Pub Date : 2010-03-22DOI: 10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.1.0093
Horst J. P. Bergmeier, Rainer E. Lotz
When Arthur Briggs arrived in Europe as a member of the Southern Syncopated Orchestra in 1919, he was just twenty years of age. For the rest of his life he worked on the "Old Continent" with but one single trip back to the United States in 1930. Admired for his technical ability and clear tone, he recorded extensively and influenced generations of European jazz musicians. Although he had no firsthand experience in American jazz, he managed to keep abreast with developments in the States through records he obtained in stores in every country he visited: "I had most of Fletcher Henderson's records and the Wolverines at that time and Frankie Trumbauer" (Goddard 1979, 287). (1) [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Arthur Briggs himself has always been vague, even contradictory about the place and date of his birth. On more than one occasion he claimed to be a United States citizen: "I was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the 10th of April 1901. My parents were from Grenada, Mississippi." (2) In actual fact he was born in St. George's on the Caribbean island of Grenada on April 9, 1899, the youngest of ten children of a father from St. George's and a mother from Barbados. According to the passenger list of the British and Burmese Steam Navigation's liner SS Maraval, James Arthur Briggs, musician, eighteen years and six months old, arrived from Grenada in New York on November 22, 1917. He gave his address as the home of his mother, Louisa Briggs, on Green Street, St. George's, Grenada. She had paid for the travel, and stated that he was going to stay with his sister, Mrs. Inez Hall, in New York City. According to the immigration authorities, Briggs was a West Indian and traveled on a British passport. Briggs also declared that he had not been in the States before. Briggs's sister Inez, a seamstress, had arrived with her twenty-five-year-old sister Olive, a domestic servant, on June 6,1913, aboard the SS Maracas from St. George's to New York. On arrival they gave their father's name as James Briggs and stated that they were bound for a friend, Thomas Hall, whom the nearly-nineteen-year-old Inez was to marry the same year. On August 1, 1917, Edith Inez Hall arrived in New York from Grenada aboard the SS Mayaro and stated that she was twenty-four years of age and on her way to rejoin her husband Thomas, and that she had previously resided in New York from 1913 to 1916. (3) Upon his arrival in the United States in November 1917 Arthur Briggs stated that he followed the occupation of "musician." Perhaps he had undergone some musical training in his hometown of St. George's, training which was available either through the Boy Scouts' drum-and-fife bands, one of the British colonial police bands, the Salvation Army, or private study. John Chilton's Who's Who of Jazz claims that the legendary trumpeter William "Crickett" Smith (1881-1947)--"New York's Buddy Bolden"--was Briggs's uncle (Chilton 1985, 307). If this were true, Crickett should have been the brother of Briggs's m
{"title":"James Arthur Briggs","authors":"Horst J. P. Bergmeier, Rainer E. Lotz","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.1.0093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.1.0093","url":null,"abstract":"When Arthur Briggs arrived in Europe as a member of the Southern Syncopated Orchestra in 1919, he was just twenty years of age. For the rest of his life he worked on the \"Old Continent\" with but one single trip back to the United States in 1930. Admired for his technical ability and clear tone, he recorded extensively and influenced generations of European jazz musicians. Although he had no firsthand experience in American jazz, he managed to keep abreast with developments in the States through records he obtained in stores in every country he visited: \"I had most of Fletcher Henderson's records and the Wolverines at that time and Frankie Trumbauer\" (Goddard 1979, 287). (1) [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Arthur Briggs himself has always been vague, even contradictory about the place and date of his birth. On more than one occasion he claimed to be a United States citizen: \"I was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the 10th of April 1901. My parents were from Grenada, Mississippi.\" (2) In actual fact he was born in St. George's on the Caribbean island of Grenada on April 9, 1899, the youngest of ten children of a father from St. George's and a mother from Barbados. According to the passenger list of the British and Burmese Steam Navigation's liner SS Maraval, James Arthur Briggs, musician, eighteen years and six months old, arrived from Grenada in New York on November 22, 1917. He gave his address as the home of his mother, Louisa Briggs, on Green Street, St. George's, Grenada. She had paid for the travel, and stated that he was going to stay with his sister, Mrs. Inez Hall, in New York City. According to the immigration authorities, Briggs was a West Indian and traveled on a British passport. Briggs also declared that he had not been in the States before. Briggs's sister Inez, a seamstress, had arrived with her twenty-five-year-old sister Olive, a domestic servant, on June 6,1913, aboard the SS Maracas from St. George's to New York. On arrival they gave their father's name as James Briggs and stated that they were bound for a friend, Thomas Hall, whom the nearly-nineteen-year-old Inez was to marry the same year. On August 1, 1917, Edith Inez Hall arrived in New York from Grenada aboard the SS Mayaro and stated that she was twenty-four years of age and on her way to rejoin her husband Thomas, and that she had previously resided in New York from 1913 to 1916. (3) Upon his arrival in the United States in November 1917 Arthur Briggs stated that he followed the occupation of \"musician.\" Perhaps he had undergone some musical training in his hometown of St. George's, training which was available either through the Boy Scouts' drum-and-fife bands, one of the British colonial police bands, the Salvation Army, or private study. John Chilton's Who's Who of Jazz claims that the legendary trumpeter William \"Crickett\" Smith (1881-1947)--\"New York's Buddy Bolden\"--was Briggs's uncle (Chilton 1985, 307). If this were true, Crickett should have been the brother of Briggs's m","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"222 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132583035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-03-22DOI: 10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.1.0077
J. Green
��� The reception given to black musicians in Britain was reflected in the reviews of their shows and acts, in recording contracts, billing in theaters of varying statuses, and the recollections of professional colleagues. The human side, where friendships were made with local people, led many foreign-born individuals to make their homes in Britain. By conducting interviews with descendants of the Southern Syncopated Orchestra performers, this often overlooked aspect of their history has been documented. The interviews, conducted in 2007 and 2008, brought fresh information and encouraged more archival research.
