I N - T H I S - I S S U E :

Book Review

BY HAZEN SCHUMACHER

Lars Bjorn with Jim Gallert, Before Motown: A History of Jazz in Detroit, 1920-60. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. 239 pages. Price: $24.95 (paperback).

rom 1920 to 1960, Detroit was experiencing social upheaval unequaled anywhere else in urban America. Before Motown takes a close look at the music of this period and integrates it with the social turmoil. This reviewer gives it four stars: It is:

• an encyclopedia on its subject, useful as a reference book; the footnoting, indexing, and format are carefully structured and easily accessible.
• a sociological study of Detroit from 1920 to 1960; economic trends and the dramatic population shifts serve as counterpoints to the jazz chronology.
• a handsome coffee-table book good for browsing or in-depth reading. (Bjorn refers to it as an "art history book.") The photographs (many from Gallert's personal collection) newspaper ads, and city maps are both informative and attractive additions to the text.
• just a plain good read. The narrative moves along for the general reader, while the jazz buff or the sociologist will delight in the wealth of detailed documentation.

The 1920s

jorn begins the story in the 1920s when there was very little jazz in Detroit. Ironically enough, the era did produce the best-known jazz group to come out of the Motor City. Top jazz authority Gunther Schuller referred to McKinney's Cotton Pickers as a sophisticated group which attained a "high performance level not matched by any other big band of the time."

There wasn't much jazz but there were a number of sweet bands and the (African American) Michigan Chronicle reported that "things are booming for race musicians in the Motor City." As for theatrical entertainment there were only a couple of theaters which blacks could attend. One of them apparently was part of the TOBA, the Theater Owners Booking Association (black performers called it "Tough On Black Asses") which booked major black artists such as Bessie Smith.

Blacks had no large ballrooms of their own in the 1920s, they had to rent white ballrooms, one night at a time. There was almost no racial integration of entertainment venues, although Bjorn reports that one club, the Palms, did have mixed audiences.

The 1930s

he early 1930s brought the Depression and hard times to Detroit. In spite of it, there were 19 clubs on the five streets north of Gratiot Avenue, the northern boundary of "Black Bottom." A contest was held and the area was named "Paradise Valley." Some of the clubs were little more than small neighborhood bars but they began to serve as sites for fine jazz. Tenorist Lucky Thompson said, "You could go to almost any block and you would hear people playing all day long."

There wasn't much progress in racial integration during the decade. Eastwood Gardens at Gratiot and Eight Mile featured big bands, which were in residence for a week, but their no-black dancers policy was only relaxed for one week in 1935 when Duke Ellington played there.

As an indication of how far apart the races were in those days, this reviewer, a born-and-raised Detroiter, can remember taking the bus downtown Detroit, going by the Valley, knowing who lived there but having no idea of what was going on there — a foreign country to a white teenager. Before Motown shows us that we missed a lot!

The 1940s

here was a breakthrough for black entertainment in 1941 when the Paradise Theater opened in downtown Detroit with black performers and audiences in the former home of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The financial situation of blacks had improved in this period and they could afford to spend money on entertainment. During the late 1930s a black middle class was developing, helped in part by the Ford Motor Company, the first large company to hire blacks. This policy was interesting in the light of the company's strong anti-union stance until the early 1940s and of Henry Ford's reactionary and anti-Semitic public positions.

Jewish-black relationships are explored by Bjorn as they impacted the jazz and entertainment scene in Detroit. Many of the first clubs to admit blacks were Jewish-owned. Black population pressures also affected Jewish-black relations as blacks moved into Jewish neighborhoods. A jazz bar might open in a neighborhood 10% black which in a few years would become 80-90% black.

The 1940s were a boom time in Detroit, particularly in the immediate postwar period. In 1947, the Michigan Chronicle was certainly exaggerating when it called the city, "the entertainment center of the nation" but all of the major black musicians performed there on a regular basis. For example, the Flame Show Bar opened in June, 1949, and two weeks later Billie Holiday performed there. The Ellington, Basie, and Hampton bands played Detroit and often picked up talented Detroiters as new sidemen.

White flight from the city began in the 1940s as black housing and black jazz spread around the city. Whites did get an occasional glimpse of black music, however. The white disc jockey Bill Randle from radio station WJLB started a series of jazz concerts at the Detroit Institute of Arts which featured major artists such as Coleman Hawkins.

The 1950s

jorn considers the 1950s the "Golden Age" of jazz in Detroit by listing a lineup of clubs, theaters, ballrooms, and the personnel who played in them. The influential giants of jazz like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie played Detroit often but they had many young followers in the city, players like Sonny Stitt, Kenny Burrell, Tommy Flanagan, and others who would go on to national fame.

Miles Davis chose Detroit as the place where he'd kick his drug habit. The visit lasted many months and in his biography he comments on the high quality of the local players at places like the Blue Bird Inn which was becoming nationally known. It should be noted, however, that Miles didn't choose Detroit because of the musical quality, but because he guessed that the strength of the local heroin would be lower than that in New York. He was right and kicked the habit in Detroit!

But the Golden Age of Jazz was coming to an end. Hanging out in the clubs in the 1950s, digging the music and even joining the musicians in the home sessions was a young man named Berry Gordy. Later on he would establish the first Detroit record label to penetrate the national market — Tamla/Motown. There Bjorn's story ends, although he does conclude, "Just as there was jazz in Detroit before Motown, there is jazz in the city after Motown."

Hazen Schumacher is host of "Jazz Revisited" on National Public Radio and has taught jazz history at the University of Michigan.

I N - T H I S - I S S U E :
1. BEFORE MOTOWN - 2. JOE HENDERSON, HAROLD McKINNEY- - 3. FORD DETROIT JAZZ FESTIVAL- - 4. SEMJA CLINICS- -5. AROUND TOWN
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