Books, Arts & Manners: An Olla Podrida of Jazz

If someone ever writes an adequate history of jazz, he will cast a light on that dark age for white musicians, the early Depression years. Turning on his radio then the hardy householder would hear the heigh-ho-everybody of Rudy Vallee, or Wayne King’s saccharine waltzes, or Russ Columbo’s androgynous croonings. To hear jazz, the embattled citizenry had to journey to Harlem’s dance halls and nightclubs, their counterparts in Chicago’s North Side, or those other oases in Kansas City or uptown New Orleans. White musicians were left to gig for coffee and cakes or play among the off-key saxophones of Guy Lombardo. It was not much of a life.

But jazz is a magnificent obsession. After a stint with the commercial bands, white jazzmen could redistill their juices at after-hours jam sessions, drinking Prohibition rotgut and making music. Every now and then the recording companies would relent sufficiently to assemble a group of white jazzmen for a session. And there was always John Hammond, a crew-cut Yalie dropout with enough of the long green to devote himself to the perpetuation of jazz. Back in the Thirties, he would say to me, “Hey, Ralph, there’s a great piano player at a beer garden out in Staten Island”—and I would be introduced to the likes of Art Hodes. Returning from a winter night’s drive to the boondocks, John would kick off his shoes to let the cold metal of the accelerator pedal keep him awake in the wee hours.

RT

About the Author

Ralph de Toledano

Featured Tags

If someone ever writes an adequate history of jazz, he will cast a light on that dark age for white musicians, the early Depression years. Turning on his radio then the hardy householder would hear the heigh-ho-everybody of Rudy Vallee, or Wayne King’s saccharine waltzes, or Russ Columbo’s androgynous croonings. To hear jazz, the embattled citizenry had to journey to Harlem’s dance halls and nightclubs, their counterparts in Chicago’s North Side, or those other oases in Kansas City or uptown New Orleans. White musicians were left to gig for coffee and cakes or play among the off-key saxophones of Guy Lombardo. It was not much of a life.

But jazz is a magnificent obsession. After a stint with the commercial bands, white jazzmen could redistill their juices at after-hours jam sessions, drinking Prohibition rotgut and making music. Every now and then the recording companies would relent sufficiently to assemble a group of white jazzmen for a session. And there was always John Hammond, a crew-cut Yalie dropout with enough of the long green to devote himself to the perpetuation of jazz. Back in the Thirties, he would say to me, “Hey, Ralph, there’s a great piano player at a beer garden out in Staten Island”—and I would be introduced to the likes of Art Hodes. Returning from a winter night’s drive to the boondocks, John would kick off his shoes to let the cold metal of the accelerator pedal keep him awake in the wee hours.