ONE OF THE GREATEST OF THE EARLY NEW

Orleans jazz musicians, Sidney Bechet (1897-

1959) was among those who left the city
around the time of World War I, bringing the
I
music to an international audience. Although
he performed on clarinet throughout his career,
he was also the first important player of the so- Sidney
prano saxophone, which became his main in-
strument. Bechet worked for Duke Ellington for
a few months in 1924 and his New Orleans
Bechet's
style had a great influence on Ellington's band.
His fortunes declined during the 1930s, along
Musical
with the "hot" style he exemplified, but he be-
came one of the beneficiaries of the New Or-
leans revival at the turn of the decade.
Philosophy
During the latter part of his life, Bechet
narrated his autobiography in a series of taped interviews, which were later tran-
scribed and edited. 1 These selections from the book that resulted, Treat It Gentle: An
Autobiography (1960), pertain to Bechet's musical philosophy and the heritage that
shaped it. Although it is in some sense a document of the 1950s, the book is ex-
cerpted here as a firsthand account of the earliest jazz "musicianers." Bechet makes
his story vivid and evocative by personifying the musical tradition to which he be-
longed, allowing him to present jazz as something that is experienced as deeply per-
sonal, yet shared socially and rooted historically.

y sto1y goes a long way back. It goes further back than I had any-
thing to do with. My music is like that. I got it from something in-
herited, just like the stories my father gave down to me. And those
stories are all I know about some of the things bringing me to where I am.
And all my life I've been ttying to explain about something, something I un-
derstand-the part of me that was there before I was. It was there waiting
to be me. It was there waiting to be the music. lt's that part I've been trying
to explain to myself all my life.
There was a hell of a lot of fuss and confusion about the time my father
was growing up. It was right around Emancipation time. All the papers were
taking sides, running cartoons of apes and things, screaming blood and gun-
powder. A lot of people didn't want to lose the Negroes. The Negro, he was
three billion dollars worth of property, and here was a law coming that was
to take it all away. Who was to do the work then?

Source: Sidney Bechet, Treat It Gentle: An Autohiograpby (London: Cassell. 1960), pp. 4,
47-48, 104, 203, 63, 176-77, 209, 201.
1The extent to which Bechet's collaborators rewrote his memoirs is now hard to

determine. For an account of the complex nnwP•,~ that produced Treat It Gentle,
see John Chilton, Sidney Bechet: The c>(Jazz (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1987), pp. 290]-92. Sec also the thoughtful reviews by Nat Hentoff, "A Need
to be Moving," Metronome, March pp. 30-31, and Max Jones, "This Book I,
Bechet," Melody Maker, 23, p. 5.
l

4 I Firsl Accounts
Well, they had the war, and it made a bitterness. A lot of people, they
never could climb so high again after the war and they had a whole lot to
say about that. It was a crime; it was all political; it was the end of America.
What would anyone want with a lot of black people being free, people who
couldn't even spell their names or read a book? And everything changed up-
side down . . . the soldiers being brought in to guard, sort of keep order,
and making more bitterness just by being there.
But the Negroes, it had made them free. They wouldn't be bought and
sold now, not ever again. If they could find a piece of land somewheres it
would be theirs, they could work it for themselves-the ones anyway who
had heard that slavery was against the law. A lot of Negroes, especially in
back places, never did hear about it. But mostly there was this big change:
a different feeling had got started.
Go down Moses,
Way down in Egypt land;
Tell old Pharaoh,
Let my people go ..
It was years they'd been singing that. And suddenly there was a differ-
ent way of singing it. You could feel a new way of happiness in the lines.
All that waiting, all that time when that song was far-off music, waiting mu-
sic, suffering music; and all at once it was there, it had arrived. It was joy
music now. It was Free Day . . . Emancipation.
And New Orleans just bust wide open. A real time was had. They heard the
music, and the music told them about it. They heard that music from bands march-
ing up and down the streets and they knew what music it was. It was laughing
out loud up and down all the streets, laughing like two people just finding out
about each other . . like something that had found a short-cut after traveling
through all the distance there was. That music, it wasn't spirituals or blues or rag-
' time, but everything all at once, each one putting something over on the other.
