Christopher Wilkinson, a WVU professor of music, was on sabbatical
in 1988 when he visited the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University
in New Orleans. What he discovered there led him to write a book
about an African-American bandleader of the 1930s who never hit
the big time, but who nevertheless contributed much to the history
of jazz and African Americans in the United States.
Wilkinson's Jazz on the Road: Don Albert's Musical Life, published last fall by the University of California Press, uncovers a fascinating and largely unexplored side of American musical history.
Don Albert, born Albert Anité Dominique, was a New Orleans trumpet player who was the first to use the phrase "swing band." His group, who billed themselves as "America's Greatest Swing Band," included a number of players who later became well known for their performances of New Orleans and Kansas City-style jazz, including Herschel Evans, Louis Cottrell, Alvin Alcorn, and Herb Hall.
Albert and his band traveled from their San Antonio base to venues throughout the eastern half of the United States from 1931 to 1940, performing a diverse mix of music for white and African-American audiences. They entertained coal miners in West Virginia, and had a singer, Merle Turner, who hailed from Charleston.
By the time the band broke up, it had achieved widespread popularity in black America, but not national status. Albert went on to work as a nightclub owner. He later returned to performing, remaining active until his death in 1980.
Wilkinson discovered Don Albert among the oral histories in the Tulane archives in 1988, just as he was considering changing the direction of his research in music history.
"The focus of my scholarship had been European and American art music," he said. "In October 1987, while I was teaching my first class in jazz history at WVU, I had an epiphany. Always wanting to learn more about the history of jazz, I realized that I had a semester's sabbatical coming up and it was the perfect opportunity to do a groundwork investigation—to read sources, listen to music, and to see what the field represented."
Wilkinson went to the Library of Congress
in Washington, D.C., to study source material on classical jazz.
He also traveled to Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he
had received his master's degree and Ph.D. in music, and visited
the Institute of Jazz Studies, a major archive for jazz history
in the northeastern United States.
"The third place I went was New Orleans," he said. "I picked up a 1973 sociological study by Jack Buerkle and Danny Barker called Bourbon Street Black: The New Orleans Black Jazzman—a controversial book that names musicians who were well known in New Orleans, but who were not part of the national culture of jazz. This book is important to my research because it gave me specific people to investigate at Tulane."
One of the first oral histories Wilkinson found at the Tulane archives was an interview with Alvin Alcorn, who had been a trumpet player with Don Albert and his swing band. The interview began with the band's recording of "Rockin' and Swingin'."
"I had never heard, or heard of, Don Albert," Wilkinson said. "I expected to hear New Orleans jazz—that brassy, parade-march music. Instead, I heard 1930s big band music played by New Orleans musicians. And the recording was done in San Antonio!"
Wilkinson said most historians trace the history of jazz from south to north, and ultimately to New York City. But here was a jazz musician and bandleader who moved from New Orleans west to Texas. It was an aspect of jazz history that intrigued him.
"I listened to many interviews with Don Albert in the Tulane archives, and I liked what I heard," Wilkinson said. "I became increasingly curious about a musical career that unfolded outside the mainstream of jazz history."
During several years of research, Wilkinson traced the movements of Don Albert and his band through 24 states in the eastern half of the country. A great deal of Wilkinson's research was in some of the leading African-American newspapers of the time, including the Pittsburgh Courier, the Chicago Defender, the San Antonio Register, and the Louisiana Weekly of New Orleans.
In addition to the oral histories and newspapers, Wilkinson studied the works of other scholars and critics, memoirs of musicians, correspondence, advertisements, and census data.
"I believe Don Albert's life is important because it was far more typical of the life of a bandleader and jazz musician of the period than Duke Ellington's or Count Basie's," he said. "There were many more Don Alberts, but their lives have not been documented."
Don
Albert's swing band built its reputation, in part, on arrangements
of popular compositions, including several by Duke Ellington.
By 1935, the northeast was beginning to take notice of Don Albert
and his band when they performed in New Jersey and New York,
and played in a revue called the Harlem Radio Follies. Some of
the band's most popular songs, recorded in 1937, were the band's
theme song "You Don't Love Me," "Sheik of Araby
(With No Pants On)," "Deep Blue Melody," "Sunny
Side of the Street," "Liza," "True Blue Lou,"
"Tomorrow," and their killer-diller number, "Rockin'
and Swingin'."
Then, a series of mistakes occurred that would affect the band's future. First, they were double-booked to perform in New York City and Pittsburgh on the same day. They ended up performing in New York and disappointed 1,100 people in Pittsburgh, without sending a replacement band. The previously supportive Pittsburgh Courier blasted them, and the American Federation of Musicians banned them from performing in major cities in the Northeast and Midwest for several months.
Albert blamed the booking problem on crooked promoters, but the second mistake was his own. He received an offer from two top managers, one at the urging of singer Ella Fitzgerald, to take over the management of the band. Albert rejected these offers. He later said it was the biggest mistake of his career.
