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13. “You Just Can’t Keep the Music Unless You Move with It”: The Great Migration and the Black Cultural Politics of Jazz in New Orleans and Chicago
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313 “You Just Can’t Keep the Music Unless You Move with It”: The Great Migration and the Black Cultural Politics of Jazz in New Orleans and Chicago CHARLES LESTER 13 What seems to me most important about these mass migrations was the fact that they must have represented a still further change within the Negro as far as his relationship with America is concerned. It can be called a psychological realignment, an attempt to reassess the worth of the black man within the society as a whole, an attempt to make the American dream work, if it were going to. —Amiri Baraka, 1963 Later in life, Louis Armstrong wrote about his first journey to Chicago in 1922, reflecting on his motivations for the trip. “Hillare and the rest of us kids who turned out to be good musicians, migrated from New Orleans—to Chicago, when times were real good. There were plenty of work, lots of Dough flying around, all kinds of beautiful women at your service. A musician in Chicago in the early twenties were treated and respected just like—some kind of a God.”1 Armstrong’s brief recollection reflects the dream of Chicago as a land of hope and opportunity for African Americans during the First Great Migration. For jazz musicians in particular, South Side Chicago presented unique avenues to openly ply their trade, advance careers, organize collectively, and achieve a social standing and a kind of respectability unattainable in the South (certainly the black elite would find little, if anything, respectable about jazz north or south). The cabarets and theaters of Chicago’s black entertainment district, known as “the Stroll,” acted as incubators that nurtured jazz from its infancy to adolescence. Here the music matured into a distinct Chicago style that blended southern and northern influences, cultures, and personalities to create a national, and uniquely American, musical art form. Louis Armstrong’s mentor, Joe “King” Oliver, left for Chicago in 1918. With his encouragement and assistance, Armstrong finally set out for Chicago. As Armstrong 314 CHARLES LESTER explained of Oliver, “He kept sending me letters and telegrams telling me to come up to Chicago and play second cornet for him. That, I knew, would be real heaven for me. I had made up my mind that I would not leave New Orleans unless the King sent for me. I would not risk leaving for anyone else.”2 Cleary Armstrong thought long and hard about his decision to leave New Orleans based on a variety of factors. Ultimately, he was swayed based on the advice of a close confidant. Though this particular element of Armstrong’s story is telling, it is far from unique. By 1924, Armstrong would bring the Chicago style to New York City, intent on leaving his own mark on the brand of jazz that was beginning to take Harlem by storm. For Armstrong and fellow musicians, the migration experience opened new avenues for political activism unavailable in the South. In the 1920s and 1930s, the young trumpet impresario became a dues-paying member in both the Chicago and New York musicians locals, and though he projected an apolitical persona to the general public, he quietly channeled funds to civil rights organizations such as the NAACP as his income grew more secure.3 Armstrong’s migration story challenges popular narratives about jazz that center on Harlem as the nodal point of black cultural production in the first decades of the twentieth century.4 Among Armstrong’s belongings that he brought north was the cultural baggage of New Orleans jazz. He checked that baggage and augmented it in Chicago before making his way to Harlem. Once in New York, he was less than impressed with the music scene there. After joining Fletcher Henderson’s band (one of the biggest and most sought after acts in the city), he found the group lacking the discipline and dynamism of its Chicago counterparts. “I stayed and tolerated them cutting up on the bandstand instead of playing the music right. . . . The fellows in Fletcher’s band had such big heads . . . such big heads until—even if they miss a note ‘So what.’” Furthermore, he believed Henderson cared little for his innovative style: “Fletcher only let me play third cornet in his band the whole time I was in his band—dig that shit. . . . Fletcher was so carried away with that ‘society’ shit and his education he slipped by a small timer and a young musician—me—who wanted...