New York Turns On the Heat

by Wilder Hobson

THERE WAS probably as much fine jazz
playing in New York during the Twenties
as in Chicago. Matching the names already
identifed with the Windy City, the musicians
more frequently in New York included Joe
Smith, Tommy Ladnier, Albert "Cootie"
Williams, Charlie "Big" Green, Jimmy Har
rison, Milfred "Mif" Mole, Jay C. Higgin
botham, Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton, Coleman
Hawkins, Benny Carter, Buster Bailey,
Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Barney Big
ard and Thomas "Fats" Waller-and it was
in New York that Fletcher Henderson, Duke
Ellington and Luis Russell developed their
excellent big bands, including most of the
players mentioned above.
New York's genuine jazz was, of course,
like that of Chicago, very obscure as com
pared with the popular commercial dance
music. When the Original Dixieland Jazz
Band quit the city in 1919, it left very few
musical imitators. Most of the "jazz" bands
which sought a popularity like that of the
Dixieland copied merely the latter's gags and
novelty efects, made a syncopated din which
had little or nothing to do with the jazz lan
guage as the Dixieland had learned it in New
Orleans; these Northern combinations were
for the most part old-style ragtime "nut"
bands with added comedy features, an extra
set of pots and pans for the drummer, and
the habit of playing their instruments on one
knee or in other acrobatic positions. They

were exactly as raucous as a good many min
isters of the Gospel insisted they were.
The jazz center of Gotham through the
Twenties was, naturally enough, the Negro
section-Harlem-which was to New York
what the South Side was to Chicago. To this
vast, drably architectured district the Cool
idge-Hoover boom brought more money than
it had ever seen before or has ever seen since,
although, by downtown standards, it would
have been necessary to call it very small mon
ey. A good fraction of it was paid out by
sightseers, led off by the downtown esthetes
who "discovered" Negro art, music, dancing
and vice in the early Twenties. And of that
fraction a sizable sub-fraction was siphoned
of by entertainment bosses who were not
Negroes. Colored Harlem has long been ex
ploited in its own precinct by opportunists not
of the race. The well-known Savoy Ballroom,
where practically every fne Negro band has
played in its time, was not and is not owned
by Negroes, and the old uptown Cotton Club
of Prohibition days, where Duke Ellington
made his name, was operated by a white
beer-running syndicate. During the boom,
however, enough steady money seeped into
Harlem's musical circles to encourage the
organization of some of the best bands in
the jazz annals. And Harlem gave them the
kind of attention which stimulates good play
ing-from visitors who expected genuine jazz
and, more especially, from strenuous, inven

tive Negro dancers who, as Andre Gide says
of the African natives, were "learned" rhyth
mically.
The frst fne Negro band in New York,
however, spent a good part of its time down
town. While Paul Whiteman was flling the
expensive Palais Royal, Fletcher Henderson
was leading his colored combination at the
public dance hall, Roseland, a few blocks up
Broadway. Henderson has always had various
distractions from his music and has never
been much of a self-promoter. He has perhaps
joined in more fne jazz performances than
any man alive, both with his bands and as
accompanist to Bessie Smith and other blues
singers, but he has never sustained the disci
pline and routine, either personal or orches
tral, which seem necessary for the really big
money and which are apt, at the same time,
to cut the spirit of the music. He is recognized
today chiefy as the writer of some of Benny
Goodman's most efective orchestrations.
Fletcher and his younger brother Horace have
turned out many fne, unpretentious scores,
thoroughly in the spirit of good improvised
jazz. Among them are "King Porter Stomp,"
"Sugar Foot Stomp," "Wrappin' It Up,"
"Down South Camp Meetin'," "Big John Spe
cial," "Hot and Anxious" and "When Bud
dha Smiles."
But there is a good deal more to be said
about Fletcher. His father was a school
teacher in Cuthbert, Georgia. Fletcher stud
ied chemistry for a while and then played the
piano in a road show. Around 1919, he
formed his frst band for Roseland, where he
appeared of and on for the next 15 years.
He was the frst hot musician to build a big
hot band with full brass, reed and rhythm
sections and to orchestrate for sections in the
manner now familiar, as may be gathered
from his record of "What-Cha-Call-'Em
Blues" and "Sugar Foot Stomp," which was
made in 1924. The personnel of his band
changed frequently, but the ensembles were