Maybe that's not easy to understand. White people, they don't have the mem-
01y that needs to understand it. But that's what the music is . . . a lost thing
finding itself. It's like a man with no place of his own. He wanders the world
and he's a stranger wherever he is; he's a stranger right in the place where he
was born. But then something happens to him and he finds a place, his place.
He stands in front of it and he crosses the door, going inside. That's where the
music was that day-it was taking him through the door; he was coming home.
All those people who had been slaves, they needed the music more than
ever now; it was like they were trying to find out in this music what they
were supposed to do with this freedom: playing the music and listening to
it-waiting for it to express what they needed to learn.
Sometimes when I was playing the music I knew what it was that I was
remembering. Other times, I was just being a kid, forgetting a thing almost
before it was over. Somehow it seems like I always understood more when
the music was playing and I was inside it, bringing it on out to itself.
There's a pride in it, too. The man singing it, the man playing it, he makes
a place. For as long as the song is being played, that's the place he's been look-
ing for. And when the piece is all played and he's back, it may be he's feeling
"Whence Comes Jass?" / 5
good; maybe he's making good money and getting good treatment ~nd he's feel-
ing good--or maybe he starts missing the song. Maybe he sta1ts wanting the place
he found while he was playing the song. Or maybe it just troubles back at him.
Sometimes we'd have what they called in those days "bucking contests";
that was long before they talked about "cutting contests." One band, it would
come right up in front of the other and play at it, and the first band it would
play right back, until finally one band just had
to give_ in. _And the one that
didn't give in, all the people, they'd rush up to it and give it drmks and food
and holler for more, wanting more, not having enough. There just couldn't
be enough for those people back there. And that band was best that played
the best together. No matter what kind _!2f music it was, if the ban_d could
keep it together, that made it the best. [!hat band, it ~s\uld know its num-
bers and know its foundation and it would know itse!f \
In the old days there wasn't no one so anxious to take someone else's
run. We were working together. Each person, he was the other person's mu-
sic: you could feel that really running through the band, making itself up and
coming out so new and strong. We played as a group then . . . .: I guess
just about the loneliest a musicianer can be is in not being able to fmd some-
one he can really play with that way.
\Like I said before, you could ask me, "What's classical music?" l couldn't
answer that. It's not a thing that could be answered straight out. You have
to tell it the long way. You have to tell about the people who make it, what
they have inside them, what they're doi~g, what they're waiting for. Then
you can begin to have an understandingj , .
You come into life alone and you go out of it alone, and you re gomg
to be alone a lot of the time when you're on this earth-and what tells it all,
it's the music. You tell it to the music and the music tells it to you. And then
you know about it. You know what it was happened to you.
2
ONE OF THE EARLIEST PUBLISHED DISCUS-
sions of jazz appeared in the New York Sun
on August 5, 1917. The author, Walter Kings-
ley ("the Great Authority on the Subject" ac-
cording to the Sun), was a press agent for
New York's Palace Theatre. The first section
of his article illustrates how writers frequently
"Whence
projected their fantasies onto the new music:
here jazz is positioned midway between the Comes
exoticism of the African jungle and the eclec-
ticism of New York's vaudeville and variety
shows. Kingsley continues by quoting and
Jass?"
summarizing (sometimes inaccurately) the
work of a certain Professor William Morrison
Patterson, who offers some perceptive com-
ments on rhythm, particularly syncopation.
Source: Walter Kingsley, "Whence Comes Jass' Facts From the Great Authority on die S~b\~ct,''
New York Sun, August 5, ]917, p. 3. Later summarized ;md_quotecl extensively m The
Appeal of the Primitive Jazz," 7be litemty Digest, August 2). 1917, pp. 28-29.
 6 I First Accounts
But when Patterson tries to explain the power of jazz, his theory relies on a contra-
diction that would plague jazz throughout its history: he refers to "savage," "in-
stinctive" jazz musicians, yet he praises their skills and links their art to modernity.
Overall, Kingsley's account of the origins of jazz is closer to the truth than many
other versions that have circulated, but this article is of interest mainly as evidence
of how jazz was being presented to the attention of white Americans at this time.
ariously spelled Jas, Jass, Jaz, Jazz, Jasz, and Jascz.
