The Duke's Music and Race in America
Black, Brown, and Beige
Duke Ellington’s music and race in America.
by Claudia Roth Pierpont
Source: TheNewYorker.com
The basement club was cramped, and the bandstand was so small that, by the drummer’s measure, it could hardly hold a fight. The clientele included mobsters, musicians, and star performers from the nearby Broadway shows, slipping in among the crowd from the time the band appeared, at about ten o’clock, straight on “until.”
The banjoist who provided the schedule could elaborate no further about how long the night went on: “Until you quit. Until period.” After 3 A.M., you couldn’t get a seat.
In the fall of 1926, the craze for Negro music was already sending savvy white New Yorkers up to Harlem, but the Kentucky Club, on West Forty-ninth Street, had the hottest band in town. Trumpets, trombone, saxes, clarinet, tuba, banjo, and drums—nine or so players, huddled on the stand beneath the pipes that ran along the ceiling, plus the handsome young piano player who led the group while
dancers surged around him on the floor.
But the band did more than keep the temperature high and the dancers moving; its arrangements were so startling that even a familiar number like “St. Louis Blues” sounded new. Variety capped a gushing review of the “colored combo” by noting that the club’s patrons—transfixed “jazz boys” and civilians alike—spent a remarkable amount of time just sitting around and listening.
Now that's food for thought!
Who will you make a way possible?
