Racial Tension in the Swing Era

            During the 1920’s, jazz not only was procured by whites and blacks, but came to symbolize a decade of dancing. The increased white interest in jazz resulted in an influx of white jazz musicians by the mid 1930’s. Marking the beginning of the “swing era,” this period saw the development of the big band. For the first time, white musicians attained the same level of prominence as blacks.

            Indeed, the “King of Swing” was bandleader Benny Goodman, a white clarinetist. Goodman premiered jazz in Carnegie Hall in a 1938 concert, breaking the label that jazz was a low-brow form of entertainment (lecture 14 Feb). Goodman also integrated black and white musicians in his band. Like other white bandleaders, Goodman enjoyed better pay, job security, and mainstream acceptance than his black colleagues (Gioia 142). At the Savoy, a black Harlem club, Goodman musically battled against black drummer and bandleader Chick Webb in 1936. Goodman summarily lost, suggesting that the white bandleader’s advantage was one of race, not skill (lecture 14 Feb).

            In October of 1929, the stock market crashed, beginning the Great Depression. Recently, the radio had become available as a means of listening to music for the masses. The economic downturn caused the radio to largely replace the record because a radio was a one-time purchase, whereas records needed to be continually purchased in order to listen to new music. Previously, music could be recorded and distributed entirely within the black community. However, radio stations were owned by whites. Since blacks were denied gigs at, for instance, hotels, survival for a black musician meant gaining the influence and recognition to be played on a white station in favor of white musicians (Swing Changes 107).

            Duke Ellington did so by conceding his image and repertoire to white entrepreneurs, signing with a white agent, Irving Mills (Gioia 123). Mills not only helped Ellington procure deals with record companies and venue owners, but helped guide Ellington’s work to reflect what would be popular. However, Ellington had to give Mills an even share of profit and creative rights in return (Gioia 130). Ellington thrived as a bandleader at the Cotton Club, a nightclub owned by mobster Owney Madden which exclusively admitted whites (Gioia 126). However, he was conscious that he abandoned the black community, perhaps inspiring the dissonance and moodiness in, as an example, his melancholy composition “Black Beauty” (Gioia 128).

            Critics, typically middle class whites, worked from an entirely different social pedestal than did black musicians, constituting a lack of “embedded criticality” (lecture 14 Feb.), a shared sentiment between critic and musician. This created an aesthetic schism between black ideals and white consumption. John Hammond, the most important critic of the era, was responsible for discovering Benny Goodman and Count Basie among others (Swing Changes 56). Raised in a mansion, Hammond was an upper class white member of the Vanderbilt family (Swing Changes 55). Hammond became connected with the Popular Front, a communist organization which equated anti-Fascism with anti-racism (Swing Changes 62). Even though he believed that blacks were racially superior musicians, Hammond’s socio-economic position was detached from the problems faced by black musicians. Therefore those who prospered under his patronage were not necessarily chosen by virtue intrinsic to the black community.

            During the swing era, blacks competed with white musicians for white approval. Because they were judged with aesthetics not intrinsic to their background, blacks felt a great racial tension between a duty to their culture and a need to prosper. This tension was an artistic faucet of the dual consciousness between American and African described by W. E. B. Du Bois.