The word is African in origin. It is common on the Gold Coast of Africa
and in the hinterland of Cape Coast Castle. In his studies of the creole pa-
tois and idiom in New Orleans, Lafcadio Hearn reported that the word "jaz,"
meaning to speed things up, to make excitement, was common among the
blacks of the South and had been adopted by the creoles as a term to be
applied to music of a rudimentary syncopated type. 1 In the old plantation
clays, when the slaves were having one of their rare holidays and the fun
languished, some West Coast African would cry out, "Jaz her up," and this
would be the cue for fast and furious fun. No doubt the witch-doctors and
medicine-men on the Congo used the same term at those jungle "parties"
when the tomtoms throbbed and the sturdy warriors gave their pep an added
kick with rich brews of Yohimbin bark-that precious product of the
Cameroons. 2 Curiously enough the phrase "Jaz her up" is a common one to-
day in vaudeville and on the circus lot. When a vaudeville act needs ginger
the cry from the advisors in the wings is "put in jaz," meaning add low com-
edy, go to high speed and accelerate the comedy spark. "Jasbo" is a form of
the word common in the varieties, meaning the same as "hokum," or low
comedy verging on vulgarity.
, I (jazz music is the delirium tremens of syncopation. It is strict rhythm with-
! \
oufmelocly. To-day the jazz bands take popular tunes and rag them to death
to ma_ke jazz. Beats are added as often as the delicacy of the player's ear will
permi!} In one-two time a third beat is interpolated. There are many half notes
or less and many long-drawn wavering tones, It is an attempt to reproduce
the marvelous syncopation of the_ ~frican jungle. Prof. William Morrison Pat-
terson, Ph.D., of Columbia University in his monumental pioneering experi-
mental investigation of the individual difference in the sense of rhythm says:
"The music of contemporary savages taunts us with a lost art of rhythm.
Modern sophistication has inhibited many native instincts, and the mere fact
that our_<:<:>11yenti()r1al dignity usually forbids us to sway our bodies or to tap
our feet when we hear effective music has deprived us of unsuspected plea-
sures." Professor Patterson goes on to say that the ear keenly sensible of these
wild rhythms has "rhythmic aggressiveness." Therefore of all moderns the jazz
1Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was a writer who was best known for introducing the
West to the culture and literature of Japan.
2Kingsley's "no doubt" signals that he is simply guessing. Similarly, the musical de-
scriptions he offers in the following paragraph are, to put it charitably, vague.
The Location of "Jass" / 7
musicians and their auditors have the most rhythmic aggressiveness, for jazz
is based on th~ . §iJ:.l':;l.g~ musician's wonderful gift for progressive retarding and
acceleration guided by his sense of "swing." He finds syncopation easy and
pleasant He plays to an inner series of time beats joyfully "elastic" because
not necessarily grouped in succession of twos and threes, The highly gifted
jazz artist can get away with five beats where there were but two before. Of
course, beside the thirty-seconds scored for the tympani in some of the mod-
ern Russian music, this doesn't seem so intricate, but just try to beat in be-
tween beats on your kettledrum and make rhythm and you will think better
of it. To be highbrow and quote Professor Patterson once more:
"With these elastic unitary pulses any haphazard series by means of syn-
copation can be readily, because instinctively, coordinated. The result is that
a rhythmic tune compounded of time and stress and pitch relations is cre-
ated, the chief characteristic of which is likely to be complicated syncopa-
tion. An arabesque of accentual differences, group-forming in their nature, is
superimposed upon the fundamental time divisions."
There is jazz precisely defined as a result of months of laboratory
experiment in drum beating and syncopation. The laws that govern jazz
rule in the rhythms of great original prose, verse that sings itself, and opera
of ultra modernity. Imagine Walter Pater, Swinburne, and Borodin swaying
to the same pulses that rule the moonlit music on the banks of African
rivers.
ALTHOUGH NEW ORLEANS HAS LONG BEEN
proud of its status as "the birthplace of jazz,"
that was not always the case. In 1918, the
editors of the city's leading newspaper has-
tened to decline this honor. 1 First, however,
they condemned jazz in musical terms. They
built a "house of the muses" according to the
The
plan of European symphonic music, group-
ing together and dismissing as inferior all Location
types of music that work according to other
principles-especially tho_se_ that encourag,e
bodily movemenr:•Tfieir stern reference to
of "Jass"
tap
peoplitwho their feet at symphony con-
certs reflects the process of sacralizing art and
taming audiences that took place in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 2
Source: "Jass and Jassism," 17Je Times-Picayune !New Orleans I, June 20, 1918, p. 4.
