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25 Wilbur C. Sweatman: Disrespecting Wilbur Although he doesn’t get much respect from jazz historians today, Wilbur Sweatman was one of the great pioneers of recorded African American music, during the transitional years from ragtime to jazz. Legend has it that he made the first recording of Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” on a locally made cylinder around 1903. He made what are arguably the first jazz clarinet recordings in 1916 and what are undeniably some of the first, and most popular, “jass” band records in 1918–19. First and foremost , though, Sweatman was an entertainer, and his highly successful career as a vaudeville novelty performer has for some obscured his musical accomplishments. Sweatman was born on February 7, 1882, in Brunswick, Missouri. Showing musical aptitude as a youngster, he was taught to play the piano by his sister, then learned the violin and clarinet on his own. He later recalled listening, at age eleven, “to an imported African tribe who were in Excelsior Park in Kansas City playing strange rhythmic instruments.” Around the turn of the century, while still a teenager , he embarked on his professional career, first with Prof. Clark Smith’s Pickaninny Band of Kansas City, and later with the better-known P. G. Lowery Band, which was touring with the Forepaugh and Sells’ Brothers Circus. Cornetist Lowery (c. 1870–1930s) was highly regarded by his contemporaries and toured with some of the top minstrel shows and circuses of the early 1900s. He no doubt opened many doors for the talented young musician. Sweatman played both violin and clarinet with Lowery and on occasion filled in as substitute orchestra leader.1 Vaudevillian Tom Fletcher met Sweatman when the latter was with Lowery’s band and was sufficiently impressed to devote several pages to him in his 1954 autobiography . In his first-hand account of a visit of the Forepaugh and Sells’ Circus to New York City Fletcher says, “In those days, when the circuses played at old Madison Square Garden, there would be a street parade the night before the opening , with bands, animals, actors, clowns, everything except the freaks. The colored band made the parade in New York and the season Sweatman was with the band the crowds that lined the sidewalks started following the band just to hear Sweatman playing his clarinet. Everybody was saying they had never heard anybody play the instrument like that before. Sweatman was the sensation of the parade.”2 By late 1902 Sweatman had joined a band led by W. C. Handy, which was touring the Midwest with Mahara’s Minstrels.3 His stint with Handy was evidently short (or intermittent), as by late 1902 or early 1903 he had settled in Minneapolis, where he led his own all-black band at the Palace Museum for at least four years. It was early during his stay in Minneapolis that he is said to have made a private cylinder recording of Scott Joplin’s famous “Maple Leaf Rag” with a small band for the local Metropolitan Music Store, which may have either sold copies locally or placed them on coin-slot cylinder jukeboxes. No copies of this legendary recording—which may 05.335-496_Broo 12/22/03, 1:43 PM 337 338 lost sounds indeed be only a legend—are known to exist today. Sweatman also went on tours of the Midwest during this period. Sweatman was ambitious as well as talented, and in 1908 he moved to Chicago hoping to expand his musical horizons. Landing the prestigious position of bandleader at the Grand Theater, he quickly built a reputation as a showy and talented performer, drawing crowds to the theater just to hear his intermission music . A laudatory article in January 1910 pointed out that he was one of a small number of musicians who could lead an orchestra while giving virtuoso performances on his own instrument. Mr. Sweatman is one of the “stand-out hits” of the Grand Theater, regardless of who is on the bill. The people pack the house to hear the Grand orchestra and “Sensational Swet” as he is usually called—to hear him play that clarinet. Mr. Sweatman is in a class of four novelties of America as leaders of bands and orchestras. The leader of the orchestra of the old Orpheum Theater in San Francisco led his men with an organ. The leader of the Seventy-second Massachusetts, of Springfield, Mass., leads with a barytone horn. The leader of the...

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