I originally wrote this as a comment on Intrepid Liberal Journal’s fine post Remembering the Trailblazers: Branch Rickey & Jackie Robinson. It grew, and I thought I’d post it by itself as well.
Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Sidney Bechet, Jack Teagarden.
Yup.
Four of hundreds
Hundreds that grew to thousands.
Now?
Maybe five or six generations later?
Millions.
Literally.
Read on.
While we are at it…let us remember the OTHER trailblazers.
30 and 40 years AHEAD of Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson.
Others who defied the color line in their search for excellence.
Louis Armstrong, who played with the white trombonist Jack Teagarden in the 20’s for the simple reason that Teagarden was about the only other horn player on the planet who would not be blown away by Louis’s power and virtuosity on the bandstand. (Sidney Bechet having moved to Paris…where he STILL had to defend himself with a pistol and do some jail time before he was through.)
Bix Beiderbecke, Benny Goodman and an entire generation of white musicians who came up in the ’20s and absolutely DEFIED the dominant culture by playing black music and learning at the feet of the masters no matter what their race.
Try to imagine what it must have taken for young working-class white musicians in racist America at the beginning of the 20th Century to say to their parents and dominant culture “No, I don’t think I am going to study Beethoven any more. I am going to go down across the tracks over there and learn from people like Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong, thank you very much.” Learn from people who quite literally COULD NOT WALK DOWN THE BLOCK UPON WHICH THESE PEOPLE GREW UP UNLESS THEY WERE THERE AS A DOMESTIC SERVANT.
Think on it.
Think on the flat-out love that enabled people like Willie “The Lion” Smith to accept a young Jewish kid like Artie Shaw as an acolyte. On the courage it must have taken for Artie Shaw and hundreds of others to brave the hostility and suspicion of black people…well deserved suspicion and scorn in a broad sense, given a black society where one predominant word used to describe white folks was “ofay”. (Pig latin for “foe”.).,..to brave that hostility and walk the streets of Harlem, East St. Louis and wherever else to go hear the music, to sit in with their masters at black clubs. As late as the ’60s, I walked my white ass down the still almost THOROUGHLY segregated Harlem streets at all hours of the day and night with my instrument case in my hand acting as a badge of safe passage.
People knew their allies.
Think on these accomplishments.
Think on Duke Ellington, who wrote the “Black, Brown and Beige Suite” in the early ’40s and never, EVER compromised his dignity as a human being in the face of established racism.
Benny Goodman, who hired the black vibes player Lionel Hampton and the black pianist Teddy Wilson to be featured members of his small group in the late ’30s.
Artie Shaw who studied with the Harlem style pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith and then later…at the height of his fame (rock star-level)…hired Billie Holiday to play with his band and Roy Eldridge…the bridge between Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie in the growth of jazz trumpet…to be the featured soloist in his band.
And all of the black, white and hispanic musicians who came together from the early 1900s on to produce the towering achievement that we call “American music” today.
50 years before Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson.
Remember these people as well.
In racist America?
It took courage.
Believe it.
And love too.
I do not mean to disparage the achievements of Rickey, Robinson and the others who broke the color line in sports here…I just want to set the record straight.
Jackie Robinson had to endure the WORST kind of bullshit from the many racist white players who ruled the baseball roost when he joined the Dodgers. People who felt threatened by the competition.
In comparison…the white jazz players revered their models.
Literally.
Louis Armstrong is not referred to as “Pops” for nuthin’, y’know…
He is the daddy of us ALL.
Bet on it.
Later…
AG