1The Times-Picayune had only a slightly larger circulation than the other leading
daily, the Item.
2sec Lawrence W. Levine, Hif;hhrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy
in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988).
8 I First Accounts
W
e usually think of people as either musical or nonmusical, as if
there were a simple line separating two great classes. The fact
is, however, that there are many mansions in the house of the
muses. There is first the great assembly hall of melody-where most of us
take our seats at some time in o ur lives-but a lesser number pass on to in-
ner sanctuaries of harmony, where the me lodic seque nce , the "tu ne ," as it
most frequently is called, has infinitely less interest than the blending of
notes into chords so that the combining wave-lengths will give new aes-
thetic sensations.1_This inner court of harmony is where nearly all the truly
great music is e njoyecf\
.--'
In the house there is, however, another apartment, properly speaking,
down in the basement, a kind of servants' hall of rhythm. It is there w e hear
the~noT the -inaG;; dance, the throb of the Oriental tambo urines and ket-
tledrums , the clatter of the clogs, the click of Slavic heels, the thumpty-tumpty
of the negro banjo, and , in fact , the native dances of a world. Although com-
monly associated with melody, and less often with harmony also, rhythm is
not necessarily music, and he who loves to keep time to the pulse of the or-
chestral performance by patting his foot upon the theatre fl oor is not neces-
sarily a music lover.
Prominently , in the baseme nt hall of rhythm, is found rag-time, and of
those most devoted to the cult of the displaced acce nt there has developed
a brotherhood of those who, devoid of harmonic and even of melodic in-
stinct, love to fairly wallow in noise. On certain natures , sound loud and
meaningless has an exciting, almost an intoxicating effect, like crude colors
and strong perfumes, the sight of flesh or the sadic pleasure in blood. To
such as these the jass music is a delight, and a dance to the unsta ble bray
of the sackbut gives a sensual delight more intense and quite different from
the languor of a Viennese waltz or the refined sentiment and respectful emo-
tion of an eightee nth-centu ry minuet. 3
In the matter of the jass, New Orleans is particularly interested, since
it has been widely suggested that this particular form of musical v ice had
its birth in this city-that it came , in fact , from dou btful surroundings in
our slums. We do not recognize the honor of parenthood, but with such
a story in circulation, it behooves us to be last to accept the atrocity in
polite society, a nd where it has crept in we should make it a p o int of civic
hono r to suppress it. Its musical value is nil, and its possibilities of harm
a re great.
3"Sad ic"is equivalent to "sadistic." Until the eighteenth century, the trombone was
often called a "sackbut"; here , the archaic word is used for effect.
•A"Serious"
ONE OF THE FIRST PRESTIGIOUS CONCERT
hall musicians to endorse jau was a Swiss
conductor, Ernest Ansermet (1883-1969). In
this essay his main topic is Will Marion Cook
(1869-1944), an important composer for the
black musical theater who led a series of
bands in New York from the turn of the cen-
tury into the 1920s; Cook assembled the New
York Syncopated Orchestra (later called the
Southern Syncopated Orchestra) and toured
Musician Takes
the United States and England with it be-
tween 1918 and 1920. Ansermet's comments
Jazz Seriously
have long been famous, however, because of
his early recognition of Sidney Bechet's tal-
ent. Although even this enthusiastic report is
not entirely free of condescension, Ansermet
presents this music as different from European concert music yet not inferior to it.
