Chicago

Jazz
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Chicago
Jazz
A
Cultural
History
1904-1930

WILLIAM-HOWLAND KENNEY

Oxford
NewYork
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
 Oxford University Press
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and associated companies in

Berlin Ibadan

Copyright © 1993 by William Howland Kenney

First published in 1993 by Oxford University Press, Inc.,

200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016

First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1994

Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kenney, William Howland.
Chicago jazz : a cultural history, 1904-1930
/ William Howland Kenney.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-506453-4
ISBN 0-19-509260-0 (pbk)
r. Jazz—Illinois—Chicago—History and criticism.
2. Chicago (Ill.)—Social conditions, 3. Chicago (Ill.)—Race relations.
4. Chicago (Ill.)—Popular culture. I .Title.
ML35o8.8.C5K46 1993
781.65*0973'1109042—dc20 92-27397

135798642

Printed in the United States of America

For Francoise and Melanie
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 Acknowledgments

MY INTEREST IN the cultural history of jazz was sparked by historian

Neil Leonard many years ago at the University of Pennsylvania. In a
small way at least, I hope this volume will indicate his enduring inspira-
tion. The work of Lewis A. Erenberg deeply influenced my initial
thoughts about a model for this study. Two Kent State University
colleagues—Professors Doris Y. Kadish and August Meier—played im-
portant roles by taking precious time from their own research to help me
to improve the focus and organization of my chapter drafts. Their intel-
lectual discipline and generosity have acted as a constant source of schol-
arly inspiration, while their faith in this project's potential, like that of
editor Sheldon Meyer, has been vastly encouraging.
I gratefully acknowledge fellowship support for this book from the
American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for
the Humanities. Both awarded summer Grants-in-Aid in 1989 for the
collection of source materials in Chicago. The Research Council of Kent
State University provided an Academic Year Research and Creative Ac-
tivity Appointment in 1989 and travel funds to return to the archives
thereafter.
viii Acknowledgments

The staffs of several libraries and archives, worked with remarkable

skill to make my job easier. These organizations are listed on page 181.1
would particularly like to acknowledge, however, the permission granted
by Ron Greek of the Columbia Oral History Collection and Mary Ann
Bamberger of the University Library, University of Illinois at Chicago to
quote from the collections under their management. Michael Cole, Linda
Burroughs, and Mary Taylor of the Periodical Information and Access
Department at Kent State did a skillful job of making available to me
crucial interlibrary loan, periodical, and microfilm documents.
I would also like to express my indebtedness to the dedicated jazz
record collectors who went out of their ways to tape Chicago jazz records
for my use. Joel O'Sickey again provided invaluable assistance in this
regard, as he has on past projects, and I'm particularly grateful to him for
sharing his considerable knowledge of the phonograph records with me.
John and Nina Steiner offered me their hospitality while I learned from
the Steiner Collection. Jim Stincic, John Richmond, Larry Booty, and
John Bitter all provided records and tapes of Chicago jazz. Jazz guitarist
Brad Bolton diagrammed some of the more complex big band record-
ings. All these individuals proved the strength of the jazz community and
the role it can play in helping to recreate a cultural history of jazz. Above
all, Francoise Massardier-Kenney, who has shone a bright and encourag-
ing light on my path to and through this project, has my heartfelt thanks.

Kent, Ohio W. H. K.
June 1992
 Contents

1 • South Side Jazz: Cultural Context, 3

2 • The Evolution of South Side Jazz, 35
3 • White Jazz and Dance Halls, 61
4 • White Chicago Jazz: Cultural Context, 87
5 • Chicago's Jazz Records, 117
6 • "Syncopated Threnody":
The End of Chicago's Jazz Age, 147

APPENDIX, 173
ABBREVIATIONS OF ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS, 181
NOTES, 181
INDEX, 219
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 Introduction

THIS BOOK ADVANCES an interpretation of the cultural history of jazz

in Chicago from its origins to the Depression. In recent decades musi-
cologists and music critics, whose major findings will be incorporated
into the present study, have demonstrated the musical depth and artistic
originality of jazz, tracing the lines of influence running from one out-
standing jazz artist to another. 1 But historians have become increasingly
active in the scholarly analysis of jazz. Cultural historians, in particular,
have traced the relationship of jazz to changing African-American sensi-
bilities as they moved from slavery to freedom, as well as studying the
interactions of jazz and race within the cultural patterns of the dominant
white society at given moments in American history.2
A closer analysis of one particular time and place, widely recognized
to have been important to the evolution of jazz, will help to re-create a
clearer sense of the particular social and cultural circumstances—what
anthropologist Clifford Geertz called the "flow of social action" and the
"conceptual structures"—within which jazz musicians molded their mu-
sic. Leroy Ostransky has demonstrated that several powerful historical
forces, which were at work early in this century in major American cities,
created the political, economic, and racial preconditions for the develop-
xii Introduction

ment of jazz.3 This study tries to reconstruct some of the interactive

process between music and the specific night-life institutions that pre-
sented jazz in twenties Chicago. The job, as South Side newspaper
columnist and orchestra leader Dave Peyton insisted, created bands and
held them together. Cabaret, dance hall, and vaudeville theater employ-
ment gave life to jazz groups:

The job makes the orchestra. If you lose the job and loaf a few
weeks, you haven't any band. Our field is a narrow one. Your men
can't afford to loaf long and the first bidder takes them away from
you. The job is what you want to worship.4

The distinction often drawn between the music that jazz musicians had
to play on the job and the music that they would personally have pre-
ferred to play should not be allowed to obscure the depth of jazz's
involvement with its immediate surroundings. Regular employment in
Chicago's cabarets helped to shape the evolution of instrumental tech-
niques, solo flamboyance, skills in accompaniment, jazz band repertoires,
and new concepts in composing and arranging.
The field of musical expressiveness suggested by the word "jazz"
presents certain complications not usually encountered in cultural his-
tory. The term's exact meaning has been notoriously elusive, covering,
both then and now, a wide variety of different musical styles and provok-
ing substantial disagreement. I have retained much of the definition of
jazz offered by Joachim E. Berendt, who focused on the artistic confron-
tation of blacks with European music within the United States. Berendt
emphasized a series of musical characteristics—rhythmic swing, creative
spontaneity, improvisation, and individualistic instrumental sonorities—
which characterized African-American jazz music.
The notion of jazz as a musical art form is central to the field, but
should be broadened to include white artistic confrontations with
African-American musical traditions. Based on facts found in the pri-
mary sources, this book affirms that black South Side Chicagoans were
chronologically well in advance of the city's white musicians in develop-
ing the music, but whites soon made their contributions, too. Members of
all races, however, felt many of the impulses that generated jazz. The
primacy of black jazz in Chicago during the twenties resulted from
craftsmanship developed in response to musical ambitions and economic
 Introduction xiii

opportunities in a white society that had long expected and encouraged

African-Americans to make music. As a 1906 newspaper article from the
white Chicago Tribune, reprinted in the black Chicago Broad Ax, put the
matter:

. . . the Negro has a future in music . . . .there is no prejudice

against the Negro in music . . . He need not fear that race prejudice
will antagonize him. Music is the universal art and language and
begins where speech ends.5

Chicago Jazz is on one level (some would say the only important one)
the story of the musical creativity of a small group of South Side Chi-
cagoans who pioneered jazz's major musical breakthroughs, but the
word also carried, in the 1920s, a much broader, cultural signification.
Most Chicagoans were only marginally aware of the complex and subtle
details of African-American encounters with European music. While it is
true that Chicago's great jazz musicians of the 1920s often succeeded in
recording music with an appeal that lasted well beyond the moment of its
creation, it is also true that those same artists habitually performed as
musical entertainers when creating their jazz art. As a result, during the
late nineteen teens and twenties, Chicago jazz nearly always stimulated
and responded to Jazz Age cultural sensibilities in Chicago and the
nation. Therefore, a distinction can be made between "jazz," as innova-
tion in musical art, and the phrase "jazz age," that can be used to describe
"Roaring Twenties" social dance music and associated activities, such as
going out to dance halls and cabarets, going to the movies, dressing like
"sheiks," "shebas," and "flappers," and drinking bootleg gin.
These activities, like jazz itself, were "jazzy" urban behaviors that
expressed the excitement, adventure, glamour, sensuality, and daring
stimulated in young urban Americans. Jazz Age sensibilities did not
require any overt confrontation at the intersection of race and music,
although those closest to Chicago jazz in the twenties insisted that they
discovered their most memorable musical experiences there. Chicago
Jazz proved capable of expressing a range of emotions that stimulated
and reflected the excitement of the Roaring Twenties and sometimes
achieved a level of musical expressiveness which attracted critical praise
long thereafter. Some musicians and groups shaped these musical expres-
sions more distinctively than others; some played more consistently in
xiv Introduction

clubs associated with jazz, while others played some jazz numbers
among other styles of popular music in venues not exclusively identified
with jazz.
All of the musicians and audiences of that time were enmeshed in
various mixes of the popular emotions, feelings, and tastes which charac-
terized the Roaring Twenties. Jazz in Chicago gave particularly sharp
and memorable musical expression to feelings of giddy excitement and
rebellious daring, stimulating powerful emotional experiences which per-
manently shaped our collective memory of that time and place. Although
individual musicians and groups placed themselves differently within the
sensibilities of the time, they all were inextricably involved with post-
World War I economic prosperity, a heightened interracial awareness,
the excitement of city life, urban machine politics, and the ongoing
rebellion against Prohibition moralism.6
In the pages that follow, I have tried to describe the ways in which
culture, race, and music acted on one another to draw upon specific
elements of African-American musical traditions in order to create jazz.
Traditional white perceptions of racial characteristics and the craftsman-
ship of twenties jazz musicians combined to create exotic night-time
worlds of urban excitement; the music itself simultaneously stimulated
emotionally charged moments of social daring and sensations of racial
reconciliation through ritually ordered rhythm and harmony. Developed
as a way to make oneself heard within the city, South Side Chicago jazz,
an object lesson in economic and cultural adaptation, served for many
who heard it to affirm that a pluralistic urban society was possible.
Chicago has an especially broad range of primary and secondary
sources dealing with the historical jazz scene of the 1920s. Newspapers,
trade papers, phonograph records, transcribed oral interviews, and
autobiographies provide the means to discover how music, race, and
culture interacted in that urban setting. In addition, the history of early
twentieth-century Chicago has produced an unusual number of studies of
major social developments—urban vice, racial relations, dance halls, and
spreading slums—that were acknowledged at the time to have had an
association with jazz. In a sense, therefore, the sort of cultural history of
Chicago jazz which I have tried to write has been waiting to be written.
This examination of jazz during a major period of its gestation seems
in one sense to confirm that the music itself emerged from a blending of
"lowbrow" cabaret culture and elements of "highbrow" musical tradi-
tion.7 At least from the Chicago experience of its early innovators, jazz
 Introduction xv

provides a remarkable example of aesthetic activity in which "high" and

"low" cultures are not necessarily antagonists. For instance, jazz musi-
cians readily borrowed from a variety of sources in refashioning the
music they had brought to Chicago. Jazz in 1920s Chicago was neither
just folk music, nor merely commercial entertainment, nor solely concert
hall art, but instead it was a synthesis of these elements. In the process, it
created an original, indigenous, richly varied music form. The stock
market crash, the repeal of Prohibition, and the Depression of the 1930s
were factors that helped destroy this Chicago jazz tradition and in the
process remove the recordings of the period from their original cultural
context.
This study also demonstrates that beneath the heated debates over
jazz in 1920s newspapers, art magazines, and education journals—
debates that treated jazz as a "revolutionary" social and cultural
phenomenon—there were groups of people who did not normally write
about jazz, but just played, promoted, and listened to it in clubs and
dance halls around the city. Whatever musical borrowing jazz made
from "highbrow" sources, and in spite of its popularity with slumming
members of the upper middle class, Chicago jazz of the twenties was
firmly rooted in a tough inner city world of working-class entertainers.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, who first applied the term "Jazz Age" to the
1920s, traced the unfolding of disturbing new sensibilities of the twenties
within the social worlds of college campuses, country clubs, and elegant
hotels. Fitzgerald wrote little at all about jazz music, its musicians, or the
important jazz clubs. I have tried, in this book, to recapture some of the
substance and flavor of the more immediate inner-city world of jazz
cabarets and dance halls in twenties Chicago. Jazz looks different, some-
what less "revolutionary" and more evolutionary from this other perspec-
tive, one closer than that of twenties social critics and writers to the
worlds of the musicians themselves, who actually created jazz in the
exciting, enterprising world of twenties Chicago.8
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Chicago
Jazz
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 1
South Side Jazz:
Cultural Context

DURING THE 1920s, Chicago provided a major focal point of innovative

jazz performance in America, drawing to itself musicians from through-
out the Midwest and the Deep South. Jazz legend has focused on the U.S.
Navy Department's November 12, 1917, closing of "Storyville," New
Orleans' celebrated red light district, as the fundamental impetus to the
emigration of jazz musicians from the Crescent City. Since some of these
subsequently famous New Orleans musicians also performed on the
Streckfus Line's Mississippi River paddle wheelers, jazz also has been
said to have "come up the river from New Orleans." But the closing of
the official vice districts in cities like New Orleans merely dispersed their
activities into the surrounding neighborhoods. Both bordello and dance
hall continued to flourish, as the official closing of Chicago's "Levee"
district in 1912 amply proved. Moreover, as Richard Wang has pointed
out, jazz legend ignores North American geography: the Mississippi
River doesn't flow through or even very near Chicago.1
Jazz musicians were not so much pushed from their many different
homes throughout the country as pulled to Chicago. Popular musical
development actually began there well before World War I, stimulating
and reflecting a mounting popular "craze" for social dancing. During the
4 Chicago Jazz

twenties, what Marshall Stearns called a "peak of jazz intensity" devel-

oped in New Orleans, Chicago, New York, and Kansas City. Chicagoans
listened and/or danced to jazz in a variety of settings: white, black, and
black-and-tan cabarets, roadhouses, vaudeville and movie theaters, dance
halls, excursion boats and trains, and private parties. Journalists for the
entertainment trade papers underscored Chicago's leadership in cabaret
orchestras; they marveled that jazz and dance bands had become a domi-
nant force in vaudeville, replacing vocal acts as the major medium for
creating hit tunes.2
Chicago's booming market for entertainment encouraged intense
musical competition and led to key musical discoveries that propelled
jazz forward during the 1920s as a new American art form. Most of the
city's creative musical advances emerged from African-Americans, who
were crowded into a racial ghetto on the South Side; black musicians
created many musical innovations in which white Chicago musicians and
social dancers found their inspiration. Some of these daring creations
were captured on influential phonograph records. Louis Armstrong's
Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers, and
critically acclaimed recordings by Joseph "King" Oliver, Jimmy Noone,
Johnny Dodds, and Earl Hines provided enduring evidence of Chicago's
importance in jazz history by defining major directions of jazz develop-
ment for years to come.
The jazz music played by South Side Chicagoans sprang from a self-
conscious evolution in African-American musical and show business tra-
ditions. Born of a combination of folk blues, marching band tunes, social
dance music, popular songs, and ragtime, jazz found expression in
twentieth-century urban adaptations of nineteenth-century minstrel and
vaudeville forms. Like ragtime, jazz expressed two important facets of
African-American sensibilities: first, such music was a valued element of
black cultural life; and, second, certain kinds of musical activity were
recognized by the surrounding white society as appropriate for blacks.
The two dimensions combined to create strong foundations for making a
creative popular music responsive to city life.
Jazz on Chicago's South Side was deeply woven into a fabric of
economic and political activities designed to improve the standard of
living and political power of the black community. South Side jazz, for
example, was closely allied with a dynamic pattern of entertainment
enterprise which, given major racial constraints on black economic activ-
ities, played an even more important role in the South Side community
 South Side Jazz: Cultural Context 5

than might otherwise have been the case. Barred from most professional
schools and corporations by reasons of color, entrepreneurs on the South
Side focused an unusual amount of creative energy on such entertain-
ment enterprises as cafes and saloons, pool halls, gambling, bootlegging,
vaudeville, popular music making, and such fast-developing enterprises
as the production of phonograph records and movies, and professional
boxing, baseball, and football. Jazz in twenties Chicago closely associated
with these kinds of activities.
At the same time, these enterprises intersected with the gathering
political ambitions of the black community in Chicago. The rise of the
South Side cabarets and jazz paralleled the determined and successful
effort to elect the first African-Americans as City Council Aldermen.
Chicago's Second Ward, where most of the leading cabarets were located,
probably contained a majority of black voters by 1915 when, amid heated
newspaper commentary, Oscar DePriest was elected Chicago's first black
Councilman. In 1918, another African-American—Louis B. Anderson—
was elected to replace DePriest, while Major Robert R. Jackson won the
second of the two City Council seats allotted to the Second Ward. The
leading clubs in which the famous black ragtime and jazz musicians
played were owned and/or managed by black Republican party orga-
nizers, who used the musicians, their music, and popular musical enter-
tainers to attract and to focus the attention of potential black voters. Jazz
musicians, often thought to be apolitical, nonetheless helped to build, on
the South Side at least, pride in the economic and political advances of the
race. They also contributed their music to the ceremonial political meet-
ings held on the South Side between Chicago's black and white politi-
cians.3
The institutional roots of Chicago jazz reached back to a turn-of-the-
century night club, gambling hall, theater, and political hot spot called
the Pekin Inn, at 2700 South State Street. It was the most important
South Side Chicago club and musical theater before 1910 and the first to
employ musicians who were closely associated with ragtime and pre-jazz
popular music. The Pekin began as a popular beer garden serving blacks
and whites, but on June 18, 1904, was revamped as the Pekin Inn, "a
cabaret better known as a Music Hall." On either March 17 or 30, 1906
(depending upon which source one reads) the Pekin was reopened as a
i,2OO-seat "theater for Colored people of this city," owned by Robert T.
Motts, who had been born on June 24, 1861, in Washington, Iowa, and
had come to Chicago in 1881. Joining forces with Samuel R. Snowden
6 Chicago Jazz

and William Beasley, Motts had made 480 South State Street a center for
the sporting set before taking over the Pekin Inn, and had invested his
gambling profits in South Side real estate. At the same time, Motts, who
became an important South Side politician, used his club to mobilize the
black vote. He paid some of his customers $5 per day to help the Second
Ward Aldermen register black voters and see that they voted on election
days.4
A black entrepreneur like Motts had to devise strategies for balancing
economic with racial interests: whites generally had more money to
spend than blacks, and therefore could easily account for the financial
success of such an enterprise; but blacks, with less discretionary income,
nonetheless dominated the Pekin's neighborhood creating contrary pres-
sures for racially responsive entertainment policies. An influential pre-
World War I report on the South Side black community indicated that
black business succeeded financially only when two-thirds of the cus-
tomers were white. A close observer of South Side cabarets insisted,
"there is no reason to draw any color line when colored people have to
struggle to make a living." The Pekin Inn and places like it therefore
traditionally served the "sporting fraternity," an informal brotherhood of
pleasure-seeking bachelors of both races. The sporting set included slum-
ming young upper-class whites, who lined up at the bar and gathered
around the gambling tables with downtown politicians, artisans, actors,
and immigrants to the city from many lands.5
Robert Motts seems to have succeeded remarkably in appealing to
race pride. The Chicago Broad Ax, an old-fashioned newspaper that
opposed most of the social trends of the jazz age, compared him to
Benjamin Banneker, Toussaint L'Ouverture, and Booker T. Washington
and hailed him as "the new Moses of the Negro race in the theater
world." Motts's Pekin was touted as "the finest and the largest playhouse
conducted by Afro-Americans in the United States." The first show
produced there in 1906 was called "The Man from Bam," a musical
comedy with a book by Collin Davis, music, which included "The Rag
Time Ballet," by Joe Jordan, and lyrics by Arthur Gillespie. Soon after its
opening, Motts donated the premises and "the famous Pekin Orchestra"
for a Grand Benefit for the Frederick Douglass Center. Jane Addams of
Hull House, who sponsored a special program by Soper's School of
Dramatic Art, and Mrs. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who defended the Pekin
Theater against criticisms from local ministers, placed their stamp of
approval on Motts' venture. As long as Robert Motts lived, the Pekin
 South Side Jazz: Cultural Context 7

Theater was a self-consciously black Chicago entertainment institution

that employed African-Americans in all capacities and charted an enter-
tainment strategy which responded to the ambitions of African-
American entertainers.6
The tension between economic necessity and racial solidarity was
ongoing, though. In April 1910 the Chicago Defender wrote that Motts
afforded blacks the possibility of enjoying nationally recognized vaude-
ville acts of both races "without going downtown ...," but the newspaper
added that "[he] caters much at present to white people" and urged that
he take care to pay his black acts as much as his white ones. In the months
that passed thereafter, Motts was reported to have traveled to inspect the
Howard Theater in Washington, D.C., where what the newspaper called
a "Hebrew" proprietor was offering black audiences "[racially] 'mixed'
vaudeville." Motts subsequently steered the Pekin more successfully
along the tricky inter-racial path, away from a complete reliance on white
acts and audiences and toward greater encouragement of race-oriented
productions and the professional ambitions of black actors and enter-
tainers. He presented legitimate plays like "Tallaloo" and "Carib," with
African-American themes and produced and acted by the Pekin Stock
Company of local black actors, entertainers, and musicians.7
Robert T. Motts died in 1911. At his funeral, he was eulogized by the
Rev. W. D. Cook and the Rev. H. J. Cullis, with leading South Side
banker Jesse Binga as an honorary pall bearer. Until World War I the
Pekin was owned by Robert's sister Lucy Motts, who married Dan
Jackson, the proprietor of the Emanuel Jackson undertaking business
and later a leading South Side politician; thereafter a series of whites,
among them George Holt, Frank Haight, Thomas Chamales, William
Adams, and Walter K. Tyler, subsequently owned the Pekin Inn. Ac-
cording to folklore that circulated among those in the inexpensive bal-
cony seats, "the Ghost of Robert Motts" caused the theater's curtain
to stick shut on each opening night under new white management,
since Motts was said to have requested on his deathbed that the Pekin
remain always under black ownership. The theater seats were removed
in the summer of 1916 and replaced by a dance floor, and the cabaret
finally became a gangland hangout, where two policemen were shot in
1920. The building was eventually sold to the city and became a police
station.8
The musicians who accompanied entertainers at the Pekin Inn and
Theater and who performed their own musical acts there shared the
8 Chicago Jazz

institution's orientation toward black entertainment and black audiences.

Among the Pekin Inn's most influential early musicians, composers as
well as instrumentalists, were Joe Jordan, who served as musical director
of the vaudeville and legitimate theater productions from 1906 and Tony
Jackson, who wrote the famous song Pretty Baby. Jackson apparently
arrived in Chicago around 1912. He also appeared at the Congress Hotel
and Russell and Dago's Elmwood Cafe, while Jordan appeared at clubs
like the Pompeii Buffet and Cafe and the Deluxe Cafe in the waning
years of the ragtime era just before World War 1.9
People of both races also came to the South Side to hear clarinetist
Wilbur Sweatman, a vaudeville/novelty instrumentalist who presented
mixed programs of classical music, gypsy airs, and hot syncopated num-
bers to Chicagoans as early as 1906. Sweatman was famous for playing
"The Rosary" on three clarinets simultaneously and in harmony. He
performed with William Dorsey at the piano and George Reeves on
drums at the Pekin Inn, the Monogram Theater, and the Grand Theater,
the South Side's largest vaudeville/movie theater. Sweatman's clarinet
style was so unprecedented in Chicago that even musically sophisticated
black listeners found it strange:

He was such a hit with his queer style of playing "Hot Clarinet"
that Broadway [subsequently] went wild about him. People of both
races came to hear this three piece orchestra play jazz music, al-
though they didn't call it jazz then. They called it "hot music."
Sweatman produced the weird, eerie tones on the clarinet that sent
thrills through the listener. He was a sensational, rapid, clever ma-
nipulator of the clarinet.

Sweatman later claimed to have recorded the first jazz records ever made
(in 1912 for Columbia Records), and advertised himself as "Originator
and Much Imitated Ragtime and Jazz Clarionetist. . . ." I0
With the death of Robert Motts in 1911, leadership of the South
Side's developing cabaret culture, as well as of its political ambitions,
passed briefly to black boxing champion Jack Johnson, who had used his
immense popularity as early as 1910 to campaign for Edward H. Wright,
the first black candidate for City Council. After defeating boxer Jim
Flynn in Las Vegas on July 4, 1912, Johnson opened the Cafe de Cham-
pion at 41 West 3ist Street in "the Old Palace [theater]" between Armour
Avenue and Dearborn Street. A pianist was featured at the grand piano
 South Side Jazz: Cultural Context 9

in the upstairs cafe, and at the club's gala opening, W. H. Taylor's

Orchestra presented an "elaborate program of music and song in the
downstairs buffet." Johnson's influence on the developing patterns of
musical entertainment on the South Side was soon limited, however, by
his indictment on November 7, 1912, by a federal grand jury on a charge
of trafficking in women. The champion, characterized by the Defender as
a martyr to white racist resentments of his defeat of the white boxer Jim
Jeffries, fled to Europe, although his club remained open."
During this same period, Thomas McCain's Pompeii buffet and cafe
at 20-22 East 3ist Street, at the 3151 Street elevated station, and Dago and
Russell's Elmwood Cafe presented such leading musical entertainers as
Tony Jackson, Ferd "Jelly Roll" Morton, drummer Manzie Campbell,
and the highly regarded tenor vocalist and durmmer Ollie Powers. The
Pompeii, which was renamed the Richelieu in 1914 when Jelly Roll
Morton became its musical director, was known as a "hang-out for
theatrical people"; the Elmwood attracted attention for its late Sunday
afternoon concerts and Tuesday matinees, both managed by Ollie
Powers. Even when owned by whites, clubs like these encouraged black
musicians and entertainers who were "... closed-out of even middle-level
vaudeville and theater work."12
By 1915, leadership of the South Side cabaret scene passed to Henry
"Teenan" Jones, who had arrived in Chicago from Watseka, Illinois, in
1876. Jones had run the Senate Buffet and the Lakeside Club in Hyde
Park for sixteen years before being forced out when that area became an
all-white residential neighborhood. He then moved further north, join-
ing with Art Codozoe and J. H. "Lovie Joe" Whitson to own and run the
Elite Cafe at 3030 South State Street, next door to the "old" Monogram
Theater, a major center for down-to-earth black vaudeville and musical
entertainment that subsequently moved further south to 34th and State
and became the "new" Monogram Theater. Jones, like Robert Motts, was
deeply involved with the South Side's dynamic combination of politics,
gambling, and musical entertainment. A bar and restaurant, the Elite No.
i also functioned as a small music hall; a space for dancing was enclosed
by brass railings, which also served to divide performers from the cus-
tomers at show time. Three to four hundred patrons could be served at a
time and, as the newspaper put it: "The entertainers and the orchestra
always hit it up pretty lively during evening hours."
Teenan Jones, who was described as a "bosom friend of the late
Robert Motts, was president of "the Robert T. Motts Memorial Associa-
io Chicago Jazz

tion" and the "Colored Men's Retail Liquor Dealers' Protective Associa-
tion," a founder of the Great Lakes Lodge No. 43, L. P. B. O. Elks, and
an organizer in the Republican party.'3 In 1915, he struck off on his own,
opening Teenan Jones' Place, also known as "Elite No. 2," at 3445 South
State Street, identified by its white tiled fagade, and advertised as "the
most elaborate emporium on the Stroll. Fine wines, liquors, and cigars;
cafe and cabaret in connection." The music at Teenan Jones place, at the
time of its opening at least, encompassed both classical and popular styles,
making listeners feel, according to the Indianapolis Freeman, "like you
were listening to a grand opera—the next minute to high class vaude-
ville." Like the Elite No. i, which had been next door to the old Mono-
gram Theater, Jones' place was nestled next door to the new Monogram
Theater and became known as an actors' hangout.11*
Teenan Jones was looked upon as a political power on the South Side
at least until 1917. Then he was indicted for conspiracy, along with
Alderman DePriest, and turned state's witness and confessed that he had
been the head of a gambling syndicate. Jones admitted making monetary
contributions to DePriest and Police Captain Stephen K. Healy, contri-
butions that were construed to be protection money to keep the police
away from his gambling houses. While confessing to the charge in return
for immunity from prosecution, however, Jones still insisted that he had
only been involved in making political campaign contributions. His con-
tention was supported by DePriest's defense attorney Clarence Darrow
and by the variety of Jones' other political activities on the South Side.
DePriest was ultimately acquitted."5
At about the same time that Jones opened his Elite No. 2, Frank
Freer and William Bottoms, with the assistance of Virgil Williams,
opened the Deluxe Cafe at 3503 South State Street. Sometimes men-
tioned in the press as the LeLuxe, this cabaret featured vocalists Lucille
Hegamin and Qllie Powers and strove to establish a reputation as a
morally upright establishment where fighting was prohibited. When, just
over one year later, Frank Preer suffered what one newspaper called "a
nervous breakdown from overwork," Bottoms took over the club."6
Given the constraints on black economic and cultural initiatives in
Chicago, clubs like the Pekin, Cafe de Champion, the two Elites, and the
Deluxe played important roles in the ghetto's institutional life. They
hired significant numbers of neighborhood men and women as floor
managers, entertainers, musicians, cooks, barmen, waiters, doormen, and
janitors, enough to contribute to the economic foundations of the South
 South Side Jazz: Cultural Context n

Side. South Side cabarets also brought elements of urbane popular cul-
ture to the black ghetto. The Chicago Defender, which encouraged the
popular culture of the twenties as much as the Broad Ax discouraged it,
declared, with the sort of hyperbole reserved for race initiatives, that the
Elite No. 2 "... [is] the most elaborate and well-appointed cafe and buffet
in the country." Thanks to Jones, "... the race will have a Rector's or a
Vogelsang's [elegant (white) lobster palaces] of its own ... a Mecca for
High-Class Amusement."'7
Jelly Roll Morton's early career in Chicago developed the most im-
portant of the South Side cabarets during 1914 and 1915. He played and/
or organized vaudeville entertainment at the Richelieu, DeLuxe, and
Elite #2 (mistakenly identified as the first Elite in the Lomax/Morton
memoir). His Chicago activities enlivened the most influential of South
Side Chicago's musical cabarets. His piano playing style best documents
the transition from ragtime to jazz. 18
The word "jass" first appeared in the city's black press in connection
with the Pekin Inn, when, on September 30, 1916, the Chicago Defender
used the word to describe music produced by black pianist-songwriter
W. Benton Overstreet in support of vaudevillian Estella Harris at the
Grand Theater. Harris, variously labeled as a "Coon Shouter" and "Rag
Shouter," was now accompanied by a "Jass Band" which had been
known as "the famous Pekin Trio" up to that time. They were a smash
hit doing "Shima Sha Wabble," "Happy Shout," and "The New Dance";
one thousand fans were turned away at one late Sunday night show.
Very soon thereafter, a variant spelling of the term—"Jaz"—was used in
the Indianapolis Freeman to describe an instrumental group, John W.
Wickliffe's Ginger Orchestra "Styled America's Greatest Jaz Combi-
nation"—which included Chicagoan Darnell Howard on violin and an
"Entertainer or Interlocutor."'9
The Great Migration of the years 1916 to 1919, which brought ap-
proximately 500,000 blacks from the southern states to northern cities
(nearly one million more followed in the 19205), greatly increased the
demand for entertainment in these northern cities. The arrival in Chi-
cago of over 65,000 blacks from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Ar-
kansas, and Texas between 1910 and 1920 triggered Chicago's Jazz Age,
for it expanded the city's market for racially oriented black musical
entertainment and also intensified white Chicago's awareness of a grow-
ing black population. In the process, it created a broader market for black
entertainment aimed at white audiences. During World War I, immigra-
12 Chicago Jazz

tion from Europe slowed drastically, and many European immigrants

moved back to their homelands. Northern industries like Chicago's Illi-
nois Central Railroad, International Harvester, the steel mills, and the
Swift and Armour stockyards and slaughtering houses actively recruited
nonunionized black laborers to take their places. By 1920, over 100,000
African-Americans lived in Chicago, an increase of 148 percent in ten
years.20
Most of the city's South Side jazz performers arrived between 1917
and 1921 at the height of this migration. Of the fifty-five black musicians,
vocalists, and orchestra leaders closely associated with jazz in Chicago
during the 19205 about whom information is available, nearly half ar-
rived during or just after World War I. About the same percentage came
from New Orleans. These migratory early jazz musicians moved about
the country wherever work beckoned, often in company with the vocal-
ists, mimes, acrobats, and buffoons of carnival, circus, minstrel show, and
vaudeville troupes. Many of them had traveled extensively before settling
into relatively lucrative, longer-lived Chicago jobs. The Original Creole
Orchestra, usually cited as a major influence in the transition from instru-
mental ragtime to jazzband music, toured the nation on several vaude-
ville circuits for many years before two of its most influential musicians—
the bassist/leader Bill Johnson and cornetist Freddie Keppard—settled in
Chicago in 1918. Reed soloist Sidney Bechet, who arrived that same year,
had played dances, shows, one-night stands, and dime stores all over
Texas with pianist/composer Clarence Williams. At age fifteen, New
Orleans trumpeter Lee Collins had worked for the Illinois Central Rail-
road in Cairo, and subsequently toured Alabama, Mississippi, and Forida
before moving to Chicago.21
Immigration to Chicago thus did not necessarily signify uninter-
rupted residence; many jazz musicians discovered compelling economic
and political reasons to keep a suitcase packed, and their music retained
the subversive strains of social alienation. Some who played long, cele-
brated runs in Chicago traveled widely with vaudeville companies when
club jobs grew scarce, as they did during the mild economic depression in
1921 and early 1922 and later when Prohibition politics closed certain
cabarets; others worked extensively in St. Louis, Milwaukee, and other
mid western cities; the most famous worked for extended periods in New
York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and a few even toured Europe
and the Far East.22
 South Side Jazz: Cultural Context 13

Economic opportunity in a growing market for leisure time enter-

tainment drew African-American musicians north from New Orleans
into competition for the dollars that urban workers could devote to
recreation in Chicago. From 1910 to 1916, New Orleans musicians had
earned between $1.50 and $2.50 per engagement, plus tips, which could
double that sum. After World War I, South Side Chicago cabarets paid
sidemen a weekly salary of around $40 which also could be supplemented
by tips. When groups of white Gold Coast socialites decided to "go
slumming" in the cabarets, tips could amount to more than the regular
pay. Orchestra leaders and solo stars, of course, earned more than side-
men.^
Like other immigrants, musicians felt the excitement Chicago could
generate. Pianist Lil Hardin, who moved to Chicago from Memphis in
1918, recalled the northern city's magic many years later: "... I made it
my business to go out for a daily stroll and look this 'heaven' over.
Chicago meant just that to me—its beautiful brick and stone buildings,
excitement, people moving swiftly, and things happening." Despite the
bloody race riot of 1919, black immigrant musicians retained a guarded
but persistent optimism born of job opportunities, higher wages, personal
freedom, and the reassuring sparkle of cabaret lights and standing-room-
only signs. They would have agreed with the grim optimism expressed by
one anonymous prospective emigrant from the South: "I suppose the
worst place there is better than the best place here."24
Many of those gripped by "the moving fever" on "The Flight Out of
Egypt" arrived in Chicago as young adults who had left family ties and
the older generation behind at least until they could get settled; they were
eager to enjoy "the exhilarating feeling of liberation" from lives of south-
ern dependency. Historian James Grossman has emphasized the "impor-
tance of bright lights and leisure opportunities ... to the migrants' image
of Chicago as a freer environment than the rural or small town South."
Temporarily freed from many of the traditional controls of family and
church, unattached men and women between the ages of twenty and
forty-four, who accounted for an unusually large proportion of the total
black population, lived in the rapidly growing South Side rooming house
district, where they created informal, transient relationships. In this shift-
ing, restless world emerged the "rent party," a semipublic social occasion
where young men and women paid a modest admission charge to dance
to the latest phonograph records, a "boogie woogie" pianist or a small
14 Chicago Jazz

combo, drink inexpensive bootleg alcohol, and make friends. The jazz,
like the alcohol, provided entertainment while helping the party's orga-
nizers to pay their rent.*5
Workers with money to spend on entertainment also helped to create
a market for more elaborate commercial ventures. During and after
World War I, South Side Chicago, particularly "The Stroll," the bright-
light district on South State Street, came alive with a fast moving, free-
spending night life. In the early years of this century, South Side night life
first focused on the intersections of South State with cross streets num-
bered in the twenties, the area of the old vice district called the Levee.
This sin and entertainment district south of the Loop had grown up to
service a transient population that circulated around the South Side
terminals of the city's railroad, elevated, and trolley lines. The twenty-
square block "Vice District" had comprised 500 saloons, 6 variety thea-
ters, 1000 "concert halls," 15 gambling houses, 56 pool rooms, and 500
bordellos housing 3000 female workers. The showplace of the Levee had
been the internationally famous Everleigh Club at 2131-33 Dearborn
Street. Run by two Kentucky sisters, Ada and Minna Everleigh, the club
had even used hidden wall devices to shoot perfume into the rooms.
Thanks in part to the Everleighs' flaunting disdain of reformers, the
Levee had been officially closed by Mayor Carter Harrison in 1912; but
the move had succeeded only in moving such activities into other areas of
the city and even into the suburbs.26
As the black population grew on the South Side, the center of the
black bright-light district moved southward away from the area of the
Pekin Inn on 27th Street to 3151 Street (Elite Cafe No. i, Grand Theater,
Royal Gardens Cafe) and then to 35th Street, where much of the more
influential jazz activity of the 19205 took place—in the Elite Cafe No. 2,
DeLuxe Cafe, Dreamland Cafe, Sunset Cafe, Plantation Cafe, and the
Apex Club.
White jazz personality Eddie Condon later claimed that in 1924-26,
at the height of the jazz age, a trumpet held up in the night air of the
Stroll would play itself. Stores remained open twenty-four hours a day to
serve those enjoying urban life after years of rural tranquility. During the
day, women wearing what the Defender called "head rags of gaudy hues"
leaned from tenement windows while small groups of men asserted a
more public presence on the sidewalks. At night the crowded sidewalks
rang with music and laughter, the cabarets, vaudeville and movie theaters
interspersed with "gaudy chile, chop suey, and ice cream parlors."
 South Side Jazz: Cultural Context 15

Thirty-fifth and State streets offered a cosmopolitan "Bohemia of the

Colored Folks," where "lights sparkled, glasses tinkled," and crowds of
people circulated, around the clock.
Langston Hughes, visiting from New York in 1918, recalled that
"midnight was like day," even though electric streets lights were not
installed by the city on State Street until late 1922! According to black
dance band leader William Everett Samuels, some South Siders, working
as postal clerks, mail order operatives, hotel porters, and a variety of other
jobs during the day, often went home to bed at quitting time, arose at
2:00 a.m., dressed up in their finest clothes, hung out on the Stroll,
sobered up in a steam bath, and returned to work.2?
The Stroll and the southward-moving South State Street bright-light
district, which would be centered at 47th and State by the end of the
decade, created an enterprise in racial entertainment serving the tourist
market on at least two levels: first, many black customers on the side-
walks and in the commercial establishments were tourists from different
points throughout the Midwest; secondly, the arrival of so many migrant
blacks in Chicago stimulated the curiosity of whites, who came to the
Stroll to experience something of "Race" life in the north.
To attract black tourists, Robert S. Abbott's Chicago Defender issued
both a city and a national edition, the latter intended for broad circulation
to readers throughout the Midwest and South. Both editions touted the
Stroll as "a Mecca for Pleasure" and, likened South Side Chicago to
Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem, a center of cultural attraction for African-
Americans, where no one need fear "racial embarrassment." The paper
reported that the Stroll was regularly "filled with tourists and travel-
ers," particularly when the black delegations of such national organiza-
tions as the Republican party and racial splinter groups like the African-
American Elks met in Chicago. The Indianapolis Freeman regularly
covered Chicago news in the manner of a Windy City newspaper,
and its readers learned that the best and most sophisticated African-
American cabarets and vaudeville theaters were in Chicago and New
York.28
Racial tourism among whites was governed by white American atti-
tudes toward African-Americans. The mixture of fascination and fear,
which often gripped whites when they turned their attention to blacks,
had a long historical tradition about which South Side entrepreneurs
could scarcely have been ignorant. The Sporting Set was probably beyond
this stage of racial perception, but many white tourists in Chicago must
16 Chicago Jazz

have responded to it. The lyrics to Fred Fisher's famous popular song
"Chicago That Todd'ling Town" gaily inform listeners that:

More Colored people up in State Street you can see,

Than you'll see in Louisiana or Tennessee.29

For curious whites, the expressive dimensions of the new northern urban
African-American culture could be experienced in the black-and-tan
cabarets—for a price.
Inevitably, a new generation of entertainment entrepreneurs arose to
satisfy the demand for urban styles of recreation and personal expressive-
ness. Jazz became an influential force in this development.'0 In the com-
mercialized bright-light districts on the North and West Sides of Chi-
cago, large dance halls were constructed during the nineteen teens and
twenties, but in the black ghetto, entertainment focused on more limited
capital investments like night clubs and cabarets. As the historian of black
Chicago, Allan H. Spear, points out: "Negroes were completely excluded
from most commercial amusements—skating rinks, dance halls, [night
clubs], and amusement parks." The one amusement park for blacks—
Joyland Park at Thirty-third Street and Wabash—never became a major
force in South Side musical enterprise.^1 Given the lack of city financed
recreational facilities, a larger role was played in young people's leisure
time plans and employment opportunities by cabarets, dance halls, movie
theaters, and pool halls.
Until the opening of the Savoy Ballroom at the corner of 47th Street
and South Parkway on November 23, 1927, African-Americans had no
large, commercial dance hall. An effort made around 1913 to create "a
model dance hall" on the South Side foundered on the opposition of
whites, who feared that it would attract "vicious" elements. White City
Ballroom on 63rd and Cottage Grove, outside the ghetto of the twenties,
catered to whites, although its owners, the Beifields, regularly employed
black orchestras. The Trianon Ballroom at 62nd and Cottage Grove was
similarly reserved for whites. Black youth tended to concentrate on what
was available to them, vaudeville theaters and cabarets.^2
Chicago's most widely discussed Jazz Age cabarets were the "black -
and-tans," clubs located in the South Side ghetto which presented enter-
tainment by black performers and catered to both blacks and whites. The
phrase stemmed from a slang expression used after the Civil War to
describe those Republican factions that included both blacks and whites.
 South Side Jazz: Cultural Context 17

In Chicago, "black-and-tan" indicated a night club in which blacks and

whites could interact with one another in certain socially stylized ways,
talking, flirting, drinking, dancing, and listening to music. Such activities
might lead to much more intimate social contacts thereafter, but those
more explicitly sexual relations did not take place in the black-and-tan
cafes.33
The black-and-tans pursued differing policies according to a variety
of factors. Some black-owned cabarets, usually not the largest, would
admit whites but catered overwhelmingly to black customers, who
thought of these clubs as neighborhood institutions. Other clubs, usually
larger, were owned by blacks and designed, in part at least, for an
interracial clientele. A few of the largest South Side clubs were owned by
whites who hoped to attract a primarily white audience with African-
American entertainment. Some cabarets—such as the Pekin Inn, as we
have seen—changed their racial policies according to economic and polit-
ical pressures, so that a club known for catering to whites at one moment
might at another turn to a more African-American emphasis.
Before the construction of the Grand Terrace Cafe in 1928, Chicago
seems to have had no black-and-tan cabaret like Harlem's Cotton Club,
where, from the start, only whites were allowed as customers, although
the high prices at the South Side's Sunset Cafe effectively excluded most
South Siders. Chicago's relatively freer interracial mingling in the clubs
was an essential part of its reputation as a more earthy, elemental jazz city
than New York, but much depended upon the particular establishment
and at what particular point in its history. As Harlem stride pianist
"Willie the Lion" Smith put it after playing for several months in 1923 at
Chicago's Fiume Cafe, "... there was a lot more mixing of the races in
Chicago at that time than there was in New York. I sure found the
'toddlin' town' to be real friendly."34
During and just after the war, increasing numbers of both black and
white entrepreneurs, responding to black immigration and to white Chi-
cago's growing awareness of what the Chicago Tribune, the city's lead-
ing newspaper, called "the incoming hordes of Negroes," opened caba-
rets on the South Side. Several of these newer clubs became important
foundations of Chicago jazz: the DeLuxe Cafe, Dreamland Cafe, the
Royal Gardens Cafe, the Apex Club, the Plantation Cafe, and the Sunset
Cafe.
The most frequently discussed and promoted in the black news-
papers was William Bottoms' Dreamland Cafe at 3520 South State Street.
18 Chicago Jazz

On October 7, 1914, this "new and magnificent hall" had a grand open-
ing to advertise its 18 electric blow fans, 5 exhaust fans, 125 electric lights,
and its 8oo-person capacity dance floor whose boards were laid in a circle.
Dreamland later reopened under Bottoms' ownership in May 1917; "an
orchestra on an elevated stage or platform discourses fine music through-
out the afternoon and evenings." Even the old-fashioned Chicago Broad
Ax declared the Dreamland Cafe "one of the most pleasant places of
amusement on the South Side." In June 1917 its "Original Jazz Band"
was one of the very first on the south side to spell "jazz" with two z's. In
September 1918, the Dreamland was reported to have "the best ragtime
band in Chicago, accompanied by Bertha Hall, Alberta Hunter, and Mr.
Tom Mills ... The New Orleans Jazz Band hits the rail[s] all the time at a
high rate of speed ... Bottoms really understands how to provide first
class and 'catchy' amusement." In 1919, Bottoms hired Joseph "King"
Oliver and his band away from the DeLuxe Cafe. From that point
forward, Dreamland remained in the forefront of jazz development in
Chicago, particularly in 1925-26, when Bottoms featured Louis Arm-
strong in Lil Hardin-Armstrong's Dreamland Syncopators.^s
Bottoms enjoyed the sort of admiration and neighborhood support
which the ghetto community had extended to Robert Motts and Teenan
Jones. Although Bottoms is nowhere mentioned as a leading politician,
he may have used his club the way Motts and Jones used theirs. But
whenever any black entertainment entrepreneur invested his money on
the South Side, hired neighborhood men and women to work in his
establishment, and featured black entertainers on a regular basis, he
championed the racial ambitions of South Side Chicago even when
many of his customers were white. White cabaret entrepreneurs, on the
other hand, could hire black entertainers and service personnel in their
cabarets, but their own racial identity and that of their white clients
placed the African-Americans in a secondary and more subservient posi-
tion.36
Although the South Side supported any clubs and cabarets that em-
ployed black musicians, entertainers, and service personnel, whole-
hearted loyalty was reserved for clubs like Dreamland, which the Chi-
cago Defender called "a first class resort owned by a member of the Race."
In the black-and-tan business, the race of the owner-proprietor could
affect the taste with which black entertainment was presented to the
general public and the courtesy with which black customers were re-
ceived. White proprietors and managers were more likely than black
 South Side Jazz: Cultural Context 19

ones to fall into the sort of racial stereotyping which traditionally resulted
from the white commercial regulation of black musical entertainment.
As the Defender put it concerning Dreamland:

There are a great many of our people who refuse to patronize caba-
ret and entertaining parlors operated by others than our own
folks The members of the Race who patronize cabarets have al-
ways taken pride in this particular resort as operated by Billy Bot-
toms. Residents and business men of the Race throughout the city
could feel safe in taking their close friends and the members of
their families there with the knowledge that nothing would be al-
lowed, by word or act, to cause complaint.37

The Defender minced no words in its condemnation of the South Side

greed and complicity in white racist elements of the cabaret scene.
"Scores of young men," taking their cues from the neighboring Levee
vice district, cultivated "a profitable field in acting as escorts to young
white men slumming through the south side." Such "fixers," also re-
ferred to as "go-betweens" in white urban reform literature, guided
groups of white males from cabaret to cabaret and located afterhours
"buffet flats," apartments where food, drink, piano music, and prostitutes
awaited them. Black waiters, who acted as "fixers" in white-owned caba-
rets, embarrassed respectable black customers, who thus relied on "de-
cent," "orderly," "race" cabarets. Bottoms encouraged neighborhood
pride by making Dreamland the sort of club of which the community
could be proud.38
The second leading South Side site for jazz music was the Royal
Gardens Cafe at 459 East 3151 Street. Sometime before 1918, two police-
men had been killed on the premises, and the City Council had decreed
that no further cabarets might be opened there. In exchange for a one-
third interest in a proposed lease on the premises, Louis B. Anderson,
elected Alderman of the Second Ward in 1918, managed to get this
restriction removed and joined with Dreamland Cafe's William Bottoms
and Virgil Williams as equal co-owner of the Royal Gardens Cafe. When
Mrs. Florence Majors obtained title to the building in 1921, Williams,
Bottoms, and Anderson sold out, and the Royal Gardens Cafe was re-
named the Lincoln Gardens.39
The Royal Gardens Cafe was in some ways a different sort of institu-
tion from Bottoms' Dreamland Cafe. It was the largest dance hall on the
20 Chicago Jazz

South Side, until the Savoy Ballroom was constructed in 1927. Virgil
Williams, a director of the Liberty Life Insurance Company and presi-
dent of the Royal Gardens Moving Picture Company, directed the Royal
Gardens, which many members of the community regarded as a commu-
nity youth institution. Drummer Warren "Baby" Dodds insisted that
Royal Gardens/Lincoln Gardens was not a "black-and-tan," as the New
York Clipper had claimed, but rather a neighborhood dance hall. The
Juvenile Protective Association, an influential white urban reform orga-
nization, agreed that the facility was essential to youth culture on the
South Side and kept paid chaperones on the dance floor. The JPA even
went to federal court to defend the dance hall from an official attempt to
close it down.
Although whites were admitted, white Chicago jazzmen Eddie Con-
don, Bud Freeman, and George Wettling noticed that they were not
given a particularly warm welcome when they went to listen to King
Oliver's Jazz Band at the Lincoln Gardens. Wettling, however, described
the dance hall this way:

There was a painted canvas sign about two by four feet square
hanging outside the best-looking building that housed the Lincoln
Gardens Cafe, a sign that read "KING OLIVER AND HIS CREOLE
JAZZ BAND." ... The thing that hit your eye once you got into the
hall was a big crystal ball that was made of small pieces of reflect-
ing glass and hung over the center of the dance floor. A couple of
spotlights shone on the big ball as it turned and threw reflected
spots of light all over the room and the dancers. Usually they'd
dance the Bunny Hug to a slow blues like London Blues or some
other tune in a like slow blues tempo, and how the dancers would
grind away. The ceiling of the place was made lower than it actu-
ally was by chicken wire that was stretched out, and over the wire
were spread great bunches of artificial maple leaves.

Tenor saxophonist Bud Freemen remembered that on one occasion, at

least, there "was a man on the dance floor who would direct the dancing;
if he saw people who were dancing too close to each other or staying in
one spot he would say: 'Get off that dime, man. Let's move it around.'"4°
While Virgil Williams was its proprietor and James Griffin its man-
ager from 1918 to 1921, the Royal Gardens consistently hired Clarence
Muse, a mainstay of black vaudeville who went on to a long career as a
character actor in Hollywood, to stage what were often elaborate floor
 South Side Jazz: Cultural Context 21

shows. The facility led the way into the jazz age by featuring King
Oliver's Band for an exceptionally long run, from 1919 to 1924 (with time
out for a trip to the West Coast). It caught fire under suspicious circum-
stances on Christmas Eve 1924 and reopened only briefly, in 1927, as the
Charleston Cafe and then the Cafe de Paris, before reverting to its
original name in 1928.4" Like Dreamland, this cabaret, even under white
ownership, served the local community by providing one of two relatively
large dance floors in a neighborhood otherwise deprived.
The Sunset Cafe, opened by Edward Fox and Sam Rifas on August 3,
1921, at the corner of 35th and Calumet, led the white-owned black-and-
tan cabarets on the South Side. This cabaret was subsequently managed
by Joe Glaser, a white, who later became Louis Armstrong's manager.
The club hired Percy Venable, one of the two leading black floor show
directors, to design and stage its floor shows; and Glaser consistently
featured black bands—those of Art Sims, Sammy Stewart, and Carroll
Dickerson among them—and helped Louis Armstrong further his career
as an entertainer of white audiences.
The Sunset, later the New Grand Terrace, was the most widely
known black-and-tan to which crowds of slumming whites ventured
when the uptown theaters closed. When it first opened, anonymous
leaflets, allegedly written by "The Citizens' Betterment Club," circulated
through the South Side claiming that this new white-owned club pre-
sented "immoral" entertainment "of the lowest type." Co-owner Edward
Fox angrily refuted the charges in the Defender, insisting that he ran the
Sunset "in a clean, businesslike and legitimate manner," and reminded
the readers that the Sunset Cafe employed "upward of fifty people."
Black musicians who worked there and white musicians who sat in with
them concur that nearly all of the customers were white.*2
The second leading white-owned black-and-tan cabaret on Chicago's
South Side was the Plantation Cafe, located at 338 East 35th Street near
Calumet Avenue, diagonally across the street from the Sunset Cafe. The
Plantation was initially owned by Edward Fox and Al Turner, and,
despite the minstrel show imagery in the club's name, its interior decora-
tions, and some of its entertainment, it presented Joe Oliver's Dixie
Syncopators, an important jazz band, from February 1925 until the club
was repeatedly bombed in the spring of 1927.
The Dixie Syncopators featured such influential black jazz instru-
mentalists as reedmen Barney Bigard, Albert Nicholas, Paul "Stump"
Evans, and Darnell Howard, trombonist Edward "Kid" Ory, and drum-
22 Chicago Jazz

mer Paul Barbarin. Variety reported that Oliver's band dispensed "real
jazz," "loud, wailing, and pulsating," jazz with "no conscience," to a
house packed with whites—sophisticated high school youngsters, office
clerks, and out-of-town businessmen who to get in paid a dollar on
weekends and fifty cents during the week.
The early history of the Plantation Cafe, told here for the first time,
reveals important information about the elaborate arrangements which
kept gangster-owned jazz speakeasies in business during both national
Prohibition and the tenure of Mayor William Dever, staunch defender of
prohibition. The thrill of illegal drinking in public places that were likely
to be raided by the police added another touch of daring to the cabaret
experience without exposing the customers to any serious confrontation
with the law. The Plantation Cafe had been Al Tierney's Auto Inn, a
particularly notorious, segregated, whites-only cabaret where Dapper
Dan McCarthy had shot Steve Kelleher to death. Shortly after Dever's
election as mayor in 1923, he closed the Auto Inn, and Tierney moved
further south into the all-white Woodlawn rooming house neighborhood
and opened the Pershing Palace in the New Pershing Hotel at 6ist and
Cottage Grove Avenue. He continued to own the building at 35th and
Calumet.
The Plantation Cafe went into business in 1924 without a license and
quickly established itself as a wide open, all night black-and-tan, al-
legedly controlled by the Capone syndicate. Variety, reflecting continued
reform pressures, emphasized the prevalence of "undesirable characters"
at the Plantation Cafe, inside and out; it said that "white women" were
not safe in the club, due presumably to gangsters, since most of the blacks
were out in the street selling pints of gin (asking price $3) and "bonded"
bourbon (asking $8). When federal prohibition officers seized a pint of
whiskey which had allegedly been passed from a black to a white man in
the Plantation Cafe on the night of November 9, 1924, the agents took it
back to their laboratories to verify that the liquid was (indeed) alcohol.
Twelve days later, their suspicions scientifically confirmed through labo-
ratory analysis, the officers raided the Plantation, searched unsuccessfully
for more alcohol, and arrested manager John Paley, who was subse-
quently released, since he had not witnessed the transaction in question,
the waiter involved had disappeared, and no restaurant bill existed to
document the sale of any alcohol.«
Despite obvious illegal activities and much discussed underworld
connections, downtown newspapers accepted publicity from clubs like
 South Side Jazz: Cultural Context 23

the Plantation Cafe, and uptown Loop theater programs carried ads for
the Apex Club, an elegant after-hours spot on the second floor just across
Prairie Avenue from the Chicago Defender. The Apex, formerly called
Club Alvadere and The Nest, was owned by boxer Joe Louis' manager
and backer Julian Black. It presented stylistically innovative jazz as early
as 1926 by Jimmie Noone's orchestra, featuring pianist Earl Hines. The
club catered to a wealthy white clientele, and many of the white jazzmen
who called themselves "the Chicagoans" frequented the Apex Club in
order to listen carefully to Noone's band.44
The South Side's famous cabarets, influential channels for interracial
contacts in a segregated city, served to shape patterns of commercialized
entertainment and personal expressiveness into emotionally powerful
interracial rituals. Plying their trade on the northern edges of the black
ghetto, an area associated with, if not in, the old Levee vice district where
alcohol, drugs, and prostitution had been available for many years, caba-
rets saw their share of what were then called "vicious" activities like
prostitution. What one black newspaper called "the white plague"—
white men in search of black women and white female prostitutes look-
ing for business among black men—gravitated to the Stroll. In 1916,
black citizens had rallied against an attempt by a white North Side
sporting set entrepreneur to turn the area around 3ist Street into a red
light district.45 It seems safe to assume that interracial prostitution flour-
ished around the entertainment district of the South Side.
But, with the exception of the spring of 1923, when the police closed
the bordellos in the old vice district and forced prostitutes to solicit openly
in the cabarets, the most assiduous of the cabaret investigators—Jessie
Binford, Paul M. Kinzie, and Nels Anderson of the Juvenile Protective
Association—found some prostitution, but less than they had anticipated.
According to their reports on the Dreamland Cafe, female prostitutes of
both races, seated at tables, solicited by winking at men who passed by.
Prostitutes hung around the door to the Royal Gardens Cafe. (One told a
JPA investigator to "go-to-hell," when he plied her with more questions
than drinks.) Prostitutes or their "fixers" worked the sidewalks outside
the clubs.
But investigators working for the JPA and the associated American
Social Hygiene Association, who entered cabarets during the early morn-
ing hours and remained only long enough to take notes, reported that
such prostitution, while closely related to the black-and-tan sensibilities,
was not the main business of the cabarets known for their jazz music.
24 Chicago Jazz

While prostitution seemed to them to be the integral ingredient at the

Entertainer's Cafe at 209 East 35th Street, the Pekin Inn during its
declining years of short-lived white ownerships, the Edelweiss Gardens,
the Pioneer Cabaret, and the Schiller Cafe, to their surprise, it did not
provide the focus of cabaret activities. Prostitutes were observed to work
the bars in the cabarets known for their jazz orchestras, but the clubs
provided them with no special facilities or consideration. White slum-
mers did not go into the leading jazz-oriented cabarets to sleep with
prostitutes.^6
To the most morally exacting observers, Chicago's jazz clubs of the
twenties seemed to be a prominent feature of "vicious" neighborhoods
but one that created a separate, specialized world of musical entertain-
ment. Instead of "vice" itself, the Dreamland, Sunset, and Royal Gardens
specialized in presenting unprecedented spectacles of interracial contacts
in social dancing. A major attraction for many white customers was the
experience of Anglo-Americans and African-Americans dancing to-
gether to jazz music. Both paid entertainers and paying customers joined
in this social dance chiaroscuro. Following the instructions of a master of
ceremonies, customers would seat themselves at small tables and watch a
floor show revue in which African-American vocalists and dancers per-
formed what reform investigators considered to be "suggestive songs"
and "improper," "indecent," "contortions and jazz dances."
Jazz musicians provided the music for these shows and, once the
customers "were permitted to dance," played dance music for them as
well. Out on the crowded floor, hard by the slightly raised "stage," the
customers, often mixing with prostitutes, imitated the steps, gestures, and
movements which had been performed for them. Many customers, par-
ticularly those who appeared to be wealthy Gold Coast parties "slum-
ming" in the ghetto, took a keen interest in this inter-racial dancing. In
the clubs which preserved racially segregated seating arrangements, this
inter-racial dancing must have generated a voyeuristic appeal to those
who remained at their tables. Paul M. Kinzie, on the trail of illicit vice on
the evening of December 10, 1923, and generalizing about his observa-
tions, felt that "slumming parties ... are apparently pleased with the
atmosphere of sensuality and find delight in seeing the intermingling of the
races."*! Black-and-tan cabarets sold not vice but suggestive African-
American musical entertainment which helped customers create an at-
mosphere of inter-racial "sensuality."
In part, the market for this entertainment ritual grew from the
 South Side Jazz: Cultural Context 25

perception among late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century middle-

and upper middle-class whites that the nervous pressures of modern
urban life required release and relaxation from moral and intellectual
strenuosity. White "antimodernists," as described by T. J. Jackson Lears,
hoped to learn from '"Oriental people, the inhabitants of the tropics, and
the colored peoples generally.'"'*8
But this stylized "black-and-tan" process took on greater ritualistic
and symbolic power in the atmosphere of inter-racial fear and hatred
expressed in Chicago's murderous race riot of 1919. Twenties jazz and
the black-and-tans involved what John Szwed has called "the embodi-
ment of culture," in which Caucasians, depending upon their interests,
temporarily adopted the dance and/or the musical mannerisms of
African-Americans, taking on, in their own minds, the characteristics of
South Side Chicagoans in ritualized, often racially stereotyped, song and
dance. The musical rituals of the black-and-tan cabarets were inclusory
and served to explain and interpret in an essentially reassuring manner
the presence of other, exotic, and perhaps dangerous peoples in their
midst. Polyphonic jazz in the black-and-tan cabarets of twenties Chicago
suggested some of the disorder and moral confusion of contemporary city
life, but it also provided reassuring harmonic and rhythmic structures
that helped customers to allay their fears of modern life and interracial
violence. Musicians and musical entrepreneurs quickly learned how to
earn money by staging elements of the popular night-life fantasies cher-
ished by white customers.49
At least some of the jazz cabarets turned away from the black-and-
tan business toward their other, more immediate market, becoming, at
certain times, black neighborhood institutions. Theoretically, of course,
white customers might walk in at any time; but, in practice, they tended
to come late at night, the traditional association of night-time with "dark-
town" holding strong in the white sporting set. Thus, South Side jazz
cabarets acted as black-and-tans from the late evening through the early
morning hours.
Under mandatory police closing orders brought on by World War I
but abandoned thereafter, customers had to leave by 1:00 a.m.5° and
tended to seek after-hours clubs like the Book Store and the Apex Club
in order to extend the evening. But the Royal Gardens and Dreamland
Cafe advertised a variety of alternate schedules and special events for the
local community: matinees from 3:00 to 7:00 p.m. on selected weekdays
caught members of the neighborhood coming home from work; "Blue
26 Chicago Jazz

Monday" specials lowered prices; breakfast dances from 4:00 a.m. to

midmorning on Sundays became a standard feature of the jazz age;
special gatherings for the musicians' union (Local 208) and the waiters'
union encouraged ghetto institutions; benefits, like that staged by the
Plantation Cafe for the dependent relatives of soldiers killed at Camp
Grant during the encampment of the all-black Eighth Regiment in 1925,
further tied the black-and-tans to the local community. The Chicago
chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People met at the Dreamland Cafe in June 1926.5'
But the jazz cabarets were highly controversial within the black as
well as the white community. Black religious leaders and old time South
Siders with the sort of Victorian attitudes which appeared in the Broad
Ax, disapproved of dance halls, cabarets, ragtime, jazz, leisure time li-
cense, and, in fact, the whole "bright-light" transformation of their
neighborhood. Dr. M. A. Majors, editorial writer for the Broad Ax,
roundly condemned all of the latest entertainment trends, especially
"ugly, low, nasty dances" and the gangs of young black toughs who hung
around the pool halls "armed to the teeth."s2 Despite such opposition, the
Broad Ax did support and promote the black owners of entertainment
enterprises.
On the other hand, the Chicago Defender, which had played such an
important role in stimulating the Great Migration, easily adjusted to the
new social patterns of life on the South Side, adopting the new journal-
ism, and encouraging black-owned cafes and dance halls between 26th
and 39th streets, just as it promoted black-owned grocery stores and fish
markets. The Defender considered Motts' Pekin Inn, the two Elites, the
DeLuxe Cafe, Dreamland, and the Grand Theater to be "up-to-date,"
"Afro-American" establishments that enjoyed "phenomenal patronage
by our people"; where every employee was "a member of our race," and
where "customers would always receive respectful attention."53
While not, perhaps, an unmitigated moral blessing to the community,
night-club investments and the music they presented expressed the kind
of optimistic entrepreneurial spirit characteristic of black Chicago in the
19205. The Defender celebrated the profits to be made in "supplying the
needs of a cosmopolitan population"; banking, insurance and real estate
all found "pre-eminent opportunity and success in Chicago."

... Chicago is the embodiment of the dream of Booker T. Washing-

ton.
Chicago takes pride in its artistic temperament ... Along the
 South Side Jazz: Cultural Context 27

lines of music there is a generous and growing development that

have [sic] given the community a fineness of taste.54

Jazz and business did not seem to be contradictory activities, but rather
were integrally related to one another and to the ideal of success. As
Defender columnist Dave Peyton put it:

Chicago musicians are away [sic] ahead of musicians of our group in

other cities of the country. Their achievements have been wonder-
ful— Let us make the world respect us. Ours is an art ... Work
together, acquire real estate, and then you will be independent.55

Musical enterprise was just one important element in a broader and

more varied effort to find economic opportunity in commercializing
various forms of popular amusement. From the earliest days, for exam-
ple, Robert Motts and Teenan Jones combined their musical entertain-
ment with vaudeville, legitimate theater, gambling, and such fast grow-
ing sports as boxing. Teenan Jones headed the reception committee for
boxing champion Jack Johnson when he returned to Chicago from
his celebrated victory over Jim Jeffries in Reno, Nevada, in 1910. Dream-
land Cafe owner Bill Bottoms later promoted Johnson in a series of
exhibition bouts in the Dreamland basement when the ill-fated black
champion again returned to Chicago after his release from Leavenworth
prison.5*5
Jones and Bottoms involved themselves in efforts to turn the all-black
American Giants baseball team into a commercial proposition. Both
cabaret owners contributed their facilities to the team for banquets at the
start of the season. Bottoms and William S. Abbott jointly promoted at
least one football game in 1922 between an all-white and an all-black
team, a highly publicized match won 7-0 by the blacks. Jazz was born
and matured in the years when official "sporting life" evolved into com-
mercial popular culture on the South Side.57
Most revealing in this connection were the efforts of owner and
manager Virgil Williams of the Royal Gardens to organize an all-black
"Royal Gardens Motion Picture Company" to train blacks in movie
making and photoplay production. By 1920, Williams had produced
three films, the third, a comedy, earning |io,ooo in bookings. This com-
pany, like so many other black entertainment initiatives, did not sur-
vive.58
The troubled history of Chicago's Joyland Amusement Park, an
28 Chicago Jazz

African-American enterprise at 33rd and Wabash reflected the ambitions

which nearly all South Side entrepreneurs shared for an expanding com-
mercialization of entertainment. In 1923, South Side Attorney Augustus
L. Williams spearheaded an attempt by "many of the best colored men
and women in this city," including Virgil Williams, editor Robert S.
Abbott, and Broad Ax editor Julius F. Taylor, to open an amusement park
for blacks, a pressing need since all of the large Chicago amusement
parks were racially segregated. Moreover, many of Joyland Park's
backers saw the amusement park's merry-go-round, ferris wheel, whip,
and Venetian swing as healthy alternatives to cabarets:

... thoughtful citizens ... believe that the People should have out-
door amusement, rather than to live and pass their time in Cabarets,
stuffy indecent picture and vaudeville houses which tends [sic] to
create criminals.

Yet when Joyland's backers applied to the City Council for a license to
operate an amusement park, Second Ward Alderman Louis B. Ander-
son, with support from Republican Ward Committeeman Edward H.
Wright, introduced a Council order to close the facility. Mayor Dever
vetoed the order and Joyland remained open, but it continued to be
plagued by opposition from the cabaret owners and their political repre-
sentatives in City Hall.59
The influence of South Side politicians at City Hall directly con-
nected African-American musical enterprise to white Chicago, creating
political protection for Chicago's black-and-tan speakeasies, and encour-
aging an inter-racial audience for jazz. William Hale Thompson, the
Republican candidate for mayor in 1915, and one of the most flamboyant
of America's urban machine politicians, appealed, both publicly and
privately, for the black vote. He worked through white South Side
lieutenants like George F. Harding, the millionaire alderman of the
Second Ward, for support of the black entrepreneur/politicians. Harding,
a crucial intermediary between City Hall and the South Side's cabaret
politicians, was a real estate magnate with offices at 3151 and Cottage
Grove Avenue; he reportedly owned hundreds of buildings on the South
Side and charged his black tenants reasonable rents. In return for the
overwhelming support of black voters in his successful campaigns of
1915, 1919, and 1927, Thompson appointed many blacks to city hall
positions.
 South Side Jazz: Cultural Context 29

Thompson, a Nebraska cowboy, dedicated sportsman, and two-fisted

bourbon drinker, personified Chicago's new, open affair with the entre-
preneurs of urban show business. His political coalition of Irish, German,
Italian, and African-American minorities included most of Chicago's
important white and black night-club entrepreneurs. Big Bill's cam-
paigns were part tent show, part circus, and all show business, as he
stumped the city with vaudeville acts, presenting vocalists like Sophie
Tucker, and black jazzbands. He was known to shout "Get a horn and
blow loud for Chicago ... Put on a big party! Let the jazz band play!
Let's show 'em we're all live ones!"60
In 1919, the second of the three mayoral election years that witnessed
Thompson's triumph in Chicago, Virgil Williams donated his dance hall
for a "Big Second Ward Republican Harmony Dinner" on December
4th. With a $3000 check contributed by George Harding, Williams orga-
nized an elaborate banquet for leading white and black politicians.
Mayor Thompson spoke, "pressed the flesh," and listened to "the Royal
Gardens Orchestra and its entertainers." When Big Bill Thompson
landed the Republican National Convention in Chicago in 1919, Virgil
Williams turned the Royal Gardens into an entertainment center for
convention delegates.61
In return for the organized political support constructed through
South Side entertainment establishments, Big Bill Thompson's political
machine protected speakeasies, with which jazz, of course, was closely
associated. Thompson was caught, on the one hand, between the de-
mands of socially influential urban reformers and temperance advocates
for total repression of cabarets and, on the other, the more directly
persuasive political support of night-club entrepreneurs and bootlegging
gangsters. His solution appears to have involved police surveillance and
periodic raids of establishments that flagrantly violated any of the city
ordinances governing their operation, while leaving the majority of the
clubs alone. Throughout his three terms in office, Thompson retained a
special mayoral prerogative to issue licenses to any club he wished, re-
gardless of contrary political pressures in City Council. Interference with
the jazz cabarets was left to federal agents, who were seriously overbur-
dened. The 134 federal Prohibition agents working out of Chicago had to
cover all of Illinois, Iowa, and eastern Wisconsin. Throughout the 19205,
selected South Side clubs were periodically raided and closed, but they
usually reopened. In 1922, for example, Izzy Shorr's Entertainers' Cafe
was closed for one year for violations of the Volstead Act. Nothing came
jo Chicago Jazz

of a simultaneous attempt by the prosecution to have the club's jazz

music, itself, declared morally dangerous. Even Dreamland Cafe was
closed for a time late in 1923 and early in I924-62
Musicians and entertainers who made their living in cabarets had
become inured to this game. In 1917, vaudevillian Billy King and his
company had staged a "screaming farce" at the Grand Theater about a
cabaret where the show proceeded merrily "until a copper showed up at
the back door ...":

Table cloths were then raised and hanging from the edge of the ta-
ble was a Sunday school motto, and Billy King, who was enacting
the part of the waiter, transformed himself into a minister and con-
tinued exhortations.

