[Dixielandjazz] Questions about laws regarding musicians and segregation

[Bert]

Hello Ken,

Many thanks for your contribution!
Quite a few years ago, I had a long conversation with a woman, in whom's house Benny Carter was renting rooms in the late 1930's when both Benny and Coleman Hawkins were working in the Netherlands.
She told me very similar stories, that Benny was modest, or even shy. He seems to have been quite opposite to Hawkins in his entire ways. Hawkins always chasing women, large bottle with strong drinks all day long, whereas Benny was here with his wife, never drinking, always very decent and polite.
The nicest story was, that he said: well, since I am in Holland, I guess I should have a bike, and he took the woman I spoke to, to a bycicle shop, to help him making a choice. So as a young lady she was at the backseat of Benny Carter's bike, never realising what an important musician he actually was! 😂

I will see if it is possible to find an affordable copy of the book you just mentioned.

In my evaluation of Coleman Hawkins career I make for Dr. Jazz, I'm just at the chapter when Hawk and Benny made those lovely 1937 recordings with Django and Grappelli in Paris, and then went to The Hague!
Hawkins at this time had quite a few discussions with jazz enthousiasts, and seems to have been annoyed by people who were stating that only black musicians could play jazz properly. I found the following interesting comments:

  *   his favourite band was the Casa Loma Orchestra, until Jimmy Lunceford became known.
  *   he thought Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw were much better clarinet players than Dodds and Noone.
  *   When someone asked about his opinion of Chu Berry, he replied Alex Combelle was just as good and Ben Webster was better.
  *   in Hawkins opinion, Goodman played the Henderson arrangements better than Henderson did himself.
  *   Henderson was a smart guy, selling arrangements to Goodman that didn't exist at all. They were head arrangements that Fletcher transcribed of his own records!
  *   although Hawk had started his prof. career in Mamie Smith's band, he wasn't very fond of the blues.

Kind regards,

Bert

________________________________
From: Ken Mathieson <ken at kenmath.free-online.co.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2019 10:07 PM
To: Bert Brandsma <mister_bertje at hotmail.com>
Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Questions about laws regarding musicians and segregation

On this topic, it's worth noting that Benny Carter was hugely important
in the merging the separate Black and White Musicians' Unions in Los
Angeles in the early 1950s. He was one of the few musicians in either
union who was total respected in both. As chairman of the Black Union's
negotiating team, he was massively important in conducting discussions
that led to the amalgamation, which in turn led to the acceptance of
black players into the studio orchestras of the film, TV and recording
industries and their acceptance, based solely on talent and reliability,
of black composers and orchestrators. The successful amalgamation
established in the LA negotiations became the template as desegregation
of the AFM spread across the USA. It was typical of Benny's modesty that
he would make light of his role when the topic came up in conversation
and stress that it was a team effort on both sides, even though I
suspect he was, within himself, immensely proud of the achievement.

This is covered in Chapter 8 of Volume 1 of Berger, Berger and Patrick's
biography of Carter - Benny Carter, A Life in American Music, which is a
very well researched and detailed account of Carter's career, but even
in such a meticulously researched work, there's very little detail about
the roles of those involved or the processes of the amalgamation. I
suspect the ever-modest and tactful Benny wasn't prepared to make
statements that others might see as biased or controversial and just
didn't say much about it.


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