The white musician in America need not be discussed at such length. In a sense, he has practically from the start been the outsider type, playing a music which he knew to be misunderstood by the public. 'When will we be able to earn our living playing hot?' asked Frank Teschemacher, the famous Chicago clarinetist. The question was rhetorical. Teschemacher and his friends knew perfecly well from the moment that they began to imitate the black players that this kind of music was not saleable to the white dancing public for 'jazz' in the 1920s. The most they could hope to do with it was to play a few college dances where some of the students might be for it, to play the kind of night clubs or halls where the manager and the public didn't mind what the noise was, so long as it was loud, and to make an occasional record. If they wanted to earn their living by music, at least after 1927-8 or so, they had to play in 'sweet' or 'pop' bands. The uncompromising white musician thus faced the problem of the misunderstood and isolated artist from the beginning; indeed, who knows how many of them had not chosen to play jazz just because it was their private paradise, which neither fathers nor 'square' friends could share, a protest against the old generation, against the 150 per cent Americanism of the lush decade before 1929? Howard Becker the sociologist has described a group of such young white jazz musicians in the Chicago of the 'cool' era, but the description, with a few changes, could stand for the 1920's also: they were sons of good middle-class Americans. They protested, totally and absolutely, against all aspects of the 'American way of life', by playing their jazz, by frequenting only musicians and night-club girls, by wolfing existentialist or other guaranteed anti-bourgeois philosophers. No generation of white jazz players since the start (with the possible excpetion of the poor New Orleans whites who simply played the New Orleans way and thought no more about it) has been without such a contingent of rebels. And none has been without its quota of self-lacerating and doomed romantic artists, drinking themselves quietly into an early death, survived only by their records...
The classical white jazzman, a pocket Hemingway or Scott Fitazgerald, equally suspended between the whisky bottle, the wisecrack, and the jam session, was a refugee from the bourgeois world. However, there was also the non-classical white jazzman, whose situation was much more like that of the black musican. He was an entertainer or popular music player by trade, and not primarily a crusader or a deliberate castaway. This was certainly the position of most of the original white New Orleans players, the majority of whom came from social strata like the Sicilian immigrants, whose social position in the hierarchy of the old South was not a great deal higher than the blacks': at any rate they werealso sometimes lynched. 'Wingy' Manone, for instance, a slum child from New Orleans, and near neighbour of the young Armstrong, played music like Armstrong, worked the habitual circuits of the small-time Delta musicians--Louisiana, Texas, the middle-Mississippi valley, later Chicago, New York and the West Coast--and earned his living as a 'comedy personality' as much as by his trumpet.
Southern or Northern, the genuine professional musician type seems to have lacked something of the hunted purism of the refugee jazzman. George Bruines, for instance, an excellent New Orleans trombonist, seems to have been quite happy in his berth with the terrible band of Ted Lewis from 1923 to 1935, and did not feel his jazz status was jeopardised by lying down on his back with another musician on his stomach, while he operated a trombone slide with his feet...However, as we have seen, the economy of the jazz business is such that a great deal of casual work is inevitable, whatever the tastes or compulsions of musicians, and post-New Orleans white pros, especially those who got their start in the wild 1920s, when jobs were never short, have often had a varied and casual career...
Since the end of the thirties, the rise of the specialized jazz public has produced a new kind of white musician: the amateur jazz enthusiast, who has, in the nature of things, often turned into the professional player...
Whatever the character of the white jazz players, one thing has always--until recently at least--separated them from the black ones: their freedom of movement. The blacks could not leave. Playing music (for self-educated players, playing their kind of music) or some other form of entertainment were their only ways of earning a living unless they wanted to be unskilled labourers, and their only way of making a way in the world. For most of jazz history the black men, who found jazz jobs hard to get, had not the choice of joining a radio station's staff band or a classical orchestra, or working as a staff composer or arranger in films or on the air, or simply settling down to sell insurance or to journalism or business, like those middle-aged Chicagoan former jazz players who still meet annually, as "Sons of Bix", to commemorate the idol of their youth...The black musician was therefore obliged to stick to his music, which was his only prop. Perhaps this helps to account for his superiority in execution and in ideas over the white. For white musicians had ideas. The group of white New York Players who recorded in the later twenties, with or without the addition of brilliant Mid-Westerners like Bix Beiderbecke, shows signs of anticipating many of the musical ideas of 'modern jazz' fifteen years before the blacks, but it did not develop them. For what happened? "Miff" Mole, the trombonist went into commercial bands and radio, where he played mainly classical music for a decade. Eddie Lang, the guitarist went to Hollywood to make a film about Paul Whiteman and then became Bing Crosby's accompanist. Frank Trumbauer, the saxophonist eventually left music altogether for the Civil Aeronautics Administration. And so on. They were good jazzmen, but they did not have the hard compulsion to express themselves and to win their place in the world through developing their jazz, and only through it, which drove the Charlie Parkers, the Gillespies, and the Thelonious Monks. Only those who were congenitally and implacably 'anti-commercial' had this compulsion. But was it, in their case, always a compulsion to make music, or merely one to break away, to recapture their youthful paradise on Lake Michigan, to live the bohemian life of the anti-bourgeois? Perhaps both.
Eric Hobsbawm, The Jazz Scene, p.187-190
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The white musician in America need not be discussed at such length
HAHAHA!
'When will we be able to earn our living playing hot?'
When will we able to earn our living playing free?
The most they could hope to do with it was to play a few college dances where some of the students might be for it, to play the kind of night clubs or halls where the manager and the public didn't mind what the noise was, so long as it was loud, and to make an occasional record.
This is the 1920's he's talking about. Has it really been 90 years of this same nonsense?
It makes one wonder just how much "jazz" history (and particularly "white jazz history") has been made possible by the trust fund and the trustafarians empowered and emboldened by the capital from that trust?
And what has the wicked huge disparity between the life styles and exigencies of the trustafarians and the un-trusted barbarians (aka everyone else) done to "this music?" "Jazz" is such a huge pool, filled with so much liquid gold, it's hard to really tell how it's being affected in "real time." But "This Music"--our beloved Crazy Experimental Freedom music--what has the trust fund done to music (and the social conditions surrounding its creation)?
George Bruines...did not feel his jazz status was jeopardized by lying down on his back with another musician on his stomach, while he operated a trombone slide with his feet...
How many times have you left the house to check out a gig, only to come home and say "yeah, well once the Vaudeville routine was over, the music was ok..."
Drummers for some reason seem uniquely suited and perfectly willing to embrace the spirit of George Bruines. "Antics" as it were...adding another "dimension," another "facet" to the music by way of rib tickling, crowd pleasing shenanigans.
Just the other day I went to see a brass quintet perform at the local high school auditorium. They played for about 2 hours, all from memory. The concert began with Handel and Bach. From there it took a turn for the "lite", starting with a tango number, then moving on to a medley of familiar, co-opted operatic themes. Wagner's "Kill the Wabbit" for example. As the evening went on, more and more choreography and costumery was employed to (truly) titillate the audience.
Playing music (for self-educated players, playing their kind of music) or some other form of entertainment were their only ways of earning a living unless they wanted to be unskilled labourers, and their only way of making a way in the world.
And what's wrong with unskilled labour (aside from the pay)?
Sicilian immigrants, whose social position in the hierarchy of the old South was not a great deal higher than the blacks': at any rate they were also sometimes lynched.
I wonder, did any other European immigrant enjoyed lynchings in the US?
Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion!
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