Fumi Tomita’s Excellent “Early Jazz” Book

EARLY JAZZ / By Fumi Tomita / SUNY Press, 240 pp. $99 hardcover, $33.85 paperback

With this book Fumi Tomita, Associate Professor of Jazz Pedagogy and Performance at the University of Massachusetts. Amherst, accomplishes in the jazz field what I did in the opera field, an updated and expanded version of an earlier book. In my case it was Joseph Kerman’s Opera as Drama; in his case it was Gunther Schuller’s Early Jazz. Having read (but did not buy) the Schuller book, I can attest that an improvement was most definitely needed. Unlike its sequel, The Swing Era, Schuller (in my view) rather rushed his first book, leaving out too many important musicians. He made up for this to a small extent by discussing the vitally important Red Nichols recordings in The Swing Era, where they didn’t belong, and even then he gave short shrift to them.

Fumi Tomita

The more important thing about this book is that, for once, it is fair and balanced in its detailed description of the early jazz scene. No one other than Nick LaRocca ever claimed, to my knowledge, that African-Americans were not the major originators of jazz, but too many latter-day scribes erroneously insist that only Black musicians created it and only Black musicians were the pioneers of all instrumental technique in jazz and its musical style. With one fell swoop, Fumi Tomita has set the record straight. Somewhere in the ether, the spirits of Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Miles Davis, Chico Hamilton, Charles Mingus. Geri Allen and other Black musicians who insisted on integrating their bands even as Black social critics lambasted them for “Uncle Tomming,” are rising from their graves and cheering this book.

Aside from a few missing names which I consider important and a later documentation of pre-World War I jazz not included here, Early Jazz is for the most part spot-on in Tomita’s descriptions of all the musicians he covers, fair-minded without giving in to the politically correct mania that has shunted certain jazz pioneers to the side in recent decades, and on balance a good snapshot of the early jazz scene, how it developed, how the different styles emerged, and who the real heroes and heroines of early jazz were. As he put it in the Introduction:

Jazz had grown from being a bad word to a prestigious one, but to deny the contributions of whites, or other similarly ignored musicians, is to deny jazz’s malleability as an art form. At heart jazz is a flexible art form that is and has always been open and adaptable to different styles of music by musicians of any race or background. Right from the beginning in New Orleans, musicians black, white, Creole, and otherwise were playing nascent forms of jazz and it stayed that way. Everyone played jazz in their own way and in the process injected a little of their own nuances and culture into the music. An African American-based music, jazz is a living and breathing thing that continues to thrive in the hands of its practitioners. This is what makes jazz great yet difficult to define.

Bravo to you, Fumi! And may I say, it’s about time that the “melting pot” of jazz was finally acknowledged!

Of course, any such book is a reflection of the author’s personal tastes, which is only natural. No jazz musician, educator or plain fan is unbiased about this music. They are passionate about the artists they like as well as the ones they dislike, thus if I occasionally disagreed with Tomita’s opinions I want it to be clear that this is merely a difference in perspective, not a condemnation of what he wrote. No two people in the world hear music exactly the same way; he has the right to say what he wants in his book, and if a reader, upon listening to some of the recordings he praises (or damns) has a different opinion, this does NOT invalidate the breadth and scope of his work, which is truly phenomenal. One such instance is the work of Hartzell Strathdene “Tiny” Parham (1900-1943), whose jazz orchestra and particularly his jazz compositions of 1927-1930 which I, and millions of others, consider to be one of the most valuable and important legacies of that era. He is only mentioned by Tomita twice, in passing, when discussing other bandleaders in a single sentence, but since he does mention him Tomita clearly knows who he was. That is his right as an author, but I wish it was not so. Two other jazz artists who I thought would have been in the book were legendary New Orleans trumpeter Lee Collins (1901-1960), who replaced Louis Armstrong in King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and whose few late-‘20s recordings with the Collins-Jones Astoria Hot Eight are considered classics (Collins also recorded with Jelly Roll Morton and, in the early 1950s, left us some interesting live performances), and jazz singer Blanche Calloway, Cab’s older sister, who was utterly unique and around as early as 1925. Speaking solely for myself, I would also liked to have seen Arthur “Blind” Blake in this book. Although considered a blues singer, Blake actually fused folk and jazz music, particularly with his unique “piano style” method of playing guitar which influenced a great many guitarists who weren’t named Eddie Lang. Oh yes, one other: the utterly stunning jazz singer Gertrude Saunders. She recorded two songs she had performed in the Sissle-Blake landmark musical Shuffle Along, I’m Craving For That Kind of Love and Daddy, Won’t You Please Come Home? which are mind-blowing in her use of a three-octave range. Even post-modern jazz chanteuse Sophie Dunér was knocked out by her, and not much from the early period of jazz impresses her.

