That's Got 'Em!: The Life and Music of Wilbur C. Sweatman

1. IN DEFENSE OF WILBUR SWEATMAN: A Response to His Critics

- 3 chapter 1 In dEfEnsE of wIlbur swEATmAn - A Response to His Critics 0 history has not been kind to wilbur sweatman. Key his name into a web search-engine and you will find numerous references—nearly all of them relating to a few weeks in early 1923 when a struggling pianist from Washington found himself in New York along with some friends, working in vaudeville with Sweatman. That vaudeville stint made a lasting impression on the young Duke Ellington, who learned much of the business of public presentation and stagecraft from the proud, middle-aged clarinetist . And so he should have. Sweatman, by that date, had been performing before the public since the mid-1890s, in locations that ranged from circus tent-shows and dime museums, to New York’s prestigious Palace Theater, and vaudeville houses from coast to coast. For years those jazz writers who even found sufficient space to mention Sweatman have looked on him with derision and scorn (one author even claimed that he was the Henry Mancini of his day!), mainly because of his minstrel/vaudeville roots and because he was best known for his trick of playing three clarinets simultaneously. That, however, is not the impression given by musicians and performers who knew Sweatman in his heyday: “Sweatman was my idol. I just listened to him talk and looked at him like he was God.”—garvin bushell1 in defense of wilbur sweatman 4 “[Sweatman] started recording for Emerson in 1915 . . . when the prejudice and discrimination were so thick you couldn’t cut them with a butcher’s knife.”—perry bradford2 “He was a sensational, rapid, clever manipulator of the clarinet.” —dave peyton3 “When he introduced his style of playing in the leading vaudeville theaters , it was before some of the men now given credit for introducing jazz were born.”—tom fletcher4 “Sweatman’s band was ‘Hotter than red pepper.’”—perry bradford5 “I . . . learned a lot about show business from Sweatman. He was a good musician.”—duke ellington6 “He was big-time in all ways.”—harrison smith7 Buster Bailey, Garvin Bushell, Cecil Scott, Gene Sedric, and many other musicians fell under Sweatman’s influence. His astounding top-to-bottomregister break on the Columbia recording of “Think of Me Little Daddy” was the talk among Harlem clarinetists in 1920; both Sedric and Bushell independently recalled hearing it for the first time.8 The roster of musicians who worked with Sweatman over the years is not unimpressive for a man whom jazz history has at best denigrated and at worst downright ignored: Freddie Keppard, Sidney Bechet, Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington, Arthur Briggs, Wellman Braud, Russell Smith, Cozy Cole, Sid Catlett, Sonny Greer, Otto Hardwick, Herb Flemming, Ikey Robinson, Jimmie Lunceford, Claude Hopkins, Teddy Bunn, and many others. It is important to note that, as well as influencing and encouraging fellow African American musicians, Sweatman was among the first black instrumentalists working in the idiom of syncopated music to perform regularly with white musicians. In his vaudeville work Sweatman generally worked with a pianist and drummer, usually fellow black musicians, but earlier in his vaudeville career he worked as a “single,” accompanied by the pit band of the theater at which he was appearing. From 1911 onwards, when he started to work on the white-owned United, Keith-Albee, and Orpheum vaudeville circuits, most if not all of these accompanying musicians would have been white. Sweatman was also the first black instrumentalist to record in the United States with a racially mixed group. Indeed, his 1916 Emerson in defense of wilbur sweatman 5 recordings are accompanied by white studio musicians. At other times in his career he worked with white instrumentalists on the bandstand, and recalled working with a white musician as a sideman in his own band on at least one recording session. White banjoist Michael Danzi, who spent much of his working life in Germany, recalled a recording session with Sweatman in 1924, and that the last gig he worked in the United States before leaving for Germany in 1924 was a wedding dance with Wilbur Sweatman’s band. In this sense Sweatman can be seen to be many years ahead of his contemporaries , both black and white, and one has to look to the more racially tolerant Europe to find comparable contemporary parallels. Even discounting the well-known names who played with Sweatman and the influence he had on many other musicians, Sweatman...