{"title":"Memories of the SSO: Descendants Speak","authors":"J. Green","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.1.0077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.1.0077","url":null,"abstract":"��� The reception given to black musicians in Britain was reflected in the reviews of their shows and acts, in recording contracts, billing in theaters of varying statuses, and the recollections of professional colleagues. The human side, where friendships were made with local people, led many foreign-born individuals to make their homes in Britain. By conducting interviews with descendants of the Southern Syncopated Orchestra performers, this often overlooked aspect of their history has been documented. The interviews, conducted in 2007 and 2008, brought fresh information and encouraged more archival research.","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126518542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-03-22DOI: 10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.1.0019
Howard Rye
In this section appear basic biographies for all musicians known to have worked with the Southern Syncopated Orchestra in Europe, although without repeating information on major figures which may easily be recovered from standard reference sources on jazz or African-American music. In many cases these biographies are extremely sparse, and in a few cases nothing is known of the musicians' origins and career beyond their involvement in the SSO. The length of the biographies does not reflect either the relative or absolute importance of the performers, but the amount of information available and whether it has previously been available in an accessible format. As a general rule, personal relationships are mentioned only when relevant to professional activities or when marriages were contracted or children born while the artist was in Europe. It must be emphasized that SSO engagements listed are those at which the artist's presence can be demonstrated from contemporary sources. It will be evident from the main text that for many engagements only the names of principals are known. Wherever the words "member of SSO" appear they should be construed as "confirmed as member of SSO." The most important sources and record series used in the compilation of this data are listed in the list of record series consulted, which appears at the end of this article. Otherwise sources are noted only when they are not obvious public records series or contemporary newspapers and/or reliability is in doubt or sources are in conflict. Allen, David Cornelius. Banjoist, vocalist. Nationality unknown. Member of SSO for five weeks. Dismissed in Glasgow, January 1920. Archer, Frederick (real name: Akinlawon Olumuyiwa). Vocalist. Nigerian. Reportedly a former medical student at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London. Member of SSO in Glasgow, September/October 1921. Baker, George N. Vocalist. Born Louisville, Kentucky, August 16, 1875. Came to Europe in September, 1908 as an actor. Registered as a U.S. national at the consulate in Edinburgh, March 21, 1915. Wrote music and lyrics for and performed in 1916 touring show Dark Town Jingles. Described himself as a music-hall artiste when he registered for the draft in London in 1918. Member of SSO in London at Philharmonic Hall, 1919; Kingsway Hall, 1920. Bates, Frank (Allan Fitzgerald). Vocalist. Born St. Michael, Barbados, July 14, 1889, according to his apparent birth certificate, or November 19, 1892, according to his U.K. Seamen's Identity Certificate. Served as able seaman in the British Merchant Marine. Gave his profession as actor in July 1919. Member of SSO in Glasgow, September/October 1921. Died in Rowan disaster, October 9, 1921. Married Fanny Vivian, London, December 31, 1918; living descendants in Great Britain. "Battle Ace." Drummer. Recalled as working with SSO at London Coliseum, December 1919. Not securely identified. Benny Peyton was by his own testimony the drummer on this engagement. Drummer Carl Kenny, formerl
{"title":"Southern Syncopated Orchestra: The Roster","authors":"Howard Rye","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.1.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.1.0019","url":null,"abstract":"In this section appear basic biographies for all musicians known to have worked with the Southern Syncopated Orchestra in Europe, although without repeating information on major figures which may easily be recovered from standard reference sources on jazz or African-American music. In many cases these biographies are extremely sparse, and in a few cases nothing is known of the musicians' origins and career beyond their involvement in the SSO. The length of the biographies does not reflect either the relative or absolute importance of the performers, but the amount of information available and whether it has previously been available in an accessible format. As a general rule, personal relationships are mentioned only when relevant to professional activities or when marriages were contracted or children born while the artist was in Europe. It must be emphasized that SSO engagements listed are those at which the artist's presence can be demonstrated from contemporary sources. It will be evident from the main text that for many engagements only the names of principals are known. Wherever the words \"member of SSO\" appear they should be construed as \"confirmed as member of SSO.