He recognized the cooperative flexibility that kept the performances fresh, and his
deep respect for these musicians was extraordinary for the time . Perceptively, he em-
phasized performance over composition, and tradition as much as instinct. Still, the
conductor was troubled by his inability to gauge the musicians' interiority (what they
thought and felt, who they really were): he liked what he was hearing, but wasn't
sure he understood its source. 1
T
he first thing that strikes one about the Southern Syncopated Or-
chestra is the astonishing perfection, the superb taste, and the ferv or
of its playing. I couldn 't tell whether these artists feel it is their duty
to be sincere, or w hether they are driven by the idea th at they have a "mis-
:.ion" to fulfill , or whether they are convinced of the "nobility" of their task,
or have that holy "audacity" a nd that sacred "valor" which the musical code
r ·quires of our European musicians, nor indeed whether they are animated
b • any "idea" whatsoever. But I can see they have a very keen sense of the
music they love, and a pleasure in making it which they communicate to
the hearer with irresistible force-a pleasure which pushes them to outdo
themselves all the time , to constantly enrich and refine their medium. They
play generally without written mu sic, and eve n when they have it, the score
nly serves to indicate the general line , for there a re very few numbers I
have heard them execute twice with exactly the same effects. I imagine that,
knowing the voice attributed to them in the harmo nic e nsemble a nd con-
·ious of the role their instrument is to play, they can let themselves go , in
a certai n direction and within certain limits, as their hearts desire. They are
Source: Originally published in Switzerland: E. Ansermet , ··s ur un Orchestre Negre, " Reuue Ro-
mande, October 1919. Reprinted in Paris, with 8 translati on by Walte r E. Sch:.iap, in
Jazz Hot, November- December 1938, pp. 4-9.
1 1-or a fuller d iscussion of this topic, se e Robert Walser, "Deep Jazz: Notes on lnte-
riority, Race, and Criticism, " in Inventing tbe Psycbological: Toward a Cultural His-
tmJ1 of Emotional Life in America, ed . Joel Pfister an d Nancy Schnog (Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1997), pp. 271-96.
9

AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSICIANS WERE NOT
often invited to participate in public de-
bates over the nature and meaning of early
jazz, so this statement by James Reese Eu-
5 go to war. However, Colonel Hayward raised $10,000 and told me to get die
rope (1881-1919) is especially significant.
A successful band leader and composer, Eu-
rope organized in 1910 an association of "A Negro
black musicians known as the Clef Club,
and in 1913 his band became the first black Explains
group ever to make recordings. He gained
great fame through his association with
Irene and Vernon Castle, leaders of the so-
'Jazz' n
cial dance craze of the 191 Os, who popu-
larized African-American-derived dances
among the white middle class. During
World War I, Europe became famous for the
quality of his military band and for the concerts he conducted in France. In ret-
rospect, his music is usually taken to represent a transitional moment between
ragtime and jazz.
Like so many other people, Europe offered a fanciful explanation of the word
"jazz" (evidence for the existence of "Razz's Band" is lacking). But his story includes
valuable accounts of how his music was received, and he mentions technical details
to explain how certain "peculiar" sounds were produced. With great conviction, Eu-
rope advocated the cultivation of "negro music" (though where he refers to "racial"
qualities we might today be inclined to write of "cultural" ones), invoking the names
of prominent African-American musicians of the time in support of his argument
against musical assimilation. This article begins with a brief introduction by Grenville
Vernon, under whose byline Europe's statement appeared in the New York Tribune
in 1919.
ust what is •'jazz"? Most of us know it when we hear it, but few of us
1 know its derivation, its reason, or the manner in which the veritable
"jazz'' is produced, for there are '•jazzes" which are not veritable. f'fazz"
1s, of course, negro; somehow or other all musical originality in An1erica
seems to be negf(;i:The negro musically is always a worshipper of rhythm;
often he is a rhythomaniac, and "jazz·• arises from his rhythmic fervor, com-
bined with a peculiar liking for strange sounds. This at least is the opinion
of Lieutenant James Reese Europe, late of the Machine Gun Battalion of the
old 15th Regiment. Lieutenant Europe has just returned from more than a
year's service in France, which he passed partly in the direction of the band
he had organized for his regiment, a band which had a stupendous success
in France and which is having equally as great success at home,
"When war broke out I enlisted as a private in Colonel Hayward's regi-
ment, and I had just passed my officer's examination when the Colonel asked
Source: Urt'nvillc Vt"rnon, "Thal Mysterious Jnz,',. :Yl?w York fri/Junc, March 30, 1919, Section
It, p, S, Subsequently reprinted with slight changes as "A Negro Explains 'Jazz.'" '/hi?
Uteraiy lJigesl, April 26, 1919. pp, 28--2'l,
"A Negro Explains Jazz''' / 13
me to form a band. I told him that it would be impossible, as the negro mu-
sicians of New York were paid too well to have them give up their jobs to
musicians wherever I could get them. The reed players l got m Porto Rico,
the rest from all over the country. l had only one New York negro in the
band-my solo cornetist. These are the men who now compose the band,
and they are all fighters as well as musicians, for all have seen service in the
trenches.
