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3 “That’s Got ’Em” Joseph Morton Davis was born into precisely the right period of American history in precisely the right place to enable him to carve his later musical career. Decades before Barry Gordy’s Motown stable of artists finally (and firmly) pushed black popular music comfortably into the mainstream, Davis can be viewed as a pioneer who unwittingly helped to break racial barriers in the music industry. His attitude toward his work helped to move the notion within the industry that “quality trumped race.” By the summer of 1924, when Joe Davis was handling the race talent for Ajax, he had been in the music business for nearly a decade. More than half a century of musical career lay ahead of Davis even then, and had he simply been involved in the Tin Pan Alley scene—as indeed he also was— his career would have been both interesting and instructive. Involved as he was throughout his career with equal ease among black and white entertainers , Davis’s career pattern was less typical of the average New York manager/publisher. Involved in such depth at an early period, and at equal depth at later periods, effectively only with black artists, he stood out as an exception for the pre–World War II era. Only a handful of others, perhaps most notably Duke Ellington’s somewhat controversial manager (sometimes characterized as his overseer), Irving Mills, fulfilled a similar role at this time. Born in New York City on October 6, 1896, to middle-class parents, Joseph Davis’s mother was of English descent; his father, Louis (possibly born in Germany) fit the stocky, stern, Prussian-mustached stereotype perfectly. Youngest of eleven children, none of them musical, he resisted moving into his father’s soda water business on 121st and Pleasant Avenue, although he worked for him for a while. In prescribed fashion, Davis took piano lessons when he was about ten and soon became noted as a singer with natural talent. He played at church and basketball events and sang at theaters, like the Gotham, for “song sales” (sales of sheet music). He also Chapter One “That’s Got ’Em” 4 began writing his own lyrics and by 1913 tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to publish them. His first part-time job at the age of sixteen was as an office boy in the Sheldon School where he earned 7.00 a week. Here Davis learned efficiency and how to operate the multigraph machine, in which he saw a chance to further himself. He then obtained a job as a full-time multigraph operator printing the “Daily Menu” for the Childs Restaurants chain at their main office. He planned them so far in advance that he knew what people in Salt Lake City would be eating ten days before they did. A bright young man, Davis quickly grew bored with this job and began looking for a new, more interesting position. He soon landed a job at the Palmer School of Penmanship, where he learned the rudiments of law. The various skills learned at all three jobs stood him in good stead in later operations. Some twenty years later Davis talked of attending business school, even though he never completed high school. The various jobs he held over the years, however, served as his “business school” and proved quite sufficient in preparing Davis for his music industry careers. By 1914 Davis had his first song published: “Down Where the Old Road Turns,” with lyrics and part of the music by him. Significantly, he soon borrowed 50 from his father in order to buy back the rights to “Down Where the Old Road Turns.” Early on, Joe Davis learned the lesson to “never sell a copyright” because he felt—quite rightly—that money could be made from owning the song rights. Davis quickly became a song-plugger, a term applied to a piano player (or occasionally a singer) employed by music stores in the early twentieth century to promote and help sell new sheet music. Davis, for example, hyped his own songs in stores owned by the McCrory chain and worked most often at the store on nearby 149th Street at a time when sheet music was ten cents a copy. According to ASCAP, his second composition, “Syncopated Bride and Groom” (cowritten with Harold O’Hare), was published in 1915. The following year Davis borrowed another 50 from his father and rented “desk space” (in...

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