Yet even I, who not only have nearly 60 years’ experience listening to and evaluating early jazz but also had the advantage, which the younger Tomita did not, of discussing this period with people WHO WERE THERE such as Ralph Berton, Jim Robinson, Jimmy McPartland, Bill Challis and Max Kaminsky, learned new things about not only some artists I hadn’t heard but even about artists I thought I knew a lot about. That in itself makes this book a valuable resource. On the other hand, I hope that Mr. Tomita, if he reads my review, will forgive me for occasionally interjecting a few comments on what he wrote that I learned from my first-hand sources.

I would just add one more thing before reviewing the book itself. Although legendary jazz trumpeter Willie “Bunk” Johnson is indeed mentioned a few times in the text, I, personally would have included a discussion of his recordings made for Bill Russell’s American Music label in 1943-44 because they represent the earliest style of New Orleans group improvisation which had, in fact, virtually disappeared even by the mid-1920s. On those Johnson recordings, you can hear a complete interweaving of voices as the band plays, with the clarinet and trombone playing different metric patterns against the trumpet. This was the style of New Orleans jazz heard most often in the dance halls in the mid-1910s, a style which Johnson continued to play even into the late 1920s before his dental problems forced him to stop. The much tighter band concepts of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, New Orleans Rhythm Kings, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and Jelly Roll Morton’s various groups replaced this. They came to the fore by 1923 and eventually influenced the large jazz band concepts of Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman, Bill Challis and even the band Louis Armstrong led in Chicago. For a great many listeners, even those who thought (incorrectly) that Armstrong’s Hot Five recordings represented old-style New Orleans jazz, those Bunk Johnson recordings were an ear-opener, a window onto a lost world of collective improvisation that only Oliver and Morton occasionally revisited in their own arrangements.

Tomita’s chapter on early ragtime composers is accurate as far as it goes, but by concentrating on Scott Joplin and taking Joplin’s admonition that “it is never correct to play ragtime fast” out of context, he does readers a disservice. He was on the right track when he wrote that ragtime was derived from marching band music, but then assumed, as Joshua Rifkin did, that this meant that Joplin’s ragtime pieces should be played at a medium-slow walking tempo (he recommends Rifkin’s Nonesuch recording of Maple Leaf Rag). But what he left out was the fact that the ragtime written and played by East Coast pianists was MUCH faster than march tempo, particularly Eubie Blake’s 1899 Charleston Rag with its driving pace and walking bass (he recorded it twice, once in the early 1920s as Sounds of Africa, then in 1969 under its correct title). The orchestrated version of Maple Leaf Rag was played at the correct tempo, a brisk march tempo, by both Gunther Schuller and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, as did Joplin himself in his piano roll (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMAtL7n_-rc). In addition, it might have been helpful to the reader for Tomita to discuss the differences in inflection between African-American ragtime musicians and whites. Joplin himself had a looser, more “rolling” beat to his playing than one hears in the performances of white musicians, as did Bunk Johnson’s band in their 1947 recordings of items from the “Red Back Book.” I feel this is a key factor in assessing how ragtime influenced early jazz among the Black population of New Orleans.