"I believe that the term 'jazz' originated with a band of four pieces
which was found about fifteen years ago in New Orleans, and which was
known as 'Razz's Band.' This band was of truly extraordinary composition.
It consisted of a barytone horn, a trombone, a cornet, and an instrument
made out of the china-berry-tree. This instrument is something like a clar-
inet, and is made by the Southern negroes themselves. Strange to say, it
can be used only while the sap is in the wood, and after a few weeks' use
has to be thrown away. It produces a beautiful sound and is worthy of in-
clusion in any band or orchestra. I myself intend to employ it soon in my
band. The four musicians of Razz's Band had no idea at all of what they
were playing; they imp.rQY.!2~SL as they went along, but such was their .iJl~~
natc... ~~!}_:;i.e._oLrhytll_m that they produced something which was very tak-
i~g. Fr~m the small cafcs of New Orleans they graduated to the St. Charles
Hotel, and after a time to the Winter Garden in New York, where they ap-
peared, however, only a few days, the individual musicians being grabbed
up by various orchestras in the city. Somehow in the passage of time Razz's
Band got changed into 'Jazz's Band,' and from tl11s corruption arose the
term.Jazz.' . . . . . ' ,.. . '
("The negro loves anything that 1s peculiar m music, and this 1azzmg
appeals to him strongly:_Jt is accomplished in several ways. With the brass
instruments we put in mutes and made a whirling motion with the tongue,
at the same time blowing full pressure. With wind instruments we pinch
the mouthpiece and blow hard. This __prgduc~s the peculiar sound which
you all know. To us it is not discorcEint, aswe.. plaflhe inusic as it _is_ writ-
ten, only that we accent strongly in this manner the notes wluch ongmally
would be without accent. It is natural for us to do this; it is, indeed, a
racial musical characteristic. I have to call a daily rehearsal of my band to
prevent the musicians from adding to their music more than 1 wish them
to. Whenever possible they all embroider their parts in order to produce
new, peculiar sounds. Some of these effects are excellent and some are
not, and I have to be continually on the lookout to cut out the results of
my musicians' originality. .
"This jazz music made a tremendous sensation in France. I recall o_ne m-
cident in particular, From last February to last August I had been m the
trenches, in command of my machine gun squad. I had been through the
terrific general attack in Champagne when General Gouraud annihilated the
enemy by his strategy and finally put an end to their hopes ot victory, ~rnd
r had been through many a smaller engagement. l can tell you tha~ musJC
was one of the things furthest from my mind when one day, just betore the
14 / First Accounts
Allied conference in Paris on August 18, Colonel Hayward came to me and
said:
" 'Lieutenant Europe, I want you to go back to your band and give a sin-
gle concert in Paris.'
"I protested, telling him that I hadn't led the band since Februa1y, but he
insisted. Well, I went back to my band, and with it I went to Paris. What was
to be our only concert was in the Theatre des Champs-Elysees. Before we
had played two numbers the audience went wild. We had conquered Paris.
General Bliss and French high officers who had heard us insisted that we
should stay in Paris, and there we stayed for eight weeks. Everywhere we
gave a concert it was a riot, but the supreme moment came in the Tuileries
Gardens when we gave a concert in conjunction with the greatest bands in
the world-the British Grenadiers' Band, the Band of the Garde Republicain,
and the Royal Italian Band. My band, of course, could not compare with any
of these, yet the crowd, and it was such a crowd as I never saw anywhere
else in the world, deserted them for us. We played to 50,000 people at least,
and, had we wished it, we might be playing yet.
"After the concert was over the leader of the band of the Garde Repub-
licain came over and asked me for the score of one of the jazz compositions
we had played. He said he wanted his band to play it. I gave it to him and
the next day he again came to see me. He explained that he couldn't seem
to get the effects I got, and asked me to go to a rehearsal. I went with him.
The great band had played the composition superbly-but he was right: the
jass effects were missing. I took an instrnment and showed him how it could
be done, and he told me that his own musicians felt sure that my band had
used special instruments. Indeed, some of them, afterward attending one of
my rehearsals, did not believe what I had said until after they had examined
the instruments used by my men.