Ten years later pianist Earl Hines recalled that he and the other enter-
tainers at the Sunset Cafe would have to crowd into a patrol wagon and
ride to the police station nightly. "I stood up in the wagon so often on
those trips, I finally decided to run and get a seat when the police came."63
The continuing threat of police raids, far from dampening public
enthusiasm for South Side night life, seemed to contribute just the right
note of excitement to Chicago's jazz scene, mixing with new styles of
personal liberation—clothes, insiders' slang, cigarettes, bootleg gin, mari-
juana (called "gage"), sexual expressiveness, and interracial mingling—to
add drama to the new music. In fact, the notoriety gained in defying the
reformers and fending off court injunctions merely served to make caba-
ret entrepreneurs like Teenan Jones, Bill Bottoms, Ike Bloom, and Bert
Kelly into "personalities" customers flocked to see at close range.64
In 1923, prohibitionist Democrat William Dever won the mayoral
election, but Thompson would win back City Hall in 1927. In the in-
terim, cabarets like the Sunset Cafe and Dreamland, while having to
adjust, ultimately continued much as usual. To square accounts with
those in the Republican party who had dropped him from the ticket,
Thompson delivered his usual blocs of votes to Dever. Once in power,
Dever closed a number of clubs, including Tierney's Auto Inn, located at
the center of the most respectable black neighborhood and catering to
whites only. He also closed Dreamland, but this unleashed such an outcry
among Bottoms' many South Side friends that it soon reopened. Of the
South Side cabarets, the Entertainers Cafe was the biggest loser to Mayor
 South Side Jazz: Cultural Context 31

Dever's reform activities; it was closed in 1924 for a year and a day and
reopened for only a brief time thereafter.6?
Dever became famous for his "beer war" against the "soft drink
palaces" that secretly sold beer. Up until 1923, an unspoken gentlemen's
agreement had held that prohibition applied only to hard liquors. By
November of that year, the Democratic mayor had revoked the licenses
of 1600 businesses and 4,031 saloons. Most of them reopened, due to the
many legal ambiguities in the enforcement of the Volstead Act; the courts
issued restraining orders prohibiting further interference with such busi-
nesses. During the Dever regime, moreover, 182 cabarets were licensed.66
When Big Bill swept back into office in 1927, the musical entertainers
turned out in force to honor the mayor and South Side Aldermen Louis
B. Anderson and Daniel Jackson at a Victory Ball held on June gth at the
Eighth Regimental Armory. The entire troupes from the floor shows of
the Cafe de Paris (the old Lincoln Gardens) and the Sunset Cafe ap-
peared, the latter putting on "a thunderous show, speed and plenty of it.
They danced, they black bottomed and did everything else to make
merry...." Louis Armstrong and his orchestra, representing the Sunset
Cafe, thrilled the crowd.6?
Mayor Thompson's encouragement of bright-light enterprise facili-
tated the determined efforts of black musicians to break through racial
barriers around the South Side and secure regular, contracted playing
jobs in white Chicago. This was never easy, due to the determined
opposition of the all-white Local 10 of the American Federation of Musi-
cians, but black band leaders did successfully penetrate white Chicago,
and even secured several long-run engagements at some prominent
night-life institutions. Sometime between 1915 and 1916, George Filhe
led a group that included Charles Elgar at the Fountain Inn at 63rd and
Halsted, while another instrumental ragtime group associated with
Elgar, one which included trumpeter Manuel Perez, clarinetist Lorenzo
Tio, Jr., trombonist Ed Atkins, and drummer Louis Cottrell, Sr., had
played sometime soon thereafter at Mike Fritzel's Arsonia Cafe at 1654
Madison Street.68
In 1916, an Elgar group had been the first black orchestra to play a
long-term engagement in a white dance hall on the West Side—Paddy
Harmon's Dreamland Ballroom—performing both "rough dance music
for mostly Jewish people and Italians" and "sweet waltzes" whenever
urban reformer Jessie Binford dropped in to take the moral temperature.
32 Chicago Jazz

This cavernous old one-story, barn-like building under the elevated

tracks at Paulina and Van Buren streets also featured Charles "Doc"
Cook's Orchestra, another top black dance band, for a long run from
1922 to 1927, and Joe Oliver's band from time to time. Cook's large
orchestra also played for several seasons at the city's Municipal Pier and at
white South Side's appropriately named White City Ballroom.69
Before the Great Migration of Deep South blacks to Chicago it was
not unusual to find African-American bands playing in all-white clubs.
Among other things, race orchestras seemed to offer greater expressive-
ness. In February 1916, for example, a reporter from the Chicago Herald
visited the Cafe de I'Abbe in the Hotel Normandy at North Clark and
West Randolph streets and found a black instrumental quartet led by an
unnamed violinist [Elgar?] playing upstairs. Using what were to become
metaphorical jazz cliches, he tried to describe the music's impact on a
young, innocent girl, accompanied by a much older, more sophisticated
man:

Upstairs was hidden away a quartet of musicians. They were black,

but were far from being in mourning. The violinist had taken his
instrument, the most wonderful interpretive instrument in the
world, and he was making it talk. Here's what that violin said [to
"Mary," the simple innocent girl] and the cocktail added its aban-
doned echo... "Ah, Mary, isn't it wonderful to be loved ..."

The music jumped from dreamy romance to "Ragtime Pipers of Pan," as

the spotlight suddenly illuminated two young female entertainers.?0
Throughout the 19205, black band leaders who could supply refined
and regimented music were those who most often were able to secure
longer running, contracted jobs in all-white clubs and dance halls. Gold
Coasters, for example, provided a lively market for society dance bands
such as that of William Samuels. Black musicians often worked for
private parties, particularly on New Year's Eve, but there were one-night
stands, not the sort of regular work on which to build a career.
With the help of cabaret entrepreneur and loyal Thompsonite John
M. Kantor, Eddie South, "The Dark Angel of the Violin," and black
bandleaders Albert Wynn and Jimmy Wade led orchestras at Kantor's
elegant Moulin Rouge Cafe at 416 South Wabash Avenue in the Loop.
South, a classically trained violinist, played a soft, refined style of jazz
 South Side Jazz: Cultural Context 33

indicative of the more "legitimate," familiar sounds which white Chicago

expected of black orchestras outside of the black-and-tans.?1
Even black jazz bands which presented a studied New Orleans poly-
phonic style worked for many years at Bert Kelly's Stables at 431 N. Rush
Street in the Towertown bohemian section of town. This cabaret adver-
tised itself as having brought jazz to Chicago in the first place. Kelly
presented bands led by clarinetist Yellow Nunez, King Oliver (for a
three-month engagement starting in November 1924) and Freddie Kep-
pard, "the World's Greatest Colored Jazz Cornetist, formerly at Purcell's
on San Francisco's Barbary Coast." Keppard's band played a long run at
Kelly's Stables before the cornetist's fabled drinking habit forced his
clarinet player, Johnny Dodds, to take over the group in 1926. Dodds
remained in charge of the band, which included his brother Warren,
Honore Dutrey, and Charlie Alexander, until 1932.7*
Chicago had its North and West Side clubs and dance halls where
black orchestras entertained white audiences, but racial integration
stopped there. Some influential clubs never hired black musicians, and, of
course, blacks were not allowed into most of these clubs as anything other
than employees. Whites could venture into black cabarets, but blacks
could not enter most night clubs or dance halls in white Chicago, not
even those white establishments where black orchestras provided the
music. As a result, many, perhaps the majority, of white Chicagoans, both
musicians and customers, experienced the jazz age in all-white environ-
ments; only an inner circle of white musicians realized that the latest
innovations in jazz performance were to be found on the South Side. As
white cornetist Muggsy Spanier put it: "White and Negro musicians kept
to themselves pretty much; only rarely did they sit in with each other;
there were no mixed bands."
During the 19205, Mike Fritzel's Friars' Inn ("Land of Bohemia
Where Good Fellows Get Together"), at 343 S. Wabash in the Loop
epitomized the limits of racial integration in Chicago jazz.73 This club
featured the white New Orleans Rhythm Kings for a lengthy run early in
the decade, a group that exerted a major musical influence on other
budding white Chicago jazzmen. Throughout most of the era, Friars'
Inn, which was, of course, off limits to black customers, refused to hire
black musicians. When, in September 1926, a black band finally maneu-
vered into the club, Local No. 10 president James Petrillo tried to force
them out by claiming that they, like all black bands, were playing for less
34 Chicago Jazz

than union scale. But President Verona Biggs of the black local No. 208
investigated and discovered that the New Orleans Rhythm Kings had
been playing under scale, while the black musicians were receiving
scale.74
Beginning in 1926, an increasing number of black jazz performers
broke through the resistance of the white musicians' union and secured
contracted jobs in Loop clubs and hotels. In the early part of that year,
two black bands had just moved into the Loop's Valentino Inn when the
federal government padlocked it for liquor violations. In 1927, Louis
Armstrong temporarily broke racial barriers by leading a band in the
Loop's Blackhawk Restaurant, one block from the Chicago Public Li-
brary. Until 1928, when white vocalist and shimmie dancer Bee Palmer
hired violinist Eddie South to lead her backup band, the College Inn
featured the dance music of Isham Jones' all-white orchestra. The hotel
also presented hot dance music in its exclusive Bal Tabarin after-hours
club.75
Although the example of black musicians playing in clubs open to
white customers did expand the influence of South Side jazz by provid-
ing a discrete reminder of South Side Chicago nightlife, continuing racial
barriers—segregated locals of the Chicago musicians' unions and segre-
gated night-life institutions—also fostered the growth of a separate
African-American musical movement on the South Side, one with re-
markably distinctive musical ingredients, a movement that played a
far more prominent role within that neighborhood's cultural traditions
than did the white jazz evolving elsewhere. The interplay of African-
American musical traditions with Chicago's urban institutions influenced
the most creative jazz in the city during the twenties. It is time to turn
from South Side jazz institutions to the evolution of South Side Chicago
jazz within them.
 2
The Evolution of
South Side Chicago Jazz

THE BLACK MIGRANT musicians who gathered on Chicago's South

Side Stroll after World War I swiftly cultivated their distinctive instru-
mental music, replanting its New Orleans roots in Chicago's highly
competitive world of cabaret show business. Here the African-American
musical tradition merged with elements of popular and European musi-
cal cultures in Chicago to produce jazz styles that responded to their new
time and place. A small number of creative musicians swiftly developed
and adapted their skills and musical devices so as to enrich and in some
cases transform the New Orleans jazz which had migrated north. As
there are no recordings of the jazz played in New Orleans before the
northern migration, that style cannot be fully compared with the jazz
records made in Chicago. And, as the idea of emigration from the South
may have appealed primarily to the more ambitious and innovative musi-
cians, at least some jazz in Chicago represented the creatively ambitious
side of New Orleans music. But the northern city provided a new cultural
context for the immigrants, radiating a powerful cultural symbolism for
southern African-Americans in general and for New Orleans musicians
in particular. The emigration from New Orleans had taken on some-
36 Chicago Jazz

thing of the spirit of an exodus; Chicago, at least in the beginning, seemed

to offer a new start and greater freedom.
Chicago also offered an unprecedented number of jobs for jazzmen
and women, work situations that accelerated ongoing patterns of musical
evolution; from 1919 to 1929, Chicago jazz became a more varied syn-
thesis of folk music, "lowbrow" minstrel and medicine show entertain-
ment, and "highbrow" musical techniques. Musicologist Gunther Schul-
ler argues that "... the New Orleans style in its pure early form did not
survive the 19205. Even King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton succumbed to
the pressures of changing styles, and their great recordings of that decade
represent both the end of an era and the beginnings of a new one."
Whether or not. such a thing as a "pure" form can be proven to have
existed, few would deny that jazz evolved rapidly in northern cities
between 1915 and 1930.'
Historian Kathy Ogren has shown that professional entertainment
networks for black musicians and entertainers in minstrelsy, circuses,
tent shows, and medicine shows had begun to take shape on both the
national and regional levels before World War I; it would be a mistake,
she argues, to interpret black musical entertainment around the turn of
the century as "noncommercial folk" music. Much of the evolution in
jazz that took place in Chicago during the late teens and twenties, there-
fore, represented an ongoing cultural process whose fruits leapt to public
awareness through Chicago's cabarets, dance halls, and recording studios.
As Lawrence W. Levine has put it, jazz, like all black secular music,
"manifested the simultaneous acculturation to the outside society and
inward-looking, group orientation that was so characteristic of black
culture in the twentieth century." African-American musical sensibilities
both adapted to and molded changing institutional environments. In
moving from New Orleans, for example, some of the social institutions
through which jazz had found expression—musical funerals, neighbor-
hood street parades, hayrides, and picnics—were largely left behind.
South Side Chicago musical enterprise worked more at adapting trans-
planted New Orleans jazz to black, black-and-tan, and white cabarets,
where "jazz" became an ever more self-conscious act in the structured
world of night-club entertainment. 2
According to banjoist Danny Barker, at least some of the musicians
who did not want to take up careers as traveling professional entertainers
and therefore remained in New Orleans retained ingredients of pre-
professional, communal attitudes toward making music: they played out-
 The Evolution of South Side Chicago Jazz 37

of-tune, preferred easy material, and didn't care to improve their instru-
mental control. According to Edmond Souchon, a lifelong supporter of
New Orleans jazz, their "hard-hitting, rough and ready" music was
made "without plan from the leaders or sidemen" who sometimes blew
"a few bad ones" and dropped out to rest. New Orleans night clubs and
dance halls were small, wooden structures where the music was played by
a constantly changing group of what Barker called "ham-fat" folk musi-
cians.3
Chicago's cabaret floor shows, a central and influential element in
South Side clubs, put musicians on display and focused increased atten-
tion on visual dimensions of musical performance. Even more than most
immigrants to Chicago, musicians learned the new urban standards of
manners and personal hygiene advocated by the Chicago Broad Ax for all
rural immigrants. Jazz musicians, vocalists, and dancers appeared before
the black public as models of urban sophistication. South Side musicians
unanimously affirmed that the black public held professional cabaret
musicians in high regard, particularly as there were relatively few black
lawyers and doctors to compete with them for status. The latest in
elegant, urbane clothing styles took on increased importance among Chi-
cago's musical entertainers. The stylish black man "was as much a stereo-
type as the plantation darky," one found both threatening and curiously
reassuring by many whites, and also admired by many blacks fresh from
the country. A few immigrant jazzmen arrived in Chicago wearing
outdated late nineteenth-century clothing styles: tall Stetson hats, tight
pants, boxback coats, and high-button shoes. Cornetist Chris Kelly had
been known to combine a tuxedo with a blue work shirt and tan shoes
when playing in New Orleans. Many of the New Orleans musicians felt
lost and lonely in the cold, bleak, and uninviting northern cities.**
The more sophisticated style of the 19205 took time to evolve: a few of
the pioneer Chicago jazz musicians of the second decade of the century
sometimes cultivated styles which appeared gaudy to later arrivals. Jelly
Roll Morton had imbedded what he alleged to be a diamond in his front
tooth in order to radiate wealth. Some of the so-called Classic Blues
singers, who took the entertainment world by storm in 1920, also im-
bedded diamonds in their front teeth to ensure a glinting smile. Clarinet-
ist George Baquet of the Original Creole Orchestra adopted a theatrical
but less flashy diamond horseshoe stick pin in a gaily colored silk cravat.?
But Chicago in the twenties was the era of the elegantly tuxedoed
jazz musician. Down south, even the parade bands took a casual ap-
38 Chicago Jazz

proach to uniforms; but, up north, cabarets liked to improve their contro-

versial public image by dressing musicians in tuxedos and encouraging
customers to wear them as well. For their publicity photos, musicians
adopted wing-collared shirts, butterfly bow ties, sharply tailored tuxedos,
gilets, and patent leather shoes. Joe Oliver traded his New Orleans
costume—open-neck white shirt, red undershirt, and suspenders—for a
tux. Louis Armstrong adapted more slowly to new show business de-
mands; his southern habits died hard. In 1922, Armstrong arrived in
Chicago a "green-looking country boy" and two years later still looked
substantially overweight when appearing in New York in "... high top
shoes with hooks in them, and long underwear down to his socks."
Northerners, both black and white, demanded "Up-to-Date," "High
Class Entertainment." As one editorial in the Defender put it:

The World asks, "What can you do?"... we must awaken to the
fact that we are living in a "show me" age ... "Make Good" is the
password that opens the door of Success.

Among South Side jazzmen in the 19205, Earl Hines took the honors for
sophistication when stepping out in his tux, Chesterfield overcoat, and
bowler hat, swinging a walking stick. Hines had been raised in Pitts-
burgh, where he had learned northern ways. Lacking a union, black
jazzmen in Pittsburgh had dressed up like dandies and hung out on
Wylie Avenue, where bookers regularly hired musicians off the side-
walks. Already, jazz musicians understood clothing as a form of show
business advertising.6
In addition, there were other cabaret bandleaders, both early and late
in Chicago's jazz age, who had lived either in the North or in a border
city before moving to Chicago. Al Wynn, Art Sims, Jimmy Wade, Eddie
South, and Ollie Powers cultivated the sort of personal carriage, social
polish, and verbal skills that prepared them to represent the poorer,
recently arrived southern musicians to band bookers, club managers, and
the public. Wynn and South took bands into white clubs like the Moulin
Rouge up in the Loop. Arthur Sims, whose father Adolph was well
placed in Mayor Thompson's City Hall, possessed what the Defender
called "aristocratic" manners and was one of the first jazz band contrac-
tors at the Sunset Cafe and Midway Gardens. Fess Williams, who became
Chicago's first black stage band leader, had been educated at Tuskegee
Institute.?
 The Evolution of South Side Chicago Jazz 39

Urbane clothes also could signify a sense of personal, economic, and

racial pride, particularly since vaudeville had so often dressed the pi-
oneering Creole Orchestra in cliched theatrical farm clothes. The tuxedo
and well-tailored clothes represented a strike against certain kinds of
racist stereotypes as well as a personal statement. The Defender, for
example, printed the story of a physical beating of the all-black Howard's
Whispering Orchestra of Gold that was administered by some "crackers"
outside of an all-white Miami, Florida, hotel. The musicians "realizing
that neatness was an asset ... were appropriately dressed upon every
occasion ... This sartorial grandeur did not meet with the approval of the
'crackers.'" Apparently upset by the musicians' neatness, self-assertion,
and aloofness, the southern whites allegedly snarled:

We'll teach you niggers to come here dressed in your white flannels
and your tweed coats, playing for our dances and looking at our
pretty white women. Now, go back up North and tell all your nig-
ger friends.

As musicians appeared before the public as entertainers, they became role

models for many younger musicians who either attended their perfor-
mances or looked in through windows or doors from the streets or alleys.
Chicago jazzmen symbolized a new, urban style in racial pride, just as
cabarets, cafes, and buffet restaurants signaled that their customers were
no longer shabby "Can Toters," trudging home from work with a bucket
of beer.8
Public cabaret performance in Chicago often demanded a cosmopoli-
tan demeanor. The ambitious movie theater orchestra leader and colum-
nist Dave Peyton never tired of enumerating bad habits which musicians
ought to avoid: arriving late, entering the club in a loud, indiscreet
manner, smoking and drinking on the bandstand, criticizing the leader,
talking unnecessarily and frivolously to one another and to patrons,
flirting with customers, playing in a slouched position with legs crossed,
and beating time with feet. Peyton often exaggerated, but clarinetist
George Baquet similarly recalled that the six members of Buddy Bolden's
Band were dozing on the bandstand of the New Orleans Odd Fellows
Hall when he first arrived in 1905. In Chicago, Joe Oliver had to disci-
pline trombonist Roy Palmer for falling asleep on the stand. In order to
teach his musicians that "the contract depended on being on time,"
bandleader Earl Hines fined his men $5 per minute late. Some of the
40 Chicago Jazz

most successful jazz musicians learned important lessons before settling

in Chicago: the Dodds brothers, Pops Foster, banjoist Johnny St. Cyr,
and Louis Armstrong, who had worked on the Streckfus Line's Missis-
sippi River steamboats, brought some invaluable lessons in punctuality,
regimentation, comportment, and memorization with them to Chicago,
benefiting from their prior experience in musical show business.9
New patterns of dress and demeanor were just two elements of an
ongoing development of show business calculation and strategies. The
northern nightclub's combination of confined spaces and interracial audi-
ences forced a new attention to show business upon cabaret musicians.
Clarinetist and bandleader Jimmy Noone, a star attraction in the second
floor apartment at 35th and Calumet first called Club Avadere, subse-
quently The Nest, and finally the Apex Club, was widely known for his
smiling, genial personality. Yet those who knew him well noticed his
anxious attention to the minute details of showmanship, fussing with
signs, lighting, table arrangements, and the like. Noone habitually played
with one eye on the door and sequed into the favorite songs of arriving
fans as they walked into the club.
In the black-and-tans, the mixture of interracial audiences and alco-
hol also required a wary vigilance. White pianist Tut Soper remembered
going regularly to the Apex Club to hear Noone and his idol, pianist Earl
Hines: "... there'd be drunks coming around and I'd say, 'why don't you
stop bothering the piano player, listen to what he's doing,' and Hines
liked that—" I0
In step with vaudeville, jazz developed a star system to replace the
folk anonymity of southern musicians. Trumpeter Manual Perez was the
first New Orleans musician to receive star billing in the Defender;
Tommy Ladnier, Joe Oliver, Freddie Keppard, Louis Armstrong, and
Reuben Reeves soon followed as cornet and trumpet "Kings." While at
the Royal Gardens Cafe, Oliver saw to it that none of his sidemen
outshone him on the bandstand. Their solos were fewer and shorter than
his own. Jazz commentator Edmond Souchon remembered that, com-
pared with his New Orleans days, the Chicago Joe Oliver was a "star," "a
much more impressive figure now ... 'King,' the most important per-
sonage in the jazz world, surrounded by his own hand-picked galaxy of
sidemen."11
But being a "star" also meant being a jazz professional who possessed
endurance, instrumental technique, a distinctive instrumental sound, and
various elements of musical theory. Some New Orleans musicians had
 The Evolution of South Side Chicago Jazz 41

rarely thought of themselves as professionals, living as manual laborers

who also played weekend gigs. But in keeping with the increasing spe-
cialization of northern industrial society, Chicago jazz, for some musi-
cians at least, became a demanding business which required, among other
things, exceptional physical endurance. Joe Oliver set the pattern for
many other top jazz musicians in 1918 when he regularly "doubled,"
playing from 9:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. at the Dreamland Cafe before moving
up to the Pekin Cafe at 27th and State from 2:00 to 6:00 a.m. Those
whose instrumental virtuosity or technical skills helped them to land
theater jobs "tripled," playing as many as five shows in a pit band, a
cabaret show until 1:00 a.m., and winding-up with four hours in an after-
hours club like the two Elites, the Pekin, and the Apex Club. Such
schedules demanded far more than fleeting inspiration: endurance, disci-
pline, and a deep commitment to music were required.12
Around whites in the black-and-tan cabarets, black musicians
learned to be cooly aloof, disciplined craftsmen, adept at cordial restraint.
Likewise, bandleaders disciplined spontaneous behavior of their sidemen.
Joe Oliver took a brutally direct approach to inculcating northern disci-
pline and regimentation—he placed a pistol on his music stand. As he
wrote to one musician:

This is a matter of business, I mean I wants you to be a band man,

and a band man only, and do all you can for the welfair [sic] of the
band in the line of playing your best at all times."3

But adaptations penetrated below the surface level of dress and show
business strategies. Substantive musical issues were also involved. Musi-
cians now faced more varied and lucrative performance opportunities
requiring a variety of new musical skills, and, of course, a more conscious
manipulation of older ones. The range of possibilities was remarkably
wide and included enhanced instrumental performance techniques; a
new, complex jazz and popular song literature; and South Side band-
leaders' artful admixtures of aural improvisers with literate musicians.1'*
At one extreme, as many an African-American musician from W. C.
Handy and James Reese Europe to trumpeter Lee Collins discovered,
white audiences, nostalgic for an earlier, supposedly simpler, non-
technological world, could be seduced with musical primitivism. Handy,
"Father of the Blues," learned this lesson in the South when a crowd for
whom he was performing requested "some of 'our native music'" played
42 Chicago Jazz

by three local blacks on a battered guitar, mandolin and a worn out bass.
This trio played "one of those over-and-over strains that seem to have no
very clear beginning and certainly no ending at all ... the kind of stuff...
associated with cane rows and levee camps." This "haunting" music
brought a shower of silver dollars from the dancers and convinced Handy
that there was money in folk music. "That night a composer was born, an
American composer." Orchestra leader James Reese Europe, in order to
maintain the illusion of the "naturally gifted" black musician, would
rehearse his band on stock arrangements, leave the scores behind, and,
when taking requests for these thoroughly rehearsed tunes, ask cus-
tomers to whistle a few bars, and then "confer" with the musicians "in
order to work it out with the boys." In 1931 at the Paradise Club on
North Clark Street, trumpeter Lee Collins marveled at the popularity of
Joe Stacks' skiffle band of folk "drifters" brought north by a rich New
Yorker; Stacks flashed a roll of bills "big enough to choke an alligator."'5
In Chicago, any genuine musical primitives would have lacked the
instrumental skills necessary to adapt to varied playing situations; more
versatile jazz performers learned to include primitivist acts in their reper-
toires. Skilled musical craftsmen like drummers Jimmy Bertrand, War-
ren "Baby" Dodds, and Jasper Taylor easily accommodated themselves to
these minstrel and vaudeville traditions by placing thimbles on their
fingers and fabricating rachety, shuffling sounds on washboards for nov-
elty recordings like those of Jimmy Bertrand's Washboard Wizards. This
same element of calculated primitivism suffused the entire northern
approach to "jazz," but Chicago jazz performers refused to be typed as
crude barroom or street corner entertainers. Joe Oliver's advertisement of
his jazz band as "Eight Men Playing Fifteen Instruments" expressed
some of the musical ambitions of South Side jazz. 16
Ambitious jazz musicians, for example, took new pride in perform-
ing on elegant, up-to-date instruments. Arriving musicians soon discov-
ered that representatives of the musical instrument manufacturers were
willing to lend (or sell at a discount) new instruments in exchange for
testimonials. Well-publicized leaders could profit most from this ar-
rangement, and proven instrumentalists, who appeared in publicity pho-
tos wearing tuxedoes, also received new musical instruments with the
understanding that they place them in the foreground. In fact, the musi-
cal instrument companies sometimes paid for half the cost of such public-
ity with the understanding that their brand name would be used on
record labels and cabaret announcements. A photo of Cook's Dreamland
 The Evolution of South Side Chicago Jazz 43

Orchestra, part of an advertisement in the Defender for the Tom Brown

Music Corporation in the State-Lake Building, appeared over the band's
endorsement of Buescher Musical Instruments. Like the other cabaret
stars, musicians prized the new, highly polished, gleaming instruments.
Louis Armstrong recalled that, before moving to Chicago, he, like most
New Orleans jazzmen, thought "you had to be a music conservatory man
or some kind of a big muckity-muck to play the trumpet." He got over
such folk myths in Chicago, where he switched from the cornet to the
trumpet.'7
But Chicago's transforming power went beyond the mere possession
of a new musical instrument. Cabaret musicians had to be accomplished
enough on these "legitimate" musical instruments to be able to "play the
show," both as a featured act and in accompaniment to vocalists, dancers,
and comedians. New Orleans musicians who couldn't discipline them-
selves enough to do this didn't make it in Chicago. Bill Bottoms, who at
first refused to book anything as raucous as a jazzband, had to fire
trumpeter Tig Chambers when his band proved incapable of playing the
Dreamland cafe's shows.'8 Lesser New Orleans musicians who had come
north on someone else's coattails faded quickly from the scene. Techni-
cally limited musicians could easily play a short feature in the show, but
could not accompany more sophisticated vocal acts, which depended
heavily on the manipulation of tonal colors, nor could they generate the
range of moods required for dance features.
Some cabaret floor shows produced for white audiences could be-
come elaborate revues of original songs, dances, musical features all tied
together by a theme which drew upon images of southern plantations,
Mississippi River levees, or paddle wheeling show boats. In 1922, white
promoters Morris Greenwald and Jimmy O'Neill mounted an elaborate
African-American show called "Plantation Days" at Chicago's Green
Mill Gardens on the North Side. This forty-five-minute revue had a cast
of twelve principal actors, a chorus line of six dancers, and Charles
Elgar's orchestra of twenty-six pieces. Playing for a show like this re-
quired the ability to read scores designed to accompany a variety of on-
stage scenes. When Elgar wouldn't leave Chicago, "Plantation Days"
went on tour to London with an orchestra led by New York pianist/
composer James P. Johnson.'»
Similarly, the Sunset Cafe built a complex revue called "Rhapsody in
Black" around George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," and the Grand
Terrace hired Percy Venable to design even more complex shows than he
44 Chicago Jazz

had created for the Royal Gardens. Earl Hines testified that the elaborate
planning of calculated effects for the shows he played "helped me get
wrapped up in music, and they made me feel there was a big future in
it."20 A handbill from the Plantation Cafe in 1926 gives an idea of the
range of musical roles—from accompaniment of vocalists to accompani-
ment of dancing chorus lines and roller skaters, to minstrel parading,
social dance music, and performance features—required by some of the
more elaborate cabaret floorshows:

Edward Fox, Mgr., Presents

Plantation Cafe's 3rd Anniversary Celebration, November 9,
1926
The Hottest Show in Any Chicago Cafe
Produced by Norman Thomas
Featuring the Season's Current Hit "Minstrel Days,"
A Real Old-Time Minstrel First Part.
Watch for the Big Parade, "Dr. Jazz,"
Based on Joe Oliver's Latest Song.
Spice—Pep—Girls Galore
New Principles—New Girls—New Comedians
Also see the Novelty of the Season, Bamboo McCarver,
Champion Roller Skating Dancer of America
Some of the Stars that Will Shine:
Naomi Thomas—Walter Richardson—L*ulu Belle
Frantye Jaxan—Fred Andrews—Jackson and Bell—Red
Simmons—St. Claire Dotson
8 Plantation Ginger Snaps
Dance to the Entrancing Strains of Joe Oliver's
Dixie Syncopators21

Most South Side cabarets usually produced somewhat less elaborate

floorshows: the black cabaret entrepreneurs generally had less money to
invest in entertainment than did whites. The limited entertainment dol-
lar of the ghetto public also encouraged the extinction of the "big revue"
on the South Side. Variety reported that "the colored amusement patron"
refused to commit to long-running shows of any kind, preferring "con-
stant variety in the styles of his play fare." White promoter Robert Levy
experimented with many different kinds of shows but discovered that
none of them would work for more than a short run: "Levy says the
colored show patron is the craftiest shopper since Noah's wife went out to
buy her rainproof bathrobe."22
Moreover, many South Siders had serious reservations about the
 The Evolution of South Side Chicago Jazz 45

"Down South," "Plantation" themes of elaborate "colored" shows like

"Plantation Days." Such productions were so firmly anchored in racial
cliches that black performers found it difficult to focus attention on their
performance art. When, for example, the Entertainers Cafe re-opened
after its losing battle with urban reformers and prohibition agents, the
Defender objected to the title of its new floorshow "Plantation Review,"
which seemed to suggest "'down home' routines ... the title may seem a
bit far-fetched to some who associate river boats and cotton bales with
everything that hints of Dixie." For a number of reasons, therefore,
cabaret managers preferred to feature a few separate, frequently chang-
ing vaudeville acts, cut out the expensive, specialized chorus line dancers,
and use the musicians as both a stage feature and dance band.23
Playing a less pretentious floorshow could help musicians, vocalists,
and dancers focus audience attention on their individual and collective
performance skills. Musicians had to follow the cues that structured the
sequence of events on stage; they had to remember agreed upon tempi
and key signatures for vocal and dance numbers; rehearsals were re-
quired to perfect the timing of a wide range of special instrumental
effects for comedy routines; accompanists coordinated carefully with tap
dancers' rhythmic "catches" and jumps; and musicians generally had to
learn to enhance other performers' acts with supportive, but unobtrusive,
music. None of this necessarily required that every musician be musically
literate, but adjusting to these playing situations often did mean that at
least one musician, usually the pianist or the leader, sight-read music,
since touring vaudeville and cabaret artists brought their own scores and
arrangements with them. Non-reading sidemen had to learn the routines
by ear and memorize them, thereby sharpening their aural analytical
skills.
Chicago jazz performers also had to develop greater instrumental
agility in order to play at much faster tempi than southern musicians.
Late at night, with the lights turned down, black and black-and-tan
cabaret musicians might play a grindingly slow New Orleans blues or a
lament in a minor key; but show time audiences expected hot, fast
musical action full of "pep" and "ginger," and in touch with the agitated
rhythms of urban life. As banjoist Johnny St. Cyr, who was in a position
to know, put it: "... the Chicago bands played only fast tempo
... the fastest numbers played by old New Orleans bands were slower
than ... the Chicago tempo." Earl Hines agreed that, "we certainly
played more up tempos in those [Chicago] days ..."**
46 Chicago Jazz

In addition, those who performed in South Side cabarets often ac-

companied female vocalists like Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters, caba-
ret stars who sang the latest in popular songs. These vocalists challenged
their musicians with a new, rapidly changing repertoire of popular song
material that was pouring forth from northern publishing companies.
Popular songs created a major challenge to Chicago jazz performers; if
they couldn't read the sheet music, and many could not, they had to be
"fast," both in analytical grasp and instrumental technique. King Oliver,
for example, had trouble playing the shows, but got by on his excep-
tionally sharp memory. As Jelly Roll Morton said of Oliver:

My God what a memory that man had. I used to play a piano

chorus, something like King Porter [Stomp] or Tomcat [Blues], and
Oliver would take the thing and remember every note. You can't
find men like that today.2?

Louis Armstrong testified that Bessie Smith also possessed a remarkable

memory, since "she'd always have the words and tune in her head."26
Musicians like these were used to remembering tunes by playing them.
Repetition engendered a functional recall of melodic, harmonic and
rhythmic patters, even when, on a given occasion, mention of the tune's
title brought nothing whatever to mind. Once one had begun to play, the
tune flashed back into memory. Lil Hardin described how this mental
process worked in a story she liked to tell about her audition with the
Creole Band:

When I sat down to play I asked for the music and were they sur-
prised! They politely told me they didn't have any music and fur-
thermore never used any. I then asked what key would the first
number be in. I must have been speaking another language because
the leader said, "When you hear two knocks, just start playing."
It all seemed very strange to me, but I got all set, and when I
heard those two knocks I hit the piano so loud and hard they all
turned around to look at me. It took only a second for me to feel
what they were playing and I was off. The New Orleans Creole
Jazz Band hired me, and I never got back to the music store—
never got back to Fisk University. 2 ?

South Side jazzbands of the late teens and early 19205 used a limited
number of chords and usually played in the flatted keys, so it would have
 The Evolution of South Side Chicago Jazz 47

been possible for a pianist to guess at both the key and the probable
harmonic progressions and quickly adapt.
But in Chicago, such casual guesswork increasingly gave way to more
calculated approaches to music making. A musician's memory was often
severely taxed by the unprecedented number of new popular songs issu-
ing from music publishing houses and record companies. Although
scarcely unknown in the New Orleans repertoire, the standard thirty-
two-bar popular song was now as important to cabaret floorshows and
dance halls as the New Orleans marches, which sounded less relevant
inside a cabaret than in church or out in the street. According to Variety,
show business success demanded "the creation, in a commercial sense, of
a constant flow of new tunes, new musical ideas and novelties." Chicago
Jazz quickly developed its own distinctive, varied musical literature, an
amalgam of New Orleans tunes with newer original materials and popu-
lar songs. Musicians had to memorize the key signatures, melodic and
harmonic patterns, and most effective tempi of a rapidly growing litera-
ture sung by a changing group of vocalists, which included Mamie, Clara,
and Bessie Smith, Victoria Spivey, Ida Cox, Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters,
Alberta Hunter, Lucille Hegamin, Lillie Delk Christian, Mae Alix, Mary
Straine, Mary Stafford, Mattie Hite, and Josephine Stevens, in addition to
Ethel Waters and Alberta Hunter.28
Many of the new tunes that seemed to lend themselves most naturally
to jazz interpretation came from the pens of black songwriters who
migrated to the South Side; their melodies, which formed the core litera-
ture of Chicago jazz, reflected the strong entrepreneurial spirit of the
black ghetto in the 19205. The earliest pioneer Chicago musicians built
hopes on the inspirational success of pianist-composer-publisher and real
estate investor Joe Jordan, who arrived in Chicago in 1903 from St. Louis,
where he had learned ragtime at Tom Turpin's Rosebud Cafe. Musicians
like Jordan and pianist Dave Peyton were the most musically literate of
Chicago's pre-World War I black cabaret musicians. They were crafts-
men who often were hired to compose or transcribe original materials for
less literate performers. Peyton even advertised "will write orchestra-
tions, songs taken from voice .. ."Z9 Jordan became musical director of
Robert T. Motts Pekin Temple of Music from 1903 to 1912. He orga-
nized the Pekin Publishing Company to provide a publication outlet and
copyright protection for black talent. He published several of his own
works—"Pekin Rag" (1904), "J.J.J. Rag" (1905), "Oh Liza Lady" (1908),
and "Dixie Land" (1908)—and broke ground in 1916 for the Jordan
48 Chicago Jazz

Building, a three-story combination retail store and apartment building

on the northeast corner of 36th and State streets. In 1917, Jordan suc-
cessfully sued the Original Dixieland Jazz Band for appropriating his
own "The Teasin' Rag" (1909) as part of their "Original Dixie Jazz Band
One Step," frequently mentioned as the first jazz record.^0
The leading postwar musician-entrepreneurs like Clarence Williams,
Spencer Williams, and Jelly Roll Morton provided an original, challeng-
ing repertoire for Chicago's Jazz Age by recording, writing, and pub-
lishing compositions that combined blues with ragtime and popular song
forms, converting more whimsically unorganized oral traditions into the
uniform, standardized system of published European notation. In the
process, Chicago jazz entrepreneurs transformed the country blues' met-
rical variety of thirteen-and-one-half or fourteen-and-a-half-bar motives,
fragmented lyrics, and changing melodies into more appropriately uni-
form products. Blues historian David Evans argues that urban musicians
who had learned European notation—either blacks themselves or those
with access to cooperative whites who could write music—standardized
the blues into the twelve-bar pattern, providing thematic lyrics that told a
relatively coherent story, and melodic content focused into a fixed verse-
chorus pattern of Tin Pan Alley popular songs. According to race record
producer Mayo Williams, African-American pianists Lovie Austin, Tiny
Parham, and Thomas A. Dorsey worked with performers in the record-
ing studios, learning their original songs by ear and then writing them
down in European notation.31
In 1916, William Christopher Handy's "Memphis Blues" (actually a
combination of rag and blues strains) and "Jogo Blues" were on sale at the
Frank B. Jones Music Company at 34O9'A South State Street. New Or-
leans song writer, publisher, entertainer, and vaudevillian Clarence
Williams and his partner, composer Armand J. Piron, moved to Chicago
in 1918 and opened the Williams and Piron Music Company ("Home of
Jazz") at 3129 South State Street. Soon they were selling sheet music for
"Uncle Sam Ain't No Woman, but He Sure Can Take Your Man" (A
Big Jazz Blues), "Ragtime Dixie Ball" (Great Jazz Hit), and "No More
Cabarets in Town." Williams left for New York after the Race Riot of
1919, but his music store stayed open; he returned to Chicago frequently,
especially to plug new songs like "Royal Garden Blues" (1919). As he
put it:

The demand for jazz music never was so great as it is right now.
All our numbers are doing well, but we predict a record sale for
 The Evolution of South Side Chicago Jazz 49

our three new numbers, judging from the avalanche of orders re-
ceived already. The people want good jazz music and that is what
we aim to give all the time.32

Joe Oliver also involved himself in this form of musical commerce by

marketing the southern musical tradition in the North. As he wrote to
fellow cornetist Buddy Petit:

If you've got a real good blues, have someone to write it just as you
play them and send them to me, we can make some jack on them.
Now, have the blues wrote down just as you can play them, it's the
originality that counts.33

Jelly Roll Morton's many original compositions published in Chicago by

the Melrose Brothers clearly indicate the entrepreneurial and commercial
dimensions of jazz in Chicago. When Joe Oliver introduced Morton's
"Wolverine Blues" in the spring of 1923, he received many requests for
copies of the published sheet music. Walter Melrose, then running a
"little old dirty [music] shop" and looking for ways to make money in
music, discovered that the number had not been published. Oliver told
him that Morton was living on the West Coast, and Melrose wired the
composer a sizable advance in exchange for permission to publish
"Wolverine Blues." Walter, Lester, and Frank Melrose, white musical
entrepreneurs who were also said to act as go-betweens between black
musicans and the record companies, published Morton's most memorable
numbers— "Mr. Jelly Lord," "The Pearls," "London Blues," and many
more.3^
Chicago's resident jazz composers used cabaret floor shows and
vaudeville as vehicles for the introduction and promotion of their latest
songs. According to one observer,

[Clarence] Williams kept on plugging until he could land his songs

in different acts and until quite a few were singing his songs. This
caused the publisher to take notice and the Shapiro-Bernstein Music
Company took over a batch of Williams' songs that were big hits
later.35

Orchestra leader Erskine Tate plugged Clarence and Spencer William's

"Royal Garden Blues" at the i5oo-seat Vendome Theater by performing
an arranged version in which each section of the orchestra, hidden in
50 Chicago Jazz

different parts of the theater, began "Royal Garden Blues" when cued by
the "old familiar minstrel roll off," and played it while marching toward
the pit.36
The club by the same name also featured the number and promoted
other "hits" to issue from the Williams and Piron Music Company. For
example, the Royal Gardens promoted May 16, 1919, as "'Jelly R°U
Night!' featuring Clarence Williams' 'I Ain't Gonna Give Nobody None
O' This Jelly Roll,' a free piece of jelly roll with every order, and the
Music of the World's Greatest Jazz Band." Similarly, the club held "New
York Night with the Lafayette Players" to honor the all-black theatrical
repertory troupe, which had brought legitimate theater to the South Side.
The "Famous New Orleans Jazz Band" featured "Their Great Patriotic
Number" on this occasion, and Clarence E. Muse presented a demonstra-
tion of make-up techniques.^ Thereafter, the Royal Gardens presented
vaudeville acts on a "specially built stage"; jazzbands played for dancing
between shows. In 1923, the Sunset Cafe adopted a racetrack theme,
dressing the waiters in jockey uniforms, and featured book and lyrics by
Clarence Muse and music written by Joe Jordan and played by Carroll
Dickerson's Orchestra.^ 8
Professional jazz performers also studied instrumental expression,
tinkering with techniques in order to develop a performance specialty, a
distinctive sound or instrumental "act" that would make what cabaret
performers called an "up" (vaudevillians spoke of a "turn") during floor-
shows. A featured entertainer earned between $15 and $35 a night in the
early twenties, substantially more than sidemen in the orchestras. Some
musicians mixed comic vaudeville effects with instrumental performance
in their acts. Drummer Baby Dodds shimmied his stomach muscles in
time to the tight press rolls he played on his deep-voiced trap drum.
Bassist Bill Johnson lay down and played his string bass on his back or
while lying on his side. Even the symphonically inclined orchestra leader
Erskine Tate encouraged musicians like bassist Milt Hinton to "... lay
down with it—he used to say, 'lay down on the [stage] floor.'" Other
instrumental effects were less visually outrageous: Johnny Dunn, whose
family lived in Chicago while he worked widely in Europe and America,
billed himself as "Originator of'Trumpet Tricks,'" and specialized in
the "wah-wah," mute, and an elongated, four-foot "coach trumpet"
which he had discovered in London. Sidney Bechet used his lips on the
mouthpiece and reed to get "effects like chicken cackles." Joe Oliver also
featured vocal effects, but used the cup mute. Clarinetist Jimmy O'Bryant
 The Evolution of South Side Chicago Jazz 51

recorded "hotsy-totsy" music, cajoling a satiric, snickering laugh from his

instrument. Earl Hines performed requested tunes at a midget piano on
coasters, moving about from table to table at the Apex Club.39
Such gimmicks reflected an adaptation of vaudeville comedy to the
night club, but musicians often included revealing social commentary in
their comedy routines: Oliver and Johnson developed an act for the Royal
Gardens during which the cornetist worked his cup mute to produce a
series of sounds like baby talk, and Bill Johnson, who appeared to be
Caucasian, would sooth "the baby" in his high-pitched voice. As Louis
Armstrong remembered:

That first baby was supposefd] to be a white baby. When Joe's horn
cried like the white baby, Bill Johnson would come back with,
"Don't Cry Little Baby." The last baby was suppose[d] to be a little
colored baby, then they would break it up. Joe would yell, Baaah!
baaaaaaah! then Bill would shout, "Shut up you 'lil so and
soooooooooo. Then the whole house would thunder with laughs and
applauses.t°

Instrumental imitations of vocal inflections can be interpreted as adapta-

tions to northern, urban mechanization by "... assimilating the voice into
the realm of the instrumental: to make it, as it were, all appendage to the
machine."'*1 While some northern admirers of black southern music
often interpreted the voice-like sounds produced by jazz performers as
rejections of the original designs of European musical instruments, such
sounds can be seen just as readily as resulting from a continuing adjust-
ment of oral communication to particular musical instruments.
For example, South Side musicians worked to interiorize technology,
to make their chosen musical "machine a second nature, a psychological
part of himself or herself." While their unconventional approaches to
musical instruments have received much commentary, theirs was an
encounter with musical technology. Jazz musicians learned how to make
these tools do what they could be made to do and shaped themselves to
these possibilities/*2 This process was not perceived as a dehumanizing
capitulation to machine age regimentation but rather another enrichment
of black traditions in music. In fact, the ultimate goal of ambitious jazz
performers was a seemingly effortless, personal expressiveness in instru-
mental control. In this process, the top Chicago jazzmen of the twenties
came to terms with various dimensions of European instrumental tradi-
tions.
52 Chicago Jazz

The continuing encounter of musicians with their instruments pro-

duced intriguingly varied results: some jazz instrumentalists like Joe
Oliver, Lee Collins, and Johnny Dodds arrived at intensely personal,
unusual, individualistic styles that were relatively less dependent upon
traditionally defined instrumental technique than the jazz styles of Louis
Armstrong, Jimmy Blythe, Earl Mines, Jimmie Noone, and Jimmy
Bertrand, whose playing came to be distinguished by a marked refine-
ment of touch and tone. Mixing musicians of different stylistic tendencies
gave Chicago style jazz much of its distinctively varied flavor.
South Side Chicago jazz performers also differed widely in their
comprehension of the fundamentals of musical notation and traditional
instrumental technique. Cabaret and dance music showed two interre-
lated, but distinct, lines of development: formal musical education and
more informal jazz apprenticeships. Some cabaret musicians, such as
clarinetists Jimmie Noone and Buster Bailey, studied formally with
Franz Schoepp, the white Chicago clarinetist who also taught Benny
Goodman. Reedmen Jerome Pasquall, Darnell Howard, Omer Simeon,
and Clifford King similarly pursued formal instruction both within and
outside of the South Side ghetto. Dance band leader Charles "Doc"
Cooke, in whose orchestra Jimmie Noone was a mainstay, earned his
doctorate in music from the Chicago College of Music, and presented a
copy of his dissertation composition "Pro Arte" to William Abbott.«
Major N. Clark Smith, at one time musical director at Tuskegee
Institute, headed the music program at Wendell Phillips High School on
the South Side. Smith, a strict disciplinarian who "didn't dig it when you
were playing jazz," organized a youth band for the Chicago Defender and
several second-generation Chicago jazz performers—bassist Milt Hin-
ton, percussionist Lionel Hampton, bassist Hayes Alvis, who worked
with Jelly Roll Morton and with Jimmie Noone—took his high school
courses. Smith had once worked for the Lyon and Healey Music Com-
pany, which subsequently donated musical instruments to the South Side
high school.44
Many jazz performers joined the 3yoth Division, Eighth Illinois In-
fantry National Guard Band in order to improve their skills, or, as
reedman Albert "Happy" Caldwell put it, "to get some good, you know,
learning, playing all that type of music." Moreover, many highly trained
musicians like Erskine Tate, Charles Elgar, Dave Peyton, and Charles
Cooke supplemented their earnings by giving private lessons, so that
many jazz musicians assimilated theory and instrumental technique dur-
 The Evolution of South Side Chicago Jazz 53

ing the day, while also playing far into the night. Columnist Dave Peyton,
outspoken advocate of the professionalization of music, proposed the
licensing of all private music teachers, claiming that many ambitious
musicians were learning unorthodox techniques.*? Peyton would have
formalized all musical instruction, but his organized professionalism
never erased the continuing traditions of apprenticeship learning which
encouraged many jazz musicians to preserve and extend African-
American playing styles.
Some improvisers learned about music from the more formally
trained musicians in the bands with which they worked. Louis Arm-
strong survived the Streckfus brothers' floating conservatory thanks to
tutoring from fellow bandsman, mellophonist David Jones. Later, he
further benefited from hymn-reading sessions with Lil Hardin, when
they worked together in the Oliver band. They met and later married in
Chicago.
Pianists like Hardin played a particularly important role in infusing
immigrant New Orleans dance music with new insights taken from the
largely forbidden secrets of legitimate music. Pianists Tony Jackson, Jelly
Roll Morton, and Richard M. Jones all came to Chicago from New
Orleans, but a majority of the more prominent South Side pianists—Lil
Hardin, Lovie Austin, Earl Hines, Alex Hill, Teddy Weatherford, Zinky
Cohn, Jimmy Blythe, Luis Russell, Tiny Parham, and Casino Simpson—
did not hail from the Crescent City. They arrived in Chicago from a
remarkably broad range of geographical locations: Memphis, Chat-
tanooga, Pittsburgh, Little Rock, Bluefield, West Virginia, Oakland, Cal-
ifornia, Louisville, Kentucky, Panama, Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Chi-
cago respectively.-*6
South Side jazz instrumentalists of the 19205 learned a wide reper-
toire of jazz techniques in informal apprenticeships to older jazz per-
formers. Louis Armstrong's tutelage with the man he called "Papa Joe"
Oliver is well known. Clarinetist and tenor saxophonist Happy Caldwell
listened carefully to Buster Bailey's playing in the Carroll Dickerson
band and spoke of a "school" of clarinetists—Bailey, Jimmie Noone,
Omer Simeon, Cecil Irwin, Ed Beckstrom, and Darnell Howard—who
hung around together and influenced one another's work. Bassist Bill
Johnson taught Milt Hinton how to "slap" the bass so that the strings
snapped against the instrument's neck. Hinton then developed his own
specialty: "... instead of just using one slap [per beat] like he used, I
would multiple slap it—triples and quadruples." Drummer Jimmy
54 Chicago Jazz

Bertrand, who had studied drums at the Catholic school on 55th and
Halstead streets and with "old man Johnson," father of Erskine Tate, as
well as Roy Knapp of the Minneapolis Symphony, taught jazz drummers
Lionel Hampton and Sidney "Big Sid" Catlett.47
New show business tricks, instrumental dexterity, popular song liter-
ature, and harmonic awareness did not necessarily indicate, as one scholar
concluded, that the South Side musician was "suppressing the traits of his
own subculture and acquiring the traits of the dominant white middle
class."48 New techniques and ideas were blended into African-American
musical culture in original and swiftly changing ways. As a historian of
popular culture in early modern Europe has put it: the "minds of ordi-
nary people are not like blank paper, but stocked with ideas and images
. . . Traditional ways of perceiving and thinking form a kind of sieve
which will allow some novelties through, but not others."
Even when studying music formally the Major Smith, Franz
Schoepp, or at the Chicago College of Music, ambitious musicians
adapted European techniques and ideas to their own uses. The encounter
between elite and popular musical cultures produced an alloy called
"jazz," proof that music students were rarely passive consumers.^ South
Side musicians made individual adjustments to white musical culture,
and their levels of assimilation reflected a variety of different factors: how
old they were upon leaving the South; how long they stayed in Chicago
or another big northern city; the sort of contacts they had or could hope
to have in the profession; and other more personal and aesthetic factors.
The often underrated Chicago clarinetist Darnell Howard played a
vital role in the growth of technical sophistication and versatility in South
Side jazz. Born in Chicago to musical parents around 1895, Howard took
up the violin at age seven and began his formal musical education under
Charles Elgar. The dean of black Chicago orchestra leaders, Elgar orga-
nized many classical music concerts on the South Side, gave music les-
sons, and led a dance band at Harmon's Dreamland dance hall from 1916
to 1922. Howard performed from an early age with Elgar's student
orchestra, with whom he was featured during a May 21, 1912, perfor-
mance of Donezetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.
After working extensively in dance bands, with smaller formations at
the Loop's Lamb's Cafe and the South Side's Elite Cafe, and touring the
Midwest with Elgar, Howard joined the "Plantation Days" pit band with
several other Elgar sidemen for a trip to London in the spring of 1923. On
his return, Howard played in Carroll Dickerson's dance band and Dave
 The Evolution of South Side Chicago Jazz 55

Peyton's Plantation Cafe Symphonic Syncopators, and made the transi-

tion to King Oliver's Dixie Syncopators with whom he played alto and
soprano saxophones, clarinet, and violin.5°
Howard bridged the worlds of concert hall and cabaret music, the
first of a larger group of versatile instrumentalists that included reedmen
Jimmie Noone, Buster Bailey, Omer Simeon, Barney Bigard, and Cecil
Irwin, tubists Hayes Alvis and Quinn Wilson, trumpeters Shirley Clay,
George Mitchell, and Homer Hobson, pianists Hines, Cohn, Hill,
Weatherford, and many others, musicians who made the arranged ele-
ments of Chicago jazz possible while playing in the shadow of the solo
stars.
As Darnell Howard's career indicates, the South Side movie theater
and dance hall orchestras brought increased technical sophistication to
those who played in them. Thomas J. Hennessey has delineated a musical
field, closely related to Chicago's cabarets, occupied by Charles Elgar's
Creole Orchestra, Erskine Tale's Vendome Theater Orchestra, Charles
Cook's Dreamland Orchestra, Sammy Stewart's orchestras, and Clarence
M. Jones' Owl Theater Orchestra. It emphasized the legitimate, Euro-
pean theoretical and instrumental approaches to music which these large
aggregations brought to Chicago. These bands "... co-opted, at least
locally, the ground which elsewhere the new jazz innovators would
develop into the swing style."5'
But it is misleading to present such groups as a musical "establish-
ment" in "conflict" with the jazzmen. The tendency to see large bands
playing arrangements as somehow in conflict with "the New Orleans
men" in Chicago stems from an inability to see the varieties of musical
approaches and skills possessed by Chicago musicians and the creative
ways in which they blended them. The South Side arrangement-reading
big bands represented the possibilities in a "legitimate" polarity at one
end of a continuum of musical skills and philosophies that extended
through several of the more innovative jazz groups that made records in
the late twenties, to the polyphonic improvisations of jazz band musi-
cians.
Of course, the theater and large dance hall orchestras did inhabit a
musical world far removed from the novelty washboard bands. As Hen-
nessey and Hsio Wen Shih have argued, they represented a more middle-
class respect for the refined technique, musicianship, and concert hall
repertoire associated with the surrounding white culture. A new breed of
college-trained African-Americans, born in border states of the South,
56 Chicago Jazz

mixed harmonic sophistication, popular song form, and stock and origi-
nal arrangements with field hollers, spirituals, and the blues. But
African-American traditions in music were quick to absorb, rather than
reject or segregate new influences. As reedman Garvin Bushell told
music historian Mark Tucker, Chicago cabaret bands were not limited to
improvisation:

Chicago jazzmen had the advantage in those days of having a crack

at theater music before the New York jazzmen did. They improved
their ability that way, and so could read a little better than jazz mu-
sicians in the East.52

Some immigrant musicians—indeed, some of the most famous, made

only partial adjustments to musical literacy. Louis Armstrong apparently
learned to read music while an apprentice on the Mississippi paddle
wheelers. But many of his colleagues—bassist Pops Foster, drummer
Baby Dodds, trumpeter Lee Collins, reedman Sidney Bechet, and many
others—learned musical notation only incompletely, sometimes insisting
that they were able to "spell," if not fully read, music. For some, the
musical alphabet acted as "a major bridge between oral and literate
mnemonics," but others found it a barrier. In some senses, these musi-
cians didn't have to adjust: each improviser contributed such a power-
fully individual voice that bandleaders could build around them.53
The struggles between Dave Peyton, the composer, Chicago Defender
columnist, and theater orchestra leader, and the jazzband leader Joseph
Oliver, illustrated the key issues of cross-cultural synthesis at stake in
Chicago during the twenties. The outspoken advocacy of European con-
cert music found in Peyton's weekly column marked the farthest extreme
in the assimilationist interpretation of South Side music. Peyton, who
directed the pit band at the Grand Theater, advised all South Side
musicians to abandon "gut bucket" cabaret music with its "squeaks,
squawks, moans, groans, and flutters"; Peyton insisted that a "jazz-
crazed public" and the "hip liquor toter" had created the demand for
such "novelty," "hokum" music, leading race musicians to abandon con-
cert hall instruments like the violin for louder, more vulgar instruments
like the banjo. The day was coming, he felt sure, when race orchestras
would break into the vaudeville and movie theaters throughout the city
as regular contracted pit bands; he called upon all musicians to prepare
 The Evolution of South Side Chicago Jazz 57

themselves by studying theory, harmony, and proper instrumental tech-

nique.51*
The relentless, often brittle edge to Peyton's arguments led him into
repeated attacks on cabaret orchestras in general. While praising Erskine
Tate, Clarence M. Jones, Lovie Austin, and the other theater band lead-
ers, he condemned most jazz playing as rank musical ignorance, insisting
that any trained musician could do it, while jazz performers simply could
not play legitimate orchestral scores. As the public seemed to demand it,
Peyton agreed that theater stage and pit bands should include at least a
little jazz in their performances, in the knowledge that the entire fad
would soon pass.
Peyton's "The Musical Bunch" column in the Chicago Defender
showed a recurrent interest in Joe Oliver's jazz bands, acknowledging
them to be the best in a line of business which the writer scorned. By
1925, Peyton and Oliver competed for important South Side performance
jobs: Peyton hoped to use an occasional cabaret engagement, like the one
he secured for his own band at the Plantation Cafe, to educate cabaret
customers to traditional orchestral music; while Oliver, and his protege
Louis Armstrong, pursued success within the world of cabaret music.
Oliver, however, was by no means the musical hacker that Peyton associ-
ated with jazz, and the columnist knew it.
Oliver's rivalry with Peyton came to a climax in November 1925
when the latter hired him as a featured cornet soloist with his ten-man
Symphonic Syncopators at the Plantation Cafe. Most accounts stress
bandleader Peyton's reprimand of Oliver for attempting at one point to
leave the bandstand (" 'Look out, Joe, my musicians don't leave the stand
without permission. You are in my band now, and must do as I say'
... 'I beg your pardon, Fess ... etc.'"), but more was at stake. Typically,
Peyton had combined orchestral and concert hall music with jazz, and
Variety reported that even those Plantation Cafe customers who were not
interested in dancing "applauded the merits of the orchestra sponta-
neously. Their rendition of heavy operatic numbers is handled as easily as
the ordinary syncopated tune."55
Early historians of jazz have emphasized that Oliver joined Peyton
only after losing his own job in the December 1924 fire which destroyed
the Lincoln Gardens, but Oliver had already joined Peyton's Symphonic
Syncopators in November, a month earlier. Peyton, known for his long
service in the pit at the Grand Theater, for booking bands, and for his
58 Chicago Jazz

newspaper column, was not a cabaret musician and needed the cornet
star in his Plantation Symphonic Syncopators in order to appeal to
dancers and jazz fans. As jazz cornetist Lee Collins discovered when he
went to work for him, Peyton's band was a "stage band, not a real jazz
orchestra. They played a lot of overtures and things like that and didn't
swing."
Oliver soon took over the Symphonic Syncopators, renaming them
the Dixie Syncopators, and played from 1925 to 1927 at the Plantation
Cafe, replacing Peyton at the piano with Luis Russell and stealing musi-
cians from Peyton's band from time to time. Oliver, therefore, epito-
mized the cultural amalgam that produced Chicago jazz: some of his
band's featured numbers ("Too Bad," "Deep Henderson") were built on
complex arrangements, some of his musicians (trumpeter Bob Shoffner,
reed man Darnell Howard, and pianist Luis Russell) were perfectly at
home reading scores, but Oliver mixed such "legitimate" musicians with
those who could swing and solo regardless of their other skills.56
Louis Armstrong's invention of dramatic improvised instrumental
solo statements marked the single, most outstanding contribution to the
ongoing synthesis that produced jazz in Chicago during the twenties.
Armstrong's wonderful creations surpassed contemporary comprehen-
sion. Even Peyton, the self-appointed musical sage who scorned jazz
could only marvel:

Louis Armstrong, the greatest jazz cornet player in the country, is

drawing many Ofay [white] musicians to Dreamland nightly to hear
him blast out those weird jazzy figures. This boy is in a class by
himself.57

Armstrong's new musical synthesis combined three sources: African-

American folk music traditions, elements of cabaret musical entertain-
ment, and techniques borrowed from Anglo-American musical culture.
From oral folk traditions, he took his conviction that sounds have
great power, especially when communicated in heavily rhythmic, bal-
anced patterns of repetition and antithesis. Armstrong's solos, more than
those of the white cornetist Leon "Bix" Beiderbecke, for example, pos-
sessed the eloquence and drama associated with the winners in those
verbal struggles called "the dozens," where "signifying" contestants
tongue-lashed opponents into silence. As what Ralph Ellison has called a
"rowdy musical poet," Armstrong fabricated grandly improvised varia-
 The Evolution of South Side Chicago Jazz 59

tions on traditional melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic patterns.?8 The

principles of black oral rituals described by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,
parallel some of his solo devices: musical metaphor (quoting a melodic
pattern from one song during a solo variation on another); hyperbole
(exaggerating a distinctive feature in a given melodic, harmonic, or
rhythmic pattern); chiasmus (inverting the relationship between the ele-
ments in parallel phrases); and synecdoche (using a phrase element in
place of the whole from which it was taken, or applying double time to fit
a large part of a melody into a short fragment of time).59
In the cabarets, Armstrong learned what Chicago jazz historian John
Steiner has called "the value of the instrumental soloist as entertainer."60
Chicago show business demanded that musicians learn to make an in-
strumental "statement," something to show contractors, club managers,
and band leaders. In this highly competitive environment, musicians
developed jazz techniques very quickly. Solo statements inevitably
grabbed the spotlight, acting as the ambitious musician's "act" and mo-
ment of glory. Jugglers briefly defied laws of time and space; vocalists
crammed every trick they knew into one or two feature numbers; a
comedian had three minutes to stimulate rolling waves of laughter; tap
dancers dazzled the clients during their short features; and jazzmen, in
turn, grew accomplished at transforming swiftly passing beats and har-
monies with their own, personal inventions of timbre, tone, range, phras-
ing, and harmonic insight.
Lastly, Armstrong's remarkable solos depended upon an excep-
tionally high level of instrumental virtuosity, one that appeared more
often in the concert hall. Armstrong developed an exceedingly wide
instrumental range, impressive power, and technical dexterity with
which to demonstrate sweeping, dramatic jazz solos of grand propor-
tions. Although he never described how he did it, the solo star did
mention practice sessions with Lil Hardin, who had studied music at Fisk
University before coming to Chicago and continued on to earn her teach-
ing certificate at the Chicago College of Music. Song writer Hoagy Car-
michael claimed that Lil Hardin "got a book of the standard cornet solos
and drilled him. He really worked, even taking lessons from a German
down at Kimball Hall, who showed Louis all the European cornet
clutches."61
Further evidence of Armstrong's studious approach to the artistic
problems of the jazz solo emerges from two printed editions of his solo
work, published by the Melrose brothers in Chicago. One of them, pub-
60 Chicago Jazz

lished as 725 Jazz Breads for Cornet, featured, according to the Defender,
his particular solutions to "jazz endings" (also called "turnarounds,"
those concluding beats of a chorus that feature harmonic transitions back
to the chorus beginning), "jazz connections" (moments of harmonic tran-
sition from the A to the B and back to the A sections in AABA popular
songs), and jazz breaks. The other book offered 50 Hot Choruses for
Cornet, transcriptions of Armstrong's improvisations on songs sold by
Melrose. As James Lincoln Collier notes, these books reveal that Arm-
strong's improvisations were primarily melodic and rhythmic rather than
harmonically oriented.62
Virtuoso solo improvisation was bound to have been developed by
someone, since adaptations of African-American music traditions to city
culture pointed in that direction. But Louis Armstrong extensively dem-
onstrated this breakthrough in twenties Chicago and imprinted it with
his remarkable musicianship, doing something telling with every note he
played, shaping music which was not merely flashily elegant, dramatic,
outrageous, and hilarious, but structurally balanced, passionate, and
beautiful. Armstrong's solo style illustrated an artful blend of African-
American music with cabaret culture.
But the world of Louis Armstrong and the South Side black-and-tans
functioned within a larger network of musical entertainment, a complex
series of large racially exclusive dance halls and hotel ballrooms, where
musicians played musical styles which, while resembling and even appro-
priating jazz in many ways, pursued more commercial directions suitable
to a broader market. It is time to turn to this world of jazz age social
dance music, which, even if considered as a sort of "near beer" by jazz
lovers, passed for the real thing among thousands of Chicagoans.
 1
White Jazz
and Dance Halls

THE CORE CULTURAL and musical synthesis that produced Chicago

jazz of the twenties emerged in the cabarets from 1904 to 1929. Impres-
sive numbers of white Chicagoans, however, danced to Jazz Age music in
the large Loop hotels and in the large dance halls built in the major
North Side and West Side bright-light districts. Only one of these more
sizable institutions—the Savoy Ballroom—was built in the black ghetto
(and late in the decade); the large commercialized dance hall was over-
whelmingly a white phenomenon that catered to a craze among the white
population for social dancing. Dance halls and hotel ballrooms presented
varied styles of dance music and entertainment against which jazz strug-
gled to create a separate identity. For jazz musicians and their close
listeners, and even for some dance band musicians, the "real thing" was
always defined by both its resemblance to and differences from commer-
cial dance music. Isham Jones, Chicago's premier dance band leader,
whose orchestras recorded over 200 titles in the 19205, refused to label his
music "jazz," and claimed that most dance band musicians considered
jazz a "'down South Negro type' of blues." In order to better advertise
the broader range of sensibilities encouraged by his dance orchestra, Jones
preferred that his music be called "American Dance Music."1 The major-
62 Chicago Jazz

ity of Chicagoans probably were less sensitive to music, race, and urban
cultures and would often accept jazz age dance hall music as jazz itself,
particularly when a good dance band wanted them to.
Large commercialized dance halls of the Roaring Twenties catered to
a much greater number of Chicagoans than the smaller cabarets, and
presented several styles of social dance music other than jazz. They
accentuated the physical activity of the customers' dancing, and avoided
the cabarets' role as "speakeasies," where illicit alcoholic beverages were
consumed. Even before prohibition, entrepreneurs of Chicago's largest
dance halls organized to meet urban reformers' criticisms of small halls,
which combined elements of the saloon, cabaret, and dance hall, places
where social dancing mixed with the sale of alcoholic beverages, vaude-
ville-style entertainment, and sometimes prostitution. The large com-
mercialized dance halls came to focus attention on morally restrained,
often athletic social dancing and encouraged several brands of arranged,
big band music designed to stimulate it.
From the start, jazz age music in Chicago was deeply intertwined
with a mounting enthusiasm for social dancing that had swept through
the rooming house neighborhoods. Young urban audiences of the second
and third decades of this century were no longer content to sit passively
and watch vaudeville musicians, vocalists, and dancers perform exciting
new dance demonstration numbers on stage; they wanted to get closer to
their musician-heroes, and even to play, sing, and dance to the new songs
themselves. It is no surprise that jazz-related music caught on with the
public in new leisure institutions: commercial dance halls in Chicago's
neighborhoods made the customers into the stars of their own produc-
tions of energetic but urbane and sexually charged physical movements,
which provided ample room for individual creativity within a shared
public sensibility. The dance bands, their handsome leaders, and star
sidemen made a varied popular music to which the public danced.2
White Chicago experienced a widespread, grassroots social dance
movement which got under way by at least 1910. In 1911, for example,
urban reformers began a series of worried public reports on dance hall
evils. This popular phenomenon had roots in the late nineteenth-century
concert saloons—those with an extra room for entertainment and danc-
ing—where, during the ragtime era, solitary pianists and instrumental
groups had set the city youth and the sporting set dancing to a transitional
combination of ragtime with vaudeville comedy or novelty effects. In
 White Jazz and Dance Halls 63

1910-11, urban reformers had observed 328 small, dirty, ill-lighted, flam-
mable, largely unregulated centers of entertainment, 190 of which
opened directly onto a saloon. Liquor was sold outright in 240 others.
Liquor was being sold to boys and girls fourteen to eighteen years old,
who danced "tough dances" that often shocked their immigrant parents.
Reformers fretted about the disreputable lodging houses located near the
dance halls, where "innocents from Europe and the country are cor-
rupted." In 1910, social dancing was more popular than going to the
movies: as many as 86,000 youngsters a night thronged hundreds of
obscure halls, most of which were thought to be controlled by "saloon
and vice interests."3
Freiberg's on 22nd Street in the old Levee vice district had been "the
most notorious of all places in the city where stepdancers gather," the
prototype of the sort of night spot from which the leading ballroom and
cabaret proprietors of the 19205 hoped to disassociate social dancing.
Opened by Fritz Freiberg, the dance hall had catered to the "Bohemian"
element or the "Sporting Set"—a mixture of politicians, vaudevillians,
"thieves, whores, pimps, and gunmen, who mingled nightly with visiting
business and professional men from out of town or respectable neighbor-
hoods in the city itself." Ike Bloom, who managed Freiberg Hall and was
later known as "King of the Brothels," had hired fifteen female dance
instructors, who were ordered not to take their "tricks" out of the hall.
Bloom later became an important Chicago night-life personality who,
after the war, openly defied the wartime 1:00 a.m. Police Department
closing order, and, when Freiberg Hall was closed, opened the highly
successful Midnight Frolic where he featured "girlie entertainment"
rather than music, defying the twenties trend toward clubs which fea-
tured music and dancing.4
Chicago's clubs during World War I often had been what newspaper
columnist Westbrook Pegler called "dumps," small, poorly ventilated,
dirty, makeshift cellars with close geographical and historical ties to
Chicago's vice district. A leading reformer had this complaint about the
lewd social dancing to the ragtime bands in clubs like these:

Couples stand very close together, the girl with her hands around
the man's neck, the man with both his arms around the girl or on
her hips, their cheeks are pressed close together, their bodies touch
each other; the liquor ... is like setting a match to a flame; they
64 Chicago Jazz

throw aside all restraint and give themselves to unbridled licence

and indecency ... their animal spirits fanned to flame by the mad
music.