On page 15, where Tomita discusses the era of minstrelsy, he conflates the two different periods—1840 to 1875 and 1890 to 1925—as both being horribly racist and demeaning towards Blacks. I, too, believed this for most of my life until I read Alain Locke’s 1936 book, The Negro and his Music, a couple of years ago. Locke was old enough to have known and talked to many Blacks who had lived through the first period of minstrelsy, the era of James Bland and Stephen Foster, and although he admitted the demeaning aspects of the white performers in blackface during the earlier period, he brought up the fact that there were many more Black composers and musicians involved in minstrel shows at the time, that the songs were far less cruel (no “coon” songs), and that this earlier period was a major breakthrough for Black performers to gain a foothold in the predominantly white entertainment industry, showing their versatility in being able to play several different instruments with exceptional skill:

when Negroes themselves came into stage minstrelsy, the mold was too set to be radically changed…However, they brought to the fore not only a more genuine and cleaner humor and a new vivacity, but brought music and instrumental expertness on many instruments besides the banjo to add to the main attraction and appeals of orthodox minstrelsy…The two really great Negro minstrel troupes of these days were “Lew Johnson’s Plantation Minstrel Company” and the “Georgia Minstrels.” The latter was the first successful all-Negro group and was founded in 1865 by Geo. B. Hicks, a native Georgian. This company with many changes of management, name and personnel, made extraordinary contributions to the American stage and American music…The greatest of the early Negro comedians, Billy Kersands and Sam Lucas, were members of this troupe, James Bland, the composer of “Carry Me Back to Ole Virginia” and other less known but really important melodies, was a star performer in the Haverly Period. Bland was born on Long Island of mixed Negro, Indian and white parentage, and after several years at Howard University, ran away, as Will Marion Cook puts it: “banjo under arms, to join Callender’s Minstrels, and to become, at the height of his fame in the United States, London and Paris, the brightest and most versatile star of the heyday of minstrelsy.”

It is interesting to note, even as early as the minstrel period, the double strand in Negro music which today divides it as “sweet jazz” and “hot jazz,” As the minstrel tradition drew towards its close, the burlesque motive dominated and the banjo-picker was in the ascendant; but [Stephen] Foster and Bland were the sweet minstrels responsible for the romantic Southern legend and the sentimental ballad that for two generations dominated American song[1]

In the section of the book on Bessie Smith, Tomita suggests that she always played to packed houses. This was certainly true in the South, but not in such Northern cities as Philadelphia, New York or Chicago, where the faster, snappier blues numbers of Ethel Waters, Victoria Spivey and Alberta Hunter were preferred. The few times Smith sold out the house in those Northern cities, her audiences consisted almost exclusively of Southern Blacks who had migrated North to escape the oppressive Jim Crow laws. The reason I think this needs to be mentioned is that it explains why Bessie’s recordings took so long to be reissued complete on LP. Columbia Records just wasn’t sure there was a market, on the national level, for that much Bessie Smith.

On the other hand, Tomita provides us with much more information on the complex interaction of races in New Orleans which led to their blending their musical assets together to formulate jazz as we know it. Although Thomas Brothers, in his excellently-researched but somewhat one-sided survey of Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans, also indicated that the much better musically educated Creoles and whites tended to disparage Black performers until they could no longer ignore or resist the powerful influence of their music, Tomita puts it into better perspective, particularly in explaining why the sons of Italian immigrant families bonded with the Blacks: they, too were considered an inferior race by the snobbish Germans, French and Spanish whites whose families in that city went back generations. I hadn’t really thought of that before.

Of course there’s a lot more to his chapter on this earliest period of jazz and the way it branched out into other cities and states. There were also burgeoning jazz scenes in Missouri and Texas which had only a small connection to New Orleans, but in addition to those N.O. musicians who toured the country during the 1910s by car or train, we sometimes forget the riverboats that started and ended in New Orleans but traveled to cities as far as Ohio or even further. As those riverboat bands became hotter and jazzier, hundreds of other listeners in other states were able to catch on as to what the excitement was all about.

