Tension in the Swing Era

     By the mid-1930's, jazz had moved to the forefront of the American mainstream and the struggle to reconcile the notion of separate but equal with the precepts of a country that called itself the land of freedom and opportunity was becoming apparent.  Specifically, the current of social integration was changing the way jazz was played, heard, and marketed yet “the disparity between [black and white musicians] increased” (Swing Changes, 122)  and this contrast now made the issue of race within jazz more explicit than ever before.

     As with Duke Ellington’s tenure in the Cotton Club, the late 20's saw some of the first instances of black musicians playing in white clubs.  (Lecture, 2/14/2013) Integration was also encouraged by the radio which created the first national mass culture while introducing musicians to one another (Swing Changes, 107) in a way that, provided you could get on the radio, was indiscriminate of race.  These interactions led to dance trends with both white and black influences, like the jitterbug, which were popular in unprecedented scale and certainly made the dangers of social miscegenation more palpable. (Lecture, 2/14/2013)  The 1930s also awakened the mainstream white jazz fan, who in a previous age would have been considered uncouth but now spoke louder and more freely than his black counterpart. 

     This allowed, during the mid 30's, for white involvement to increasingly be a part of jazz production at almost every level.  Black big bands were regularly denied patronage from clubs, radios, and other venues, suffered from reduced demand after the popularization of the radio (Gioia, 128), and furthermore, required proportionately larger funds to sustain paychecks and equipment (Swing Changes, 106).  In the harsh economic climate of the 1930's Depression, reliance on white businessmen, who were better connected, to find opportunities was necessary for a big band’s survival. (103)  However, as seen through the example of Duke Ellington and his white manager Irving Mills, in this context blacks and whites were working on equal footing as colleagues.

     White influence also manifested itself in the phenomenon of the white jazz critic, a liberal typically leftist group of young men whose “dominant trope… [was] hailing America as a land of racial equality and opportunity.” (Swing Changes, 75)  As part of this agenda, they promoted in their magazines the debate over whether blacks or whites played better jazz, (78) which culminated dramatically with the Benny Goodman vs. Chick Webb battle at the Savoy.  One particularly influential jazz critic, John Hammond, was also a businessman who originally sponsored talented acts, regardless of race, like those of Benny Goodman and Fletcher Henderson. (Gioia, 140) He ignited racial controversy in persuading Benny Goodman to use black musicians during a performance at Carnegie Hall, a first at the time.  (Swing Changes, 55) He is also known for authoring an editorial that chastised Duke Ellington’s failure to use his position of esteem in the jazz world to seek a more equal workplace for his fellow black musicians, bringing racial issues further to the attention of the public. (52)

     The liberalist political alignment of these critics emphasized the threat to “established cultural values” that the black jazz musicians they supported had “unconsciously issu[ed].” (53) Jazz came to be emblematic of a sort of political and ideological radicalism.  The mainstream adoption of jazz during the 1930's was demonstrating that blacks had ”unique powers of spontaneous artistic creativity” (53) and the exposure these, often well-educated and articulate (Fletcher Henderson, 104) bandleaders like Fletcher Henderson or Duke Ellington received begged the question of whether separate but equal was really consistent with American principles.  These issues were brought into the limelight with The Scottsboro case of 1931, in which several black teenagers were unfairly convicted of rape. (Lecture, 2/14/2013)   Even in its own time, this case was cited as an example of overt racism that led to a miscarriage of justice.

     Meanwhile, the Popular Front, which was loosely a collection of leftist and communist groups that formed against the growing fascism in Europe, sought to ally itself with other oppressed minorities, particularly the black people of America. (Lecture, 2/14/2013)   As part of this effort, The Communist Party of the USA preached its own brand of anti-racism, an essentially anti-fascist ideal they claimed, to whites through appreciation of Black culture and jazz music.  This of course would have furthered the perception of jazz as a music of rebellion but at the same time made some whites more aware of struggle of the African American in a white society.