usually excellent, with several top-rank
soloists. First and last, he has had certainly
a good 50 per cent of the finest Negro talent
in the country. Back in 1924-25, the band in
cluded Louis Armstrong, on from Chicago,
Coleman Hawkins, who has been to the
tenor saxophone what Armstrong has to the
jazz trumpet, and Charlie "Big" Green, whose
comic trombone "comment" is familiar be
hind the recorded voice of Bessie Smith and
who, with Miff Mole, was one of the earliest
expressive trombone soloists. In 1927-28,
Henderson still had Hawkins, Buster Bailey
on the clarinet, Benny Carter and Don Red
man on the alto saxophone, Jimmy Harrison
on the trombone and the superb trumpet team
of Joe Smith and Tommy Ladnier.
I frst heard the band at this period, at a
college party. The dozen pieces were spread
in front of a set of Gothic windows and
fanked, for a while, by three large, well
corseted hostesses sitting on a divan and de
terminedly giving the impression that they
felt quite at home with "Clarinet Marmalade"
being delivered ten feet away with fve parts
brass. Hawkins sweated out chorus after cho
rus in his more agitated manner, and Kaiser
Marshall sometimes exuberantly threw away
the drumsticks, not catching them again, like
the trick drummers, but lobbing them out over
the heads of the crowd. I think this was the
evening when the tuba player was high and
kept injecting great haarrrumphing notes
where they weren't wanted. When this fnally
annoyed Fletcher, the tuba player said: "Ali
usually only play two-three notes; ah'm goin'
have some fun this evenin'."
There were alternate trumpet choruses
from Smith and Ladnier, Smith's jetting out
of the middle range of his horn, with those
light, slippery rhythms across the pulse of
the band which may be heard in the records
of "Stockholm Stomp" and "Rocky Mountain Blues."

There were no screams or blasts, and no ornate

scrambling, however expert, but the
most jubilant, singing trumpet passages imag
inable, with lovely infections in the slow num
bers (the closest suggestion of Smith I've
heard in recent months was from Muggsy
Spanier with his small Ragtime Band). And
Henderson usually worked up to seething last
choruses of full hand faking, like the end of
the "Fidgety Feet" record.
It is hard work to develop large, 1
to 16-piece, jazz combinations, to get en
semble finish, precise intonation, unifed at
tack, the sections phrasing and blending well
among themselves and with each other. Many
currently popular bands are very musicianly
in this sense. They have a polish which Hen
derson seldom, if ever, had, and for which I
imagine he never tried. But his best combi
nations had a quality beside which a high pol
ish seems a rather routine, if difcult, achieve
ment. It might he called ensemble ease and
spontaneity-listen to the records of "Fidgety
Feet" or "New King Porter Stomp." There
was a sense of relaxation, lack of strain, re
serve strength. This was perhaps largely a
matter of individual talent. With a brass team
such as Russell and Joe Smith, Ladnier, Green
and Harrison, it would have been too bad
to insist on precision. They might have de
livered it, but the music would have lost the
spirit of these men attacking with their nat
ural enthusiasm. Henderson's best large bands
played with the buoyancy of a fine, small, im
provising combination. Obviously, few other
bands have had such musicians, but, even so,
there has recently seemed to be a fetish with
regard to precision, and it would seem that,
in obtaining it, a lot of the players' gusto is
often lost. In the playing of Henderson's "Big
John" the premium is on the warm spontane
ity, careless in the best sense of the word,
which was one of the reasons why, for years,
virtually every jazz musician in New York
sometimes sat in one of the chairs across the
foor from the Roseland bandstand and lis
tened to Fletcher Henderson.