I’m not sure that it’s helpful to the neophyte, and in any case is certainly misleading, for Tomita to refer to pianist Lil Hardin as “Lil Hardin Armstrong” from his first mention of her as a member of King Oliver’s band. She had been with Oliver’s band since 1921, but only became an Armstrong after Louis’ arrival and their subsequent marriage in early 1924. His description of the Oliver band’s performances on records is also accurate to a point. The one thing he fails to mention is that, unlike the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, Oliver’s band does not always swing on records. They played with a stiff, jerky rhythm that is still tied to ragtime. I asked Ralph Berton about this since, as a thirteen-year-old whose older brother was a well-known jazz drummer, he had heard the Oliver band in person at the Lincoln Gardens several times (and once, even sat in Oliver’s lap!), and he agreed with me about the records. His theory was that Oliver and the band were somewhat cowed by the white record company executives—his exact words were that “Oliver was a truly nice man, a polite gentleman, not in your face like Morton was”—but he also stressed the fact that Baby Dodds had to stick to woodblocks and an occasional cowbell in the studio, which greatly inhibited his ability to swing the band in person. Dodds was the first great virtuoso drummer in jazz, as one can hear from his numerous electrical recordings on which he was able to use his entire drum kit, thus more so than Ben Pollack of the N.O.R.K. or Tony Sbarbaro of the O.D.J.B., his ability to drive the band in a swinging manner was reduced to almost nothing. British cornetist and trad-jazz specialist Mike McQuaid did the world an incredible favor by recreating the sound and style of the Creole Jazz Band with a full drum kit in his online album, The King Oliver Project. On these recordings, playing original Oliver arrangements (and recreating one or two in songs that the C.J.B. played but did not record), we get a much clearer picture as to why this band was considered so special.

I agree with everything Tomita wrote about Jelly Roll Morton’s Chicago recordings but respectfully disagree with his blanket dismissal of his New York period. Yes, there were misfires, but there are too many excellent compositions and arrangements from this period to ignore, such as Georgia Swing, Boogaboo, Shoe Shiner’s Drag, Burnin’ the Iceberg, Red Hot Pepper – Stomp and Harmony Blues, the latter one of the most beautiful jazz compositions and arrangements ever made.

As for Morton and his claim that he invented jazz, as Gunther Schuller pointed out, there is really no hard evidence to the contrary, but the important point is that Morton never claimed to have invented improvisation and in fact told many accurate stories about the “dirty” blues players and improvisers he heard while growing up. What he meant was that he invented the use of tripartite form orchestrated in such a way that the whole ensemble swung, always with improvisation in the breaks; in fact, in the final chorus of Red Hot Pepper—Stomp, he did the reverse, having the ensemble play an improvisation in answer to the solo trumpet’s C theme statement in the previous chorus. He was also a stickler for musicians who could read music, which is the main reason he had no respect for piano genius Earl Hines, stating that he had to “rescue” Hines a couple of times by helping him write out his band arrangements. (Seeing a young fan gaping in awe at Hines’ playing in Chicago, Morton walked up to him and said, “Son, you’re wasting your time. That man doesn’t know anything about music.” But of course he missed the forest for the trees. When Maurice Ravel came to Chicago in 1928, one of his stops was at the Apex Club where Hines was playing in Jimmie Noone’s small band, and he was so impressed that he offered to write a piano concerto for him. Hines, embarrassed by his lack of reading ability, turned him down.)

On page 66, Tomita accurately claims Frank Signorelli as the most common pianist on the recordings of the Original Memphis Five, but fails to mention that on their early, big-selling recording of Aunt Hagar’s (Children’s) Blues, the pianist is none other than Jimmy Durante. (In the early 1990s, I also learned from Dave Brubeck that this was one of the recordings that influenced Darius Milhaud’s jazz-based composition, La Creation du Monde. You can hear licks from this song in his work.) I did, however, learn from Tomita about the better OM5 recordings featuring trombonist Miff Mole that I hadn’t known about, as well as a band I hadn’t heard of previously, The Georgians, which featured the excellent Oliver-influenced cornetist Frank Guarante. I also didn’t know that the manager of the California Ramblers band was Ed Kirkeby, who later managed Fats Waller’s career—or that the band was originally formed in Ohio. They just added “California” to their name to give them a touch of ersatz prestige. I was also thrilled that Tomita spent quite a bit of space lauding the talents of Adrian Rollini, the greatest bass saxophonist in jazz history—and he even mentioned his playing the “hot fountain pen”! Yes, this info is well known in trad jazz circles, but to put it in what amounts to a new textbook on early jazz is PHENOMENAL!