Jazz in the 20s

        The evolution of jazz from the New Orleans ensemble style, to the “hot” club music that increasing emphasized the role of the soloist, and then to Swing, is suggestive of the corresponding shift in the center of Jazz music from New Orleans to Chicago and eventually to New York.  New York may have produced its own unique fusion of Northern and Southern influences in the form of Stride piano, but its late beginnings in improvisation and blues intonation are largely indebted to the arrival of southern bands before whom, one musician claimed “there wasn’t an Eastern musician who could really play the blues” (Fletcher Henderson, 101).  Louis Armstrong’s Chicago style playing, which “represented the Western style of jazz” (103), was similarly disseminated in New York during his 1924 tenure in the Fletcher Henderson orchestra.  Thus although it was in New York that big bands of the Swing Era emerged in the late 20s, these developments were made on a foundation that had its origin in Chicago.
Particularly in Chicago, many of the changes during the early 1900s in the American socioeconomic climate led to shifts in jazz's geographic and aesthetic locality.  The Great Migration led more than "1.5 million" (Gioia, 46) African Americans northward in search of better social treatment and jobs that were a result of expanding industrialism.  Black musicians in particular were affected by the closing of Storyville and were also accompanied by white New Orleans jazz musicians who wanted to "tap the larger economic base of the northern city" (46).  Directly related to industrialism was the development of new technology like recordings and broadcasts that allowed musicians "who offered a personal, direct...delivery....to rise to fame" (Gioia 83).
In Chicago, the new population of blacks participated heavily in mainstream culture by buying from chain stores and standard brands but ironically it made them "feel more independent and influential as a race, not more integrated" (Making a New Deal, 154) as the mass market was molded to the shape of their needs.  This created a new urban identity that "expressed race pride through jazz". (154)  How specifically this changed jazz is difficult to ascertain but it certainly changed the way jazz was perceived by the black population and the relationship between the musician and his music.
        Black musicians in Chicago at the time worked mainly in clubs, which experienced great popularity, but were often owned by gangsters who, through coercion, managed their employees tightly, and as a result the "black people who played [jazz] were never free agents."(The Jazz Slave Masters, 48)  They also faced great discriminatory injustice from the whites, whose clubs they were prohibited from entering, but whose musicians would feverishly attend black performances essentially "doing what is known in the theatrical world as stealing." (You Are Going To Be More Than Me, 68)  This is interaction is some of the most direct evidence for Bahktin's dialogic theory that art is created through the figurative dialogue between the performer and the audience. In this case, the white's attempts to imitate black jazz would create a music that would in turn provoke a response from black musicians.  This theft however played a large part in the creation of what some would call the Chicago style.
There are two somewhat distinct lineages of the type of jazz music played in Chicago during the 1920s.  The older one is essentially the progression of the New Orleans ensemble style, brought by bands like the Original Creole Orchestra and King Oliver's, which under the influence of Louis Armstrong, began to focus on improvisational soloing while pursuing a "hotter" sound that was in demand at the various dance clubs of the time.  This style is described as being highly reminiscent of the "old style" (New Orleans) but also the backdrop for "[Oliver's] protege's discovery of a freer rhythmic form" (King Oliver, 48).
A separate but related style is that of Bix Beiderbecke and other white musicians whose sound emerged from imitations of New Orleans jazz and later the Austin High Gang who attempted to imitate Beiderbecke and traditional influences like the Original Dixieland Jazz band.  Some have suggested that these imitations "[were] not a style at all" (Chicagoans, 162), but Gioia points out several distinguishing characteristics from the New Orleans style such as “a certain restless energy” and that “counterpoint lines no longer weave together." (Gioia, 72)  In particular there has been what is described as a "thrusting aggressiveness" to their music that sets them apart from "the recordings of that period by New Orleans" men (Chicagoans, 162).
  Together these styles formed what Gioia describes as "the quintessential sound of jazz." (Gioia, 71)