Similarly, in Chicago's cheaper neighborhood halls, the boys often

danced with their hats on, and smoked, drank, and even spat while idling
between numbers; the girls, who frequently placed powder puffs provoc-
atively in their stocking tops, sat on the laps of their beer drinking escorts,
and talked tough to fascinate the younger girls.5
The atmosphere of clubs and dance halls, filled with wild music, the
perspiration odors of the dancers, tobacco smoke, and alcohol fumes
fulfilled the worst nightmares of nineteenth-century moralists, who had
warned that social dancing would lead Christian youth directly to hell.
Nevertheless, the larger commercialized dance halls in the mid- to late-
teens and twenties responded to urban reform pressures on unregulated
night-life institutions, as well as to marketing decisions to appeal to a
broad cross section of society.
Mayor Carter Harrison, Jr.'s closing of the Levee vice district in 1912,
a response to pressure from the Committee of Fifteen and other reform
organizations, and continuing investigations by urban reformers into the
gambling, prostitution, and sale of alcohol at the earliest Chicago music
clubs of the years just before and during World War I, led to substantial
reforms and encouraged several sorts of more refined and commer-
cialized dance music. The detailed reports of 1910 and 1917 authored by
Louise de Koven Bowen, Chicago heiress, socialite, philanthropist, Hull
House benefactor, and leading urban reformer, and her researcher Jessie
Binford, documented the behavior and the night-life institutions of the
formative years of Chicago's Jazz Age, when the "dance craze" encour-
aged a transformation of ragtime into jazz; her leadership of the move-
ment to reform new night-life institutions, moreover, played an influen-
tial role in creating large specialized dance halls and peppy but refined
dance orchestras.6
As a founding member of the Juvenile Protective Association, created
in 1904 in association with the Juvenile Court Society to protect Chicago
youth from the debilitating effects of commercialized vice, Bowen spear-
headed a Victorian backlash against new forms of urban entertainment
and helped to shape the foundations of Chicago's Jazz Age. She deeply
feared the effects of mixing social dancing with alcohol consumption in
unsupervised dance halls located near cheap hotels and rooming houses.
 White Jazz and Dance Halls 65

Bowen saw jazz as another pernicious ingredient in a combustible mix-

ture of indecency and self-indulgence. To her, jazz was social dance
music that somehow encouraged "indecent" dancing, movements that
defied the prohibitions of Victorian dance etiquette against wriggling the
shoulders, shaking the hips, and twisting the body. She opposed the
"Dip" (during which the man bent his partner backward until her head
touched the floor, at which moment the woman would kick up one leg
"so that [her] privates were shown"). Couples should "stand far enough
away from each other to allow free movement of the body in order to
dance gracefully and comfortably."7
Although accused of all manner of immoral influences by some con-
servative social critics, certain styles of jazz and near-jazz social dance
music actually contributed to Chicago's efforts to clean up even the worst
dives by offering an alternative focus to commercialized sex. Music that
suggested, in an ill-defined, diffuse way, forbidden worlds of sexual
excitement and alcoholic abandon still was not, itself, an overtly sexual or
illegal act. City government, responding to conflicting pressures from the
reformers and night-life entrepreneurs, found music a lesser evil which
could be structured and reformed more readily than prostitution or
alcohol consumption.
Conflicting social pressures on social dance music found expression in
municipal regulations. From 1916 to 1921, for example, the Chicago City
Council had groped toward definitions of various different night-life
institutions in order to respond to the contrary pressures from leisure
time entrepreneurs and urban reformers. Music turned out to be one
important medium for compromise between these two contrasting pres-
sure groups. Eager to institute a system of revenue-producing, graduated
licence fees which would be keyed to the size of the dance floor, the City
Council tried to sift through a bewildering complexity of new leisure
time activities.
The focus was placed on what Council members, under conflicting
political pressures, considered common, but unsavory, commercial con-
tacts between female entertainers—vocalists, dancers, and dance instruc-
tors—and male customers in dance halls, cabarets, and saloons. A reform
ordinance of 1916, for example, required that places of amusement that
offered musical entertainers and social dancing demark separate areas in
which the entertainers performed and the customers danced. Where
space was limited, the two groups were not to occupy the same area
simultaneously in order to limit what was considered to be a core prob-
66 Chicago Jazz

lem: commercialized sexual contacts between entertainers and cus-

tomers.8
Neither at the time nor thereafter was there much complaint about
social dance music, itself, as a music-making process. Rather, this kind of
popular music became a problem when joined with prostitution, drunk-
enness, and lewd dancing. Some ragtime, particularly when combined
with traditional dance numbers, might even act as a calibrated, culturally
acceptable form of entertainment. As a result, a Chicago city ordinance of
1917, which aimed at cabaret reform, specifically excepted instrumental
music from the list of prohibited forms of entertainment. Council's legal
adviser noted that in exempting instrumental music this ordinance would
prohibit patriotic vocal performances while permitting "noisy ragtime,
the jangle of the jazz band and the tom-tom with which is associated the
sinuous oriental music," but still emphasized that:

There is no time within the memory of any of us when instrumen-

tal music was prohibited by statute or ordinance at places where the
sale of liquor is permitted ... there was never any demand for sup-
pressing such music until the entertainments in such places were
broadened out beyond what people had been accustomed to.

Clearly, ragtime and jazz music in cabarets presented newer styles of

more traditional, acceptable forms of entertainment than did disguised
prostitution; from the point of view of the cabaret entrepreneur, the
advantage of a musical (rather than a "girlie") act lay in the fact that
customers sat and listened, or danced, and had no morally dangerous
interactions with the musicians. Jazz was intended to be exciting, animat-
ing, effervescent music, but it would retain a relative innocence through-
out the twenties. Whatever raucous barrelhouse sounds they made in the
insalubrious surroundings in which they sometimes found work, musi-
cians, at least while performing, were too occupied with playing their
instruments to indulge in vicious activities. In a world of prostitution,
gambling, and illegal alcohol, music and dancing were lesser evils.9
In Chicago's most celebrated early adaptations of jazz, the most
popular groups removed some of the moral onus from their music by
mixing in liberal amounts of vaudeville humor. Novelty bands, made up
of white southerners from New Orleans, cast African-American rhythms
and instrumental improvisations in a nervous, comic, often slapstick
mold. In 1915, Tom Brown's Ragtime Band, an all-white group, came to
 White Jazz and Dance Halls 67

Chicago from New Orleans to play a four month engagement at Lamb's

Cafe at the intersection of North Clark and West Randolph streets.
Although the word "jass" or "jazz" did not originate in Chicago (it has
been traced back to a San Francisco journalist writing in 1913), it was
used to denigrate Brown's Ragtime Band, when, in order to discredit the
successful invaders from New Orleans, the leader of the Chicago band
playing opposite them at Lamb's Cafe got the musicans' union to launch a
smear campaign, spreading the word that Brown's music was "jass," an
obscene term normally associated with other matters in Chicago's Levee
vice district. Undismayed, Brown made the most of the situation and
approved an advertisement for his group that read "Brown's Dixieland
Jass Band, Direct from New Orleans, Best Dance Music in Chicago."
They attracted substantial attention with their slapstick novelty num-
bers.10
By far the most important white group to play these "sardonic,"
"impudent," "slaphappy" sounds, which Neil Leonard has called "nut
jazz," in Chicago in the waning nights of the gaslight, concert saloon era
was "Stein's Band from Dixie." They were discovered in New Orleans by
Chicago night-club entrepreneur Harry James, who booked them into
Schiller's Cafe, 318 East 3151 Street at South Calumet Avenue just on the
southern edge of the Levee vice district and the northern edge of the fast
emerging black belt.
In a shuffle of personnel, cornetist Nick LaRocca, trombonist Eddie
Edwards, and clarinetist Alcide Nunez left Stein's band and reorganized
themselves into a new group by adding New Orleans drummer Tony
Sbarbaro and clarinetist Larry Shields. This group moved on June 2,
1916, to the Cafe de 1'Abbee at 419 S. Wabash, and finally on July 6 to the
Casino Gardens as the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. One year later, the
ODJB's brand of frenetic "nut jazz" caught on at New York City's
racially segregated Reisenweber Cafe and led to the band's celebrated
R.C.A. Victor recordings of 1917, and international fame as the "inven-
tors" of jazz."
This "nut jazz" had a lasting impact on the social dance music
offered as jazz by Chicago dance bands. From 1919 to 1925, for example,
such prominent groups as that which Paul Biese led in vaudeville, ball-
rooms, and hotels performed an overtly comical form of syncopated
dance music. Whether performing with his Trio, several of whose rec-
ords were actually augmented by wind instruments, or by the Paul Biese
College Inn Orchestra, Biese played tunes like "Bow Wow," "Chili
68 Chicago Jazz

Bean," "Timbuctoo," "Happy Hottentot," and "Dardenella" with clearly

delineated saxophone melody adorned by a broadly slapstick tailgate
trombone, laughing muted trumpet, and squealing clarinet. "Dangerous
Blues," a promising jazz title, was played for laughs, featuring a satiric
"dasdardly villain" introduction to a sweetly sentimental ballad appro-
priately entitled "Sweet Love." Biese's "Happy Hottentot," "Timbuc-
too," and "Chili Bean," referred snickeringly to the allure of young
African and Latin American women (who were, of course, barred from
white hotels and dance halls). The "Happy Hottentot," according to the
lyrics, is always happy to: "Meet you, greet you, glad to eat you; Shake
you, bake you, and shimmie shake you."12
Dance styles were similarly shaped to middle-class white taste. Cus-
tomers in the cafes of the late ragtime/early jazz years were helped to "get
onto" the latest dance steps by imitating stage dancers who performed for
them. In the all-white clubs of Chicago, the most influential male dancer
was Joe Frisco, who was known as a "jazz dancer" as early as 1914 and
made his reputation as the "American Apache," dancing in clubs and on
vaudeville stages to music performed by Bert Kelly's Jazz Band or Tom
Brown's jazz band; he was photographed with the latter of these groups
(Al Capone looks on). Frisco, as he was known, demonstrated the fox trot
with Loretta McDermott before changing into "tough clothes of the
Bowery," wearing a smartly cocked derby, smoking a cigar, and snap-
ping jokes out of the side of his mouth. Before he could play a note of
jazz, white Chicago tenor saxophone star Bud Freeman involved himself
in popular music by imitating Joe Frisco:

I was a dancer; wherever I went, I did the Frisco, you know, the
thing Joe Frisco got from Snake Hips Robinson [sic, Tucker], a
dance called "the Frisco."

Variety noted that Frisco's imitators in vaudeville and the night clubs
"have been as plentiful as were those of Eva Tanguay in her day and
George M. Cohan in his. Some people have seen so many 'friscos' they
believe it isn't a jazz dance unless the dancer has a cigar."'3
Several female stage dancers also popularized a refined, stylish form
of jazz dancing in Chicago. The Arsonia Cafe, opened in 1904 at 1654
Madison Street by Mike Fritzel, who had come to Chicago from Ne-
braska on a cattle train in 1898, and its reincarnation called Friars Inn,
allegedly presented Joan Crawford (born and stage name "Lucille Le-
 White Jazz and Dance Halls 69

Seur.") Crawford later danced the Charleston in a 1928 movie about

flappers called Our Dancing Daughters. Ginger Rogers also danced to the
music of various pre-jazz orchestras. Bee Palmer, less well known today
than the other two dancers, specialized in the Shimmie, the torso shaking
dance step (borrowed from black cabaret dancers) which had separated
"nice girls" from brazen flappers. Variety reported that her "refined
shimmie act" was less vulgar than many other such turns:

The undulating oscillations and nerve control of the involuntary

muscles, particularly the pectoralis, major and minor are ... remark-
able.

Gilda Gray, a Polish immigrant from Milwaukee who was streamlined

with the help of vaudeville and cabaret vocalist Sophie Tucker, took a
refined shimmie to Chicago and New York.1'*
The advent of prohibition in 1919 brought about further, sweeping
changes in the early concert-saloons and cafes. Before the passage of the
Volstead Act, "night resorts," as Variety called them, "were very little
above the common saloon." Entertainment was merely something pa-
trons got "for nothing along with the pretzels and the free lunch ... an
old dilapidated piano, a couple of coon shouters, and girls ... to keep the
customers in good humor and help them part with their sheckels." Prohi-
bition required that saloons find something effervescent with which to
camouflage the sale of alcohol. The solution most often taken was to
upgrade the entertainment into a small vaudevill show. Since musicians
were needed anyway, one inexpensive possibility involved featuring the
band as a cabaret act. "Jazz, flappers, 'sugar daddies,' alias 'butter and egg
men,' soon came to the fore and with them a complete rehabilitation" of
saloons into cabarets."1?
The earliest ragtime bands and demonstration dancers commer-
cialized the popular dance craze in Chicago. Neighborhood clubs and
fraternal societies with colorful names like the "Put Away Trouble
Club," "The Merry Widows," "The Fleet Foot Dance Club," "The Dill
Pickle Club," and the "Gladiators" hired bands and gave dances. In an
age which had not yet supplied urban youth with playgrounds or orga-
nized sports, such small, obscure, popularly initiated dances were far too
numerous to control, and new musical and dance styles continued to
grow spontaneously from modest, neighborhood dance halls throughout
the era.
70 Chicago Jazz

By comparison, the commercialization of new urban night-life activ-

ities, as well as the need to respond to urban reform pressures, required
the creation of a product that could appeal to a socially heterogeneous
white market. Chicago's commercialized white dance halls of the late
teens and twenties encouraged a variety of different social dance orches-
tras which played an important role in mediating the tensions between
spontaneous cultural expressiveness and the patterned, supervised worlds
of commercialized leisure behavior.
The city's pioneer in large, clean, well-lit, safe commercialized dance
halls, presenting old fashioned but politely peppy dance music, was J.
Louis Guyon, an early exponent of "clean" dancing whose moralistic
approach paralleled that of the urban reformers. Guyon began organiz-
ing dances in Victoria Dance Hall beginning in 1909. In 1914, he leased
the Dreamland Dance Hall at Van Buren and Paulina on the West Side,
before opening in the same year Guyon's Paradise, which featured a
dance floor said to accommodate 4,000 persons. Guyon reached for a mass
market among the estimated 600,000 potential customers living in the
West Side rooming house district; he located his Paradise dance hall near
abundant, cheap late night transportation, and could draw customers
from as much as five miles away.
Louis Guyon reportedly made a fortune running "the most conserva-
tive ballroom in Chicago." He stubbornly resisted the more daring and
energetic developments in social dance and musical styles: before World
War I, when the one-step and fox trot become popular, he allowed only
the waltz and the two-step. He similarly banned the Charleston in late
1925, when it was imported from New York City. He catered to a
somewhat older clientele than most of the ballrooms in Chicago. Variety
characterized the music at the Paradise as "a service brand of dance
music—peppy but not hotsy-totsy." The customers at Guyon's Paradise
took their dancing seriously; social dancing was not just "one item of the
evening, as in a cafe." Dance bands paid close attention to finding moder-
ate but steady tempi and plenty of popular melodies.16
The biggest of the twenties "ballrooms," most of them built in the
nineteen teens, offered the public carefully engineered and sanitized
musical and dance experiences. While it was waging its fourteen-year
war against "vice," the Juvenille Protective Association came to a cultur-
ally influential understanding with the owners and managers of nearly all
of Chicago's largest dance halls, where some important jazz musicians
earned a living. In 1921, the owners of the Midway Gardens, Merry
 White Jazz and Dance Halls 71

Gardens, White City Ballrooms, Trianon Ballroom, Marigold Gardens,

Dreamland Ballroom, and the Columbia Ballroom formed the National
Association of Ball Room Proprietors and Managers. Together, they
pledged to work out their differences with the Juvenile Protective Asso-
ciation.
One step toward dance hall reform, taken in 1921, had a direct causal
relationship to the birth of the Jazz Age. In an initial meeting with the
JPA, dance hall managers had asked: "What can we do to make our
dance halls more respectable?" The JPA's answer: "'Speed up your
music.'"

Within twenty-four hours, every orchestra in the ballroom group

had doubled the tempo of its melodies. The toddle, the shimmy and
kindred slow syncopated motions were impossible at the brisk pace
the music set, and the managers found most of the bad dancing
eliminated.

Second, ballroom managers had agreed to hire JPA observers ("host-

esses") to supervise social behavior of the dancers. This chaperone system
had "suggested itself as the outgrowth of the hostess devices employed
during the war in army camps."1/'
Cooperation between dance hall entrepreneurs and urban reformers
shaped the commercialization of the dance craze and created a demand
for fast paced "peppy," but morally sanitary, jazz age social dance music.
The Benson Orchestra of Chicago, one of the leading dance orchestras in
a number of dance halls during the 19205, specialized in such music.
When this band recorded numbers like Jelly Roll Morton's "Wolverine
Blues" with the influential Frank Trumbauer on C-melody saxophone,
the musical gap between Chicago social dance music and jazz greatly
narrowed. Even the Benson Orchestra's renditions of numbers like "Go
Emmaline" and "San" set high musical standards for the performance of
arranged-but-hot dance music.
James Lincoln Collier's description of New York City dance orches-
tras in the twenties aptly describes this influential Chicago counterpart.
Dance bands like Edgar Benson's concentrated on a "smooth exposition
of melody, with good tone, clean attack, [and] accurate execution, at the
expense of improvised risk-taking." Groups like this one also sought to
appeal to a broader range of sensibilities, recording waltzes ("Pal of My
Cradle Days," "I'm Drifting Back to Dreamland," "Tears of Happiness")
72 Chicago Jazz

and a number of sentimental songs ("Fair One," "Lonely Little Wall-

flow'r," and "After All, I Adore You") which were calculated to appeal to
a brand of lingering Victorian sentiment against which Chicago jazz
bands were in rebellion.18
JPA officers Jessie Binford and Elizabeth L. Crandall regularly in-
spected the leading dance halls. This arrangement worked well and kept
the leading dance halls in operation for six years before the depression set
in. In late 1928, however, Chicago newspapers discovered that the Na-
tional Association of Ball Room Proprietors and Managers was paying at
least one JPA official—Elizabeth Crandall—for her onsite investiga-
tions! Crandall's surviving reports on NABRPM dance halls were all
favorable. Thereafter, JPA made an effort to keep expense accounts,
which would help to justify the dispersal of funds collected by supervisors
from those being supervised. The stock market crash and depression
threw most of the dance halls temporarily out of business and left Eliz-
abeth Crandall writing angry letters about expense payments due to
her.1?
Several of Chicago's large, commercialized dance halls which opened
in the nineteen teens—dance halls subsequently associated closely with
the Jazz Age—had gradually fashioned distinctive musical and dance
formulae, choosing from among several degrees of dance music "respect-
ability." In 1915, Patrick T. Harmon took over direction of Dreamland
Ballroom on the near West Side, just outside the Loop at Paulina and
Van Buren, where three elevated lines converged overhead to create what
must have been a severe acoustical challenge. Harmon established a 19205
social dance and music polity "of moderate liberalism with the stop signal
up on the too hot."
Harmon's Dreamland catered to a heavily working class neighbor-
hood: "It is surrounded by families of the factory-working type. When
the mechanics and [telephone] operators get washed-up after supper they
have the urge to move to the strains of music." Harmon fully cooperated
with urban reformers and focused attention on music and social dancing,
despite the working class neighborhood in which his hall was located.
Elizabeth L. Crandall of the Juvenile Protective Association praised the
"well lighted and supervised" facility and emphasized the musical focus
of the proceedings she observed there:

The community singing here is always a unique feature and an in-

teresting one. During intermissions a crowd gathers around the pi-
 White Jazz and Dance Halls 73

ano where Mr. Mehle leads them in community singing until the
orchestra starts playing again for dancing.

Crandall even approved of the dancing, for although she witnessed

"some eccentric dancing here," she saw even more of the "regular foxtrot
and onestep than eccentric. The young people were dancing with much
vim and zest."20
At his Dreamland Ballroom, which doubled as a roller rink, "Paddy"
Harmon allowed some jazz. In order to appeal to a younger crowd than
that which patronized Guyon's Paradise, he hired the all-black Charles
Elgar Orchestra, a refined reminder of the South Side's cabaret world.
South Side musician Willie Randall recalled that Elgar played "good
bona fide ballroom music" at Harmon's Dreamland. "I don't say you
would identify it and tag it as jazz .. ."2I Taking advantage of a promis-
ing situation, Elgar started with a small combo and with Harmon's
support, he added a few musicians. By 1921, he enjoyed such renown
among the dancers that Isham Jones, seeking to enhance his own reputa-
tion as a jazz-oriented white orchestra leader, challenged Elgar to a
highly publicized "duel" of their nine-piece bands in order to grab some
reflected glory.
Elgar built a versatile professional orchestra which played a wide
variety of styles, ranging from the decorous waltzes, which it performed
from behind a cluster of potted palm trees at black banker Jesse Binga's
year-end parties, to concert wind ensemble literature, and some of the
latest popular styles. Elgar adjusted his music to the market. But at
Harmon's Dreamland he sometimes featured the improvised solos of the
wayward, playboy jazz cornetist Freddie Keppard.
Charles Cook's all-black Dreamland Orchestra, another versatile
concert and dance orchestra, which again featured cornetist Keppard, as
well as the easygoing, golf crazy jazz clarinetist Jimmie Noone, followed
from 1922 to 1928. Cook's band was "a fixture ... warm and popular
with the steppers." The dance hall even broke through to some hot jazz,
when, in early October 1925, Harmon hired Joe Oliver's jazz band to
play for the annual dance of the Checker Cab company, whose employees
were just the sort of streetwise savants to appreciate African-American
jazz.22
During the same years, Harmon also owned the Arcadia Ballroom,
an unpretentious working-class neighborhood dance hall on the North
Side at Broadway and Wilson Avenue where he again presented dance
74 Chicago Jazz

bands organized by Charles Elgar and led by Darnell Howard, among

others. Here, at the height of the Roaring Twenties, an observer wit-
nessed the democratic power of the ongoing grassroots dance movement.
A group of youngsters from the neighborhood, turned-out as "sheiks"
and "shebas," generated spontaneous dance contests: "popularity here is
based on the ability to twinkle an eccentric toe." Off in the darker corners
of the hall, "where the stag line converge[s] with the young frails," the
dancers competed for popularity through the originality of their steps:

When the individualistic dance style pleases one of the opposite sex
a team is formed, and they venture out on the main floor. Every-
body seems intent upon drawing the limelight in their [sic] direc-
tion. Fashions in stepping are exceedingly versatile and varied.

The Arcadia presented no professional dancers like Joe Frisco and Bee
Palmer: the neighborhood youth were proud enough of their own cre-
ativity that "the boys and girls would probably regard a team of profes-
sional dancers with disdain. And at that, very few professionals could
imitate some of the dancing pulled by the Arcadia amateurs."23
Another pillar of Chicago's commercialized and reformed jazz age
was White City, an amusement park named after the World's Colum-
bian Exposition of 1893 and run by Herbert A. and Ernest L. Beifield at
63rd Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. It was located in an immense,
sprawling rooming house district, near the El Station, streetcar lines, and
Illinois Central suburban trains. White City had opened in 1905 and was
subsequently attacked in 1909 by the Chicago Law and Order League for
renting out its facilities to morally suspect traveling carnivals. White City
management learned by 1914 to create more wholesome thrills based on
fast physical movement on "The Flash," its roller coaster, in its bowling
alley, and at a roller rink. Two dance floors, which could accommodate
up to 5,000 dancers, carefully separated young and old dancers. The main
ballroom had a cushioned dance floor, where a middle-aged crowd
danced the more traditional steps. At the Casino, according to a JPA
witness in 1917, the dancing was more "modern," and a "jazz band of
five pieces played all the fancy dance music." In the Casino, in contrast to
the ballroom, "most of the girls had their arms around the men's necks
and in many cases the faces together."
By at least 1916, the new syncopated social dance music at White City
Casino consistently drew a crowd of the more daring, fast moving white
 White Jazz and Dance Halls 75

teenagers: young men in the Casino wore spats and drank liquor; the
girls somehow seemed "hardly dressed" and wore "gaiters that once were
white." In the twenties, the Beifields featured Sig Meyers's Casino Druids
which included at various times Danny Altiere, Arnold Loyocano,
Wop Waller, Benny Goodman, and many of the jazz-influenced musi-
cians who worked at Midway Gardens as well. Variety likened their
music to "a blast from a furnace," "full of sock." "It is a sheik and
sheikess element Mr. Meyer [sic] and his lads appeal to. They use strictly
hotsy-totsy numbers [and] the clerks and stenos do their stuff." The all-
black dance bands of Charles Elgar and Charles Cook played long runs at
the Casino, while the House of David Jazz Band and Jimmy McPart-
land's Wolverines under the direction of the slick dance band booker
Husk O'Hare accepted the occasional job, too.2**
The Midway Gardens, at 6oth Street and Cottage Grove Avenue,
was, along with Harmon's Dreamland and the Beifields' White City
Casino, among the most important Juvenile Protective Association-
approved dance halls which catered to a young working-class audience.
This hall offered hot, jazz-influenced dance music played by a mixture of
serious white jazz musicians and dance band professionals. This dance
hall's history is an interesting example of the shifting economic and
political foundations of cultural hierarchies in American music. Designed
by Frank Lloyd Wright and opened in 1914 as an outdoor, summer
concert garden for the National Symphony Orchestra, the Midway Gar-
dens had offered "high class modern cuisine" and other refreshments.
The Winter Garden, the indoor concert facility of this sprawling com-
plex, was also opened for "devotees of the prevailing craze for modern
social dancing," when not used by the National Symphony under the
direction of Max Bendix. Just before World War I, private financial
backing crumbled, and the Gardens were sold to the Edelweiss Brewing
Company, which turned the high brow music center into a beer garden
that now shared the name of a more notorious club several blocks away.
Closed in 1923, this second Edelweiss Gardens was reopened the follow-
ing year as the Midway Dancing Gardens.25
The Midway Dancing Gardens built its own identity by presenting
dance music that was advertised as hotter and more daring than that
offered by the nearby Trianon Ballroom. As a show business trade paper
noted, located so close to the larger, more modern Trianon, the Midway
Dancing Gardens' band "has to be good since the ballroom offers only
dancing and charges f i to get in." The concert shell, built for the Na-
76 Chicago Jazz

tional Symphony, focused attention on the music made by the dance

orchestra through the large, acoustically advanced sound board behind
the bandstand:

Backed by a tremendous sound board, the musicians conform to the

usual "Chi" tempo of mixing in numerous fast trots ... while main-
taining a rhythm conducive to stepping. The orchestra has some-
thing of a reputation which seems securely based upon merit. They
drew heavily on a Thursday, an off night.

Another reporter scornfully noted that the Midway Gardens attracted

the lower social class whites: "the boys with the round hair cuts and the
'hotsie totsies' gather ... it was 'Corn Festival' week." Variety, the show
business trade paper, considered it Chicago's ultimate Roaring Twenties
dance hall:

There is not a mature person to be found on the Midway Gardens

dance floor. The youths in their inevitable high-waisted dark suits
and with long funny hair and glossy with vaseline are perfect proto-
types of the ballroom sheiks. The girls, most of them pretty and all
of them endurance dancers, are dressed flashingly. In the daytime,
their occupations probably range from dipping chocolates to taking
dictation.

Jazz pianist/composer Elmer Schoebel led the orchestra through 1924

into 1925. Variety reported that "'Hot Stuff with a fast tempo is the only
sort of music that receives any encouragement." Schoebel hired the
rhythm section from the now defunct white New Orleans Rhythm Kings
jazz band—string and brass bassist Steve Brown, banjoist Lou Black,
drummer Frank Snyder, and saxophonist Jack Pettis—to play in his
Midway Gardens Orchestra, combining them with such dance band
professionals as trumpeters Arthur "Murphy" Steinberg, Frankie Quar-
tell, and reedman Art Kassel.26
Schoebel's hot dance band made a series of recordings in 1923, under
such names as the Original Memphis Melody Boys, the Midway Gardens
Orchestra, Midway Dance Orchestra, and the Chicago Blues Dance Or-
chestra, "Blue Grass Blues" and "House of David Blues" by the last-
named of these bands were labeled by Variety as "typical examples of the
colored indigo school of dance compositions," and these records give a
good idea of what many white working-class dancers must have under-
 White Jazz and Dance Halls 77

stood the term jazz to mean in 1923. The eleven-piece orchestra played
ensemble-dominated, frequently polyphonic versions of original tunes
written by Schoebel and other members of the band. The two trumpets
usually took the lead in harmony, a common pattern among white dance
bands of the twenties. The orchestra interjected plenty of two-bar instru-
mental breaks and favored cup-muted trumpet effects. The trombonist
played in a solid New Orleans tailgate style, and the clarinet contributed
excellent New Orleans obbligato embroidery. The reedmen doubled on
saxophones, sometimes taking the melodic lead for a chorus, and other-
wise playing harmonic and rhythmic support. Schoebel's head arrange-
ments, riff figures, and movement of the lead from one to another of the
wind instruments contributed variety and kept the polyphonies from
becoming cluttered.
But the band's rhythm was not without anomalies. The rhythm
section of Black, Snyder, Brown, and Schoebel swung steadily and hap-
pily along, laying down a smoothly infectious beat at medium dance
tempos; ban joist Lou Black in particular played with a cocky assurance
which propelled the rhythm into a jumping trot. But the modern sound-
ing jazz beat was nearly neutralized by what was often a stiff syncopated
ragtime phrasing by the trumpets. None of the band's lead horns, not
even Murph Steinberg, who hung around with jazz musicians, had ad-
vanced rhythmically as far as the musicians who had come over from the
New Orleans Rhythm Kings. To compound what amounts to a rhythmic
confusion, the clarinetist played his breaks and solos in a legato, quarter-
and half-note style which ignored the band's pulse.
The Midway Gardens Orchestra corrected its jazz shortcomings
when, in 1926-27, dance band leaders Sig Meyers and Floyd Towne
brought in the hottest young whites on wind instruments—intellectual
looking reedman Frank Teschemacher, school dropout and jazz cor-
netist "Kid Muggsy" Spanier, and saxophonist Danny Altiere, as well as
the slickly handsome Mississippi River valley pianist Jess Stacy. These
musicians could share and even enliven the Midway Gardens dance beat
with their urgent, rowdy, unpredictable instrumental work.2?
In contrast to the Midway Gardens, Dreamland, and White City, all
built before the war, the Trianon Ballroom at 6and and Cottage Grove,
built in the twenties and a NABRPM member from the start, sailed
through the jazz age attracting large crowds of dancers with a conserva-
tive music policy which explicitly avoided hot jazz. Built in 1922 by
entertainment entrepreneur Andrew Karzas for the then unheard of sum
78 Chicago Jazz

of $1,000,000, the Trianon was at that time the most expensive and
elaborate of the commercialized dance halls built in Chicago to capitalize
on the popular dance craze. Surrounded by Louis XVI-inspired decor,
the dance floor was built to accommodate 3000 dancers, with room for an
equal number in the many foyers, promenades, and loges. The Trianon
was strategically located in the growing far South Side Woodlawn room-
ing house district for "working girls and laboring men" to whom it
offered evenings of glamorous, urban sophistication. In addition to its
dance music, the ballroom presented floorshows and demonstrations of
aids to glamor, producing commercial dramas such as this: a woman,
asked why she had come to the Trianon, replied that:

She was hunting her husband 'Cy, who was in Chicago ... she was
going to be beautiful so that 'Cy would not neglect her and this was
a cue which led to the opening of the curtains and the disclosure of
a Marinello beauty parlor.

To young people recently arrived from the country, or to the children

of immigrant parents, the Trianon might have seemed pretty "jazzy,"
but the dance music there was several steps removed from what insiders
considered Chicago jazz. Karzas opened his ballroom with the Paul
Whiteman Symphonic Jazz Orchestra at the royal sum of $25,000 for six
nights of music, "the highest salary ever in the dance orchestra world."
But the band flopped with Chicago dancers, who had come to the open-
ing instead of going to their usual neighborhood dance halls, expecting a
steady rhythm for dancing. But, as one of Whiteman's musicians con-
fessed to local jazz entrepreneur Bert Kelly at the grand opening: "My
God, they just wouldn't dance to our music."i8
One probable explanation lay in Whiteman's focus on jazz for listen-
ing rather than for dancing. He championed "symphonic syncopation,"
and sometimes denied that his orchestra even played jazz: "What we
have played is 'syncopated rhythm,' quite another thing. And our orches-
trations have always been worked out with all the color and beauty of
symphonies." This concept of jazz-influenced music-making later led to
Whiteman's pioneering concert at Aeolian Hall in New York City on
Frebruary 12, 1924, and encouraged complex musical arrangements
made primarily for listening rather than dancing. Whiteman cleverly
manipulated tonal colors and rhythmic patterns to maximize aural inter-
est. He succeeded so well that many dancers could no longer find the
 White Jazz and Dance Halls 79

steady, swinging Chicago beat which made dance hall patrons want to
dance. As the New York Clipper put it: "Those who like his music refuse
to patronize a dance hall and mingle with the masses; while dance hall
patrons won't pay $2 to get into a Whiteman concert." Abel Green, one of
the very early show business writers to follow jazz and dance music
closely, put in:

... no dance organization can flit from the dance floor to the stage
and do justice to either. A stage dance orchestra cannot play the
fancy arrangements and really maintain a perfect dance rhythm.
That's a musical impossibility.

Less technically oriented jazz bands often knew better how to please the
dancers:

In a dance hall, amidst hundreds of feet, the special arrangements

are literally lost in the shuffle while the "hot" band with no pre-
tense at symphonic qualities, blares forth the rhythmic jazz in a
manner to please the masses.

In the twenties, large numbers of young Chicagoans, who followed the

latest developments in social dance music, wanted "that steady hammer-
ing rhythm," and Chicago jazz musicians valued those who kept "good
time."29
Although the Trianon was an important "jazz age" institution in
Chicago—Karzas even brought in Rudolph Valentino for a one-night-
stand—people who were looking for hot dance music would have
scorned the waltzes which Karzas reportedly mandated every third num-
ber. They also would have resented the tuxedoed "floor men" who
circulated constantly to reprove any who indulged in wild dancing and/or
displays of affection on the dance floor.
The Trianon subsequently hired a series of dance bands led by such
white leaders as Roy Bargy, Isham Jones, Paul Biese, Art Kassel, Dell
Lampe, Arnold Johnson, and any of a number of dance orchestras
booked by the ubiquitous Edgar Benson. These bands presented a more
refined, old-fashioned dance music, catering to the sensibilities of an
older audience for whom dancing to a gently bouncing beat in a public
place seemed daring enough in itself. Lampe's Orchestra from the Tri-
anon Ballroom, for example, nodded in the direction of hot twenties jazz
when recording a warm version of "Prince of Wails" but demonstrated
80 Chicago Jazz

its concern for an older, more conservative crowd by waxing "Trianon

Chicago Tango," "Lady of the Nile," and "The Midnight Waltz."3°
The impulse behind the Trianon and its relationship to jazz were
caught by band leader Meyer Davis, who sponsored a contest to rename
"jazz" for people who disliked the word's lowlife implications. "Synco-
Pep" won from a group of sanitizing euphemisms which included
"Rhythmic-reverie," "Rhapsodoon," "Peppo," "Exilera," "Hades Har-
monies," "Paradisa," "Glideola," and "Mah Song." Guy Lombardo and
His Royal Canadians played extensively for Chicago dancers in the 19205
and sought to please the same upper-middle-class white audience as
Meyer Davis. Discographer Brian Rust was surprised to discover that
"when required" Lombardo's dance band of the twenties could "play as
'hot' as any of their contemporaries." "St. Louis Blues," "The Cannon
Ball," and "Mama's Gone, Goodbye" startle the jazz fan with their
stomping heat. But Lombardo was more likely to record waltzes like
"Charmaine," "Ramona," and "Sweet Chewaukla, the Land of Sleepy
Water" and a broad range of mawkish vocal numbers like "Sweet
Dreams," "Please Let Me Dream in Your Arms," and "You're the Sweet-
est Girl This Side of Heaven."3"
Other large, commercial, all-white Chicago ballrooms similarly re-
fined, diluted, and camouflaged jazz. For example, Fred and Al Mann's
"Million Dollar" Rainbo Gardens, at the intersection of North Clark
Street and Lawrence Avenue on the Near North Side, featured a stage
which opened onto the outside gardens and also moved inward to the
center of the dance floor. The Rainbo Gardens staged "Elaborate specta-
cles and vaudeville numbers—ballets in the grand manner of the great
opera houses" for which Frank Westphal (a novelty pianist in the Zez
Confrey tradition who was once married to Sophie Tucker) and his
Rainbo Orchestra provided the accompaniment in the early twenties.
This band sounded much closer to jazz than most white social dance
orchestras. They recorded "State Street Blues," "Oh! Sister, Ain't That
Hot?," "Beale Street Mama," and "Aunt Hager's Blues."
But, according to Variety, the Rainbo Gardens appealed to "the white
collar, middle class element ... family groups that would not feel com-
fortable in the hotsy-totsy environment of the cubby-hole cafes and can
step out at the Rainbo and still be dignified." For these customers, West-
phal recorded "Where the Volga Flows" and "That Lullaby Strain." Re-
cordings made by the Victor Company of Ralph Williams and the Rainbo
Gardens Orchestra show a more predictable adaptation of jazz numbers
 White Jazz and Dance Halls 81

like Elmer Schoebel's "Prince of Wails" into a peppy medium tempoed

arrangement lacking instrumental solos or insistent rhythmic heat.
Like Rainbo Gardens, the Eitel brothers' Marigold Gardens at the
intersection of Broadway, Grace, and Halsted streets, was another
sprawling complex of terraces, indoor and outdoor dance floors, and
dining facilities. It featured elaborate stage revues, sometimes involving
twenty-five to forty chorus girls, rather than hot dance music.'2
Whenever ballroom proprietors moved toward a dine-and-dance or
supper club policy, the music took on a more soothing, conservative cast.
The Terrace Gardens, adjoining the Morrison Hotel at Madison and
Clark streets, for example, was the largest dance hall in the Loop, de-
signed to faintly echo jazz age sensibilities. The dance floor was sur-
rounded with banked rows of tables and chairs so that as many as 900
customers could seat themselves between dance numbers and during
floor shows and revues. The proprietors billed the Gardens as "Chicago's
Wonder Restaurant" and presented featured attractions like "Elizabeth
Friedman and her Famous Elida Ballet in a Musical Revue of Dance
Divertissements." F'or social dancing, patrons of the Terrace Gardens
stepped to a series of large, refined dance bands like those of Jimmy
Travers, trumpeter Fred Hamm, saxophonist Paul Biese, and others
under the direction of the Edgar Benson organization. They all provided
a gently bouncing beat, violins, and plenty of predictable, reassuring
melody. Variety concluded that Terrace Gardens catered to an "out-of-
town clientele ... the man from Keokuk, Iowa ... transient middle class
Rotarians."33
The show business trade papers and most patrons fully accepted the
refined, bouncy dance music that was played in Chicago's large, racially
exclusive hotel ballrooms as jazz. The hotel dance orchestra often defined
itself in contrast to the "rackety, 'blarey' conglomerations of noise makers"
of past years, searching for something "softer," with a "fullness of tonal
quality ... decidedly more melodious and symphonic" with which to
entertain the customers, who had paid at least a one-dollar cover charge
which acted "as a sort of refiner keeping the undesirable element away."34
Playing in the leading hotels required a regimentation of behavior
and appearance. Dance band musicians were expected to "be at all times
immaculate in appearance, gentlemanly in conduct, clean-cut, well-bred,
and business-like." One had to "realize his place and never attempt to
assert authority." The orchestra took care to coordinate its activities with
the maitre d' to avoid interfering with the food service. One prominent
82 Chicago Jazz

leader recommended that hotel dance orchestras play ig-minute sets

followed by i2-minute intermissions, allowing the customers time for
five 3-minute numbers and then time to eat and relax.^
Out-of-town businessmen and tourists with plenty of money to spend
could easily find jazz-influenced dance music down in the Loop at the
Sherman Hotel's College Inn, where Isham Jones and his Orchestra were
the sole attraction for many years. Jones, along with San Francisco dance
band leader Art Hickman, had been among the first to abandon the early
twentieth-century hotel formula of "Viennese violin ensembles," which
had played behind rows of potted palms, for a featured dance band,
which included choirs of saxophones. Jones provided a zesty brand of
popular dance music in which the complex, harmonically advanced ar-
rangements by Jones himself and his pianist Roy Bargy managed not to
overwhelm the spirit of good times.
Jones' band was careful to "watch its step" in catering to "unsophisti-
cated tourists and dignified Chicagoans." The College Inn was described
as "gathering patrons of the better class of transients and among the wise
crowd, it is oft slangily termed the 'sucker joint of the Windy City.'"
According to Variety, the rowdy "soc" [sic] stuff was left to "working
girls' ballrooms" like the Midway Gardens. Jones entertained a well-
heeled clientele, who descended the stairs onto a long plush red carpeted
aisle called "Peacock Alley," along which the royalty of Chicago's car-
riage trade, tourists, and celebrities strutted their stuff. In addition to the
dollar cover charge the patrons paid "relatively expensive" prices for
dinner.36
Isham Jones went much farther than any of the other Chicago hotel
dance bands in casting African-American blues numbers within involved
arrangements. His records of "Aunt Hagar's Children's Blues," "Hen-
pecked Blues," and "Forgetful Blues" all show a sharp staccato ensemble
attack and heavy vibrato from all the wind instruments. While the
rhythm sections seem to mount some momentum, the solo horns seem
not to break their solos into regular rhythmic units at all; cornetist Louis
Panico, a self-professed admirer of King Oliver, turns mute techniques
into musical humor, fashioning all sorts of unusual solo muted effects
which, nevertheless, ignore the underlying rhythmic pulse. He and the
clarinets reach regularly for satirically comical effects reminiscent of the
Original Dixieland Jazz Band. When Jones took his dance band to New
York, eastern audiences thought of his fast stepping numbers as "bois-
terous" "fireworks" from the "'sawdust' situation" of Chicago's Sherman
 White Jazz and Dance Halls 83

Hotel. California bandleader Vincent Lopez took over Jones' job at the
College Inn in February 1925.37
From the end of World War I to about that same date, dance music
in Chicago's other leading hotels was controlled by orchestra entrepre-
neur Edgar Benson, who fashioned exclusive booking arrangements with
the Sherman, Drake, Edgewater Beach, Blackstone, LaSalle, and Bis-
marck hotels. Trade papers alleged that Benson created such exclusive
bookings through kickback schemes; wealthy hotel patrons would hire
his bands for private parties, and Benson "kicked back" to the hotel a
percentage of what he earned.
Benson's power in the dance band business served to impede the
passage of newer sounds into hotel clubs and to promote weaker dilutions
of jazz. At one time or another, Benson booked the orchestras of Ben
Bernie, Roy Bargy, Paul Biese, the Oriole Orchestra at Edgewater Beach,
Arnold Johnson, Dell Lampe, Don Bestor, Frank Westphal, Jean Gold-
kette (before he moved to Detroit), and his own Benson Orchestra. These
bands moved about, playing long-term contracted runs at the Green Mill
Gardens, Trianon Ballroom, Marigold Gardens, Merry Gardens, the
Pershing Palace, Crillon, Deauville, the Tent, Silver Slipper, La Boherne,
Pantheon, the Senate, Tip Top Room, Rector's, the North American, the
Midway Gardens, and Guyon's Paradise. As Variety put it: "It is next to
impossible for any outside orchestra to come into Chicago at the recog-
nized Benson trencholds .. ."38
Benson's grip on "high class" white dance music perpetuated what
trade papers considered a conservative brand of "symphonic syncopating
combinations without the noisy effects produced by jazz bands." The
elaborate arrangements appealed to a variety of delicate Victorian senti-
ments. When working for Edgar Benson, Biese, Bernie, and Bargy incor-
porated refined and restrained jazz numbers into their repertoires, rely-
ing upon a new breed of "specialty jazzers," well-trained dance music
sight-readers, section men who could also take an occasional jazz solo. At
the start of the decade, such musicians were rare; those sent by the union
were too mechanical, "unable to follow the 'trick' stuff, or unacceptable
of appearance."
When actual jazz musicians were willing to step in, the problem was
solved, but many of them couldn't sight-read music or were scornful of
the "sweet bands" and "likely to turn Bolshevik." A new breed of highly
trained section men, however, began to master a tamed, dance band
version of the jazz beat and solo inflections, often copying straight from
84 Chicago Jazz

jazz records. Louis Panico was the most celebrated of a group of trum-
peters which also included Frankie Quartell.w
"Dance music technicians" developed their own ways of understand-
ing the jazz elements expected of twenties dance bands: according to
Variety, legitimately trained musicians in the jazzy dance bands thought
of "jazz" as "snappy, but not necessarily in tune"; to these legitimately
trained instrumentalists, "get hot" signified "scorching the air by blowing
notes off key"; they defined a "hokum" player as "not necessarily a good
musician but a good performer."
The surging jazz beat presented established dance band musicians
with major problems. Most simply could not catch it. In order to assimi-
late what they understood about the new beat, dance band leaders hired
college men, since "they have the spirit of the new generation in their
dance rhythms." Many young college men were not only technically well-
schooled enough to play the charts, but also in touch with the latest
dancing rhythms. College musicians were more likely to have "the bear-
ing and appearance of a gentleman," important when hotels kept a sharp
eye on their employees (particularly musicians). They were young, hand-
some, and knew how to approximate enough rhythmic swing to appeal to
the younger dancers. They could earn more—usually over $50 a week—
with a major dance band than they would have commanded at most
other jobs. It took them some time to realize that they were earning
substantially less than a dance band's regular musicians.
Where Benson failed to gain control of a dance band or a booking, he
could usually manipulate selected musicians in the orchestra. He booked
individual players as well as groups on a commission basis and a "play-or-
pay guarantee" under which the musician was assured of payment
whether he worked or not, but could not control where or to whom he
was assigned. Pianist/leader Roy Bargy was widely admired by jazz
musicians and had been Bix Beiderbecke's tutor in harmony. Benson
actively impeded Bargy's ambitions when he sought to break away on his
own; Benson split up Bargy's band by withdrawing key musicians. He
did the same thing to Isham Jones, luring away his star trumpeter Louis
Panico and setting him up with his own band in vaudeville and at
Guyon's Paradise. When Jones went into New York's Cafe de la Paix
cabaret on Broadway without his star attractions, the club bounced his
paychecks.^0
Edgar Benson's power also depended on close cooperation with mu-
sic publishers, retail music merchandisers, and recording companies. The
social dance craze turned publishers of sheet music and orchestral ar-
 White Jazz and Dance Halls 85

rangements away from vaudeville, where they had used vocal acts to
promote their products, and toward prominent dance bands. Publishers
tended to blame jazz for an ongoing slump in sheet music sales, conclud-
ing that jazz signaled a decline in musical literacy. As the New York
Clipper put it: "A well written melodious number is so buried under the
jazz antics of scores of orchestras that the audience can scarcely recognize
the melody. . . ." Benson's orchestras featured plenty of unadorned mel-
ody, thereby attracting the keen interest of the music publishing houses.
Together, band leader and publisher arranged with recording executives
to wax tunes created for the mass market; in fact, companies like
Brunswick and Victor reserved potential hit songs for their popular
recording orchestras, leaving the novelty tunes and ethnic music to little-
known bands. Once a likely hit had been recorded, promotional activity
could become intense. Well-known recording bands appeared in vaude-
ville, cabarets, hotels, and even music stores, where the windows were
decorated with special publicity streamers, hangers, folders, catalogues,
and cardboard cut-outs.*1
In 1924 and 1925, however, several of Edgar Benson's most famous
bandleaders began to follow Isham Jones in rebellion; first Paul Biese,
then Roy Bargy, and finally even Don Bestor declared their indepen-
dence. As a result, big dance bands—Abe Lyman's from Los Angeles, the
Coon-Sanders Nighthawks from Kansas City, and New York's Vincent
Lopez Orchestra—began to play long runs in Chicago's poshest dine and
dance clubs. Moreover, a new breed of band bookers with national ambi-
tions stepped in to promote the dance bands and jazz groups which
Benson had shunned. Ernie Young, among the first of this influential
group, had produced black-and-tan revues in some of Chicago's hottest
cabarets and promoted Roy Bargy, Paul Biese, King Oliver's Jazz Band,
Elgar and his Champion Colored Orchestra, the Seattle Harmony Kings
with hot cornetist Wild Bill Davison, and the Marigold Garden orches-
tra. Dance band leader Ray Miller booked Ben Bernie and his Notable
Dance Orchestra into New York's Roosevelt Hotel; he and I. Jay Faggen
organized Cosmopolitan Orchestras Booking and Promotion which han-
dled King Oliver's Jazz Band and vocalist Red McKenzie's Mound City
Blue Blowers.t2
Especially important for the spread of a more heated brand of dance
music by both white and black jazz bands was the Music Corporation of
America, organized by Jule C. Stein and Ernie Young in 1922. At first
locked out of Chicago by Edgar Benson, MCA subsequently moved in to
precipitate his decline, booking many of the hotter bands which appealed
86 Chicago Jazz

to the younger dancers. Stein was also the first to effectively organize
national booking of dance bands and dance halls, opening a New York
office in 1926 in order to better book MCA bands on the east coast and
particularly in New England. Stein reportedly built an elaborately
equipped, experimental ballroom near Waukegan, Illinois, where his
production department worked to develop the "entertainment possi-
bilities" of the many local bands which vied for broader exposure.«
In terms of sheer numbers, therefore, more Chicagoans experienced
the jazz age in large, racially segregated, commercialized dance halls and
hotel supper clubs than in the jazz cabarets. The music which these
institutions presented varied according to the sensibilities of the propri-
etors and managers, but represented an attempt to assimilate some jazz
within a broader range of tastes. The Midway Gardens, White City
Casino, Harmon's Dreamland Ballroom, and Harmon's Arcadia played
major roles in popularizing several styles of jazz-influenced dance music.
In these dance halls, a jazzman like Freddie "King" Keppard, relin-
quishing his role as a dance band section leader, might take a sip from the
straw which he had inserted into a bottle hidden in his inside jacket
pocket, and shortly thereafter break into a searing solo flight which
would momentarily transform a more restrained evening of dance music.
He, Louis Armstrong, Jimmie Noone, and young, innovative white jazz
musicians like Frank Teschemacher and Benny Goodman stabbed out
the occasional driving, unpredicatable solos which added the heat of
Chicago's tough, fast-moving, youthful sensibilities to Jazz Age dance
music.44
But several of Chicago's white jazzmen, musicians who devoted their
lives to jazz, often felt constrained by the straight melodic or harmonic
ensemble lines in what they called the "sweet" dance bands. Their fiery
solo sensibility could be expressed more freely in a smaller orchestra and a
less regulated venue. Famous jazzmen like Keppard, Spanier, Noone,
Stacy, Goodman, and Teschemacher maintained long working relation-
ships with the dance bands, but other devotees of hot rhythms, poly-
phonic ensembles, and improvised instrumental solos denigrated the
dance orchestras as a commercial compromise of their artistic freedom.
Their careers in jazz were often grounded on their efforts to turn their
understanding of South Side Chicago jazz against the commercial com-
promises of the "sweet" dance bands. It is time to look more closely at the
relationships of the white Chicago jazzmen to the cultural forces that
molded Chicago in the twenties.
 4
White Chicago Jazz:
Cultural Context

JAZZ QUICKLY BECAME a major musical expression of white sen-

sibilities. Among the factors contributing to this were the performances
of white New Orleans bands beginning in 1915, the early appearances of
black orchestras in white clubs and dance halls, the assimilations of
ragtime and nut jazz by white Chicago dance bands, the jazz band
records of several white groups recorded in New York City, the popu-
larity of African-American musicians in the South Side black-and-tan
cabarets, the pioneering jazz and jazz-influenced dance hall music of
Elmer Schoebel, and, lastly, the determination of some white Chicagoans
to take inspiration from South Side musicians and become jazzmen, too.
By the mid-twenties, an inner circle of brash young whites began to
appear, who strongly identified with Chicago's jazz scene and devoted
themselves with a religious fervor to jazz music and the jazz life. Their
careers began five to ten years after South Side clarinetist Darnell How-
ard appeared with Wickliffe's Ginger Orchestra, "America's Greatest Jaz
Combination," in 1916.'
In twenties Chicago, white jazz musicians labored under a consider-
able disadvantage among knowledgeable cabaret goers. They were rela-
tively inexperienced when compared with the South Siders. According to
88 Chicago Jazz

Paul Eduard Miller, an early chronicler of Chicago jazz, the relatively

small inner circle of acute jazz listeners in the 19205 recognized that black
musicians played better, more mature, more confident jazz than whites.2
The general public, although less aware of the differences between
good and less good bands, also tended to think, because of the long
traditions of minstrelsy and vaudeville, that blacks played "real" jazz. As
a result, the aspirations of white Chicago jazzmen were caught between
the reputation of the black stars in the South Side cabarets and the
demonstrated ability of the white dance bands, which were so well
ensconced in the large hotel ballrooms and the dance halls. Would-be
white jazzmen couldn't become black, although one of them—Mezz
Mezzrow—tried mightily. They could, however, learn to play hotter and
wilder jazz than that offered by the white dance bands. Some rebellious
young Chicagoans cultivated a strong sense of cultural alienation from
the suburban middle class, turning their experience of South Side jazz
and their understanding of racial injustice into a critique of mainstream
America.
The impulse to play a wilder, freer music arose not from race but
from the excitement of urban life. Like the black musicians, those whites
who determined to play jazz had been deeply stirred by the excitement of
Chicago, itself. Early twentieth-century Chicago produced a generation
of teenagers of all races whose lives were more deeply influenced by the
experience of the city than by traditional rural definitions of family,
culture or career. Many such youngsters worked as newspaper sellers, bell
hops, telegram runners, saloon entertainers, messengers, advertisers, inci-
dental laborers, and street vendors of all sorts of merchandise, from
chewing gum to cigarettes. Kids like these sometimes worked or played
late into the night, ate whatever and whenever they pleased, rarely at-
tended school, might smoke and drink from very early ages, and some-
times used drugs like marijuana, which was then sold openly on Chicago
street corners. The music of the white Chicago jazzmen—the Mc-
Partlands, Bud Freeman, Mezz Mezzrow, George Wettling, Muggsy
Spanier—expressed some of the tough freedom of such youngsters, who
lacked formal education and were powerfully drawn to what Jane Ad-
dams called "The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets."3
Urban reform observers of the mid-twenties street cultures asserted
that such youth were drawn to the thrill of urban freedom; a typical
youngster learned "to like and to depend upon the excitement of the
streets and he sees all aspects of vice ... he acquires a distaste for a regular
 White Chicago Jazz: Cultural Context 89

occupation." One Chicagoan recalled newspaper boys from ten to fifteen

years old, for example, as they roared off into the night in the back of
delivery trucks:

The joy of it. They cling on casually, waving unconcerned arms and
legs at the sides. They disappear into the night. Riding on swift
going trucks at night. Free of control. Yet controlled for the sake of
[newspaper] circulation ... what home could compete in fascination
with the lure of those night rides on the rushing trucks, that undis-
ciplined, nomadic life which is recruiting ground for our gangs and
our criminals?

Similarly, "Children of the Stage," very young ones, became veteran

actors and performers, like the two "mere infants" who did "an Amazing
Apache dance" in dozens of Chicago theaters, cabarets and night clubs,
performing until 2:00 a.m. Such youngsters feasted on urban popular
entertainment, eagerly mixing in the itinerant street carnivals and back-
room gambling parlors, spending long hours in the vaudeville theaters
and cheap nickleodeons, hanging around at the swinging doors in hopes
of earning some change by entertaining the habitues with a song. These
resilient ragamuffins read "the small magazines like Red Pepper, Zip,
Jazz, Whiz Bang, Frolics, Short Stories, Hot Dog, and the Wampus Cat."
They knew where to find excitement, discovering everything from ob-
scene post cards for sale in seedy store fronts, to gangster hideouts, and
wild apartment rent parties with their tough, syncopated blues, ragtime,
and jazz.4
Upper-class urban reformers probably exaggerated the lower-class
basis of these urban street sensibilities, which also, according to the novels
of James T. Farrell, seized the high-school age children of the white
middle class on the Far South Side. Bored by school, repulsed by and
somewhat afraid of organized religion, angry at .authoritarian parents
who remained determinedly out of touch with the youth culture of the
streets, Studs Lonigan and his friends search for adventure in the defi-
ance of middle-class respectability by running in gangs, fighting, stealing,
smoking and chewing tobacco, and discovering the forbidden pleasures
of city life.5
The white Chicago jazzmen who thrilled to the excitement of twen-
ties Chicago hailed from both working- and middle-class families and
came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Milton "Mezz" Mezzrow,
90 Chicago Jazz

who was born on the Northwest Side in 1899 and who wrote the best
known of the white Chicago jazz autobiographies, clearly identified his
need to make music with a youthful sense of roaming the streets "all
jammed up full of energy, restless as a Mexican jumping bean ... I felt
like I wanted to jump out of my skin, hop off into space ..."

It was a lot more than a mere sex flash that kept me all keyed up. I
was maneuvering for a new language that would make me shout
out loud and romp on to glory. What I needed was the vocabulary.
I was feeling my way to music like a baby fights its way into talk.

