African Americans on the Great Plains: An Anthology

11. Frompin’ in the Great Plains: Listening and Dancing to the Jazz Orchestras of Alphonso Trent, 1925–1944

During the 1920s and 1930s, dozens of African American dance bands of various sizes crisscrossed the Midwest and Southwest United States. These organizations are called “territory bands” by jazz historians because they typically maintained a city such as Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Omaha, or Tulsa as a home base, from which they mounted tours of the surrounding towns. The territory bands had their best years just prior to the Great Depression, but most were devastated by the 1930s and disbanded. Most of these bands included jazz in their repertoire and were vital to its development, creating a style of music distinct from that of New York, New Orleans, or Chicago. This midwest jazz style did not die with the demise of the early bands, for the careers of the Count Basie Orchestra and Charlie Parker were their legacy. This paper focuses on one of the most popular and inmuential of the territory band leaders, Alphonso Trent. From 1925 to the mid 1940s, his groups were acknowledged by listeners and by other musicians as among the very best of the jazz bands performing in the Southwest and Great Plains. In the cities and towns that they visited, their performances were always a special event, particularly in the African American communities. Trent’s orchestras played an important role as musicians and entertainers of African Americans in the Great Plains states in the 1920s and 1930s. Frompin’ in the Great Plains: Listening and Dancing to the Jazz Orchestras of Alphonso Trent, 1925–1944 marc rice chapter 11 Frompin’ in the Great Plains 257 Although Trent did lead his lrst orchestra through the Midwest and Northeast, most of his career was set in and around the Great Plains, specilcally in three cities, Dallas, Texas; Kansas City, Missouri ; and Deadwood, South Dakota. In Dallas Trent met with his lrst triumph, securing well-paying jobs that had previously been offlimits to African American orchestras. Kansas City saw him during a period of hard times, when tragedy and the Depression had taken its toll on his group. In Deadwood, at the end of his music career, Trent again found lnancial success and stability. Alphonso Trent Alphonso Trent was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas, in 1902. He came from a solidly middle class African American family that emphasized greatly the importance of education. According to Henry Rinne, his father was the principal of the black high school in Fort Smith, and was one of the lrst black graduates of Ohio State University.1 In addition to formal classroom education, Alphonso was given piano lessons at an early age. By his early teens, he was playing professionally with local bands.2 In 1925 Trent joined a group of musicians in Little Rock, Arkansas. The personnel included Edwin Swayzee, trumpet; Eugene Crooke, banjo; James Jeter, alto saxophone; John Fielding, vocals; Leo “Snub” Mosely, trombone; and Trent on piano.3 In the spring of 1925 the band, now called the Alphonso Trent Orchestra, traveled through Texas and eventually arrived in Dallas. In most cities the Trent orchestra played their primary engagements at extravagant, exclusively white hotels. These hotels, catering to the economic elite, could offer the band steady long-term employment . During their off nights, however, in whatever city they were in, the Trent orchestra booked themselves into African American establishments. The orchestra did not make much money on these 258 rice nights, but as their reputation grew, these dances became important events in the black communities. Dallas The orchestra lrst established this method of operation in Dallas. In 1925 the city had three arenas for an African American orchestra to play and for a black audience to dance and listen. There was an outdoor pavilion in a section of Dallas called “Oak Cliff.” There was the Pythian Temple, a large building downtown for the use of black businesses and organizations. And there were two nightclubs in the area, the L. B. Mose Theater and the Hummingbird.4 The Oak Cliff pavilion was the scene of the Trent Orchestra’s lrst engagements in Dallas. According to Essie Mae Trent, Alphonso’s widow, who lrst met her husband shortly after he moved to Dallas, the pavilion at Oak Cliff was at a ballpark in a predominantly African American neighborhood. The audience was generally ninety percent black as well. In Mrs. Trent’s words, the facility was a large area and plenty of parking space. I wouldn’t say that it...