\" The most important sources and record series used in the compilation of this data are listed in the list of record series consulted, which appears at the end of this article. Otherwise sources are noted only when they are not obvious public records series or contemporary newspapers and/or reliability is in doubt or sources are in conflict. Allen, David Cornelius. Banjoist, vocalist. Nationality unknown. Member of SSO for five weeks. Dismissed in Glasgow, January 1920. Archer, Frederick (real name: Akinlawon Olumuyiwa). Vocalist. Nigerian. Reportedly a former medical student at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London. Member of SSO in Glasgow, September/October 1921. Baker, George N. Vocalist. Born Louisville, Kentucky, August 16, 1875. Came to Europe in September, 1908 as an actor. Registered as a U.S. national at the consulate in Edinburgh, March 21, 1915. Wrote music and lyrics for and performed in 1916 touring show Dark Town Jingles. Described himself as a music-hall artiste when he registered for the draft in London in 1918. Member of SSO in London at Philharmonic Hall, 1919; Kingsway Hall, 1920. Bates, Frank (Allan Fitzgerald). Vocalist. Born St. Michael, Barbados, July 14, 1889, according to his apparent birth certificate, or November 19, 1892, according to his U.K. Seamen's Identity Certificate. Served as able seaman in the British Merchant Marine. Gave his profession as actor in July 1919. Member of SSO in Glasgow, September/October 1921. Died in Rowan disaster, October 9, 1921. Married Fanny Vivian, London, December 31, 1918; living descendants in Great Britain. \"Battle Ace.\" Drummer. Recalled as working with SSO at London Coliseum, December 1919. Not securely identified. Benny Peyton was by his own testimony the drummer on this engagement. Drummer Carl Kenny, formerl","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"96 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121202795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-03-22DOI: 10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.1.0085
Howard Rye
The band known to history as The Jazz Kings is the best known of the many groups formed by former members of the Southern Syncopated Orchestra in London after their departure from the orchestra. This is largely because New Orleans clarinetist Sidney Bechet was a member (see Figure 1). The Jazz Kings had an intimate but still not fully elucidated relationship with the twelve-piece group which George Lattimore had previously supplied to the Portman Rooms under the leadership of Frank Withers. It is not absolutely certain when this engagement began. The Tatler reported in its issue of September 10, 1919 (no. 950, xiv, "Round and About Notes") that "a The Dansant will be held daily from 3.30 to 6.00 p.m. and the evening functions are timed from 8.30 to 12 midnight. A special feature of the Portman dances will be the continuous double band, ensuring an uninterrupted flow of music. The Portman Rooms contain one of the finest ball-rooms in London, which is capable of accommodating 800 dancers." The Tatler does not mention the Portman Syncopated Orchestra by name until the issue of October 15, 1919 (no. 955, xii, "Round and About Notes") by which time the The Dansant was not starting until 4:00 p.m. However Town Topics had already reported (October 11, 1919, 2, "Shows and Autre Choses") that "so great was the crowd that the large salon, accommodating 800 dancers, was found to be insufficient, and the overflow found its way into the smaller salon, where the services of a second band of the Portman Syncopated Orchestra had to be requisitioned." There is no real clue how this is to be interpreted. Evening dress or uniform was essential at night. During the afternoon sessions, dance instruction was given by M. Jean Castanet. The October 1919 issue of London Amusement Guide (hereafter LAG) (i/6, 34, "Dancing Notes") described the orchestra as "a combination of New York dance players, who are not only excellent musicians, but sweet singers as well." [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] The only known members of the orchestra or orchestras at the Portman Rooms are trombonist Frank Withers, reported as the leader by Norris Smith (Chicago Defender, January 30, 1920, 7), saxophonists Mazie Mullins Withers and Fred Coxito, violinist George Mitchell Smith, and banjoist Henry Saparo. The last three referred to their membership in the course of affidavits sworn in Lattimore's various legal cases (see Rye 2009). It was reported by LAG for December 1919 (i/8, 44, "Dancing Notes") that beginning on December 1 the dances would require membership, and members and guests only would be admitted. The evening sessions would in future run from 9:00 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. Soon afterwards the management decided to dispense with the services of the African Americans, and the musicians arrived for work on December 20 only to be informed by the manager, Mr. Rockover, that their services were no longer required (Chancery Division 1920 L No. 175, Affidavit 99). Lattimore himself said he was approached on th
历史上被称为爵士之王的乐队是由伦敦南方切分管弦乐团的前成员在离开乐团后组建的许多乐队中最著名的一个。这在很大程度上是因为新奥尔良单簧管演奏家西德尼·贝克特(Sidney Bechet)是其中的一员(见图1)。爵士之王与乔治·拉蒂莫尔(George lattimmore)之前在弗兰克·威瑟斯(Frank Withers)的领导下为波特曼厅(Portman Rooms)提供的12人乐队有着亲密但仍未完全澄清的关系。这次交战是什么时候开始的还不能绝对确定。《闲谈者》在1919年9月10日的那期杂志上报道了950, xiv， "Round and About Notes")， " The Dansant将于每天下午3时30分至6时举行，晚间活动时间为午夜8时30分至12时。波特曼舞蹈的一个特别之处将是连续的双乐队，确保音乐不间断地流动。波特曼舞厅是伦敦最好的舞厅之一，可容纳800名舞者。”《八卦者》直到1919年10月15日才提到波特曼切分音乐团的名字。955, xii，“Round and About Notes”)，而此时《丹桑特》直到下午4点才开始。然而，Town Topics已经报道过(1919年10月11日，第2期，“show and Autre Choses”)，“观众太多了，容纳800名舞者的大沙龙已经不够用了，拥挤的人群进入了较小的沙龙，在那里不得不申请波特曼切分音管弦乐队的第二支乐队。”没有真正的线索来解释这一点。晚礼服或制服在夜间是必不可少的。在下午的课程中，舞蹈指导由Jean Castanet先生讲授。1919年10月出版的《伦敦娱乐指南》(以下简称《LAG》)(第6期，第34期，“舞蹈笔记”)将该乐团描述为“纽约舞蹈演员的结合体，他们不仅是优秀的音乐家，而且是甜美的歌手。”[图1略)在波特曼房间的管弦乐队中，已知的成员只有长号手弗兰克·威瑟斯，诺里斯·史密斯(1920年1月30日，《芝加哥后卫》，第7期)，萨克斯管手马齐·穆林斯·威瑟斯和弗雷德·科西托，小提琴手乔治·米切尔·史密斯和班卓琴手亨利·萨帕罗。最后三个提到他们的成员在宣誓证词在拉蒂莫尔的各种法律案件(见拉伊2009)。据拉丁美洲联盟1919年12月报告(i/ 8,44，“舞蹈笔记”)，从12月1日开始，舞会需要会员参加，只允许会员和客人参加。晚间会议今后将从晚上9时至凌晨2时30分举行。不久之后，管理层决定取消非裔美国人的服务，12月20日，乐师们来上班，却被经理罗克弗先生告知不再需要他们的服务(衡平法司1920 L no . 175，宣誓书99)。拉蒂摩尔自己说，同一天有人找他为大使馆俱乐部提供一支乐队(大法官部1920 L第175号，宣誓书79)，但本尼·佩顿作证说，拉蒂摩尔在12月18日找他(大法官部1920 L第175号，宣誓书96)，这肯定是真的，如果，正如佩顿所说，拉蒂摩尔拒绝招待佩顿建议的人员，因为他们中的一些人在波特曼房间的乐队工作。订婚仪式原定于12月22日开始，为期三周，但最终被推迟到新年前夕。19年12月31日在伦敦老邦德街6-8号大使馆俱乐部开幕[大法官处1920 L No. 175，宣誓书96;《舞蹈时代》(Dancing Times)证实，1929年1月)，被称为“切分管弦乐队”。原创人员:Sidney Bechet，单簧管;弗雷德·科西托，中音萨克斯;小提琴演奏家乔治·米切尔·史密斯;皮埃尔·德卡约，钢琴;亨利·萨帕罗，班卓琴;本尼·佩顿，鼓手。20年1月19日Band从lattimmore的管理层转到DeCourville的管理层(网址:. ...)