Mezzrow ignored his parents' urging toward solid professional respect-

ability. He hung around Division and Western avenues with a gang of
young toughs, who tried to "live our whole lives out before the sun went
down." Similarly, Chicago percussion instructor Roy Knapp, who taught
most of Chicago's leading white jazz drummers, remembered that Gene
Krupa, his star pupil, was a wild bundle of adolescent nerves, "drum-
ming on the walls," when he first came to see about taking lessons.6
Jazz fanatic and chronicler Ralph Berton, brother of the noted drum-
mer Vic Berton, proudly explained to his hero, cornetist Bix Beiderbecke,
that he had graduated from Goudy Elementary School, Winthrop Ave-
nue at Foster, despite having spent a grand total of two years going to
classes. Vic and his other brother Gene grew up "outside the walls of
school and church ... complaisant parents ... spared [us] other sacred
institutions we saw imposed on all other kids " Ralph Berton spent as
much time as he wished "learning, or doing, exactly what I wanted,"
which, in his case, meant exploring the city, reading at random, and
listening to records.7
Chicago's excitement also worked powerfully on trumpeter Max Ka-
minsky, who later remembered "the bursting feeling of life in the city,
engendered by the hordes of eager young people from Midwestern farms
and small towns who swarmed into Chicago by the thousands." Chicago,
"this bubbling, yeasty stew," was "a fast city [with] a fast life, a 'toddlin'
town." Kaminsky, born to Russian immigrant parents, in Brockton, Mas-
sachusetts, arrived on the Chicago scene in 1928, and found a world of
difference from the east coast. His colleague, banjoist Eddie Condon, did
a great deal to promote the notion of an inner circle of true believers,
whom he labeled in 1927 "the Chicagoans," and later "the barefoot mob"
or the Condon "Gang." They were jazz zealots who played a definable
 White Chicago Jazz: Cultural Context 91

style called "Chicago Jazz." Condon couldn't get into Chicago night life
quickly or deeply enough, eagerly fleeing the repressive morality of rural
Indiana and Illinois. "A bantam sized, cocksure little guy, with an impu-
dent Irish face, a quicksilver mind, and a lethal tongue ... bow tied,
debonair, tight-mouthed, and gimlet-eyed," Condon came fully alive
only in the fast-moving world of jazz and cabarets.8
Few of these white Chicago musicians reasoned their ways to jazz;
rather, they were drawn to visceral, nonverbal forms of personal expres-
siveness as teenagers or very young men. Their shared devotion to jazz
functioned as a religious faith, providing a new form of sectarian cohe-
sion and an idealistic scale of values. Jazz, as Neil Leonard has explained,
often acted in this manner as a religion for many who had been cast adrift
in the maze of urban America.9
This sense of defying the dull and predictable lives prepared for them
by parents and school, of mutually discovering and shaping a powerful
and esoteric medium of musical and personal expressiveness, particularly
animated "the Chicagoans," a self-proclaimed inner circle of white true
believers in jazz, surrounded, as they saw it, by a deadening middle-class
world of crass commercialism. The label suggests an exclusive claim on
the creative spirit of twenties Chicago jazz, but it has usually been applied
to a relatively small group of white jazzmen who worked closely with
"the Austin High Gang" and promoters Eddie Condon and William
"Red" McKenzie. These jazzmen absorbed an enduring wild streak of
urban musical primitivism and would remain stubbornly loyal to it; but
even among Chicago's white jazz musicians of the twenties, they should
be understood to have been just one especially influential wing of a larger
group who merit the label "Chicagoans," too. This more numerous
group of white Chicago jazzmen included musicians who shared the
urge to make wild, exciting urban music, but whose sensibilities also
allowed them to play jazz in technically more arranged and commer-
cialized musical forms. The label camouflaged many white Chicago
jazzmen—clarinetists Benny Goodman, Bud Jacobson, and Voltaire De
Faut, drummer Vic Berton, pianist-bandleader Elmer Schoebel, for
example—who played jazz band improvisations, read dance band ar-
rangements, composed, arranged, and made substantial contributions to
Chicago jazz in the 19205.
As traditionally applied, the label "the Chicagoans" also has led to
misunderstandings about who actually played most of the jazz in twen-
ties Chicago. Compared to many of the South Side musicians, who never
92 Chicago jazz

claimed to represent the city or its culture, many of the whites—

significantly the "Austin High School Gang"—had short performing
careers in Chicago during the twenties, although they did have longer
careers later elsewhere. Leon "Six" Beiderbecke was often associated
with the city, but actually played relatively little there. Some important
white jazz musicians, like clarinetist Bud Jacobson, alto saxophonist
Boyce Brown, and reedman Rod Cless, slightly younger than the more
famous of the white Chicago jazzmen, played long runs in Chicago clubs
during the late twenties and throughout the 19305, certainly earning their
rank as "Chicagoans," even though their careers reflected less of the
glamour of the 19203 of Al Capone, Big Bill, and Elliott Ness.10
All of Chicago's white jazzmen were inspired by their visions of
freedom and excitement in the city, but their music, and especially their
careers, moved in different directions, depending upon their approaches
to resolving the contrary pressures arising from the influence of South
Side music and from the legacy of the commercial white dance bands.
Some white jazz musicians, best exemplified by Mezz Mezzrow, took an
inflexible stand in favor of. urban musical primitivism as opposed to the
commercial "sweet" dance bands. Others, led first by Elmer Schoebel and
later by Benny Goodman, found ways to express big city excitement in
musically more sophisticated (and ultimately more lucrative) ways.
One can identify three fairly distinct subgroups within the most
inclusive definition of white Chicago jazzmen, each with its own social
origins: first, those white jazzmen—Benny Goodman, Muggsy Spanier,
Gene Krupa, Art Hodes, Mezz Mezzrow, Floyd O'Brien, Volly de Faut,
Joe Sullivan, Vic Berton, and Joe Marsala—who were born and/or raised
in the city neighborhoods; second, those like Dave Tough, Frank
Teschemacher, Jim Lannigan, the McPartland brothers, Bud Freeman,
and Bud Jacobson, who were either born or raised in the suburbs;
third, a larger group—Eddie Condon, Wild Bill Davison, Bix Beider-
becke, Hoagy Carmichael, Rod Cless, Frank Trumbauer, and Elmer
Schoebel—who came to Chicago from various points in the Midwest in
order to pursue their goal of becoming jazz musicians.
Several of the important white Chicago jazz musicians were raised in
Chicago's relatively poor inner city neighborhoods. The largest number
were from the Near West Side, with a sprinkling from the Far South and
the Near North Sides. The Near West Side, an area bounded by Kinzie
Street on the north, the Chicago River on the east, and the Burlington
railroad tracks at i6th Street on the south, was the classic immigrant
 White Chicago Jazz: Cultural Context 93

melting pot of first- and second-generation Italians, Germans, Polish and

Russian Jews, and French Canadians. During the 19205, Italians were the
most numerous ethnic group on the Near West Side. That neighborhood
was also famous for Jane Addams Hull House at Halstead and Polk
streets, for numerous Italian gangsters ("Bootleggers' Square" was at
12th and Halstead), and for the dark and dirty alleys of inner city pov-
erty. It produced clarinetist Benny Goodman, pianist Art Hodes, reed-
man and organizer Mezz Mezzrow, cornetist Jimmy McPartland, and
probably tenor saxophone stylist Bud Freeman, too, although he and
McPartland always preferred to talk about their subsequent years in
Austin on the Far West Side. Drummers Gene Krupa and George Wet-
tling and clarinetists Volly DeFaut and Don Murray grew up on Chi-
cago's Far South Side, a white rooming house neighborhood, while trom-
bonist Floyd O'Brien grew up in Hyde Park and cornetist Muggsy
Spanier, who in 1924 led the Bucktown Five in the first significant jazz
recordings in Chicago by white musicians, came from the Near North
Side."
Attitudes toward music varied according to socio-economic status,
personal proclivities, and whether or not drinking had become an impor-
tant ritual of life; still, certain important similarities in outlook charac-
terized the poorer, inner city Chicagoans. Benny Goodman was one of
twelve children born to Russian immigrants who, while moving around,
settled for a time at 1125 Francisco Avenue in the Jewish ghetto on the
Near West Side. Goodman showed less adolescent rebelliousness than
Mezzrow and some of the others. While stirred by the restless sensibility
of the city, Goodman saw music as a challenging body of knowledge, a
craft, and a more creative avenue than factory labor for making much-
needed money to support himself and his family. He earned his first five
dollars when he was only twelve years old, standing up in the pit of the
Balaban and Katz Central Park Theater to play an imitation of clarinetist
Ted Lewis. Although his recorded improvisations conveyed plenty of
fire, Goodman considered his music something "in my hand," a craft, an
avenue of opportunity, a complex body of knowledge. He expressed a
sense of professional distance from what he called "the wild West Side
mob," and built a career in the recording studios and with the swing
music of the 1930s.12
Pianist Art Hodes, whose parents had emigrated from Russia in 1904,
concluded from his early experiences "on Chicago's tough West Side"
that music represented, among many other things, economic opportunity.
94 Chicago Jazz

After piano lessons at Hull House, where Benny Goodman also studied
for a time, Hodes at nineteen went to work from 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. at
the Rainbow Cafe on West Madison Street. "I was able to buy a car, wear
nice clothes and walk around with money in my pocket all the time."
Like Goodman, Hodes spoke of his music as a craft, and showed little of
the wild, urban bandit characteristics cultivated by some white Chicago
performers like Condon, Davison, and McPartland.' 3
Francis "Muggsy" Spanier shared Hodes' unassuming modesty about
making music. Born as one often children and raised on the Near North
Side at 117 E. Delaware Place, Spanier grew up loving boxing, baseball,
and music. Nicknamed for John J. "Muggsy" McGraw, then manager of
the New York Giants, he played in a street band when only six years old
and supported himself as a messenger boy on LaSalle Street. Like all of
the white Chicagoans, he paid little attention in class, immersing himself,
instead, in various new forms of popular culture. Yet Spanier never posed
as a social or cultural rebel. He worked for many years in the "sweet"
dance and stage bands of Art Kassel and Ted Lewis with little apparent
artistic frustration. **
Although their paths did not often cross, Gene Krupa shared Span-
ier's musical professionalism. Born into a large family of Polish-
American Catholics who lived in a Far South Side neighborhood, Krupa
channeled his nervous energy into the craft of dance band and jazz
drumming. He smoothly negotiated potential conflicts with his parents
about his preference for drumming over the priesthood. Krupa worked
with the dance bands of Leo Shukin, Joe Kayser, and Thelma Terry, as
well as the Seattle Harmony Kings, the Hossier Bell Hops, and the
Benson Orchestra, becoming known as "cleancut, intelligent, shy, serious,
and very ambitious." Much the same mixture of jazz excitement with
musical professionalism characterized clarinetist Volly de Faut, who
played both in important small groups like the New Orleans Rhythm
Kings and the Bucktown Five and in larger dance bands such as those led
by Sig Meyers and Ray Miller.r s
So too, percussionist Vic Berton, born in Chicago in 1896 to a vaude-
ville theater violinist, took music as a craft and a profession, studying
with Joseph Zettelmann, the first percussionist with the Chicago Sym-
phony under Frederick Stock. Berton appeared with the Chicago Sym-
phony and the Milwaukee Symphony orchestras when he was still only
sixteen, and thereafter worked in the dance bands of Paul Biese, Arnold
Johnson, Husk O'Hare, Art Kahn, and Don Bestor and also led his own
 White Chicago Jazz: Cultural Context 95

band at the Merry Gardens. In 1924, Berton took over the management
of Bix Beiderbecke and the Wolverines and occasionally played with the
band, as well.'6
Several of the most prominent inner-city Chicagoans, therefore, sub-
sequently stressed the musical and economic (rather than the socially
rebellious) dimensions of their lives in jazz. Among their published
recollections, only reedman Mezz Mezzrow's best-selling, flamboyant
autobiography Really the Blues, first published in 1946, strongly associated
white Chicago jazz with social rebellion. He spoke of a "social revolution
simmering in Chicago ... a collectively improvised nose-thumbing at all
pillars of all communities, one big syncopated Bronx cheer for the right-
eous squares everywhere." But Mezzrow was an inner city Chicagoan
born to a financially secure middle-class family. An uncle owned a chain
of Chicago drug stores. Mezzrow's comparatively wealthy background
distinguished him from the other inner city Chicagoans like Goodman,
Spanier, and Krupa. He found a positive resonance among Chicago
jazzmen for his ideas of rebellion through syncopation, improvisation,
and blue notes.'?
The second group of white Chicago jazzmen, the "Austin High
Gang"—cornetist Jimmy McPartland and his guitar-playing brother
Richard, tenor saxophonist Bud Freeman, clarinetist Frank Tesche-
macher, pianist Dave North, and string bassist Jimmy Lannigan—played
an important role on the white Chicago jazz scene and a pre-eminent role
in the subsequent critical definition of "Chicago Jazz." Although they
performed relatively little in twenties Chicago and made their reputa-
tions as "Chicagoans" later in New York, they did form the core of the
Blue Friars, who played on radio station WHT (Mayor William //ale
Thompson) in 1924 as Husk O'Hare's Red Dragons. In 1925, they were
also members of Husk O'Hare's Wolverines, who played in Iowa and at
the outdoor musical shell of White City Amusement Park. Several of
them starred in some of the better white Chicago recording sessions—
McKenzie and Condon's Chicagoans, Charlie Pierce and His Orchestra,
and the Jungle Kings.'8
Austin was an unlikely source of Roaring Twenties jazz. A comfort-
able, middle-class suburban-style community which had been annexed to
Chicago in 1899, it was built by Henry Austin, a state legislator who
drafted the Illinois Temperance Law of 1872. The town named after him
was a center of the Prohibition movement, and saloons were conspicu-
ously absent in the Twenties. Like a true child of the inner city, Mezz
96 Chicago Jazz

Mezzrow described Austin as "a well-to-do suburb where all the days
were Sabbaths, a sleepy-time neighborhood big as a yawn and just about
as lively, loaded with shade trees, clipped lawns and a groggy-eyed popu-
lation that never came out of its coma except to turn over."'9
But two of the leaders of the Austin High Gang—Jimmy McPartland
and Bud Freeman—were more closely tied to Chicago's neighborhoods
than their many recorded interviews would indicate. Moreover, none of
the leading Austin High jazzmen actually graduated from that school.
Not one of them appears in the school's yearbook. By their own testi-
mony, most of their school hours were spent at the town soda fountain,
the Spoon and Straw at 5619 Lake Street, owned by C. S. Lewis, where
they first heard the records of Ted Lewis, Paul Whiteman, Jan Garber,
the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings.
Bud Freeman, arguably the most consistently creative soloist of the
group, admitted that he was obliged to go to a YMCA summer school in
order to progress from Nash Grammar School to Austin High.20 State-
ments in his recently published autobiography not withstanding, Free-
man admitted in another interview that he had been born somewhere in
downtown Chicago, not Austin. He was unable to recall more exactly
where he had been born within the city, despite the fact that he had lived
there for six years.
Jimmy McPartland was nearly as reticent about his earliest years,
talking repeatedly about his Austin High School experiences. But Benny
Goodman recalled having met McPartland not at Austin High but at
Harrison High School in the poverty-stricken Near West Side. In a
Smithsonian Institution interview, McPartland remembered having
spent his first five years growing up in a poor, racially-mixed neighbor-
hood on Lake and Paulina streets. When his parents temporarily di-
vorced in 1912-13, McPartland was consigned to an orphanage and felt
abandoned, "mad at everyone," and bitter; he later joined a street gang,
and built a reputation emulating his father, a two-fisted scrapper. In 1919,
when Jimmy was twelve, a court urged his reunited parents to move the
family to a better neighborhood; they settled in Austin, where McPart-
land learned to make apparently "lawless" music as a substitute for a life
of crime. "Jazz supplied the excitement we might otherwise have looked
for among the illegal activities which flourished then in the neighbor-
hood."21
More typical of the suburbs were middle-class people for whom
rebellion through jazz served to channel and express frustrations stem-
 White Chicago Jazz: Cultural Context 97

ming from unhappy childhood experiences. Clarinetist Frank Tesche-

macher died before telling his story, but Bud Freeman has painted a
portrait of a shy, withdrawn, acerbic, troubled youngster completely
immersed in his jazz.
Oak Park drummer Dave Tough started hanging around with the
Austin High School musicians in 1922. Born to immigrant Scottish par-
ents (his father was a bank teller who dabbled in the real estate and
commodities markets), Tough grew up reading voraciously. His mother
died in what is variously described as an alcoholic or apoplectic fit when
he was nine. Tough is said to have taken up serious drinking at fourteen.
After drifting away from classes at Oak Park High School, the young
drummer took language and literature courses at the downtown Lewis
Institute, and hung around at a cabaret called the Green Mask, where he
"accompanied" poetry readings by Max Bodenheim, Langston Hughes,
and Kenneth Rexroth. He learned a strong traditionalist's respect for
language and tried to base his life on jazz, literature, and alcohol. Despite
his supremely assured, rhythmically "relentless" drumming and flashing,
literate wit, Tough was painfully insecure, constantly searching for ap-
proval, his rebellion torn between the different, if related, sensibilities of
twenties' literature and jazz.22
The relatively comfortable, middle-class dimension of the Far West
Side of Chicago made a major contribution toward the musicians consid-
ering jazz as art. The Austin High Gang, simply by living a suburban-
style life, were more likely to come into contact with contemporary
notions of jazz and art than the very poor whites and poor blacks of the
inner city. In the suburbs jazz sometimes served to express artistic aliena-
tion from middle-class materialism. Dave Tough was the only one of the
white Chicago jazzmen who was active in the intellectual currents of
the time; the rest, however, were aware that their involvement in jazz
paralleled certain powerful intellectual trends. Tough worked hard to
convince the other white musicians that jazz expressed artistic sensi-
bilities. He taught Bud Freeman and Frank Teschemacher about George
Jean Nathan and H. L. Mencken's American Mercury, Chicago's Art
Institute, and current thinking about artistic rebellion against the bour-
geoisie.
The greater number of the third group of white "Chicagoans," those
who migrated to the city from the Midwest and beyond, shared the
rebellious attitudes of the Far West Side "Chicagoans." Several of them,
far less intellectual than Dave Tough, enjoyed the mixture of artistic
98 Chicago Jazz

sensibilities with jazz, even if they remained much better informed about
jazz than art or the intellect. Max Kaminsky, who rarely read anything
but the newspapers, noted that "all the fellows in the Chicago crowd,"
musicians with whom he retained important ties, were "on a genius
kick." The cornetist admitted that until meeting them, he had "seldom
cracked open a book," and Tough mocked his poor reading habits, but
"... I didn't let it bother me too much for I always felt there were other
ways to learn besides from books."2'
The notion of social rebellion through jazz was a sensibility that the
suburban jazzmen shared with several members of the third group of
"Chicagoans," those who had migrated to the city from the greater
Midwest. Just as Chicagoan Jimmy McPartland had felt abandoned and
angry, so too had cornetist William Edward "Wild Bill" Davison found
his life in Defiance, Ohio, hard to accept. Abandoned by his parents, he
was brought up by grandparents who worked as librarian and custodian
of the Defiance Public Library. Living in the library's basement, Davison,
continually hushed by his guardians, grew up to force his rage through a
cornet. He practiced in a row boat, drawn far enough out into the
Maumee River that no one could tell him to quiet down. He plunged
eagerly into the musical night life of Chicago. There, the raging fury of
his cornet had no equal.24
Davison discovered an immediate empathy with fast-talking, sar-
donic Eddie Condon, whose promotional abilities earned him the
nickname "Slick." Condon's family moved to Chicago via Goodland,
Indiana, Momence, Illinois, and Chicago Heights, as his father, a saloon-
keeper, steadily lost ground to the harassment of the Women's Christian
Temperance Union. A rhythm ukulele, banjo, and lute player, Condon
inherited a strong sense of Irish-American alienation from midwestern
Anglo-Saxon Protestants. He retained the attenuated ties of most of the
white Chicagoans to the intellectual and artistic dialogues of the day. A
third-generation Irish-American, and a tough survivor who cultivated a
nonchalant hedonism, he admitted that after suffering through some
very, very literary conservations with college student fans, his own read-
ing had never included Marcel Proust.25
Whatever the differences between the three groups of white Chicago
jazzmen, they all passed through a complex process of personal orienta-
tion toward the world of music in general and of black music in particu-
lar. The white Chicagoans sought out black cabaret music at an early age,
but they generally did not grow up in neighborhoods that were rich in
 White Chicago Jazz: Cultural Context 99

African-American music. Rather, they lived in a separate white world

that received its impressions of African-Americans through the media.
Because the entertainment and recording industries were tightly segre-
gated, Art Hodes, for example, had reached the age of twenty-three
before even hearing a record of a black person playing jazz. He subse-
quently listened carefully to the sounds in South Side clubs. Max Ka-
minsky had played popular dance music professionally for six years
before hearing the records of the black jazz pioneers.
The young white "Chicagoans" began their jazz journey by listening
to the phonograph records of the leading white dance bands of their
youth: Ted Lewis, Art Hickman, and Paul Biese. These bands remained
a major, if often frustrating, influence on them. However sweetly corny
or musically slapstick such dance music later seemed, it carried, when
they first heard it, a thrill that they associated with the fox trot and up-to-
date social dancing. It was their first escape from the waltz, violins, and
dreamy, tearful, sweetly sentimental dance music. Eddie Condon, who
made a career out of disparaging sweet bands and promoting hot ones,
listed the recordings of dance band pioneer Art Hickman (and those of
the Paul Biese Trio, Edison Trios, and Ted Lewis) among the first jazz
records he heard.26
In their progress toward jazz, "the Chicagoans" soon developed a
taste for records by the white Original Dixieland Jazz Band, who played
a brand of music which they later repudiated as corny and out-of-date;
but at the time they first heard it, the ODJB's sharp ragtime syncopations
and sardonic, vulgar animal imitations had an appealing impudence. The
smoother, more swinging beat of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, and
the King's serious musical attitude made a longer-lasting impression on
them, in part because some listened to NORK in person at Friars Inn, as
well as on records. This band, a mixture of New Orleans with mid-
western musicians, dropped most of the clowning attitude of the Original
Dixieland Jazz Band and took a more serious approach to jazz, even if
they did become known for their boyish pranks on stage. As Ralph
Berton, brother of Chicago percussionist Vic Berton and Bix Beider-
becke's biographer, put it:

They played not in the zany, tongue-in-cheek spirit of the white

bands ... but seriously—mean and low down, pretty or funky, driv-
ing or lyrical, but always for real. As we said in those days—there
was no higher praise—they played lil^e niggers.^
ioo Chicago Jazz

While still in high school, the Austin High Gang learned to play jazz
by playing along with NORK records, so that their most immediate
musical models were white. Jimmy McPartland described their appren-
ticeship:

What we used to do was put the record on—one of the Rhythm

Kings', naturally—play a few bars, and then all get our notes.
We'd have to tune our instruments up to the record machine, to the
pitch, and go ahead with a few notes. Then stop! A few more bars
of the record, each guy would pick out his notes and boom! we
would go on and play it. Two bars, or four bars, or eight—we
would get in on each phrase and then play it all ... It was a
funny way to learn, but in three or four weeks we could finally play
one tune all the way through—Farewell Blues. Boy, that was our
tune.18

McPartland's recollections also underscore the influence of pianist, com-

poser, and band leader Elmer Schoebel, who, more than any other indi-
vidual, charted the major musical course of white jazz in twenties Chi-
cago. Born in 1896 in East St. Louis, Illinois, Schoebel was about ten years
older than the rebel white jazzmen. He worked in popular entertainment
from a very early age, playing piano in movie houses from age 14 and in
vaudeville theaters beginning at age 16. Schoebel came to Chicago in 1919
with the 20th Century Jazz Band and went on to play a key role in
creating the arrangements for the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. He
designed a successful amalgamation of jazz and social dance music at the
Midway Gardens in 1924-25, creating the hottest white dance band in a
major Chicago ballroom, and went on to play and arrange for other top
dance bands led by Isham Jones and Louis Panico. Most important, he
wrote several of the tunes which came to define the literature of Chicago
jazz, as opposed to New Orleans jazz. His "Farewell Blues," "Bugle Call
Rag," "Nobody's Sweetheart Now," and "Prince of Wails" became im-
portant vehicles for the recorded improvisations of Chicago jazz musi-
cians during the twenties and thereafter.^
Chronologically the last, and in some ways most powerful, white
musical influence on the "Chicagoans" was cornetist/pianist Leon "Bix"
Beiderbecke, particularly the records Beiderbecke made in 1924 with the
Wolverines. If the New Orleans Rhythm Kings contributed a tough,
white working-class spirit, Beiderbecke brought to the Chicagoans a
mixture of exuberance and disciplined harmonic and tonal refinement.
 White Chicago Jazz: Cultural Context 101

The central cult figure of the Jazz Age, Bix was a middle-class Mid-
westerner become ill-fated artist, lost in the big city; his dreamy abstrac-
tion had little in common with the rough-and-tumble inner-city street
life, but he exerted an enormous musical influence on musicians filled
with more jazz spirit than musical vision.
Beiderbecke actually spent relatively little time in Chicago. In No-
vember 1921, while still a teen-ager who had been banished by his wor-
ried parents to Lake Forest Academy, thirty-five miles northwest of
Chicago, he got their permission to spend Thanksgiving in Chicago, and
there he heard the New Orleans Rhythm Kings at Friars Inn. He there-
after snuck down to the Loop regularly during the semester, a practice
which led to his expulsion from school in May 1922. When not listening
carefully to the NORK at Friars Inn, Bix cultivated social and musical
relations with Bill Grimm and a group of Northwestern University
students who played jazz for fraternity parties and listened to the black
cabaret bands on the South Side. In June 1922, Grimm got Bix a job
playing on a Graham and Morton line excursion steamer on Lake Michi-
gan. Beiderbecke developed a beautiful, unique tone on the cornet. When
Eddie Condon heard him play that fall, he remarked that Bix's "sound
came out like a girl saying yes."3°
Beiderbecke and the Wolverines, a group largely composed of colle-
giate musicians from the greater Chicago area, played a brief engagement
at Palmer Cady's Cascades Ballroom at Argyle Street and Sheridan Road
on the Far North Side, jamming after hours at Dinty Moore's, a speak-
easy at Broadway and Balmoral. They travelled to Richmond, Indiana, to
make their influential records of 1924.
In the spring of 1925, Beiderbecke played at George Leiderman and
Sam Rothschild's Rendez-Vous Cafe at West Diversey and Broadway on
the North Side, a Gold Coast cabaret noted for "the pulchritude of its
female ensembles" and for Charlie Straight's dance band. Although the
club manager allegedly disapproved of Beiderbecke's modern harmonic
ideas, Straight and his trumpeter Gene Cafarelli insisted that he remain,
pleading that Bix was far more than just another cornet player. They
even tithed themselves to make up a salary for him. Bix also joined the
after-hours "relief band which improvised for listeners, after Straight's
orchestra had played ensemble dance music.31
And that, despite a brief notice in the summer 1927 Orchestra World
that Beiderbecke was playing third trumpet in the Stevens Hotel Orches-
tra under Armin Hand and Roy Bargy, was the extent of Beiderbecke's
IO2 Chicago Jazz

Chicago career. Even though Variety described the Wolverines as being

"from around Chicago" when they made a hit at New York's Cinderella
Ballroom in September 1924, they were more active on midwestern
college campuses than in Chicago itself. And by 1925, Beiderbecke had
accepted a job in Detroit with the Jean Goldkette Orchestral2
Bix's records, however, inspired the white Chicagoans—particularly
Max Kaminsky and Bill Davison—with his harmonic insight, improvisa-
tional poise, and restrained passion. He circulated on a collegiate social
level which overlapped that of Oak Park and Austin, but the downtown,
white Chicago sound was more fully captured by Jimmy McPartland,
who replaced Beiderbecke in the Wolverines in October 1924. Despite
Beiderbecke's deep influence on his style, McPartland played with a raw,
nasal tone—the sound that Mezz Mezzrow called "a Bronx cheer for the
righteous squares"—and a more impressionistic harmonic awareness.
Most of the white Chicagoans brought their white musical influences
with them to their encounters with South Side music and culture. But a
few had discovered African-American dance hall and cabaret music at an
early age. George Wettling, who lived in Woodlawn, the all-white Far
South Side rooming house district, had to travel through the black belt on
his way to the Loop, and was just into his teens when he began stopping
off at 3ist and Cottage Grove. He was an early habitue of the Lincoln
Gardens, where the drumming of Baby Dodds deeply impressed him.
Muggsy Spanier was only eleven or twelve years old when he first sat
outside of the Pekin Inn to listen to Joe Oliver's cornet playing. Spanier,
who captured much of Oliver's approach with the cup mute, also listened
to Oliver when he performed in Lawrence Duhe's band in the bleachers
at Chicago White Sox home games.33
With the exception of Wettling and Spanier, most of the other white
Chicagoans were in their later teens when they first went to the South
Side clubs. Jimmy McPartland, Bud Freeman, and the Austin High
Gang first heard about the South Side club scene when they played for
fraternity parties at the University of Chicago and Northwestern. Ac-
cording to Freeman, Bill Grimm of the University of Chicago first took
him to hear Oliver and Armstrong at the Lincoln Gardens. Onah
Spencer, a South Sider himself and a writer on Negro Music in Chicago
for the WPA Federal Writers' Project, named Murphy Podolsky, Fritz
Neilson, Ted Clark, and Jack Kirk as instrumental in bringing the
Chicagoans to the South Side for the first time. Condon identifies Po-
dolsky as a pianist with "an inside track on school dance dates."34
 White Chicago Jazz: Cultural Context 103

Jazz acted as a shared sensibility and a musical craft which muted

racial tensions between black and white musicians. This shared musical
exploration gained its emotional impact from the powerful tensions of
American racial attitudes. The young white Chicago jazzmen were pow-
erfully drawn to the Lincoln Gardens. Their determination to invade this
self-consciously African-American dance hall where King Oliver's band
had been playing for three years, created tensions which surfaced imme-
diately in their contacts with doormen.
Veiled remarks indirectly indicated racial attitudes to which neither
blacks nor whites could refer directly. The young whites were kept
waiting by the doorman until a series of signals indicated that they might
enter. On their way in, the doorman often commented upon their reasons
for coming. Bud Freeman adopted a strong southern black stage accent
when remembering an extremely heavy doorman who always remarked:
"Ah hears you-all's here to gets your music lesson tonight." Freeman
chalked up the remark to the man's perceptiveness: "We were there for
the music."35
South Side chronicler Dempsey Travis writes that Bill Summers,
doorman at the Sunset Cafe, made similar remarks: "Good morning! I
bet I know why you boys are back again this morning. You came for
another music lesson, didn't you?" Such remarks, coming from the door-
man of a black-and-tan designed to attract whites, probably were made
with amiability, but they took on different meanings when placed within
the context of the white musicians' professional interest in black music.
One cannot forget that black musicians were not allowed to enter the
Loop hotels and clubs in order to study the latest musical effects being
produced there.
The casual manner in which white musicians sometimes replied to
the comments of Bill Summers at the Sunset Club revealed a nettling
insensitivity: "Some would reply, 'You're right, Professor.' Others would
say, 'Here's a quarter, Sam. Get yourself a cigar.' The more timid ones
only nodded, sometimes with a smile." Eddie Condon wrote insightfully
that the young whites "had good reason to feel slightly uncomfortable
until they had pushed their way close to the bandstand and been recog-
nized by Oliver. A nod or a wave of his hand was all that was necessary;
then the customers knew that the kids were all right."?6
The actual physical movement from the sidewalk into the black
dance hall—crossing a threshold that separated two distinct areas, was, as
Victor Turner puts it, a rite of passage for the young whites. The black
i<>4 Chicago Jazz

doorman's opening of the door for these whites, their subsequent crossing
of a racial frontier, separated the young initiates, in their own minds,
from everyday life and took them into a pulsating new realm of intense
nonverbal experience that was beyond everyday routines. Edmond
Souchon recalled passing through a dark winding hallway, feeling his
excitement mount as he approached the wildly animated dance hall of the
Royal Gardens Cafe. Once they had emerged into the brightly lit dance
hall inside, the young white jazzmen felt that they had never before
experienced such explosive excitement. Eddie Condon later recalled:

As the door opened the trumpets, King and Louis, one or both,
soared above everything else. The whole joint was rocking. Tables,
chairs, walls, people, moved with the rhythm. It was dark, smoky,
gin-smelling. People in the balcony leaned over and their drinks
spilled on the customers below . . . . Oliver and Louis would roll on
and on, piling up choruses, with the rhythm section building the
beat until the whole thing got inside your head and blew your
brains out.

Through an eager, heedless preoccupation with their own spiritual

agendas, the whites, according to one black observer, often "literally
muscled their way through the throngs of black dancers to get near the
bandstands. Once they were there, they would hog that area until just
before dawn." Condon and Freeman implied that the seating arrange-
ments resulted from their status as musicians, that space near the band-
stand was accorded them as a mark of respect. But at least one black
observer claimed that the whites benefited from a Jim Crow seating
policy.37
Their hypnotic fascination with the music created a realm of sacred
time and space filled with intoxicating moments of emotional excitement
in which young whites could defy lingering Victorian moral repression,
racial segregation, and ubran-industrial discipline. The rebel Chicagoans
recalled being completely hypnotized by the music. The Original New
Orleans Creole Band with Sugar Johnny or Freddie Keppard on cornet,
Sidney Bechet on saxes and clarinet, and Wellman Braud on string bass
put Mezz Mezzrow "in a trance" and left him "breathless." "That was
my big night," he wrote, "the night I really began to live." Eddie Condon
recalled a similar flash of lucid understanding the first time he heard
King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band:
 White Chicago Jazz: Cultural Context 105

It was hypnosis at first hearing. Everyone was playing what he

wanted to play and it was all mixed together as if someone had
planned it with a set of micrometer calipers; notes I had never
heard were peeling off the edges and dropping through the middle;
there was a tone from the trumpets [sic} like warm rain on a cold
day. Freeman, McPartland and I were immobilized; the music
poured into us like daylight running down a dark hole.38

Despite their extensive prior exposure to white bands and records, the
white "Chicagoans" were deeply moved by South Side music. Louis
Armstrong, of course, had a stunning impact on Wild Bill Davison,
Wingy Manone, and Max Kaminsky. Davison provides a particularly
vivid and clearly documented example: his earliest recordings with the
Cincinnati-based Chubb-Steinberg Orchestra reveal the influence of Bix
Beiderbecke's phrasing on his early playing style; once he heard Louis
Armstrong, however, Davison changed remarkably; the Beiderbecke in-
fluence all but disappeared, replaced by Davison's raging interpretation
of Armstrong's passionate flamboyance.39
Kaminsky's transformation followed similar lines. Already deeply
moved by Beiderbecke's tone and feeling, the white trumpeter never
heard Armstrong in person until January 1929, when he listened to him
in the Carroll Dickerson band at the Savoy Ballroom. "I felt as if I had
stared into the sun's eye. All I could think of doing was to run away and
hide till the blindness left me." Kaminsky explained what he heard in
Armstrong's playing:

Above all—above all the electrifying tone, the magnificence of his

ideas and the Tightness of his harmonic sense, his superb technique,
his power and ease, his hotness and intensity, his complete mastery
of his horn—above all this, he had the swing. No one knew what
swing was till Louis came along.

Kaminsky expressed what most of the Chicagoans must have felt,—that

Armstrong brought grandeur to a form of music then associated with
song-and-dance entertainment and social rebellion.40
Drummer Baby Dodds exercised an equally profound influence over
Dave Tough and George Wettling. Both young whites heard him with
the Oliver band at the Lincoln Gardens, but also had ready access to
Dodds' music during his long tenure in his brother Johnny's band at Bert
106 Chicago Jazz

Kelly's Stables in the Loop. Both emulated Dodd's equipment—the deep

snare drum, the head loosely stretched, and Dodds" combination of cym-
bals and wood blocks—while imitating the South Side drummer's style
of sensitive accompaniment and his use of fills and press rolls.4 1
Five of the white clarinetists—Benny Goodman, Rod Cless, Joe Mar-
sala, Frank Teschemacher, and Mezz Mezzrow—took early inspiration
from Jimmie Noone. Goodman also was influenced by clarinetists he
heard on some of the early jazz records made by white New York studio
bands, as James Lincoln Collier argues, but he specifically mentioned
Jimmie Noone in his autobiography. Goodman, Noone, and Buster Bai-
ley studied with the same teacher, Franz Schoepp; and Goodman, there-
fore, would have known Noone well enough to contact him at the Apex
Club. Like Noone, Goodman played jazz with a full, rounded "legiti-
mate" tone achieved by following the traditional European encourage-
ment of full abdominal support, an open throat, arched palate, and lip—
not tooth-—support of the mouthpiece.
Goodman does not seem to have emulated other characteristics of
Jimmie Noone's improvisational style—his regular eighth notes, staccato
phrasing, and vertically oriented, broken chord clusters—but the white
drummer and band leader Ben Pollack detected a transformation in
Goodman's playing from his early fascination with vaudevillian Ted
Lewis to "a mixture of Jimmie Noone, Leon Rappolo, Buster Bailey, and
other great clarinet players." White clarinetist Joe Marsala, for whom
"Noone was the man," confirms that Goodman "came around listening
to Noone too." Moreover, Goodman was to popularize the type of small
swing group with clarinet lead which f immie Noone introduced in Chi-
cago. Goodman emulated much of that group sound in hiring pianist
Teddy Wilson, who had taken inspiration from Noone's Apex Club
pianist Earl Mines. Goodman also played the better known numbers
from Noone's repertoire—"Four or Five Times," "My Baby Rocks Me,
with One Steady Roll" (disguised as "Six Appeal"), and "I Know That
You Know."**2
Frank Teschemacher's dirty-toned, hell-for-leather, spikey improvi-
sations also left an obvious impression on Goodman. Teschemacher also
listened closely to Jimmie Noone, even if his own playing developed
along quite different lines. His 1928 solo on "Darktown Strutters' Ball"
with the Jungle Kings reveals a direct paraphrase of Noone's style: the
young white reedman plays clusters of quarter note triplets followed by
staccato eighth notes in the chalumeau register, concluding with an up-
 White Chicago Jazz: Cultural Context 107

ward leaping sixteenth note broken chord capped by a dotted quarter

accented with a wide vibrato.
White Iowa-born clarinetist Rod Cless, who played extensively in
Chicago near the end of the decade, also credited Johnny Dodds and
Jimmie Noone as major influences on his playing style.43 But none of the
white Chicagoans was more deeply or dramatically impressed with South
Side musical culture than Mezz Mezzrow, who found in black music and
musicians an originality, uncomplicated honesty, humor, and lack of
perversity which, in his mind, contrasted sharply with the hypocrisy and
racism of white society. He admired the mixture of lament with un-
affected good spirits in South Side jazz, and the calculated grace of the
black performers of his acquaintance; he used their lives and their art as
repudiations of what he perceived as white middle-class racism and
violence in America. Mezzrow adopted the mannerisms of black show
business performers, an urbanized southern black accent, and black street
slang. He married a black woman, and lived in Harlem for many years
after leaving Chicago. He even claimed that his skin darkened as well. As
one black observer put it, probably referring to Mezzrow:

The Austin bunch were not just imitators, they absorbed the very
spirit of this music ... and did more to introduce and set an exam-
ple of real friendship between the races.44

Mezzrow went further than the rest, but South Side jazz also led Bud
Freeman to a deeper appreciation of African-American grace under
pressure:

Now here were these black people who were allowed no privileges.
They were not allowed to come into our shops and cinemas, but we
whites were allowed to go out to their community, where they
treated us beautifully. I found their way of life equally as important
as their music. It was not just their music that moved me but the
whole picture of an oppressed people who appeared to be much
happier than we whites who had everything's

This basic grasp of the African-American dilemma drew the white

Chicagoans into a more sympathetic stance toward black jazz and deep-
ened their sense of alienation from the white middle class. Some—like
Dave Tough—returned to the South Side often, visiting not just the most
prominent cabarets, but some of the smaller clubs, the rib joints and
io8 Chicago Jazz

buffet flats about which most whites were ignorant. Tough ultimately
married Casey Majors, an African-American cabaret dancer. Wild Bill
Davison hung out in "an all-black place" called "the Ranch," and once he
was established as Louis Armstrong's friend, he could go there without
"anybody making any fancy remarks." Bud Jacobson attended all-black
functions like the Okeh [Records] Cabaret and Style Show, one of a small
number of whites in a crowd of thousands.^ 6
In moving closer to South Side Chicago music and musicians, the
young whites epitomized America's racial dilemma. South Sider Milt
Hinton expressed the problem with telling irony:

We didn't fraternize with white guys. White guys always knew

where the good players were. That's the reason that Benny Good-
man admits that he was tremendously influenced by Jimmie Noone
in Chicago. Because he could come up to the Elrado, and the
Golden Lily and the places where Jimmie Noone played and listen
to him ... But we didn't go downtown to the College Inn to hear
Ben Bernie, you see. It wasn't chic.

Wild Bill Davison put it bluntly: "They were always happy to see white
people come ... because we had the money ... so there was no bad
treatment. You got the best of it, really, whether they liked you or not."47
Davison and Freeman were among the few white Chicagoans to
address directly the power advantage most white musicians enjoyed over
black musicians under racial segregation. As whites, they were privileged
visitors in the South Side clubs. A few pushed to sit in with the black
bands, and, while acknowledging the compliment involved, black musi-
cians wondered at their temerity. South Side reedman Scoville Brown,
whose distinguished career got under way in the late twenties, recalled
that the Austin High Gang were "still wet behind the ears ..." in the late
twenties.^8 Nevertheless, according to Teschemacher-inspired clarinetist
Bud Jacobson, Bud Freeman sat-in frequently on tenor sexophone with
black bands, even though he was just beginning to learn. Freeman never
wavered in his praise of black musicians, underlining in his many inter-
views, books, and autobiography their unquestioned priority in the in-
vention of jazz. After hearing the Oliver band, he said, he completely
abandoned his earlier white inspirations.
Jimmie Noone noted that, not content to just listen, the young Joe
Sullivan, "not much more than a novice," rushed to sit down at the piano
 White Chicago Jazz: Cultural Context 109

when the highly accomplished Earl Hines took a break. When Hines
organized his crack show band for the Grand Terrace Cafe, white musi-
cians, including Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey,
Muggsy Spanier, Joe Sullivan, Jess Stacy, Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Car-
michael, and Frank Trumbauer, sat in. Hines remarked that he and his
fellow black musicians "... sat around waiting to see if these guys were
actually going to come up with something new or different."^
Black musicians allowed white musicians to sit in for several good
reasons: first, the excitement of mutual discovery and the usually interest-
ing and occasionally exciting joint explorations in musical improvisation
created real bonds between black and white Chicago musicians in the
twenties. As one black observer put it:

The growth of hot jazz in Chicago during the twenties ...

brought about the spectacle of white and colored "experts" meeting
in order to further a common interest ...

Secondly, given the nature of American race relations, the whites' eager
admiration of South Side music was flattering to most blacks. Dave
Peyton of the Defender proudly noted that "many Ofay musicians"
crowded Dreamland Cafe in January 1926 to hear Louis Armstrong
"blast out those weird jazzy figures."5°
Black musicians also allowed whites to sit in because the whites were
at a different stage of musical development. They were usually younger,
less advanced jazz improvisors who were not likely to outshine the black
stars. Aspiring white jazzmen had few important club jobs playing jazz
in Chicago, even at the height of the jazz age. Bud Freeman remarked
that their repeated trips to the Local 10 union hall produced few results;
he never held a long-term job with any band until 1933. Davison played
with Benny Meroff s stage band, Teschemacher with Jan Garber's dance
band, Spanier with Ted Lewis, and so on. As Art Hodes wrote: "We
learned our jazz in Chicago, but we had to come to New York City to be
able to pursue jazz as a livelihood."
Hoagy Carmichael remarked that Chicago's fledgling white jazzmen
"just stood and waited. There were never enough jobs and too many new
kids who thought the world was waiting for the sunrise of their talents.
Chicago style came out of a lot of this standing around " By compari-
son, black musicians like Jimmie Noone and Joe Oliver held down
regular jobs that lasted for years, playing jazz in Chicago. The whites
no Chicago Jazz

mostly played one-nighters, many of them on Northwestern, University

of Chicago, and Indiana University campuses and summer jobs at lake-
side resorts like Lake Delavan in Wisconsin. The black musicians could
afford to humor them.51
The relative dearth of jazz jobs in white Chicago resulted from
several interrelated factors. First, the hotels and dance halls were present-
ing dance music which the public accepted as jazz. Second, the major
downtown clubs like Friars Inn featured floor shows, and several of the
"Chicagoans" were not known for reading music. When the New Or-
leans Rhythm Kings broke up in 1923, Friars Inn continued its white
New Orleans music policy and hired the Merritt Brunies Orchestra for a
three-year residency, through the family connection between NORK
trombonist George Brunies, and his trumpet-playing brother Merritt,
whose "good standard all-around band" played a "competent" floor show
and "good dance music." It was not until Brunies left for the Cinderella
Ballroom in September 1926, that drummer Bill Paley put together some
of Charlie Straight's ex-musicians with Jimmy McPartland, Jim Lan-
nigan, and pianist Vic Breidis. The Austin High Gang was just moving
into Friars Inn when the place was padlocked in June 1927 for violations
of the Volstead Act.s2
Although they played few long-term downtown jazz jobs, aspiring
white musicians did take three-month jobs in summer resort dance halls
like those at Delavan Lake, Wisconsin, Paw-Paw Lake, Michigan, and
Hudson Lake, Indiana. Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Condon, Art Hodes,
Orville "Bud" Jacobsen, Dave Tough, Joe Sullivan, Murphy Podolsky,
Wop Waller, George Wettling, Mel Stitzel, and many other young white
jazz musicians spent the summers performing for vacationing college
students and their parents, gaining invaluable playing time and enlarging
their repertoires with a wide range of popular songs. During the daylight
hours, they had plenty of time to listen to race records and develop their
appreciation for the South Side musicians.53
Black musicians also permitted the young whites to sit in because
several of the more serious of them—Muggsy Spanier, Frank Tes-
chemacher, George Wettling, Joe Sullivan, Rod Cless—had begun to
incorporate into their own playing elements of the styles of King Oliver,
Jimmie Noone, Baby Dodds, Earl Hines, and Johnny Dodds. The depth
of their artistic admiration encouraged black cooperation. Finally, there
was always the chance that musical contacts with white musicians might
lead to more jobs for black bands in white-only clubs and dance halls.
 White Chicago Jazz: Cultural Context in

But black attitudes toward the white Chicagoans were often ambiva-
lent. Some black musicians like Scoville Brown insisted that excellent
relations developed between themselves and white jazzmen: "White and
black musicians got along fine. Now, there were existing conditions in
society that prevented our working together. You follow me? This is a
social problem. But this isn't a problem among the musicians them-
selves."54 But white appropriations of black jazz instrumental styles
raised the specter of racial exploitation. In a racially segregated society,
white musicians could qualify for lucrative playing jobs denied to blacks
because of their skin color. The general popular ignorance of the South
Side scene made it possible for white instrumentalists to entertain unso-
phisticated white audiences with techniques and ideas "borrowed" from
blacks.
South Side musicians of the twenties referred to white musicians as
"alligators," exploiters who copied black musical inventions in order to
profit from them. Chicago jazz lore includes stories of Joe Oliver cutting
the titles off the tops of his band charts and refusing to identify particular
numbers in which white musicians took a suspiciously close interest.
Dave Peyton questioned Oliver's encouragement of white jazzmen and
became one of the first black writers to try to establish the priority of
blacks in the invention of jazz.55 Musicians usually referred to these
problems more obliquely. Lil Hardin Armstrong, for example, remarked
to Bud Freeman years after Chicago's heyday was over: "We used to look
out at you all and say, 'What are they all staring at? Why are they all
here?'"? 6 Jelly Roll Morton said nothing directly, but his amanuensis,
ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, wrote in Morton's autobiography that
the Chicago High School kids "did well; not only were they talented,
they were the right color. [They] would have the money and the fame
while old Doctor Jazz died hard in Atlanta and his boys were still
scuffling in the honky tonks."57
When John Lax asked South Side drummer Red Saunders how close
the black and the white musicians became in Chicago during the twen-
ties, he replied: "Hm, Comme ci, comme qa—just so so." Ralph E. Brown
recalled that musicians of both races drank together in South Side clubs
after the whites had finished their night's work, but they were "not too
close. We fraternized a little bit." Even the more optimistic Scoville
Brown, when asked if Chicago in the 19205 had produced more closeness
between the races, replied, emphatically, "No."'8
The ambivalence of black Chicago musicians' attitudes toward the
112 Chicago Jazz

white jazzmen, colored by the history of American race relations and

professional competition, was echoed in a similar pattern of ambiguity in
white attitudes toward South Side musicians. The complexity of these
perceptions was most dramatically expressed by Mezz Mezzrow, who
articulated an extreme primitivist position which toppled into a kind of
reverse racism of its own. Mezzrow's admiration of New Orleans jazz on
the South Side emphasized its instinctual, guileless originality. He con-
trasted South Side jazz with white, east coast jazz which, he felt, relied
solely on instrumental technique and legitimate tonal quality. The
"true," "real" blues-rich New Orleans jazz, therefore, seemed to him to
be innocent. He admitted that Oliver and Armstrong moved away from
their "real" New Orleans music toward big band jazz as the twenties
progressed, but he could not accept that such changes could represent a
growing interest in new musical possibilities; to Mezzrow, it could only
be commercialism.
Mezzrow's descriptions of his South Side experiences contain several
such striking anomalies. He tells of a long evening in 1927 which he spent
with the other white Chicagoans who were about to leave for New York,
at the Nest, an elegant after-hours black-and-tan cabaret which adver-
tised in the programs of various Loop theaters. At the Nest (actually
called the Apex Club at the time) Mezzrow and his white jazz musician
friends listened to Jimmie Noone's Orchestra, described by columnist
Dave Peyton as playing "soft, scintillating, and sweet" music to packed
houses. Mezzrow noted that Noone usually played "arrangements of the
popular tunes of the day," but that, whenever Mezz and his white musi-
cian friends took their seats at the special table reserved for them in front
of the bandstand, Noone would respond to their requests for "low down
New Orleans gut bucket" blues. On this particular night, Noone agreed
amiably, but, to Mezzrow's displeasure, actually played only show tunes.
Finally, just as the other whites were about to leave, Noone and his
saxophonist Joe Poston began to sing some blues lyrics which commented
upon the tensions Mezzrow felt between himself and the other Chi-
cagoans. Strikingly, Mezzrow interpreted the whole incident as reflective
of his solidarity with "Negroes," and had nothing to say about the
wealthy clientele to which the Apex Club catered, or about Noone and
Earl Hines' steady refinement of their instrumental improvisations, or
why he had chosen this band, made up of some of the more advanced
jazz instrumentalists in Chicago, to ask them to play "low down New
Orleans gut bucket" blues.59
 White Chicago Jazz: Cultural Context 113

Moreover, Mezzrow presented the most extreme version of a kind of

well-intentioned, racist generalizing to which many of the young whites
were prone. While observing black prisoners singing the blues, black
jazzmen performing, and black vocalists and dancers entertaining in
clubs frequented by the black sporting set, Mezzrow could not imagine
either that the black performers were giving performances or that the
sporting set was just one dimension of a far more complex, varied society
on the South Side. Rather, he took what he saw and heard and gener-
alized about "the Negro," who had a "simple and natural" bearing, a
special "sense of time and rhythm that fascinated us," and a "relaxed,
high-spirited, unburdened style of life." Mezzrow admired all of this
focusing exclusively on those blacks closest to their southern folk roots
and completely ignoring other black Chicago musicians like Sammy
Stewart, Dave Peyton, Charles Elgar, and Erskine Tate who worked in
the opposite direction, blending folk music with dance band arrange-
ments and legitimately trained section men.
Finally, of course, Mezzrow forcefully articulated the major attitudes
described in Norman Mailer's essay on the "white Negro." Mailer associ-
ated what he saw as a sociopsychological phenomenon with the beat
generation after World War II, while making passing references to its
roots in the America of the 19203. According to Mailer, "hipsters" ex-
pressed their alienation from a war-torn, materialistic world in a mystic
religion which focused on "The Negro," who appeared to offer a model
for finding physical pleasure and musical expressiveness in the midst of
despair.60 Mezz Mezzrow was surely the most outspoken example of an
historical phenomenon which stretched back through vaudeville and
minstrelsy to the nineteenth century. As he put it:

They were my kind of people. And I was going to learn their mu-
sic and play it the rest of my days. I was going to be a musician, a
Negro musician, hipping the world about the blues the way only
Negroes can. I didn't know how the hell I was going to do it, but I
was straight on what I had to do.

To his credit, Mezzrow, more than any of the other white musicians,
at least raised the possibility that his own determination to play "Negro"
music reflected elements of a white racist presumption that one could
identify racial essences and come to possess whatever attibutes of the
oppressed race one might admire. He admitted that his discovery of the
114 Chicago Jazz

South Side led him to think that it was "my own personal property." His
collaborator, Bernard Wolfe, appended an insightful essay "The Ecstatic
in Blackface" to a 1972 paperback edition of Really the Blues. In it, Wolfe
systematically dismantled as "a coy fiction" Mezzrow's entire story of the
spontaneous Negro, insisting, despite his own role as Mezzrow's ama-
nuensis, that the true story was one of "the Negro as the white world sees
him and forces him to behave."6'
Cornetist Wild Bill Davison took a less romantic attitude toward the
ambivalent relations between black and white jazz musicians. In 1926,
Davison arrived in Chicago with the Seattle Harmony Kings and played
at the Cinderella Ballroom, which catered to college kids out in Austin.
He then caught on with Benny Meroffs highly successful vaudeville
stage band, earning so much money playing in Chicago's leading down-
town theaters that he was able to keep a table reserved every night at the
Sunset Cafe. One night, Armstrong, who had never actually heard
Davison play, invited him to sit in. Wild Bill played one or two passages
which Armstrong might himself have played, and the black jazzman
burst into laughter. Davison was never sure whether he was laughing
with him or at him. Wild Bill later invited Armstrong to a party at his
North Side apartment, where, it turned out, he was the only black.
Armstrong refused to leave the kitchen. Davison and his friends there-
fore moved into the kitchen, too.62
With few clubs looking for genuine white jazz bands even during the
winter cabaret season, the white Chicagoans who could read music
moved into the dance bands. Those who couldn't read that well played in
vaudeville acts like Red McKenzie's Mound City Blue Blowers, a novelty
combination, or didn't work at all, dedicating themselves instead to
"making the scene." Many made a habit of following Beiderbecke
around from job to job. and Bix's arrival in Chicago with the Paul
Whiteman Orchestra in 1927 led to one final, significant appropriation of
African-American musical traditions by the Chicagoans—the "jam ses-
sion."
A confirmed alcoholic from an early age, Bix sought out a place in
which to drink in between the five shows a day that he was playing with
the Whiteman band at the Chicago Theater. One block away, he discov-
ered Sam Beers' My Cellar, "a blackened-up old store," at 222 North
State Street, and began soaking up prohibition gin while exploring mod-
ern harmony at a battered upright piano in the basement. Soon this
"fillmill," as Mezzrow called it, became an after-hours hangout for Chi-
 White Chicago Jazz: Cultural Context 115

cage's white jazz musicians. Linking their music to images of sex and
danger, they renamed the place "the Three Deuces, parodying the Four
Deuces, one of the biggest syndicate whorehouses in town."63
Getting the leading soloists in the white big bands—Bix, Tesche-
macher, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Ben Pollack, Gene Krupa, and
Benny Goodman among others—together with the rebel primitivists—
Mezzrow, Condon, O'Brien, Red McKenzie, and Joe Sullivan—gave the
whites another opportunity to learn the art of improvisation. And Bix
was to be their teacher. Everyone wanted him to play (and to play beside
him), not only because they admired his style but because they could
profit from it. Mezzrow claimed that at the Three Deuces sessions, unlike
informal sessions on the South Side, competition through solo "cutting
contests" was rejected in favor of "really collective" improvisations in
which musicians played together for pure enjoyment, after months of
separation in different big and small bands. While that was probably true
for some of them, others used the Three Deuces sessions for professional
advancement.
Eddie Condon drank and played with the best men in the business,
and got many of the musicians to come to the sessions. He met promoter
and novelty musician Red McKenzie, and together they selected several
of the musicians from the Three Deuces sessions for a recording date at
Okeh Records. Bud Freeman, who was one of those chosen, was heard by
drummer/band leader Ben Pollack, who hired him to go to New York.
There, his career took on national scope.
Mezz Mezzrow would later claim that he had invented the "jam
session" at the Three Deuces, giving these free-wheeling sessions their
label by constantly requesting that they play Clarence Williams' "I Ain't
Gonna Give Nobody None of this Jelly Roll."

Down in that basement concert hall, somebody was always yelling

over to me, "Hey, Jelly, what you gonna do?"—they gave me that
nickname, or sometimes called me Roll ... and almost every time
I'd cap them with, "Jelly's gonna jam some now," ... and I think
the expression "jam session" grew up out of this playful yelling
back and forth.

His claim receives little critical or scholarly confirmation, and the verb to
"jam" and the noun "jam session" are credited to black musicians. But
Mezzrow was an extreme example of the "embodiment" of African-
n6 Chicago jazz

American culture among white Chicagoans. Thanks to racial segrega-

tion, he could "become," under special circumstances, Jelly Roll Mor-
ton. 6l»
The rebel white Chicagoans, in their reach for something wilder, less
saccharine, and less socially contrived than the music of the commer-
cialized white dance bands, found themselves caught between the South
Side jazz musicians, on the one hand, and a growing group of versatile
white dance band professionals who played excellent jazz as well. The
latter group—Benny Goodman, pianist arranger Mel Stitzel, Elmer
Schoebel, Vic Berton, Frank Teschemacher, Volly de Faut, Muggsy
Spanier, and Ben Pollack—assimilated the musical knowledge and sensi-
bilities necessary to span the chasm between soulful expressiveness and
dance band techniques, a perilous journey that was also made by many
South Side jazz musicians. Some of the subsequently famous rebel Chi-
cagoans like Eddie Condon remained proudly loyal to small group im-
provisation.
Taking an inflexible stand against the playing of scored arrangements
of popular song materials lived to haunt Mezz Mezzrow, who later
organized a historic inter-racial recording session in New York in 1933,
mixing such black players as saxophonist and arranger Benny Carter,
Teddy Wilson, bassist and bandleader John Kirby, drummer and band
leader Chick Webb, and Chicago pianist/arranger Alex Hill with a few
of his white Chicago colleagues. Hill later lamented that the arrange-
ments he contributed to the session were ruined by the leader, who
couldn't read them.6s
White jazz spokesmen found it difficult to fully articulate a rationale
for their desire to play jazz which did not rely upon race. Obviously
something other than African-American music and culture provided
their initial desire to play jazz, for few of the white Chicago jazzmen had
heard black music before turning to jazz in the first place. The initial
desire to play this tension-filled, fast moving music came from their
anticipation of the excitement of urban life, their alienation from middle-
class Victorian moralism, and a keen appreciation for the artful way
South Side musicians played their music under trying cultural circum-
stances. Blacks, for a variety of specific historical reasons, took the lead in
Chicago jazz, but the urge to play jazz music in twenties Chicago came
from an interracial and polyethnic experience of early twentieth-century
urban life.
 5
Chicago's Jazz Records

THE PHONOGRAPH RECORDS of Chicago's jazz groups of the 19205

both responded to and acted upon the society that produced them. In this
reciprocal process, economic and racial forces shaped recording and mar-
keting decisions, while recorded jazz stirred a broader and deeper public
appreciation of the talents of cabaret musicians. Of the two interwoven
dimensions of jazz records, the music has received far more critical
attention than the cultural or racial forces that shaped it. This chapter,
therefore, will first examine selected dimensions of the record business as
a context for the musical patterns engraved onto the records themselves.
The technology of sound recording revolutionized the public context
in which jazz was experienced, lifting it out of the cabarets and inserting
its sounds into homes across the country. Recorded sound technology
proved an invaluable tool for ambitious jazz musicians, since records
removed at least some of the distractions of the cabaret environment and
encouraged record buyers to focus attention on the music. For the lis-
tener, repeated playing of particular phonograph records could reveal the
musical excitement of jazz performance more clearly, a musical impact
easily lost in live cabaret performance. Indeed, according to an article
written in 1924 by Abel Green, an experienced entertainment reporter,
few cafe customers in the twenties could even distinguish the melody of
tunes they heard:
118 Ch icago Jazz

Of 300 people in a cafe, about 40 percent are usually dazed and

more inclined toward their respective vis a vis, the rest are dance
mad and careless about the melodies, but stepping to anything with
a rhythm, and, of course, there is the usual quota of "stoogies" who
couldn't recognize the strains of the National Anthem in their con-
dition . . . 5 per cent are conscious enough to appreciate what it's all
about. 1

Eventually, jazz writers and musicologists appeared—from Hugues Pan-

assie and Wilder Hobson to Gunther Schuller and Martin Wil-
liams—who relied nearly exclusively on phonograph records in writing
about the musical ingredients of jazz; both jazz's complex cultural func-
tion as cabaret entertainment and the economic and cultural influences
on jazz records were largely ignored.2
Some of the Chicago records by Oliver, Armstrong, Hines, Morton,
Beiderbecke, Noone, and Johnny Dodds have come to be interpreted as
milestones in the nearly seventy-five year history of recorded jazz. The
critically acclaimed jazz records made in Chicago during the twenties
have been selected from a larger number and broader range of records
made there during the decade. However, the subsequently famous jazz
musicians and jazz groups from that era also recorded many largely
forgotten dance numbers, vocal blues, and popular song performances,
and comic and novelty entertainment drawn from minstrelsy, medicine
shows, vaudeville, and cabarets. These latter sorts of records document
the musical enterprise of the decade, and, when they are regrouped for
purposes of analysis with the musically exceptional ones, the interactions
between music and cultural context emerge in sharper focus. The
broader range of Chicago jazz records reveals more clearly than the few
critically acclaimed ones how jazz functioned as a key ingredient in
urban entertainment enterprise. Jazz's musical evolution proceeded as
leaders, sidemen, and record producers worked to fashion dramatic and
entertaining musical acts with which to attract and hold public attention.
The musicians, jazz groups, and phonograph records that have been
most closely associated with jazz were only selected elements within a
musical culture generated by cabarets, theaters, and dance halls. Several
musical strategies, to be detailed later in this chapter, can be distinguished
within the larger body of jazz records made in twenties Chicago, differ-
ent approaches which reflected an evolving artistic consciousness at work
under special conditions in a particular time and place. These musical
 Chicago's Jazz Records 119

strategies responded to the economic and cultural pressures of that era,

but they also were intended to draw public attention to instrumental
music in cabaret, theater, and dance hall entertainment. In order more
fully to appreciate the cultural context in which these strategies found
expression, it will be necessary first to describe the evolution of jazz
records within the record industry,
Jazz records first appeared as a specialized form of white dance
music. Until 1913, little in the way of popular dance music was recorded
in this country. American companies produced expensive phonographs
and records for a wealthy elite. Operatic material dominated the recorded
music, and phonograph manufacturers believed that customers bought
records merely to have something with which to enjoy their phono-
graphs. Beginning in 1913, however, the dance craze led to the pro-
duction of dance records, which quickly turned immense profits and
propelled the record industry forward during subsequent periods of eco-
nomic weakness.3 As early as 1916, record companies canvassed poor
urban neighborhoods, like Chicago's South Side ghetto, to determine
how many citizens owned phonographs. When enough inexpensive ma-
chines had been manufactured and sold—in the mid-twenties an Ar-
tophone suitcase portable costing $13.85 became popular on the South
Side—records were designed to sell to specialized urban markets.^ Dur-
ing World War I the number of phonographs rose remarkably; national
production had reached $27,116,000 in 1914, but rose to $158,668,000 in
1919, representing 2,225,000 machines. Some companies even contributed
new portable models to military units in order to help soldiers entertain
themselves and develop a taste for recorded sound at their base camps
during lulls in the fighting in Europe. The New York Clipper reported
that growth continued through 1921, when one American out of every
seventy-two owned a record player. In that same year, 100,000,000
records were made.5
In the dance music field, the crucial background against which jazz
records emerged, the history of sound recording followed social and
racial patterns established before the war: after the initial recordings of
the white Original Dixieland Jazz Band were issued in 1917, jazz and
dance records continued to be made overwhelmingly in New York City
(and Camden, N.J.) by several companies using small white bands like
the Ted Lewis groups, the Happy Six and other formations directed by
Harry A. Yerkes, Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band, the Louisiana Five,
Ladd's Black Aces, Bailey's Lucky Seven and other Sam Lanin groups,
I2O Chicago Jazz

and the California Ramblers, as well as larger white hotel orchestras

thought to appeal to middle-class customers and the carriage trade. Dur-
ing these years black band leaders like Wilbur Sweatman, James Reese
Europe, W. C. Handy, and Ford Dabney recorded an interesting mixture
of minstrel, ragtime, and orchestral music aimed at customers from both
races.6
This white dominance, which ignored the long tradition of African-
American musical entertainment of white audiences, seriously hindered
black musicians. For both white and black musicians, making records
formed an important ingredient in the planning and publicity that built
performance reputations, particularly among those who had limited con-
tacts with powerful white promoters and band leaders. Musicians could
use their records to impress band leaders and band bookers, just as the
latter used them to attract job offers from cabaret and vaudeville man-
agers and dance hall proprietors. The appearance of the name of the
cabaret or dance hall on the record label indicates that phonograph
records were a form of advertising both within and outside of the music
business.
Appearances on records also had a significant economic impact on
jazz musicians. In the mid-twenties, whether or not their records ever
sold in large numbers (the actual sales figures of all jazz records have
been slow to surface), sidemen were paid $30 for each master that was cut
and approved for production. When they accompanied vocalists, they
could earn from $5 to |io, depending upon whether or not their instru-
mental work was featured during the recording. At a time when they
often earned from $45 to $75 a week in dance halls and cabarets, record-
ing fees could amount to more than wages.7
From 1917 to 1922, white jazzbands and the larger white hotel ball-
room orchestras recorded prolifically in New York City. Chicago band
leader Paul Biese traveled to New York as early as 1919 to record novelty
numbers in the nut jazz tradition. The Isham Jones Orchestra was the
only group to record in Chicago, itself, before 1922, waxing tunes like
"Dance-O-Mania" as early as June 1920. The Edgar Benson Orchestra
cut jazz-flavored records—"My Little Bimbo," "San," "Ain't We Got
Fun?"—in Camden, New Jersey, beginning on September 20, 1920.
Russo and Fiorito's Oriole Orchestra from the swank Edgewater Beach
Hotel, and the Frank Westphal Orchestra soon followed the others east-
ward. Since jazz-influenced dance band records, like the Benson Orches-
tra's "Wabash Blues" (1921) and Jones's "Virginia Blues" (1922), ap-
 Chicago's Jazz Records 121

peared on the market first, the record-buying public, for a time at least,
could have thought of Chicago jazz as something that the hotel dance
bands often played. Lists in the Appendix indicate the band names, the
chronological order in which they were recorded (expressed through the
date of their first and last recording sessions of the decade), the number of
jazz records they made, and the company labels involved.8
The subsequently celebrated records of black Chicago jazz bands
were first made in 1923, six years after those by the Original Dixieland
Jazz Band and three years after the first of Chicago's white jazz age
dance records by the Paul Biese Trio and the Charlie Straight Trio. Thus
they marked the systematic introduction of black groups into a field
already dominated by a small number of highly productive white groups
who recorded in New York City. In part, the decisions to make such
records resulted from new, mass marketing strategies which involved, as
Variety put it, "exploiting local bands for local trade, figuring on the
band's domestic following and possible radio popularity to augment local
trade."s
Decisions to produce black jazz band music on records intended for
sale in African-American neighborhoods followed earlier efforts to profit
from the sale of Irish, Yiddish, German, French, Native American, Ha-
waiian, Mexican, Bohemian, Polish, Tyrolean, and Scandinavian musics
wherever these immigrant groups clustered. Such "Race Records" were
intended to develop a working-class, urban, ethnic market for inexpen-
sive phonograph records. As we have seen after World War I, black
journalists referred to African-Americans as "the Race," so that the
choice of the term Race Records did not necessarily carry negative impli-
cations for those meant to buy them. Much depended, however, on who
used the term and the context involved, since within at least one record
company (discussed below) that produced these products, racial market
operations were conducted in a strictly segregated manner. 10
One of the first companies to develop the urban black working-class
market was the Okeh Record Corporation. In New York, on February
14, 1920, Okeh recorded black vocalist Mamie Smith singing "That
Thing Called Love" and "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down." Sales of
this first record were moderate, but Smith's subsequent August 10, 1920,
recording of black composer Perry Bradford's "Crazy Blues" and "It's
Right Here for You," both accompanied by her Jazz Hounds, sold 75,000
copies in Harlem alone over several weeks, demonstrating the existence
of a lucrative market for popular black vocal music. In 1921 through
122 Chicago Jazz

1922, a major craze for black female blues singers, whose work strongly
reflected the world of urban show business, received encouragement
from the Okeh Record Company, Paramount Records, and Vocalion
Record Company. Although vocalist Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds did
make some important instrumental records in New York in 1922, and
although many of the most influential black jazz instrumentalists played
accompaniment on these "Classic Blues" vocal records, the concerted
move to record instrumental music by black jazz bands did not begin
until 1923."
Chicago's Race Records subsequently reproduced several different
kinds of sounds from a broad range of styles and tastes within the
African-American ghetto community. In addition to the so-called Classic
Blues vocal records by black female cabaret and theater singers, instru-
mental jazz records paralleled and competed with recordings by ragtime
vocalists, minstrel, medicine show, and street corner entertainers, come-
dians and parodists, gospel and church choirs, jubilee and gospel quartets,
jug and washboard bands, string bands, harmonica players, and an im-
pressive number of recorded sermons.12 These conceptually different
sorts of recorded sound, moreover, influenced one another. Thus, what
have been called "jazz records" often reflected elements of several forms
of entertainment while at the same time setting standards for more
purely instrumental musical effects in the dance band field.
Although precise sales figures are scanty, these race records appar-
ently sold briskly. The long list of blues vocalists and jazzbands produced
on record, after Mamie Smith's breakthrough, indicates a strong demand
for racially oriented music. According to Variety, in mid-1923, "colored
singers and playing artists are riding to fame and fortune with the cur-
rent popular demand for 'blues' disk recordings." Clarence Williams,
who had moved from Chicago to New York, told the New York Clipper
that racial discrimination had created a demand for records among
entertainment-hungry blacks, who brought records home for parties,
since live performances occurred only in prohibitively expensive or
racially exclusive clubs.T 3 When the blues craze first hit, Williams had
three music stores in Chicago on State Street—to handle record sales.
Erskine Tate sold "Crazy Blues" in large numbers from his store at jist
and Wabash, and the Defender regularly advertised many other music
stores that stocked race records. Harry Rife, proprietor of the Metro-
politan Music Store at 47th and South Park, sold unprecedented quan-
tities of records like Clarence Wiliams's "Gulf Coast Blues" and Bessie
 Chicago's Jazz Records 123

Smith's "Back Water Blues." During the height of the rush, some cus-
tomers paid two dollars to reserve copies of popular records which nor-
mally sold at half that amount or less.1'*
Race records also sold by mail. Newspaper advertisements for Para-
mount and Vocalion Records carried a small form which readers filled
out, clipped, and sent to the company in order to receive (at a list price of
75 cents per record plus a cash-on-delivery charge) the products adver-
tised. Moreover, door-to-door sales were more important than has been
realized: race record advertisements included a call for full- or part-time
retainers; the newsboys of the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Defender
regularly carried copies of the latest records of the week along with their
newspapers. They sold the disks at $i apiece; for many customers the
records were as important as the news. As one newsboy recalled:

You'd go to one customer and she'd get all excited over a new blues
and start in to telling you all about her girl friend or some relative
who was sure to buy one, too.

