 Producer, John Hammond |
FESTIVAL REVIEWTime After Time -page 4by Tom Manoff |
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Politics and music: John Hammond and From Spirituals to Swing
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THE FINAL CONCERT of the festival introduced the career of John Hammond, the influential record producer, music critic and political activist. Titled From Spirituals to Swing: Carnegie Hall: December, 1938 & ’39 , its purpose was to recreate parts of two concerts staged by Hammond to demonstrate the legitimacy of African American music and promote concerts integrated with white and black performers— still off limits in New York in that time.
Singer Helen Hume peformed at original Hammond concerts
Hammond’s interest in black music began at an early age. A scion of the Vanderbuilt fortune, he was born to wealth and privilege, living in a mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Rather than spend time “upstairs” with his family, Hammond preferred “downstairs” among the black servants. While his mother had him studying classical music upstairs, downstairs he heard other kinds of music, music that moved him in deeper ways.
John Hammond’s life was a purposeful rebellion against his parents’ pro-segregationist and pro-Hoover politics, and the music he associated with their class. Jazz critic and historian John Gennari writes:
Early on Hammond developed a fericious distate for the polite, peppy dance music of white “sweet” bands that played upscale hotel ballrooms, debutante balls, and other cockrtail-swilling functions of the leisure class. He found this music insipid, sentimental, and perfectly representative of the hollow artificiality of the socially privileged.
In 1931, the 21- year- old Hammond dropped out of Yale, moved to Greenwich Village, and with his trust fund, launched a career as a record producer and critic. Hammond became America’s first jazz critic to be read across the Atlantic in England. One of the publications for which he wrote was New Masses, a Marxist paper closely associated with the Communist Party. New Masses would later sponsor of theFrom Spirituals to Swing concerts. Their advertisement for the concerts shows the American Left’s vision of African American music: :
American Negro music as it was invented, developed, sung, played and heard by the Negro himself -the true, untainted folk song, spirituals, work songs, songs of protest, chain gang songs, Holy Roller chants, shouts, blues, minstrel music, honky-tonk piano, early jazz, and finally the contemporary swing of Count Basie. (New Masses, 1938)
The historic concerts brought together an extraordinary coalition of artists; Among them: jazz musicians Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Sidney Bechet, Lionel Hampton, Helen Hume and Fletcher Christian; and from the world of blues and gospel: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry and the Golden Gate Singers. That no recording of the concert exists makes one treasure all historic recordings, the tendency among some today to regard them as resources rather than art.
Hammond looking over shoulders of producer Dave Dexter and Counte Basi
The concerts demonstrated the Left’s belief that art should reflect and further a political view. Black music (for the Left) represented the artistic expression of an oppressed people— an authentic voice of America. But this idea also overlapped with a more general question: What constitutes American’s authentic music? There were others, as I will discuss in Part II, who regarded black music as a blight on American music’s true nature.
Hammond's career was extraordinary. Mixing politics, scouting and promoting new talent, writing jazz criticism and producing records, Hammond discovered, produced or helped in significant ways many important careers, some of them: Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Pete Seeger, and in later years, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springstein and Stevie Ray Vaughn. Hammond's joining of politics to art made him one of the most influential behind-the-scenes figures in the history of American music, and jazz in particular.
Most jazz greats of the time weren't card-carrying radicals. At one level, they were just making a living. They took what help they could get —especially from a white producer like Hammond who could get them a record contract. And a gig for a communist affair here and there was a job after all.
But don't underestimate the influence of politics on some jazz artists. Many were politically active —Duke Ellington, for one. This was the era of the Popular Front —the wide reaching coalition on the Left that included such figures as Paul Robeson, Ira Gershwin, Frank Sinatra and Oscar Hammerstein II. This was the era of the Harlem Renaissance — the movement centered in New York among black writers, musicians, and artists whose goal was to define and establish the "authentic" voices of African American arts. This was the ear of Jim Crow in the South, while significant types of segregation in the North. I'll return to the Popular Front in Part ll, especially in relationship to the politics of Oscar Hammerstein, and the creation of Oklahoma.
OFAM's jazz headliners joined a full jazz orchestra for this finale, and appeared in smaller ensembles, too. The effect of the different combinations was musically opulent, the quality that can make a finale of a festival quite grand.
Chuck Redd
The music-making was inspired. Perhaps the performers looked at the small crowd and thought to themselves, "let's make this night special for those who have showed up." They seemed determined to make the music special for each other. OFAM gives them a chance to perform together for an extended time and in a format they don't have elsewhere, a fact mentioned by Peplowski from the stage.
Gary Hobbs took over as the main drummer. Hobbs was especially effective driving the energy of the large ensemble, the overall effect, the best ensemble playing I heard at the OFAM events. Chuck Redd, who'd been on the drumset for the first week of the festival, moved to vibes, playing with focused clarity and fascinating mellow-to-brittle sound in the small ensemble numbers. Clairdee was the featured vocalist, moving easily through jazz, blues, and gospel numbers, and showing again that they all exist in the same big tent. Peplowski led the orchestra in some fine arrangements, repeating numbers that Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and the Kansas City Five played on the original Hammond concerts.
Gary Hobbs
Peplowski doesn't mention, either from the stage or in the program, when the music is one of his arrangements. You have to guess. Sometimes the musicians know the material so well the music is just "head arrangements" — improvised in a structure that's well known. I'm guessing that on this night, and certainly on other concerts, Peplowski is feeling out the musical possibilities of his new OFAM position. He's a remarkable musician in many ways, his ravishing clarinet solos —often musical commentary on the lyrics (even when not sung)— are a striking example of his talents. I'd like to see credits for all arrangements in OFAM programs. Granted, sometimes there may not be an official arrangement. Let us know. We'll just be more impressed.
True to Hammond's stylistic mix, the Staple Brothers — a local gospel group from Portland —played a set towards the end of the program. The Staple Brothers are not polished performers. Here they were on the same stage with some of the best jazz players around. The audience was shaken by the juxtoposition. The concert , which had been going quite well, seemed to fall apart.
Clairdee
Indeed. Here was bare-boned stylistic nullification, aesthetic nakedness in extreme. The magical gauze of musical style, which binds audience to performer, had disappeared. Street culture intruded on concert culture, its rawness unable to mesh with artistic refinement. Had the program ended then, the entire evening would have lost its sense of artistry.
For me, the broader sense of authenticity restored the art. The normal stage for the Staple Brothers is church. Towards the end of their short set, they began to "testify." History broke into Silva Hall unadorned by any niceties, but with its own compelling energy which was bitter and sweet.
Clairdee, Peplowski, Stripling, and the other musicians returned to the stage with some new inner energy, partly to put things back together. And they did. OFAM regular Ian Whitcomb sang "If I Could Be With You" in the most moving performance I've ever heard from him. All the performers closed the evening and the festival itself in, what seemed to me, a state of grace.
END OF PART ONE
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