{"title":"The Jazz Kings and Other Spin-Off Groups","authors":"Howard Rye","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.1.0085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.1.0085","url":null,"abstract":"The band known to history as The Jazz Kings is the best known of the many groups formed by former members of the Southern Syncopated Orchestra in London after their departure from the orchestra. This is largely because New Orleans clarinetist Sidney Bechet was a member (see Figure 1). The Jazz Kings had an intimate but still not fully elucidated relationship with the twelve-piece group which George Lattimore had previously supplied to the Portman Rooms under the leadership of Frank Withers. It is not absolutely certain when this engagement began. The Tatler reported in its issue of September 10, 1919 (no. 950, xiv, \"Round and About Notes\") that \"a The Dansant will be held daily from 3.30 to 6.00 p.m. and the evening functions are timed from 8.30 to 12 midnight. A special feature of the Portman dances will be the continuous double band, ensuring an uninterrupted flow of music. The Portman Rooms contain one of the finest ball-rooms in London, which is capable of accommodating 800 dancers.\" The Tatler does not mention the Portman Syncopated Orchestra by name until the issue of October 15, 1919 (no. 955, xii, \"Round and About Notes\") by which time the The Dansant was not starting until 4:00 p.m. However Town Topics had already reported (October 11, 1919, 2, \"Shows and Autre Choses\") that \"so great was the crowd that the large salon, accommodating 800 dancers, was found to be insufficient, and the overflow found its way into the smaller salon, where the services of a second band of the Portman Syncopated Orchestra had to be requisitioned.\" There is no real clue how this is to be interpreted. Evening dress or uniform was essential at night. During the afternoon sessions, dance instruction was given by M. Jean Castanet. The October 1919 issue of London Amusement Guide (hereafter LAG) (i/6, 34, \"Dancing Notes\") described the orchestra as \"a combination of New York dance players, who are not only excellent musicians, but sweet singers as well.\" [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] The only known members of the orchestra or orchestras at the Portman Rooms are trombonist Frank Withers, reported as the leader by Norris Smith (Chicago Defender, January 30, 1920, 7), saxophonists Mazie Mullins Withers and Fred Coxito, violinist George Mitchell Smith, and banjoist Henry Saparo. The last three referred to their membership in the course of affidavits sworn in Lattimore's various legal cases (see Rye 2009). It was reported by LAG for December 1919 (i/8, 44, \"Dancing Notes\") that beginning on December 1 the dances would require membership, and members and guests only would be admitted. The evening sessions would in future run from 9:00 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. Soon afterwards the management decided to dispense with the services of the African Americans, and the musicians arrived for work on December 20 only to be informed by the manager, Mr. Rockover, that their services were no longer required (Chancery Division 1920 L No. 175, Affidavit 99). Lattimore himself said he was approached on th","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127502119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2010-03-22DOI: 10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.1.0004
Howard Rye
12 Jun 19 First party arr. Liverpool from Philadelphia on American Line's SS Northland [Board of Trade, Passenger Lists, Inwards, 1878-1960. National Archives Ref. BT26/654]. 14 Jun 19 Second party arr. Liverpool from New York City on Cunard's SS Carmania [Board of Trade, Passenger Lists, Inwards, 1878-1960. National Archives Ref. BT26/654]. 29 Jun 19 Third party arr. Liverpool from New York City on White Star's SS Lapland [Board of Trade, Passenger Lists, Inwards, 1878-1960. National Archives Ref: BT26/654]. 4 Jul 19 Opened at Philharmonic Hall, Great Portland Street, London ["Matters Musical," Referee, July 6, 1919, 4]. Initially twice daily at 2:45 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Report made to HMV Committee that SSO not suitable for recording (information from Brian Rust from EMI filing). 3 Aug 19 Free concert at People's Palace, Mile End Road, London at 3:00 p.m. ["Negro Musicians, East End Concert To-Morrow," [London] Daily Herald, August 2, 1919, 5; "Real Ragtimes By Real Darkies," Daily Herald, August 4, 1919, 3]. 8 Aug 19 Performed at a dance at the Albert Rooms, London, in honor of distinguished African visitors to London. The President of Liberia was amongst those attending [Hamnett 1984, 117-118; Hooker, 1986, 129; courtesy Val Wilmer]. 9 Aug 19 Afternoon private party for members of the Royal Household at Buckingham Palace, London ["King's Garden Party To His Servants," The Times [of London], August 11, 1919, 13; "King And His Servants, Royal Entertainment," [London] Daily Telegraph, August 11, 2919, 8]. It appears that the full orchestra appeared and that some of the singers also performed with Will Marion Cook as accompanist. A "Nigger Jazz Band" [sic] performed in the amphitheatre formed by the bed of the drained Palace lake. The personnel consisted of: William [sic] Briggs, comet; William [sic] Forrester, trombone; Sidney Bechet, clarinet; Lawrence Morris, bandoline; Robert Young, drums. 4 Sep 19 Arr. at Southampton of Charles and Martha Gilmore, William Bums, and Frank Dennie from New York City on White Star's SS Lapland [Board Of Trade, Passenger Lists, Inwards, 1878-1960. National Archives Ref: BT26/665]. mid-Sep 19 Small band derived from the orchestra began working for the Portman Dances at the Portman Rooms, Baker Street, London, as The Portman Syncopated Orchestra [1920 L No. 175, Affidavit 99; London Amusement Guide, October 1919, 34; Dancing Times, October 1919, 33]. This twelve-piece group was led by Frank Withers [Norris Smith, "Dear Old Lunnon," Chicago Defender, January 3, 1920, 7]4 Oct 19 Last day for which Philharmonic Hall matinees are advertised as daily [Westminster Gazette]. 6 Oct 19 Philharmonic Hall matinees, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday only [Westminster Gazette]. 14 Oct 19 Arr. at Southampton from New York City on White Star's SS Lapland of E. E. Thompson, George Smith, and Frank Tate [Board of Trade, Passenger Lists, Inwards, 1878-1960. National Archives Ref: BT26/665]. 20 Oct 19 Began series of matinees at Pr