Even Pullman porters augmented race record sales by carrying batches of

the latest issues with them on trips from Chicago into the South, where
country folk often enjoyed listening to the sounds of the city.'5
Race pride and musical entrepreneurship mingled in South Side
Chicago's attitudes toward the race record business. When New York's
James Reese Europe cut "Too Much Mustard" and "Down Home Rag"
on December 29, 1913, the first records made by a Negro orchestra, the
Chicago Defender concluded that Europe was "Jazzing Away Prejudice,"
since whites usually encountered blacks only as porters, cooks, and
waiters.16 Moreover, when Mamie Smith's "That Thing Called Love"
later appeared on the market, the Defender announced that "lovers of
music everywhere and those who desire to help in any advance of the
Race should be sure to buy this record."'7 Each subsequent effort by
Okeh to drum up business in Chicago was met with further journalistic
encouragement. The Okeh "Colored Folder," the first of the race record
catalogues of titles by "colored artists" was greeted with applause; in
response to lowered prices during the company's May 7, 1923, "Okeh
Week" the Defender announced that "Racial Pride demands that full
advantage be taken of this generous offer."18
Okeh's "Twelve Room House for Blues" campaign in November
1924 further revealed the mixture of racial pride and entrepreneurship
124 Chicago Jazz

that animated the race record business. Taking their cue from what their
newspaper advertisement called "the splendid reception given by lovers
of high-class music to the album sets of imported Odeon recordings,"
Okeh issued a hard-cover jazz record album: the front cover's design
featured "a weirdly-tilted 'House of Blues' and its human overflow of
laughing, dancing, 'blues' bands"; the pockets ("rooms"), into which
record buyers would insert their "blues" disks ("tenants"), were framed
by interviews with Clarence Williams, a major black jazz entrepreneur,
blues artist Sippie Wallace, and vocalist Sara Martin. It was an "indirect
appeal to the growing pride of Race."1?
The Consolidated Talking Machine Company's promotional cooper-
ation with South Side musicians and music entrepreneurs climaxed in
1926 with two star-studded programs staged at the Chicago Coliseum.
The first, called "Okeh Race Record Artists' Night," took place on Feb-
ruary 27, 1926, co-sponsored by the South Side Elks Lodge. It was
prepared for by an intensive publicity campaign in the sixteen Okeh
record retail outlets on the South Side. At the Coliseum, guitar sensation
Lonnie Johnson, in company with Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, made
records on stage "to demonstrate how its done." These recordings were
played back to an awed crowd immediately afterward. Clarence Wil-
liams, Bennie Moten, King Oliver, and Richard M. Jones further enter-
tained the crowd, leading orchestras which accompanied several heavily
promoted vocalists. The program was broadcast over the Chicago Tri-
bune's radio station WGN, and ex-Mayor Thompson took the occasion to
make a speech.20
Consolidated Talking Machine Company, the record distribution
subsidiary of Okeh, also promoted the culminating event of the jazz
movement in twenties Chicago: the "Okeh Cabaret and Style Show"
organized by company president E. A. Fearn. Designed to promote Okeh
stars and sales while also benefiting the black Local 208 of the musicians'
union (which held parades for three days advertising the event), the show
was held in the Chicago Coliseum on Saturday night, June 12, 1926.
Okeh dealers sold tickets at discount with record purchases. Ten bands
played, including the dance orchestras of Sammy Stewart, Erskine Tate,
and Charles Elgar, along with two blues vocalists, and the comedy team
of Butterbeans and Suzie. Louis Armstrong's Hot Five broke up the
show.21
While intended primarily for black audiences, blues and jazz rdce
records also attracted white customers from the start; given the sorts of
 Chicago's Jazz Records 125

black-and-tan cabarets in which most "classic blues" singers and jazz

musicians worked, it would have been surprising if at least some whites
had not bought these records. Variety routinely reviewed selected blues
and jazz records by black musicians and reported that Okeh race records
had "caught on with Caucasians," who accepted "the recognized fact that
only a Negro can do justice to the native indigo ditties." Reviewing
"Birmingham Blues" and "Wicked Blues" by Edith Wilson and Her
Jazz Hounds, the trade paper decided that "the fair Caucasian percentage
that dote on barbaric wails of the indigo order" had a good buy await-
ing.22 The New York Clipper highly recommended King Oliver records
as "barbaric indigo dance tunes played with a gusto and much ado which
leaves little doubt as to their African origin."23
In Chicago, Jack Kapp, creator of Brunswick Records' Vocalion race
line and later Director of Decca Records, owned a record store at 2308
West Madison Street on the edge of the black ghetto that was emerging
on the West Side. He stocked race records for white, as well as black,
customers. Similarly, Tom Brown (leader of the Six Brown Brothers
saxophone act) sold race records in his music store on South Wabash
Avenue.2«
White record companies fought bitterly to retain their monopoly on
the recording and marketing of African-American music when Harry H.
Pace organized his all-black Black Swan Record Company. Whites
owned all but three of the race record companies and of those three,
Sunshine Records, C & S Records, and Pace and Black Swan, only Black
Swan made a major contribution to race record production. Even though
black musicians recorded music primarily intended for black audiences,
race records ultimately reflected the policies and ideas of the whites who
owned the companies. White executives worked through black inter-
mediaries, talent scouts and studio managers such as Clarence Williams
in New York and Mayo Williams and Richard Myknee Jones in Chicago,
who exercised substantial influence in guiding the development of black
recorded music.25
Mayo Williams, who took charge of the race recording program for
Paramount Records from mid-1923 through mid-1927, produced many
excellent jazz records by Freddie Keppard, Johnny Dodds, and Tiny
Parham in addition to his better known blues disks. His activities illus-
trate how race records came to be made and in what different senses they
represented African-American culture. Williams, the first black to hold
an executive position in a white recording company, came to Chicago in
126 Chicago Jazz

1921 and first wrote sports articles for the Chicago Whip before selling his
services to the all-white Paramount Record Company, a faltering corpo-
ration which had purchased the catalogue of Black Swan Records. Wil-
liams represented himself to Paramount's sales manager M. A. Supper as
having an inside knowledge of the black community's musical tastes,
even though his own ran to opera rather than the blues and jazz. Eager to
make money on the race market without having to become directly
involved with the racial community, Paramount agreed to give Williams
free rein and to pay him one cent on each record sold; he received no
salary, but rather what he preferred to call "a talent" or "sales royalty"
from each of the artists whose sessions he produced.26
Under Mayo Williams, race records came to be strongly influenced by
South Side cabarets and vaudeville theaters. Since he had limited per-
sonal taste for popular black music, he scouted talent at the "new"
Monogram Theater, the popular vaudeville theater on South State Street,
two blocks from his own office in the Overton Bank Building at 36th and
South State. As he was quoted as saying, "Nothin" but lowly people went
to the Monogram ... the uppercrust went to the Grand." Williams stood
backstage in the theater, measuring the applause accorded various vocal
and instrumental acts. He followed the theatrical columns in the Whip
and the Defender and frequented important black cabarets like Bottoms's
Dreamland and the DeLuxe. Finally, Williams hired such important
composer/pianist/arranger/accompanists as Tiny Parham, Thomas A.
Dorsey, and Lovie Austin to identify musically interesting performers,
teach proper pitch and arrangements to folk vocalists and musicians, and
transcribe their subsequent performances for copyright lead sheets and
sheet music.27
Paramount race records therefore both reflected and shaped African-
American musical traditions. If whites owned the companies, black ar-
tists and producers exercised substantial control over the music chosen
and recorded. The music had normally proven its popularity with South
Side audiences before getting on record. Artists whose initial record did
not sell at least 250 copies were not invited back to make more.
Mayo Williams personally regarded the separate retailing category
printed in company catalogues as demeaning to blacks. Moreover, the
company refused to allow Williams "to be identified with white records,
or the white side of the situation at all." He was completely isolated
from his employers, who never set foot in his South Side office, and
when he was summoned to the yearly meeting with company officers
 Chicago's Jazz Records 127

in the Palmer House, he took the service elevator to the appropriate

floor.28
The racially segregated organization of record companies encouraged
certain types of race records. Black vocalists and musicians were encour-
aged to record what the white company executives and their black talent
scouts considered to be distinctively "Negro" material. Such pressures
encouraged racial stereotypes. Jazzman Danny Barker complained that
black vocalists were forced by black record executives like Mayo Wil-
liams to do "earthy" material. Mamie Smith's record sales dropped when
she started to record ballads instead of the blues that were expected of
her. Instrumental music avoided the overt stereotypes of race and gender
that attached themselves to vocal performances.^ Jazz could not, how-
ever, entirely escape the economic and racial pressures of the record
business.
Due in part at least to the heavier expenses involved in recording a
ten-to-twelve piece orchestra, all of the record companies seriously
under-recorded Chicago's large black theater and dance orchestras,
which were, nevertheless, firmly entrenched in South Side movie theaters
and a few leading white dance halls, and who should have been recorded
far more than they were.3° Racial stereotypes combined with economic
pressures to encourage a preference among recording executives for five-
to-seven-piece jazz bands, rather than the larger and more legitimate
sounding orchestras. As Dave Peyton put it in his weekly column "The
Music Bunch" near the end of the decade:

In the past the big recording companies have confined our musi-
cians to one style of recording. This style of recording they consider
our orchestras are perfected in. They confine us to low jazz and
blues. They have an idea that our orchestras cannot play real music
for recordings, but they never were so wrong.31

Peyton was a theater pit orchestra leader and thus in a good position to
understand how jazz polyphonies could act as a racial trap for ambitious
musicians.
Harry Pace, unlike most record producers, took care to record a
broad variety of musical genres when he founded the African-American
record company called Black Swan, but his enterprise was short-lived.^ 2
Once created, stylistic categories helped to determine subsequent public
expectations. As the twenties spun on, one trade paper indicated that,
ia8 Chicago Jazz

despite the efforts of a handful of white musicians, blacks most authen-

tically recorded black music. The white writer wondered aloud at the
"paradox for one of his race" when Fletcher Henderson, recording with a
big band, "delivers a white man's blues style that is not at all faithful,
coming as it does from a crack negro aggregation." The writer felt that
whites had "done their damnedest to simulate the native negro 'blues'
and succeed indifferently with but occasional exceptions."33
Despite cultural and economic pressures on race recording, the move
to record Chicago jazz bands, which followed the decline of the Classic
Blues craze, helped to move cabaret musicians out from behind the
vocalists and other stage entertainers, spotlighting a form of small group
musical entertainment that avoided the more overt racial stereotypes of
cabaret show business. In 1922, Gennett Records, which had pioneered
mail order and chain store record distribution, began recording the latest
small group instrumental sounds from the city. Gennett, a subdivision of
the Starr Piano Company of Richmond, Indiana, developed the urban
ethnic and racial markets. It eventually sold its wares under inexpensive
labels like Champion, Buddy, Bell, Black Patti, Herwin, QRS, Challenge,
Conqueror, Superior, Supertone, and Silvertone. Following the estab-
lished racial policies of the larger and more expensive labels like
Brunswick and Victor, Gennett's first efforts at small band instrumental
jazz had been limited to white New York-based groups like Jimmy
Durante and the Original New Orleans Jazz Band, Bailey's Lucky Seven,
and Ladd's Black Aces (whites drawn as caricatured Negroes for com-
pany advertising).3'*
The record industry's preference for white jazz bands continued in
Gennett's selection of the peppy jazz age social dance music of white
Chicago dance band promoter Husk O'Hare's Super Orchestra, recorded
at its Indiana plant on March 9-10, 1922. On August 29, 1922, the label
followed with records of the white Friars Society Orchestra. Its members
traveled from their regular engagement at Mike Fritzel's Friars Inn in
Chicago to Richmond, Indiana, to make the first recordings of Chicago
jazz band music, seven months before any black jazz bands did.
The choice of the Friars Society Orchestra for these historic records
followed directly from the group's popularity in white Chicago. The
Starr Music Company store was just around the corner from Friars Inn,
where the size of the crowds convinced Starr's Chicago manager Fred
Wiggens that a market for records by a small cabaret jazz band might
exist. For subsequent sessions at Gennett in the spring and summer of
 Chicago's Jazz Records 129

1923, the group, which had ended its seventeen-month residence at Friars
Inn, dropped its association with both O'Hare and the cabaret, taking
their own name, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings.35
The impact of these early white jazz band records in Chicago is best
understood against the background of instrumental novelty and dance
records already made from 1917 to 1922. Compared with the nationally
popular 1917 records of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the Friars
Society Orchestra played New Orleans style polyphonic music seriously,
very largely rejecting the "nut" humor of the earlier white group. Com-
pared with the jazz age dance records already made by the Paul Biese,
Husk O'Hare, Frank Westphal, Russo and Fiorito, and Isham Jones
hotel orchestras, those by the Rhythm kings challenged the precisely
executed, legitimate-toned music of professional dance bands with an
earthier-sounding, coarse-timbered polyphony mixed with head arrange-
ments devised by pianist Elmer Schoebel. Schoebel's own "Farewell
Blues" and "Bugle Call Blues" and the band's performances of "Eccen-
tric" and "Discontented Blues" all offered a judicious mixture of harmo-
nized effects with polyphony. The band was well rehearsed, having
performed their material repeatedly at Friars Inn. Schoebel, who could
read and write music, taught his arranged effects to his young, non-
reading musicians.
In these "head arrangements" individual parts were worked out by
adjusting intuition and spontaneity with memorization of preconceived
note patterns. With such arrangements, the records made by the Friars
Society Orchestra, like those of several other important Chicago jazz
bands, were frequently less fully improvised than the legend of jazz
improvisation would suggest.36
The rugged individualism of the group's wind instrumentalists lent
an earthiness to their sound seldom found among white bands. The
guilelessly emphatic lead horn of Paul Mares, whose coarse-toned me-
lodic statements rarely strayed from the middle register, dominated the
front line sound. Just as importantly, the Friars/Rhythm Kings achieved a
remarkably relaxed, rhythmically swinging beat and avoided the ten-
dency of many white dance bands to sound nervous when playing "jazz."
At the time they recorded, few popular white groups had ever achieved
this flowing and focused rhythmic impact. Unlike many of the white
hotel and dance hall bands of that time, in which a rhythmic disjunction
separated percussion from wind instruments, the Friars Society Orches-
tra played with a shared rhythmic pulse.
130 Chicago Jazz

But their influence on Chicago listeners did not increase with time.
Groups of white musicians continued to assemble for NORK recording
sessions, but with many changes in personnel; the core musicians in this
group never worked again as a cabaret band after their initial run at
Friars Inn and therefore lost much of the cohesion and musical focus
which regular live performance with fixed personnel had encouraged
earlier. Moreover, the subsequent move to record black jazz bands on
"race records" soon revealed the depth and variety of regularly employed
South Side jazz groups which had awaited exposure on record.
Indeed, in its own way NORK had helped to direct attention to the
rich possibilities in recording South Side music when they recorded with
Jelly Roll Morton at the piano on July 17 and 18, 1923, the first interracial
recording sessions by Chicago musicians. But in addition to making an
integrationist statement, NORK's record's benefited musically from Mor-
ton's loping left-hand swing that added even more propulsion to a good
rhythm section; his beautiful right-hand countermelodies behind the
soloists added a gracefully contoured counterpoint to their improvisations.
On the other hand, the band's recordings of "Sweet Lovin' Man,"
"Wolverine Blues," and "Mr. Jelly Lord" gained in popular impact from
the fact that the composers involved were African-Americans who had
not yet been given the occasion to record them themselves. NORK's "Tin
Roof Blues," their most influential number, long struggled against accusa-
tions of having been stolen from Richard Myknee Jones's "fazzin' Babies
Blues." What could be interpreted as unusually close relations with black
jazzmen, might also represent the taking of unfair advantage.^7
The marketing of race records swiftly uncovered the number, vari-
ety, and depth of jazz bands which had been hidden by the preference for
white groups among the record companies. Although Clarence Jones
made some solo piano records in Chicago in January, King Oliver's
Creole Jazz Band made the first recordings of a black Chicago jazz band
on April 6, 1923, seven months after the white Friars Society Orchestra,
when Gennett, as part of a campaign to enlarge its race record catalogue,
recorded nine numbers by them in one session. (Drummer Baby Dodds
later explained that "we did all that recording in one day because none of
us had quarters to sleep in Richmond.")^8 Fred Gennett had been intro-
duced to Oliver by his Chicago store manager Fred Wiggens and, sensing
sales possibilities in the large crowds which crammed the Lincoln Gar-
dens, signed him to a recording contract immediately. The Richmond,
Indiana, company therefore deserves the credit for giving Chicago's black
 Chicago's Jazz Records 131

jazz bands their first break into the recording business. Joseph Oliver
recorded sixty-six sides in the Midwest with Gennett, Okeh, Columbia,
and Paramount; only South Siders Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton,
and Jimmie Noone were to become as prolific. Oliver made more records
than any Chicago jazz band leader of the twenties except Jelly Roll
Morton.
The Okeh Record Company soon set the pace for prolific recording
and aggressive publicity for its race records, setting up a temporary
recording studio in the Consolidated Talking Machine Company Build-
ing at 227 West Washington Street. The details of how Oliver and his
band first came to record for the Okeh label confirm the importance of
musical entrepreneurship on both the black and the white sides of the
music business.39 In early June 1923, a Music Trades Convention met in
the Drake Hotel and presented a series of bands to entertain the conven-
tioneers. King Oliver's Jazz Band was scheduled last on the bill and
appeared at 3:00 a.m. for a twenty-minute set, which eventually ran
nearly two hours longer than planned. What the journal Talking Machine
World called a "mob of admirers" crowded around to marvel over the
band, "especially the little frog-mouthed boy [Louis Armstrong?] who
played cornet." The band recorded for Okeh later that month.
Important recordings of African-American music resulted from
commercial decisions made by white companies to use black bands and to
rely upon sales to Chicago's black population, black tourists, and a sub-
stantial number of whites who were thought to like black jazzband
music. In September 1923, the General Phonograph Company took ad-
vantage of a convention of the African-American Improved Benevolent
Order of Elks to advertise the Oliver and Erskine Tate bands' new
records by tacking up posters and having the bands perform throughout
the South Side on flatbed trucks.^ 0
The records of Joe Oliver's Jazz Band revealed that polyphonic per-
formance benefited from unusually distinctive and powerful instrumen-
tal voices. Like NORK, despite their breaks and interesting head ar-
rangements, most of the Oliver Jazz Band records (more than those he
later made under the name of King Oliver's Dixie Syncopators) focused
on polyphonic performance: the cornet(s) carried the melody, the clarinet
embroidered, and the trombone punctuated rhythmically. But Oliver's
band, like most of the recording white dance orchestras of the time, had
two cornets whose close harmonic voicing provided an unusually power-
ful lead, and their clarinetist Johnny Dodds played with unprecedented
132 Chicago Jazz

emotional power and depth. Moreover, Oliver's jazz band had discovered
some challenging ways of arranging oral musical traditions so as to
introduce a variety of sounds which enriched the overriding polyphonic
paradigm.
Recordings of King Oliver's group demonstrate a mixture of impro-
visation with arrangements developed in oral/aural tradition music. Like
the earliest NORK recordings, Oliver's involved, fairly set routines de-
rived from rehearsals and four years of on-the-job experience. Indeed,
some of their routines must have been New Orleans aural/oral traditions
transplanted to Chicago. As noted earlier, Eddie Condon, thought that
the mixture of individual instrumental voices in the Oliver Jazz Band
sounded "as if someone had planned it with a set of micrometer cal-
ipers."'*1
The band recorded "Dippermouth Blues" on two occasions (two and
a half months apart) in 1923. The performances are very similar, not only
in the ensemble arrangements but also in the now-famous solo lines
played by Oliver (an incendiary cup-muted wail) and clarinetist Johnny
Dodds, who began his solo with three measures of keening whole notes.
Indeed, when, three years later, Oliver recorded the number a third time
(calling it "Sugar Foot Stomp") the cornet and clarinet solos still hinged
on the same motifs. Similarly, two recordings of "Snake Rag," with its
slithering, muted cornet-to-sliding-trombone effects, unfold in a strongly
similar manner.*!2
Oliver wove a variety of different textures, requiring planning and
memory, into his ensembles. First, even when they were polyphonic, the
two-cornets-in-harmony lead added a widely admired element of prepa-
ration. Moreover, Oliver sometimes turned the lead over to his powerful
clarinetist Johnny Dodds, supporting him with choir-like harmonies
from the other wind instruments. He also varied the relationships be-
tween lead and supporting instruments, giving the lead, in the trio of
"High Society," for example, to Dodds, playing in the chalumeau regis-
ter, while Armstrong played hushed harmonies one octave higher. Arm-
strong's harmonic support, moreover, surpassed the simple statement of
parallel chordal tones, forming instead a contrapuntal melodic line, key
notes of which harmonized with important harmonic moments in
Dodd's direct statement of the tune's trio theme. To make his band sound
even more surprising, Oliver would change from polyphony to ho-
mophony and back again from chorus to chorus and within choruses.
Oliver carefully selected his repertoire in order to bring out of his
 Chicago's Jazz Records 133

musicians a variety of moods, extending well beyond the expected jazz

age social dance excitement. In fact, one outstanding quality in the Oliver
sound is the recurrent sense of other, sometimes sacred, emotions color-
ing what functioned as dance hall music. Johnny Dodds and Louis Arm-
strong brought a prayerful humility to the trio of "High Society" and to
the moving "Riverside Blues," written by gospel composer Thomas A.
Dorsey. So too, the stirringly powerful, repetitive melodic themes of
"Working Man Blues," with their beautiful harmonies, gave Oliver's
records a singular emotional power.
But the changing focus of the music found on records made by other,
later groups led by King Oliver demonstrates that a band's performance
situation in Chicago influenced the kinds of records it made. The Vocal-
ion records which Oliver made with his Dixie Syncopators beginning in
1926, when the group worked as the house band at the Plantation Cafe,
included musical and show business ingredients that were missing from
his Royal Gardens Cafe dance band.« Oliver now included "legitimate"
section men in his ten-piece Plantation Cafe and Vocalion recording
band. Bob Shoffner, who went on to play with Tate, Elgar, and Peyton,
read the scored cornet parts on "Too Bad" and "Deep Henderson" in
1926, while Albert Nicholas, Billy Paige, and Barney Bigard combined in
a harmonically and tonally rich red section that was entirely absent from
Oliver's earlier recording group. This saxophone choir, which caused the
band's sound to more closely approximate that of most white dance
bands, was particularly adept at changing tonal colors through varying
combinations of the soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones with clarinets.
On some of his Dixie Syncopators records cut in Chicago, Oliver
demonstrated an increased awareness and control of techniques implied
on some of his Creole Jazz Band sides. Where clarinetist Johnny Dodds
had sometimes played lead within polyphonic ensembles, Nicholas or
Bigard (and even Johnny Dodds himself, who returned to the Oliver
band to perform on "Someday Sweetheart") now stepped out of the
ensemble to spotlight the melody and the clarinet sound, while the brass,
or reeds (or sometimes both) chorded together in the background or
punctuated at rhythmic intervals. This increasing differentiation between
the improvising or reciting soloist and background accompaniment re-
flected a growing solo instrumental specialization and an orchestral styl-
ization appropriate to cabaret entertainment.
The Plantation Cafe also hired singers, and some of the King Oliver
Dixie Syncopators recordings therefore presented several different fe-
134 Chicago Jazz

male cabaret vocalists. Oliver and his band backed Teddy Peters on
"Georgia Man," a cabaret song, Georgia Taylor on the vaudeville-
influenced "Jackass Blues" (composer and vaudevillian Perry Bradford in
live performances of this tune, appeared on stage with a mule), and Irene
Scruggs on "Home Town Blues" and "Sorrow Valley Blues" in the
classic blues mold. None of these vocalists could match the musical talent
of their accompanists. They probably came across better in live perfor-
mance, where they could dance as well as sing. Each of them sang
straightforward blues with lyrics that dealt with strife between the sexes,
indulging in none of the cheaper entertainment tricks or sexual double
entendres often found on other records.
Jazz records helped to sharpen a new focus on instrumental musical
entertainment. In the competitive world of Chicago musicians, each jazz
instrumentalist and each jazz band worked to develop a distinctive
sound. Different combinations of musicians inevitably produced differ-
ent group sounds, even when everything else remained much the same.
Many interesting records by both white and black groups, for example,
relied more or less completely on the basic jazzband paradigm of five to
seven musicians playing polyphonic choruses on a blues or popular song.
To what degree such ensemble work really was improvised is open to
question. While these performances certainly do not sound as if they were
being read from written scores, the musicians may have memorized and
then repeatedly played the patterns of notes they recorded. The propo-
nents of this style, as far as one can tell from their records, largely resisted
the interesting head arrangements found in the early recorded work of
NORK and Joe Oliver. Within it, one can locate Freddie Keppard's
Cardinals, the New Orleans Boot Blacks and the New Orleans Wan-
derers (the same group under different names), Jelly Roll Morton's
pre-1926 recordings, the State Street Ramblers, and Lovie Austin and
Her Blues Serenaders, Wingy Manone's Cellar Boys, and the Frank
Melrose records. Not entirely lacking in relatively simple, easily remem-
bered head arrangements, records like these still primarily focused on a
multi-chorus melodic statement and polyphonic elaboration of the tune
being recorded. Black groups were more likely to use a blues progression
and theme as the basis for such improvisations, while white bands usually
chose a popular song of the day.
On recordings like these, often quite distinctive sounding instrumen-
talists combined their personal and highly expressive instrumental tim-
bres and techniques in practiced demonstrations of polyphonic freedom.
 Chicago's Jazz Records 135

They seemed, when compared with arranged dance band records at least,
to capture jazz's freedom from the tyranny of precise melodic repetition
and from the regimentation of written arrangements. But despite their
celebrated (and often bitterly condemned) polyphonic freedom, such
records actually explored (and re-explored) a limited musical and show
business territory. The impression of creative freshness and novelty ini-
tially produced by these groups depended upon the discovery of their
particular polyphonic texture. Despite their efforts to find interesting
new material, different instrumentalists, and variety in tempi, such
groups recorded and re-recorded jazzband polyphonies.
A substantial number of less arranged records by black outfits manip-
ulated minstrel and vaudeville effects. Novelty and hokum records made
up a large proportion of those made by Jimmie O'Bryant's Washboard
Bands (with either W. E. Burton or Jasper Taylor on washboard), Jimmie
Blythe's Ragamuffins (Jasper Taylor's washboard on tunes like "Messin'
Around" and "Ape Man"), Jelly Roll Morton's Steamboat Four and
Stomp Kings (with "Memphis" playing the comb and W. E. Burton, the
kazoo), and J. C. Cobb and his Grains of Corn (also with W. E. Burton on
kazoo). On a few of the Johnny Dodds sides, minstrel show monologues
set the tone of the three-minute recording.
White recording executives probably encouraged such overtly primi-
tivist instrumentation. White A & R men like Frank Melrose, Jack Kapp,
and Ralph Peer often discussed recording sessions ahead of time with
black band leaders, searching for marketable compromises between what
the musicians seemed prepared to play and what the company believed
would sell. Even when blacks were in charge of the recording session,
company pressures to produce identifiably racial music still had both
good and bad consequences, providing a market for black musicians but
also encouraging racial stereotyping.44
But greater musical sophistication in jazz seems in some cases to have
evolved in tension with the more overt show business solutions to the
problems of generating musical excitement. The records of Jelly Roll
Morton's Red Hot Peppers, nineteen of which were made by the Victor
Talking Machine Company in Chicago from September 15, 1926 through
June 10, 1927 (after which Morton recorded in New York), created
combinations of strikingly arranged passages with polyphonic ensembles,
breaks and solos.45 On these records, more than on his earlier ones,
Morton focused on instrumental effects in the jazzband tradition, mixing
carefully conceived head arrangements with polyphonic improvisations
136 Chicago Jazz

on his own original compositions. Morton's critically celebrated composi-

tions were recorded by a handpicked core of practiced New Orleans-style
improvisors, but three of them were then working in Chicago's large
black dance bands and therefore accustomed to reading arranged pas-
sages as well as improvising. They skillfully interpreted Morton's original
compositions, which featured elaborate introductions and codas, choir-
like harmonies for the wind instruments, two-bar harmonized as well as
individual solo breaks, unison and harmonized riff figures, and a loose,
swinging jazz beat.
Morton's Red Hot Pepper recordings blended a remarkable precision
in the performance of the leader's arrangements with relaxed polyphonic
ensembles. Morton fashioned an unprecedented compositional and tex-
tural originality out of the seven-piece jazzband tradition, which had
moved from New Orleans to Chicago. Although he had used the sax-
ophone as a lead instrument before 1926, Morton avoided the two-
saxophone section; he arranged, however, lovely harmonized passages for
clarinetists Darnell Howard and Barney Bigard on "Sidewalk Blues" and
"Dead Man Blues." He even had Omer Simeon double on bass clarinet,
an unusual instrument in jazzband music.
Jelly Roll Morton recorded both musically focused and novelty-
oriented records and was more likely than Oliver to reach for fairly
blatant vaudeville effects when recording entertainment-oriented sides:
"Hyena Stomp" spotlighted contagious belly laughter, and "Billy Goat
Stomp" immortalized rhythmic bleating. Records like these returned
music to the service of stage humor. The majority of his Red Hot Peppers
sides, on the other hand, substantially enlarged the territory of musically
focused cabaret entertainment.
The interweaving of polyphony and arranged passages also charac-
terizes some of the more rhythmically urgent and instrumentally naive
records of the young rebel white Chicagoans, who sometimes produced a
wildly disorganized sound on their recordings. Muggsy Spanier's Buck-
town Five used plenty of arranged passages, notably on their recording of
"Really a Pain," an elaborately contrived arrangement whose title might
have indicated Mel Stitzel's enjoyment at writing a very complicated
piece, or the musicians' feelings about recording it, or both.-*6 McKenzie
and Condon's Chicagoans integrated some basic structural signposts like
"the flare," an ensemble punctuation played at the first ending of a
chorus, "the explosion," a brief polyphonic ejaculation at the end of the
first eight bars of a thirty-two-bar popular song, and "shuffle rhythm," an
 Chicago's jazz Records 137

implication, often during the bridge, of double time by the rhythm

section, while reveling in the wildest (nearly anarchic) sorts of polyphonic
improvisation, what guitarist Marty Grosz has called "the manic frenzy
of the ensemble imbroglio." These very young white musicians brought
an unprecedented rhythmic urgency and carefree (nearly careless) indi-
vidualism and solo abandon to their best records, but Bud Freeman,
Mezz Mezzrow, and Wingy Manone recorded solos in Chicago which
demonstrated a groping for improvisational control. In the 19205, at their
early stage of musical development, their rough tonal production, angu-
lar solo lines, and dissonant harmonics worked best in the ensemble
mode.47
Frank Teschemacher contributed the more arranged touches to the
Chicagoans' records: the introductions, notably the harmonized passages
on "Nobody's Sweetheart," and "China Boy," and the unusual 6/4 meter
on "Liza" by McKenzie and Condon's Chicagoans. "Jazz Me Blues"
recorded by Frank Teschemacher's Chicagoans even features written
arrangements for three saxophones, an unusual attempt among the white
rebel musicians to integrate dance band concepts with improvisations.
The same tune recorded by the Charles Pierce Orchestra in April 1928
(Pm 12640) included a marvelously written variation for three sax-
ophones, played with urgent forward movement.48
The most widely admired ensemble approach featured one or more
exceptionally powerful, controlled solo instrumentalists within a poly-
phonic context. Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven records, for
example—recorded beginning on November 12, 1925—combined tech-
nically limited but emotionally powerful polyphonic ensemble players
like Edward "Kid" Ory and Johnny Dodds with Armstrong's flamboy-
antly dramatic soloing on a series of harmonically simple, often blues-
based tunes. The limitations of the other instrumentalists and, as James
Lincoln Collier^ has noted, the carefree simplicity of the underlying
structures enhanced the impact of Armstrong's astounding virtuosity and
inventiveness. "West End Blues," for example, combined Armstrong's
technically advanced, dramatic playing with an unadorned blues other-
wise performed in a relatively undistinguished fashion.
The cornet/trumpet star was not the first to take solos on records:
members of white New York jazz bands had recorded solos as early as
1922, while they also had been part of NORK's pioneering Gennett sides
one year later; Beiderbecke's solos on the Wolverines' "Tiger Rag" and
"Royal Garden Blues" (among others) in 1924 had announced on record
138 Chicago Jazz

some impressive possibilities for jazz solos. But Armstrong set newer and
more flamboyant standards. His solo work fused comedy and melodrama
with brilliant musical invention. His influence is everywhere on the
Chicago jazz records of the latter half of the 19205, as other horn players
tried unsuccessfully to capture his expressive eloquence. Among South
Siders, Lee Collins, Jabbo Smith, and Reuben "River" Reeves—the last-
named largely ignored in jazz histories—strove to emulate Armstrong's
style, while Wild Bill Davison, Wingy Manone, and Max Kaminsky
followed suit among the whites playing lead horn in Chicago.
Reuben ("Red" or "River") Reeves and His River Boys made a series
of recording sessions in 1929 which framed the trumpeter within a poly-
phonic jazzband. Reeves, a skilled trumpet soloist inspired by Arm-
strong, had been born in Evansville, Indiana, and earned a master's
degree from the American Conservatory of Music before joining Dave
Peyton's Grand Theater pit orchestra in 1927. He went on to play with
Peyton's Regal Theater Orchestra and taught music at Wendell Phillips
High School before cutting his River Boys sessions during the summer of
1929.5°
Reeves possessed a remarkable trumpet technique, power, and range;
Dave Peyton touted him as the heir to Armstrong's throne. But his small
band records suggest that the educated musical technician had technically
mastered many of Armstrong's mannerisms but not the spirit of his
individual style. "River Blues," "Parson Blues," and "Papa Scag Stomp"
present flashy displays of trumpet, piano, and clarinet technique, but
often become satirical in spirit: Reeves's version of Armstrong's "shake"
becomes a horse-like whinny, while falsetto vocals communicate the
comical, ever so slightly condescending attitude which educated musi-
cians often brought to playing in even a sophistcated blues style.
Jabbo Smith, another Armstrong follower who recorded in Chicago
late in the decade, came closer than Reeves to replicating Armstrong's
solo range, technique, timbre, and spirit within the polyphonic jazzband
approach. Smith, moreover, recorded with superb musicians—banjoist
and guitarist Ikey Robinson, clarinetist Omer Simeon, tubist Hayes Alvis,
and the marvelous pianist Cassino Simpson—who played well in the Hot
Five style. As Jabbo Smith's Rhythm Aces, these musicians made exciting
recordings of "Ace of Rhythm," "Sau Sha Stomp," and "Little Willie
Blues." A reckless exhibitionism led Smith into solo stunts from which he
sometimes had trouble escaping satisfactorily, and this same quality pre-
cluded his reaching the emotional depth of Armstrong's playing.51
 Chicago's Jazz Records 139

Framing more than one impressive soloist within the jazzband model
sometimes stretched this approach to its limits, particularly when Arm-
strong combined with Earl Hines, the second-most acclaimed soloist on
Chicago's race records from the twenties. Hines's path-breaking talent
was not immediately apparent, however. He first recorded with Johnny
Dodds's Black Bottom Stompers in April 1927, one month before he
played on Armstrong's Hot Seven sessions. Hines had played in leading
South Side Chicago clubs since 1923. He had studied piano formally in
Pittsburgh before moving to Chicago and he paralleled Armstrong in
instrumental mastery. On the early records he made with the clarinetist
and the trumpeter, Hines tailored his work to the older New Orleans
style, playing more accompaniment than solos, his outstanding abilities
hidden under the old fashioned polyphonies.
In December 1928, however, Earl Hines was finally given the occa-
sion to record on his own. He produced eight solo numbers for the QRS
company in New York and four more for Okeh in Chicago. These
records reveal Hines's light, precise, and powerful touch, his sweeping
keyboard control, and his lightning coordination. He produced memora-
ble interpretations of "Blues in Thirds," "Monday Date," and "Off Time
Blues."
Hines had developed, through long years of study and practice, un-
precedented rhythmic freedom. He frequently and dazzlingly varied the
traditional stride left-hand patterns with on- and off-the-beat walking
tenths, rolling boogie woogie eighths, and irregular rhythmic accents.
With his right hand, Hines played melodies and improvisations in oc-
taves (while commenting and decorating with the middle fingers of the
right hand), a pattern known as his "trumpet-style," for its resemblance
to the solo voice clarity of an improvising trumpet. Most impressively, he
mixed the great number of patterns of which each of his hands was
capable into a brilliant variety of combinations, many of which sus-
pended, delayed, anticipated, and interrupted the underlying rhythmic
pulse.s2
The records made in Chicago by Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines
from June to December 1928, under the name of Louis Armstrong and
His Hot Five, Louis Armstrong and His Savoy Ballroom Five, and Louis
Armstrong and His Orchestra, stretched the conventions of jazz band
performance of the time and sometimes broke with the form of polyph-
ony plus solos. On such records as "Muggles" (an early slang term for
marijuana) and "Weather Bird," the two virtuosos introduced a new
140 Chicago Jazz

range of performance possibilities in the interaction of just two musi-

cians. By combining two (and potentially more) exceptional solo instru-
mentalists, they demonstrated a new sequential approach to instrumental
interaction. On the out-chorus on "Weather Bird," Armstrong or Hines
called out or responded to solo figures which seemed to unfold in conver-
sational dialogues. The empathy and sensitivity required to complement
one another were enriched by their ability instantly to seize and creatively
extend each other's solo lines. In the process, Hines and Armstrong
created fresh elements of drama and suspense.
Clarinetist Jimmy Noone's Apex Club Orchestra, which cut sixty-
three numbers for Vocalion during the twenties, also featured two elo-
quent instrumental soloists in an interestingly arranged and loosely
played setting. Noone's records were influential in enhancing the role of
the clarinet as a lead and solo instrument. The group's instrumental
sound focused attention on Noone's beautifully clear, centered, and
round-toned woodwind style, juxtaposing his warmer, lighter sound to
the brassy New Orleans tradition and featuring an interplay between
Noone, a baroque improviser, and Joe Poston, a non-improvising alto
saxophone section man who carried the melodies. With the technical
refinement of Earl Hines (later replaced by Alex Hill and Zinky Cohn) at
piano and a slick, fast rhythm section led by drummer Johnny Wells, the
longest-lasting member of the group, Noone's band epitomized sophisti-
cated cabaret jazz.53
Noone's solos and duet embroideries featured a variety of thought-
fully manipulated instrumental techniques. Typically, as in his recording
of San, Noone's solo motifs began in the clarion register and descended
deep into the chalumeau before working their way upward once more.
He often featured staccato-tongued broken chord figures which danced
over the changing harmonic progressions. Noone liked contrast, and for
nearly every one of his sharply tongued phrases, a very lightly tongued or
slurred figure soon followed. Similarly, he easily jumped large intervals,
as his signature "Apex Blues" and his up tempo "El Rado Scuffle" and
"Chicago Rhythm" indicate. During the slower numbers, after establish-
ing a long bathetic half or whole note by hitting it squarely in the center
with his wonderfully focused tone, he would bend it and work it over
with a widening vibrato, a parallel on the clarinet to Armstrong's shake,
so wide a vibrato as to burst into one of his dissonant, birdlike trills that
ranged from a minor second to a minor third. Various ingredients of
Noone's style were absorbed by Albert Nicholas, Barney Bigard, Omer
 Chicago's Jazz Records 141

Simeon, Cecil Scott, Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Buster Bailey,

Frank Teschemacher, and Mezz Mezzrow.
Noone's Apex Club Orchestra created its own relaxed, informal but
elegant after-hours fusion of music and show business. Band members or
featured vocalists sang earthy double-entendre lyrics on numbers like
"It's Tight Like That," "Let's Sow a Wild Oat," and "My Daddy Rocks
Me (With One Steady Roll)" and eerily juxtaposed musical high spirits
with songs about suicide ("Ready for the River" and "Four or Five
Times"). Two numbers, "Wake Up Chillun, Wake Up," and "On Re-
vival Day," intermixed the sounds of the spirituals with red hot twenties
stomps like "Oh, Sister! Ain't That Hot?"
The records made in Chicago by Bix Beiderbecke and the Wolverines
also combined solo virtuosity with polyphonic ensembles. The relative
instrumental naivete of the other Wolverines enhanced Beiderbecke's
sound in much the same way the Hot Fives and Sevens had enhanced
Armstrong's. But Beiderbecke's approach to improvisational solo free-
dom was far less flamboyant than Armstrong's. Beiderbecke displayed
his exceptional abilities within the ensemble, during breaks, and in his
famous chorus-long solos. The beautiful bell-like clarity of his tone and
his flawless musical discretion, lifted his undistinguished studio col-
leagues into history. He attempted less than Armstrong, not just because
of his retiring personality. Few of the white Chicago jazzmen, and cer-
tainly none of those who played on college campuses, had ever been
required to play the sort of solo features pioneered by Armstrong in
cabaret floor shows. Wild Bill Davison's extensive solo features on the
vaudeville stage with the Benny Meroff Orchestra were exceptional
among the white jazzmen. They usually played for dances and for each
other, adopting less of the dramatic flamboyance of the South Side solo-
ists and all but eliminating vocals, comedy routines, religious references,
and the like.54
Armstrong's seven-man group which recorded in 1928 as the Hot
Five and the Savoy Ballroom Five used some effectively arranged pas-
sages to complement and highlight their matchless solos. The outstand-
ing examples were "St. James Infirmary Blues," "Beau Koo Jack," and
"No One Else But You." The most complex was Alex Hill's "Beau Koo
Jack," an up-tempo jump or stomp number with a three-theme structure
complicated by an intricate introduction, two modulations, breaks, and a
breath-takingly challenging, thirty-six-measure concluding ensemble ar-
rangement. It was an Armstrong tour deforce; the trumpet star played a
142 Chicago Jazz

thirty-two-measure solo and immediately jumped into thirty-six mea-

sures of taxingly arranged ensemble lead. The arrangement featured long
ensemble lines which sounded like (and might once have been) improvi-
sations, scored for the four frontline wind instruments. Such scored
passages may well account for Armstrong's selection of Jimmy Strong on
clarinet and Fred Robinson on trombone in place of Johnny Dodds and
Kid Ory. Whatever their demonstrated shortcomings as soloists (neither
possessed the rugged, untutored power of the musicians they replaced)
Armstrong's new sidemen could read and therefore more swiftly master
the written sections.55
"St. James Infirmary," a stagy musical drama in minor mode, elicited
little solo inspiration from either Armstrong or Hines but did feature
saxophonist/arranger Don Redman's softly haunting, arranged ensemble
line in the background behind Fred Robinson's trombone chorus. Red-
man then brought his long, loping, written ensemble line to the fore-
ground for a rousing last chorus which fittingly contrasted a new techni-
cal sophistication with an old-fashioned tune.
Another group of competent, versatile black Chicago musicians, who
were often good if not exceptional soloists, focused on playing well-
conceived small band arrangements. Records by the rarely mentioned
Tiny Parham and His Musicians, who recorded extensively for Victor
from 1928 through 1930, presented the most fully arranged small group
sound of the era and yet succeeded by not becoming too ambitious or
overly elaborate. Hartzell Strathdene Parham, a tall, heavy man who had
been born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1900 and raised in Kansas City,
came to Chicago in 1925 after touring on the Pantages circuit with his big
band. After co-leading a band with violinist Leroy Pickett, Parham then
led his own group at La Rue's Dreamland, the Sunset Cafe, the Granada,
Merry Gardens, El Rado, and the Golden Lily. Late in the decade, all of
these clubs were heavily patronized by whites. Al Quodbach's Granada
on Cottage Grove Avenue, for example, had featured Paul Whiteman,
Guy Lombardo, and Ted Weems before Parham took over in 1931.
Parham also worked as an arranger under Mayo Williams of Para-
mount Records, who remarked that he was "a hell of a piano player, but
he couldn't get 'down to earth' on blues [as a performer]." Parham's
particular talent, however, was described by a Paramount salesman:
"You could sing it (a blues) one time; he could play it back; he'd write it
the next time."56 Parham favored a relatively refined, arranged jazz
sound, recording with a seven-to-eight-piece band that featured New
 Chicago's Jazz Records 143

Orleanian trumpeter Punch Miller as get off man. He built intelligent,

challenging, and not overly fussy arrangements on original numbers like
"The Head Hunter's Dream (An African Fantasy)," "Voodoo," "Jungle
Crawl," "Lucky '3-6-9,'" "Nervous Tension," and "Bombay."57
"Voodoo," recorded on February i, 1929, centers on the possibilities
of a minor mode and minimal harmonic movement. After a dramatic
rubato piano introduction in Db major by Parham, the violin and sax-
ophone state a simple unison riff figure in Db minor over an eight-bar
suspended, unchanging tonic chord, sharply delineated by an ostinato
bass figure based on the first three intervals of the scale and played in
unison by Quinn Wilson on tuba and Parham's left hand. A brighter ray
of harmonic movement provides an abbreviated "bridge" of four bars,
before a return to the ostinato pattern and modal suspension that round
out the sixteen-bar frame. The solo instruments concentrate on full tonal
production rather than complex lines, encouraging the listener to enjoy
the underlying mystery inherent in that eerie minor figure in the bass.
(Parham worked extensively in vaudeville and movie theaters as well as
the large cabarets, and many of his records show a penchant for theat-
rically dramatic moods—mysterious, exotic "Bombay," elegantly deco-
rous "Cathedral Blues," and the slickly prancing "Washboard Wiggles").
His "Dixieland Doings" adopts an analytic stance toward jazz band
polyphony that still preserves some of the genre's excitement. Parham's
carefully crafted arrangements often made up for his group's lack of a
creative soloist of Armstrong's stature.
As the decade waned, a more arranged sound competed with the
earlier improvised polyphonies. The number, size, and popularity of
cabarets had encouraged the recording of small jazzbands; but, as the
courts moved to close most of Chicago's most prominent cabarets in 1928
and 1929, a process considered in more detail in the following chapter,
those jazzmen who remained in the city began to compete for jobs in the
dance halls and the few remaining, large cabarets. This process encour-
aged the development and recording of bigger, arrangement-reading
jazz bands.
The large black dance and theater orchestras of Charles Elgar,
Erskine Tate, Charles Cook, Sammy Stewart, Carroll Dickerson, and
Earl Hines produced complexly arranged big band music with and
without creative solos. For example, Erskine Tate's twelve-piece Ven-
dome Theater Orchestra, which played light concert hall classics as well
as accompaniments for vaudeville and movies, recorded a very hot, hard,
144 Chicago Jazz

charging romp entitled "Static Strut" with Louis Armstrong on May 28,
I926.58 While the record features two solo choruses by Armstrong on an
harmonically straightforward sixteen-bar pattern, this number shows
attention to arrangement. The two trumpets play a riffing stop-time
figure in the introduction and verse, while the three saxophones chord
on whole notes. Tate then shifts the lead to his saxophone section
over prominent woodblock counter-rhythms by percussionist Jimmy
Bertrand. The woodblocks then recede, and the muted trombone leads in
dialogue with the saxophone section. A four-bar arranged modulation
from C major to E|j major introduces Armstrong's ecstatic solo with
rich stomping piano accompaniment by Teddy Weatherford, who then
makes an unprepared modulation back to C in order to solo for sixteen
bars without rhythm section accompaniment. Weatherford is then fol-
lowed for a chorus by an unknown alto saxophonist, and Stump Evans
concludes the solo choruses with a slap-tongued statement on his baritone
sax. Armstrong then returns to rip off a stop-time figure in the first four
bars of the last chorus, answered by a hot orchestral polyphony in mea-
sures five through eight; the same configuration repeats before the per-
formance struts into a four-bar coda, again divided into rhythmically
contrasting two-bar effects.
Throughout "Static Strut," the musicians are kept on their toes by
changing patterns of rhythmic breaks, particularly during the last eight
bars of Armstrong's second solo chorus, when four differently arranged
two-bar breaks follow one upon the other. Exciting Chicago jazz records
like this one represented just one form of cross-fertilization between the
large theater and dance bands and the cabaret soloists. In this context,
virtuoso instrumentalists like Armstrong and Weatherford were called
"get-off men" for their ability to improvise. If the get-off man couldn't
read music, another musician playing the same instrument would be
hired to read the arrangements.
The power of this style was even more clearly delineated by Carroll
Dickerson's orchestra. Dickerson's crew also recorded with Louis Arm-
strong and Earl Hines as featured soloists on "Symphonic Raps" and
"Savoyagers' Stomp." Dickerson had played long runs as band leader at
the Sunset Cafe, toured in vaudeville with his big band, and played
extensively in the Savoy Ballroom starting in 1928. He was just one of
several South Side musicians whose careers spanned the improvisatory
and "legitimate" musical worlds. Dickerson's recording of "Missouri
Squabble" did without great soloists but still managed to create exciting
 Chicago's Jazz Records 145

jazz in an interestingly arranged rhythm number in popular song form,

recorded for Brunswick in May 1928.59 The well-rehearsed arrangement,
which opens with an eight-bar chromatic progression, carries the perfor-
mance nicely, and its extended harmonized lines for the saxophone sec-
tion in both the A and the B sections demonstrate the power and excite-
ment generated by replacing the soloist with a well-rehearsed choir of
saxes attacking a written variation on the melody and chords with a finely
honed rhythmnic identity. A well-played chorus-long, linear variation
carried even more punch than a lone solo instrumentalist might have.
The relatively few big band sides from twenties Chicago underscore
the close relations between jazz bands and larger orchestras. Charles
Cook's Dreamland Orchestra included a core of jazz-oriented musicians
who heated up the orchestral arrangements and sometimes stepped out
together to play as a separate small jazz band. Cook reedmen Jimmy
Noone, Joe Poston, Clifford King, and Jerome Pasquall shared jazz
sensibilities with cornetist Freddie Keppard and banjoist Johnny St. Cyr.
These men brought a wild stomping spirit to the Dreamland Orchestra's
recordings of "Hot Tamale Man" and "High Fever" on Columbia. Kep-
pard, Noone, Poston, St. Cyr, trombonist Fred Garland, and pianist
Kenneth Anderson also emerged from the dreamland Orchestra to form
Cookie's Gingersnaps, a marvelous hot jazzband which both improvised
and featured arranged effects on its own recorded versions of "High
Fever," "Here Comes the Hot Tamale Man," and "Messin" Around."60
The Earl Hines Orchestra, formed as a rehearsal band while the star
pianist was appearing with Jimmie Noone's Apex Club Orchestra, re-
corded in 1929. This group sought a synthesis of the arranged, twelve-
piece orchestral sound with the hot, agitated Chicago beat. As Gunther
Schuller has noted, the Hines orchestra failed to achieve an identifiable
sound because it used too many different arrangers, and the band's
records sometimes sound under-rehearsed.61 But these records still mark
an important step in the decade's steady movement toward show business
and musical sophistication. The fact that so many sidemen not only
wanted to but were capable of writing arrangements indicates what had
been happening to jazz music in Chicago.
Hines went after the best of Chicago's new generation of jazz musi-
cians, young men like reedman Cecil Irwin and brass bassist Hayes Alvis.
These ambitious jazzmen sight read skillfully, soloed smoothly, and had
studied arranging. Of the records by Hines's 1929 aggregation, "Chicago
Rhythm," primarily a rhythmic vehicle with little in the way of remark-
146 Chicago Jazz

able harmonic or melodic content, was the most exciting.62 It features an

arrangement of a stock thirty-two-bar popular song in which a swiftly
moving train-whistle introduction leads into a full chorus, harmonized,
saxophone choir statement of the melody. The trumpet choir shares the
second chorus, with a sax solo on the bridge, before an unusually ar-
ranged eighteen-measure interlude. Hines then plays a romping, swoop-
ing solo on the A section of the ABA song form before the entire band
plays it out, concluding with a skyrocketing fanfare.
Ben Pollack and His Orchestra recorded elaborately arranged jazz
performances while still retaining informality and excitement. Pollack, a
Chicago drummer who had played and recorded with the New Orleans
Rhythm Kings, subsequently worked in California where he assembled
an exceptionally talented band which included Benny Goodman, saxo-
phonists Gil Rodin and Fud Livingston, and trombonist Glenn Miller.
The group played in Chicago in the Venetian Room of the Southmoor
Hotel and the Blackhawk Tavern beginning in 1926 and recorded for
Victor. On "He's the Last Word," a popular song ("He can't talk, but on
a moonlight walk, he's the last word") sung by Hannah (Mrs. Jack
Dempsey) and Dorothy Williams, Glenn Miller's demanding, sophisti-
cated arrangement wedded the white tradition of dance band arranging
to hot, improvised jazz. Using impressionistic whole tone scales, dense,
odd chordal progressions, parallel and chromatic motion, and unusual
modulations (D maj to E min to Bb minor to E maj to Db min and back
to E min) Miller left no doubt of his voice-leading skills and theoretical
sophistication. Benny Goodman is the featured soloist and improvises
confidently, combining some startling Teschemacher-inspired pyrotech-
nical leaps into the upper register with a precocious instrumental and
improvisational control.63
Chicago's jazz records from the 19205, therefore, offer a variety of
approaches to the combining of the oral/aural musical traditions that
were brought to the city with a lively and competitive market for musical
entertainment. These strategies were intended to catch the attention of
cabaret audiences and to create identifiable musical reputations that
would sell phonograph records. In the process, the leading musicians
working in twenties Chicago created a musical genre whose appeal has
endured well beyond the special jazz age to which it made such a major
contribution. As the foundations of Chicago's jazz age crumbled in the
late twenties, jazz music swiftly adapted to new economic, political, and
cultural conditions, leading the way toward Swing.
 6
"Syncopated Threnody":
The End of
Chicago's Jazz Age

THE END OF Chicago's 19205 Jazz Age could not, by any means, put an
end to jazz in Chicago. During the decade, the musical and entertain-
ment power of jazz had been more compellingly demonstrated than ever
before. Musicians like Art Modes, Punch Miller, Bud Jacobson, Milt
Hinton, and Franz Jackson would follow the musical paths traced by the
Jazz Age greats and would explore their own jazz strategies, but they
would enjoy few of the supporting economic, political, and social condi-
tions which had made jazz the central cultural experience of the 19205.
The quantity, intensity, and type of jazz in Chicago did change in the
late 19205 as the city's leading jazz musicians moved on—mainly to New
York City—to participate in new forms of popular music. Eventually,
economic, musical, and political conditions would converge again, creat-
ing a dominant new design called the Swing Era to rival the Jazz Age;
but in that transition much was lost. Chicago's leading jazz cabarets had
provided a powerfully concentrated, highly charged jazz experience. The
leading black-and-tan cabarets had presented the best black jazz musi-
cians, singers, and dancers of a talented and ambitious generation to
148 Chicago Jazz

inter-racial audiences that were packed close to the bands and to each
other on small dance floors and around tiny tables. By comparison, the
emerging Swing Era would inherit the racial segregation of big city
dance halls of the twenties, which had allowed only all-white audiences,
would confine jazz soloists to arrangement-reading dance bands, and
would dilute the musical experience in large open spaces filled with self-
absorbed social dancers. Many who lived through both periods never
forgot the intense excitement of Chicago's jazz cabarets during prohibi-
tion.
A number of factors contributed to the decline of Chicago's historic
Jazz Age. The buoyant, heady, and giddy sensibilities of twenties Chi-
cago had been intensified by an unprecedented historical combination of
a booming economy, machine politics, rebellion against prohibition mor-
alism, and increased inter-racial awareness. The stock market crash of
October 1929 removed one of the most important outlets for these sensi-
bilities by cutting out most of the discretionary, leisure time income of
many urban workers and bureaucrats. Many of the cabaret entrepreneurs
were forced out of business. Of "black Tuesday" on October 29, 1929,
when the market crashed for the second time and failed to recover,
Variety headlined "Wall Street Lays an Egg" and a week later declared
that "the bottom [has] dropped out of hilarity." 1
But Chicago's urban reform moralists and racial segregationists had
long since served notice against the continued existence of the black-and-
tan cafes. South Side cabarets suffered a slow death during the late
twenties. The historical circumstances which had attracted the best musi-
cians to the city began to change. Many of the most talented jazz artists—
those who had created musical excitement in what were sometimes dis-
mal basement speakeasies—left Chicago in 1927 and 1928.
Observers close to the scene reported that adverse conditions had
begun to undermine Chicago jazz as early as October 1925. That year,
Jack Lait, a pioneering Chicago night-life reporter, in a comment on the
revived power of urban reformers under Mayor William Dever, had
declared that the city's fabled cabaret era was dead. He said that the town
was now dominated by its "paunchy merchants and axe-faced re-
formers." In its normal seasonal cycle, the cabaret business wilted in the
summer but revived in the fall. But the autumn of 1925 found South Side
black-and-tans abolishing their cover charges in order to "coax atten-
dance." Just over a year later, Variety noted that the entire night-club
business in Chicago was "a slowly sinking trade."2
 "Syncopated Threnody": The End of Chicago's Jazz Age 149

The fate of Isadore Shorr and Joe Gorman's Entertainers Cafe on the
South Side stood as a reminder of what the wrong combination of urban
reformers, Democratic politicians, hostile court justices, and racial seg-
regationists could do to the entertainment world. Repeatedly singled out
for liquor violations from 1920 to 1924, the Entertainers Cafe was closed
down in mid-1924 for a year and a day by the United States Circuit Court
of Appeals. Part owner Joe Gorman, a white person, was jailed. He died
upon leaving prison, and his widow's attempt to reopen the club was
unsuccessful. The Chicago Defender concluded that Gorman, who was
"very popular among our people" and "absolutely unprejudiced," had
become a martyr to racial injustice.^
This continuing campaign by urban reformers against the black-and-
tan cabarets spelled the beginning of the end. Variety had warned in late
1925 and early 1926 that the black-and-tan club scene, and the Plantation
Cafe in particular, had "turned rough—too rough even for those seeking
high-power ... thrills." Lait had claimed that a tough "colored element"
around these "hybrid roisteries" no longer distinguished "white sight-
seers and kick-seekers" from the show business people who, he claimed,
had "made this cafe." In an uncharacteristic vein, Lait, usually even-
handed in covering race news, reported that white people and especially
white women were no longer protected. He claimed that actors and
entertainers going to the Plantation Cafe in April 1926 exposed them-
selves "to unpleasant publicity and trouble by being in attendance."-'
Over the 1926-27 Christmas and New Year's holidays—at the end of
William Dever's tenure as mayor and just before Big Bill Thompson
regained the office—Chicago police raided many South Side clubs and
even arrested and fined several owner-managers, including the usually
untouchable Joe Glaser of the Sunset Cafe. According to the trade papers,
he and Virgil Williams, then of the Dreamland Cafe, were separately
charged with "mistreating" under-age girls and contributing to their
"delinquency." The charge against Glaser was pressed for one of the
girls' fathers by the Board of Education. No further press coverage
detailed the outcome of either case, which would have come to trial
under the Thompson regime.?
Jazz musicians continued to do their best to attract crowds into
struggling clubs, generating some of their most frenetic displays of musi-
cal heat. In April 1926, Dave Peyton reported that Carroll Dickerson's
Sunset Cafe band with Louis Armstrong and Zutty Singleton was "red
hot"; and he added that, with Joe Oliver's Dixie Syncopators at the
150 Chicago Jazz

Plantation Cafe, 35th Street was likely to burst into flames. But in March
1927, with city police raids in progress throughout the South Side, the
Plantation Cafe suddenly closed, putting Oliver's band out of work. The
veteran band leader responded by mounting his eleven-piece band on a
flatbed truck to play on street corners throughout the city, much as he
had earlier on wagons when starting out in New Orleans. As the Planta-
tion Cafe reopened and closed again with the shifting tides of city politics,
the Peyton-Oliver competition for work at the club resumed. Peyton
won, and Oliver, starting the jazz exodus from Chicago, left in late April
on a tour planned to reach its climax at New York's Savoy Ballroom.6
Although local political pressures on cabaret speakeasies had inten-
sified under Mayor Dever, the jazz clubs had still managed to remain in
business. Owners had appealed municipal closing orders, often succeed-
ing in securing writs of mandamus or supersedeas by which appellate
courts ordered that the cabarets in question be allowed to remain open
until final legal appeals were heard, perhaps as high as the Supreme
Court. From 1923 to 1926, therefore, all cabarets had functioned in a legal
limbo, pressured by urban reformers and reform-minded Chicago politi-
cians but still managing to remain open. They were kept in business by
the unwillingness or inability of the city police to discover their infrac-
tions, the preoccupation of federal agents with the manufacture and
distribution rather than the retailing of alcohol, and temporary court
injunctions issued either by federal appellate courts or by municipal
judges that were allied with the Thompson Republicans. Even when
their appeals had been exhausted the maximum punishment that they
received for proven liquor violations was a one-year suspension of busi-
ness. 7
Nevertheless, legal ambiguities and political pressures did lead the
most prominent black jazz businessman—Bill Bottoms—to disassociate
himself from the South Side black-and-tans and move his business out-
side of the city limits. The revered neighborhood cabaret owner sold his
Dreamland Cafe and moved his operations to Robbins, Illinois, where he
opened a roadhouse that featured Darnell Howard's Orchestra, satirically
named the Farm House Country Club. Bottoms did return to the South
Side with the repeal of prohibition. Virgil Williams, who had run the
famed Royal Gardens in its heyday and the Dreamland Cafe for a time,
after Bottoms quit, also got out of the South Side cabaret business.
During the late twenties, white gangsters, who had always been a
force in the Black Belt, tightened their grip on the Stroll. The Al Capone
 "Syncopated Threnody": The End of Chicago's Jazz Age 151

syndicate reputedly bought the Plantation Cafe. Joe Glaser had also
bought into the Plantation. Ed Fox owned the Grand Terrace. As the
noose of federal prohibition tightened, business fell off, and competition
became violent. Bombs ripped through the Plantation and the recently
renovated Cafe de Paris. (The Sunset stood untouched.) The most fa-
mous South Side cabarets became increasingly notorious as gangland
properties, cutting themselves off from legitimate businessmen in both
the black and white communities. 8
Even the return of Big Bill Thompson to the Mayor's office in 1927
failed to reverse the tide. Thompson's Chief of Police publicly pledged
"respect for personal liberty and no more mass arrests." But a national
campaign, first carried out by federal agents against cabarets and speak-
easies in Chicago, succeeded in closing all of the mainstays of the jazz age.
Clubs had successfully defied prohibition as long as prosecutors remained
unable to prove that illegal alcohol, discovered and then confiscated on
the premises, had been sold by or even in the club. But in December 1926,
not long before Thompson regained office, this legal loophole was closed
when federal judge Adam C. Cliffe heard the appeal of Chicago's Moulin
Rouge, Friars Inn, and Al Tierney's Town Club, three of the Loop's
leading night clubs, and ruled that the Volstead Act outlawed not just
public places which actually sold illegal alcoholic beverages but also
"places where people carrying liquor congregate." Such clubs were now
guilty of aiding and abetting customers in the public consumption of
alcohol if they provided set-ups of glasses, ice, water, and ginger ale to
anyone who carried liquor onto the premises in a "hip flask."9
Led by Mike Fritzel of Friars Inn, the three clubs appealed to the
United State Supreme Court. The court was asked to refuse testimony
from agents who claimed to have witnessed patrons "drinking from a
bottle something that looked like whiskey." In October 1927, the Su-
preme Court refused to hear the cabaret owners' appeal of what Variety,
always a supporter of the speakeasies, called the "hip" rulings. The city
entrepreneurs regarded the Court's refusal to intervene in the federal
crackdown as "the death knell for night club business in Chicago and
perhaps the entire country."
One month later, twelve clubs were padlocked under the "hip flask"
ruling. On February 7, 1928, at 1:30 a.m. on a Monday morning, federal
agents conducted a blanket raid on the largest and most prominent cafes
both in and out of the Loop: included were the Blackhawk, Rainbo
Gardens, Plantation Cafe, Club Bagdad, Silver Slipper, Jeffery Tavern,
152 Chicago Jazz

Rendez-vous, and Midnight Frolics. The Moulin Rouge, Friars Inn, and
Town Club, of course, had already been closed. Thousands of customers
were in the clubs at the time of the raids; police took the names of those
who had liquor at their tables. Agents padlocked an estimated three
million dollars in property. Variety began to talk about Chicago's jazz
cabarets in the past tense:

Chicago was once the hottest cafe town in the United States, famous
for sizzling music, torrid night life, a great little spot for the great
little guys. But that's history now. Night by night it gets tougher for
the cabarets.

The era of the flashy cabaret had thus been brought to a close (but
bequeathed another likely source for the jazz term "hip" or "hipster," as
a fanatic of jazz, alcohol, and cabarets who defiantly carried a flask
hidden in a hip pocket).10
These raids did not come as a complete surprise to cabaret owners.
According to Variety, about a month before the appeal of a specific
cabaret was to be heard, "the cafe affected usually cuts down on its
operation costs and entertainment." One week before the padlocks were
applied, "the places clean up, dispose of all equipment and voluntarily
close up shop." Entrepreneurs also discovered that the perpetual threat of
federal padlocking caused insurance companies to cancel their policies
since a padlocked, empty club became a risk for unexplained fires which
might bring insurance reimbursement. 11
Those few cabaret entrepreneurs who managed to remain in business
were too broke even to open on the night of the Dempsey-Tunney fight.
Most of them decided that alcohol was too risky and turned to gambling.
The South Side's Granada Cafe, at 65th and Cottage Grove, reserved for
a white clientele and owned by Al Quodbach, pioneered a new compli-
ance with the Volstead Act by prohibiting liquor in and even around the
premises, hiring doormen to check customers for hip flasks. At the same
time, Quodbach aimed to capture a large number of customers, each of
whom would spend less than the butter-and-egg men of earlier times but
still enough to make a profit. If money was no longer to be made by
milking the wealthy with overpriced prohibition alcohol and exorbitant
cover charges, then club owners could turn to a higher volume of moder-
ate spenders. But in the process, Chicago's jazz cabarets began to trans-
form themselves into large streamlined clubs which were sometimes
 "Syncopated Threnody": The End of Chicago's Jazz Age 153

difficult to distinguish from dance halls. By early 1929, Dave Peyton

reported that:

Most of the night clubs using small orchestras have been closed in
Chicago on account of prohibition violations, making it pretty tough
on our musicians, who were in demand in the places patronized by
the elite with money.12

The groundswell of sensibility about urban leisure time, which had

been reported in the press as early as 1904, was far too powerful, however,
to be completely arrested by the depression and federal prohibition.
Though most of the prominent jazz roisteries of the twenties had disap-
peared, the cabaret business survived on a smaller and far less remunera-
tive scale. Federal prohibition never touched an enormous number of
more modest "speaks." According to Variety, "16,000 Beer Flats in Chi-
cago" continued to vie for the cabaret customers. Living room and dining
room cabarets lined South State Street between 43rd and 55th streets well
into the Depression. Chicago under Big Bill Thompson became once
more a wide open town, even if deprived of its most famous Jazz Age
cabarets. Chicagoans could still drink in secluded spots throughout "the
great Chicago neighborhood territory," but thanks to federal prohibition
agents and the depression, not to flashy shows which included jazz bands,
dancing girls, and comedians.1^
The surviving "low rent spots" reverted to the old cafe/saloon enter-
tainment policy—a piano player (Art Hodes played in the Rainbow Cafe,
an upstairs apartment on West Madison Street) and increasingly to me-
chanically reproduced music. On the South Side the small neighborhood
speakeasies encouraged the further development of the style known
as "boogie woogie" that was performed by pianists like Jimmy Yan-
cey, Albert Ammons, Clarence "Pine Top" Smith, Meade Lux Lewis,
Clarence Lofton, Cow Cow Davenport, Montana Taylor, Charlie Spand,
Wesley Wallace, and Will Ezell. Boogie woogie featured a pulsing left-
hand ostinato which kept the customers dancing.
Boogie woogie had developed in the southern logging camps and
migrated to Chicago along with southern workers, and the smaller
neighborhood speakeasies encouraged its development. Boogie woogie's
relative lack of technical sophistication reflected the retreat from the high
pressure world of Chicago's leading cabarets of the twenties. The boogie-
woogie pianists who recorded in the 19205 only made a few records late in
154 Chicago Jazz

the decade, just before the crash, and lived and worked thereafter beyond
the awareness of most white fans and the jazz promoters who had relied
heavily on the black-and-tan cabarets to locate black musical talent.J 4
Actually the crash and depression did not destroy all of the white-
owned black-and-tan cabarets, although they were "scarce as hen's teeth"
by June 1932, according to the Defender. In late December 1928, Ed Fox,
one of the original co-owners of the Sunset Cafe, had opened the Grand
Terrace Cafe on South Parkway and 4Oth Street. With a stunning floor
show of light-skinned dancers directed by the experienced Percy Venable
and a ten-piece orchestra led by pianist Earl Hines, the Grand Terrace
survived the depression, thanks in part to gangland backing and to one of
the first direct broadcast radio wires from a night club. Ninety-five
percent of the customers were white.' 5
The Sunset Cafe also survived the crash and continued to do success-
ful business at 35th and Calumet with a clientele described by the De-
fender as "98 per cent white, mostly out-of-towners." The club was "still
hitting" with peppy song and dance numbers from black performers; the
newspaper praised these acts but said little or nothing about the bands
which appeared there.
During the years between the crash and repeal, musical praise from
the black press was reserved for a select few musicians who had already
proven themselves during the twenties. Clarinetist Jimmie Noone, for
example, seems to have survived better than most of the other leading
jazz musicians from the South Side. Playing what the Defender called
"soft, scintillating, sweet" jazz, soft but hot, and "pouring oil on the boys
of melody when they visit," Noone worked steadily at the Apex Club
until it closed in February 1929. Thereafter, he resurfaced, still with his
sextet, at the Ambassadore Club, at the Barone Night Club, and, most
prominently at the El Rado, an important jazz club that opened in July
1929 at 55th and Prairie Avenue. The El Rado attracted a predominantly
black clientele, which gave Noone a rousing farewell party in May 1931
when the clarinetist moved temporarily to New York's Nest Club. When
Noone returned to Chicago in September, he played extensively in the
Loop and on the North Side before returning to the Club Dixie, the Lido,
and the Midnight Club.' 6
Clarinetist Johnny Dodds also defied the odds, but in a different
manner, continuing a long series of engagements through prohibition at
Bert Kelly's Stables, the Three Deuces, the New Plantation, Lamb's Cafe,
the 29 Club, and the New Stables, in all of which the audiences were
 "Syncopated Threnody": The End of Chicago's Jazz Age 155

overwhelmingly white. He usually headed a traditional jazzband that

included Charlie Alexander, Natty Dominique, and his brother Warren.
Together, these musicians played a very traditional New Orleans jazz
band music with great success, spreading the polyphonic influence into
the thirties among white musicians like Yank Lawson, Billy Butterfield,
and Bob Haggart of the Bob Crosby band. Dodds was able to buy an
apartment building.1''
But despite such instances of remarkable endurance, the federal
crackdown on the public consumption of alcohol devastated the Chicago
cabaret scene: 250 cabaret entertainers and 200 musicians had lost their
jobs by May 1928, thanks to the "hip flask" ruling. Many, like Benny
Goodman, Louis Armstrong, and Eddie Condon, found themselves at a
stage in their careers where working for a few dollars and drinks in an
obscure neighborhood apartment was unacceptable.
The cabarets had furnished the leading stages for jazz, but there had
been others. Some of the more technically advanced Chicago jazzmen of
both races might have turned from small cabaret bands to the movie
theater pit orchestras, which had long offered performance opportunities,
job stability, and technical training to many jazz musicians. But the
movie theater pit orchestras were also eliminated during the last third of
the decade, depriving Chicago's young jazz musicians of important ca-
reer possibilities, and the Jazz Age of another major foundation. Once
more, the problem was national rather than local in scope. Chicago
theater musicians saw serious problems approaching from New York at
least as early as 1925. The arrival in Chicago during the summer of 1927
of new technologies, marketed by Vitaphone and Movietone, brought
mechanically produced sound to the movies.'8
The new sound technologies idled musicians of both races, hitting
Chicago's white musicians first. Black musicians enjoyed a temporary
respite but watched apprehensively as the sound systems led to the firing
of orchestras in the leading New York City movie theaters. By October, a
reported 1500 "straight" musicians had been thrown out of work in
Chicago's theaters. For a time, musicians hoped that the capital expense
of wiring movie theaters for sound would keep the new devices out of the
South Side's more humble theaters. By 1928, however, even the smallest
South Side theaters began to install relatively inexpensive sound systems
like Photophone, Electraphone, and Orchestraphone, which used phono-
graph records synchronized to the films and required only one "cue boy"
to operate them.'9
156 Chicago Jazz

After bitter conflict with both the white and Negro musicians'
unions, Chicago's theater owners fired their pit orchestras; Erskine Tate
of the Vendome Theater, Clarence Black of the Metropolitan, Clarence
M. Jones of the Owl Theater, Lovie Austin of the Monogram, and Dave
Peyton of the Grand. An avenue for a fuller integration of black musi-
cians into the city's music business had been closed. For the time being,
many theater owners replaced their orchestras with what were often
elaborate electric pipe organs, another sign of the new technological
forces sweeping the music business.20
The rise of radio and more particularly the organization of national
radio networks further undermined live musical entertainment and the
jazz community in Chicago. New York controlled the new world of
radio music as Gotham-based radio networks like NBC and CBS were
organized in the twenties. They swallowed up many local stations and
forced muscians to deal with a new set of potential employers less tied to
the local scene than Chicago's WMBB, owned by Andrew Karzas at his
Trianon Ballroom, and WHT, which had been installed in the Wrigley
Building by Big Bill Thompson, William Wrigley, and U. J. "Sport"
Herman. 21
At first, as Variety noted, network radio broadcasting acted as a
punishing "courtroom for jazz" and encouraged "melody stuff over hot
breaks and tricks." National broadcasting appealed to the mass audience
by promoting a wide variety of the latest popular songs in their most
identifiable melodic form. For example, in 1929 NBC presented "The
Made-to-Order Orchestra," a versatile, professional group of the fastest
sight-readers who could emphasize "some distinctive quality which the
public can recognize, even if it doesn't understand it."22 Since black
musicians had become identified so completely with jazz, and since
the white musicians' union controlled negotiations with radio studios,
African-Americans did not get their share of radio jobs. Walter Barnes,
the leader of the Royal Creolians and Peyton's replacement as music
columnist for the Chicago Defender in 1929, commented bitterly:

Our folks buy, in proportion, more radios and allied equipment and
victrolas than any other group and even this seems to be overlooked when
it comes to giving out contracts for broadcasting. It seems to be the belief
among whites that the Race is still in the cotton fields and cannot sing or
play anything else but cotton songs and blues. This is a great mistake. We
are music lovers and enjoy all types and forms of music.
 "Syncopated Threnody": The End of Chicago's Jazz Age 157

Gradually, however, a few black Chicago bands obtained ten- or fifteen-

minute spots on local stations. Barnes and his Creolians were the first
blacks in Chicago to broadcast nightly, and Earl Hines became the first
African-American band leader from Chicago to enjoy network cover-
age.^
The influence of network radio on Chicago jazz proved to be just one
of many forces that transformed the racial and cultural outlines of the
city's jazz scene. Chicago groups had come by the late twenties to depend
increasingly on new national booking agencies like the Music Corpora-
tion of America, which had moved to headquarters in New York in June
1926. The new booking agencies hired few of the South Side bands.
MCA did send King Oliver's Dixie Syncopators on a long road trip after
the Plantation Club closed. Black Chicago bands had, of course, traveled
to New York from time to time, but such transfers had been arranged
between individual club owners on a relatively informal, temporary basis.
Close observers of the South Side music business, like Dave Peyton, had
long complained of the prejudice against blacks in the band-booking
business. The rise of national booking offices located in New York only
enlarged the scope of the problem.2*
The nationalization of jazz- and dance-band booking had the further
effect of solidifying the power of whites over the marketing of African-
American popular music across the nation. Verona Biggs, ex-president of
Chicago's Local No. 208 of the musicians' union, moved in late 1928 to
organize a local black-run agency to market "small orchestras, stage
talent and other amusement features" within the city. Columnist Dave
Peyton urged the South Side Musical Bunch to establish separate booking
agencies in every large city across the country in order to counter the
advantage which white booking agencies gave to white jazz musicians.
For the most part, however, these efforts came much too late—MCA had
cornered the field.2?
With most of Chicago's leading cabarets closed, the theater orchestras
silenced, and new technological and organizational forces unleashed, the
outlines of the Swing Era began to appear, particularly in African-
American music circles, at least five years before the initial popular
success of the Benny Goodman band that heralded the big band era in
1935. In 1928, Dave Peyton suggested in his Chicago Defender column
that movie theater orchestra leaders could create some new form of
entertainment with which to save themselves. The large "stage band"
might replace the theater pit band. He promoted the idea, which had
158 Chicago Jazz

been pioneered in the Loop by Paul Ash, of a large versatile stage orches-
tra which could both accompany the full range of vaudeville-style stage
acts and play jazz and other features as well. Such bands would now be led
by a "personality" with star quality who could entertain, banter with the
acts and musicians, and, of course, lead the orchestra. Peyton emphasized
that versatile Chicago musicians like Reuben Reeves would be able to find
employment in these new stage bands. Following the Paul Ash model,
Fess Williams and his Joy Boys were installed in early 1928 at the Regal
Theater. However, due to the Depression, the movie theater stage band,
an important forerunner of the swing bands, never became a permanent
feature in the nation's theaters, and Peyton's hopes were dashed.26
A few of the leading Chicago orchestras did manage to find work in
the more elaborate roadhouses of Cook County, as much of Chicago's
night life ventured into the country, where federal enforcement of prohi-
bition was weak. The Coon-Sanders Nighthawks, locked out of the
Blackhawk Restaurant, moved to Morton Grove, as did the Ray Miller
Orchestra when the College Inn was closed. Variety claimed that the
more inexpensive roadhouses, with no cover charge, catered to the youn-
ger set more successfully than the famous in-town cabarets. Two couples
piled into a "second hand flivver with a selling price within reach of
young purses" ("a 35-buck lizzie"). With a $2.50 pint of bootleg alcohol,
they spent .66 on gas, $1.20 for twelve bottles of pop, $1.50 for two bottles
of ginger ale for a grand total of $2.93 per couple.
By May 1928, Cook County had issued over one hundred new li-
censes for roadhouses, thanks in part to the "wet" views of President
Anton J. Cermak of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. A
"broad-minded gent," Cermak had only two officers assigned to clear
roadhouses of vice and gambling. The others were directing traffic. In the
countryside, moreover, federal surveillance was diluted, making raids
logistically difficult. But reformers compiled a dismal composite portrait
of these roadhouses:

... a one- or two-story, queerly-named frame structure containing

an improvised old-fashioned bar and a medium-sized, dimly-lit, ill-
ventilated and smokey dining room filled with decrepit chairs and
tables covered with soiled linen, an automatic instrument and radio
or jazz band, a rough dance floor and decorated with twisted
streamers of brightly-colored, gaudy crepe paper.2?

