Softly, with Feeling: Joe Wilder and the Breaking of Barriers in American Music by Edward Berger (review)

Edward Berger, a senior jazz researcher and former Associate Director of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, has written a timely biography of the groundbreaking African American musician, Joe Wilder. Wilder, who died at the age of ninety-two in May 2014, had a long and highly successful career as a journeyman musician (he only infrequently recorded under his own name), working as a trumpet player, first in several prominent big bands of the late swing era, then later in various Broadway theatrical productions, studio work in television and radio, and, late in his career, symphonic work. Wilder played a significant historic role as one of the very first African American musicians to break through the color barrier in these latter fields. As a jazz player, he also recorded a number of historically-influential recordings, serving both as leader and sideman. As Berger notes, “Wilder’s singular tone and phrasing is unmistakable, whether the context is jazz, commercial, or classical” (p. 213).

While he was highly regarded among his peers, widespread popular recognition nonetheless eluded Wilder for most of his career. As Berger notes, by the late 1950s, “Wilder was well respected by musicians, critics, and serious jazz fans alike, but his name recognition among the general public was hardly on par with other … jazz artists of the day” (p. 150). In spite of his low public profile, Wilder could regularly be heard in Broadway pit orchestras (he worked on some seventeen Broadway productions between 1950 and 1989 [p. 86]) as well as on radio and television broadcasts, numerous jingles, and recordings of all sorts. He was featured on sixty-five albums between 1957 and 1959 alone (p. 150), and on more than seventy-five albums in the following decade (p. 217). His 1959 album The Pretty Sound “became something of a cult classic among trumpet players of several generations” (pp. 153–54). Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who wrote the forward to Berger’s book, and with whom Wilder worked and toured in the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, recalled, “When I got to New York in the 1980s, I found out about Joe [Wilder]. Everywhere I went [musicians] would talk about him. … They told me, ‘you need to know about Joe Wilder, who he is, and what he did’” (p. xi).

Wilder was a pioneering African American professional musician who, like many of his generation, found opportunities for success in the swing-era dance music industry, even as many other professions effectively barred black participation. Later, in the 1950s and 1960s, Wilder was among just a handful of African American musicians to find success working in the pit orchestras of major Broadway productions and in various types of studio work. He was also significant for being among the first of a very small number of African American musicians who were able to break institutional race barriers and find steady work in network television and radio orchestras. Wilder played a similar race-barrier-breaking role in the field of classical music, performing with chamber and symphonic orchestras and serving as principal trumpet in the groundbreaking, racially- and genderintegrated Symphony of the New World.

Berger’s thoroughly researched biography is based on interviews with Wilder and other musicians (conducted by the author and others) as well as material culled from journals, newspapers, and other archival sources. Berger also provides a discography of Wilder’s recordings and a detailed chart listing his work in Broadway shows. In this regard, Softly, with Feeling provides a valuable resource for jazz and American music researchers, supplying a wealth of important detail, not only on the individual career path of this highly accomplished yet largely unrecognized musician, but also on the day-to-day professional challenges more generally faced by African American musicians in the twentieth century.

Berger presents Wilder’s biography...