19年6月12日第一方从费城出发，乘坐美国铁路公司的SS Northland[贸易委员会，乘客名单，向内，1878-1960]。国家档案[j]. [c]。19年6月14日来自纽约的利物浦在卡纳德的SS Carmania上[贸易委员会，乘客名单，入境，1878-1960]。国家档案[j]. [c]。19年6月29日第三方协议从纽约出发的利物浦乘坐白星的SS Lapland[贸易委员会，乘客名单，入境，1878-1960]。国家档案编号:BT26/654]。19年7月4日在伦敦大波特兰街爱乐音乐厅开幕[“音乐之事”，《裁判》，1919年7月6日，第4期]。最初每天两次，下午2点45分和8点30分。向HMV委员会报告SSO不适合录制(来自EMI文件中的Brian Rust的信息)。19年8月3日下午3点在伦敦Mile End路人民宫举行免费音乐会[“黑人音乐家，东区音乐会明天”，[伦敦]《每日先驱报》1919年8月2日第5期;“真正的黑人创作的真正的黑人时代”，《每日先驱报》，1919年8月4日，第3页。8 Aug 19在伦敦阿尔伯特房间的舞会上表演，以纪念尊贵的非洲游客到伦敦。利比里亚总统出席了会议[Hamnett 1984, 117-118;Hooker, 1986, 129;瓦尔·威尔默]。1919年8月9日伦敦白金汉宫为皇室成员举行的下午私人派对[《国王给仆人的花园派对》，伦敦《泰晤士报》，1919年8月11日，第13期;《国王和他的仆人，皇家娱乐》，[伦敦]《每日电讯报》，8月11日，2919,8]。似乎整个管弦乐队都出现了，一些歌手也在威尔·马里恩·库克(Will Marion Cook)的伴奏下表演。一支“黑鬼爵士乐队”在宫殿湖干涸的湖底形成的圆形剧场里演出。人员包括:威廉·布里格斯，彗星;威廉·福雷斯特，长号;西德尼·贝克特，单簧管;劳伦斯·莫里斯，班多林;罗伯特·杨，鼓手。9月19日在南安普敦的查尔斯和玛莎·吉尔摩，威廉·邦姆斯和弗兰克·丹尼从纽约市乘坐白星的SS拉普兰[贸易委员会，乘客名单，入境，1878-1960年]。国家档案编号:BT26/665]。19年9月中旬，从乐团中衍生出来的一支小乐队开始在伦敦贝克街的波特曼厅(Portman Rooms)为波特曼舞蹈团(Portman Dances)工作，名为the Portman Syncopated orchestra [1920 L No. 175, Affidavit 99;《伦敦娱乐指南》，1919年10月，第34页;《舞蹈时代》，1919年10月，第33期。这支由弗兰克·威瑟斯(Frank Withers)领导的十二人乐队[诺里斯·史密斯，《亲爱的老伦农》，1920年1月3日，《芝加哥守卫者》，7]4 19年10月19日爱乐大厅日场每日广告的最后一天[威斯敏斯特公报]。19年10月6日爱乐音乐厅日场，仅限周一、周三、周四和周六[威斯敏斯特公报]。10月14日10月19日e·e·汤普森、乔治·史密斯和弗兰克·塔特的白星号SS拉普兰号从纽约驶往南安普顿[贸易委员会，乘客名单，入境，1878-1960]。国家档案编号:BT26/665]。1919年10月20日星期一和星期四2:45在伦敦威尔士王子剧院开始一系列日场演出[广告，[伦敦]晚报，1919年10月20日]。现在每周三和周五有爱乐音乐厅的日场[1919年10月20日《每日快报》的广告]。29年10月22日《每日电讯报》刊登威尔·马里恩·库克导演的最后一则广告。他于1929年10月24日被释放[Chancery Division 1920 L No. 542, Affidavit 304]，并于2929年11月23日从勒阿弗尔返回美国。由11月19日起，星期三及星期六为爱乐音乐厅日场[广告，星期日泰晤士报，2929年11月9日;《伦敦娱乐指南》1919年11月第7期;伦敦景点，1919年11月12日]。11月29日代表婴儿福利工作中央委员会在伦敦皇家阿尔伯特音乐厅举行的胜利舞会2号。《辉煌的胜利舞会》，《伦敦日报》，1919年11月12日，第6期;《胜利舞会》，《舞蹈时代》，1929年12月，第213页。…
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Pub Date : 2009-09-22DOI: 10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.47655
Howard Rye
The Southern Syncopated Orchestra has exercised an enduring fascination for European enthusiasts and researchers, and understandably so. It brought to Europe the first of the New Orleans "jazz greats" to cross the Atlantic and provoked some of the earliest serious public commentary on jazz outside the pages of the African-American press. Furthermore, it was the ultimate jazz nursery. Many of the non-American members of the African diaspora who were to play jazz in Europe during the first jazz age, and some of their white contemporaries, learned their trade in its ever-changing ranks. This very large musical aggregation, which was said to have a repertoire of about five hundred songs ("Kings Bench Division" 1920), played a mixture of jazz, ragtime, spirituals, minstrelsy, light classical music, and anything else which could be given a credible African-American cast in a climate which at first sight was one of almost total public ignorance. In reality, it is not quite that simple. It is not an accident that the original prime mover of the Southern Syncopated Orchestra (SSO), Will Marion Cook, had also been involved with the high profile London presentation of In Dahomey back in 1903 (Green 1983; Parsonage 2005, 81-104). This also was only one incident, though a very important one, in a long line of presentations of music with a distinctively African-American content extending back into the nineteenth century. The evolution from "minstrelsy" to "ragtime" to "jazz" was all traceable in the comings and goings of performers on the music-hall circuits throughout Europe (Pickering 1990; Lotz 1997a). Catherine Parsonage (2005) has recently written at length on the context and significance of the Southern Syncopated Orchestra, making brilliant use, with full acknowledgment, of many of the facts presented in the original version of this study. It would be quite difficult to improve on her interpretation. The important point is to set aside notions of jazz development drawn from the dream picture developed by the young jazz enthusiasts of the 1930s. This views African-American music as a simple line of development in which an apparently spontaneous musical development in New Orleans spread up the river to Chicago and then to New York City, from where it conquered the world. In practice this line of development is often viewed through the forms resulting from co-option by mainstream culture, though this is rarely acknowledged. Though this model has been formally rejected by serious scholars for decades, much current writing about jazz still accepts its implications and the concomitant notion of artistic progress in which each stage is of greater artistic value than its predecessor, which must henceforth be dismissed as a technically inferior and an old-fashioned embarrassment. This view of the history and significance of each stage of development flies in the face of everything we know about the rest of human artistic endeavor. Parsonage's analysis of contemp
南方切分音乐团对欧洲的爱好者和研究人员有着持久的吸引力，这是可以理解的。它把新奥尔良的第一个“爵士大师”带到了欧洲，跨越了大西洋，并在非裔美国人的报纸之外引发了对爵士乐最早的一些严肃的公开评论。此外，这是一个终极的爵士托儿所。在第一个爵士乐时代，许多散居在欧洲的非美国非洲人演奏爵士乐，以及他们同时代的一些白人，在不断变化的队伍中学会了他们的手艺。这个非常庞大的音乐组合，据说有大约500首歌曲的保留曲目(“国王长凳师”1920)，演奏爵士乐，拉格泰姆，灵歌，吟唱，轻古典音乐，以及其他任何可以给一个可信的非裔美国人演员的音乐，乍一看几乎是完全无知的公众。实际上，事情并没有那么简单。南方切分管弦乐团(SSO)最初的主要推动者威尔·马里恩·库克(Will Marion Cook)也参与了1903年在伦敦举行的高知名度的《In Dahomey》演出，这并非偶然(Green 1983;牧师住宅2005,81 -104)。这也只是一个事件，虽然是一个非常重要的事件，在一长串的音乐呈现中有明显的非裔美国人的内容可以追溯到19世纪。从“吟游诗人”到“拉格泰姆”再到“爵士”的演变都可以追溯到表演者在欧洲各地音乐厅巡回演出的进进出出(Pickering 1990;Lotz 1997)。Catherine Parsonage(2005)最近写了一篇关于南方切分管弦乐团的背景和意义的长篇文章，充分利用了本研究原始版本中提出的许多事实。要提高她的口译水平是相当困难的。重要的一点是，抛开从20世纪30年代年轻爵士乐爱好者的梦想画面中得出的爵士乐发展概念。这种观点认为，非洲裔美国人的音乐是一条简单的发展路线，在新奥尔良，一种明显自发的音乐发展沿着河流传播到芝加哥，然后到纽约市，从那里它征服了世界。在实践中，这一发展路线通常通过主流文化的合作形式来看待，尽管这一点很少得到承认。尽管这种模式已经被严肃的学者们正式拒绝了几十年，但目前许多关于爵士乐的文章仍然接受它的含义，以及随之而来的艺术进步的概念，即每一个阶段都比前一个阶段具有更大的艺术价值，因此必须将其视为技术上的低劣和过时的尴尬而予以摒弃。这种对每个发展阶段的历史和意义的看法，与我们所知道的人类其余艺术努力的一切都是背道而驰的。为了理解SSO的重要性，Parsonage对爵士乐和非裔美国人音乐之间的差异的当代看法的分析是必要的。在过去十年中，美国背景也一直是Lynn Abbott, Tim Brooks和Doug Seroff的三项主要研究的主题，这些研究也是重要的来源(Abbott和Seroff 2002, 2007;布鲁克斯2004年)。直接目的的关键一点是，在风格和表演实践上具有独特的非裔美国人特征的音乐已经在伦敦现场出现了几十年，在第一次世界大战期间，非裔美国人的弦乐队音乐已经成为伦敦大人物们的音乐选择。在伦敦的上流社会俱乐部里，完整的非裔美国人乐队，如百能四人组(Berresford, Rye, and Walker, 2995)和丹·基尔代尔的谱号俱乐部管弦乐队(Rye and Brooks, 2997)，在为那些渴望忘记战争的富有的伦敦人举办的众多私人聚会上演奏，让听众和舞者都为之惊叹。．．.