Tomita also spends, rightly, nearly nine pages discussing the groundbreaking music of Red Nichols’ various groups, thus validating everything that Stephen M. Stroff said in his much-maligned book, Red Head: A Chronological Survey of Red Nichols and his Five Pennies (Scarecrow Press, 1996), although that book is not listed in Tomita’s bibliography.

His survey of stride pianists of the 1920s happily mentions Luckey Roberts, a key figure in the transition from ragtime to stride, even though he didn’t make his first recordings until 1946. It would have been nice, however, if when he mentioned his showpiece Ripples of the Nile, he also noted that in 1942 it was slowed down, had lyrics added to it, and became a monster hit for Glenn Miller as Moonlight Cocktail (and yes, Glenn gave him label credit, thus filling his coffers with royalties from the recording and sheet music sales). I was also surprised that he omitted one of the most interesting and individual of ‘20s stride pianists, Donald Lambert (1904-1962), whose work was highly admired by both James P. Johnson and Fats Waller.

Tomita assesses the Armstrong Hot Five and Seven recordings well, but should have mentioned that neither Kid Ory nor Johnny Dodds were really happy with his expanding the role of the cornet/trumpet to dominate the ensemble. They were used to a more democratic distribution of musical ideas; Dodds, in particular, was so upset by Armstrong’s brilliance that he flounders and flubs on the Hot Five recordings as he never did with Oliver or on sessions under his own name. This was one reason why they were more relaxed, and sound much happier, on the New Orleans Bootblacks sessions arranged by Lil Hardin Armstrong on which Morton’s old standby cornetist, George Mitchell, replaced Armstrong.

Tomita seems very upset by Armstrong’s immersion in popular songs of the day, viewing it as a departure from “jazz as true art.” Forgive me, but I don’t see the difference between this and the kind of music that the Fletcher Henderson band played when Armstrong was a member, or the ODJB recordings of (Back Home Again in) Indiana and other pop tunes, or even the material played by the old New Orleans bands which, when not the blues, were clearly popular songs of the day. Armstrong’s one artistic mistake was in forming a permanent band based on the “sweet” sound of Guy Lombardo’s Royal Canadians, which he (and OTHER black musicians) greatly admired—go back and re-read Alain Locke’s comments on “hot jazz” vs. “sweet jazz”—yet even within that context he created some astonishingly artistic solos, particularly on a tune written by Guy Lombardo’s brother Carmen, Sweethearts on Parade. Armstrong would remake this tune a decade later with his more swinging band of the time, and I like that version as well for its verve, insouciance and Armstrong’s deft handling of the rhythm, but his solo on the 1930 recording is one of his real masterpieces, albeit one that is generally ignored by critics.

After discussing Armstrong we get Earl Hines. It took me a fairly long time to appreciate Hines, not because he wasn’t original or interesting but because he played with a very hard, brittle piano tone, but once I “got” him, I realized what a great genius he was.

And then, Tomita drops in a bombshell, in more ways than one: female trumpeter Dolly Jones (1905-1975), who I had never heard of before. She plays very well on the two 1926 Albert Wynn sides he recommends, but the rest of the band sounded so awful I couldn’t enjoy them. Much better are her two solos from Oscar Michaud’s 1938 film, Swing! She clearly had a rock-solid technique, beautiful tone and some good ideas, and would have been an asset to the International Sweethearts of Rhythm. She was also drop-dead gorgeous…a real “bombshell,” particularly when compared to the ISR’s star trumpeter, Ernestine “Tiny” Davis. But Davis could also sing and she moved around when playing in a way that was amusing. Jones just stood there, looked beautiful, and played superbly. Without a dash of showmanship, she had no chance to make it. Even Valaida Snow, who studied with Dolly’s mother Dyer Jones (also known as an outstanding trumpeter), had more showmanship than Dolly did and thus became a star during the Swing Era.

