Big Band Jazz in Black West Virginia, 1930-1942 by Christopher Wilkinson (2012)

Whenever the state of West Virginia is mentioned in an article on music, chances are good that the state is associated with certain forms of ‘white’ music such as ‘mountain music,’ hillbilly, country music and bluegrass.
Now, this statement is absolutely correct; however, it is also incomplete.

Since the styles mentioned above relate directly to the social groups that developed them (white working class), the music of the other big population (black working class) also played an important role in the social life of the region. And those styles were blues and big-band jazz.

As Christopher Wilkinson, professor of music history, points out in the first study of its kind to focus on the musical culture of big-band jazz as seen from the perspective of the rural African-American audience in West Virginia. His survey covers the extremely prospering years between 1930 and 1942, when the state that offered a seemingly unlimited number of jobs in railroad building, housing construction and most of all in the coal mines, was very attractive to black workers. At least until machines took over their jobs in the late 1940s.
West Virginia already in the 1870s guaranteed voting rights to its black population thus making the state very interesting for the recently freed former slave population of the Southern states.
Moreover, a worker there easily earned much higher wages than a steel worker in the cities of the North, where the high-quality coal of West Virginia was in high demand.
All these facts led to the quick growth of large black communities in the region that had their own social centers together with entertainment diversions provided by radio broadcasts, newspapers (most prominently the Pittsburgh Courier, the leading black paper back then) and finally, the many black jazz big-bands touring the country.

And West Virginia gigs were very attractive for any booking agency in the North, since the bands played in sold-out shows almost all the time. Together with the broadcasts and the newspapers the concerts were the most important links of the Virginia communities to the social lives and altogether racial identity of the North, particularly to the latest musical developments in New York.

This is the reason why almost all the bands of importance played West Virginia and were eager to return on their next tour: Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmie Lunceford, Andy Kirk and Chick Webb all found grateful and well informed audiences on their stops in Welch, Logan, Beckley, Charleston, Bluefield, Mount Hope or Huntington.

The tastes of the black audiences in the coal-mining area were as diverse as the styles of the various radio stations broadcasting all the way into the mountain region: hot jazz, up tempo, but also popular dance tunes and sweet and slow music. The regional shows were an occasion for the traveling big-bands to demonstrate their whole repertoire including slower titles hardly ever performed while on tour through the cities of the North.

It is satisfying to see the picture of the jazz culture in those important years for the development of the music getting sharper and better. Wilkinson also gives very exclusive details as to which songs were the most popular, what bands toured where and when, which bookers and entrepreneurs were involved, what wages were paid to musicians on such tours and much more precious data.
Thanks to studies such as this new connections and conclusions in jazz research can be drawn and again, a more complete impression of the era is surfacing.

Review by Dr. A. Ebert

 

Christopher Wilkinson. Big Band Jazz in Black West Virginia, 1930-1942 (American Made Music). University Press of Mississippi, 2012, 214 pages.