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Pub Date : 2008-03-22DOI: 10.4324/9781315090979-17
Daniel Kreiss
In 1971 avant-garde jazz musician Sun Ra was expelled from a house in Oakland, California, owned by the Black Panther Party (Szwed 1997, 330). It was the same year that he taught a course entitled "Sun Ra 171" in Afro-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, the readings for which reflected his eclectic interest in subjects including black literature, bible studies, ancient Egypt, the occult, etymology, and, of course, outer space (Johnson; Sun Ra). On the surface, the pairing of Sun Ra and the Black Panthers is a striking study in contrasts. The mystical Sun Ra, with his philosophies of time and space, flamboyant Egyptian and outer space costumes, and devotion to pursuing truth and beauty through music, must have seemed out-of-place to many residents of a city still watched over by leather-clad Panthers wielding a rhetoric and creating an iconography of revolutionary Marxist struggle as they engaged in direct neighborhood actions. However, at a deeper level, Sun Ra and the Black Panthers stood in relation to the broader cultural and political movements of the post-World War II era that engaged in fundamentally performative projects to change consciousness in response to the psychological alienation caused by racism and the workings of a technocratic, capitalistic society. At the same time, both appropriated technological artifacts and rhetoric and made them central to their identities in their respective projects of liberation. Yet the different artifacts they appropriated and the contrasting ways in which they redeployed and reconceived technologies reveal competing ideologies and broader conflicts over the meanings of black consciousness, politics, and social change during the 1960s. This paper demonstrates how technological artifacts and metaphors were used as agents of psychological change during the 1950s and 1960s. In his music, performances, and writing beginning in the early 1950s, Sun Ra appropriated artifacts and technological metaphors to create what I call a "mythic consciousness" of technologically empowered racial identity that would enable blacks to recreate and invent technologies and construct utopian societies on outer space landscapes. The Black Panthers redeployed and reconceived technologies to create a "revolutionary consciousness" with the end of political mobilization. Unlike Sun Ra's more mythic and utopian imaginings, the revolutionary consciousness of the Panthers was terrestrially directed at economic and social change. Through the performance of artifacts during direct political action and the rhetorical recasting of advanced weaponry and outer space as a means to educate blacks about capitalist and racist subjugation, the Panthers linked their struggle with international socialist and postcolonial movements. To date, scholars have pursued separate lines of inquiry into black appropriation of technologies, resulting in the lack of a coherent history or context for their appearance in black social,
{"title":"Appropriating the Master's Tools: Sun Ra, the Black Panthers, and Black Consciousness, 1952-1973","authors":"Daniel Kreiss","doi":"10.4324/9781315090979-17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315090979-17","url":null,"abstract":"In 1971 avant-garde jazz musician Sun Ra was expelled from a house in Oakland, California, owned by the Black Panther Party (Szwed 1997, 330). It was the same year that he taught a course entitled \"Sun Ra 171\" in Afro-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, the readings for which reflected his eclectic interest in subjects including black literature, bible studies, ancient Egypt, the occult, etymology, and, of course, outer space (Johnson; Sun Ra). On the surface, the pairing of Sun Ra and the Black Panthers is a striking study in contrasts. The mystical Sun Ra, with his philosophies of time and space, flamboyant Egyptian and outer space costumes, and devotion to pursuing truth and beauty through music, must have seemed out-of-place to many residents of a city still watched over by leather-clad Panthers wielding a rhetoric and creating an iconography of revolutionary Marxist struggle as they engaged in direct neighborhood actions. However, at a deeper level, Sun Ra and the Black Panthers stood in relation to the broader cultural and political movements of the post-World War II era that engaged in fundamentally performative projects to change consciousness in response to the psychological alienation caused by racism and the workings of a technocratic, capitalistic society. At the same time, both appropriated technological artifacts and rhetoric and made them central to their identities in their respective projects of liberation. Yet the different artifacts they appropriated and the contrasting ways in which they redeployed and reconceived technologies reveal competing ideologies and broader conflicts over the meanings of black consciousness, politics, and social change during the 1960s. This paper demonstrates how technological artifacts and metaphors were used as agents of psychological change during the 1950s and 1960s. In his music, performances, and writing beginning in the early 1950s, Sun Ra appropriated artifacts and technological metaphors to create what I call a \"mythic consciousness\" of technologically empowered racial identity that would enable blacks to recreate and invent technologies and construct utopian societies on outer space landscapes. The Black Panthers redeployed and reconceived technologies to create a \"revolutionary consciousness\" with the end of political mobilization. Unlike Sun Ra's more mythic and utopian imaginings, the revolutionary consciousness of the Panthers was terrestrially directed at economic and social change. Through the performance of artifacts during direct political action and the rhetorical recasting of advanced weaponry and outer space as a means to educate blacks about capitalist and racist subjugation, the Panthers linked their struggle with international socialist and postcolonial movements. To date, scholars have pursued separate lines of inquiry into black appropriation of technologies, resulting in the lack of a coherent history or context for their appearance in black social, ","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128908850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2007-09-22DOI: 10.4324/9781315089669-20
Jon Fitzgerald
Black songwriter-performers such as Fats Domino, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry achieved success on the U.S. pop charts (1) as leading contributors to the development of 1950s rock and roll. Rock and roll's impact had waned by the late 1950s, however, and white songwriter-producers dominated the creation of U.S. pop hits. Many of the successful songwriters from this period have been referred to as "Brill Building" composers--so named after a building (located at 1619 Broadway in New York) that first housed music publishers during the Great Depression. Successful writers and writing teams (e.g., Don Kirsher/Al Nevins, Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller, Doc Pomas/Mort Shuman, Carole King/Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil, and Phil Spector) created material for a wide range of artists (including male and female soloists, duos, and girl groups). They typically functioned as producers as well as songwriters, and some went on to form influential record companies such as Aldon (Kirshner/Nevins), Redbird (Leiber/Stoller), and Philles (Spector/Sill). (2) Betrock (1982, 38) describes the Brill Building sound as emanating "from the stretch along Broadway between 49th and 53rd streets." He also provides a sense of the frenetic activity of the New York pop scene: "You could write a song there, or make the rounds of publishers with one until someone bought it. Then you could go to another floor and get a quick arrangement, ... get some copies run off ... book an hour at one of the demo studios ... round up some musicians and singers ... and finally cut a demo of the song" (39). The dominance of writer-producers meant that black performers of the day (like their white counterparts) depended largely on these professional writers to supply them with potential pop-chart hits. (3) For example, Leiber/Stoller provided material for the Coasters and the Drifters, Goffin/King created hits for the Drifters, Shirelles, Cookies, and Little Eva, while Mann/Weil's artist roster included the Drifters and Crystals. The first sign of a new "crossover" breakthrough into the pop charts for black songwriters came in the late 1950s, in the form of hits by Sam Cooke and Curtis Mayfield. Described by Reed (2003, 89-90) as "the first widely-celebrated professional gospel singer to seek a secular career," Cooke achieved a number-one U.S. Top Forty hit in 1957 with "You Send Me." By 1963, he had a total of eighteen Top Forty entries (many self-penned). Mayfield's first U.S Top Forty hit was "For Your Precious Love" (written for Jerry Butler in 1958). He followed this up with a series of hits for artists such as Jerry Butler, the Impressions, and Major Lance. During the early 1960s, black songwriters associated with the Motown label joined Cooke and Mayfield on the pop charts. The Motown Record Corporation (together with Jobete Music Publishing Company) was created by Berry Gordy in 1959. Gordy had previously operated an unsuccessful jazz record shop (from 1953 to 1955), eventually receivi
