[Dixielandjazz] segregation and the CIA

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Long ago the former head of the CIA, Miles Copeland, was interviewed on a BBC radio jazz programme, and reminisced about his friendship with members of the Erskine Hawkins band, in a Southern state whose dishonour John Coltrane marked with a powerful composition. 
As I recall, Miles C. was welcomed when he dropped in on the band during gigs in New York, carrying his trumpet --  the greeting was something like, 'good, you can play that damned thing again!'  The reference wasn't to the horn but to the little trumpet phrase with which the number opened, and of which the entire Hawkins trumpet section was heartily weary. He reported having played it many the time, even dropping in for the privilege.  
There is also the story of interest to historians of language, told by Artie Shaw of when he went south with Billie Holiday as vocalist. It seems the archaic noun "wench" was still current down there ("wench" survived in Scotland as a verb meaning to court a lady with expectation of eventually nuptials, of course during a period of exclusively 'mixed marriages, one male one female' as the sometime trumpeter Spike Milligan put it in a Goon Show script).
Billie was dragged off kicking and screaming, her latest fan was asking for her using not only the word "wench" but a prefatory adjective beginning N....Was she blue?The air was too.
Robert R. Calder

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