I was thrilled to note that Tomita mentioned Emmet Hardy as an early influence on Bix Beiderbecke. Hardy, who returned to New Orleans shortly after his gig with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, died at age 22 from tuberculosis without having recorded, but he was a close friend of a singing group of young teenaged girls, the Boswell sisters (older sister Martha had a strong crush on Hardy and fantasized about marrying him). In the late 1970s I was in touch with the lone surviving Boswell sister, Vet, and asked her what she thought of Beiderbecke. To my amazement, she had never heard him, so I sent her a tape of his best work (recordings with Trumbauer and the “Bix and his Gag” sides). When I talked to her next and asked what she thought, she said to me, “Oh, he’s wonderful! He sounds just like Emmet!” So there is first-hand corroboration of Hardy’s influence on Beiderbecke. On the other hand, Tomita denies Bix’s first stint with the Jean Goldkette band, stating that his “inability to read music adequately led to a failed audition (italics mine) with Goldkette,” but Goldkette DID hire him at that time, as can be heard in the famous test pressing (the only one that exists) of Clarence M. Jones’ I Didn’t Know from November 24, 1924, which has been reissued many times. Unfortunately, Bix fluffed a note in the middle of his solo, which angered recording engineer Edward T, King, a former star cornetist with Sousa’s Band, who demanded that Goldkette (who, rare for him, was in the studio at the time) dismiss him from the session. That is when Goldkette promised to keep tabs on him and bring him back once he was sure his playing was at a professional level, which he did in the fall of 1926. But it is true that Beiderbecke was a slow reader, and in fact never did progress much further in his reading skills, leading him to lament to his friends, “I’m just a musical degenerate!”

On the other hand, Tomita did his homework on the rather elusive Jean Goldkette, accurately describing him as a “Frenchman born in Greece and raised in Moscow.” The Goldkette family, in fact, produced a team of circus acrobats of which Jean was the odd man out, preferring music to trapeze work. Tomita mistakenly credits Bill Challis as the arranger of Clementine (From New Orleans), but this was a head (confirmed to me by Challis himself). Tomita accurately states that “ ‘Clementine’ is one of the two ‘hot’ jazz songs recorded by Goldkette,” but doesn’t mention the other one, Charles Fulcher’s My Pretty Girl, which was a Challis arrangement (and one of his very finest) until much later. But I was again thrilled by his mention of Marion Harris’ rare 1934 vocal version of Singin’ the Blues. It wasn’t the first vocalese recording ever made—that honor belongs to a vaudeville singer named Bee Palmer, who Paul Whiteman hired to record a vocalese version of the same song in 1929 for Columbia—but Palmer’s voice was so abrasive and unattractive that the label shelved the record, and only a test pressing exists.

When describing Paul Whiteman’s desire to raise the jazz quotient in his band, Tomita dates it from his hiring the ex-Goldkette musicians (Bix, Tram, and Steve Brown) in the fall of 1927, omitting the fact that in the spring of 1927 Whiteman hired members of Red Nichols’ Five Pennies, namely alto saxist Jimmy Dorsey, drummer Vic Berton and Red himself on cornet (trombonist Miff Mole and guitarist Eddie Lang were contractually obligated to Roger Wolfe Kahn’s dance-jazz orchestra, though both Lang and Joe Venuti freelanced on Whiteman and Goldkette recordings), and that they made some remarkable recordings with him, particularly Side By Side and I’m Comin’, Virginia. Whiteman also commissioned Fletcher Henderson’s ace arranger, Don Redman, to write several arrangements for him, two of which he recorded (Whiteman Stomp and an almost manic rendition of the old ODJB piece, Sensation Rag, here renamed Sensation Stomp), and on that session he had both Dorsey brothers (but not Red or Vic; they had both quit by then). Tomita also credits the scintillating arrangement of From Monday On to Matty Malneck, but it was actually written by Tom Satterfield, a brilliant arranger who Whiteman loved (he later contributed two other great charts, Limehouse Blues which was not recorded until Keith Nichols’ “New Whiteman Orchestra” played it at Whitley Bay, England in the early 21st century, and Felix the Cat, an utterly brilliant chart with Bix playing spot solos all through it, which was recorded for Columbia), but like the ill-fated Fud Livingston, Satterfield was a hopeless alcoholic who deteriorated even faster than Beiderbecke.