The band continued to tour for five more years, but Albert and company were unable to gain access to white audiences in the major northern cities. This prevented achieving the visibility and reputation they needed to become a famous orchestra.
Wilkinson says it's "a toss-up" whether or not America's Greatest Swing Band could have become nationally known with the right kind of support and management. He notes that the band did achieve national recognition within black America for a brief while in 1939, primarily because it was supported at the time by black promoters and press in Chicago, Detroit, and St. Louis.
Unlike other researchers who have interviewed or written magazine articles about Don Albert, Wilkinson investigated his early life as well as his later years, and learned important information that was previously unknown.
Young Albert Dominique was a French-speaking "Creole of Color," or, as they called themselves, les gens libres des couler ("the free people of color"). The 1920 census categorized his family as "mulatto." Albert's musical education was European, but influenced by African styles. While growing up, he learned to play the trumpet by imitating the popular Creole bandleaders who were his mentors.
"Don Albert's musical education could only have happened in that period in New Orleans," Wilkinson said. "It was the cradle of jazz. The mix of people in New Orleans created a fusion of European and African pedagogies that didn't happen anywhere else."
During Albert's later years as a San Antonio nightclub owner, he saw increasing racial animosity, which he resisted in 1951 by successfully defending his legal right to operate a racially integrated nightclub.
"Albert's later career as a club manager draws attention to two developments in American culture," Wilkinson said. "One was evolving race relations, and the other was the changing taste of music in the black communities of San Antonio. Big band music gave way to modern jazz, or bebop. But bebop had limited popularity because it was not dance music. Blacks in San Antonio were not interested in bebop and instead embraced rhythm and blues."
Wilkinson's research shows that audiences in particular areas of the country liked different kinds of music, and bands such as Albert's often expanded their repertoire to give audiences the kind of music they wanted to hear, whether it was the "sweet" sound of orchestras such as Guy Lombardo's, or the "hot" jazz of Duke Ellington. Albert's band, and many others like his, played both kinds of music.
"I don't think historians have thought a great deal about what music audiences preferred in the regions of the country where Albert played at the time," Wilkinson said. "His career was one of fundamental truth-telling about America's musical taste. There was a diverse taste, among blacks as well as whites.
"Don Albert was not primarily a jazz
musician," Wilkinson explains. "He was a performer
of popular music. To him, the audience mattered most. His career
tells much about the character and social evolution of our nation
and the complex diversity of American music in the 20th century."
Jazz on the Road in West Virginia
By Charlene Lattea
Don Albert and his swing band played in
West Virginia several times during the 1930s. The band's vocalist
for several years was Merle Turner, a native of Charleston, who
joined the band in 1935.
In May 1934, Albert played the first of a number of engagements
in the West Virginia coal fields. His baritone saxophonist, Herb
Hall, later recalled that everybody in the coal industry was
employed in those days, so the band made good money.
The band played in
southern West Virginia several times in 1935, and in November
of that year they played at the Charleston armory and in Beckley
at the Rose Garden Inn.
"I found only eight surviving issues of a black newspaper
published in Charleston called the West Virginia Weekly,
and two of the eight issues had advertisements for Don Albert's
band," said Professor Christopher Wilkinson, author of Jazz
on the Road: Don Albert's Musical Life.
Currently, Wilkinson's research focuses on the reception of jazz
in the African-American communities of West Virginia during the
Swing era. He has found that African-American bands performed
in many towns and cities around the state, including Morgantown,
Fairmont, Clarksburg, Wheeling, Parkersburg, Huntington, Charleston,
Beckley, Bluefield, Welch, and Logan, among others.
Today, Wilkinson specializes in the history of African-American
music with particular attention to jazz as well as to the history
of art music from a multicultural perspective. His research has
been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities,
the West Virginia Humanities Council, and West Virginia University.
Learn More About Jazz History
For more information about Christopher Wilkinson's Jazz on
the Road: Don Albert's Musical Life, contact the University
of California Press at 1-800-UC-BOOKS or read a chapter of the
book on-line at www.ucpress.edu.
Jazz on the Road is a finalist for the 2002 Award for
Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research, given by the
Association for Recorded Sound Collections. Visit www.arsc-audio.org to view a complete list
of nominees.
"The Sheik of Araby," Don
Albert style.
Don Albert and his band performed this popular tune of the 1930s
with a unique twist. At the end of every phrase of the lyrics,
the band responded as follows:
(Merle Turner: vocal soloist
The Band: response)
I'm the Sheik of Araby.
With no pants on.
Your heart belongs to me
With no pants on.
At night when you're asleep,
With no pants on.
Into your tent I will creep.
With no pants on.
The stars that shine above,
With no pants on.
Will light our way to love.
With no pants on.
You'll rule this land with me,
With no pants on.
I'm the Sheik of Araby.
With no pants on.
Hear recordings by Don Albert's swing band!