Rex Stewart

Macmillan’s Jazz Masters series, in six volumes published between 1965 and 1972, presents the history of jazz by decades—a simplifying scheme that barely constrains the various authors. Jazz Masters of the 30s (1972) is unique in the series, as the only volume written by a musician, rather than a critic or commentator; it compiles articles that cornetist Rex Stewart wrote for various publications—Down Beat, Evergreen Review, Music Maker, Melody Maker—between 1965 and his death in 1967. By the time Stewart wrote the pieces collected in Jazz Masters of the 30s, he had retired and returned to the jazz life several times. In an Appendix by composer and critic Francis Thorne (a friend of Stewart), we learn that Stewart had appeared in several films, lectured on jazz in Europe and Australia, studied gastronomy in France, and retreated for a time to a farm in upstate New York. Stewart’s own writing here largely avoids the autobiographical in favor of stories about the extraordinary acquaintances he clearly relished and the kind of experiences that illuminate the jazz life from the inside. Apart from a few passing claims to have been cheated out of compositional credit for several famous tunes, Stewart reveals little of the bitterness attributed to him (circa 1960) by Thorne. Stewart resented not getting his due along with other musicians of his generation, writes Thorne, but the writer we encounter in Jazz Masters comes across as a man anyone would be pleased to know.

Stewart’s bona fides are impeccable in retrospect. He grew up in Washington, D.C., took to the road at the age of 14, and made his way to New York City in the early-1920s as a disciple of Bubber Miley. Trombonist Jimmy Harrison got him a gig with Elmer Snowden’s band, from which he graduated to the Fletcher Henderson orchestra after the departure of Louis Armstrong. (Stewart adamantly refuses to say that he ‘replaced’ Armstrong). He played with Duke Ellington for 11 years in the late-1930s and early-1940s, recorded with Django Reinhardt in 1939 (on a session organized by Hugues Panassié), and led a number of small bands through the late-40s and 50s. And, lest anyone accuse Stewart of living in the past, Francis Thorne tells us that Stewart hired Cecil Taylor for a string of gigs in the late 1950s. Along the way, he met an honor roll of innovative and influential musicians—from Henderson, Armstrong and Ellington to Jimmy Harrison (‘talented in mathematics’), Joe “Tricky Sam” Nanton (who owned hundreds of books on everything from philosophy to astronomy and was fond of reciting the ancient poets), Art Tatum, Barney Bigard, Harry Carney, Ben Webster, John Kirby, Sid Catlett (in great demand to accompany chorus lines of dancing girls) and Benny Carter. We are fortunate that Stewart took to his typewriter late in life, with insight and perspective that no critic or historian could match.

Most of the players that Stewart portrays in the essays he wrote in the mid-1960s have come to be recognized for their contributions to the music, as the quality and quantity of jazz history and commentary has expanded. At the time, though, Stewart wished to ensure wider acknowledgement for musicians who were in danger of being forgotten (himself included, alas). Musicians like Henderson and Harrison and the others never got the recognition that they deserved for a number of reasons, according to Stewart. Jazz was not yet established as an art form at the time; the observers who commented in print were unsure of the validity and significance of what they heard, he says. The musicians themselves resisted efforts to explain their talents and their way of life to the public. In addition, the primitive recording technology characteristic of the time could not convey the power and verve of the music. In the mid-1960s, when Stewart was writing about music played decades earlier, jazz seemed peripheral to the mainstream of American musical culture, and the ruckus of rock and roll had all but drowned out the jazz tradition.

The problematique of race is unavoidable in any honest discussion of jazz history. Stewart knows the racial animosity black musicians faced, but he also asserts the legitimacy of white musicians playing a music invented by blacks. Jazz Masters of the 30s begins with an essay on the Jean Goldkette Band out of Detroit. The Goldkette band swung harder than Benny Goodman ever did, says Stewart, and was good enough to best the Fletcher Henderson group in a Battle of the Bands at the Roseland Ballroom in 1927. Jimmy Harrison showed everyone how the trombone can swing, but Stewart also commends the mastery of Jack Teagarden, one of the few musicians ever allowed to sit in with the Henderson band. Stewart describes the ‘shock’ and surprise of Harlem musicians who made the trip to Patterson, New Jersey to hear Red Norvo (‘an innovator’) play with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. Though black and white musicians played together and generally maintained a respectful camaraderie, the jazz life and business were usually more favorable to whites. Tours could be lucrative if managed well, writes Stewart, but travel exposed black musicians to potential violence and almost certain hostility, especially in the South. Thirty years after the fact, Stewart relates episodes with a blend of weary amusement and a sense of deadly danger narrowly averted. Once, in tidewater Virginia, when the Henderson band was denied gasoline for its tour bus, the light-skinned John Kirby walked a mile back to the station to buy a can of fuel using his best redneck accent. Another time, Tricky Sam stood up to a Texas sheriff just long enough for the Ellington band to leave town ahead of a gathering lynch mob. Stewart tells of segregated theatres in the South where blacks in the balcony were afraid to show appreciation until the white audiences indicated approval of a performance. It’s not difficult to imagine that some of the bitterness attributed to Stewart by Francis Thorne was a result of the routine racial antagonism endured by black musicians and the communities from which they came.

Stewart’s essays are a pleasure to read for the telling anecdotes and inside observations that reveal a world that few non-musicians ever experienced. Jazz in the 1930s was show business, set in shiny ballrooms and seedy dives; musicians worked and played and partied hard, traded stories and ideas, insults and encouragement. Stewart can tell a great story, about how Barney Bigard watched the crowd on the dance floor at the Plantation Club in Chicago part as a phalanx of armed gangsters escorted a patron out the front door, or how Ben Webster saved Lester Young from drowning in the river at Albuquerque. We hear about the time that Coleman Hawkins’ raccoon coat caught fire, and the time when Benny Carter had to wrestle a gold-plated revolver away from Bill (Bojangles) Robinson during a rehearsal at the Lafayette Theatre. Stewart tells us that Harry Carney was a generous host when traveling through his hometown of Boston, treating fellow musicians to his mother’s cooking (codfish balls and baked beans) or securing for the band a round of drinks at Shag Taylor’s drugstore during Prohibition. We can see in our mind’s eye Big Sid Catlett, newly arrived in town, challenged to a bicycle race by Harlem’s top drummer, pedaling furiously twice around the block ahead of the neighborhood hotshot. In Stewart’s telling, blowing sessions and cutting contests sound thrilling and calamitous and cathartic. We sense Stewart’s pleasure at the retrieval of such memories, even as we recognize that memory is not always certain. Still, even if Jazz Masters of the 30s is one man’s version of the past, it is a version offered up with magnanimous grace.… (meer)