{"title":"Black pop songwriting 1963-1966: an analysis of U.S. top forty hits by Cooke, Mayfield, Stevenson, Robinson, and Holland-Dozier-Holland","authors":"Jon Fitzgerald","doi":"10.4324/9781315089669-20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315089669-20","url":null,"abstract":"Black songwriter-performers such as Fats Domino, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry achieved success on the U.S. pop charts (1) as leading contributors to the development of 1950s rock and roll. Rock and roll's impact had waned by the late 1950s, however, and white songwriter-producers dominated the creation of U.S. pop hits. Many of the successful songwriters from this period have been referred to as \"Brill Building\" composers--so named after a building (located at 1619 Broadway in New York) that first housed music publishers during the Great Depression. Successful writers and writing teams (e.g., Don Kirsher/Al Nevins, Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller, Doc Pomas/Mort Shuman, Carole King/Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil, and Phil Spector) created material for a wide range of artists (including male and female soloists, duos, and girl groups). They typically functioned as producers as well as songwriters, and some went on to form influential record companies such as Aldon (Kirshner/Nevins), Redbird (Leiber/Stoller), and Philles (Spector/Sill). (2) Betrock (1982, 38) describes the Brill Building sound as emanating \"from the stretch along Broadway between 49th and 53rd streets.\" He also provides a sense of the frenetic activity of the New York pop scene: \"You could write a song there, or make the rounds of publishers with one until someone bought it. Then you could go to another floor and get a quick arrangement, ... get some copies run off ... book an hour at one of the demo studios ... round up some musicians and singers ... and finally cut a demo of the song\" (39). The dominance of writer-producers meant that black performers of the day (like their white counterparts) depended largely on these professional writers to supply them with potential pop-chart hits. (3) For example, Leiber/Stoller provided material for the Coasters and the Drifters, Goffin/King created hits for the Drifters, Shirelles, Cookies, and Little Eva, while Mann/Weil's artist roster included the Drifters and Crystals. The first sign of a new \"crossover\" breakthrough into the pop charts for black songwriters came in the late 1950s, in the form of hits by Sam Cooke and Curtis Mayfield. Described by Reed (2003, 89-90) as \"the first widely-celebrated professional gospel singer to seek a secular career,\" Cooke achieved a number-one U.S. Top Forty hit in 1957 with \"You Send Me.\" By 1963, he had a total of eighteen Top Forty entries (many self-penned). Mayfield's first U.S Top Forty hit was \"For Your Precious Love\" (written for Jerry Butler in 1958). He followed this up with a series of hits for artists such as Jerry Butler, the Impressions, and Major Lance. During the early 1960s, black songwriters associated with the Motown label joined Cooke and Mayfield on the pop charts. The Motown Record Corporation (together with Jobete Music Publishing Company) was created by Berry Gordy in 1959. Gordy had previously operated an unsuccessful jazz record shop (from 1953 to 1955), eventually receivi","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"129 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128686629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the movie The Jerk (1979), Steve Martin plays Navin Johnson, a white man raised by an African-American family in rural Mississippi. The opening credits have barely concluded when it becomes clear that the development of Navin's personality is causing some consternation among his adoptive parents and siblings. He cannot dance, he experiences difficulty clapping in time to the rustic shout-type tune that his family plays on the front porch, and he prefers tuna fish sandwiches on white bread (with extra mayonnaise) and shrink-wrapped Twinkies to soul food. Navin finds his deliverance, however, in a fortuitous exposure to a broadcast of 1970s-era easy listening music--suddenly, he can clap on the backbeat to the neo-Herb Alpert strains emanating from the radio, recognizing through this involuntary response that, somewhere, others of his own kind must exist. My summary of the opening of The Jerk may seem remote from the title of this article. But the movie's first few scenes present topoi that condense many beliefs and assumptions central to understanding the links between identity and musical genres. The film revels in the absurdity of rigid essentialist stereotypes even as it points to widely shared associations between musical categories and racial demographics. Nature triumphs over culture, and mimesis (how nature and culture become "second nature") lurks outside the frame. Who, after all, associates African Americans with Herb Alpert? (1) If a generalized connection can be established in The Jerk between racial identity and musical "kind" writ large, then a second anecdote illustrates the ambiguity involved with categorization in practice. On a recent trip to the local HMV megastore, I attempted to find a recording by the Drifters, a group that began in the 1950s with Clyde McPhatter's gospel-derived lead tenor featured against the background of the group's gospel-quartet influenced "doo-wop" vocals. By the late 1950s, the group (with Ben E. King now singing lead) had become a star attraction of the new "uptown," pop-rhythm and blues emerging from the Brill Building in central Manhattan. After I searched in vain for the "oldies section," which I assumed would house the Drifters' recordings, a friendly store clerk directed me to the "R&B" section, and I left with a copy of the Drifters' Greatest Hits. I felt a bit perplexed: the Drifters' first recordings certainly were categorized as "rhythm and blues" in the mid-1950s, and as both "rhythm and blues" and "popular" (i.e., as "crossover recordings") during their Brill Building heyday from 1959 to 1964. But they have little in common with contemporary R&B, which is what I expect to find in the R&B section of the contemporary record store. Compared with the straightforward, commonsensical relationships observed in The Jerk, my visit to the HMV megastore presented a more tangled web of connections. The logic of this particular HMV's spatial arrangement of categories is not difficult to detect, even