Roadhouses never managed to provide as important a foundation for

 "Syncopated Threnody": The End of Chicago's Jazz Age 159

the presentation of jazz as had the inner city cabarets. Although many of
them sprang up, especially in the late twenties, relatively few presented
jazz. Some specialized in prostitution or gambling or drinking, leaving
only a handful that presented live music for dancing. The few that
offered food, drink, dancing, and entertainment, however, could gener-
ate some of the volatile emotions that surged through the best inner city
cabarets. One observer who worked in roadhouses later wrote that their
impact sometimes could match that of a good religious revival:

The slow syncopation of the orchestra, the suggestive but joyful

dancing; the low colored lights, the late hour, the drinking, and the
general merriment of the place react powerfully on the organism of
the individual. Both the revival and the roadhouse tend to condition
the person to a specific way of life.28

By 1929, when they were investigated by the Juvenile Protective

Association, many of the roadhouses supplied music either with "an
automatic musical instrument," the Amplivox, the first commercially
marketed juke box, or with a radio or a player piano. Whether or not a
roadhouse presented a live jazz band depended on the size of the owner's
investment and the ease with which substantial numbers of Chicagoans
could easily travel out from the city. Oh Henry Park Dance Hall, a
roadhouse fifteen miles from Chicago and easily reached on the Joliet
Road or by the Joliet-Chicago interurban line, became a popular spot
known for good dance music. The New Dells and the Light House in
Morton Grove presented some of the top white bands because they regu-
larly attracted wealthy upper-middle-class residents from nearby Evan-
ston and other northern Gold Coast communities.
But the jazz age thrills of the black-and-tan cabaret experience rarely
made it to the countryside. The roadhouses of Cook County during the
latter part of the twenties were racially segregated. Not one of the many
JPA roadhouse investigations turned up a rural black-and-tan. In a work-
ing-class Chicago Heights roadhouse, a small place which had recently
been run by an African-American, the new owner proudly announced
that he was "barring the dinges" and put up a sign "For Whites Only."
Another JPA investigator visited a Robbins, Illinois, roadhouse in which
all of the customers were black and asked the black bartender, "Do you
run along the same lines as the places on the South Side of Chicago?" The
bar tender replied: "No, this is pretty much of a colored place. Sometimes
white folks do come in, but it is mostly for the colored people."29
160 Chicago Jazz

Thus, an overpowering convergence of technological, economic, po-

litical, and social forces destroyed the unique Jazz Age cultural context
that had given jazz music such particular resonance in Chicago. Begin-
ning in 1927, therefore, many, if not all, of the jazz musicians who had
made the city a famous jazz town began to move elsewhere, mainly to
New York. Although the same moralizing and technological assault on
jazz dominated the eastern metropolis, the political climate there closely
resembled that in Chicago in 1919 when Big Bill Thompson had been
elected mayor for a second term. Jimmy "Beau James" Walker, a flashy
sporting set associate of Broadway promoters, actors, song writers, and
underworld financiers, had been elected mayor of New York in 1926,
ushering Manhattan into just the sort of political climate to encourage
speakeasies and jazz. Political ties between downtown white power bro-
kers and Harlem politicians replicated the kind of political arrangements
which had tied Chicago's South Side to Thompson's City Hall.3°
Many of the white jazz musicians who left Chicago for New York in
1927 quickly succeeded. Beginning in March 1928, Ben Pollack took his
band from the Venetian Room of Chicago's Southmoor Hotel first to
New York's Little Club and then to the Park Central Hotel. There, for a
year and a half, Jimmy McPartland, Benny Goodman, and Bud Freeman
earned some of the best salaries in the business, playing Pollack's impres-
sive combination of technically sophisticated and emotionally hot dance
music. Goodman, moreover, quickly moved into the lucrative studio
scene in New York, playing jingles, popular songs, arrangements of all
types of dance music, and jazz with all-white groups. He had gotten
started in Chicago, but he built his swing career in New York. Although
certain of the rough-and-tumble qualities of early Chicago jazz would
continue to color Goodman's playing style and his bands, the clarinetist
did not continue to identify himself professionally as a Chicagoan.31
McPartland, Freeman, and Frank Teschemacher played occasional
recording sessions with the New York studio establishment, bringing
what New Yorkers heard as a hotter, more seriously creative approach to
musical entertainment. The white Chicagoans in New York benefited
from their contacts with MCA. When the Pollack band lost its hotel job,
MCA booked them into Young's Million Dollar Pier in Atlantic City—
owned, of course, by Chicago's Ernie Young. Some of the Pollack men
also subsequently worked in Chicagoan Paul Ash's Paramount Theater
orchestra.' 2
Several of the rebel white Chicago jazzmen, under the leadership of
 "Syncopated Threnody": The End of Chicago's Jazz Age 161

jazz promoter and vocalist Red McKenzie, who worked for the
Brunswick Record Company, also transferred their careers to New York
in the late spring of 1928. Eddie Condon, Joe Sullivan, and Gene Krupa
left jobs in different Chicago dance bands, expecting to work in New
York backing Chicago shimmy dancer Bee Palmer in a Broadway speak-
easy, but they ended up playing for another dance team in vaudeville.
Though soon unemployed, they did hold several excellent recording
sessions in New York which further set the foundations for the white
Chicago style.33
Even though prohibition politics, radio, movie sound tracks, juke
boxes, and a reeling economy destroyed much of Chicago's cabaret busi-
ness after 1929, most of the dance halls survived, and some new ones were
built. The larger, more prestigious dance halls had, as we have seen,
already established a privileged position with Chicago's urban reformers,
and therefore largely escaped the local political heat which the reformers
had turned on the cabarets in 1927. In fact, as reform pressure on cabarets
and speakeasies increased late in the decade, the relative innocence of the
JPA-approved dance halls recommended itself to reformers and politi-
cians. Paddy Harmon, speaking before the International Association of
Policewomen in 1927, said: "You can't keep fifteen-year-olds out of the
dance halls. If you do, they'll go to cabarets where they get liquor ... a
fifteen-year-old girl is a problem when she's full of liquor."34
Versatile, technically skilled jazz musicians, therefore, continued to
find work in the dance halls after the collapse of the cabarets. While it is
true that established black dance bands of the twenties were fired begin-
ning in 1927, this should not be interpreted as evidence of the collapse of
the dance hall business in Chicago. Charles Cook's Orchestra was let go
in March 1927 by Harmon's Dreamland after a four-year run, but the
dance hall did not close. Harmon hired another black group—Clifford
"Klarinet" King and his Orchestra—as Cook's replacement through
1928. Similarly, Jerome Pasquall, back from his studies at the New
England Conservatory of Music, headed the band at Harmon's Dream-
land until the crash. Cook moved first to Chicago's Municipal Pier and
then to the White City Ballroom, where he stayed until the crash. Much
the same can be said of the firing of Charles Elgar's orchestra from
Harmon's Arcadia Ballroom. Darnell Howard and then Walter Barnes
replaced Elgar, thereby keeping these (now perhaps less lucrative) jobs
among all-black Local 208 musicians.35
The dance hall buildings themselves represented substantial invest-
162 Chicago Jazz

ments which owners were reluctant to abandon. Large and small dance
halls could cater to the mass market of "little guys" who could afford the
fifty- or eighty-cent price of entry. Variety labeled dance halls "the great
American playground ... for the great American peasantry ... a melting
pot ... a caldron of emotions." Cabarets had been more expensive, some
of them notorious for inflated cover charges, expensive drinks, and
bloated tabs. As the cabaret era ended, the dance hall era began. Jazz
musicians who were technically prepared could still contemplate work
opportunities in the dance halls.36
Near the end of the decade, a chain of new dance halls owned by one
company was constructed in the black neighborhoods of some of Amer-
ica's largest cities, finally developing a market which had been served in
Chicago only by the Royal Gardens and Dusty Bottom dance halls. In
1927, as part of this chain, dance hall entrepreneur I. Jay Faggen and a
group of white investors undertook to build in Chicago a state-of-the-art
dance hall on the South Side. Faggen had owned, at one time or another,
New York City's Roseland, the Blue Bird (after 1924 the Arcadia) Dance
Hall at 53rd and Broadway, the Rosemont Ballroom in Brooklyn, Har-
lem's Savoy Ballroom, three Roseland ballrooms in Philadelphia, and the
Cinderella Ballroom at Madison and Central streets in Chicago. He
associated with white Chicago dance-band leader Ray Miller to form the
Cosmopolitan Orchestras Booking and Promotion Offices to control and
promote the bands serving his own and others' dance halls. The Savoy
Ballroom complex, which included the Regal Theater, was opened on
Thanksgiving night in 1927 at 47th Street and South Parkway (currently
Martin Luther King Drive), and the Regal Theater opened on February
4, 1928. The most elegant elaborate, and expensive entertainment com-
plex ever built in black Chicago, the Regal/Savoy pulled bright light
entrepreneurs away from the Stroll and created a new center of black
Chicago nightlife for the thirties.&
But this famous Chicago dance hall marked both the end of Chi-
cago's jazz age and the beginning of a new era. The Savoy outshone all
of the smaller South Side dance halls along the Stroll, and its success
killed the 351!} and South State Street entertainment district, which had
been the center of Chicago's Jazz Age. (Dave Peyton tried to save the
Stroll by opening the short-lived Club Congo in September 1931.) Fag-
gen, pursuing a two-band policy at the Savoy from 1927 to 1929, opened
with the well-established dance orchestras of Charles Elgar and Clarence
 "Syncopated Threnody": The End of Chicago's Jazz Age 163

Black. The former was soon replaced by the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra
featuring Louis Armstrong and drummer Zutty Singleton. Encouraged
by the Savoy Ballroom job, the Dickerson orchestra became the hottest
dance band on the South Side and in 1929 broadcast nightly over
WMAQ, the Chicago Daily News affiliate. Young dancers began to create
"wild new dance steps ... the Bump, Mess Around, and the Fish Tail...
dislocating the joints of the younger generation."3s
But I. Jay Faggen refused to limit hiring to local South Side or even
Chicago bands. He regularly booked white bands from Chicago and
New York into the Savoy, most notably the theater stage bands of Paul
Ash and Benny Meroff, stars of the Loop's largest theaters. Black band-
leaders predicted doom from this invasion of their territory. Faggen
spearheaded the quickly accelerating movement toward large, versatile
theater stage/ballroom orchestras by installing New York's Fess Williams
and His Jazz Joy Boys, who had long appeared at his Harlem Savoy
Ballroom, into Chicago's Regal Theater and Savoy Ballroom.39
Amid changing economic, technological, and organizational condi-
tions which left so many of Chicago's cabaret musicians unemployed and
disheartened, first Louis Armstrong and then Earl Hines became leaders
and symbolic heroes of Chicago's struggling jazz musicians of the twen-
ties. Armstrong in particular adapted his cabaret experiences to the new
outlines of musical show business. He triumphed in each of the new
formats created near the end of the decade. First, of course, the trumpeter
and vocalist became the star attraction in the newest, largest, and best
connected dance hall in black America, playing to packed houses and
rave notices with the Dickerson band at the Savoy. Armstrong was the
hero there one night in April 1928 when owner I. Jay Faggen took the
musicians by surprise. Inviting the Erskine Tate Orchestra to appear at
the Savoy in addition to the regular Dickerson and Clarence Black bands,
Faggen got the idea of having all three bands play a number named after
his ballroom:

A note was handed to the house orchestras by Mr. Fagin, asking

them to join in and play "Savoy Blues" with the guest orchestra.
This was wonderful. Three bands, consisting of 37 players, rocked
the beautiful ballroom with their scintillating music. It was Louis
Armstrong, s member of Carroll Dickerson's Orchestra, whom this
writer has termed the "Jazz Master," who saved the hour. As the
164 Chicago Jazz

boys would say, Louie poured plenty of oil and it soaked in too.
The crowd gathered around him and wildly cheered for more and
more.-'0

South Side musicians also could count on Armstrong's reassuring

ability to outshine the top white solo instrumentalists in bands that were
being brought into the Savoy to play opposite the Dickerson band. Dave
Peyton gloated that the cornet star "has slaughtered all the ofay jazz
demons appearing at the Savoy recently." Peyton began referring to
Armstrong as "King Menelik," after the nineteenth-century Ethiopian
emperor who drove the Italians out of Ethiopia. Armstrong enjoyed the
added prestige of appearing on stage with Peyton's orchestra at the Regal
Theater, demonstrating his ability to adapt to the new stage band strate-
gies and vastly reinforcing the popularity of a very expensive orchestra in
bad economic times.
In 1929, Armstrong worked through I. Jay Faggen to arrange a two-
night feature engagement with the Luis Russell band in Faggen's Har-
lem Savoy Ballroom. The trip to New York included recording sessions
for Okeh. Armstrong, Faggen, and Okeh executive Tommy Rockwell
subsequently planned a second Harlem appearance for Armstrong two
months later in May. The trumpeter, by now aware of his national status
as a star attraction, brought the Dickerson band, which had done so
much for him at Chicago's Savoy Ballroom, along with him on that
second trip to New York presenting Rockwell with a. fait accompli. When
Armstrong's Savoy appearances and a long run in the Broadway show
Hot Chocolates ended, Rockwell refused to promote the Dickerson musi-
cians, most of whom returned to Chicago. But Armstrong had more than
proved his loyalty to a fine group of musicians.
Armstrong's success in Hot Chocolates confirmed the original ambi-
tions of dozens of black cabaret entertainers who had hoped to move
from the black-and-tans into the legitimate theaters. Peyton chortled that
Armstrong made "Broadway eat out of the palm of his hand."41
Earl Hines, the other great symbolic hero of South Side jazz lovers,
carried Chicago's cabaret traditions to success in the 19303. Hines toured
the east coast cities, playing dance halls and white and black theaters as a
stage band attraction. In Chicago, his band appeared at the Savoy Ball-
room as well as the Grand Terrace, where Ed Fox arranged for his band
to back New York dancers such as Maude Russell, Bill "Bojangles"
Robinson, and Buck and Bubbles.42
 "Syncopated Threnody": The End of Chicago's Jazz Age 165

By 1932, a growing trend toward large jazz-oriented black dance

bands was clearly visible in Chicago. Earl Hines, of course, had been
building his band at the Grand Terrace since the end of the previous
decade, keeping an edge on the competing black big bands led by Tiny
Parham, Reuben Reeves, Walter Barnes. Black Chicago also welcomed
big bands from Kansas City and New York as well, cheering the Benny
Moten, Duke Ellington, and Fletcher Henderson orchestras on their
periodic tours through the South Side. According to the Defender, all of
the most ambitious South Side Chicago band leaders, including Jimmie
Noone and Eddie South, vied for national exposure, eagerly seeking the
promotional backing necessary for national tours like the one which Ed
Fox promoted for Earl Hines in 1932. Touring bands now played a
maximum of a week or two in large Chicago cabarets, hotels, and dance
halls before moving on.43
Some white jazzmen struggled under often discouraging conditions
in the clubs after the stock market crash. Art Hodes stayed on in Chicago
until 1938, long after many other white players had left for New York.
After the crash, Hodes survived by playing in Floyd Town's and Frank
Snyder's dance bands and playing solo piano at the Capitol Dancing
School, Harry's New York Bar, and the Liberty Inn. His description of
the last underscores how, under adverse economic circumstances, jazz
returned to a lesser, supporting role in cabaret entertainment.
Johnny McGovern owned the Liberty Inn at Clark and Erie and the
connecting hotel next door. He featured bar girls in the front and
vaudeville-style cabaret acts and strippers in the back room. Hodes found
it "a grind" playing for the floor show and dancing, but a number of
important white musicians—pianist Bob Zurke, trumpeters Marty Mar-
sala, Wingy Manone, and Louis Prima, and drummer Earl Wiley—
played with him in the backroom of the Liberty Inn at one time or
another. Sam Beer's My Cellar on State near Lake Street kept jazz and
racial integration alive by featuring inter-racial jam sessions through the
repeal of prohibition.^
Most of the rebel white Chicagoans, whose enthusiasm had done so
much to enliven the Chicago jazz scene, migrated to New York and
survived during the lean years between 1929 and 1935 by playing in
various dance bands—Arnold Johnson, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Frank West-
phal, Meyer Davis, Jan Garber, and others. Some of these dance band
leaders had worked extensively in Chicago during the 19205, and had
preceded the jazzmen to New York. Often booked by MCA, these bands
166 Chicago Jazz

continued to play an important role in the professional and artistic lives of

the white Chicago jazzmen.45
As the depression waned and World War II approached, however,
these musicians began a long process of appropriation of Chicago's jazz
band tradition. "Chicago Jazz" became closely associated with them,
although as we have seen, they had actually performed relatively little in
Chicago during the 19205. Unlike Louis Armstrong, who adapted his
cabaret experiences to the theater stage band in a pragmatic approach to
musical show business, the immigrant white rebel Chicagoans closely
connected their musical aspirations to the remembered sensibilities of
twenties Chicago and its cabaret/speakeasy tradition. Red McKenzie and
Eddie Condon had attached the city's name to their first records in 1927
(and Condon would continue to do so in several subsequent recording
sessions); Variety touted their first "Chicagoans" records as the latest
thing soon after their arrival in New York. Accessible to journalists,
Condon, McPartland, Freeman, Wettling, and others publicized the im-
portance in their lives of Chicago, Austin High School, and Windy City
gangland speakeasies.^6
In the mid-thirties, as the Swing Era began to dominate the national
scene, a Chicago-influenced small jazzband style began to emerge in
New York. As early as 1932, Milt Gabler, proprietor of the Commodore
Music Shop at 144 East 42nd Street began reissuing older jazz records by
both black and white groups. A small but enthusiastic market existed for
such reissues among white professionals like English professor Marshall
Stearns, Time-Life illustrator Richard Edes Harrison, commercial artist
Paul Smith, Time and Fortune staff writer Wilder Hobson, and a very
young George Avakian, who later came to be in charge of popular music
albums at Columbia records.47
Reissue programs and their accompanying brochures and liner notes
played an influential role in a retrospective definition of "Chicago Jazz."
Stearns organized a group called the United Hot Clubs of America,
devotees of small band jazz music as an art form, who began an influen-
tial reissue series under their own label. To promote a taste for small
band jazz in the midst of the Swing Era, Gabler organized in 1938 a
series of insider, invitation-only jam sessions at the Decca studios at 799
Seventh Avenue at the corner of 52nd Street.
Beginning in 1938, several of the transplanted rebel Chicagoans be-
gan playing regularly at a club called Nick's, on Seventh Avenue and
 "Syncopated Threnody": The End of Chicago's Jazz Age 167

Tenth Street in Greenwich Village, which was frequented by journalists,

artists, and writers. While black solo stars such as Sidney Bechet and
Willie the Lion Smith were featured from time to time, Nick's usually
presented white bands to white audiences. In the process, "Chicago Jazz"
was even more closely associated with the rebel white Chicago jazzmen.
At about the same time, when Milt Gabler began recording both black
and white jazz groups, several of the white ones appeared under names
associated with Chicago.**8
George Avakian solidified the identification of Chicago jazz with
some of the white musicians who had played jazz there in the twenties
when he produced and wrote the liner notes for "Chicago Jazz," the first
jazz album ever made, which featured white bands led by Eddie Condon,
Jimmy McPartland, and George Wettling and was issued on Decca.
Avakian later directed several recording sessions at Columbia Records
featuring "Chicago" musicians, like Wettling, Bud Freeman, and Bill
Davison, all of whom were closely associated with Eddie Condon.4?
Condon's influence in defining "Chicago Jazz" grew, thanks in great
part to a circle of influential advertising executives that included Ernest
Anderson and Condon's wife Phyllis Smith. He began to front a series of
jazz concerts at Town Hall, which lasted for several years. Condon
industriously promoted the Chicago traditions as he understood them.
His autobiography We Called It Music further emphasized the impor-
tance of the speakeasies to white Chicago jazzmen during the twenties
while also emphasizing the importance of the South Side jazz scene. He
opened a long-lived jazz club called "Condon's" in Greenwich Village in
1945 and featured most of the white Chicagoans at one time or another
playing very loosely organized jazzband music. When, during and after
World War II, the traditional jazz revival flourished, Chicago jazz came
to be exclusively associated with solo-dominated dixieland played by
white musicians. In the process, much of the interesting variety of the
music that had been played and recorded in Chicago during the twenties
was lost.5°
The earliest jazz writers, working from phonograph records and oral
interviews with the musicians, further underscored the importance of a
"Chicago style" jazz played by white musicians. French critic Hugues
Panassie's influential book Hot Jazz was published in America in 1934.
He was deeply impressed by the McKenzie and Condon's Chicagoans
records; he defined Chicago style jazz as unarranged, small group im-
i68 Chicago Jazz

provisation characterized by a minimalist, few-notes style and a prefer-

ence for hot intonation and intensity of feeling over virtuosity. Panassie
insisted that the style, which peaked between 1925 and 1929, was a "white
appropriation" of Louis Armstrong's playing style.'1
Wilder Hobson, the first American to write a book of jazz criticism,
defined the Chicago style as a blend of "the Negroes' personal intensity
and a linear economy suggestive of Beiderbecke." Hobson believed that
Chicago style gained focus when compared with New York cornetist Red
Nichols's and trombonist Miff Mole's 1929 "white manner of playing" in
New York. Their "clean, agile, polished, graceful, and balanced" style
contrasted with the wilder more expressive spirit which the white Chi-
cagoans had assimilated from black musicians. Hobson also wrote that
Chicago style stood out in bolder relief when compared with the "blatant
virtuoso exhibitions of the 'swing' fad."?2
On the other hand, at the end of World War II, writer Rudi Blesh
began a strong critical counter-reaction against the soaring reputation of
the rebel white Chicagoans. While convinced that it was "impossible to
praise too highly the ardor and the fidelity of their pursuit of jazz," he
said the "Chicagoans" played only a "white imitation of Negro jazz,
sincere but not profound," demonstrating a progressive loss of control
and a consolidation of the weakest features of South Side jazz. These
"white faced boys," Blesh wrote, played a "bad, good music," while all
but a few "faithful Negroes," "weaned away by white commercialism
and the easy success of their own ruined music, no longer wish to play
jazz."
Blesh and other jazz writers believed that the popularity and reputa-
tion of the white Chicagoans was belied by their comparatively thin
contributions to jazz in the twenties. And musicologist Gunther Schuller,
writing in 1968, buried the rebel Chicagoans in a footnote that labeled
their records as "commercial performances geared to a thriving mass
market requiring a consumer's product." Jazz writer Martin Williams,
Schuller's frequent collaborator, omitted most of the white Chicagoans
from his collections of essays and from his vastly influential record set the
"Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz."53
A cultural history of jazz in Chicago during the twenties clearly
demonstrates that the label "Chicago Jazz" has been far too musically
and racially narrow a term to adequately describe the variety of ap-
proaches to jazz actually played and recorded there in the 19205. As a
stylistic label, the phrase has suggested the spirit of fast-paced, nervous
 "Syncopated Threnody": The End of Chicago's Jazz Age 169

excitement that Chicago stimulated in musical entertainment; but, as we

have seen musicians manipulated this complex set of sensibilities in many
unexpected directions. The white movement to appropriate Chicago
jazz, while paying lip service to the priority of the South Side Chicago
jazz scene, removed the music from the context of black cabaret show
business in which it had grown, completely altering its historical and
cultural context.
But this historical investigation of jazz activity in Chicago during its
hey day there in the 19205 documents several more functional dimensions
of jazz, not as a particular stylistic approach to making music, but as a
cultural force which interacted with some of the most important trends in
northern urban society after World War I. The music of King Oliver,
Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, and Frank Tes-
chemacher expressed and stimulated nonverbal patterns of emotional
excitement which Chicago stirred in its youth. Jazz in Chicago gave voice
to a sense of abandon in the new urban wilderness.
And just as importantly, jazz functioned to express and channel some
of the explosive emotions generated by racial and cultural tensions in
Chicago. The opening bars of Chicago's post-World War I jazz age
music unfolded in South Side musical institutions in 1918-19 at the time
of the city's worst race riot. Chicago's Roaring Twenties were born in an
atmosphere of racial hatred and fear; the black-and-tan cabarets, whose
owners often provided invaluable political organization and recruitment
for Big Bill Thompson's Republicans, functioned to provide channels for
the resolution of racial tensions through intense, structured rituals of
nonverbal inter-racial expressiveness. As Victor Turner has explained,54
conflict, an integral part of the social process, produces "social dramas,"
incidents like Chicago's terrifying race riot of 1919. After an emotional,
bloody social conflict, some redressive action, institutionalized or ad hoc,
is usually brought into action by representative members of the disturbed
social system.
The process of reintegration of society, never complete, usually in-
volves an invitation of members of the different parties to a major ritual
which will affirm the other side of their conflictual relations—com-
munitas—nonrational (but, as Chapter Five argued, not necessarily "irra-
tional") bonds uniting people over and above any formal social associa-
tions which may unite them. An intuitive, "liminal" communion, labeled
"liminoid" when Turner writes of its night-club variant, emerged
through drinking illegal alcoholic beverages, dancing, and listening to
170 Chicago Jazz

jazz in Chicago's cabarets. Such liminoid rituals sometimes produced an

emotional catharsis, such as that experienced by Mezz Mezzrow and
analysed in Chapter Four, marking an exchange of qualities between the
groups in conflict, and causing, in some instances, genuine transforma-
tions of character and social relationships. Relationships between mem-
bers of formerly conflicting racial groups, Louis Armstrong and Wild
Bill Davison or Mezz Mezzrow, for example, become antistructural,
egalitarian, direct, nonrational, existential ones rooted in the shared expe-
rience of music, movement, nomadism, and transience of the jazz musi-
cian's life.
Liminoid experiences, such as those produced by jazz in twenties
Chicago, were often interpreted as sacred by those who experienced
them, forming a bedrock change in sensibilities. These moving experi-
ences of African-American music and dance, moreover, remained locked
in memory, capable of eliciting, as they do in the many autobiographies of
white jazz musicians, strong emotions over the passage of many years. In
this way, nearly fanatical loyalties arose to "Chicago Jazz" or to Louis
Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven records, or to Bix Beiderbecke,
among people who not only loved the music but also shared some sense of
racial conflict or an awareness of social injustice in America. Armstrong
or Beiderbecke or Jimmie Noone often became shamanistic figures, their
very musical instruments potent symbols of their magical powers, their
records sacred texts, and their photographic images powerful icons.
So, too, prohibition, the immediate triumph and ultimate failure of
the Victorian reform movement, added power to the twenties' jazz expe-
rience in Chicago. The leading cabaret customers included undercover
F.B.I, agents, plainclothes city policemen, note-taking observers from the
Juvenile Protective Association, leading city politicians, bootleggers, and
gangsters in a volatile mixture that added an extra jolt to the incendiary
music and the burning bootleg alcohol. This cultural context heightened
the meaning of the experience of jazz in twenties Chicago.
Finally, the unusual mixing of social classes that came to be associated
with jazz audiences stimulated its own special thrills. The admixtures of
slumming Gold Coasters with tourists, young office workers, pimps,
gangsters, prostitutes, politicians, and government agents created an un-
precedented fluidity and indeterminacy of social status. For an evening,
at least, rich, workaday, and poor could ogle one another, aping each
other's style and gestures. Whites could mimic black music and dance;
blacks could dress up in tuxedoes and gowns and dance and drink with
 "Syncopated Threnody": The End of Chicago's Jazz Age 171

whites; the poor could revel in expensive leisure time elegance; the rich
could have fun acting like tough street lords; rural tourists could rub
shoulders with urbane sophisticates.
None of this level of meaning, however, can present itself to conscious
understanding when jazz history is built only on the phonograph records,
career summaries of individual musicians, and photograph collections.
Seen in that familiar perspective, jazz has appeared to be a musical art
form evolving in its own isolated world of instrumental mastery, chord
progressions, and orchestral formations and disintegrations. These chap-
ters have tried to restore some sense of the cultural context in which jazz
functioned historically, and to describe the racial and cultural forces
which it expressed at a given time in a specific place. Jazz in Chicago
during the Roaring Twenties gave voice to and commented upon the
intensely felt emotions generated by the excitement and dangers of early
twentieth-century urban life.
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 Appendix

THE FOLLOWING LISTS summarize the chronology of recording activ-

ity either in Chicago itself or elsewhere of groups closely associated with
the midwestern city. They should be seen as suggestive and illustrative
rather than definitive. In some cases, record collectors, music scholars,
and jazz writers disagree about which records do and do not present jazz
music. Although most jazz criticism has exmphasized African-American
jazz, some now argue that many more records by white dance bands
should be included in jazz discographies; others would disagree. Until
such time as scholarship produces more definitive discographies of jazz
records, I have followed the distinctions established by discographer
Brian Rust between jazz and dance band records. Although Rust re-
mained vague about his reasons for including and excluding records from
his discographies, the data I gathered on the different cultural contexts
within which jazz and dance groups functioned support his basic distinc-
tions between jazz records and "American Dance Music" records. There-
fore I have included as "jazz records" those sides by major white dance
orchestras included by Rust in Jazz Records. The records by white dance
orchestras that Rust excluded from his jazz discography have been sim-
ilarly omitted from list A.
Ambiguities also cloud a few decisions about whether or not a lesser
known recording group deserves to be included as a Chicago band. These
174 Appendix

lists focus upon instrumental recordings made in Chicago, Richmond,

Ind., Camden, N. J., Grafton, Wise., and New York City before 1931 by
musicians with some association with Chicago beyond the occasional or
isolated Chicago recording session. When in doubt about some of the
more obscure groups, however, I have usually included them.
In order to retain the focus on groups involved in Chicago night life,
the many records made in Chicago by groups like the Detroit-based
McKinney's Cotton Pickers have been excluded because neither the indi-
vidual musicians nor the orchestra worked extensively in Chicago clubs
or dance halls during the 19205 and because such orchestras recorded
more often in other cities. So too, when a leader such as Jelly Roll Morton
moved to New York and continued to record, but with a substantially
different group of musicians, I have omitted those New York records in
spite of the fact that they appeared under the same Morton Red Hot
Peppers trademark. If, as in the case of several bands, important Chicago
musicians remained in what otherwise became a New York recording
band, I have included such recordings. The same desire to highlight
Chicago nightlife led to the inclusion of the Coon-Sanders Original
Nighthawk Orchestra that started in Kansas City and employed Kansas
City musicians but moved to Chicago for lengthy jobs at the Congress
Hotel and Blackhawk Cafe.
Jazz recording chronology can be traced through the first date in the
left-hand column. In each of the two lists, that date represents the first
recording session by a given group that produced jazz as defined by
discographer Brian Rust. The second date in the left-hand column indi-
cates the last "jazz" recording session by that same group in the period
considered in this book.
The right-hand column indicates the number of jazz sides (individ-
ual recorded performances) made by each group and the company labels
involved. Repeated takes of the same number are included, but rejected
takes are excluded. The abbreviations of recording company labels are as
follows:

Vic = Victor Recording Ok = Okeh;

Company;
Bp = Black Patti; Oly = Olympic;
Bwy = Broadway; Od = Odeon;
Br = Brunswick; Pm = Paramount;
Chg = Challenge; Auto = Autograph;
 Appendix 175

Col = Columbia; Cx = Claxtonola;

Ed = Edison Diamond Sil = Silvertone (Amer-
Disc; ican);
Gnt = Gennett; Spr = Superior;
Her = Herwin (Ameri- Spt = Supertone (Amer-
can); ican);
Horn = Homochord; Sw = Swaggie;
Mt = Melotone (Ameri- Uhca = United Hot Clubs
can); of America.

Despite the hazy musical distinctions between jazz and dance band
music, taken together these lists survey the general order in which jazz
groups recorded in Chicago. The first and last dates of recording activity
suggest the relative length of time during which any given group was
considered ready to record jazz oriented material. One can also see which
ones were most active in the field as well as their relatively longer or
shorter periods of recording activity.

A. CHICAGO J A Z Z RECORDS: WHITE BANDS

First —Last No, Sides

Recording Dates Recording Group £f Labels

4-11-21—5-23-25 The Benson Orch. 34 Vic

8-P-21 Lindsay McPhail 2 Oly
2-?-22—5-15-30 Isham Jones Orch. 32 Br
3-9-22—3-10-22 O'Hare's Super Orchestra 6 Gnt, Voc
6-P-22—9-23-26 Russo & Fiorito's Oriole Orchestra 22 Br, Vic
8-18-22—3-6-24 Frank Westphal Orchestra 16 Col
8-29-22—3-26-25 New Orleans Rhythm Kings' 33 Gnt
8-31-22—3-18-24 Roy Bargy 6 Vic
3-?-23—5-?-23 Albert E. Short's Tivoli Syncopators 5 Voc
4-2-23 Original Memphis Melody Boys 4 Gnt
4-P-23 Guyon's Paradise Orchestra 3 Ok
5-30-23 Chicago Blues Dance Orchestra 2 Col
6-1-23—7-13-23 Art Landry & the Call of the North 9 Gnt
6-P-23— 8-25-28 Charley Straight and Orchestra 44 Pm, Br
i76 Appendix

First —Last No. Sides

Recording Dates Recording Group & Labels

7-10-23—11-12-23 Porter's Blue Devils 10 Gnt

8-?-23— 9-13-28 Paul Ash Orchestra 12 Br, Col
10-16-23—6-27-27 Art Kahn Orchestra 14 Col
10-18-23—12-5-23 Midway Garden Dance Orchestra 7 Col, Pm
12-P-27 Axel Christensen 2 Pm
2-18-24—12-12-24 Wolverine Orch. (Beiderbecke) 18 Gnt
2-23-24—11-14-29 Mound City Blue Blowers 18 Br, Col Vic
2-25-24 Bucktown Five 7 Gnt
3-10-24—11-27-28 Guy Lombardo Royal Canadians 1 1 Gnt, Col
4-3-24 Paul Biese Orch. 3 Vic
4-5-24—12-12-29 Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk 66 Vic
Orchestra
4-P-24—c.5-?-24 Boyd Senter 10 Auto, Pa
7-P-24 Chicago DeLuxe Orchestra 2 Auto
9_?_24— 3-2-26 Merritt Brunies Friars Inn Orch. 15 Auto, Ok
10-?-24 —6-26-26 Al Turk 10 Oly, Ok
1 l-?-24— l-P-25 Dell Lampe Orch. 8 Auto
H_7_24— 12-17-25 Jack Chapman Drake Hotel 3 Vic
Orchestra
11-7-24—12-16-25 Ralph Williams Rainbo Orchestra 7 Vic
12-5-24 Frankie Quartell Orchestra 4 Ok, Br
1-26-25 —9-8-30 Bix Beiderbecke Groups 20 Gnt, Ok Vic
7-?-28— 12-P-28 Bill Haid Groups 25 Pm, Auto
3-P-25— 7-P-25 Super Syncopators 4 Auto
4-30-25—12-17-25 Fred Hamm Orchestra 6 Vic, Br
5-P-25 Voltaire De Faut 1 Auto
6-?-25 Dixie Boys 2 Auto
c.7-?-25 Stomp Six 2 Auto
8-3-25—11-14-27 Don Bestor Orch. 5 Vic
8-8-25— l-p-30 Benny Meroff Orch. 4 Ok, Br
1 1-23-25 Bob Deikman Orch. 3 Gnt
12-9-26—6-23-30 Ben Pollack Orch. 52 Vic
5-12-27—12-15-27 Sol Wagner Orch. 5 Ok
10-2-27—12-21-29 Ray Miller Orch. 18 Br
 Appendix 177

First —Last No. Sides

Recording Dates Recording Group &• Labels

10-12-27—-3-25-29 Original Wolverines 17 Br, Voc

10-28-27—11-20-30 Hoagy Carmichael 14 Gnt
12-8-27—12-16-27 McKenzie & Condon's Chicagoans 4 Ok
1-10-28 Husk O'Hare's Wolverines 2 Voc
1-23-28—8-13-29 Benny Goodman Groups 10 Br, Voc
2-?-28-^-?-28 Charles Pierce & Orchestra 7 Pm
3-29-28—9-27-28 Thelma Terry's Playboys 6 Col
4-4-28—4-28-28 Chicago Rythm Kings /Jungle Kings 6 Br, Voc, Pm
4_?_28— 11-9-28 Arnold Johnson Orchestra 5 Br
4-28-28 Frank Teschemacher's Chicagoans 1 Uhca
7-5-28 Frankie Masters Orch. 1 Vic
7-28-28—2-8-29 EJddie Condon Groups 8 Par, Ok, Vic
7-P-28—8-P-28 Midnight Serenaders 2 Voc
9-4-28—9-19-30 Wingy Manone Groups 10 Ok, Col, Voc
10-22-28 Danny Altier Orch. 2 Voc
12-3-28 Bud Freeman & Orch. 2 Ok
10-2-29 Syd Valentine Patent Leather Kids 4 Gnt
10-18-29 Elmer Schoebel & Friars Society Orch. 2 Br
2-12-29—4-11-30 Frank Melrose Groups 12 Pm, Gnt
1-24-30 The Cellar Boys 3 Voc
2-?-30 Louis Panico Orch. 2 Br

'This group first recorded on August 29, 1922, under the name "Friars Society Orchestra." A very
similar, if smaller, group of musicians subsequently recorded as the "New Orleans Rhythm Kings"
beginning on March 12, 1923. Jelly Roll Morton played on five recordings (three different tunes, five
takes) at NORK's July 17, 1923, recording session so that one session qualifies as "racially integrated";
whites otherwise dominated the group's personnel.
i78 Appendix

B. CHICAGO R A C E RECORDS: J A Z Z 2

First—Last No. of Sides

Recording Dates Recording Group & Labels

l-P-23— 12-P-28 Clarence M. Jones 9 Auto, Pm

4-6-23—4-27-27 King Oliver Bands 66 Gnt, Col,
Ok, Voc
6-1-23—2-8-29 Richard M. Jones Jazz Wizzards 26Ok,Gnt,Voc
6-P-23—6-10-27 Jelly Roll Morton Groups 70 Gnt, Vic,
Pm, Ok, Voc
6-23-23—5-28-26 Erskine Tate Vendome Orch. 4 Ok, Voc
9-P-23— 1-14-25 Ollie Powers Harmony Syncopators 8 Cx, Pm
10-3-23—11-6-23 Lois Deppe 6 Gnt
10-P-23— ll-P-23 Young's Creole Jazz Band 4 Pm
ll-P-23— 8-P-24 Sammy Williams 4 Auto
12-?-23— 10-10-28 Jimmy Wade Orch. 7 Pm, Gnt, Voc
1-21-24—3-30-28 Doc Cook Groups 21 Gnt, Col, Ok
4-?-24— 4-1-28 Jimmy Blythe Groups 27 Gnt, Voc,
Pm
8-?-24— 10-4-28 Sammy Stewart Orch. 7 Pm, Voc
ll-?-24— l-P-26 Jimmie O'Bryant 27 Pm
ll-?-24— 8-P-26 Lovie Austin Blues Serenaders 16 Pm
2-22-25—6-P-25 Hersal Thomas 4 Ok
2-?-25 Original Midnight Ramblers 2 Auto
4-6-25—2-24-26 Hociel Thomas 15 Gnt, Ok
5-?-25 Jones' Paramount Charleston Four 2 Pm
11-12-25—12-12-28 Louis Armstrong Groups 63 Ok, Col
2-?-26 Austin's Musical Ambassadors 1 Pm
2-?-26 Chicago Hottentots 2 Voc
3-10-26—11-17-26 Luis Russell Bands 6 Voc, Ok
5-28-26 'Lill's Hot Shots 3 Voc
5-29-26-^-25-29 Jimmy Bertrand's Washboard 12 Voc
Wizzards
6-21-26 Art Sims Creole Roof Orchestra 3 Ok
6-25-26—10-9-28 Albert Wynn Groups 6 Ok, Voc
7-13-26—7-14-26 New Orleans Wanderers/Bootblacks 8 Col
7-25-26 Birmingham Bluetette 1 Her
8-P-26— 10-24-29 Junie Cobb Groups 9 Pm, Voc
 Appendix 179

First—Last No. of Sides

Recording Dates Recording Group &• Labels

8-?-26—8-28-29 Vance Dixon Groups 7 Pm

9-?-26 Preston Jackson Uptown Band 4 Pm
9-P-26 Keppard's Jazz Cardinals 3 Pm
9-P-26 Elgar's Creole Orchestra 6 Voc, Br
12-P-26 Pickett-Parham Apollo Syncopators 2 Pm
12-10-26—6-7-27 Dixieland Jug Blowers 24 Vic
l-P-27—6-29-28 Jasper Taylor Groups 4 Pm, Voc
l-?-27—6-22-29 Charles "Cow Cow" Davenport 25 Pm, Voc, Br,
Gnt
3-30-27 Vicksburg Blowers 4 Gnt, Ch
3-P-27—2-7-29 Johnny Dodds Groups 40 Pm, Vic
6-?-27—9-? -27 Nelson's Paramount Serenaders 4 Pm
7-19-27—7-24-27 (King) Brady's Clarinet Band 2 Gnt
7-20-27 Hightower's Night Hawks 2 Bp
8-12-27—7-19-28 State Street Ramblers3 22 Gnt, Ch
8-P-27— 12-P-27 Dixie-Land Thumpers 5 Pm
9-P-27—9-20-29 Will Ezell 14 Pm
12-2-27—3-12-29 Eddie South Alabarnians 7 Vic, Hmv
12-P-27— 11-11-30 Tiny Parham Groups 46 Vic, Pm
12-P-27 Meade Lux Lewis 1 Pm
12-3-27—7-4-28 Chicago Footwarmers 10 Ok
1-21-28 Levee Serenaders 2 Voc
4-1-28—6-7-29 W.E. Burton 6 Pm, Gnt
4-3-28 Fess Williams Joy Boys 2 Voc
5-16-28— 10-30-30 Jimmie Noone Apex Club Orchestra 63 Voc
5-25-28—7-5-28 Carroll Dickerson Groups 4 Br, Od
6-P-28 Dixie Four 4 Pm
6-?-28 Tub Jug Washboard Band 3 Pm
7-?-28 Clarence Black Savoy Trio 2 Pm
9-22-28 Lil Hardaway's Orchestra 1 Voc
10-9-28 Midnight Rounders 2 Voc
12-8-28— 10-25-29 Earl Hines 25 Ok, Vic
12-10-28 E.G. Cobb & His Corn Eaters 2 Vic
12-12-28—7-25-29 Walter Barnes' Royal Creolians 8 Br
12-P-28 Beverly Synocopators 1 Pm
iSo Appendix

First —Last No. Sides

Recording Dates Recording Group & Labels

1-29-29—8-22-29 Jabbo Smith Rhythm Aces 19 Br

1-4-29—3-8-29 Ikey Robinson Bands 9 Br
2-P-29 Paramount Pickers 2 Pm
2-12-29 King Mutt & His Tennessee 7 Gnt, Ch
Thumpers Spt
3-11-29 Thomas' Devils 2 Br
3-21-29 Bill Johnson's Louisiana Jug Band 2 Br
3-30-29—2-8-30 Alex Hill 7 Voc
4-?-29 Windy Rhythm Kings4 2 Pm
4-15-29— 7-24-29 Tampa Red [Jug Bands] 9 Voc
5-9-29 Ike Rogers Biddle Street Boys 1 Br
5-22-29—10-1-29 Reuben Reeves Orch. 15 Voc
7-2-29—3-15-29 Kansas City Stompers 4 Br
7-24-29 Bealc Street Washboard Band 3 Voc
8-21-29—9-11-29 Omer Simeon 2 Br
8-28-29 Harlem House Rent Stompers 1 Br
9-23-29 Dixie Rhythm Kings 4 Br
10-28-29 Kentucky Jazz Babies 2 Vic
12-20-29—2-8-30 Alex Hill Groups 5 Voc, Sw
12-P-29 Bob Call 1 Br
2-4-30—1 l-P-30 Bob Robinson 4 Ch, Pm
5-15-30—11-19-30 Harry Dial Blusicians 6 Voc
7-?-30— 11-20-30 Lloyd Smith's Gut-Bucketeers 5 Voc
11-12-30 Frankie Franko Louisianians 2 Mt

2
This list surveys instrumental music and does not include the hundreds of vocal blues records which
more properly belong to the closely related but still separate history of the blues in Chicago.
3
An "unknown white teenager" played alto saxophone on the July 18, 1928, recording session by this
group, so that six of their sides were "racially integrated."
4
This black group led by the Cobb brothers may have included Frank Melrose on piano and thus would
qualify as a racially integrated session.
 Notes

Abbreviations of Archival Collections

CHS Chicago Historical Society

CJA Chicago Jazz Archive, Music Division,
Regenstein Library, University of Chicago
COHC Columbia University Oral History Collection
HCWB Vivian G, Harsh Collection of Afro-American Literature and
History, Carter G. Woodson Branch, Chicago Public Library
IJS Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University-Newark, New Jersey
JSC John Steiner Collection, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
SPCPL Special Collections, Chicago Public Library
JPAR Juvenile Protective Association Records, University Library,
University of Illinois at Chicago
WRHJA William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University, New
Orleans

Introduction

i. Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968); Martin T. Williams, The Jazz Tradition (New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970).
182 Notes

2. LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Blues People (New York: Morrow, 1963);
Lawrence Levine, Blac^ Culture and Elack^ Consciousness (New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1977); Neil Leonard, Jazz and the White Americans (Chicago: Univ.
of Chicago Press, 1962); Chadwick Hansen, "Social Influences on Jazz Style:
Chicago, 1920-1930," American Quarterly 12 (1960), 493-507. Kathy Ogren, The
Jazz Revolution: Twenties America and the Meaning of Jazz (New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1989).
3. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books,
1973), chaps, i, 15. Jazz City: The Impact of Our Cities on the Development of Jazz
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978). Also see Janet Wolff, "Forward:
The Ideology of Autonomous Art," in Music and Society: The Politics of Composi-
tion, Performance and Reception, ed. Richard Leppert and Susan McClary (Cam-
bridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1—12.
4. Chicago Defender, April 17, 1926, p. 6.
5. Joachin E. Berendt, The Jazz Boo/(: From Ragtime to fusion and Beyond,
trans. H. and B. Bredigkeit with Dan Morgenstern, new ed. (Westport, Conn.:
L. Hill, 1982), 371-77. Edward Pessen explores the dangers of reverse racism in
his review of Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era: The Development of jazz, 1930-
1945 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989) in "A Less than Definitive Non-
historical Account of the Swing Era," Reviews in American History 17 (1989),
599-607. For extended discussions of the proper definition of "jazz," see Mark
Gridley, Robert Maxham, and Robert Hoff, "Three Approaches to Defining
Jazz," Music Quarterly 73 (1989), 513-31, and Lee B. Brown, "The Theory of
Jazz Music 'It Don't Mean a Thing ...'," Journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism 49
(1991), 115-27. The Dec. 9, 1906, Tribune article on opportunities for blacks in
music was reprinted in the Chicago Broad Ax, Dec. 15, 1906, p. 2.
6. For a theoretical discussion of the origins of cultural history, see Roger
Chartier, "Intellectual History and the History of Mentalites: A Dual Re-
evaluation," in Chartier, Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations
(Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1988), chap, i; and Lynn Hunt, "Introduction:
History, Culture, and Text," in The New Cultural History, ed. L. Hunt (Berke-
ley: Univ. of California Press, 1989), 1—22. Paula Fass uses the term "sensibilities"
throughout her The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 19205 (New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977) and Chartier explicitly analyzes the word's
utility to historians in Chartier, Georges Duby, Lucien Febvre, Pierre Francastel,
& Robert Mandrou, La Sensibilite dans I'histoire (Brionne, France: Gerard Mon-
fort, 1987). Simon Frith, "Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music," in Leppert
and McClary, eds., Music and Society, 133-49, provides a suggestive model for the
sociocultural analysis of popular musics.
7. Dwight Macdonald, "Masscult and Midcult," in Against the American
Grain (New York: Knopf, 1962), defends high cultural traditions against all
 Notes 183

others; while Lawrence W. Levine traces the origins of cultural hierarchies in

Highbrow, Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cam-
bridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988).
8. J. Ogren, The Jazz Revolution, 3-10. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tales of the Jazz
Age (New York: Scribner's, 1922). Arnold Shaw, The Jazz Age: Popular Music in
the i()2os (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987), p. 4, notes a difference between
"real jazz" and what Fitzgerald and bandleader Paul Whiteman understood by
the term. Houston A. Baker, Jr., Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (Chi-
cago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1987), 4-6, discusses the narrowness of Fitzgerald's
vision of the jazz age.

Chapter One

1. Richard Wang, "Researching the New Orleans-Chicago Jazz Connec-

tion: Tools and Methods," Blact{ Music Research Journal 8 (1988), 101-2; Leroy
Ostransky, Jazz City: The Impact of Our Cities on the Development of Jazz (En-
glewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978), 59.
2. Dan Morgenstern, "Jazz as an Urban Music," in Music in American Soci-
ety, / 776-7976: From Puritan Hymns to Synthesizers, ed. George McCue (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1977), 139. Marshall Stearns, The Story of
Jazz (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1956), 112. Variety documents the impor-
tance of Chicago bands to the national jazz age, e.g.: Dec. 29, 1922, p. 15; Jan. 5,
1923, p. i; March 8, 1923, p. 16; Aug. 2, 1923, p. 5; June 25, 1924, p. 5; Aug. 6,
1924, p. 37; Sept. to, 1924, p. 39; also see: Ostransky, Jazz City, chap. 6.
3. Indianapolis Freeman, March 6, 1915, p. i; Harold F. Gosnell, Negro
Politicians: The Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago (Chicago: Phoenix Books, 1967),
74—75, 102—20, 170—71. Dempsey J. Travis, Autobiography of Blac/^ Politics (Chi-
cago: Urban Research Press, 1987), 35—64.
4. Motts's activities and events at the Pekin Inn are reported in Chicago
Broad Ax, Feb. 3, 1906, p. i; March 24, 1906, p. i; May 12, 1906, p. 2; July 2, 19:0,
p. 2; Jan. 28, 1911, p. 2; April 15, 1911, p. i; April 29, 1911, p. 2; May 13, 1911,
p. i; Aug. 10, 1912, p. 2; Sept. 14, 1912, p. i; Dec. 14, 1912, p. 2. The Broad Ax,
March 24, 1906, p. i, reports that the theater will open on March 3151, while the
same source on Aug. 10, 1912, p. 2, indicates that it opened on March I7th. Alan
H. Spear, Blac/^ Chicago: The Matting of a Negro Ghetto, 1890—1920 (Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press, 1967), 76, identifies Motts as "a community leader."
Gosnell, Negro Politicians, 127-28, analyzes Motts's political activities. John F.
Steiner and Charles A. Sengstock, Jr., "A Chronological Survey of the Chicago
Defender and the Chicago Whip from 1909 to 1930 on the Development of Jazz
Music on Chicago's South Side," unpublished typescript, CJA identifies some
articles on Motts and the Pekin but the Broad Ax is the fullest source. Variety,
184 Notes

June 2, 1922, p. 10; New York Clipper, July 30, 1924, p. 18; Rudi Blesh and
Harriet Janis, They All Played Ragtime (New York: Oak Publications, 1971),
1
54-55-
5. On the sporting fraternity, see Steven A. Reiss, City Games: The Evolution
of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press,
1989), 14-15. Chicago Defender, March 4, 1910, p. 6; March 26, 1910, p. 6; the
April 23, 1910, p. 4, issue claims that Motts "caters much at present to white
people." The issue of May 7, 1910, p. 3, notes the appearance of a white blackface
comedian at the Pekin. Oct. i, 1910, p. 4; Nov. 26, 1910, p. 3, labels the Pekin as
the first "Colored playhouse"; also see Defender, May 6, 1911, p. 4; July 29, 1911,
p. 4; Aug. 12, 1911, p. 4; Sept. 21, 1912, p. i; Aug. 28, 1920; June 16, 1923, for
further claims concerning the racial orientation of the Pekin Theater. "Accord-
ing to evidence confirmed by U.S. census figures, there is little possibility for a
colored business man to make a living solely from the patronage of his own
people ... This affords one explanation of the fact that most of his business is of
such a character that a white man is willing to patronize it...." Louise de Koven
Bowen, The Colored People of Chicago: An Investigation (Chicago: Juvenile Pro-
tective Association, 1913), 9. Theatrical columnist Sylvester Russell defended the
appeal of South Side cabarets to an inter-racial clientele in Indianapolis Freeman,
May 6, 1916, p. 5, and Aug. 19, 1916, p. 5.
6. Chicago Broad Ax, Feb. 3, 1906, p. i; March 24, 1906, p. i; April 7, 1906,
p. 2; May 12, 1906, p. 2; the July 9, 1910, p. 2, issue identifies Motts as "full of race
pride."
7. Chicago Defender, March 26, 1910, p. 6; April 23, 1910, p. 4; April 30,
1910, p. 4; May 7, 1910, p. 3; Aug. 6, 1910, p. 4.
8. The history of the Pekin Theater after Motts's death can be traced in the
black Chicago newspapers and the Indianapolis Freeman. In particular, see
Defender, July 29, 1911, p. 4; July 26, 1913, p. 6; Oct. 18, 1913, p. 6; Nov. 8, 1913,
pp. i & 7; Nov. 22, 1913, p. 6; Jan. 31, 1914, p. 7; and Indianapolis Freeman,
March 6, 1915, p. 5. The "Ghost of Motts" is described in the Freeman, Aug. 19,
1916, p. 5.
9. The date of Jackson's first Chicago performances, which is subject to
debate, is placed in 1905 by Blesh and Janis, They All Played Ragtime, 149—60—
which provides no documentation—but is located after 1910 by Lawrence
Gushee, "A Preliminary Chronology of the Early Career of Ferd "Jelly Roll"
Morton," American Music 3 (Winter 1985), 404 61.38, 411; Gushee insists upon
using only the dates at which the Chicago and/or Indianapolis newspapers
actually mentioned the presence of a particular musician in Chicago. Such dates
can be verified through primary printed sources in a way that earlier dates
provided by jazz writers cannot, but they do not rule out, of course, the possi-
bility of an earlier presence. Dempsey }. Travis, An Autobiography ofBlacl^Jazz
(Chicago: Urban Research Institute, 1983), 12.
 Notes 185

10. Peyton gives the 1906 date in Chicago Defender, Dec. 12, 1925, p. 7. He
creates a chronology for the history of Chicago jazz in the following issues of the
same paper: Oct. 17,1925, p. 6; Feb. 5,1927, p. 6, and the block quote concerning
Sweatman appears in the second of these two locations. The Broad Ax, July 15,
1911, p. I, mentions Sweatman's role in Motts's funeral. The New York Clipper,
June 4, 1919, p. 14, carries Sweatman's advertisement of himself as the originator
of ragtime and jazz clarinet playing; the April 19, 1922 issue, p. 22, of the same
publication reports on his claim to have made the first jazz records. The Clipper,
Feb. 28, 1923, p. 24, and Variety, Jan. 31, 1920, p. 23, further trace Sweatman's
activities.
11. Johnson's political alliance with Wright is mentioned in the Chicago
Defender, April 9, 1910, p. 3. Jack Johnson and the Cafe de Champion are
described in Chicago Defender, June 8, 1912, p. i; June 29, 1912, p. i; July 6,
1912, p. 6; July 13, 1912, p. i; April 5, 1913, p. i; May 17, 1913, p. i. Randy
Roberts, Papa Jackj Jac(( Johnson and the Era of White Hopes (New York: Free
Press, 1983), chap. 9, details the factually flimsy and emotionally charged case
against Johnson.
12. The role of cabarets in providing an outlet for black entertainers barred
by racism from vaudeville theaters is discussed by theatrical columnist Sylvester
Russell in the Chicago Defender, Aug. 27,1910, p. 4. Activities at the Pompeii are
reported in the Chicago Defender, June 15, 1912, p. 2; June 21, 1913, p. 3; May 2,
1914, p. 6; and Aug. 29, 1914, p. 6, which reports on the club's name change and
Morton's role as musical director. The Elmwood is also covered in the Defender,
March 29, 1913, p. i, and May 2, 1914, p. 6.
13. Jones's career emerges from the pages of Chicago Broad Ax: July 15,
1911, p. i; Dec. 30, 1911, pp. 2, 5; Nov. i, 1913, p. i; Nov. 8, 1913, p. i; July 17,
1915, p. 4; Aug. 21, 1915, p. 4; Sept. 25, 1915, p. 8; Dec. 2, 1916, p. 4; Jan. 20, 1917,
p. i; Feb. 3, 1917, p. i; Aug. 25, 1917, p. 4; Dec. 7, 1918, p. 2; Dec. 21, 1918, p. 7;
May 17, 1919, p. 5; May 22, 1920, p. 3; and the Chicago Defender, July 31, 1909,
p. 3; June 14, 1913, p. 6; Nov. 8, 1913, pp. i, 7; Jan. 23, 1915, p. 6; Sept. 4, 1915,
p. 6. Jelly Roll Morton and/or Alan Lomax confuse the two Elites, mistaking the
second one for the first, Lomax, Mr. Jelly Roll, 152.
14. The second Elite Cafe also known as Teenan Jones' Place was heavily
promoted in the Indianapolis Freeman, Jan. 2, 1915, p. i; Feb. 6, 1915, p. 5; July
10, 1915, p. 5; July 17, 1915, p. 5; Aug. 21, 1915, p. 5; Nov. 6, 1915, p. 5; Jan. 22,
1916, p. 5; and Feb. 5, 1916, p. 5.
15. Jones's political activities are analyzed in Gosnell, Negro Politicians, 128-
3°. '73-
16. Reports on the DeLuxe Cafe appear in the Indianapolis Freeman, Jan. 9,
1915, p. 5; Jan. 23, 1915, p. 8; Feb. 27, 1915, p. 5, announces that there are no
fights there; Feb. 19, 1916, p. 5; and March n, 1916, p. 5. Preer's illness is
reported on May 13, 1916, p. 5.
186 Notes

17. Chicago Defender, Jan. 23, 1915, p. 6.

18. Gushee, "Early Career of Ferd 'Jelly Roll' Morton," 404. Morton &
Lomax, Mister felly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole
and "Inventor of Jazz" (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1950), 152—55.
19. Chicago Defender, May 27, 1916, p. 6; June 17, 1916, p. 4; Sept. 30, 1916,
p. 3; Oct. 14, 1916, p. 4. Eileen Southern, Music of Blacl^ Americans: A History, 2d
ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), 362, identifies the sources above as
documentary evidence of the first appearance of the word "jass" in the history
of black music; Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Develop-
ment (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968), 4. Indianapolis Freeman, Oct. 28,
1916, p. 5.
20. William M. Tuttle, Jr., Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of i<)i<)
(New York: Atheneum, 1970), chap. 3; Allan H. Spear, Blact^ Chicago, chap. 8;
St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Blac/( Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in
a Northern City (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1945), 5-18. James R. Grossman,
Land of Hope: Chicago, Blac\ Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press, 1989), 3-4.
21. John Chilton, Who's Who of Jazz: Storyville to Swing Street (Philadelphia:
Chilton, 1972), passim. For a short but penetrating discussion of the musician as
vagabond entertainer, see Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music,
trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1985), 13-15.
Dave Peyton, "The Musical Bunch," Chicago Defender, Nov. 19, 1927, p. 10, says
that the Creole Band arrived in Chicago in 1911, but he changes the date to 1910
in Defender, 6-8—29, p. 10. Frederic Ramsey and Charles Edward Smith echo
Peyton's claim for 1911 in "Chicago: 'Every tub its own bottom,'" in Jazzmen
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1939), 95-96; Ramsey uses the 1910 date in "Going
Down State Street: Lincoln Gardens and Friars Inn Set the Stage for Chicago
Jazz," Jazzways, ed. George S. Rosenthal and Frank Zachary (New York:
Greenberg, 1946), 22; John Steiner accepts a date of 1912 in "Chicago," Jazz:
New Perspectives on the History of Jazz by Twelve of the World's Foremost Jazz
Critics and Scholars, ed. Nat Hentoff and Albert J. McCarthy (New York: Da
Capo, 1975), 145. Lawrence Gushee, "How the Creole Band Came To Be," Blacf(
Music Research Journal 8 (1988), 83-100, disputes these dates and places their
arrival in Chicago in Feb. 1915. A 1918 letter from the Creole Band to columnist
Tony Langston claims that the band had been "out five years" [on the road] and
therefore suggests that they could have played in Chicago as early as 1913,
Chicago Defender, March 16, rgiS, p. 6. On Bechet, see Sidney Bechet, Treat It
Gentle (New York: Hill & Wang, rg6o), chaps. 6-7; and John Chilton, Sidney
Bechet, the Wizard of Jazz (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987), chap. 4. Frank
Gillis and John W. Miner, eds., Oh, Didn't He Ramble: The Life Story of Lee
Collins as Told to Mary Collins (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1974), chaps. 1-2.
22. Attali, Noise, 13. Jimmy Wade's Orchestra was among the first to take
 Notes 187

South Side jazz from Chicago to New York when, in June 1926, they moved
from the Moulin Rouge to New York for a lo-week run at the Club Alabam,
Chicago Defender, June 12, 1926, p. 6; July 31, 1926, p. 6. A summary of move-
ment to Europe by African-American musicians appears in Dave Peyton, "Ours
Musicians in Europe," Chicago Defender, Jan. 2, 1926, p. 7.
23. Pay scales are noted in the Chicago Defender, July 24, 1926, p. 6; Chilton,
Sidney Bechet, 27-32; Gene Anderson, "Johnny Dodds in New Orleans," Ameri-
can Music 8 (1990), 422; Zutty Singleton Interview, Singleton File, WRHJA;
Lil Hardin-Armstrong in Hear Me Tallin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by
the Men Who Made It, ed. Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff (New York: Dover,
1966), 91.
24. Lil Hardin-Armstrong, "Lil Armstrong Reminisces about Early Chi-
cago Days," Down Beat 18 (June 1951), 12, also reprinted in Shapiro and Hentoff,
Hear Me Tallin', 91. Black immigrants accepted their new, northern world
"with gusto"; the Black Belt retained "a general air of optimism" until 1929.
Drake and Cayton, Blact^ Metropolis, 76, 80. "Amusement Places Reopen in Riot
Zones," Chicago Whip, Aug. 15, 1919, p. 6. Despite persistent disapproval of the
black-and-tan cabarets, no evidence was ever presented that they had played any
role in generating the race riot of 1919. Chicago Commission on Race Relations,
The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (Chicago: Univ.
of Chicago Press, 1922), 324. Anonymous immigrant as quoted in Tuttle, Race
Riot, 79.
25. Tuttle, Race Riot, 213-16; Mark Haller, "Urban Vice and Civic Reform:
Chicago in the Early Twentieth Century," in Cities in American History, ed.
Kenneth T. Jackson and Stanley K. Schultz (New York: Knopf, 1972), 299;
Grossman, Land of Hope, 150. Ostransky,/<zzz City, 83-91; Spear, Blac/^ Chicago,
157; Joanne J. Meyerowitz, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago,
1880-10,30 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988), no; Drake and Cayton,
Blac\ Metropolis, 609.
26. Perry Duis, The Saloon: Public Drinking in Chicago and Boston, 1880-
i<)2o (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1983), 236; Herman Kogan and Lloyd
Wendt, Chicago: A Pictorial History (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1958), 174-77.
27. "The Stroll" is described in Donald Spivey, ed., Union and the Blacl{
Musician: The Narrative of William Everett Samuels and the Chicago Local 208
(Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press of America, 1984), 39; Eddie Condon with narration
by Thomas Sugrue, We Called It Music: A Generation of Jazz (New York: Holt,
1947), 114. Hugues is quoted in Grossman, Land of Hope, 117, and also 140, 146.
Chicago Defender, May 2, 1914, p. i, also describes the Stroll as does Willie "The
Lion" Smith with George Hoefer, Music on My Mind: Memoirs of an American
Pianist (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964), chap. 12. Chicago Whip, Dec. 16,
1922, reports on the installation of electric lights on State Street.
28. Chicago Defender, April 9, 1910, p. i; April 9, 1910, p. 3; and especially
i88 Chicago Jazz

