-
Dan Burley
- University of Illinois Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
dan BUrley (november 7, 1907–october 29, 1962) kimberly stanley Now I stash me down to nod; My mellow frame upon this sod. If I should cop a drill before the early toot, I’ll spiel to the Head Knock to make all things root.1 The “hepcat” that reworked the famous children’s nighttime prayer “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” was Dan Burley, an integral figure in Chicago during the 1930s. The outburst of creativity that took place during the Chicago Renaissance was often linked if not compared to the Harlem Renaissance. The cultural and creative achievements that had taken place in Harlem, by the mid 1930s, seemed to be taking shape in Chicago as well. Music, art, literature, and journalism were part of Chicago’s growing urban environment. Journalism, in particular, kept blacks, some who had recently migrated to Chicago from such states as Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, in touch with their southern relatives and friends and updated them frequently on current events. The Chicago Defender and the Chicago Bee were just two of the few black papers at the center of black journalism during the Chicago Renaissance, and Dan Burley was a key fixture at both newspapers. As a journalist, Burley covered a gamut of subjects in regards to African American life and culture. He reported on sports and entertainment and kept his readers up to date with current events by chronicling the racial conflict in America and the military conflicts abroad. Yet, Burley did not just reserve his creative energies to journalism. He channeled his love of language, prose, and African American culture into writing and publishing two books that took preoccupation with the language of jive, Dan Burley’s Original Handbook of Harlem Jive (1944) and Diggeth Thou? (1959). Burley’s knowledge and preoccupation with jive stemmed, in part, from his status as a musician. Burley was known around the South Side of Chicago and in New York for his own unique style of jazz, where the music reflected the energy and originality of the language about which 142 • kiMBerly stanley Burley wrote. As an integral figure during the Chicago Renaissance, Dan Burley personifies the creative richness that emerged during the 1930s in Chicago. Daniel Gardner Burley was born in Lexington, Kentucky, on November 7, 1907, to Anna and James Burley. Burley’s father, born a slave, was a Baptist minister and thirty-five years older than his wife. One of the few memories that Burley could recall regarding his father was that he enjoyed “‘tinkering with objects and communicating with the Patent Office in Washington.’”2 Anna Seymour Burley, prior to her marriage, taught at Tuskegee Institute under the tutelage of Booker T. Washington. When Burley was three years old, his family left Kentucky and moved to Texas. Unfortunately, two years after this move, the senior Burley died while in the pulpit of his church. By 1917 Anna Seymour Burley remarried, and the family moved again, this time to Chicago. Burley’s mother was active in Chicago politics and was considered influential in rallying blacks to vote. Burley recalled politicians, such as Mayor William “Big Bill” Hale Thompson and Governor Len Small frequenting their South Side home.3 Although Burley would eventually inherit his father’s ingenuity and his mother ’s political activism, as a youngster and a teenager Burley’s interests centered on journalism and music, specifically on blues and the emerging genre of jazz. Burley, similar to many early performers of jazz, had no formal musical training. Hersal Thomas, a child prodigy and a fellow classmate of Burley’s at Douglas Elementary school, “taught Burley to play his first blues piece on the piano.”4 Thomas would subsequently teach Burley other arrangements to which Burley would master and play at parties held around the South Side of Chicago. Burley’s aversion to formal training stemmed from his belief that it was too concerned with technique instead of innate ability, raw emotion, and improvisation . Burley would later assert “if it is supposed to be jazz, it must perform the function of reporting on a condition of life, always on a corridor of human existence which the player must have experienced or understands through the works of others.”5 Burley attended Wendell Phillips High School, a school that was famous for producing talented blacks who would later make their mark in literature, science, sports, and music, such as Nat “King” Cole, Eddie Cole, and Milt Hinton. Milt Hinton, who was known as...