Black music on radio during the jazz age.

The first full decade of radio broadcasting in the United States coincided with the fabled "Jazz Age" or "Roaring Twenties," a period of significant cultural upheaval on both sides of the color line. In white America, middle-class "flappers" and "flaming youth" were in open revolt against the old-fashioned Victorian moral codes that were the foundation of their parents' puritanical culture. In their efforts to break with the past, these young rebels turned to African American culture - particularly music, dance, language, and humor. Ragtime, blues, jazz, the Charleston, the black bottom, the slow drag, black slang, and jokes all became fashionable within this subgroup of "white Negroes," and symbolic of their generational revolt against the established social order. This sort of selective expropriation of African American culture by certain sectors of white society was nothing new - it had been going on since slavery; and, more often than not, the outcome was contradictory. On the one hand, American popular culture was periodically infused with the latest black innovations in music, dance, and comedy, and these infusions both enriched the cultural mix and encouraged the cultural rebellion of disaffected segments of the white population - most noticeably bohemian fringe elements in the 19th century and middle-class young adults after 1920. Yet the end result of this cultural transaction was often a misguided and condescending dilution of the original art forms. Once they entered the mainstream, African American song, dance, and humor were vulnerable to commercial exploitation; white entrepreneurs, entertainers, and tunesmiths routinely appropriated black cultural innovations, then tailored them to appeal to a white audience. Moreover, the African Americans who created these art forms and styles in the first place were not only victimized by the theft of their material, but were often forced to compromise their art, and even their integrity, in order to gain entrance into the entertainment industry, which was white-controlled and racially segregated. These cultural contradictions reached an important watershed in the 1920s, during which time they played a decisive role in determining the form and the context of black participation in the entertainment industry - which now included a new medium called radio broadcasting.

A major source of radio programming during the Jazz Age was live and recorded music. Initially, the use of phonograph records was widespread among broadcasters due to records' utility and cost; they provided a cheap, ready-made solution to the problem of what to offer listeners via the airways. But in 1922, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) began to demand that radio stations pay an annual fee in return for the use of recorded music copyrighted by ASCAP members. The owners responded by forming their own trade organization, the National Association of Broadcasting (NAB), which then took the lead in opposing the fee demands. While a number of the better financed stations eventually cut a deal with ASCAP, especially after a federal court upheld the legality of the music organization's position, the NAB remained steadfast in its opposition to the yearly licensing fee. Toward that end, many NAB members refused to include ASCAP songs in their programming. This impasse led, in part, to an upsurge in live music broadcasts within the fledgling radio industry.

There were two major categories of live music broadcast on radio in the 1920s: "potted palm" concert music performed by amateurs, and popular big-band dance music performed by professionals. Potted palm was an industry term for classical and semi-classical concert music played by amateur musicians, who volunteered their services to the stations free of charge. It was a popular trend in radio programming during the early 1920s, providing broadcasters with an inexpensive alternative to ASCAP-controlled music. But as the radio industry moved toward network and commercial broadcasting, the novelty wore off; by the end of the decade, potted palm music was fast becoming a relic. Concurrently, popular dance music's star was on the rise in the radio industry. Large dance bands made up of professional musicians were prominently featured on live remote broadcasts from hotel ballrooms, dance halls, and nightclubs. In addition, some stations hired dance orchestras for live weekly broadcasts from their respective studios, while others scheduled regular appearances by product-sponsored dance bands like the Cliquot Club Eskimos, the A&P Gypsies, the Ipana Troubadours, and the Lucky Strike Orchestra. The musicians in these various dance orchestras were invariably members of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), which was one of the most segregated unions in the American Federation of Labor. Consequently, there were no African American musicians in these bands.

For the most part, the popular dance music associated with the Jazz Age had black roots. Pioneering African American dance bands led by James Reese Europe and Fletcher Henderson in New York City; Erskine Tate, Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton and Joe "King" Oliver in Chicago; Bennie Moten in Kansas City; and Kid Ory in Los Angeles first injected big-band jazz into the cultural mainstream. Unfortunately, these groups were seldom heard on radio in the 1920s. Instead, it was the commercially successful white dance bands of the era, such as those led by Ben Bernie, Vincent Lopez, B. A. Rolfe, and Paul Whiteman - the self-proclaimed "King of Jazz" - that were regularly featured on the airways, giving their popularity an added boost. The same tendency also held true for radio vocalists during the Jazz Age. Much of the popular vocal music of the day, including the songs written by Tin Pan Alley tune-smiths, was rooted in jazz and/or blues - as was the case with dance music. However, the singers who achieved stardom on radio in the 1920s were predominately white interpreters of black song - Al Jolson, Rudy Vallee, Eddie Cantor, and Sophie Tucker. The decade's greatest African American vocalists - luminaries like Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Leroy Carr, and Florence Mills, to name but a few - were only occasionally heard on radio, if at all. The hundreds of other black artists who recorded on race record labels in the 1920s were not played on the airways - even though they were not a part of ASCAP's catalog.