"State Street the Great White Way," May 11, 1912, p. 8; and June 15, 1912, p. i;
May 2, 1914, p. I, describes the Stroll from a tourist's perspective.
29. (New York: Fred Fisher, 1922), 2, CHS. On the white cultural tradition
of voyeuristic fascination with blacks, see Winthrop Jordan, White Over Blac\:
American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: Published for the
Institute of Early American History & Culture by the Univ. of North Carolina
Press, 1968). On this same pattern in twenties Chicago, see Commission on Race
Relations, Race in Chicago, 475, which also states that "Negroes know more of
the habits of action and thought of the white group than white people know of
similar habits in the Negro group."
30. John F. Kasson, "Organization of Entertainment in the Late igth and
Early 2Oth Centuries," Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village Herald 14 (1985),
3-13; Chicago Defender, July 21, 1923, p. 6; Lewis A. Erenberg, '"Ain't We Got
Fun? Popular Entertainment in Chicago, 1893-1929," Chicago History 38 (1985-
86), 9.
31. Blac]{ Chicago, 116. On Joy land Park, see Chicago Broad Ax, June 23,
1923, p. 2; June 30, 1923, p. i; July 7, 1923, p. 2; July 14, 1923, p. i.
32. Bowen, The Colored People of Chicago, g.
33. Harold B. Segal, Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret (New York: Columbia
Univ. Press, 1987), 75—76; Dictionary of American Slang, comp. and ed. Harold
Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner (New York: Crowell, 1967), 40-41.
34. Bowen, 'The Colored People of Chicago, 28. Erenberg, Steppin' Out, 124—
32. Smith, Music on My Mind, 127. Travis, Autobiography ofBlacI^Jazz, 43, states
that no South Side Chicago club was closed to blacks but goes on to record that
some of them "did have a Jim Crow seating policy."
35. On early Dreamland, see Chicago Defender, Sept. 19, 1914, p. i; Sept. 19,
1914, p. 6; Sept. 26, 1914, p. 5; Oct. 10, 1914, p. 6; June 9, 1917, p. 4; Chicago
Broad Ax, May 5, 1917, p. 4; Sept. 7, 1918, p. 12; Chicago Whip, June 24, 1919,
p. i; July 19, 1919, p. 5; Aug. 15, 1919, p. 6; Oct. 4, 1919, p. 2; and Travis,
Autobiography of Blacl^ Jazz, 28. On Oliver, see Frederic Ramsey, Jr., "King
Oliver," in Jazzmen, chap. 3; Walter C. Allen and Brian A. L. Rust, King Joe
Oliver (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, n.d.)—a revised edition of which has been
published as Laurie Wright, Walter C. Allen & Brian A. L. Rust's "King" Joe
Oliver (London: Storyville Publications, 1987); Martin T. Williams, "Papa Joe,"
in Jazz Masters of New Orleans (New York: DaCapo, 1979), 79-120; Edmond
Souchon, "King Oliver," in Jazz Panorama: From the Pages of the Jazz Review
(New York: Crowell-Collier, 1962). On Armstrong and Lil Hardin-Armstrong's
Dreamland Syncopators, see Chicago Defender, Oct. 31, 1925, p. 6; Nov. 7, 1925,
p. 8; and James Lincoln Collier, Louis Armstrong: An American Genius (New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983), 157. For added geographical clarity about the
location of Chicago's jazz clubs, readers can consult the map called "Chicago
Jazz Spots, 1914-1928 redrawn from the Original Map by Paul Eduard Miller
 Notes 189

and Richard M. Jones," in Esquire's 1946 Jazz Boo\, ed. P. E. Miller (New York:
Smith & Durrell, 1946).
36. "New Ideas," Chicago Defender, Feb. 2, 1918, p. 4; "Dreamland Most
Beautiful Cafe Owned and Controlled by Race Interests," Chicago Defender,
Oct. 10, 1925, p. 6.
37. Chicago Defender, Oct. 18, 1924, p. 7. South Side resentment of white
black-and-tan entrepreneurs in their neighborhood is echoed in Chicago Broad
Ax, May 26,1923, p. i. Eric Lott," 'The Seeming Counterfeit': Racial Politics and
Early Blackface Minstrelsy," American Quarterly 43 (1991), 225, introduces the
insightful expression "commercial regulation of black cultural practices."
38. Chicago Defender, Nov. 3, 1923, p. 8; June 21, 1924, p. 7; July 5, 1924,
p. 6; July 12, 1924, p. 6; Milt Hinton Interview with David Berger, ts., IJS. On
the Abbott-Bottoms partnership, see Roi Ottley, The Lonely Warrior: The Life
and Times of Robert S. Abbott (Chicago: Regnery, 1955), 201.
39. On Virgil Williams and the Royal Gardens, see Chicago Broad Ax, June
5, 1920, p. i; Chicago Whip, Dec, 23, 1922, p. i; Williams's references to Florence
Majors are confirmed by Interview with Stella [Mrs. Joseph] Oliver, ms., Hogan
Jazz Archive. However, the same person is called "Isabelle" Majors in Al Mon-
roe, ts. notes, Chicago Joints File, JSC.
40. Baby Dodds as told to Larry Gara, The Baby Dodds Story (Los Angeles:
Contemporary Press, 1959), 35. New York Clipper, Sept. 14, 1923, p. 31. JPA
support of the Lincoln Gardens is announced in Annual Report of the Juvenile
Protective Association (Chicago: JPA, 1924), 12-13. Martin T. Williams, Jazz
Masters of New Orleans, 106, asserts that gangsters owned the Lincoln Gardens.
Bud Freeman comments on his reception there in Don DeMichael and Wayne
Jones, Institute of Chicago Jazz Oral History Interview with Bud Freeman,
Nov. 3, 1980, audio tape, CJA. Wettling's description of the dance hall appears in
Hear Me Tallin' to Ya, 99-100. Condon, We Called It Music, 94.
41. Chicago Defender, May 10, 1919, p. 9; June 28, 1919, p. 8; July 2, 1927,
p. 8; July 23, 1927, p. 6; Oct. 8, 1927, p. 8; Jan. 21,1928, p. 9. Frederic Ramsey, Jr.,
"King Oliver and His Creole Jazz Band," in Jazzmen, 76.
42. Glaser, described as "a Chicago dealer in used cars," is reported to have
owned the Green Mill Gardens. Variety, Feb. 15, 1923, p. 21. The Sunset was
attacked by the state attorney general as "a common, ill-governed, disorderly
house given to the encouragement of idleness, drinking, and licentious and
lascivious conditions," but nothing came of the charge. Variety, May 12, 1922,
p. 19; Nov. 17, 1922, p. 38; Collier, Louis Armstrong, 160-62, 166, 176, 272, 344,
350, describes Glaser and his relations with Armstrong. The Hinton interview
with Berger (IJS) discusses the bassist's contacts with Glaser. On musical enter-
tainment at the Sunset Cafe, see Chicago Defender, Sept. 10, 1921, p. 6; March 31,
1923, p. 6; July 7, 1923, p. 6; Dec. 26, 1925, p. 6; April 17, 1926, p. 6; Aug. 28,
1926, p. 6; Jan. 8, 1927, p. 6; May 7, 1927, p. 8; July 2, 1927, p. 8; July 23, 1927,
190 Chicago Jazz

p. 6; Sept. 17, 1927, p. 9. Stanley Dance, The World of Earl Hines (New York:
Scribner's, 1977), 45-46; "Wild Bill" Davison Interview with Hal Willard,
ts., IJS.
43. Variety, May 24, 1923, p. 10, and Chicago Broad Ax, May 26, 1923, p. i,
announce the closing of Al Tierney's, while Variety, Dec. 2, 1925, p. 47, and
April 21, 1926, p. 45, describe the Plantation Club scene in some detail. Jazz
Grove II, 202, identifies the owners. People of the State of Illinois (ex rel. Irving
Cohen) v. City of Chicago, Cook County Superior Court transcript, Dec. 6, 1924,
CHS. Someone has penciled "Sunset Amusement Corp." on this document, even
though no such organization is mentioned in the text. This would seem to
suggest that the Sunset Cafe and the Plantation Cafe were owned by the same
company.
44. Travis,Autobiography ofBlac\]azz, 33; manuscript notes, Jimmie Noone
File, JSC; jazz Grove II, 195; Interview with Tut Soper by Wayne Jones and
Warren Plath, July 19, 1983, ts., CJA. Chicago Defender, July 2, 1927, p. 8; Sept.
17, 1927, p. 9. Wesley, M. Neff, "Jimmie Noone," Jazz Information (Oct. 4, 1940),
6-9.
45. "Colored Citizens Alarmed Over Social Evil Coming into Their Resi-
dence District," Indianapolis Freeman, March 11, 1916, p. i; "Mayor's Actions in
Dealing with Vice Seem To Be Wrought with Astounding Inconsistency,"
Indianapolis Freeman, April i, 1916, p. i.
46. The Entertainers Cafe was closed in Feb. 1921 by the U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals for violation of the Volstead Act; it reopened one year later. The
dancing of its entertainer Julie Rector was declared to be obscene at the same
time. Variety, April 7, 1922, p. 18; March 29, 1923, p. 47; JPA Files: #92—
"Commercialized Prostitution, Personal File of Jesse Binford [1923]"; #93—
"Commercialized Prostitution in Chicago, 1922"; #94—"Commercialized Pros-
titution in Chicago, 1922-24"; #96—"Commercialized Prostitution, 1923-24";
#108—Vice Investigations, 1920-23, specifically indicates that the April 1923
closing of the bordellos had created an "Abnormal Saturday night situation";
#110—Vice Investigations Chicago, 1922—23, UICSC. Dance, World of Earl
Hines, 45-46.
47. The emphasis to the description of the appeal of cabaret entertainment
has been added. See JPA File #92. Sylvester Russell, who covered the South Side
entertainment scene for the Indianapolis Freeman before the war, had similarly
insisted that "proprietors of these places [the two Elites, the Panama, the De-
Luxe, and others] are not catering for white prostitutes nor traffic traders. Good
order and recreation is their chief aim in catering for public business." Freeman,
May 6, 1916, p. 5.
48. T.J.Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Anti-modernism and the Transforma-
tion of American Culture, 1880-1920 (New York: Pantheon, 1981), 52.
49. John F. Szwed, "Race and the Embodiment of Culture," Ethnicity 2
 Notes 191

(1975), 19-33- Attali, Noise, 20-23. Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The
Human Seriousness of Play (New York: PAJ Publications, 1982), 20-60.
50. New York Clipper, July 21, 1920, p. 6; Aug. 4, 1920, p. i; March 2, 1921,
p. 32; April 6, 1921, p. 30; April 13, 1921, p. 7.
51. Chicago Defender, Sept. 4, 1926, p. 6; May 19, 1923, p. 7; Dec. 8, 1923,
p. i; Oct. 10, 1925, p. 6; Sept. n, 1926; on the NAACP at Dreamland, see
Defender, July 3, 1926, p. 6.
52. Chicago Broad Ax, July 20, 1912, p. i; Aug. 10, 1912, p. i; March 10, 1917,
p. 4; March 17, 1917, p. i; Nov. 16, 1918, p. 8; Nov. 25, 1922, p. 2; Sept. 22, 1923,
p. 2; Dec. 2, 1922, p. 3; May 26, 1923, p. i.
53. "Patronize Worthy Race Enterprises Along 'the Stroll,'" Chicago De-
fender, March 20, 1915, p. 9; May 8, 1915, p. 4; May 29, 1915, p. 8; Aug. 7, 1915,
p. 8; Sept. 4, 1915, p. 6. Ottley, The Lonely Warrior, 100-101.
54. Chicago Defender, Aug. 23, 1924, p. 4.
55. Ibid., June 12, 1926, p. 6.
56. Chicago Broad Ax, July 9, 1910, p. 2; July 9, 1921, pp. 1—2; July 16, 1921,
p. i; May 6, 1922, p. i.
57. Ibid., April 21, 1917, p. 4; April 28, 1917, p. 4.
58. Ibid., Dec. 25, 1920, p. i; Chicago Defender, Feb. 21, 1920, p. 12.
59. Chicago Broad Ax, June 16, 1923, p. i; June 23, 1923, p. 2; June 30, 1923,
p. i; July 7, 1923, p. 2; July 14, 1923, p. i.
60. As quoted in Lloyd Wendt and Herman Kogan, Big Bill of Chicago
(New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953), 147-69, 168-233. The Chicago Broad Ax, Dec.
20, 1919, p. 3, claimed that Harding owned 3,000 houses, flats, and stores on the
South Side.
61. Chicago Broad Ax, Nov. 29, 1919, p. i; Dec. 13, 1919, p. i; Dec. 20, 1919,
pp. 3, 8; June 5, 1920, p. i; June 12, 1920, p. 2.
62. Thompson's mayoral power over cabaret licenses is documented in Pro-
ceedings of City Council, 79/7—/# (Chicago: City of Chicago, 1918), 2510-11.
Herbert Asbury, The Great Illusion: An Informal History of Prohibition (Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1950), chap. 14. On Dreamland's difficulties in 1923-24,
see Chicago Defender, Nov. 3, 1923, p. 8; Dec. 8, 1923, p. i; Dec. 15, 1923, p. 3;
June 21, 1924, p. 7; July 5, 1924, p. 6.
63. Chicago Defender, Aug. 18, 1917, p. 4; Variety, July 14, 1922, p. n;
Dance, World of Earl Hines, 52.
64. Variety, Jan. 20, 1922, p. 9; March 24, 1922, p. 19; Oct. 13, 1922, p. 8.
Erenberg, Steppin' Out, 235-36, analyzes how urban prohibition served to en-
hance the aura of night-club entrepreneurs like Texas Guinan.
65. The closing of Al Tierney's Auto Inn is discussed in Chicago Defender,
May 26, 1923, p. 2. The struggles of Izzy Shorr and Joe Gorman of the Enter-
tainers Cafe with reformers are traced in the Defender, March 19, 1921; Oct. n,
1924, p. 6; May 23, 1925, p. 7; Dec. 18, 1926, p. i. Dreamland's adaptation to
192 Chicago jazz

reform pressures can be traced in Defender, Nov. 3, 1923, p. 8; Dec. 8, 1923, p. i;

Dec. 15, 1923, p. 3; Dec. 29, 1923, p. 6; June 21, 1924, p. 7; July 5, 1924.
66. John R. Schmidt, "Dever of Chicago: A Political Biography," Ph.D.
diss., Univ. of Chicago, 1983, pp. 125-26, 164, 176, 246-50; Douglas Bukowski,
"William Dever and Prohibition: The Mayoral Elections of 1923 and 1927,"
Chicago History 7 (1978), 109-18; Asbury, Great Illusion, 301; Walter C. Reckless,
Vice in Chicago (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1933), 113, offers statistics on
the number of places closed and licensed.
67. Chicago Defender, June 18, 1927, p. 8.
68. John Steiner, "Chicago," in Jazz: New Perspectives on the History, ed. Nat
Hentoff and Albert J. McCarthy (New York: Da Capo, 1975), i^Jazz Grove II,
196; and Wang, "New Orleans-Chicago Jazz Connection," 106-8, all date the
Elgar-associated group at the Arsonia in 1915. On Elgar's activities, also see:
Hennessey, "Jazz Age to Swing," 101-2; Charles Elgar Interview, HJATU.
"Negro Music and Musicians," HCWB. The early activities of black musicians
in white Chicago are also traced in Paul Eduard Miller, "Thirty Years of
Chicago Jazz," Esquire's 1946 Jazz Boo/(, ed. P. E. Miller (New York: Smith &
Durell, 1946), 8. Fritzel and the Arsonia Cafe are described in Louis M. Starr,
"45 Years of Night Life," Chicago Sun, June 6, 1943, p. 47, and Fritzel obituary,
Chicago Daily Tribune, Sept. 29, 1956, pt. 3, p. 12. Chicago Herald, Feb. 3, 1916,
p. 16.
69. The Dreamland Ballroom is described in Irle Waller, Chicago Uncen-
sored: Firsthand Stories About the Al Capone Era (New York: Exposition Press,
1965), 61. Doc Cook's band can be traced in Chicago Defender, Oct. 10, 1925, p. 7;
Oct. 17, 1925, p. 6; Feb. 18, 1926; March 6, 1926, p. 6; May 22, 1926, p. 6; June 12,
19, 1926, p. 6; March 12, 1927, p. 10; April 9, 1927, p. 9; May 7, 1927, p. 8.
70. Chicago Herald, Jan. 31, 1916, p. 16; this club is listed as "Del' Abe Cafe
(De Labbie)" in Jazz Grove, II, 197.
71. Spivey, ed., Union and the Blacl^ Musician,. On the Moulin Rouge, see
Variety, Jan. 20, 1922, p. 9; Jan. 27, 1922, p. 9; March 24, 1922, p. 19. Efforts of the
white musicians' union to limit black musicians to South Side jobs are detailed
by Dave Peyton in the Chicago Defender, Oct. 31, 1925, p. 6; Jan. 9, 1926, p. 6;
Sept. 18, 1926, p. 6; March 21, 1927, p. 8; April 2, 1927, p. 8; Oct. 8, 1927, p. 8.
72. Ramsey, "Going Down State Street," 32. Stanley Dance Interview with
Marge and Zutty Singleton, May 1975, ts. IJS. Advertisements for Kelly's Stables
trace its entertainment policy and the sequence of groups which played there. See
This Wee\ in Chicago 5 (Nov. 19, 1922), 4; 9 (Nov. 9, 1924), 20; 10 (March i, 1925),
20; 10 (March 8, 1925), 20, CHS; also Theater Programs, 1919-27, CJA. Adver-
tisements and brief descriptions of the club also appear in Variety, 1920-28
passim; collector and jazz expert John Steiner discusses Bert Kelly as the possible
originator of the word "jazz" in Chicago. See "Notes B," Jazz Odyssey II: The
Sound of Chicago, 10.23—1940, Columbia Record
 Notes 193

73. Muggsy Spanier Interview, ms., WRHJA. Charles Edward Smith,

"White New Orleans," in Ramsey and Smith, eds., Jazzmen, 56-57; Chicago
Defender, Sept. 18, 1926, p. 6.
74. Chicago Defender, March 13, 1926, p. 6; Sept. 18, 1926, p. 6.
75. Chicago Defender, Jan. 30, 1926, p. 6; Feb. 13, 1926, p. 6; Feb. 27, 1926,
p. 6; July 30, 1927, p. 8; Aug. 6, 1927, p. 8. Dominic Pacyga and Ellen Skerrett,
Chicago: City of Neighborhoods (Chicago: Loyola Univ. Press, 1986), 9-10. Variety,
March. 17, 1922, p. 19.

Chapter Two

1. Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968), 86. For a brief consideration of changes in
Oliver's New Orleans style during his Chicago years, also see Thomas Hen-
nessey, "From Jazz Age to Swing: Black Musicians and Their Music, 1917—
1935," PH.D. diss., Northwestern Univ., 1973, p. 63. Chicago jazz's new institu-
tional environment is noted in John Chilton, Sidney Bechet, the Wizard of Jazz
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987), 31.
2. Kathy J. Ogren, The Jazz Revolution: Twenties America & the Meaning of
Jazz (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), 40. Lawrence W. Levine, Blac/(
Culture and Blacl^ Consciousness: Afro-American Fol/( Thought from Slavery to
Freedom (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977), 238.
3. Danny Barker, A Life in Jazz, ed. Alyn Shipton (New York: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1986), 45. Edmond Souchon, "King Oliver: A Very Personal Memoir," in
Jazz Panorama: From the Pages of the Jazz Review, ed. Martin T. Williams (New
York: Crowell-Collier, 1962), 21-30.
4. The invaluable interviews with South Side musicians conducted by the
late John Lax included questions about the status of jazz musicians within the
South Side community. John Lax Interview with Willie Randall, Dec. 28, 1971,
ts., COHC; Lax Interview with Red Saunders, Dec. 24, 1971, ts., COHC; Lax
Interview with Scoville Brown, Dec. 14, 1971, ts., COHC. Jeff Titon, Early
Downhome Blues (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1977), chap. 7, discusses stereo-
types of urban blacks. Frederic Ramsey, Jr., describes the small town rustication
of arriving New Orleans musicians in "Going Down State Street: Lincoln
Gardens and Friars Inn Set the Stage for Chicago Jazz," injazzways, ed. George
S. Rosenthal and Frank Zachary (New York: Greenberg, 1946), 22, 28. Barker, ,4
Life in Jazz, 62, describes Chris Kelly as does Lee Collins in Oh, Didn't He
Ramble: The Life of Lee Collins as Told to Mary Collins, ed. Frank J. Gillis and
John W. Miner (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1974), 55; the Broad Ax, March
10, 1917, p. 4; March 17, 1917, p. i; and Dec. 2, 1922, p. 3, calls for a greater effort
at urbanization and personal hygiene.
5. Ramsey describes Racquet's theatrical style of dress in "Going Down State
194 Notes

Street," 22, and the Chicago Defender June 18, 1910, p. 3, reported on "a success-
ful vaudeville actor" who appeared at midnight on the Stroll wearing "his
famous diamond horseshoe." Derrick Stewart-Baxter, Ma Rainey and the Classic
Blues Singers (New York: Stein and Day, 1970), 16, discusses the diamond tooth
implants.
6. The cabaret and the tuxedo are discussed in "Cabarets of Now," Variety,
Dec. 29, 1922, p. 15. Photographs of Chicago jazz musicians of the 19205 appear
in Frank Driggs and Harris Lewine, eds., Blac\ Beauty, White Heat: A Pictorial
History of Classic Jazz (New York: William Morrow, 1982), 49—90. The following
sources describe some dimensions of dress among South Side musicians: Ed-
mond Souchon, "King Oliver," 21—30; James Lincoln Collier, Louis Armstrong:
An American Genius (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983), 124-25; Dave
Peyton, "The Musical Bunch," Chicago Defender, Nov. 3, 1917, p. 12; Nov. 19,
1927, p. 10; Albertson, "Louis Armstrong," booklet packaged with Giants of
Jazz: Louis Armstrong (Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Records, 1978), 12—17. Stanley
Dance, The World of Earl Hines (New York: Scribner's, 1977), 22.
7. Chicago Defender, Sept. 24, 1927, pp. 6, 8; Jan. 21, 1928, p. 8.
8. Lawrence Gushee, "How the Creole Band Came to Be," Black. Music
Research Journal 8 (1988), 83—100. Chicago Defender, Aug. 7, 1915, p. 8; Feb. 25,
1922, pt. 2, p. 3.
9. "The Musical Bunch," Chicago Defender, March 20, 1926, p. 6; March 5,
1927, p. 6. Dance, World of Earl Hines, 62, 85. Ramsey, "Going Down State
Street," 22. Louis Armstrong, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (New York:
Prentice-Hall, 1954), 194-200; Collins, Oh, Didn't He Ramble, 57-58; Baby
Dodds as told to Larry Gara, The Baby Dodds Story (Los Angeles: Contemporary
Press, 1959), 25-28.
10. "Junius C. Cobb," ts. career summary, Junie Cobb File, JSC. Manuscript
notes, Jimmie Noone File, JSC. Interview with Tut Soper by Wayne Jones and
Warren Plath, July 19, 1983, ts., CJA.
11. Souchon \njazz Panorama; Chicago Defender, Nov. 2, 1918, p. 6.
12. Wellman Braud as quoted in Frederic Ramsey, Jr., Chicago Documen-
tary: Portrait of a Jazz Era (London; Jazz Sociological Society, 1944), 7; Ramsey,
"Joe Oliver," in Jazzmen, 66.
13. As quoted in Ramsey, "King Oliver," 68.
14. For a helpful analysis of the movement from oral folk thought to liter-
acy, see Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (New
York: Methuen, 1982), chap. 2.
15. W. C. Handy, Father of the Blues, ed. Arna Bontemps (New York:
Macmillan, 1941), 76-77; Dave Peyton, "Career of W. C. Handy," Chicago
Defender, April 17, 1926, p. 6. Hennessey, "From Jazz Age to Swing," 19,
documents James Europe's primitivist deceptions. Collins, Oh, Didn't He
Ramble, 68-69.
 Notes 195

16. Chicago Defender, Aug. 15, 1923, p. 7.

17. Variety, Jan. 5, 1923, p. 35; July 12, 1923, p. 5. Talking Machine World,
Dec. 15, 1924, p. 179. Driggs and Lewine, eds., Blac/( Beauty, White Heat, 49—90.
The photo of Cook's Orchestra appeared in Chicago Defender, April 12, 1924,
p. ii. Louis Armstrong, Satchmo, 213.
18. Wellman Braud, as quoted in Ramsey, Chicago Documentary, 7-8.
19. Variety, June 2, 1922, p. 17; June 16, 1922, p. 23; June 23, 1922, p. 30; Nov.
10, 1922, p. 7. Collins, Oh, Didn't He Ramble, 52-53; Barker, A Life in Jazz, 44—45.
20. Dance, World of Earl Hines, 30-56.
21. Handbill as reprinted in Walter C. Allen and Brian A. L. Rust, King Joe
Oliver (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, n.d.), 19.
22. The quote appears in "Whites Framing Colored Shows for Colored
Folks," Variety, April 16, 1924, p. 47, but also see: Variety, March 24, 1922, p. 12;
"Cabarets of Now," Variety, Dec. 29, 1922, p. 15; April 16, 1924, p. 47.
23. Chicago Defender, March 3, 1923, p. 6.
24. Interview with Johnny St. Cyr, ms., Los Angeles, Aug. 27, 1958,
WRHJA; Dance, World of Earl Hines, 62.
25. Morton as quoted in Ramsey, "King Oliver and His Creole Jazz
Band," 71.
26. John Wilson, "Notes on the Music," Louis Armstrong (Alexandria, Va.:
Time-Life Records, 1978), 33.
27. Hardin as quoted in Hear Me Tallin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by
the Men Who Made It, ed. Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff (New York: Dover,
1966), 93. Sally Placksin, American Women in Jazz, /poo to the Present: Their
Words, Lives, and Music (New York: Wideview Books, 1982), 59. Gene Anderson
claims that clarinetist Johnny Dodds "possessed a superb musical memory."
"Johnny Dodds in New Orleans," American Music 8 (1990), 415.
28. Variety, Oct. i, 1924, p. 28. Pianist Art Hodes describes his accompani-
ment of vocalists as a musical learning experience in "The Rainbow Cafe,"
Selections from the Gutter: Portraits from the "Jazz Record," ed., Hodes and Chad-
wick Hansen (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1977), 10.
29. Peyton's ad appears in the Chicago Defender, Nov. 29, 1913, p. 6. Walter
Ong argues that when literacy first intrudes into oral cultures, writing becomes a
craft, "a trade practiced by craftsmen whom others hire to write a letter or a
document." Orality and Literacy, 94.
30. Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks,
"Black Metropolis Historical District" (Chicago: CCHAL, 1984), 2—7.
31. David Evans, Big Road Blues: Tradition and Creativity in the Fol/^ Blues
(Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1982), 60-64. The writing and publishing of
orally transmitted music is described in Stephen Calt, "Paramount, Part 2: The
Mayo Williams Era," j8 Quarterly i (1989), 10-30. The question of musical
literacy should be seen as one specialized dimension of the more general question
196 Notes

of the impact of literacy on African-American cultural sensibilities. Again, see

Lawrence Levine, Blac/^ Culture and Blac/( Consciousness, 155—58, 177.
32. Chicago Defender Jan. 8, 1916, p. 7; Feb. 22, 1919, p. 13; Feb. 21, 1920,
p. 7; March 20, 1920, p. 7; and Williams is quoted in Chicago Whip Sept. 27,
1919, p. ii.
33. Ramsey, "King Oliver," 96, quotes from Oliver's letter to Petit.
34. On Morton, see Jelly Roll Morton and Alan Lomax, Mr. Jelly Roll: The
Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and "Inventor of Jazz" (New
York: Duell, Sloan, & Pearce, 1950), 184-88; and Wright, Allen &• Rust's "King"
Oliver, 337. The information was gathered from Talking Machine World and
contributed to this revised edition by Lawrence Gushee.
35. Dave Peyton, "The Musical Bunch—Songwriting Business," Chicago
Defender, Jan. 23, 1926, p. 6.
36. Tate's minstrel version of "Royal Garden Blues" is described in the
Chicago Defender, Feb. 20, 1926, p. 6.
37. Ibid., May 17, 1919, p. 9; July 27, 1918, p. 7.
38. Ibid., March 31, 1923, p. 6 describes the racetrack theme at the Sunset
Cafe; also see May 24, 1919, p. 8; March 18, 1922, p. 6; Chicago Whip, July 19,
1918, p. 5.
39. Milt Hinton describes Bill Johnson's and his own musical clowning in an
Interview with Tom Piazza, Washington, D.C., Jan. 1977, ts., IJS. Lawrence
Duhe as quoted in Chilton, Sidney Bechet, 28. Chicago Defender, Aug. 30, 1924,
p. 6, reports on Dunn; Jimmy Bertrand's Washboard Wizards, Okeh Records,
Chicago April 25, 1929; Dempsey J. Travis, An Autobiography of Blac\ Jazz
(Chicago: Urban Research Institute, 1983), 34.
40. Louis Armstrong, "Life Story of Louis Armstrong," thermofax ts., IJS.
41. The quote about musical instruments and technology comes from Ajay
Heble, "The Poetics of Jazz from Symbolists to Semiotics," Textual Practice
2 (1988), 51—68. The issue also arises in Theodor W. Adorno, "Perennial
Fashion—Jazz" (review of Wilder Hobson, American Jazz Music and Winthrop
Sargeant, Jazz: Hot and Hybrid), in Adorno, Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry
Weber (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), 121-32, which hides interesting
points concerning jazz and technology in what otherwise amounts to an undocu-
mented diatribe against "jazz"; Adorno often elides "jazz" and dance music.
42. Ong, Orality and Literacy, 83.
43. Charles Cooke's doctorate is discussed in Defender, June 19, 1926, p. 6.
An interview/biographical sketch of Clifford King appears in the Illinois Wri-
ters Project of the W.P.A., "Negro Music in Chicago," HCWB; the Chicago
Defender, Dec. 4, 1926, reports on the musical education of Jerome Pasquall; on
Simeon, see "Omer Simeon," Jazz Information II (July 26, 1940), 7-10.
44. N. Clark Smith's Chicago activities are described and photographed in
Chicago Broad Ax, Sept. i, 1906, pp. i, 2; Dec. 29, 1906, pp. 3, 5, 7; June 28, 1913,
 Notes 197

p. 3; July 5, 1913, p. 2; Chicago Defender July 9, 1921, p. 4; Nov. 12, 1921, p. 3;

Oct. 24, 1925, p. 6; Nov. 28, 1925, p. 6; Dec. 19, 1925, p. 6; interview with Milt
Hinton in Dance, The World of Earl Hines; Tom Piazza Interview with Hinton,
ts., Wash., D.C., 1977, 8, 36-38, 44, IJS.
45. Interview with Albert "Happy" Caldwell, ts., IJS; Ford S. Black, Blacks
Blue Boo/(, 10,1 J- Directory of Chicago's Active Colored People and Guide to Their
Activities (Chicago: Ford S. Black, [1917]), 41-43; Ford S. Black, Blacks Blue
Boof(, Business and Professional Directory ([Chicago]: Ford S. Black, 1921).
Erskine Tate vertical file, IJS; Interview with Jimmy Bertrand, Sept. 9, 1959, ts.,
WRHJA.
46. Louis Armstrong, Swing That Music (New York: Longmans Green,
1936), 71; Lil Hardin as quoted in Ramsey, Chicago Documentary, 6-7. East Coast
pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith played on Chicago's South Side for a time in
1923; he emphasized in his memoirs that wind instrumentalists played a more
prominent role there than in New York, where the pianists starred. George
Hoefer, Music on My Mind: The Memoirs of an American Pianist (Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964), chap. 12. John Steiner, "Chicago," mjazz: New Perspec-
tives on the History of Jazz (New York: Da Capo, 1975), 155-56, lists Chicago
pianists.
47. Don DeMichael, "Percussion's Dean Steps to a Lively Beat," Chicago
Tribune (Nov. 12, 1978), 23, 26. Interview with Caldwell, IJS. Interview with
Bertrand, WRHJA.
48. Chadwick Hansen, "Social Influences on Jazz Style: Chicago, 1920-
1930," American Quarterly 12 (1960), 493. This important article first concep-
tualized the problem of Chicago jazz's interactions with historical and cultural
forces and demonstrated the richness of the Chicago Defender as a primary
printed source.
49. The quotation comes from Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modem
Europe (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1978), 60. For a concise summary of
the problems with traditional distinctions between "producers" and "con-
sumers" of culture, and the ways in which "popular culture" adapts fine arts
culture to its uses, see Roger Chartier, Cultural History: Between Practices and
Representations, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1988), 39-
41; Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Wording Class Life with
Special Reference to Publications and Entertainment (London: Chatto and Windus,
J
957)> 27~29> :42'
50. Darnell Howard's musical education can be reconstructed through Chi-
cago Defender, Dec. 16, 1911, p. 7; May 25, 1912, p. 5; Chicago Broad Ax, May 18,
1912, p. i; and Albert J. McCarthy, "Darnell Howard—Pt. i," Jazz Monthly 6
(1960), 7-9. Elgar's and Howard's activities are traced in the Chicago Broad Ax,
May 18, 1912, p. i; May 18, 1918, p. i; May 25, 1918, p. i; Dec. 31, 1921, p. i; Jan.
i, 1921, p. i; and McCarthy, "Darnell Howard—Pt. i," 7-9.
198 Notes

51. Thomas Hennessey, "From Jazz Age to Swing: Black Musicians and
Their Music, 1917—1935," Ph.D. diss., Northwestern Univ., 1973; Thomas J.
Hennessey, "The Black Chicago Establishment 1919-1930," Journal of Jazz
Studies 2 (Dec. 1974), 37. Hsio Wen Shih, "The Spread of Jazz and the Big
Bands," in Jazz: New Perspectives on the History of Jazz, ed. Nat Hentoff and
Albert J. McCarthy (New York: Da Capo, 1975), 173-87.
52. Gar vin Bushell as told to Mark Tucker, Jazz from the Beginning (Ann
Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1988), 25-26.
53. None of them explains exactly what "spelling" meant in this context, but
they had likely learned to name the lines and spaces of the grand staff with their
appropriate letters. According to Mary Lou Williams, the Kansas City pianist/
arranger, those musicians who could only "spell" were "slower than the good
readers," which seems to indicate that they also could play the notes on their
instruments (at slow tempi); as quoted in Nathan W. Pearson, Jr., Coin' to
Kansas City (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1987), 62. Ong, Orality and Literacy,
100.
54. "Bad Habits," Chicago Defender, Jan. 30, 1926, p. 6; "Song Writing
Business," ibid., Jan. 23, 1926, p. 6; "The Orchestra Conductor," ibid., Feb. 13,
1926, p. 6; "Standard Music," ibid., June 5, 1926, p. 6; "Things in General," ibid.,
Aug. 7, 1926, p. 6; "Interested Music Teachers," ibid., July 17, 1926, p. 6;
"Thoughtful Musicians," ibid., July 24, 1926, p. 6; "Characteristics in the Orches-
tra," ibid, July 3, 1926, p. 6; "Our Spirituals," ibid., March 6, 1926, p. 6; "The
Orchestra," ibid., April 3, 1926, p. 6; "Things in General," ibid., Jan. 29, 1927,
p. 6; "Things in General," ibid., March 5, 1927, p. 6; March 12, 1927, p. 10.
55. The cigarette incident is reported by Peyton in the Chicago Defender,
April 16, 1927, p. 8, and repeated in Ramsey, "King Oliver," 76-77. Walter C.
Allen and Brian A. L. Rust, King Joe Oliver (London: Sidgwick and Jackson,
n.d.), 15-16, interpret the confrontation as part of a musicians' duel over an
important job, a view confirmed more recently by Barney Bigard, With Louis and
the Duke, ed. Barry Martyn (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986), 28-29.
Peyton's Symphonic Syncopators (two cornets, three saxes, trombone, banjo,
tuba, drums, and piano) were reviewed in Variety, Nov. 12, 1924, p. 31.
56. Allen and Rust, King Joe Oliver, 15-22; Ramsey and Smith, Jazzmen, 76;
Williams, Jazz Masters of New Orleans, 100-101; Collins, Oh, Didn't He Ramble,
66; Chicago Defender, Jan. 29, 1927, p. 6.
57. Chicago Defender, Jan. 23, 1926, p. 6; also June 19, 1926, p. 6; March 19,
1927, p. 8.
58. Ralph Ellison, "Living with Music," Shadow and Act (New York: Ran-
dom House, 1964), 192.
59. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-
American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), chap. 2. Krin
Gabbard develops some of these concepts in "The Quoter and His Culture," in
 Notes 199

Jazz in Mind: Essays on the History and Meanings of Jazz, ed. Reginald T. Buckner
and Steven Weiland (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1991), 92-111.
60. Interview with John Steiner, Milwaukee, Wise., July 22, 1988.
61. Carmichael comments on Armstrong's tuition, in Hoagy Carmichael
with Stephen Longstreet, Sometimes I Wonder: The Story of Hoagy Carmichael
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965), 203.
62. The Chicago Defender, April 16, 1927, p. 8, announces the publication of
Armstrong's two books. Collier, Louis Armstrong, 178-79, discusses them.

Chapter Three

1. Isham Jones, "American Dance Music Is Not Jazz," Etude 42 (1924), 526.
2. A retrospective account on the rise of the dance craze in Chicago ap-
peared in "Dance Craze Sweeps On—Loop Theaters Hurt," Variety, Jan. 5,
1923, p. i. Its ramifications for the music business are discussed in New York
Clipper, March 20, 1918, p. 12; March 5, 1919, p. 16; Dec. 17, 1919, p. 16; June 30,
1919, p. 17; June 21, 1924, p. 17.
3. Urban reformer Louise de Koven Bowen's Our Most Popular Recreation
Controlled by the Liquor Interests: A Study of Public Dance Halls (Chicago: Juve-
nile Protective Association, 1911), 1—9; and Bowen, The Public Dance Halls of
Chicago (Chicago: JPA, 1917), 4-9. Lewis A. Erenberg, Steppin' Out: New Yor/(
Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890-1930 (Chicago: Univ.
of Chicago Press, 1981), 151-58, dates New York's social dance craze from the
19105.
4. Chicago Herald, Jan. 31, 1916, p. 16, compares Chicago cabarets with
those in San Francisco; Chicago Herald, Jan. 24, 1916, p. 18, describes Frieberg's
and Ike Bloom. See also Chicago Herald, Jan. 25, 1916, p. 16; Jan. 26, 1916, p. 3.
5. Louise de Koven Bowen, The Straight Girl on the Crooked Path: A True
Story (Chicago: JPA, 1916), 10, 18—19; The Road to Destruction Made Easy in
Chicago (Chicago: JPA, 1916), 11—13. The block quote is taken from Bowen, The
Public Dance Halls, 5. Edward A. Berlin, Reflections and Research on Ragtime
(Brooklyn: Institute for Studies in American Music, 1987), 3-5, describes ragtime
saloons in New York as do Dempsey J. Travis, An Autobiography ofBlacl{ Jazz
(Chicago: Urban Research Institute, 1983) and Eileen Southern, The Music of
Blac/( Americans (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983) for Chicago, but the subject
deserves a separate study. Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets
(New York: Macmillan, 1909) gives a general, critical appraisal. Joanna J.
Meyerowitz, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880—10,30
(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988) provides invaluable information on the
kind of women who frequented dance halls in Chicago. Kathy Peiss, Cheap
Amusements: Wording Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New Yor/^
(Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1986), 100-101, offers a comprehensive cul-
2oo Notes

tural interpretation of women and leisure time activities in New York. The
comments of Westbrook Pegler appear in Louis M. Starr, "45 Years of Night
Life," Chicago Sun, June 6, 1943, p. 47.
6. Chicago's reformers admitted that the cabarets that sprang into business
after 1916 were less vicious than those operating before Mayor Harrison's raids.
See Herbert Asbury, Gem of the Prairie: An Informal History of the Chicago
Underworld (New York: Knopf, 1940), 310. Louise de Koven Bowen summarizes
high points of her life in Growing Up with a City (New York: Macmillan, 1926);
also see Michael David Levin, "Louise de Koven Bowen: A Case History of the
American Response to Jazz," Ph.D. diss. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign,
1985, discusses Bowen's attitudes toward jazz. For a useful summary of the work
of New York City dance hall reformers, see Elisabeth I. Perry, "'The General
Motherhood of the Commonwealth': Dance Hall Reform in the Progressive
Era," American Quarterly yj (1985), 719-33.
7. The instructions for proper Victorian social dancing come from "Teresa
Dolan Dancing Academy, 401(1 Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, Season 1914-
15," in Dancing. Chicago. Miscellaneous Pamphlets, CHS. T. A. Faulkner, From
the Bali-Room to Hell (Chicago: Henry Brothers, 1894), i—10, 14, delivers a
flamboyant diatribe detailing the ways in which social dancing led to drinking,
sex, and character disorganization among young women. On popular dance
styles, see also Bowen, Safeguards for City Vouth; The Road to Destruction; The
Straight Girl on the Crooked Path; and The Public Dance Halls of Chicago.
8. Reports on City Council efforts to regulate cabarets appear in the New
York Clipper, April 3, 1918, p. 5; April 15, 1918, p. 14; June 12, 1918, p. n; June
26, 1918, p. n; Sept. i, 1920, p. 5; April 6, 1921, p. 30; April 13, 1921, p. 7; April
20, 1921, p. 34. The ordinance ordering space utilization appears in Report of the
Proceedings of Chicago City Council, 7977—7$ (Chicago: City of Chicago, 1918),
2510-11; extensive commentary on it by John Torman, chairman of the Com-
mittee on Licenses appears ibid., 1476-80; New York Clipper, April 3, 1918, p. 5.
9. City of Chicago, Report of the Proceedings of City Council, 7974—7975
(Chicago: City of Chicago, 1916), 2457-58, 3132; Report of the Proceedings of City
Council, 7975-76 (Chicago: City of Chicago, 1916), 871, 3234; Report of the
Proceedings of City Council, 7976—77 (Chicago: City of Chicago, 1917), 161, 641—
42, ion, 1892, 2079, 3587; Report of the Proceedings of City Council, 1917—18,
2510-11; 1476-80 contain the block quote, but also see 1810—12. Report of the
Proceedings of City Council, 10.18—10. (Chicago: City of Chicago, 1919), 960—62;
Report of the Proceedings of City Council, 7979—7920 (Chicago: City of Chicago,
1920), 416, 1079, 1098, 2176; Report of the Proceedings of City Council, 1921—22
(Chicago: City of Chicago, 1922), 1010-11, 1152. Variety, Dec. 29, 1922, p. 15.
10. James Lincoln Collier, Benny Goodman and the Swing Era (New York:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), 31; George Bushell, Jr., "When Jazz Came to Chi-
 Notes 2OI

cago," Chicago History i (1971), 132-41; Paul Eduard Miller, Down Beat's Year-
boo^ of Swing (Chicago: Downbeat Pub. Co., 1939), 7.
n. Miller, Yearboo/^ of Swing, 7—8; Leonard Feather, "Jazz: Chicago Style,"
Carte Blanche (1961), 24-27, 52-53; Johnny Stein in Hear Me Tallin' to Ya: The
Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It, ed. Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff
(New York: Dover Pub., 1955), 82-84. Martin T. Williams, Jazz Masters of New
Orleans (New York: DaCapo, 1979), 26-32. Chicago Herald, Jan. 24, 1916, p. 18.
Collier, Benny Goodman and the Swing Era, 31. Leonard labels the earliest white
jazz music as "nut" jazz in Jazz and the White Americans: The Acceptance of a
New Art Form (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1962), 13.
12. Brian Rust, The American Dance Band Discography, 7977-7942, I (New
Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1975), 169-73.
13. On Joe Frisco, see New York Clipper, March 20, 1918, p. 6; ibid,, Oct. 23,
1918, p. 9; Nov. 26, 1919, p. ii. Don DeMichael and Wayne Jones Taped
Interview with Bud Freeman, Nov. 3, 1980, CJA. Variety, Feb. 6, 1920, p. 9.
Talking Machine World, Sept. 15, 1926, p. 154, insists that dance steps were
popularized through "the professional stage" and "the large dance floors."
14. Gilda Gray is described in Erenberg, Steppin' Out, 250-51. Fritzel, the
Arsonia Cafe, Friars Inn, and Crawford and Rogers are described in Louis M.
Starr, "45 Years of Night Life," Chicago Sun, June 6, 1943, p. 47; also see Fritzel
obituary, Chicago Daily Tribune, Sept. 29, 1956, pt. 3, p. 12. Joan Crawford's
movie dancing is mentioned in Arnold Shaw, The Jazz Age: Popular Music in the
i<)2os (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987), 8-9. Bee Palmer's movements are
traced in New York Clipper, Aug. 9, 1919, p. 6; May 18, 1921, p. 12; Eddie
Condon's Scrapboo\of]azz, ed. Eddie Condon and Hank O'Neal (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1973), n.p., reproduces a Palmer publicity photo.
15. "Chicago by Night," Variety, Oct. 6, 1926, p. 32.
16. Variety, Dec. 16, 1925, p. 46. Orchestra World I (Dec. 1925), 16. Paul G.
Cressy The Taxi-Dance Hall: A Sociological Study in Commercialized Recreation
and City Life (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1932), 192-93.
17. JPA and NABRMP policies on dance tempi are described in Variety,
Sept. i, 1926, p. 46, making references to earlier events of 1921.
18. Brian Rust, The American Dance Band Discography, 79/7—7942, I (New
Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1975), 137-42; O'Sickey Col. Collier's com-
ments, applied to the dance bands of B. A. Rolfe and Louis Panico, appear in
Louis Armstrong: An American Genius (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983),
239.
19. The relations between the JPA and the ballroom proprietors and man-
agers are detailed in "By-Laws of the National Association of Ball Room Propri-
etors and Managers," carbon ts.; Binford to Harmon, carbon ts., Oct. 27, 1924;
Binford to Eitel, car. ts., Oct. 28, 1924; Binford to [Edward] Diedrich [Midway
2O2 Notes

Gardens!, car. ts., Oct. 27, 1924; Binfield to Miss Kendall and Mr. Lund [Merry
Gardens], Messrs. Ashton and Byfield [White City], Messrs. Karzas and Sheey
[Trianon Ballroom], car. ts., Oct. 29, 1924; Binfield to Eitel, Green, Johnson,
McCormick, Plain, McGuire, Smilzdorf, all car. ts., all dated Oct. 30, 1924;
Binford to Harmon, car. ts., Oct. 12, 1928 and June 21, 1929; Binford to
Byfield and Donlevy, Oct. 27, 1928. JPA File #102: "National Association of
Ball Room Proprietors & Managers—by laws, correspondence, minutes." JPA
questionnaires and selected answers on dance hall policies are contained in
JPA File #104: "Public Dance Halls—reports December 1917—October 1928."
JPAR.
20. Information on Harmon's Dreamland is scattered through the following
sources: E[lizabeth| L. Crandall Report on Dreamland, n—io-[28?] JPA File
No. 104 "Public Dance Halls—reports December ig^-October 1928," JPAR.
The ethnic identity of Dreamland dancers is characterized in Report on New
Majestic [Dance HallJ, Jan. 4, 1924, JPA File No. 103 "Closed Dance Halls,"
JPAR. Variety, July 27, 1923, p. 23; Jan. 13, 1926, p. 46. New York Clipper, Feb.
16, 1921, p. 23. Kernfeld, ed., Jazz Grove, II, 198. On the physical setting of
Harmon's Dreamland, see Lawrence Gushee to John Steiner, ts., n.d., Joints of
Chicago File, JSC, and Scrapbooks of Louise de Koven Bowen, I, Manuscripts
Division, CHS.
21. John Lax Interview with Willie Randall, Dec. 28, 1971, ts., COHC.
22. Interview with Charles Elgar, Elgar File HJATU. Elgar is mentioned as
providing the music for a variety of refined South Side cultural events, including
Binga's yearly parties, in Chicago Broad Ax, May 18, 1912, p. i; Dec. 31, 1921,
p. i; Jan. i, 1921, p. i. Variety, Dec. 16, 1925, p. 46. On Keppard's drinking habits,
see Onah Spencer, "Freddie Keppard," in "Negro Music and Musicians," HC-
WBCPL. The Chicago Defender, Oct. 10, 1925, p. 7, documents Oliver's appear-
ance at Harmon's Dreamland.
23. Variety, Dec. 16, 1925, p. 46.
24. The history of White City Amusement Park is quickly summarized by
Perry R. Duis and Glen E. Holt, "Bright Lights, Hard Times of White City,"
Chicago History 27 (1978), 176-79. Fascinating announcements and publicity
from White City during the twenties can be found in White City Scrapbook
of Announcements ... etc, 1914—1933," CHS. Insights into the socioeconomic
characteristics of White City crowds will be found in Chicago Herald, Feb. 7,
1916, p. 18. "White City Dance Hall—Public Dance Halls, Reports December
1917—October 1928," Juvenile Protective Association File No. 104, JPAR. Chi-
cago Herald, Feb. 7, 1916, p. 18. "White City Twin Ballrooms, Chicago's Fun
Center, n.d., Scrapbooks of Amusements, 1914—1933, CHS. Variety, Oct. 7, 1925,
p. 50.
25. The history of the original Midway Gardens is summarized in the
Midways Gardens Co., Midway Gardens [Chicago: R. F. Welsh, 1914] and Col-
 Notes 203

lege Humanities Staff, The Midway Gardens, 19/4-7929 [Chicago: Humanities

Staff, 1961], CHS. On the Midway Dancing Gardens, see Midway Dancing
Gardens Toddle News I, i (June 15, 1923), xerox, Joints of Chicago File, Steiner
Collection. Paul Kruty, "Pleasure Garden on the Midway," Chicago History 16
(1988), 4-27.
26. Descriptions of dancers appear in New York Clipper, Oct. 5, 1923, p. 25;
Variety, Oct. 15, 1924, p. 38; and Feb. 17, 1926, p. 47. Elmer Schoebel to Leonard
Feather, Schoebel Vertical File, IJS. Jazz musicians are located at Midway
Dancing Gardens in John Steiner Interview with Floyd Town, ms., n.d., Towne
File, JSC. Derek Coller, "Notes on Jess Stacy, 19 June 1969, ts., Stacy File, JSC.
Barry Kernfeld, ed., New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (London: Macmillan, 1988),
201, hereafter cited as Jazz Grove; Steiner m.s. notes, Spanier File; Alma Hubner,
"Muggsy Spanier," in Selections from the Gutter: Jazz Portraits from "The Jazz
Record," ed. Art Hodes and Chadwick Hansen (Berkeley: Univ. of California
Press, 1977), 178—79; Variety, Feb. 17, 1926, p. 47. The Midway Gardens Orches-
tra sides have been reissued on Fountain/Retrieval, "The Midway Special,"
Fountain DFJ—115. Spanier, Stacy, Floyd O'Brien, and Teschemacher are
placed at the Midway Gardens in Charles Edward Smith, "The Austin High
School Gang," in Smith and Ramsey, Jazzmen (New York: Harvest Books,
1939), 170-71. Stacy's work at Midway Gardens is described in Leonard Feather,
"A Band Pianist Who Came In from the Hot," Los Angeles Times Sunday
magazine, May 18, 1975, p. 32; and Marty Grosz, "Frank Teschemacher: Biogra-
phy and Notes on the Music," Giants of Jazz: Tcrant{ Teschemacher (Alexandria,
Va.: Time-Life Records, 1982).
27. Columbia Records, Chicago, May 30, 1923, reissued on The Midway
Special, Fountain-Retrieval Records DFJ-U5-
28. On the construction, location, and programs of the Trianon, see Variety,
June 30, 1922, p. i; Dec. I, 1922, pp. i, 4; Dec. 15, 1922, p. 9; April 26, 1923, p. 9;
Nov. 15, 1923, p. 4. On Whiteman at the Trianon, see New York Clipper, Nov.
22, 1922, p. 28; James T. Maher, liner notes to "The Great Isham Jones and His
Orchestra," RCA Victor LPV-5O4, xerox, Isham Jones File, Steiner Collection.
Nancy Banks, "The World's Most Beautiful Ballrooms," Chicago History 2
(1973), 206-15, provides a useful description of the Trianon and Aragon ball-
rooms.
29. On Whiteman's symphonic syncopation, see Variety, Dec. 13, 1923, p. i;
Jan. 3, 1924, p. 4. On his Aeolian Hall Concert, see the issue for Dec. 3, 1924,
p. 32, and for Green's assessments, Nov. 26, 1924, p. 50, and Sept. 24, 1924, p. 26c.
The New York Clipper, Aug. 10, 1923, p. 21 identifies the popularity of a "steady,
hammering rhythm."
30. Rust, American Dance Band Discography, I, 1009-10; O'Sickey Col.
31. Variety, July 30, 1924, p. 38; Nov. 4, 1924, p. 35. Rust, American Dance
Band Discography, II, 1109-12. O'Sickey Col.
204 Notes

32. Real Estate Publicity Folder, Mann's Million Dollar Rainbo Gardens,
1960, CHS; "Marigold Gardens, Misc., Chicago," CHS; This Wee/{ in Chicago
(Oct. 31—Nov. 6, 1920), n.p., CHS; Variety, March 24, 1922, p. 12; Dec. 12, 1922,
p. 31; Nov. 25, 1925, p. 44; Sept. i, 1926, p. 46. Rust, American Dance Band
Discography, II, 1913-15, 1960.
33. The interior design and the entertainment at Terrace Gardens are
graphically represented in advertisement found in theater programs. See Cort
Theater Program, July i, 1922, p. 8, and Garrick Theater Program Aug. 24,
1924, n.p., Theater Programs, 1919—27, CJA. For a description of the admiring
groups of street people gathered at the entrance, see Irle Waller, Chicago Uncen-
sored: Firsthand Stories about the Al Capons Era (New York: Exposition Press,
1965), 56-57.
34. Harold Leonard, "The Hotel Dance Orchestra," Orchestra World i (Jan.
31, 1926), 5-6.
35. Harold Leonard, "The Hotel Dance Orchestra," ibid. (Feb. 28, 1926),
5-6.
36. On Isham Jones, see New York Clipper, Feb. 2, 1921, p. 23; Feb. 9, 1921,
p. 23; May 17, 1922, p. 28; Oct. 12, 1923, p. 25; June 14, 1924, pp. 18, 22; and
Variety, Sept. 22, 1922, p. 26; Dec. 31, 1924, p. 268; March 18, 1925, p. 45; April
22, 1925, p. 38; May 27,1925, p. 45; Chicago Defender, July 15, 1922. Descriptions
of the College Inn appear in Variety, March 31, 1926, p. 47, and April 28, 1926,
p. 31.
37. "Aunt Hagar's Children's Blues" (60358), "Henpecked Blues"
(Br2479), "It's the Blues" (6^027), "Land O' Lingo Blues" (60738), "Forgetful
Blues" (Br 2531), Isham Jones Orchestra, Brunswick Records. I would like to
thank collector Joel O'Sickey for playing, discussing, and taping these original 78
rpm records for me.
38. On Edgar Benson's control of Chicago's major hotel and supper club
orchestras, see Variety, April 8, 1925, p. 43; April 22, 1925, pp. 34, 37; May 6,
1925, p. 49; July 8, 1925, p. 41. New York Clipper, May 15, 1924, p. 16.
39. Variety, Dec. 29, 1922, p. 14; April 19, 1923, p. n; Aug. 27, 1924, p. 38;
New York Clipper, Aug. 17, 1923, p. 21; Dec. 7, 1923, p. 22; Jan. 18, 1924, p. 23;
May 9, 1923, p. 18; June 21, 1924, p. 23.
40. Variety, March 18, 1925, p. 45; April 29, 1925, p. 39; May 6, 1925, pp. 49,
50; May 27, 1925, p. 45; June 17, 1925, p. 34.
41. New York Clipper, Sept. 21, 1921, p. 18; Dec. 28, 1921, p. 18; March 15,
1922, p. 18; Aug. 16, 1922, p. 13. Variety, Jan. 5, 1923, pp. 9, 35; March 22, 1923,
p. 5; Aug. 6, 1924, p. 37; Aug. 27, 1924, p. 38; Sept. 10, 1924, p. 39; Oct. i, 1924,
p. 28; Dec. 24, 1924, p. 36. Talking Machine World, Aug. 15, 1926, pp. 42, 72; Oct.
15, 1926, p. 114.
42. New York Clipper, Nov. 22, 1922, p. 28; May 2, 1923, p. 28; May 9, 1923,
 Notes 205

p. 28; Aug. 6, 1924, p. 56. Variety, April 30, 1924, p. 40; May 14, 1924, p. 48; May
28, 1924, p. 7: July 2, 1924, p. 48.
43. Variety, April 22, 1925, p. 34; April 29, 1925, p. 39; June 10, 1925, p. 39;
March 24, 1926, p. 41; June 30, 1926, p. 41.
44. Onah Spencer, "Freddie Keppard," in "Negro Music and Musicians,"
VHCWB, CPL, described Keppard's appearances with the black dance bands.

Chapter Four

1. "John W. Wickliffe's Ginger Orchestra Styled America's Greatest Jaz

Combination," Indianapolis Freeman, Oct. 28, 1916, p. 5. Nat Shapiro and Nat
Hen toff, eds., Hear Me Tallin' to Ya: The Story of jazz as Told by the Men Who
Made It (New York: Dover, 1955), chap. 8, employs the metaphor of the "Second
Line" to describe the white Chicago jazzmen who, in their admiration of the
music of the older, black pioneers, formed a "Second Line," not unlike the New
Orleans youngsters who danced along behind their favorite marching bands.
2. Paul Eduard Miller, "Thirty Years of Chicago Jazz, Chapter One," Es-
quire's 1946 Jazz Boo/(, ed. P. E. Miller (New York: Smith & Durrell, 1946), 7.
3. Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York: Mac-
millan, 1909), 3—13, 18—19, 69- Addams describes the roots of jazz age culture in
Chicago with remarkable equanimity and insight, trie Waller, Chicago Uncen-
sored: Firsthand Stories About the Al Capone Era (New York: Exposition Press,
1965), 47-48, describes the ready availability of marijuana, opium, and other
narcotics in turn-of-the-century Chicago.
4. Annual Report of the Juvenile Protective Association (Chicago: JPA, 1924),
15-26; Annual Report of the Juvenile Protective Association (Chicago: JPA, 1927),
19-25.
5. Studs Lonigan (New York: Vanguard Press, 1932).
6. Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues (Garden City, N.Y.:
Anchor Books, 1972), 3-5. Don DeMichael, "Percussion's Dean Steps to a Lively
Beat," Chicago Tribune, Nov. 12, 1978, pp. 23, 26.
7. Ralph Berton, Remembering Bix: A Memoir of the Jazz Age (New York:
Harper & Row, 1974), 184—87.
8. Max Kaminsky with V. E. Hughes, My Life in Jazz (New York: Harper &
Row, 1963), chap. 3; Eddie Condon with narration by Thomas Sugrue, We
Called It Music: A Generation of Jazz (New York: Holt, 1947), 90-110.
9. Neil Leonard, Jazz, Myth, and Religion (New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1987), has analyzed in detail the religious dimensions of jazz sensibilities and
behavior patterns.
10. Richard Hadlock, Jazz Masters of the Twenties (New York: Collier
Books, 1965), 106-7. On Beiderbecke, see Richard M. Sudhalter and Philip R.
206 Notes

Evans with William Dean-Myatt, Bix: Man and Legend (New Rochelle, N.Y.:
Arlington House, 1974) and Berton, Remembering Bix. John Paul Perhonis, "The
Bix Beiderbecke Story: The Jazz Musician in Legend, Fiction, and Fact," Ph.D.
diss., Univ. of Minnesota, 1978. John T. Schenck, "Biographical Sketch of Bud
Jacobson," Jazz Session (Nov. 1945), 3—8; John Steiner, "Jake's Chicago Trav-
elogue: A Factual History of Bud Jacobson's Activities," Storyville (June 1966),
5-7-
11. Dominic Pacyga and Ellen Skerrett, Chicago: City of Neighborhoods (Chi-
cago: Loyola Univ. Press, 1986), 199. William H. Miller, "Floyd O'Brien," Three
Brass (Melbourne, Australia: W. H. Miller, 1945).
12. Benny Goodman and Irving Kolodin, Kingdom of Swing (New York:
Frederick Ungar, 1961), chap, i; James Lincoln Collier, Benny Goodman and the
Swing Era (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), chap. i.
13. Interview with Art Hodes in Dempsey J. Travis, Autobiography ofBlacI^
Jazz (Chicago: Urban Research Institute, 1983), 381-87; Art Hodes and Chad-
wick Hansen, eds., Selections from the Gutter: Portraits from the "Jazz Record"
(Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1977), 9-11.
14. Amy Lee, "Muggsy Knew He Was Hooked," Down Beat, April 15,
1943; Bill Russell interview with Spanier, ms., April 21, 1957, WRHJA; Alma
Hubner, "Muggsy Spanier," in Hodes and Hansen, eds., Selections from the
Gutter, 178-79.
15. Rudi Blesh, Combo USA: Eight Lives in Jazz (Philadelphia: Chilton,
1971), 134—60; Bruce Crowther, Gene Krupa: His Life & Times (Tunbridge
Wells, Eng.: Spellmount Ltd., 1987), 32; Mezzrow and Wolfe, Really the Blues,
123-24. John T. Schenck, "Life History of Voltaire de Faut," The Jazz Session
July-Aug. 1945, pp. 2-3, 13. Art Hodes, "A Talk with Volly DeFaut," Down
Beat, Dec. i, 1966, pp. 22-23.
16. Ralph Berton to Leonard Feather, Dec. 23, 1954, ts., Vic Berton Vertical
File, IJS; Berton, Remembering Bix.
17. Really the Blues, 88-89.
18. Charles Edward Smith, "The Austin High Gang," in Jazzmen, ed.
Charles Edward Smith and Frederic Ramsey, Jr. (New York: Harvest Books,
1939), 161-69; Hadlock,/azz Masters of the Twenties, 106-13.
19. Pacyga and Skerrett, Chicago, 169-71; Mezzrow and Wolfe, Really the
Blues, 89; Berton W. Peretti, "White Hot Jazz," Chicago History 17 (1988-89),
26-41.
20. Austin High School Maroon and White, 1920-28, SCCPL. Chip Deffaa,
"Jimmy McPartland's Story, Part I," Mississippi Rag 14 (July 1987), i; McPart-
land as quoted in Shapiro and Hen toff, Hear Me Tallin' to Ya, 118. Wayne Jones
and Don DeMichael Interview with Bud Freeman, Nov. 3, 1980, untranscribed
audio tape, CJA. This interview should be carefully compared with Bud Free-
man as told to Robert Wolf, Crazeology: The Autobiography of a Chicago Jazzman
 Notes 207

(Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1989), 2, where Freeman says that he was born
in Austin.
21. Goodman, Kingdom of Swing, 31; Interview with Jimmy McPartland, IJS.
22. "Austin High School Gang," 162; Freeman, Crazeology, 3; Jones &
DeMichael Interview with Freeman. Vladimir Simosko, "Frank Teschemacher:
A Reappraisal," Journal of Jazz Studies 3 (1975), 28-53- Whitney Balliett, "Jazz:
Little Davy Tough," The New Yorker, Nov. 18, 1985, pp. 160-62, 165-66.
Tough's dissatisfaction with the musician's lifestyle is described in George T.
Simon, "the life and death of davey tough," Metronome, Feb. 1949, p. 17. See
also Simon, "Dave Tough," Metronome 6 (June 1937), 21. Leonard Feather,
"The Dave Tough Story," Down Beat, July i, 1953, describes Tough's "periodic
wild masochistic jags," "his personality split between the desires to play and to
write."
23. Kaminsky, My Life, 37—38.
24. Wayne Jones Interview with Wild Bill Davison, Sept. 10, 1981, CJA;
author's Interview with Davison, Washington, D.C., April 14, 1976. Marty
Grosz, "Frank Teschemacher: Biography and Notes on the Music," Giants of
Jazz: Fran\ Teschemacher (Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Records, 1982), 9; Free-
man, Crazeology, 10.
25. Condon, We Called It Music, 102-4; William H. Kenney, III, "Eddie
Condon in Illinois: The Roots of a Jazz Personality," Illinois Historical Journal 77
(1984), 255-68.
26. Hodes Interview in Travis, Autobiography of Jazz, 383; Kaminsky, My
Life, 10-39. Condon, We Called It Music, 49; Jones/DeMichael Interview with
Freeman, CJS.
27. Berton, Remembering Bix, 80, 120-21.
28. As quoted in Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Tallin' to Ya, 120.
29. Elmer Schoebel to Leonard Feather, n.d., Vertical File, IJS; [George
Hoefer] to Elmer Schoebel, June 19, 1942, ts., Vertical File, IJS.
30. Sudhalter and Evans, Bix, 63-68, 70-78; Condon, We Called It Music,
71-72.
31. Sudhalter and Evans, Bix, 135—39. Variety, Nov. 18, 1925, p. 47, describes
George Leiderman and Sam Rothschild's Rendez-Vous cabaret; and Orchestra
World i (June 1925), 12, locates it "in the Gold Coast section."
32. Orchestra World (Summer 1927), 8. Variety, Sept. to, 1924, p. 40, describes
the Wolverines' appearance at New York City's Cinderella Ballroom; the Sept.
24, 1924 issue, p. 26c, reports that they were "a torrid unit" and a "hit."
33. George Wettling, "A Tribute to Baby Dodds from George Wettling,"
Down Beat 29,7 (March 29, 1962), 21; Richard Gehman, "George, the Legendary
Wettling," Jazz 4 (Oct. 1965), 16-19; A. V. Baillie, "Kewpie Doll—A Warm
Drummer," Coda 2 (Feb. 1960), 21-24. Hubner, "Muggsy Spanier," 178; Russell
Interview with Spanier, WRHJA; Amy Lee, "Muggsy Knew."
208 Notes

34. Freeman, Cmzeology, 6, 8, 10; Spencer in "Negro Music and Musicians,"

HCWB. Condon, We Called It Music, 92.
35. Condon, ibid., 94; Spencer, "Negro Music;" Jones/DeMichael Interview
with Freeman, CJA.
36. Travis, Autobiography of Blacl{ Jazz, 66, 69-71; Jones/DeMichael Inter-
view with Freeman, CJA.
37. Souchon, "King Oliver: A Very Personal Memoir," in Jazz Panorama:
From the Pages of the Jazz Review, ed. Martin T. Williams (New York: Crowell-
Collier, 1962), 21-30. Condon, We Called It Music, 94; Travis, Autobiography of
Blac^Jazz, 43, mentions Jim Crow seating patterns in the South Side black-and-
tans. My interpretation of the descriptions later given by white jazzmen of their
experiences in entering the South Side clubs owes much to Neil Leonard, Jazz,
Myth, and Religion, chap. 4, and Victor Turner, "Liminal to Liminoid, in Play,
Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology," From Ritual to Theatre:
The Human Seriousness of Play (New York: PAJ Publications, 1982), 20-60, but
particularly 24-28.
38. Mezzrow, Really the Blues, 23; Condon, We Called It Music, 91.
39. Chubb-Steinberg Orchestra, "Horsey, Keep Your Tail Up," April 10,
1924, OK 40107, should be compared with any of the sides Davison cut later.
40. Kaminsky, My Life, 39-41.
41. Balliett, "Jazz: Little Davy Tough"; Wettling, "A Tribute to Baby
Dodds."
42. Collier, Benny Goodman and the Swing Era, 19, 61-64; Goodman and
Kolodin, Kingdom of Swing, 26; Benny Goodman in Stanley Dance, The World of
Swing (New York: Scribner's, 1974), 262. William Howland Kenney, III, "Jim -
mie Noone: Chicago's Classic Jazz Clarinetist," American Music 4 (1986), 145—58.
Marsala is quoted in Shapiro and Hentoff, Hear Me Tallin' to Ya, 126—27.
43. Kenney, "Jimmie Noone," 154, 156.
44. Onah Spencer, "Negro Music and Musicians," HCWB.
45. Freeman, Crazeology, 7.
46. Travis, Autobiography of Blac/^ Jazz, 57—58; Jones Interview with
Davison, CJA; Jacobson in Banks, First-Person America, ed. Ann Banks (New
York: Knopf, 1980), n.p.
47. Piazza Interview with Hinton, IJS; Jones Interview with Davison, CJA.
48. John Lax Interview with Scoville Brown, Dec. 14, 1971, ts., COHC.
49. Bud Jacobson in First-Person America; Travis, Autobiography of Blac/(
Jazz, 66; Freeman, Crazeology, 6. Kaminsky, My Life, 40. Stanley Dance, World of
EarlHines (New York: Scribner's, 1977), 48. Richard B. Hadlock, "Joe Sullivan:
Biography and Notes on the Music," Giants of Jazz (Alexandria, VA.: Time-Life
Records, 1982).
50. Onah Spencer, "Negro Music and Musicians," HCWB. Peyton, "The
Musical Bunch," Chicago Defender, Sept. 29, 1928, p. 10.
 Notes 209

51. DeMichael Interview with Freeman; Art Hodes, "Liberty Inn Drag," in
Notes from the Gutter, 23; Hoagy Carmichael, Sometimes I Wonder (New York:
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965), 102-3.
52. Variety, March 4, 1925, p. 45; Nov. n, 1925, p. 48; Sept. 8, 1926, p. 46;
Sept. 29, 1926, p. 53; Dec. 29, 1926, p. 37. "Merritt Brunies and His Friars Inn
Orchestra, 1924-1926," Fountain Retrieval Records FJ-26.
53. "Art Hodes," in Travis, Autobiography of Blacl{ Jazz, 383; Art Hodes,
"Everybody's in the Union," Selections from the Gutter, 11—12. Condon, We
Called It Music, 96—100, 107—10. John T. Schenck, "Biographical Sketch of Bud
Jacobson," Jam Session (Nov.—Dec. 1945), 4.
54. Lax Interview with Scoville Brown.
55. Dave Peyton, "The Musical Bunch," Chicago Defender, Dec. 12, 1925,
p. 7.
56. Lil Hardin Armstrong as quoted in Jones/DeMichael Interview with
Freeman, CJA.
57. Alan Lomax, Mr. Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New
Orleans Creole and "Inventor of Jazz" (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1950),
181-82.
58. John Lax Interview with Willie Randall, Dec. 28, 1971, ts., COHC; Lax
Interview with Red Saunders, Dec. 24, 1971, ts., COHC; Lax Interview with
Ralph E. Brown, Dec. 29, 1971, ts., COHC; Lax Interview with Scoville Brown,
COHC.
59. Really the Blues, 138-42. For an insightful discussion of primitivism and
jazz, see: Ted Gioia, "Jazz and the Primitivist Myth," Music Quarterly 73 (1989),
130-43.
60. Norman Mailer, "The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hip-
ster," Dissent (1957), 276—93.
61. Bernard Wolfe, "The Ecstatic in Blackface," appended to Really the
Blues (New York: Anchor Books, 1972), 293-304.
62. DeMichael and Jones Interview with Davison.
63. Really the Blues, 127-33; Condon, We Called It Music, 127-37; Freeman,
Crazeology, 25—27.
64. Mezzrow, Really the Blues, 127-31. Robert S. Gold, A Jazz Lexicon (New
York: Knopf, 1964), 161.
65. Freeman, Crazeology, 34.