I read with pleasure Tomita’s accurate description of the old New Orleans Creole clarinetists and their preference for the Albert system clarinets. Although, as he states, they only had 13 keys as opposed to the 17 of the more standard Boehm system clarinets, I know from talking to jazz clarinetists that the Albert system instruments are rather quirky to play, and the lack of those additional four keys somewhat limits their facility in chromatic passages. But just going over the legendary names of clarinetists who used Albert system instruments makes you wonder if perhaps some modern musicians may not consider them. One of their assets was a very rich lower range, which gave their playing a “woody” sound that the Boehm instruments did not, as evidenced by the playing of Omer Simeon, Barney Bigard, Albert Nicholas, Darnell Howard and especially Jimmie Noone, whose rich, full tone was the despair of many a New York and Chicago clarinetist.

Tomita surprised me again by mentioning that “gaspipe” clarinetist George McClennon was comedian Bert Williams’ adopted son—I never knew that. I was also happy to read Tomita’s assessment of Wilbur Sweatman, enormously popular in his day but a musician whose music just never grabbed me. The way he explains it is that “his music does not fit neatly” into either the ragtime or jazz styles, being shaped by his extensive experience in tent shows, minstrelsy and vaudeville.

The remainder of the book from that point on describes various sub-categories of jazz including the innovators and popularizers of each instrument, thankfully crediting Eddie Lang as the father of true jazz guitar (though a rare Nick Lucas session from 1922 really piqued my interest) and rightfully giving high marks to both Jack Teagarden and Jimmy Harrison on trombone (I always feel that Harrison is badly underrated in most jazz histories). Tomita claims that Teagarden played with the Roger Wolfe Kahn band, but except for that one 1928 recording date, he did not. Miff Mole was so hung over that he was in no shape to record, but one of the musicians in the band had heard Teagarden play and asked Kahn’s permission to call him up for the recording session. And She’s a Great, Great Girl was not one of his first recordings, it was the very first. I also think that Tomita should have mentioned Teagarden’s trick of taking the bell off the trombone and hanging a water glass on the tubing to create a haunting blues sound, since he is the only trombonist in history who was ever able to play like that. He debuted this device on the 1929 Mound City blue Blowers recording of Tailspin Blues.

When discussing the great New Orleans bassist Theodore “Steve” Brown, Tomita gives the correct date for his landmark recording of Dinah with Goldkette, January 27, 1926, but mistakenly claims that the Goldkette recording of My Pretty Girl was made “four days later.” It was recorded a year and six days later, on February 1, 1927. I realize that many of the errors I am bringing up may seem like nitpicking, and God knows I’ve had typos in my blog posts, but this is a blog where I can go in, edit and correct it quickly. As a scholarly book on jazz, and one I fervently hope will become a standard text on this era, someone should have caught all these little things and fixed them before going to print. The important thing I wish to stress is that most of Tomita’s musical judgments are sound and his history of the era generally very accurate. And he does keep throwing little things in that even surprised me.

