Blog Post #2: The Personality of Jazz

The Personality of Jazz

When one hears the word “Harlem”, “Renaissance” often follows.  It was the time of the new Negro, the time when blacks in New York’s Harlem were advancing art and creating community.  Poetry, fiction, visual arts and music flourished in the hands of a new people, their minds burgeoning more than their population.  Yet Harlem had another side, hidden behind the hype and hysteria.  “This second Harlem was one of harsh economics, low salaries and looming rent payments” (Gioia, 90).  This other Harlem, however, had jazz. 

Along with the “looming rent payments” came common ground.  The people living in Harlem shared the need to pay the rent.  It is from this need that rent parties were born.  And what could be better than making money while you party?  “They would crowd a hundred or more people into a seven room railroad flat, and the walls would bulge”, remembers Willie “The Lion” Smith, a fine stride pianist and a guest of honor at these parties (Gioia, 90).  It is these rent parties that epitomize New York jazz, a music created by a dialogue between the performer and the audience that became so fluid the line dividing musician and listener disappeared, birthing a single entity of modernist creation. 

This disappearance of division provides a key distinction between the jazz surfacing in New York and the jazz previously developed in Chicago.  There were no rent parties in Chicago.  To see jazz performed, one had to attend a venue.  These clubs, such as the Grand Terrace, were often run by gangsters.  “The mob”, recalls trumpeter and saxophonist George Dixon, “through intimidation and organization, had things so well-regulated we couldn’t even change jobs” (Travis, 42).  This corruption created a different environment in Chicago.  Jazz was not a means of “getting down”, but rather a resource to be controlled, commoditized and exploited.  The sense of community and comradery is absent when compared to New York.

The community in Harlem created a catalyst that propelled jazz to larger audiences and new territories.  The instrument that allowed this to happen was the piano and the style was “stride”.  This style of playing came after rag, creating a bridge to the “swing” that was to come.  James P. Johnson was the arch-virtuoso “tickler” of Harlem.  Lippy remembers taking Johnson to houses at three or four in the morning where it was “[him], or maybe Fats [Waller] who sat down to warm up the piano [until] James took over.  Then you got the real invention—magic, sheer magic” (Johnson Article).  Johnson created a sound and style of his own, drawing from “ring-shouts”, European Art Music traditions and rag (Lecture, 1/29).  It was virtuosic, pleasing to hear and largely focused on improvisation.  These three elements are key in its development because they propelled a long-loved American tradition into the forefront of jazz: competition.  And “pressure creates diamonds” (Tyner).  With this new music, the musician had to be more than merely a performer; he had to be a personality.

Willie “The Lion” Smith was the epitome of personality and a fine product of competition.  “A gladiator at heart”, Ellington called him (Gioia, 93).  Smith built his reputation in “backrooms and private gatherings…asserting his supremacy” (Gioia, 93).  Smith and many others competed for time on the keys at Harlem rent parties (Gioia, 94).  This competition allowed “stride” to evolve and, more importantly, spread.  It moved from rent parties to theater shows and finally to Paris.  The New York-born concept of “the entertainer” projected jazz through a much wider lens.  Jazz became lass of a music and more of a culture: a culture of conflict, competition and community, a culture as diverse as the world that birthed it, yet homogeneous enough to remain distinct.  Jazz had become a culture prepared to appeal to the masses.