In spite of this pattern of musical expropriation and racial exclusion within the radio industry, however, some African American musicians did manage to get on the air during the Jazz Age. They performed live in the studios of local stations, or they were featured on special remote broadcasts from hotels, nightclubs, and dance halls in urban centers like New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. In 1921, jazz pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines and vocalist Lois Deppe were the first African Americans to perform on KDKA, Westinghouse's pioneering station in Pittsburgh, and the broadcast created something of a sensation in the local black community. According to Deppe,

A lot of people had crystal sets, and there was a radio buff on Wylie Avenue who had a loudspeaker sticking out his window. The street was all blocked with people and we were just mobbed when we came back. (qtd. in Stanley Dance, The World of Earl Hines [New York: Scribner, 1977] 134)

The first African American jazz band to reach the airways on the West Coast was Kid Ory's Sunshine Orchestra, which performed on a short series of remote broadcasts from the Plantation Club in Los Angeles in 1922. Atlanta's premiere radio station, WSB, broadcast a live concert from the 81 Theater featuring vaudeville blues diva Bessie Smith in 1923; the Atlanta Constitution-owned station also aired weekend broadcasts showcasing the Morehouse College glee club, as well as local black church choirs, gospel quartets, and jubilee singing groups. Perhaps the best known African American musician associated with radio broadcasting in the 1920s was Deford Bailey, the diminutive blues harmonica player who was regularly featured on the famous Grand Old Opry show, which was broadcast out of Nashville, Tennessee.

From all indications, local radio stations in New York City and Chicago were the most hospitable to African American performers in the 1920s. Not coincidentally, these two metropolises were also the major urban centers for black music and entertainment during this period. The first African American to be heard on the airways in New York appears to have been comedian Bert Williams, who was featured on WHN early in 1922. At the time, Williams was performing in blackface on Broadway in the Ziegfield Follies. The song-writing tandem of Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake were featured on at least three New York stations (WJZ, WHN, WEAF) in 1923 - no doubt due to the success of their black musical, Shuffle Along. Other notable New York radio debuts by African American performers included Florence Mills on WHN in 1923, Sam Wooding's dance band on WJZ in 1924, and a Paul Robeson recital broadcast locally in 1925. In addition, New York stations did numerous remote broadcasts from local nightclubs and dance halls like the Club Alabam, the Plantation Club, the Savoy Ballroom, and the Roseland Ballroom - all of which featured black jazz orchestras. Fletcher Henderson's pioneering big band, featuring trumpeter Louis Armstrong, was broadcast periodically from the Club Alabam and then the Roseland Ballroom between 1924 and 1928. Chick Webb's band was heard on remote broadcasts from the Savoy Ballroom in the late 1920s. Duke Ellington's orchestra, however, made the most broadcasts on New York airways during this era; between 1927 and 1930, the band performed live on over two hundred radio shows. It is interesting to note that Ellington had an aggressive white Jewish manager named Irving Mills, who was adept at opening up employment opportunities for the Duke and his orchestra not only in radio, but also in film - and at a time when very few African Americans were granted access to these entertainment industries. For his efforts, though, Mills took one-half of Ellington's profits, and he automatically owned fifty percent of everything Ellington wrote while under contract. This arrangement was yet another example of the racial exploitation that was so pervasive in show business during the Jazz Age.

In Chicago, the city's premiere African American comedy team, Flournoy Miller and Aubry Lyles, were heard on the local airways doing their popular vaudeville routines as early as 1922. That same year, the first black dance band to broadcast locally was Clarence Jones and his Wonder Orchestra, which was heard on KYW, a Westinghouse station. In 1924, Jimmie Wade's Moulin Rouge Orchestra was featured as part of WBBM's opening-day broadcast ceremony; the station was the first in the country to adopt a jazz format. Subsequently, WBBM broadcast more African American jazz bands during the 1920s than any other station in Chicago, even though it was white-owned and broadcast to a predominately white audience. As was the case in New York City, remote broadcasts from local hotels and nightclubs were also standard fare on radio in Chicago. Pittsburgh native Earl "Fatha" Hines's orchestra was heard live on WEDC from the Grand Terrace Hotel in the mid-1920s, while Jimmy Noone's dance band was broadcast from the Platinum Lounge on WWAE. Other black jazz ensembles of note featured on local remote broadcasts included big bands led by Erskine Tate, Luis Russell, and Lil Hardin Armstrong - one of the few African American women involved in jazz in the 1920s.

Additionally, Chicago's airways transmitted black religious and blues music. As early as 1923, the city's most renowned African American choir - the eighty-voice Mundy Choristers - aired on KYW. During the rest of the decade, special Sunday broadcasts often featured Mundy's choir, along with many other African American religious groups. Blues musicians who performed on Chicago's airways in the 1920s included boogie-woogie piano legends Pinetop Smith and Albert Ammons, as well as the pioneering urban blues guitarist and vocalist Lonnie Johnson - who also did a weekly radio show on WTAM in Cleveland, Ohio, for a short period of time in 1929.

The abundance and the diversity of local radio outlets in the early heyday of broadcasting - before the advent of commercial networks - resulted in more African American radio programming during the Jazz Age than during the Depression. Local stations in the 1920s, especially those situated in large urban markets, were much more likely to feature black entertainers than the network operations of the next decade. One researcher has identified no less than eight hundred local radio broadcasts which showcased African American talent between 1920 and 1930. Another important factor encouraging black participation in radio during the Jazz Age was the existence of a relatively large and prosperous black entertainment industry. Both the T.O.B.A. vaudeville circuit and the race record business were essential to the success of African American performers in the 1920s, often paving the way for local radio appearances in the process. The collapse of these enterprises during the early years of the Depression, however, tended to marginalize most black musicians - both in the music industry and throughout show business in general. Not only did the sale of race records and the number of T.O.B.A. venues fall off dramatically in the 1930s, but African American performers were routinely excluded from participating in both the radio and the film industries. In the case of radio, the lack of black voices on the airways tended to discourage black listenership, which remained under ten percent of the total black population throughout the Depression years. Consequently, it was relatively easy for the two dominant commercial networks - NBC and CBS - to ignore African American musicians and, even worse, to employ white entertainers to cover the popular black music of the era.

William Barlow is writing a history of African Americans in the radio industry, of which this essay is a part.