I found his chapter on territory bands, for instance, to be mostly spot-on as well as informing, bringing to light orchestras I hadn’t known about. This is typical of the thorough work he did in researching some of the more unusual musicians of the era, and I applaud him for that. His chronology of Andy Kirk, the evolution of his “Clouds of Joy” band and their involvement with the greatest female jazz musician of the ‘20s, pianist-composer Mary Lou Williams, is entirely accurate and good to read in a book like this. I also appreciated his continually referencing Lil Hardin Armstrong—her impact on the history of jazz via her musical education of her first husband Louis cannot be understated—but if there was one jazz musician of that period whose work was too strongly ragtime-bound, it was she and not Vic Berton, whose drumming closely resembles many of the techniques used by today’s drummers in their continual fracturing of the beat and variety of sounds from their drum kit. I listened carefully to the Lovie Austin recording he recommended, Traveling Blues with Tommy Ladnier and Jimmy O’Bryant, and this has a much more jazzy feel to it than anything Lil Armstrong ever played. Austin really could swing, even here in 1924. Lil Armstrong was still stomping and ragging into her late years. (I would add that Peepin’ Blues by Austin is also very good.)

Tomita’s enthusiastic description of the Alphonso Trent band out of Texas prompted me to go to YouTube and listen to all their issued recordings. He’s right that the arrangements are creative and that the musicians exhibit “impeccable musicianship and flawless execution,” but even for the years 1929-33 their rhythm was exceptionally stiff and jerky, even more so than the Henderson band, and the arrangements were, to my ears, too cluttered and over-crowded with conflicting musical ideas that probably confused and alienated many average listeners. The page and a half on all-female bands was even more fascinating, unveiling names I’d never heard of before.

I was again delighted to see, in the chapter on vocal jazz, praise for such pioneers who were not racist and in fact were proud to be ale to present jazz songs, including songs by Black composers, to the American public. Tomita again brought up Marion Harris, all but forgotten for more than a half-century (as a child, I noted that my grandmother owned a Columbia record titled I’m a Jazz Vampire by one Marion Harris…I found the song to be funny and engaging, but no one in my family remembered or knew who she was) as well as the more famous names, Ethel Waters, Bing Crosby and Annette Hanshaw. Yet although I personally always loved Al Jolson’s singing, particularly the records he made in the mid-to-late 1940s, I question his being categorized a jazz singer although that is how he envisioned himself. Yes, he used rhythmic displacement in several of his recordings, but to be honest, he never swung despite his far-reaching influence on such singers as Crosby, Elvis Presley, Paul McCartney and even Jackie Wilson, all admirers of his.

In his discussion of Ethel Waters, I was surprised that Tomita did not mention her back-up band during her tenure with Black Swan records, “Ethel Waters’ Jazz Masters,” which recorded some very hot instrumentals in addition to accompanying the singer. This band included either Gus Aiken or Joe Smith on cornet, George Brashear on trombone, Gavin Bushell or Elmer Chambers (or both) on clarinet, Joe Elder on alto sax, Fletcher Henderson on piano, Ralph Escudero on tuba and sometimes Charlie Jackson on violin. Whether this was a real working band or one put together by the record label, their recordings were surprisingly hot for their time, sort of a Black ODJB on steroids, and this period was among Waters’ best.

The final segment of the book, covering the first appearances in Europe and Asia of black ragtime and jazz orchestras, was very interesting. All I had known about Sam Wooding was that his band was the first jazz aggregation heard by the young Alfred Lion, which helped him develop a lifelong love and fascination with the music.

Despite the little mistakes here and there and numerous typos throughout, this is still the best book I’ve yet read on the early jazz scene. It is said that reviewers who criticize such books wish that they had written it, but that’s not true of me. On the contrary, I’m more than happy that Fumi Tomita wrote it. He has a doctorate, and thus clout, whereas I just have a B.S. in Education, English major and Music minor, which is all I could afford. Besides, this takes me off the hook for being accused of racism. Thus, I am more than happy that he wrote it and will be the one to defend his positions. I just hope that Tomita and SUNY will revisit the text, make the corrections and edit out the typos to make it immune to any complaints from the academic community.

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

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[1] Locke, Alain: The Negro and his Music, pp. 43-50 (Associates in Negro Folk Education, Washington D.C., 1936, 152 pp. available for free reading online at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015009742886&view=1up&seq=152)