Chapter Five

1. Variety, Nov. 5, 1924, 35.

2. Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968); Martin T. Williams, The Jazz Tradition (New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970), chaps. 2—4; Rudi Blesh, Shining Trumpets: A
2IO Notes

History of Jazz, 2nd ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1976), chaps. 10-11; Hugues
Panassie, Hot Jazz (New York: M. Witmark, 1936).
3. Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph: From Tin Foil to High Fidelity
(Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1955), 172, 188-90. The negative attitude of phono-
graph retailers toward phonograph records finds documentation in "Quick
Profits in Sales of Records," Talking Machine World 24 (July 1928), 6.
4. Chicago Defender, Oct. 21, 1916, p. 5, calls for a survey of South Side
phonograph ownership. Ronald Clifford Foreman, "Jazz and Race Records,
1920-32: Their Origins and Their Significance for the Record Industry and
Society," Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Illinois, 1968, pp. 35-36. Stephen Call, "The
Anatomy of a 'Race' Label—Part One," j8 Quarterly i (1988), 19; Calt and Gayle
Dean Wardlow, "The Buying and Selling of Paramounts," 78 Quarterly i (1990),
21, identifies the Artophone machine.
5. New York Clipper, March 22, 1922, p. 28. Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph,
191, 208, 210, 212.
6. Foreman, "Jazz and Race Records," 12-37. All references to specific
contemporary recording sessions and record issues have been drawn from Brian
Rust, comp.,/azz Records, i8gj— 7942, rev. ed., 2 vols. (Chigwell, Eng.: Storyville
Publications, 1975), and Rust, 'The American Dance Band Discography, 79/7-7942,
2 vols. (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1975).
7. On the professional importance of phonograph records to recording ar-
tists, see Variety, Aug. 2, 1923, p. 5; Sept. 3, 1924, p. 37; New York Clipper, Aug.
24, 1923, p. 13; March 6, 1924, p. 13; the pay scale at recording sessions is
specified in, Baby Dodds with Larry Gara, The Baby Dodds Story (Los Angeles:
Contemporary Press, 1959), 72, and in Stephen Calt, "Paramount, Part 2: The
Mayo Williams Era," j8 Quarterly i (1989), 28.
8. See Rust, Jazz Records, I, 132. The elements of chronology in this history
of jazz recording in Chicago are largely based on the ongoing work of Harold H.
Hartel, who has been compiling a chronological listing of all jazz recording
sessions, identifying them by, among other things, location. See: "the H3 chrono-
matrix file," Record Research, nos. 175—226 (1980-86), passim. For the early Ben-
son, Jones, and Westphal jazz records, see Hartel, "chrono-matrix file," no. 175—
76 (Sept. 1980), 10; no. 177-78 (Nov. 1980), 4-5.
9. Variety, July 8, 1925, p. 41.
10. Talking Machine World, May 15, 1923, 150, and July 15, 1923, pp. 102,
137, report on efforts to promote records of black music in black neighborhoods.
Brian Rust, The American Record Isabel Boo/{ (New York: DaCapo Press, 1984),
212-17. Stephen Calt, "Paramount, Part 2," 10-30. On the implications of the
term "race records," see also James Lincoln Collier, Louis Armstrong: An Ameri-
can Genius (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983), 96-97; and Kathy J. Ogren,
The Jazz Revolution: Twenties America and the Meaning of Jazz (New York:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), 91-93.
 Notes 211

11. Rust, American Record Label Book, 212-14; Foreman, "Jazz and Race
Records," 57-58; Robert M. W. Dixon and John Godrich, Recording the Blues
(New York: Stein and Day, 1970), 9. Talking Machine World, May 15, 1923,
p. 150; July 15, 1923, pp. 102, 104; Nov. 15, 1923, pp. no, 112.
12. Paul Oliver, Songsters and Saints: Vocal Traditions on Race Records (Cam-
bridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1—17.
13. Variety, Aug. 2, 1923, p. 5. "Inside on Negro Blues Wave Explained by
Writer," New York Clipper, Sept. 28, 1923, p. 24. Record store sales of blues
records in Chicago receive comment in Oscar Hunter, "Negro Music in Chi-
cago," Aug. 23, 1940, HCWB. Call and Wardlow, "The Buying and Selling of
Paramounts," 7—24, details the sales process for one important company.
14. Hunter "Negro Music"; Variety, June 16, 1922, p. 22; March 18, 1925,
p. 51; New York Clipper, Aug. 24, 1923, p. 13, and Sept. 14, 1923, p. 31.
15. Chicago Defender (1923-24), passim. Hunter, "Negro Music."
16. The reaction to Europe is noted by Foreman, "Jazz and Race Records,"
18, 20 and 61.31; but also see Chicago Defender, May 10, 1919, p. 20.
17. Chicago Defender, July 31, 1920, p. 4.
18. Ibid., May 5, 1923, p. 6. The commercial promise of the Okeh "Colored
Folder" is reported in New York Clipper, March 15, 1922, p. 28.
19. Defender, Nov. 29, 1924, p. 6.
20. Talking Machine World, March 15, 1926, p. 104. Defender Jan. 30, 1926,
p. 7; Feb. 27. 1926, p. 7.
21. Talking Machine World, May 15, 1926, p. 18. Defender, May 8, 1926,
p. 6; May 15, 1926, p. 6; June 5, 1926, p. 7; June 12, 1926, p. 6; June 19, 1926,
p. 6.
22. Variety, June 2, 1923, p. 5, and June 16, 1922, p. 22.
23. New York Clipper, Sept. 14, 1923, p. 31.
24. James Lincoln Collier, The Reception of Jazz in America: A New View
(Brooklyn, N.Y.: Institute for Studies in American Music, 1988), 13, describes
the Kapp store. On Brown's, see Chicago Defender, March 9, 1929, p. 10.
25. Chicago Broad Ax, Feb. 19, 1921, p. i.
26. Call and Wardlow, "Paramount, Part 2."
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Danny Barker, A Life in Jazz, ed. Alyn Shipton (New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1986), 157-58. The New York Clipper, March 13, 1924, p. 16,
comments on Mamie Smith's drop in popularity.
30. The larger South Side theater and dance hall orchestras are discussed by
Thomas Hennessey, "From Jazz Age to Swing: Black Musicians and Their
Music, 1917—1935," Ph.D. diss., Northwestern Univ., 1973; and Thomas J. Hen-
nessey, "The Black Chicago Establishment 1919—1930," Journal of Jazz Studies 2
(Dec. 1974), 15-45.
212 Notes

31. Dave Peyton, "Recording Units," Chicago Defender, March 9, 1929,

p. 10. Peyton makes similar accusations of broader scope in Defender, May 21,
1927, p. 8; May 21, 1927; Oct. 13, 1928, p. 9.
32. Harry Pace describes his determination to preserve "our race music and
.... the wonderful voices and musical talent we have in the race," in Chicago
Broad Ax, Feb. 19, 1921, p. i. The broad range of music Pace recorded is
indicated ibid., May 7, 1921, p. i.
33. Variety, Jan. 5, 1927, p. 51.
34. George W. Kay, "Those Fabulous Gennetts," The Record Changer (June
1953), 4-12; Rust, Record Label Eoo\, 129-32. I am indebted to record collector
and percussionist Joel O'Sickey of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, who provided the
taped copies of hundreds of rare Chicago Jazz records upon which this chapter is
largely based. I alone am responsible, however, for the interpretations given to
these sources.
35. Charles Edward Smith, "White New Orleans," in Jazzmen, ed. Charles
Edward Smith and Frederic Ramsey, Jr. (New York: Harvest Books, 1939), 56-
58; Martin T. Williams, "N.O.R.K.," Jazz Masters of New Orleans (New York:
Da Capo, 1979), 121-35. "New Orleans Rhythm Kings,"/azz Grove, II, 169-71.
36. For a definition of "head arrangement," see Jazz Grove I, 32—33.
37. Although it is possible to hear the influence of "Jazzin' Babies Blues"
(Oliver's Jazz Band, Okeh 4975, June 23, 1923) in "Tin Roof Blues" (NORK
Gennett 5105, July 17, 1923) the latter shows major rhythmic alterations to the
former's shorter, clipped theme. NORK recorded Morton's "Wolverine Blues"
on March 13, 1923 (Gennett 5102) and "Marguerite," "Mr. Jelly Lord," and
"London Blues" on July 17 and 18, 1923. On Richard M. Jones, see George
Hoefer, Jr., "Richard M. Jones," The Jazz Session (Jan. 1946), 2—3, 14.
38. Baby Dodds's comments appear in The Baby Dodds Story, 69. Kay,
"Those Fabulous Gennetts," 4—12.
39. Talking Machine World, May 15, 1923, p. 120; June 15, 1923, p. 124; Aug.
15, 1923, p. 103; "Chicago Becoming a Recording Center," Nov. 15, 1923,
pp. no, 112. Also see Chicago Defender 6-23—23, 7, and Foreman, "Jazz and
Race Records," 152-53. The important Oliver records on Okeh are reissued on
"King Oliver's Jazz Band, 1923," Smithsonian Records Rooi with insightful
notes by Lawrence Gushee.
40. "Gets in Touch with 30,000 Colored Elks," Talking Machine World, Sept.
15, 1923, p. 102. Talking Machine Journal, Nov. 1923, p. 84.
41. Condon and Thomas Sugrue, We Called It Music: A Generation of Jazz
(New York: Holt, 1947), 91. Condon's insight did not carry through to his own
music, which was to remain highly impromptu.
42. In chronological order, the three Oliver recordings of "Dippermouth
Blues" occurred on April 6 and June 23, 1923, and (as "Sugar Foot Stomp") on
May 29, 1926. The Oliver band recorded "Snake Rag" for Gennett on April 6,
 Notes 213

1923, and again for Okeh on June 22, 1923. Rust, Jazz Records, II, 1229, 1231.
43. Strategic departures from Oliver's Jazz Band to his Dixie Syncopators
can be heard on "King Oliver and His Dixie Syncopators 1926," vol. i, Swaggie
Records 821.
44. The Baby Dodds Story, 71, documents discussions between band leaders
and recording executives prior to the recording session itself.
45. Morton's Red Hot Peppers as listed in Rust, Jazz Records, II, 1162—63,
and as reproduced on "Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers (1926—1927),
Volume 3," RCA Victor, French Black and White Series 731 059.
46. The Bucktown Five, Gennett Records, Richmond, Ind., Feb. 25, 1924.
Rust, Jazz Records, 1,214.
47. Mezz Mezzrow discusses the head arrangements on recordings by
McKenzie and Condon's Chicagoans in Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe,
Really the Blues (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1972), appendix one.
48. Giants of Jazz: Franl^ Teschemacher (Alexandria, VA.: Time-Life Re-
cords, 1982) includes the major recordings by the white rebel Chicagoans and the
insightful booklet "Frank Teschemacher: Biography and Notes on the Music"
by Marty Grosz.
49. James Collier writes that Louis Armstrong's Hot Five sessions in Chi-
cago in 1925 "were put together in the most casual fashion ... Lil, or Louis, or
somebody else in the band would scribble out a few tunes ...," Louis Armstrong:
An American Genius (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983), 170. "The Louis
Armstrong Story," vols 1—3, Columbia Records CL851-853.
50. Reuben Reeves and His River Boys recorded fifteen numbers in Chicago
for Vocalion from June 10 to Oct. i, 1929. Rust, Jazz Records, II, 1340-50.
"Reuben 'River' Reeves and His Tributaries/River Boys, 1929," Fountain Re-
trieval Records FJ-I26.
51. Rust, Jazz Records, II, 1542-43; Jabbo Smith's Chicago records are reis-
sued on "The Ace of Rhythm, Jabbo Smith," MCA-I347.
52. A perceptive discussion of Hines's style will be found in Richard Had-
lock, Jazz Masters of the Twenties (New York: Collier Books, 1965), 50-75.
Hines's solo recordings were made for the QRS company in Long Island City,
N.Y., on Dec. 8, 9, 12, 1929. Rust, Jazz Records, I, 797-98.
53. Noone's Apex Club Orchestra reissued on "Jimmie Noone and Earl
Hines at the Apex Club, 1928," vol. i, French MCA 510.039; "Jimmie Noone:
Chicago Rhythm, 1928-1930," vol. 2, MCA 510.110.
54. "Archive of Jazz: Bix Beiderbecke," BGY Records 529.054; Rust, Jazz
Records, II, 1860-61; Schuller, Early/azz, 186-94, attributes Beiderbecke's style to
his personality.
55. Chicago, Okeh Rec., Dec. 5, 12, 1928. Rust, Jazz Records, I, 54-55;
Schuller, Early Jazz, 127—31.
56. As quoted in Calt and Wardlow, "Paramount, Part 2," 16-17.
214 Notes

57. Rust, Jazz Records, II, 1274—76. Parham has recently been brought to the
attention of jazz record collectors through "Tiny Parham and His Musicians,
1926-1930," 3 vols., Swaggie Records 831-833.
58. Erskine Tate's Vendome Orchestra, "Static Strut," Vocalion 1027, reis-
sued in Giants of Jazz: Louis Armstrong (Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Records,
1978).
59. Carroll Dickerson's Savoy Orchestra, Chicago, c. May 25, 1928. Rust,
Jazz Records, I, 436; reissued on "Chicago in the Twenties," Arcadia Records
2011.
60. Cook's Dreamland Orchestra, Chicago, July 10, 1926, Col. 727-0 and
813-0, reissued on "Chicago in the Twenties, 1926-1928," Arcadia 2011.
Cookie's Gingersnaps, Chicago, June 22, 1926, Okeh 8390 and 8369. O'Sickey
Col.
61. Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), 263—75.
62. Earl Hines and His Orchestra, Chicago, Victor Records, Feb. 22, 1929,
O'Sickey Col; Rust, Jazz Records, I, 798.
63. Chicago, Victor Rec., Dec. 17, 1926; Rust, Jazz Records, II, 1298.

Chapter Six

1. Variety, Oct. 30, 1929, p. i; Nov. 6, 1929, p. i.

2. "Chicago," Variety, Oct. 7, 1925, pp. 5, 50; Oct. 14, 1925, p. 48; Oct. 28,
1925, p. 40; Dec. 15, 1926, p. 2.
3. Chicago Defender, Oct. n, 1924, p. 6.
4. Variety, Oct. 7, 1925, p. 50; Dec. 2, 1925, p. 47; April 21, 1926, p. 45.
5. Variety, Jan. 19, 1927, p. 47; March 2, 1927. The trade papers carried no
further articles on the cases, which probably never came to trial.
6. Chicago Defender, April 17, 1926, p. 6; March 12, 1927, p. 10; March 26,
1927, p. 8; April 2, 1927, p. 8; April 16, 1927, p. 8; April 23, 1927, p. 8; May 21,
1927, p. 9; June 4, 1927, p. 10; June 25, 1927, p. 8; July 2, 1927, p. 8.
7. People of the State of Illinois (ex rel. Irving Cohen) v. City of Chicago, Cook
County Superior Court transcript, Dec. 6, 1924, CHS. The Entertainers Cafe,
ordered closed by a Cook County judge, managed to remain open for several
months on a writ ofsufersedeas protecting its liberty to do business until appeals
had been heard in the U.S. Circuit Court. Variety, April 7, 1922, p. 18; May 24,
1923, p. 10; Oct. 29, 1924, p. 35. New York Clipper, Feb. 8, 1924, p. 15.
8. Barney Bigard, With Louis and the Du/(e: The Autobiography of a Jazz
Clarinetist, ed. Barry Martyn (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), 31; Chicago
Defender, July 2, 1927, p. 10; Oct. 8, 1927, p. 8, names Al Capone as co-proprietor
of the Cafe de Paris; April 21, 1928, p. 8. Bottoms' roadhouse is mentioned in
Defender, Sept. 5, 1931, p. 7-
 Notes 215

9. Variety, Sept. 29, 1926, p. 53; Dec. 15, 1926, p. 2; Jan. 19, 1927; May 4, 1927,
p. 52.
10. "U.S. Wars on Chicago Night Life," Chicago Herald and Examiner, Feb.
6, 1928, p. i. Variety, June 22, 1927, p. 58; Oct. 26, 1927, p. 57; Nov. 30, 1927, p.
56; Feb. 8, 1928, p. 55; Feb. 15, 1928, pp. 54, 62. The March 28, 1928, issue, p. 37,
declares Chicago's greatest cabaret era over. Other interpretations of the origins
of the word "hip" refer to sources which appeared after the "hip rulings." Robert
S. Gold, A Jazz Lexicon (New York: Knopf, 1964), 145-46; Robert S. Gold,/azz
Tall{ (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975), 128.
11. Variety, March 21, 1928, p. 72; April 4, 1928, p. 56.
12. Variety, April n, 1928, p. 56; Defender, March 2, 1929, p. 8; Rob Roy,
"Cafes, Like Your Sunday Suit, Abandoned on Weekdays," Variety, June 25,
1932, p. 8. Lewis A. Erenberg, "From New York to Middletown: Repeal and the
Legitimization of Nightlife in the Great Depression," American Quarterly 38
(1986), 761—78, attributes these changes to the repeal of prohibition, but the
serious enforcement of prohibition itself also stimulated larger, dry, ballroom-
like cabarets. The "[racial] restrictions" at Al Quodbach's Granada Cafe are
confirmed in John Lax Interview with Scoville Brown, Dec. 14, 1971, ts., COHC.
13. Variety, Sept. 26, 1928, p. 57; March 28, 1928, pp. i, 37.
14. William Russell, "Boogie Woogie," in Jazzmen, ed. Frederic Ramsey, Jr.,
and Charles Edward Smith (New York: Harvest Books, 1939), chap. 8. Robert
Sylvester, A Left Hand Life God (New York: Da Capo, 1989).
15. Chicago Defender, Dec. 29, 1928, p. to; Feb. 23, 1929, p. 8; Aug. 31, 1929,
p. 9. Stanley Dance, The World of Earl Mines (New York: Scribner's, 1977), 57,
70-72. Chicago Defender, June n, 1932, p. 6, laments the lack of cabarets on the
South Side as does "Cafes, Like Your Sunday Suit," p. 8.
16. Chicago Defender April 19, 1928, p. n; Sept. 29, 1928, p. 10; Nov. 3, 1928,
p. n; Dec. 15, 1928, p. io;Feb. 2, 1929, p. n; March 2, 1929, p. 8; March 23, 1929,
p. 10; June 15, 1929, p. 10; July 13, 1929, p. 9; Aug. 31, 1929, p. 9; April 4, 1931, p.
9; May 9, 1931, p. 8; May 16, 1931, p. 8; July 14, 1934. Orchestra World (April
1932), 9.
17. Baby Dodds, as told to Larry Gara, The Baby Dodds Story (Los Angeles:
Contemporary Press, 1959), 51-68. Stanley Dance Interview with Marge and
Zutty Singleton, Washington, D.C., May 1975, ts, IJS.
18. "Orchestras Beware!" Chicago Defender Dec. 31, 1927, p. 6; Feb. 19,
1927, p. 8; July 14, 1928, p. 8; July 21, 1928, p. 10; July 28, 1928, p. 8; Aug. 18,
1928, p. ii.
19. Variety, Oct. 12, 1927, pp. 54, 58.
20. Information on the battles of the [white] local #10 of A.F.M. with the
vaudeville/movie theaters appears in "Guarantee Trust Company of New Yor/( v.
National Theaters Corporation, in Re: Chicago Federation of Musicians, an Order
of the District Court of the U.S., Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division,
216 Notes

CHS; Intermezzo, Official Journal of the Chicago Federation of Musicians, Local

10 of A.F.M., May ig27-April 1928, CHS; Robert D. Leiter, The Musicians and
Petrillo (New York: Bookman Associates, 1953), 45-46; and Paul Herman Apel,
"A Study of the Chicago Federation of Musicians Local No. 10, A.F. of M.,"
unpub. M.A. thesis, Univ. of Chicago, 1951. The African-American side of the
experience emerges from Chicago Defender, July 14, 1928, p. 9; July 28, 1928, p. 8;
Sept. i, 1928, p. 9; Sept. 8, 1928, p. 8; Jan. 19, 1929, p. 10.
21. Neil Leonard, Jazz and the White Americans: The Acceptance of a New Art
Form (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1962), 102-5. Variety, Feb. n, 1925,
p. 53; May 6, 1925, p. 48.
22. Variety, Aug. 7, 1929, p. 228; Edwin P. Scheuing, "The Made-to-Order
Orchestra," Variety, Sept. 4, 1929, p. 73. Chicago Defender, Oct. 5, 1929, p. 10.
23. Walter Barnes, "Hittin" High Notes," Chicago Defender, Jan. 9, 1932,
p. 7. Bruce A. Linton, "A History of Chicago Radio Programming, 1921-1931
with Emphasis on Stations WMAQ and WGN," unpub. Ph.D. diss., North-
western Univ., 1953.
24. Chicago Defender, Oct. 31, 1925, p. 6; Dec. 12, 1929, p. 8; March 12, 1927,
p. 8; May 21, 1927, p. 8.
25. Ibid., Dec. 8, 1928, p. 10; Feb. 9, 1929, p. 8.
26. Ibid., Aug. 6, 1927, p. 10; fan. 7, 1928, 5; Jan. 21, 1928, p. 8; Jan 28, 1928,
p. 8; Feb. 4, 1928, p. 8; Feb. 18, 1928, p. 8; March 3, 1928, p. 10.
27. "Cheap Road House Parties Ruined Chicago's Night Clubs," Variety,
May n, 1927, p. i; May 16, 1928, p. i; May 22, 1929, p. 65. The composite
portrait appears in Juvenile Protective Association File No. 103 "Public Dance
Halls—Closed, Dec. 1923—Feb. 1929," 2. A general discussion of the phenomena
appears in JPA File No. 105—"Roadhouse Survey of Cook County, Illinois,
July—August 1929, Special Collections, University Library, Univ. of Illinois at
Chicago.
28. Daniel Russell, "The Road House: A Study of Commercialized Amuse-
ments in the Environs of Chicago," M.A. thesis, Univ. of Chicago, 1931, pp. n,
118, 167-68. Jessie Binford, "May We Present the Roadhouse?," Welfare Maga-
zine (July 1927), 5-6.
29. JPA File #105—Roadhouse Survey of Cook Co.
30. Leroy Ostransky,/azz City: The Impact of Our Cities on the Development
of Jazz (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978), chap. 9.
31. fames Lincoln Collier, Benny Goodman and the Swing Era (New York:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), chap. 4.
32. Jimmy McPartland, as quoted in Hear Me Tallin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz
as Told by the Men Who Made It, ed. Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff (New York:
Dover Publications, 1955), 278-79. Bud Freeman as told to Robert Wolf, Crazeol-
ogy: The Autobiography of a Chicago Jazzman (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press,
1989), 31-32.
 Notes 217

33. Eddie Condon with narration by Thomas Sugrue, We Called It Music: A

Generation of Jazz (New York: Holt, 1947). Among the important New York
recording sessions which established the Chicago style were: Eddie Condon
Quartet, July 28, 1928; Eddie Condon and His Footwarmers, Oct. 30, 1928; and
Eddie's Hot Shots, Feb. 8, 1928; and Billy Banks and His Orchestra, April 18,
May 23, July 26, 1932.
34. Variety, May 18, 1927, i, p. 52.
35. Thomas J. Hennessey states that "disaster struck" for black Chicago
bands in the dance halls when Charles Cook severed relations with Harmon's
Dreamland in order to avoid being fired and Charles Elgar lost his long-standing
position at Harmon's Arcadia Ballroom. "From Jazz Age to Swing: Black
Musicians and Their Music, 1917-1935," Ph.D. diss., Northwestern Univ., 1973,
pp. 339-40. Chicago Defender Jan. 19, 1929, p. 10; Jan. 26, 1929, p. 10; March
13, 1929, p. 10; April 9, 1927, p. 9; May 7, 1929, p. 8; May n, 1929, p. 9; July 23,
1927, p. 6; Sept. 3. 1927, p. 8; Sept. 17, 1927, p. 7; Oct. 15,1927, p. 9; Oct. 22,1927,
p. 9.
36. Variety, March 7, 1928, p. 57; Sept. 26, 1928, pp. i, 58.
37. "Savoy Is Ballroom Beautiful," Chicago Herald and Examiner, Feb. 4,
1928, p. 9. Variety, April 5, 1923, p. 47; May 14, 1924, p. 48; July 2, 1924, p. 48;
Oct. i, 1924, p. i; Feb. 4, 1925, p. 37; Feb. n, 1925, p. 35. Chicago Defender, Nov.
12, 1927, p. 2; Jan. 21, 1928, pp. 8-9; Jan. 28, 1928, p. 8; April 28, 1928, p. 8.
38. Chicago Defender, Feb. 4, 1928, p. 9; Feb. n, 1928, p. 9; March 23, 1929,
p. 10; March 30, 1929, p. 9; April 19, 1928, pp. 10-11; May 5, 1928, p. 10.
39. Chicago Defender, April 5, 1928, p. n; April 26, 1928, p. io;Feb. 2, 1929,
p. 10.
40. Chicago Defender, Jan. 28, 1928, p. 9; April 5, 1928, pp. 10— n; April 19,
1928, p. n; May 11, 1929, p. 9.
41. Chicago Defender, June 30, 1928, p. n; July 14, 1928, p. 9; Oct. 13, 1928,
p. 10; Feb. 2, 1929, p. n; March 23, 1929, p. 10; March 30, 1929, p. 9; April 21,
1929, p. 8. James Lincoln Collier, Louis Armstrong: An American Genius (New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983), 165.
42. Hines's activities both at the Grand Terrace and on the road are men-
tioned so often in the Chicago Defender that individual citations are impossible.
See Stanley Dance, The World of Earl Mines (New York: Scribner's, 1977), 2, 48-
63, 74-85.
43. Chicago Defender, Jan. 30, 1932, p. 7; Feb. 13, 1932, p. 6; Feb. 27, 1932,
p. 6; March 5, 1932, p. 8.
44. Art Hodes, "Liberty Inn Drag," in Selections from the Gutter: Portraits
from the "Jazz Record," ed. Hodes and Chadwick Hansen (Berkeley: Univ. of
California Press, 1977), 19-21. Hodes, "Jam Session," ibid., 21-23.
45. Bud Freeman, Crazeology, chap. 4; Max Kaminsky with V. E. Hughes,
My Life in Jazz (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 62-66.
218 Notes

46. As quoted in Samuel B. Charters, Jazz: A History of the New Yor% Scene
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1981), 155-56.
47. Gilbert Millstein, "For Kicks, I" The New Yorker (March 9, 1946), 30-34,
36-37; "For Kicks, II," ibid. (March 16, 1946), 34—38, 41—43.
48. George Frazier, "Someday Nick's Might Be the Hallowed Home of
Jazz," Down Beat 8 (Nov. 15, 1941), 6; Mary Peart, "Home of Dixieland Jazz,"
The Jazz Session 9 (1945), 3—10; "Nick Rongetti Died in New York on July 25,"
Down Beat 13 (Aug. 12, 1946), 2.
49. Author's interview with Milt Gabler, New Rochelle, N.Y., un-
transcribed audio tape, July 28, 1976. "Chicago Jazz Album: Featuring All Star
Personnel," Decca Records DL 8029.
50. Condon, We Called It Music. Eddie Condon and Hank O'Neal, The
Eddie Condon Scrapboot^ of Jazz (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973).
51. Hugues Panassie, Hot Jazz: The Guide to Swing Music, trans. Lyle &
Eleanor Dowling (New York: M. Witmark, 1934), 139-60. Panassie later revised
his high estimate of the white Chicagoans in The Heal Jazz (New York: Smith &
Durrell, 1942), 63. Dave Dexter, Jr., Jazz Cavalcade: The Inside Story of Jazz (New
York: DaCapo, 1977), chap. 4, derides the "Chicago Style" myth and attributes
the idea to Hugues Panassie, Charles Delaunay, and George M. Avakian. Also
see Robert G. White, "Chicago Style?" It's a Phony Myth!," Music and Rhythm
(March 1941); 35—40.
52. American Jazz Music (New York: W. W. Norton, 1939), 125—27.
53. Rudi Blesh, Shining Trumpets: A History of Jazz (New York: Knopf,
1946), 237-38. Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968), ig4n. Martin Williams, The Jazz Tradi-
tion (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970) and Williams, ed. and comp. The
Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz (Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institu-
tion, 1973).
54. Victor Turner, Dramas, fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human
Society (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1974), 29-56, 272-86. Turner coins the term
"liminoid" to describe similar emotional experiences in Western urban indus-
trial societies, in From Ritual to Theater: The Human Seriousness of Play (New
York: PAJ Publications, 1982), 20-60.
 Index

Abbott, Robert S., 15, 28 Apprenticeships, 52, 53-54

Abbott, William S., 27, 52 Arcadia Ballroom, 73—74, 161, 217/235
Adams, William, 7 Armstrong, Lil Hardin see Hardin, Lil
Addams, Jane, 6, 88, 93 Armstrong, Louis: Bix Beiderbecke and,
African-American Improved Benevolent 141; Blackhawk Restaurant and, 34;
Order of Elks, 15, 131 cabaret decline and, 155; James Col-
Alexander, Charlie, 33, 155 lier on, 213^49; costume of, 38; Bill
Altiere, Danny, 75, 77 Davison and, 108, 114, 170; Carroll
Alvis, Hayes, 52, 138, 145 Dickerson and, 149, 163-64; Johnny
Ambassadore Club, 154 Dodds and, 132, 133; Dreamland
American Federation of Musicians: Local Cafe and, 18, 109; Joe Glaser and,
10: 31, 109; Local 208: 124, 161 2.i\ Earl Hines and, 139—40; Mezz
American Giants baseball team, 27 Mezzrow on, 112; music-reading
American Mercury (periodical), 97 ability of, 56; Okeh record promo-
American Social Hygiene Association, 23 tions and, 124; Joe Oliver and, 57,
Amplivox juke box, 159 131; on Oliver-Johnson act, 51;
Anderson, Ernest, 167 Hugues Panassie on, 168; profes-
Anderson, Louis B., 5, 19, 28, 31 sional discipline of, 40; recordings
Anderson, Nels, 23 of, 137-38, 144; on Bessie Smith, 46;
Apex Club, 23, 25; Jimmy Noone and, solos of, 58-60, 86, 141-42; William
40, 140-41, 154; white "Chicagoans" Hale Thompson and, 31; training
and, 112 of, 53; on trumpet playing, 43;
22O Index

Armstrong, Louis (Com.) Bernie, Ben, 83, 85

white "Chicagoans" and, 102, 105, Berton, Ralph, 90, 99
166 Berton, Vic, 90, 91, 94-95, 99
Arsonia Cafe, 31, 68, see also Friars Inn Bertrand, Jimmy, 42, 53-54, 144
Art Institute of Chicago, 97 Bestor, Don, 85
Artiphone record players, 119 Biese, Paul: Edgar Benson and, 83, 85;
Ash, Paul, 158, 163 "nut jazz" and, 67-68, 120; record-
Atkins, Ed, 31 ings of, 120, 121, 129; Terrace Gar-
Austin, Henry, 95 dens and, 81; young "Chicagoans"
Austin, Lovie, 48, 57, 126, 134 and, 99
Austin High School Gang, 91, 92, 107; Big bands, 55, 143-46, 157, 165
Scoville Brown on, 108; careers of, Bigard, Barney, 133, 136
95-97; Friars Inn and, no; South Biggs, Verona, 34, 157
Side and, 102 Binford, Jessie, 23, 31, 64-65, 72
Auto Inn, 22, 30 Binga, Jesse, 7, 73
Avakian, George, 166, 167 Black, Clarence, 162—63
Black, Julian, 23
Bailey, Buster, 52, 53 Black, Lou, 76, 77
Bal Tabarin (club), 34 Black-and-tan clubs, 16-17, 2I ! contribu-
Baquet, George, 37, 39 tions of, 147-48; decline of, 154;
Bargy, Roy, 82, 83, 84, 85, lot politics and, 169; professional de-
Barker, Danny, 36, 127 portment in, 40, 41; prostitution
Barnes, Walter, 156, 157, 161, 165 and, 23-24; racial identity in, 18-19,
Barone Night Club, 154 25; urban reformers and, 149
Beasley, William, 6 Black businessmen, 184/25, see also Enter-
Beat generation, 113 tainment entrepreneurs
Bechet, Sidney, 12, 50, 56, 104, 167 Black community, 5, 107—8, see also Ra-
Beers, Sam, 114, 165 cial discrimination
Beiderbecke, Leon ("Bix"): Louis Arm- Black migration, 11-12
strong and, 58; Roy Bargy and, 84; Black musicians, 4, 5, 110-12, 113, 169,
Ralph Berton and, 90, 99; Vic sec also Interracial performances
Berton and, 95; Chicago and, 92; Black Swan Record Company, 125, 126,
Bill Davison and, 105; Wilder Hob- 127
son on, 168; popularity of, 170; re- Blackhawk Restaurant, 34, 158
cordings of, 137-38, 141; white Blackhawk Tavern, 146
"Chicagoans" and, 100-102, 115; Blesh, Rudi, 168
Paul Whiteman and, 114 Bloom, Ike, 63
Beifield, Herbert A. and Ernest L., 74, Blues, 48, 49, 122, 128
75 Blythe, Jimmie, 135
Bendix, Max, 75 Bodenheim, Max, 97
Benson, Edgar: bookings of, 83, 84—85; Bolden, Buddy, 39
performances of, 71; recordings of, Bombings, 151
120; Terrace Gardens and, 81; Tri- Boogie woogie, 153—54
anon Ballroom and, 79 Book Store (club), 25
Berendt, E., xii Booking agencies, 157
 Index 221

Bottoms, William: Tig Chambers and, Cascades Ballroom, 101

43; Deluxe Cafe and, 10; Dream- Casino Gardens (club), 67
land Cafe and, 17, 18, 19; Farm Catlett, Sidney ("Big Sid"), 54
House Country Club and, 150; Jack CBS (radio network), 156
Johnson and, 27 Cermak, Anton J., 158
Bowen, Louise de Koven, 64, i84«5 Chamales, Thomas, 7
Bradford, Perry, 121, 134 Chambers, Tig, 43
Braud, Wellman, 104 Chaperones, 71
Breakfast dances, 26 Charleston (dance), 69, 70
Breidis, Vic, 110 Charleston Cafe see Royal Gardens
Broad Ax (newspaper), 26 Cafe
Brown, Boyce, 92 Checker Cab Company, 73
Brown, Ralph E., in Chiasmus, musical, 59
Brown, Scoville, 108, in Chicago City Council, 65
Brown, Steve, 76 Chicago Coliseum, 124
Brown, Tom, 66-67, 68, 125 Chicago Law and Order League, 74
Brown Music Corporation, 43 Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 94
Brunies brothers, no Cinderella Ballroom (Chicago), 114
Brunswick Record Company, 145, 161 Cinderella Ballroom (New York), 102,
Buescher Musical Instruments (firm), 110
43 Citizens' Betterment Club, 21
Burton, W. E., 135 Clarinetists, 52, 53, 106
Bushell, Garvin, 56 Clark, Ted, 102
Butterfield, Billy, 155 Classic Blues singers, 37, 122, 128
Cless, Rod, 92, 107
C & S Records (firm), 125 Cliffc, Adam C., 151
Cabarets: black migration and, 17; dance Clothing, 37-39
halls and, 162; decline of, 150, 151, Club Alvadere see Apex Club
152-53, 155; interracial relations Club Congo, 162
and, 23; Joyland Amusement Park Club Dixie, 154
and, 28; lewd dancing in, 63-64, 65; Clubs see Cabarets
municipal closing of, 150; role of, Cobb, J. C., 135
10-11; saloons and, 69 Codozoe, Art, 9
Cady, Palmer, 101 Cohan, George M., 68
Cafarelli, Gene, 101 Cohn, Zinky, 140
Cafe de Champion, 8-9 College Inn, 34, 82, 158
Cafe de la Paix (New York), 84 College musicians, 84
Cafe de 1'Abbee, 32, 67 Collier, James Lincoln, 60, 71, 137,
Cafe de Paris see Royal Gardens Cafe 2i3«49
Caldwell, Albert ("Happy"), 52, 53 Collins, Lee, 12, 42, 56, 58, 138
Camp Grant, 26 Colored Men's Retail Liquor Dealers'
Capitol Dancing School, 165 Protective Association, 10
Capone, Al, 68, 150-51 Columbia Records (firm), 8, 145, 167
Carmichael, Hoagy, 59, 109 Committee of Fifteen, 64
Carter, Benny, 116 Commodore Music Shop, 166
222 Index

Condon, Eddie: on Bix Beiderbecke, 101; ings of, 167; Ernie Young and, 85;
cabaret decline and, 155; on Creole youth of, 98
Jazz Band, 104-5; Bill Davison and, Decca (firm), 166, 167
98; influence of, 167; Lincoln Gar- DeFaut, Voltaire, 91, 93, 94
dens and, 20; Red McKenzie and, Defender (newspaper), 15, 26-27
136-37, 166; in New York, 161; on Defiance Public Library, 98
Oliver Jazz Band, 132; on Murphy Deluxe Cafe, 8, 10, u, 18, 126
Podolsky, 102; on Royal Gardens Dempsey, Hannah, 146
performances, 104; small group im- DePriest, Oscar, 5, 10
provisation and, 116; on Stroll dis- Dever, William: Joyland Amusement
trict, 14; "sweet" bands and, 99; Park and, 28; prohibition and, 22,
Three Deuces sessions and, 115; on 31; vs. William Hale Thompson, 30,
white "Chicagoans," 103; youth of, 149; urban reform and, 148, 150
90-91 Diamonds, 37
Condon's (club), 167 Dickerson, Carroll: Louis Armstrong
Confrey, Zez, 80 and, 164; Buster Bailey and, 53; Joe
Congress Hotel, 8 Glaser and, 21; Darnell Howard
Consolidated Talking Machine Com- and, 54; recordings of, 144—45; ^a-
pany, 124, 131 voy Ballroom and, 105, 163; Sunset
Cook, Charles ("Doc"): Buescher Musical Cafe and, 50, 149
Instruments and, 43; Dreamland Dinty Moore's (club), 101
Ballroom and, 52, 161, 2i7«35; edu- "Dip" (dance step), 65
cation of, 52; recordings of, 145; Dodds, Johnny: Louis Armstrong and,
White City Casino and, 75 132, 133, 137, 142; Rod Cless and,
Cook, W. D., 7 107; employment of, 154—55; Earl
Cook County roadhouses, 158-59 Hines and, 139; Joe Oliver and,
Cosmopolitan Orchestras Booking and 131-32, 133; recordings of, 125, 135;
Promotion Offices, 85, 162 Stables and, 105-6
Cotton Club (Harlem), 17 Dodds, Warren ("Baby"): on Gennett re-
Cottrell, Louis, Sr., 31 cordings, 130; influence of, 155;
Crandall, Elizabeth L., 72-73 music-reading ability of, 56; "primi-
Crawford, Joan, 68-69 tivism" of, 42; on Royal Gardens,
Crosby, Bob, 155 20; vaudeville effects of, 50; George
Cullis, H. J., 7 Wettling and, 102; white "Chi-
cagoans" and, 105—6
Dabney, Ford, 120 Dodds brothers, 33, 40
Dance halls, 16, 61-86, 161-62 Dominique, Natty, 155
Dance instructors, 63 Donizetti, Gaetano, 54
Darrow, Clarence, 10 Dorsey, Thomas A., 48, 126, 133
Davis, Collin, 6 Dorsey, William, 8
Davis, Meyer, 80 Douglass Center, 6
Davison, William Edward ("Wild Bill"): "Dozens" (game), 58
Louis Armstrong and, 105, 108, 114, Dreamland Ballroom: Charles Cook and,
138, 170; Bix Beiderbecke and, 102; 217/235; Charles Elgar and, 54; J.
Benny Meroff and, 109, 141; record- Louis Guyon and, 70; Paddy Har-
 Index 223

mon and, 72-73; Midway Gardens legal appeals of, 214^7; "Plantation
and, 75; performers at, 31-32, 161 Review" and, 45; prostitution and,
Dreamland Cafe: Louis Armstrong and, 24; Volstead Act violations of, 29,
109; Tig Chambers and, 43; closing 149, igo«46
of, 30; Defender on, 19; interracial Entertainment entrepreneurs: musical
dancing in, 24; Joe Oliver and, 41; standardization and, 48; newspapers
opening of, 18; prostitution and, 23; on, 26; nonmusica! enterprises of,
sale of, 150; schedules of, 25—26; 27—28; prohibition and, 30, 152; ra-
Mayo Williams and, 126; Virgil cial identity of, 18; record promo-
Williams and, 149, 150 tion and, 123-24; role of, 4-5;
Drummers, 42 William Hale Thompson and, 29,
Duhe, Lawrence, 102 31
Dunn, Johnny, 50 Europe, James Reese, 42, 120, 123
Durante, Jimmy, 128 European clarinet technique, 106
Dusty Bottom (dance hall), 162 European immigration, 11-12
Dutrey, Honore, 33 European musical instruments, 51
European musical notation, 48
Edelweiss Brewing Company, 75 European musical style, 55, 56
Edelweiss Gardens (beer garden), 75 Evans, David, 48
Edelweiss Gardens (club), 24 Evans, Stump, 144
Education, musical, 52-53 Everleigh Club, 14
Edwards, Eddie, 67 "Explosions," 136
Eighth Illinois Infantry National Guard
Band, 52 Faggen, I. Jay, 85, 162, 163, 164
Eighth Regiment, 26 Farm House Country Club, 150
Eitel brothers, 81 Farrell, James T., 89
El Rado (club), 154 Fearn, E. A., 124
Electraphone sound system, 155 Federal regulation see Prohibition; Vol-
Electric pipe organs, 156 stead Act violations
Elgar, Charles: Arcadia Ballroom and, Female dance instructors, 63
74, 161, 217/135; Dreamland Ball- Female singers, 122, 133-34
room and, 73; Darnell Howard and, Filhe, George, 31
54; "Okeh Cabaret and Style Show" Fisher, Fred, 16
and, 124; performances of, 31; in Fitzgerald, F. Scott, xv
"Plantation Days," 43; Savoy Ball- Fiume Cafe, 17
room and, 162; Joe Shoffner and, "Fixers," 19, 23
133; sophistication of, 113; White "Flares," 136
City Casino and, 75 "Floor men," 79
Elite Cafe No. i: 9, 54 Floorshows, 43-44, 49
Elite Cafe No. 2: 10, u Flynn, Jim, 8
Ellington, Duke, 165 Football games, 27
Ellison, Ralph, 58 Foster, Pops, 40, 56
Elmwood Cafe, 8, g Fountain Inn, 31
Entertainers Cafe: closing of, 149, Fox, Edward, 21, 151, 154, 164, 165
190n 46; William Dever and, 30-31; Fox trot, 68, 70, 73
224 Index

Frank B. Jones Music Company, 48 Gorman, Joe, 149

Frederick Douglass Center, 6 Granada Cafe, 142, 152
Freeman, Bud: Lil Hardin Armstrong Grand Terrace Cafe: Ed Fox and, 151,
and, in; on black oppression, 107; 154, 164; Earl Hines and, 109, 164,
Creole Jazz Band and, 105; Joe 165; Percy Venable and, 43
Frisco and, 68; in interracial perfor- Gray, Gilda, 69
mances, 108; Lincoln Gardens and, Great Migration, 11—12
20, 103; on Local 10: 109; in New Green, Abel, 79, 117-18
York, 160; Ben Pollack and, 115; Green Mask (cabaret), 97
recordings of, 137, 167; on Royal Green Mill Gardens (cabaret), 43
Gardens, 104; South Side and, 102; Greenwald, Morris, 43
on Frank Teschemacher, 97; youth Griffin, James, 20
of, 96; mentioned, 93, 95 Grimm, Bill, 101, 102
Freeman (newspaper), 15 Grossman, James, 13
Freiberg Hall, 63 Grosz, Marty, 137
Friars Inn, 33-34, 110, 128—29, r3°' '5 1 * Gushee, Lawrence, 184729
see also Arsonia Cafe Guyon, J. Louis, 70
Friedman, Elizabeth, 81
Frisco, Joe, 68 Haggart, Bob, 155
Fritzel, Mike, 31, 33, 68, 128, 151 Haight, Frank, 7
Hall, Bertha, 18
Gabler, Milt, 166, 167 Hamm, Fred, 81
Gambling, 152 Hampton, Lionel, 52, 54
Gangsters, 93, 150-51 Hand, Armin, 101
Garber, Jan, 109 Handy, William Christopher, 41—42, 48,
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., 59 120
Geertz, Clifford, xi Hardin, Lil: Louis Armstrong and,
General Phonograph Company, 131 53, 59; on Chicago, 13; Creole
Gennett, Fred, 130 Band and, 46; Dreamland Cafe
Gennett Records (firm), 128, 130, 137 and, 18; on white "Chicagoans,"
Gershwin, George, 43 in
Gillespie, Arthur, 6 Harding, George F., 28, 29
Glaser, Joe, 21, 149, 151, 189/242 Harmon, Patrick T., 31, 54, 72-73,
"Go-betweens," 19, 23 161
Gold Coasters (club), 32 Harris, Estella, 11
Goldkette, Jean, 102 Harrison, Carter, Jr., 14, 64
Goodman, Benny: big bands and, 157; Harrison, Richard Edes, 166
cabaret decline and, 155; Hull Hartel, Harold H., 2io«8
House and, 94; Jimmy McPartland Healy, Stephen K., 10
and, 96; in New York, 160; Jimrhie Hegamin, Lucille, 10
Noone and, 106; Ben Pollack and, Henderson, Fletcher, 128, 165
146; Franz Schoepp and, 52; sophis- Hennessey, Thomas J., 55, 217/735
tication of, 92; White City Casino Herman, U. J. ("Sport"), 156
and, 75; youth of, 93; mentioned, Hickman, Art, 82, 99
86, 91 Hill, Alex, 116, 140, 141
 Index 225

Hines, Earl: Apex Club and, 23, 51; Jackson, Daniel, 7, 31

Louis Armstrong and, 163; on caba- Jackson, Robert R., 5
ret floorshows, 44; career of, 164-65; Jackson, Tony, 8, 53, 18^9
costume of, 38; Carroll Dickerson Jacobson, Bud, 91, 92, 108
and, 144; disciplinary measures of, "Jam sessions" (the phrase), 115
39; Grand 7'errace Cafe and, 154; James, Harry, 67
Jimmie Noone and, 112; on police "Jass" (the word), n, 67
raids, 30; radio broadcasts of, 157; "Jaz" (the word), n
recordings of, 139-40, 145-46; "St. "Jazz" (the word), 80
James infirmary" and, 142; Tut "Jazz Age," xiii-xiv, 147-48
Soper and, 40; Joe Sullivan and, "Jazz endings" ("turnarounds"), 60
108-9; on tempi, 45; Teddy Wilson Jeffries, Jim, 9, 27
and, 106 Johnson, Bill, 12, 50, 51, 53
Hinton, Milt, 50, 52, 53 Johnson, Jack, 8-9, 27
"Hip" (the word), 152 Johnson, James P., 43
"Hip flask" rulings, 151, 155 Johnson, Lonnie, 124
Hobson, Wilder, 118, 166, 168 Jones, Clarence M., 57, 130
Hodes, Art, 93-94, 99, 109, 153, 165 Jones, David, 53
Holt, George, 7 Jones, Henry ("Teenan"), 9-10, n, 18, 27
Hot Jazz (Panassie), 167 Jones, fsham: Edgar Benson and, 84, 85;
Hotel dance orchestras, 81-82, 83, 120-21 College Inn and, 34, 82-83; Charles
Howard, Darnell: Arcadia Ballroom and, Elgar and, 73; on jazz, 61; record-
74, 161; William Bottoms and, 150; ings of, 120, 129; Elmer Schoebel
career of, 54-55; Ginger Orchestra and, 100
and, 11, 87; Jelly Roil Morton and, Jones, Richard Myknee, 53, 124, 130
136; Joe Oliver and, 58 Jones Music Company, 48
Howard Theater (Washington, D.C.), 7 Jordan, Joe, 6, 8, 47-48, 50
Hughes, Langston, 15, 97 Jordan Building, 47-48
Hull House, 93, 94 Joyland Amusement Park, 16, 27-28
Humor see "Nut jazz"; Vaudeville Juke boxes, 159
Hunter, Alberta, 18, 46 Juvenile Court Society, 64
Hyperbole, musical, 59 Juvenile Protective Association: Jessie
Binford and Louise Bowen and, 64;
Immigration, European, 11-12 Midway Gardens and, 75; National
Improvisation, 58-60, 115 Association of Ball Room Propri-
Instrumental music, 50-51, 52, 66, 127 etors and Managers and, 70-71, 72;
Instruments, 42-43 prostitution investigations of, 23;
Insurance companies, 152 roadhouses and, 159; Royal Gardens
Interracial attitudes see Racial attitudes and, 20
Interracial audiences, 16-17, 24-25
Interracial performances, 7, 108-9, ll&> Kaminsky, Max: Louis Armstrong and,
,65 105, 138; Bix Beiderbecke and, 102;
Interracial prostitution, 23—24 black jazz and, 99; Dave Tough
Interracial recording sessions, 116, 130 and, 98; youth of, 90
Irwin, Cecil, 145 Kantor, John M., 32
226 Index

Kapp, Jack, 125 Literacy, musical see Musical literacy

Karzas, Andrew, 77, 78, 79, 156 Little Club (New York), 160
Kassel, Art, 76, 94 Livingston, Fud, 146
Kayser, Joe, 94 Lomax, Alan, in
Kelleher, Steve, 22 Lombardo, Guy, 80, 142
Kelly, Bert, 33, 68, 78 Lopez, Vincent, 83, 85
Keppard, Freddie: Dreamland Ballroom Loyocano, Arnold, 75
and, 73; Original New Orleans Cre- Lyman, Abe, 85
ole Band and, 12, 104; recordings Lyon and Heaiey Music Company, 52
of, 125, 134; solos of, 86; Stables
and, 33 McCain, Thomas, 9
King, Billy, 30 McCarthy, "Dapper Dan," 22
King, Clifford ("Klarinet"), 161 McDermott, Loretta, 68
Kinzie, Paul M., 23, 24 McGovern, Johnny, 165
Kirby, John, 116 McGraw, John J. ("Muggsy"), 94
Kirk, Jack, 102 McKenzie, William Red: Eddie Condon
Knapp, Roy, 54, 90 and, 91, 115, 136, 166, 167; Cosmo-
Krupa, Gene, 90, 93, 94, 161 politan Orchestras Booking and
Promotion Offices and, 85; in New
Lait, Jack, 148, 149 York, 161; white "Chicagoans" and,
Lakeside Club, 9 114
Lamb's Cafe, 54, 66-67 McPartland, Jimmy: Bix Beiderbecke
Lampe, Dell, 79-80 and, 102; "Chicago Jazz" and, 167;
Lanin, Sam, 119 Creole Jazz Band and, 105; New
Lannigan, Jimmy, 95, no Orleans Rhythm Kings and, too; in
LaRocca, Nick, 67 New York, 160; Bill Paley and, no;
Lawson, Yank, 155 White City Casino and, 75; youth
Lax, John, in of, 96, 98; mentioned, 93, 95
Leiderman, George, 101 McPartland, Richard, 95
LeLuxe see Deluxe Cafe Mail-order records, 123
Leonard, Neil, 67, 91 Mailer, Norman, 113
Levee district, 3, 14, 23, 64 Majors, Casey, 108
Levine, Lawrence W., 36 Majors, Florence, 19
Levy, Robert, 44 Majors, M. A., 26
Lewis, C. S., 96 Mann, Fred and Al, 80
Lewis, Ted: Benny Goodman and, 93, Manone, Wingy, 105, 134, 137, 138, 165
106; recordings of, 119; "Muggsy" Mares, Paul, 129
Spanier and, 94, 109; young "Chi- Marigold Gardens (dance hall), 81
cagoans" and, 99 Marsala, Joe, 106
Liberty Inn, 165 Marsala, Marty, 165
Lido (club), 154 Martin, Sara, 124
Light House (roadhouse), 159 Mehle, 73
Liminoid rituals, 169—70 Melrose, Frank, 134
Lincoln Gardens see Royal Gardens Melrose Brothers (firm), 49
Cafe Mencken, H. L., 97
 Index 227

Meroff, Benny, 109, 114, 141, 163 Movie theater pit orchestras, 155—56,
Merry Gardens (club), 95 ,57-58
Metaphors, musical, 59 Movietone sound system, 155
• Meyers, Sig, 75, 77, 94 Municipal Pier (dance hall), 161
Mezzrow, Milton ("Mezz"): on Austin, Municipal regulation, 65-66, 150, see also
95-96; black music and, 107, 112- Police raids; Urban reformers
13; liminoid rituals and, 170; on My Murray, Don, 93
Cellar, 114; Original New Orleans Muse, Clarence E., 20, 50
Creole Band and, 104; racial atti- Music Corporation of America, 85—86,
tudes of, 113-14, 115-16; Really the 157, 160, 165
Blues, 95, 114; recordings of, 137; Music publishers, 84-85
youth of, 89-90; mentioned, 88, 92, Music Trades Convention (1923), 131
93 Musical education, 52-53
Midnight Club, 154 Musical instruments, 42-43, see also In-
Midnight Frolic (club), 63 strumental music
Midway Dancing Gardens, 38, 75-77, 82, Musical literacy, 45, 46, 56, 198*253
100 Musical metaphors, 59
Migration, black, 11-12 Musical notation, 48
Miller, Glenn, 146 Musical primitivism, 41-42, 91, 92, 113,
Miller, Paul Eduard, 88 •35
Miller, Punch, 143 Musical synthesis, xiv-xv
Miller, Ray, 85, 94, 158, 162 My Cellar (club), 114-15, 165
Million Dollar Pier (Atlantic City),
160 Nathan, George Jean, 97
Mills, Tom, 18 National Association for the Advance-
Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, 94 ment of Colored People, 26
Minstrel music, 4, 135 National Association of Ball Room
Mole, Miff, 168 Proprietors and Managers, 71, 72,
Monogram Theater, 9, 10, 126 77
Morton, Fred ("Jelly Roll"): Hayes Alvis National Symphony Orchestra, 75-76
and, 52; Benson Orchestra and, 71; NBC (radio network), 156
dental diamond of, 37; early career Neilson, Fritz, 102
of, n; Mezz Mezzrow and, 116; Nest (Chicago) see Apex Club
musical standardization and, 48; Nest Club (New York), 154
New Orleans origins of, 53; Joe Ol- New Dells (roadhouse), 159
iver and, 46, 131; published songs New Grand Terrace see Sunset Cafe
of, 49; recordings of, 130, 134, 135- New Orleans musicians, 3, 12-13, 35"3^>
36; Richelieu club and, 9; stylistic 36-37
changes of, 36; on white "Chi- New Orleans repertoire, 47
cagoans," 111 New Orleans style, 129, 139, 140, 155
Moten, Bennie, 124, 165 New York Bar, 165
Motts, Lucy, 7 New York jazz, 160-61
Motts, Robert T., 5-7, 9, 18, 27 Newspaper boys, 89
Motts Memorial Association, 9-10 Nicholas, Albert, 133
Moulin Rouge Cafe, 32—33, 151 Nichols, Red, 168
228 Index

Noone, Jimmie, 52; Apex Club and, 23; and, 56-58, in, 149-50; Plantation
Rod Cless and, 107; Dreamland Or- Cafe and, 21-22; recordings of, 125,
chestra and, 73; employment of, 130, 131—34; Royal Gardens and, 40,
109, 154; Earl Hines and, 145; Nest 51; Stables and, 33; stylistic changes
and, 112; Joe Oliver and, 131; popu- of, 36; vaudeville effects of, 50;
larity of, 170; professionalism of, 40; white "Chicagoans" and, 102, 103,
promotion of, 165; recordings of, in
140-41; solos of, 86; on Joe Sullivan, One-step dance, 70, 73
108; white "Chicagoans" and, 106 O'Neill, Jimmy, 43
North, Dave, 95 Orchestraphone sound system, 155
Notation, musical, 48 Organs, electric, 156
Novelty bands, 66 Ory, Edward ("Kid"), 137, 142
Novelty records, 135, 136 Ostransky, Leroy, xi-xii
Nunez, Alcide ("Yellow"), 33, 67 Overstreet, W. Benton, 11
"Nut jazz," 67-68, 82, 120, 129
Pace, Harry H., 125, 127, 212032
O'Brien, Floyd, 93 Paige, Billy, 133
O'Bryant, Jimmy, 50-51 Paley, Bill, no
Odeon recordings, 124 Paley, John, 22
Ogren, Kathy, 36 Palmer, Bee, 34, 69, 161
Oh Henry Park Dance Hall, 159 Palmer, Roy, 39
O'Hare, Husk, 75, 128, 129 Panassie, Hugues, 118, 167-68
Okeh Record Corporation: Harlem Sa- Panico, Louis, 82, 84, 100
voy Ballroom and, 164; Earl Hines Paradise Club, 42
and, 139; market of, 121—22; Joe Ol- Paradise dance hall, 70, 84
iver and, 131; promotions of, 123- Paramount Record Company, 122, 123,
24; Three Deuces sessions and, 115; 125, 126, 142
Variety on, 125 Paramount Theater, 160
Oliver, Joseph ("King"): advertisements Parham, Hartzell Strathdene ("Tiny"),
of, 42; Louis Armstrong and, 53; on 48, 125, 126, 142-43, 165
blues sales, 49; William Bottoms Park Central Hotel (New York), 160
and, 18; Eddie Condon on, 104-5; Pasquall, Jerome, 161
Cosmopolitan Orchestras Booking Pegler, Westbrook, 63
and Promotion Offices and, 85; cos- Pekin Inn, 5-8, 17, 24, 41
tume of, 38; "doubling" of, 41; Pekin Publishing Company, 47
Dreamland Ballroom and, 32, 73; Perez, Manuel, 31, 40
employment of, 109; Bud Freeman Performance specialties, 50-51
and, 108; Darnell Howard and, 55; Pershing Palace (club), 22
Lincoln Gardens and, 20, 21; mem- Personal appearance, 37-39, 81
ory of, 46; Mezz Mezzrow on, 112; Peters, Teddy, 134
Jelly Roll Morton and, 136; Music Petit, Buddy, 49
Corporation of America and, 157; Petrillo, James, 33
"Okeh Race Record Artists' Night" Pettis, Jack, 76
and, 124; Roy Palmer and, 39; Peyton, Dave: on Louis Armstrong, 109,
Louis Panico and, 82; Dave Peyton 164; Walter Barnes and, 156; book-
 Index 229

ing agencies and, 157; on Chicago Publishers, music, 84-85

musicians, 27, 149-50; Club Congo Pullman porters, 123
and, 162; on discipline, 39; on em-
ployment, xii, 153; Darnell Howard QRS Company, 139
and, 54-55; on musical instruction, Quartell, Frankie, 76, 84
53; on Jimmie Noone, 112; Joe Ol- Quodbach, Al, 142, 152
iver and, 56-58, m; professionalism
of, 47; on record companies, 127; Race records, 121, 125, 126, 130
Reuben Reeves and, 138; joe Shoff- Racial attitudes, 15-16, 103, 111-12, 113-
ner and, 133; sophistication of, 113; M
stage band idea and, 157-58 Racial discrimination in: bookings, 157;
Phonograph recordings see Recordings cabarets, 33-34; radio broadcasting,
Photophone sound system, 155 156-57; record business, 122, 127,
Pianists, 48, 53, 153-54 135; roadhouses, 159; Swing Era,
Pickett, Leroy, 142 148
Pierce, Charles, 137 Racial mixing see Interracial audiences;
Pioneer Cabaret, 24 Interracial performances
Pipe organs, 156 Racial violence, 25, 39
Piron, Armand J., 48 Radio broadcasting, 156-57
Plantation Cafe, 21—23; benefit perfor- Ragtime, 62, 63-64, 66
mances in, 26; Capone syndicate Rainbo Gardens (dance hall), 80-81
and, 151; floorshows in, 44; Joe Ol- Rainbow Cafe, 94, 153
iver and, 58, 133, 149-50, 157; Dave Randall, Willie, 73
Peyton and, 57; Variety on, 149 Reading ability, musical see Musical
Podolsky, Murphy, 102 literacy
Police raids, 30, 149, 150, 151-52 Really the Blues (Mezzrow), 95, 114
Politics, 5, 6, 28-29 Record companies, 85
Pollack, Ben, 106, 115, 146, 160 Record players, 119
Polyphony, 131-32 Recordings, 4, 116, 117-46, 155
Pompeii Buffet and Cafe, 8, 9, 11 Rector, Julie, v^antfi
Popular songs, 46, 47, 48, 72 Redman, Don, 142
Poston, Joe, 112, 140 Reeves, George, 8
Powers, Ollie, 9, 10, 38 Reeves, Reuben ("River"), 138, 158,
Preer, Frank, 10 165
Prima, Louis, 165 Reformers see Urban reformers
Pnmitivism, musical see Musical primi- Regal Theater, 158, 162, 163, 164
tivism Reisenweber Cafe (New York), 67
Prohibition: in Austin, 95; cabaret de- Rendez-Vous Cafe, 101
cline and, 150, 151, 153, 155; cabaret "Rent parties," 13-14
experience and, 22, 170; in Cook Republican National Convention (1919),
County, 158; enforcement of, 29-30; 2
9
saloon transformation and, 69, see Republican party, 5, 15, 16, 30, 169
also Volstead Act violations Revues, 43—44, 49
Prostitution, 23-24, 63 Rexroth, Kenneth, 97
Proust, Marcel, 98 Rhythm, 77, 136-37
230 Index

Richelieu (club) see Pompeii Buffet and Schiller's Cafe, 24, 67

Cafe Schoebel, Elmer: Friars Society Orches-
Rife, Harry, 122 tra and, 129; influence of, 87, 100;
Roadhouses, 158-59 Midway Gardens Orchestra and,
"Roaring Twenties," xiii-xiv, 147-48 76-77; Rainbo Gardens Orchestra
Robert T. Motts Memorial Association, and, 81; sophistication of, 91, 92
9-10 Schoepp, Franz, 52, 106
Robinson, Bill ("Bojangles"), 164 School of Dramatic Art, 6
Robinson, Fred, 142 Schuller, Gunther, 36, 118, 145, 168
Robinson, Ikey, 138 Scruggs, Irene, 134
Rockwell, Tommy, 164 Second Ward politics, 5
Rodin, Gil, 146 Segregation see Racial discrimination
Rogers, Ginger, 69 Senate Buffet (club), 9
Rosebud Cafe, 47 Sentimentality, 72, 99
Rothschild, Sam, 101 Sexual license, 63-64, 65, see also Pros-
Royal Gardens Cafe, 19-21; bombing of, titution
151; fire in, 57; interracial dancing Shapiro-Bernstein Music Company, 49
in, 24; market of, 162; Joe Oliver Sherman Hotel see College Inn
and, 40, 51, 130, 133; promotions of, Shields, Larry, 67
50; prostitution and, 23; Republican Shih, Hsio Wen, 55
National Convention and, 29; Shimmie (dance), 69
schedules of, 25-26; Edmond Shoffner, Bob, 58, 133
Souchon and, 104; William Hale Shorr, Isadore, 29—30, 149
Thompson and, 31; Percy Venable "Shuffle rhythm," 136-37
and, 43-44; George Wettling and, Shukin, Leo, 94
102; white "Chicagoans" and, 102, Simeon, Omer, 136, 138
103; Virgil Williams and, 150 Simpson, Cassino, 138
Royal Gardens Motion Picture Company, Sims, Adolph, 38
2
7 Sims, Art, 21, 38
Russell, Luis, 58, 164 Singers see Vocalists
Russell, Maude, 164 Singleton, Zutty, 149, 163
Russell, Sylvester, 190^47 Smith, Bessie, 46
Rust, Brian, 80 Smith, Jabbo, 138
Smith, Mamie, 121, 122, 123, 127
St. Cyr, Johnny, 40, 45 Smith, N. Clark, 52
Samuels, William Everett, 15, 32 Smith, Paul, 166
Saunders, Red, in Smith, Phyllis, 167
Savoy Ballroom (Chicago): Carroll Dick- Smith, "Willie the Lion," 17, 167
erson and, 144, 163-64; Max Ka- Snowden, Samuel R., 5-6
minsky and, 105; location of, 16, 61; Snyder, Frank, 76, 165
opening of, 162-63; Royal Gardens Social classes, 170-71
and, 20 Songs see Blues; Popular songs
Savoy Ballroom (New York), 150, 163, Soper, Tut, 6, 40
164 Souchon, Edmond, 37, 40, 104
Sbarbaro, Tony, 67 South, Eddie, 32-33, 34, 38, 165
 Index 2 r
3

South Side Elks Lodge, 124 "Sweet" dance bands, 86, 92, 94, 99
Southmoor Hotel, 146, 160 Swing Era, 147-48, 157, 166, 168
Spanier, Francis ("Kid Muggsy"): Ted Synecdoche, musical, 59
Lewis and, 109; Midway Gardens Synthesis, musical, xiv-xv
Orchestra and, 77; Joe Oliver and, Szwed, John, 25
102; on racial integration, 33; re-
cordings of, 136; youth of, 93, 94 Tanguay, Eva, 68
Spear, Allan H., 16 Tate, Erskine: African-American Elks
Spencer, Onah, 102 and, 131; father of, 54; Milt Hinton
Spoon and Straw (firm), 96 and, 50; music store of, 122; "Okeh
Sporting set, 6, 25, 63 Cabaret and Style Show" and, 124;
Stables (club), 33, 105-6 Dave Peyton and, 57; recordings of,
Stacks, Joe, 42 143-44; "Royal Garden Blues" and,
Stacy, Jess, 77 49—50; Savoy Ballroom and, 163;
Stage band concept, 157-58 Bob Shoffner and, 133; sophistica-
Star system, 40 tion of, 113
Starr Music Company, 128 Taylor, Georgia, 134
Starr Piano Company, 128 Taylor, Jasper, 42, 135
Stearns, Marshall, 166 Taylor, Julius F., 28
Stein, Jule C., 85, 86 Taylor, W. H., 9
Steinberg, Arthur ("Murphy"), 76, 77 Teenan Jones' Place, 10, n
Steiner, John, 59 Tempi, 45, 71
Stewart, Sammy, 21, 113, 124 Terrace Gardens (dance hall), 81
Stitzel, Mel, 136 Terry, Thelma, 94
Stock, Frederick, 94 Teschemacher, Frank: Jan Garber and,
Storyville district (New Orleans), 3 109; Benny Goodman and, 146;
Straight, Charlie, 101, no, 121 Midway Gardens Orchestra and, 77;
Streckfus brothers, 53 recordings of, 137, 160; style of,
Stroll district, 14, 23, 150-51, 162 106-7; youth °f> 97! mentioned, 86,
Strong, Jimmy, 142 95
Sugar Johnny [surname?], 104 Thompson, William Hale: vs. William
Sullivan, Joe, 108-9, *6i Dever, 30, 149; musical enterprise
Summers, Bill, 103 and, 28-29, 169; "Okeh Race Re-
Sunset Cafe, 21; Bill Davison and, 114; cord Artists' Night" and, 124; radio
Carroll Dickerson and, 144, 149; Ed station WHT and, 156; reelection
Fox and, 154; interracial dancing in, of, 31, 151, 160
24; prices of, 17; promotions of, 50; Tierney, Al, 22, 151
raid of, 149; "Rhapsody in Black" Tio, Lorenzo, Jr., 31
and, 43; Arthur Sims and, 38; state Tom Brown Music Corporation, 43
attorney general on, 1897242; Tough, Dave, 97, 98, 105, 107-8
William Hale Thompson and, 31; Tourists, 15-16
white "Chicagoans" and, 103 Town Club, 151
Sunshine Records (firm), 125 Towne, Floyd, 77, 165
Supper, M. A., 126 Travers, Jimmy, 81
Sweatman, Wilbur, 8, 120 Travis, Dempsey, 103
232 Index

Trianon Ballroom, 16, 75, 77-80 Wade, Jimmy, 32, 38

Trumbauer, Frank, 71 Walker, Jimmy ("Beau James"), 160
Tucker, Mark, 56 Wallace, Sippie, 124
Tucker, Sophie, 29, 69, 80 Waller, Wop, 75
"Turnarounds" ("jazz endings"), 60 Waltzes, 70, 71, 79, 80
Turner, Al, 21 Wang, Richard, 3
Turner, Victor, 103, 169 Waters, Ethel, 46
"Turns" ("ups"), 50 We Catted It Music (Condon), 167
Turpin, Tom, 47 Weatherford, Teddy, 144
Two-step dance, 70 Webb, Chick, 116
Tyler, Walter K, 7 Weems, Ted, 142
Wells, Johnny, 140
Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 6
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, 149.
Westphal, Frank, 80, 120, 129
2i4«7
Wettling, George, 20, 93, 102, 105, 167
U.S. Navy Department, 4
White City Ballroom, 16, 32, 161
U.S. Supreme Court, 151
White City Casino, 74-75
"Ups" ("turns"), 50
White jazz: cultural context of, 87-116;
Urban reformers: black-and-tan cafes
dance halls and, 61-86; Johnny
and, 148, 149; dance halls and, 62-
Dodds and, 155; Lincoln Gardens
63, 64—65; on roadhouses, 158;
and, 20; in New York, 160-61,
youth culture and, 89
165-67; recordings of, 128, 130, 136-
37
Valentino, Rudolph, 79 Whiteman, Paul, 78—79, 114, 142
Valentino Inn, 34 Whitson, J. H. ("Lovie Joe"), 9
Vaudeville: in jazz development, 4; jazz Wickliffe, John W., n, 87
recordings and, 135, 136; jazz spe- Wiggens, Fred, 128, 130
cialties and, 50-51; music publishers Wiley, Earl, 165
and, 85; novelty bands and, 66; in Williams, Augustus L., 28
song promotion, 49 Williams, Clarence, 12, 48—49, 49—50,
Venable, Percy, 21, 43, 154 122, 124
Vendome Theater, 49—50 Williams, Dorothy, 146
Victor Talking Machine Company, 80— Williams, Fess, 38, 158, 163
81, 135-36, 142, 146 Williams, Martin, 118, 168
Victoria Dance Hall, 70 Williams, Mary Lou, 1987*53
Viennese violin ensembles, 82 Williams, Mayo, 125-27, 142
Vitaphone sound system, 155 Williams, Ralph, 80
Vocalion Record Company, 122, 123, 133, Williams, Spencer, 48, 49-50
140-41 Williams, Virgil: Deluxe Cafe and, 10;
Vocalists, 37, 46, 47, 122, 133-34 Joe Glaser and, 149; Joyland
Volstead Act violations: Adam C. Cliffe Amusement Park and, 28; retire-
on, 151; of Entertainers Cafe, 29, ment of, 150; Royal Gardens Cafe
149, 1907246; of Friars Inn, no; and, 19, 20; Royal Gardens Motion
Granada Cafe and, 152; legal am- Picture Company and, 27; William
biguities and, 31 Hale Thompson and, 29
 Index 233

Williams and Piron Music Company, 48, Wright, Frank Lloyd, 75

5° Wrigley, William, 156
Wilson, Edith, 125 Wynn, Albert, 32, 38
Wilson, Quinn, 143
Wilson, Teddy, 106, 116 Yerkes, Harry A., 119
Winter Garden (concert hall), 75 Young, Ernie, 85, 160
Wolfe, Bernard, 114 Youth culture, 88-89
Women's Christian Temperance Union,
98 Zettelmann, Joseph, 94
Wright, Edward H., 8, 28 Zurke, Bob, 165