The record changer (Mar 1945-Feb 1946)

CHARLES CREATH'S JAZZ-O-MANIACS Willie Rollins, Sammy Long, saxes; Grant Cooper, trombone; Margie Creath, piano; Charles Creath, coronet; Alexander Lewis, drums. 3 us Speaking of jazz "styles" we have Nciv Orleans, Chicago, Kansas City and Nciv York, but so far no writer has ever spread out a mess of facts and figures and come out with a ST. LOUIS JAZZ STYLE. As a matter of fact it would be nearly impossible to do so. St. Louis, for a long time, was the capital of \merican music. At the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, at the hub of 42 of the nation's railways, St. Louis was in a position to requisition the best musical artistry from every part of the country. Consequently it would be foolish to speak of a "St. Louis jazz style". The music of St. Louis was, and is todav, not "St". Louis music" but AMERICAN MUSIC. Being one of the largest railroad towns in the LTnited States, St. Louis was a focal point for a huge Negro exodus in the early working on the railroad days. In the book They Seek a City by Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy, it is shown how the Negro came to St. Louis. The authors contend that the Negro would rather have been a lamp post on Targee Street than mayor of Dixie. On the coast, in New Orleans, he was just a dock hand; inland, he was only a cotton chopper. But in St. Louis his money was his own, his confinement reduced ; he was essentially a free man. Here W. C. Handy saw the most beautiful women he ever saw in his life. . Men wore silk shirts down to their knuckles, diamonds as large as hen eggs, mirrors in the toes of their shoes, box back shoes and top rolled hats. Women were gaudily and expensively dressed with beieweled garters and stony rings. Frankie and Johnnie had a shooting match and we haven't heard the last of it yet. That's one side of St. Louis and iazz. Here is something else to consider : A larere proportion of the population of St. Louis was of French and German extraction. >mone this populance was a great number of highly trained musicians, well grounded in high standards of classical music and possessing attributes such as perfect pitch, an ear for euphonious sounds, and a great respect for instrumental technique. St. T ouis sunnorted one of the first philharmonic orchestras in the United States, boast i ing original scores. And another thing: Scarcely 200 miles to the southwest \s the Ozard region, settled in the early 18th century. The people use Elizabethan words. — Thou and ye — and sing English hallads and a sort of hybrid tvpe of Negro-hill-folk music. It has an element of the blues, an element of the old f^lk, and an element of the hill environment. The music of the Ozarks is as distinctive as anv found elsewhere in the country These are the various influences that met iazz as it came up the river from New Orleans and the South. These are the_ facts that give weight to my assertion that in St. Louis, and in St. Louis alone, jass became music. It is true there were jazz bands in New Orleans and there were circus and vaudeville ragtime bands on tour, but thev were largely limited in repertoire and stereotyped in form, and were pen^rallv runof-the-mill stomp bands And in New York, Chicago and Kansas City you mieht have found someone in a back room beating out a number or two, but it was strictly a needlein-a-havstack n^oposition. In St. Louis we had a town full of musicians, and the_ people were demanding stomp tunes and original orchestrations lone before they were cognizant of Tin Pan AUey trine. All this attracted musicians. Practically every man in New Orleans wanted to join the local m M H E R , 19 1 5 4 THE RECORD CHANGER