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INTERLUDE THREE |
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the verv Negro musicians from whom thev had learned the
business. Whether Jelly Roll suffered this affront, he was too proud to say. He confined his criticism of the Chicagoans to their frantic jam sessions which he felt had cheapened jazz. . . . "Some people play like they want to knock your eardrums down/'
As the sweet orchestral crying of the blues filled the smoky air at the Royal Gardens, another group of musicians sat at ringside tables, some puzzled and not yet sure what to do, others making hurried notes. Here were the fly boys of the burgeoning entertainment industry . . . the band leaders trying to keep track of King Joe and King Louis, who played different trumpet choruses every night just to baffle them. Eddie Cantor sat there, banjo-eyed—near neighbor to Al Jol-son who was picking up what he could. Remember Jolson later made a million-dollar success out of the Jazz Singer, a picture without a note of jazz in eight reels? Paul Whiteman, of the king-size orchestra, held court there. In a couple of years he would crown himself King of Jazz by adding a couple of bored hot men to his elephantine band.
The Victor and Columbia Gramophone Companies had not yet sent official scouts (they were much too dignified to notice jazz in the early 1920's) but their outriders, the scouts of the smaller companies, hovered in the offing , . . Ink Williams, then of Paramount, later to own a catalogue of thousands of tunes, one of which he composed. .. . The Melrose brothers, is for publishing hot tunes in a small way, bringing a recording machine to capture those hot choruses of Louis Armstrong's . . . Jack Kapp, scout for Vocation, later president of Decca. This crowd stayed close in to the bandstand, excited by the music, knowing a good thing, eager to make a dollar.
Back in the shadows sat even more blase white listeners, gentlemen who traveled in casual but wary bunches, wore sharp clothes and snap brim hats, bulged at hip and armpit, and drank only "the amber." This music suited them fine. It said, The world is a screwy place, but who the heU cares? It |
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