"I have come back from France more firmly convinced than ever that ne-
groes should write negro music. We have our own racial feeling and if we
try to copy whites we will make bad copies:) noticed that the Morocco ne-
gro bands played music which had an affinity to ours. One piece, 'In Zanz-
ibar,' I took for my band, and though white audiences seem to find it too
discordant, I found it most sympathetic. We won France by playing music
which was ours and not a pale imitation of others, and if we are to develop
in America we must develop along our own lines. Our musicians do their
best work when using negro material.(Will Marion Cook, William Tires, even
Harry Burleigh and Coleridge-Taylor a;e not truly themselves [except] in the
music which expresses their race. (Mr. Tires, for instance, writes charming
waltzes, but the best of these have in them negro influences. {!he music of
our race springs from the soil, and this is true today of no other race, except
possibly the Russians, and it is because of this that I and all my musicians
have come to love Russian music. Indeed, as far as I am concerned, it is the
only music I care for outside of negro." •'
ALTHOUGH MUSIC IS OFTEN DISMISSED AS
6
mere entertainment, this 1919 editorial ar-
gues that musical performances can have
profound political effects. It appeared in the
Chicago Defender, one of the country's lead-
ing black newspapers, in response to a con-
cert by James Reese Europe and his band.
"Jazzing
ith the ringing down of the Apw~yd_ ,,
cutain at the Auditorium last
Saturday night there dosed a
remarkable period of band concerts. If
re1u ice
you were not fortunate enough to attend
you missed a rare treat. This band had
made a wonderful record with the Amer-
ican expeditionary forces in France and with its jazz music had proved a source
of great entertainment wherever it went. When it returned to the United States
it was given a great ovation by the people of New York City, and Chicago
found it equal to advance notice. It has all the artistic finish of any band that
has invaded these parts in many years. We doubt seriously that Creatore at
his best could have furnished a better entertainment. 1 The audiences were
highly responsive and rewarded each number with the most spirited applause.
The closing number of the program, "In No Man's Land," in which the house
was thrown into darkness and all the noises of the battlefield reproduced, fur-
nished a thriller that was a fitting finale to a splendid evening's entertainment.
We hopethe swing of Europe and his band around the country will be
nation wide. the most prejudiced enemy of our Race could n~t sit t~r~ugh
an evening with Europe without coming away with a changed v1ewpom~jFor
he is compelled in spite of himself to see us in a new light. It is a well-
known fact that the white people view us largely from the standpoint of the
cook, porter, and waiter, and his limited opportunities are responsible for
much of the distorted opinion held concerning us. Europe and his band are
worth more to our Race than a thousand speeches from so-called Race ora-
tors and uplifters. Mere wind-jamming has never given any race material help.
It may be entertaining in a way to recite to audiences of our own people in
a flamboyant style the doings of the Race, but the spellbinder's efforts, be-
ing confined almost exclusively to audiences of our own people, .is of as
much help in properly presenting our cause to those whom we desire most
to reach as a man trying to lift himself by pulling at his own bootstraps. Ex-
perience has shown that most of our spellbinders are in it for what there is
in it. The good they do is nil.
Europe and his band are demonstrating what our people ca.o do in a
field where the results are bound to be of the greatest benefit. ~ie has the
Source: "Jazzing Away Prejudice," Chicago Defender, May 10, 1919, p. 20.
!Giuseppe Creatore (1871-1952) was a successful conductor, impresario, composer,
and band leader.
15
 16 / First Accounts
white man's ear because he is giving the white man something new. He is
meeting a popular demand and in catering to this love of syncopated music
he is jazzing away the barriers of prejudice.·)'
i
BORN AND RAISED IN NEW ORLEANS, JELLY
Roll Morton (1890-1941; born Ferdinand
Lamothe) was working as a pianist in the
sporting houses of the city's Storyville district
1 of ragtime. This particular gentleman had short hair and I decided then that
by the time he had reached his twelfth birth-
day. Morton began traveling around 1904-
gambling, shooting pool, hustling, and play- The "Inventor
ing the piano-and by 1917 had ranged as
far as New York and Los Angeles. Through-
out this period he absorbed many kinds of
of Jazz"
music-ragtime, blues, hymns, minstrel
songs, Tin Pan Alley songs, and Caribbean
music with its "Spanish tinge" -blending
them together and helping to spread the
emerging style that was becoming known as
jazz. The recordings Morton made in Chicago
in the mid-1920s announced a new fusion of improvisation and composition, lead-
ing some historians to hail Morton as the first jazz composer.
