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.