{"title":"QUESTIONS OF GENRE IN BLACK POPULAR MUSIC","authors":"David Brackett","doi":"10.4324/9781315093819-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315093819-2","url":null,"abstract":"In the movie The Jerk (1979), Steve Martin plays Navin Johnson, a white man raised by an African-American family in rural Mississippi. The opening credits have barely concluded when it becomes clear that the development of Navin's personality is causing some consternation among his adoptive parents and siblings. He cannot dance, he experiences difficulty clapping in time to the rustic shout-type tune that his family plays on the front porch, and he prefers tuna fish sandwiches on white bread (with extra mayonnaise) and shrink-wrapped Twinkies to soul food. Navin finds his deliverance, however, in a fortuitous exposure to a broadcast of 1970s-era easy listening music--suddenly, he can clap on the backbeat to the neo-Herb Alpert strains emanating from the radio, recognizing through this involuntary response that, somewhere, others of his own kind must exist. My summary of the opening of The Jerk may seem remote from the title of this article. But the movie's first few scenes present topoi that condense many beliefs and assumptions central to understanding the links between identity and musical genres. The film revels in the absurdity of rigid essentialist stereotypes even as it points to widely shared associations between musical categories and racial demographics. Nature triumphs over culture, and mimesis (how nature and culture become \"second nature\") lurks outside the frame. Who, after all, associates African Americans with Herb Alpert? (1) If a generalized connection can be established in The Jerk between racial identity and musical \"kind\" writ large, then a second anecdote illustrates the ambiguity involved with categorization in practice. On a recent trip to the local HMV megastore, I attempted to find a recording by the Drifters, a group that began in the 1950s with Clyde McPhatter's gospel-derived lead tenor featured against the background of the group's gospel-quartet influenced \"doo-wop\" vocals. By the late 1950s, the group (with Ben E. King now singing lead) had become a star attraction of the new \"uptown,\" pop-rhythm and blues emerging from the Brill Building in central Manhattan. After I searched in vain for the \"oldies section,\" which I assumed would house the Drifters' recordings, a friendly store clerk directed me to the \"R&B\" section, and I left with a copy of the Drifters' Greatest Hits. I felt a bit perplexed: the Drifters' first recordings certainly were categorized as \"rhythm and blues\" in the mid-1950s, and as both \"rhythm and blues\" and \"popular\" (i.e., as \"crossover recordings\") during their Brill Building heyday from 1959 to 1964. But they have little in common with contemporary R&B, which is what I expect to find in the R&B section of the contemporary record store. Compared with the straightforward, commonsensical relationships observed in The Jerk, my visit to the HMV megastore presented a more tangled web of connections. The logic of this particular HMV's spatial arrangement of categories is not difficult to detect, even","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125059298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
There is a voluminous body of published scholarship on the history and cultural influence of the African-American spirituals tradition, beginning a century ago with a series of essays by W.E.B. Du Bois (1989) in The Souls of Black Folk (1903). However, there has been relatively little focus on spirituals from a comprehensively psychological and cultural perspective. That is, the issue of how the spirituals have functioned psychologically in the culture, both during North American slavery and in the time since the end of official slavery in 1865, has received some attention in several different realms but usually in piecemeal fashion. For example, John Lovell Jr.'s (1972) important work, Black Song, employs literary analysis to uncover recurrent psychological themes in the lyrics of slave spirituals. Dena Epstein (1977, 3-17) also explores aspects of the psychological dimension in her work, including a particularly illuminating exploration of the psychological experience of African captives in the Middle Passage and a discussion of the ways in which the singing of the captives reflected key aspects of cultural adaptation. James Cone (1991) and others (for example, Hopkins and Cummings 1991; Earl 1993; Kirk-Duggan 1997) have constructed experiential profiles of slave singers through a primarily theological lens, while others (Levine 1977; Raboteau 1978; Stuckey 1987) have elucidated circumscribed psychological aspects of the spirituals through the perspective of cultural history. Samuel Floyd's (1995) analysis builds substantially on previous work while also exploring important musicological elements. Thus, although there has been an absence of scholarship that focuses comprehensively on psychological and cultural issues, it is quite possible to begin to construct such a work through scholarly synthesis. In this article, I want to share some small parts of the synthesis I have developed over the last several years, rooted in my background as a singer and clinical psychologist. I want to focus specifically on issues of emotion, resilience, and psychological coping, examined through the dual lenses of personal introspection and scholarly analysis. This discussion carries significant implications for a more complete understanding of the enduring legacy of Harry T. Burleigh, who devoted considerable time--both as a composer and as a performing artist--to the evolution of the spirituals in early twentieth-century American culture. As Simpson (1990, 289-300) has shown, much of Burleigh's life work was influenced by his immersion in the spirituals, beginning with his relationship with his blind grandfather Hamilton Waters, from whom Burleigh learned many of the songs that he would later arrange for performance in concert settings. My own entry into this field of study began quite serendipitously. Having recently returned to active singing after many years of work as a practicing clinical psychologist and university professor, I volunteered in November 199
{"title":"The Foundational Influence of Spirituals in African-American Culture: A Psychological Perspective","authors":"A. C. Jones","doi":"10.2307/4145493","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4145493","url":null,"abstract":"There is a voluminous body of published scholarship on the history and cultural influence of the African-American spirituals tradition, beginning a century ago with a series of essays by W.E.B. Du Bois (1989) in The Souls of Black Folk (1903). However, there has been relatively little focus on spirituals from a comprehensively psychological and cultural perspective. That is, the issue of how the spirituals have functioned psychologically in the culture, both during North American slavery and in the time since the end of official slavery in 1865, has received some attention in several different realms but usually in piecemeal fashion. For example, John Lovell Jr.'s (1972) important work, Black Song, employs literary analysis to uncover recurrent psychological themes in the lyrics of slave spirituals. Dena Epstein (1977, 3-17) also explores aspects of the psychological dimension in her work, including a particularly illuminating exploration of the psychological experience of African captives in the Middle Passage and a discussion of the ways in which the singing of the captives reflected key aspects of cultural adaptation. James Cone (1991) and others (for example, Hopkins and Cummings 1991; Earl 1993; Kirk-Duggan 1997) have constructed experiential profiles of slave singers through a primarily theological lens, while others (Levine 1977; Raboteau 1978; Stuckey 1987) have elucidated circumscribed psychological aspects of the spirituals through the perspective of cultural history. Samuel Floyd's (1995) analysis builds substantially on previous work while also exploring important musicological elements. Thus, although there has been an absence of scholarship that focuses comprehensively on psychological and cultural issues, it is quite possible to begin to construct such a work through scholarly synthesis. In this article, I want to share some small parts of the synthesis I have developed over the last several years, rooted in my background as a singer and clinical psychologist. I want to focus specifically on issues of emotion, resilience, and psychological coping, examined through the dual lenses of personal introspection and scholarly analysis. This discussion carries significant implications for a more complete understanding of the enduring legacy of Harry T. Burleigh, who devoted considerable time--both as a composer and as a performing artist--to the evolution of the spirituals in early twentieth-century American culture. As Simpson (1990, 289-300) has shown, much of Burleigh's life work was influenced by his immersion in the spirituals, beginning with his relationship with his blind grandfather Hamilton Waters, from whom Burleigh learned many of the songs that he would later arrange for performance in concert settings. My own entry into this field of study began quite serendipitously. Having recently returned to active singing after many years of work as a practicing clinical psychologist and university professor, I volunteered in November 199","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2004-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125074068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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