These selections are taken from Alan Lomax's Mister Je//y Roll, a book based on
a series of recorded interviews Lomax conducted with Morton in 1938. Although
Lomax admitted to having "polished" the prose, he preserved a remarkable autobi-
ographical statement by one of the most important musicians in jazz. Morton's ac-
count evokes the rich diversity of musical life in New Orleans and provides an in-
sider's explanation of how jazz developed and how it works. Morton touches on
personal problems of identity-as a light-skinned Creole, and as a man playing an
instrument that was largely identified with women-at the same time that his story
shows how he belonged to the tradition of piano "professors": boastful, vain, and
competitive virtuosi who cultivated a dandified image (Morton had a diamond set
in one of his front teeth, and bragged that he was "the suit man from suit land").
His claim that he was the "inventor of jazz" and the false birth date he gave in or-
der to support this assertion should be understood in this light, although it's prob-
ably true that no one could make a better case than he.
f course, my folks never had the idea they wanted a musician in
the family. They always had it in their minds that a musician was a
tramp, trying to duck work, with the exception of the French Opera
House players which they patronized. As a matter of fact, I, myself, was in-
spired to play piano by going to a recital at the French Opera House. There
was a gentleman who rendered a selection on the piano, very marvelous mu-
sic that made me want to play the piano very, very much. The only trouble
Source: Alan Lomax, Mister]e/ly Roll: 771e Fortunes qf]elly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and
"Inventor of]azz' (New York: Pantheon, 1993) [original publication: New York: Duell,
Sloan and Pearce, 19491, pp. 7, 52-53, 76--82, 179-8_'3.
The "Inventor of Jazz'' / 17
was that this gentleman had long bushy hair, and, because the piano was
known in our circle as an instrument for a lady, this confirmed me in my
idea that if I played the piano I would be misunderstood.
I didn't want to be called a sissy. I wanted to marry and raise a family
and be known as a man among men when I became of age. So I studied
various other instruments, such as violin, drums and guitar, until one day at
a party I saw a gentleman sit down at the piano and play a very good piece
the instrument was good for a gentleman same as it was for a lady. I must
have been about ten years old at the time.
So in the year of 1902 when I was about seventeen years old I happened
to invade one of the sections where the birth of jazz originated from. Some
friends took me to The Frenchman's on the corner of Villery and Bienville,
which was at that time the most famous nightspot after eve1ything was closed.
It was only a back room, but it was where all the greatest pianists frequented
after they got off from work in the sporting-houses. About four A.M., unless
plenty of money was involved on their jobs, they would go to The French-
man's and there would be everything in the line of hilarity there.
All the girls that could get out of their houses was there. The million-
aires would come to listen to their favorite pianists. There weren't any dis-
crimination of any kind. They all sat at different tables or anywhere they felt
like sitting. They all mingled together just as they wished to and everyone
was just like one big happy family. People came from all over the country
and most times you couldn't get in. So this place would go on at a tremen-
dous rate of speed-plenty money, drinks of all kinds-from four o'clock in
the morning until maybe twelve, one, two, or three o'clock in the daytime.
Then, when the great pianists used to leave, the crowds would leave.
New Orleans was the stomping grounds for all the greatest pianists in
the country. We had Spanish, we had colored, we had white, we had French-
mens, we had Americans, we had them from all parts of the world because
there were more jobs for pianists than any other ten places in the world. The
sporting-houses needed professors, and we had so many different styles that
whenever you came to New Orleans, it wouldn't make any difference that
you just came from Paris or any part of England, Europe, or any place-
whatever your tunes were over there, we played them in New Orleans.
I might name some of the other great hot men operating around New Or-
leans at this period and a little later. There was Emanuel Perez, played strictly
ragtime, who was maybe the best trumpet in New Orleans till Freddie Kep-
pard came along. John Robichaux probably had the best band in New Or-
leans at the time, a strictly all-reading, legitimate bunch 1 Before him, there
1Morton means that none of the players improvised.