Joined at the Hip: A History of Jazz in Twin Cities

5: The Musicians’ Unions

49 5 The Musicians’ Unions “ Sometimes you need to stand with your nose to the window and have a good look at jazz. And I’ve done that on many occasions.” —J. J. Johnson From the earliest years of jazz music, the Twin Cities musicians’ union served an important function as gatekeeper to paying jobs. The union supported musicians’ rights to reasonable wages and tried to enforce policies aimed at the owners of clubs and larger music venues. The American Federation of Musicians, chartered in 1897, helped many players secure the best-­ paying jobs available in the towns. Musician and researcher Carl Warmington said that for many years the musicians’ union “effectively controlled employment.” Joining the American Federation of Musicians involved a performance test, said Warmington. The office and club rooms of the Minneapolis local were on Glenwood Avenue, “a convenient congregating place where one might pick up a playing date, shoot pool, play cards, and be served a light lunch. In addition there was a club bootlegger who vended moonshine in special-­ size bottles; the half pint was a comfortable pocket size and was supplied when you asked for an ‘E-­ flat.’” Musicians “needed a union card to play with the top bands on the university campus.” Roy Robison said that in the early days “to become a member of the best campus bands, even then you had to be a member of the union. Even the kids had to. You couldn’t get anywhere without 50 Joined at the Hip being a union member. A good share of them couldn’t read music, so it was kind of [a] put-­ on thing. They’d go down [to the union hall] and . . . they’d know what was going to be put up in front of them. They would play ‘Dinah’ or whatever it was by ear, and, yes, they would pass the test. I can think of campus musicians who couldn’t read a note of music, really.” While neither Minneapolis nor St. Paul had separate unions for blacks and whites, many theaters, nightclubs, and even the symphony orchestra had de facto policies of segregation. The American Federation of Musicians itself did not officially allow blacks to join until the early forties, but Julie Ayer points out in More Than Meets the Ear that “the federation also ruled that if a black musician were denied admission to a local, he or she could join the nearest local that would accept the musician and should receive all the privileges of membership of that local.” The union, although racially restrictive, did not oppose the integrated jam sessions and after-­ hours activities which flourished in the 1920s and ’30s in the Twin Cities. Dave Faison recalled, “The Twin Cities didn’t have black and white unions. If you played outside your local, you had to get traveling money. You had to belong to two locals. If there was a ten-­ piece band and one guy was from Minneapolis, the whole band had to get travel pay.” The pay scale for a three-­ hour performance during Prohibition was six dollars, pretty good money for those days. It went a long way toward tuition for campus musicians, or toward the twenty-­ five dollars it took to purchase a Model T Ford. The musicians’ union became not just a clearing house and gathering place but a way for players to hook up with each other. Drummer Kenny Horst first learned of fabled Twin Cities tenor man Irv Williams through Kenny’s father, who worked at the union: “My dad used to tell me about this tenor player at Mauer’s [later the Sherwood].” For years the union was powerful and able to look out for its members (support that some members today fear has been lost). In the 1940s jazz announcer Leigh Kamman was working with Sid Smith doing a Saturday-­ afternoon record show called The Swing Club. Kamman said that jazz impresario and producer Norman Granz “came in, semi-­ arrogant, and made us an offer of a small percentage of the net proceeds if we’d promote the Jazz at the Philharmonic Concert at the Minneapolis Auditorium.” Later on, at KSTP in the 1960s, Kamman “began to do live broadcasts from Freddy’s, and if they were Norman Granz’s artists, he’d make sure they were well The Musicians’ UnionS 51 paid and adhered to union agreements. He became warm and...