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, son
of a Negro worker in the Washington, D.C.,
Navy Yard, opened with his hand at the Cot
ton Club in IIarlem in
1927, when Hender
son's hand had long since become a byword
with other jazz players. Apart from musi
cians, however, Henderson's music was
known mostly to a limited dance-hall audi
ence. It had had no efective promotion. El
lington, on the other hand, had Irving Mills'
plugging management, a handstand in the
purple glow lamps of the Cotton Club, which
was a center of the Harlem entertainment
vogue, and widespread radio facilities. Also,
in addition to being the leader of a remark
able combination, Ellington was a composer
of decided interest. In a short time, his radio
hookups brought him a large, national audi
ence-his was the frst large hot band to at
tract any such attention.
He has since had all kinds of salutes. Re
cently it has often been said that Ellington's
music has lost the genuineness which charac
terized it in the late Twenties, that it has be
come overly suave, elaborate, and virtuoso.
In a recent appearance at the downtown Cot
ton Club on Broadway, Ellington's boys wore
white jackets, boiled shirts and dress ties,
crimson trousers and shoes. Duke himself
opened the evening in a light gray coat and
black trousers, moved on to full dress, and
finished in a henna jacket and the blacks. The
trumpets appeared to be made of platinum,
heavily embossed, perhaps suitably inscribed
and possibly taken out of Tifany's each day
and put back after the night's work. Even the
instrument cases were handsomely lettered
in metal. The only feature which marred the
general splendor was a battered platter
which Rex Stewart produced from some hid
ing-place and waved over the bell of his trum
pet during the last chorus tutu of "The Sheik
of Araby."
These trappings may have little to do with music,

but I think they are fitting and proper

in this case. If any musicians ever earned the
right to a dress uniform, Ellington's boys
have earned their crimson pants and fancy
instrument cases. They have been and are an
epitome of a sort. The jazz language, com
ing out of folk-musical sources, by its own
nature bred a lot of remarkable improvising
talent. As the players grew more and more in
terested in the combination of instruments in
sections, jazz inevitably acquired consider
able orchestral sophistication. Jazz musicians
are bound to be more and more experimental
orchestrally. And it is probably natural that
some one organization should most vividly
represent all the elements of this process in
which a folk music is gradually moving into
general musical currents. It seems to me that
the band which does this is Ellington's. In
it you hear improvising in many spirits-the
"low-down" rhythmic playing of trumpeter
Cootie Williams and trombonist Joe Nan
ton, the spirited, melodic inventions of the
saxophonists Johnny Hodges and Harry Car
ney, and the foridity of trumpeter Rex Stew
art, trombonist Lawrence Brown and clari
netist Barney Bigard. Also, this is certainly
the most striking ensemble in jazz, with a bril
liance, fnish and ease resulting from long col
laboration. Finally, I don't know of any jazz
orchestrator as musically fertile as Ellington.
His ideas may seldom get sustained develop
ment, may often be loosely strung together
and over-rich for the thematic material which
is carrying then, but in an Ellington per
formance it is a rare three minutes in which
something of orchestral fascination doesn't
occur. Of how many other bands can the
same be said?
The third big band of fne quality devel
oped in New York in the Twenties was Luis
Russell's, which played at the Saratoga Club
in Harlem in 1
moved up to New Orleans and on up the Mis
sissippi to Chicago in the middle Twenties,
and then traveled eastward to Harlem, where
he assembled a short-lived group whose chief
players have recently been heard, with Rus
sell, behind Louis Armstrong. Toward the
end of the Twenties, under Russell's and Hen
ry Allen's names, this band made some of
the finest jazz records, with simple arrange
ments, a good, rhythmic ensemble and a trio
of superb soloists. These disks were the frst
to show to advantage the alto saxophone in
ventions of Charles Holmes, the playing of
Jay C. Higginbotham from Georgia, a trom
bonist who ran the gamut between the muted
delicacy of "Biffy Blues" and the explosive
strength of "Swing Out," and the clamorous,
lyric trumpeting of Henry Allen, a particu
larly fne blues player, from Algiers, across
from New Orleans.
In the jazz circles of New York, the Twenties

ended with the arrival of many of the
best Chicago players. But with such bands as

Henderson's, Ellington's and Russell's al
ready on location, and their members often
playing impromptu late hour sessions in the
Harlem basements, the city could scarcely

be said to lack for syncopation.
-1939