he was known for supplying the local jazz scene with marijuana, so much that Mezz became slang for the stuff.
He married an African-American woman and declared himself a "voluntary Negro". Mezzrow wasn't the best of a clarinet and saxophone player, but he organized important recording sessions with Tommy Ladnier and Sydney Bechet, and he had his King Jazz record label in the mid-forties. His autobiography Really The Blues gives a good insight in the hepcat scenes of New York and Chicago. The title was taken from a Sidney Bechet composition that he played. Here is that record, Mezz Mezzrow with Really The Blues.
10 - Mezz Mezzrow & Sidney Bechet - Really the Blues
11 - Johnny Otis - Doggin' Blues
Johnny Otis was that together with Linda Hopkins with the Doggin' Blues. Otis was the son of Greek immigrants and he grew up in a black neigborhood in Berkeley, CA, proclaimed himself part of the African-American community and he americanized his Greek name to Johnny Otis. As a pivotal person in the West Coast Rhythm & Blues scene he discovered a lot of great musicians - Little Esther Phillips, Etta James, Big Mama Thornton, Johnny Ace, Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John, Hank Ballard, The Robins and Big Jay McNeely.
For the next one, one more of the band of Benny Goodman - and what do you do in the studio waiting for your band leader who apparently is late? Well one thing is start jamming to get in the groove. It was so good that the recording engineer caught it on wax. So here is the combo of Benny Goodman minus Benny Goodman - waiting for Benny.
12 - Charlie Christian - Waiting For Benny
13 - Sidney Bechet & Mezz Mezzrow - Minor Swoon
14 - Lonnie Johnson & Blind Willie Dunn - Blue Room Blues
And three in a row end today's special of the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman on artists who defied the segregation and made music together no matter what race or color. After that wonderful jam session of the members of the Benny Goodman combo while waiting for their leader, you got one more of Mezz Mezzrow together with Sydney Bechet - that was from 1945 the Minor Swoon. And then I ended with the guitars of Lonnie Johnson and Eddie Lang, for the occasion billed as Blind Willie Dunn to hide that it were a white and a black musician playing together. The track was released on the Okeh label in 1929.
You may have noticed that quite some of the integrated combo's were studio initiatives - just putting some good musicians together in the safe environment of a New York studio instead of going on the road, with all the troubles that came with it, especially in the South, where Jim Crow laws forbade, or made it extremely difficult, for African-Americans to work together with white people - but the stories of these troubles tell us, that also the white musicians got in trouble when found in that situation. For that, I suppose the work of Polk Miller with his mixed quartet doing African-American spirituals and folk songs from slavery time, it must have raised an eyebrow in the early 1900s.
Together was just one big history lesson again, and I hope you enjoyed it being educated in between the music. You can give your opinions at the e-mail address of this site - that is rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. Feedback is much appreciated. And all of today's stories you can find it back on the website of the program, just search Google for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and it will show up first. Once in, this is show 257 or look for the title of this show, Defying the segregation.
I'm done, and next week there will be more great music. See you then, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!