In the Oscar-winning film “Green Book,” jazz great Dr. Don Shirley has no choice but to hire a white driver as he tours the Midwest and the Jim Crow South in the racially fraught 1960s. Though based on Shirley’s life, the risk of life on the road was very real for all Black artists of the period.
In the book “The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie Transformed America,” author Larry Tye explains how those music legends not only overcame hostility and violence but also paved the way for the modern day mega music tour. Tye spoke with Kelvin Washington on "LA Times Today."
Tye spoke about how life on the road was for Black musicians in the first half of the 20th century.
“They were professional wanderers. They basically spent their life in the day driving to the next gig at night, playing three quarters of the night. If they were lucky, they found a place to basically crash for an hour or two in between stops that often required keeping the lights on all night to keep the vermin in whatever holes they were in… It was not a fun life,” Tye said.
The venues that performers like Louis Armstrong played in often treated their Black artists poorly as well.
“What it was like for Louis Armstrong was that he could be the headliner at a Las Vegas casino, but he would have to enter through the kitchen. For Duke Ellington when he went to Lynchburg, Virginia and his manager finally talked the owner of a white hotel to let him stay there in those Jim Crow days, he was told that he had to have an extra charge for pillowcases and sheets, because after a Black man slept there, of course they would have to burn those. It was one indignity after another,” Tye explained.
At the same time, these artists were bringing the sounds of Black artistry into white spaces like never before. Tye talked about how their tours helped bring people together.
“On their radio shows, they were the first time most of white America had not only heard Black music, but had let Black men across their threshold, inviting them into their homes on the road. It was an amazing experience. Both sides saw these Black musicians, saw that all-white rural America embraced them. And rural America saw that when you had Black performers come to your town, the sky wouldn’t fall. It made a point about Black artistry. It made a point about Black genius. And it made a point most of all about Black humanity,” he said.
Tye said the work that Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie did helped lay the groundwork for the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. It also paved the way for massive tours that today’s artists embark upon.
“What the jazzmen proved was that in addition to having an incredibly financially and musically successful tour, that you could also raise social issues. Beyoncé and Taylor Swift have been out there advocating for everything from LGBT rights to women’s rights, the same way that jazzmen did for Black rights in an era where that was anathema,” Tye said.
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