James Reese Europe...musical pioneer

[LouieB]

I have often been accused here of looking at past musical figures as being better than more contemporary ones, but in the past year I have learned about a pioneering musical figure I had never really heard of before. Even those of us who listen to and like older music tend to think of the music industry as having started in the 1920s with the advent of electrical recording the groundbreaking recordings from the "golden age" from the

"race and hillbilly" sides such as those that showed up on the Anthology of American Folk Music. Thanks to Archeophone Records I have discovered a smaller but still interesting group of recordings that are rarely reissued and frankly more difficult to listen to, due to the fact that they were recorded acoustically.

 

Now I have talked about this stuff before, but one musician kept coming up in these discussions about early music, particularly the fantastic book "Lost Sounds" by Tim Brooks. I highly recommend this book if you are interested in African American music. The numerous sections on various historical figures are fascinating, since many of them are unknown or little known about them. Unlike today when we document every note and action by any musicians, either famous or not, those who recorded during the first 25 years of recording left few records or "records".

 

After reading about James Reese Europe in Lost Sounds and hearing some of his recordings, I sought out a full biography called "A Life in Ragtime" and I recently finished it. This book also is worth reading. Europe is most well known for his recordings with the WWI US Army band form the New York 15th Infantry Regiment,which was renamed the 369th nicknamed the "Hellfighters". The 20 some recordings made by this band after the war are reissued on a couple different record labels and include "Memphis Blues", "On Patrol in No Man's Land", and "The St. Louis Blues." These recordings embody some of the earliest pre-big band jazz. But even before this Europe did several amazing things. He believed strongly in the importance of both American music, in forms created by African Americans; a dignified and forward looking music, beyond the minstrel, spirituals, black show turns, and plantation melodies that were popular at the turn of the previous century. He learned arranging and conducting and organized the Clef Club, a New York booking agency that was both a cultural organization and a hiring hall for African American musicians, who were in big demand during the dance craze that began at the same time. Europe helped popularize many of the "animal dances", of which the Fox Trot continues to be popular to this day (and bedeviling pre-teens in dance classes everywhere.) It got to the point where the dance instructors who made their living teaching the middle class these dances (considered overly sexual), only wanted black musicians to play for their demonstrations, shows, and classes. Europe's patrons were the stylish and popular couple Vernon and Irene Castle who were involved in inventing the Fox Trot and many other dances.

 

Even prior to this Europe was involved in the flowering of the black musical on Broadway, which actually fell out of fashion and into hard times just prior to the First World War. But the other incredible thing Europe did in addition to all the rest, was organize the Clef Club Orchestra, a large orchestra of 10 pianos, banjos, mandolins, violins, and other types of hybrid string instruments that are rare today. Europe took this Orchestra into Carnegie Hall and presented monumental concerts of soloists, duets, harmony groups, and the orchestra; often long form music by various black composers of the day, including Europe himself were presented.

 

This story has a sad and somewhat cinematic ending. James Reese Europe, just as he was poised to become one of the most famous musicians in America, after he had survived machine gun duty in the trenches of Europe, introduced syncopate music to the French (who were some of the first to recognize jazz as a significant art form), returning to NYC to a triumphant ticker tape parade and a concert tour with his celebrated Hellfighters Band, recorded sides for Pathe Records, toured the US to fill concert halls with the band (including a three day run at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago where we have all enjoyed a Wilco concert or two), amid talks of creating a National Negro Symphony orchestra to further African American music and leave behind such cultural ephemera as "coon" songs; amid all this and during the intermission of of a show in Boston, Europe was attached by one of his drummers who cut him with a small knife on the neck and mortally wounded. He died the next day in the hospital and had the first public funeral of any black man in New York City with a million people lining 5th Avenue to pay their respects. James Reese Europe never got to do all the things he envisioned, and American jazz went on to become a force to be reckoned with, spawning nearly all the music we all know and love and figures such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Thelonius Monk, and John Coltrane; not to mention the blues, rhythm and blues, soul, rock and roll, and hip hop.

 

Precious few recordings of this era and these musicians are still around (as compared to the pap produced by the major record companies of the day such as Columbia and Victor with their house bands) I am sure they only hint at the actual sound these musicians made. Today we take for granted music education, the significant reduction of racism, the easy ability to record and distribute any form of musical recordings, and a world wide acceptance and demand for American music, but a hundred years ago these issues were not nearly so simple. American music was considered inferior to European music and black music, particularly syncopated music, was distained as more inferior yet. Yet James Reese Europe pushed ahead and set the stage for one of the largest cultural movements the world has ever seen, the ascendancy of African American music.

 

Not only is it humbling to not have known some of this information earlier in my life, but as I get older I realize we stand on the shoulders of true giants. After reading up on James Europe and some of his collaborators (incidentally Eubie Blake who had a late career resurgence and lived to 100 was one of Europe's colleagues and prot

[Wendy]

This story has a sad and somewhat cinematic ending.

Nice write-up Lou. This does sound like something that would make a great movie/documentary.

[LouieB]

Nice write-up Lou. This does sound like something that would make a great movie/documentary.

Actually I think it would make a great biopic rather than a documentary. There is very little to go on in terms of actual documentation, other than alot of newspaper articles. Seeing a huge assemblage of string intruments in ways not commonly used (or even played) today would be pretty cool. Europe's private life turned out to be sort of interesting too, with a wife from the upper crust of black society and a girlfriend who was showgirl from a musical, with whom he had a child that he named James Reese Europe Jr. and was not recognized by the official family, but lived into his 80s. Not to mention the war scenes, the shows in France, playing for European nobility, staging of concerts and all black musicals. Sounds like a good movie to me

 

The supporting cast of real characters including Eubie Black, Noble Sissel, Will Marion Cooke, Bert Williams and a number of other equally interesting people (and all African American) would make a great movie.

 

Thanks for actually reading this by the way....I expected no responses!!

 

LouieB