Duke Ellington, Radio Remotes, and the Mediation of Big City Nightlife, 1927 to 1933

Abstract

Histories of the career of Duke Ellington often give a significant, if somewhat superficial, place in the story to radio remotes of the later 1920s and the 1930s. These broadcasts from nightclubs like the Cotton Club in Harlem allowed those listening in to experience at least some of what the club's patrons did. The claim is often made that such broadcasts could be heard nationally and that they both account for and provide evidence for Ellington's rising popularity.

However, a detailed examination of the radio stations and their place in America's media, cultural and economic life raises many questions. By focusing on the political economy of the three stations which originated the Cotton Club remotes, and setting them in wider discourses of jazz and radio listening at the time, this analysis proposes new ways to conceive of the reception of Ellington's music in the late 1920s.

Specifically, the article argues that the broadcasts were far less extensive than usually thought, and that the reception of the music over the airwaves needs to be understood within the context of different radio stations and different radio audiences. Further, the connection between radio and sound film in this period is examined.

Drawing on approaches derived from media and cultural studies, the article explores both the political economy and cultural meanings at play in the mediated representations of Ellington in this period.

Notes

¹ The Red Hot Jazz Archive: A History of Jazz Before 1930, http://www.redhotjazz.com.

²Jim Haskins, The Cotton Club (London: Robson, 1985), 57.

⁴James Lincoln Collier, Duke Ellington (London: Pan Books, 1989), 96.

³ Jazz – A Film by Ken Burns. Ken Burns. PBS, 2001.

⁵Harvey G. Cohen, Duke Ellington's America (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2010); Stanley Dance, The World of Duke Ellington (New York: Scribner, 1970); Derek Jewell, Duke: A Portrait of Duke Ellington (London: Elm Tree Books, 1977). See also John Edward Hasse, Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington (New York and London: Simon & Schuster, 1993).

⁶I have used Google Scholar's citation index as the basis for selecting the popular book-length studies analyzed in this article.

⁷Michele Hilmes, Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 77; Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination, from Amos 'n' Andy and Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman Jack and Howard Stern (New York: Times Books, 1999), 93–94.

⁸Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995).

⁹In particular Jannette Lake Dates and William Barlow, Split Image: African Americans in the Mass Media (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1993); Philip K. Eberly, Music in the Air: America's Changing Tastes in Popular Music, 1920–1980 (New York: Hastings House, 1982).

¹⁰Hasse, Beyond Category; Mercer Ellington and Stanley Dance, Duke Ellington in Person: An Intimate Memoir (London: Hutchinson, 1978).

¹¹Court Carney, Cuttin' Up: How Early Jazz Got America's Ear (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009), 78–99.

¹²Chadwick Jenkins, “A Question of Containment: Duke Ellington and Early Radio,” American Music vol. 26 no. 4 (2008): 415–441.

¹³Madan Sarup, An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Post-Modernism (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1995), 59.

¹⁴Haskins, The Cotton Club, 57.

¹⁵James Lincoln Collier, Duke Ellington; A. H. Lawrence, Duke Ellington and His World: A Biography (New York: Routledge, 2001), 81, 409.

¹⁶Mills later made this claim himself (quoted in Stuart Nicholson, A Portrait of Duke Ellington: Reminiscing in Tempo (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1999), 77.

¹⁷Barry Ulanov, Duke Ellington (New York: Da Capo Press, 1975 [1946]), 62.

¹⁸Lawrence, Duke Ellington and his World: A Biography, 81, 409. Collier (1991 [1987]) is less precise, and he concedes that accuracy is difficult when relying on anecdotes from contemporary listeners.

¹⁹Tony Whyton, Jazz Icons: Heroes, Myths and the Jazz Tradition (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 145.

²⁰Clifford John Doerksen, American Babel: Rogue Radio Broadcasters of the Jazz Age (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).

²¹N.T. Granlund, Blondes, Brunettes, and Bullets (New York: D. McKay Co., 1957).

²²Bill Jaker, Frank Sulek, and Peter Kanze, The Airwaves of New York: Illustrated Histories of 156 AM Stations in the Metropolitan Area, 1921–1996 (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland, 1998), 84, 124.

²³Jenkins, “A Question of Containment.”

²⁴Abel Green, “Duke Ellington and his Heated Jazzpators,” Variety (21 March 1928).

²⁵New York Times, “Today on the Radio,” The New York Times (14 November 1929).

²⁶Jaker, Sulek, and Kanze, The Airwaves of New York: 84, 124.

²⁷John Dimmick, “Sociocultural Evolution in the Communication Industries,” Communication Research vol. 13 no. 3 (1986): 473–508;

²⁸Erik Barnouw, A Tower in Babel: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, to 1933 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966).

²⁹Clifford J. Doerksen, “‘Serving the Masses, Not the Classes’: Station WHN, Pioneer of Commercial Broadcasting of the 1920s, ” Journal of Radio Studies vol. 6 no. 1 (1999): 32, 81–100.

³⁰William Barlow, “Black Music on Radio in the Jazz Age,” African American Review vol. 6 no. 1 (1999): 4.

³¹Stanley Dance, The World of Earl Hines (New York: Scribner, 1977), 134.

³²Susan Douglas, Listening In: 93–94.

³³Cited in William Barlow, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999), 19–20.

³⁴A.J. Millard, America on Record: A History of Recorded Sound (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 77.

³⁵Collected in Robert Walser, Keeping Time: Readings in Jazz History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 41–54.

³⁶Ann Douglas, Terrible Honesty.

³⁷Clifford John Doerksen, American Babel.

³⁸Ibid.

³⁹Clifford John Doerksen, American Babel. See also Christopher H. Sterling and John M. Kittross, Stay Tuned: A History of American Broadcasting (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002), 76; Licensing Broadcast Stations, “Licensing Broadcast Stations,” Radio Broadcast (August, 1924) 300.

⁴⁰Chadwick Jenkins, “A Question of Containment,” 415–441.

⁴³Katrina Hazzard-Gordon, Jookin': The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 145.

⁴¹The Brunswick recordings were made when the Ellington band was on contract to other labels, so the name would signal the Cotton Club link without using the club name.

⁴²Kathy J. Ogren, The Jazz Revolution: Twenties America & The Meaning of Jazz (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 139–151.

⁴⁴Nadine George-Graves, “Just Like Being at the Zoo: Primitivity and Ragtime Dance,” in Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social And Popular Dance Reader, edited by Julie Malnig (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 55–71.

⁴⁵Julie Malnig, “Apaches, Tangos, and Other Indecencies: Women, Dance and New York Nightlife of the 1910s,” in Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social And Popular Dance Reader, edited by Julie Malnig (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009) 72–90.

⁴⁶Marshall Winslow Stearns and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994), 112.

⁴⁷Abel Green and Joe Laurie, Show Biz from Vaude to Video: (Henry Holt & Co.: New York, 1951), 228.

⁴⁸In 1927 “Washington Wobble” (RCA), in 1928 “Jubilee Stomp” (two versions on Victor and Okeh), and in 1929, “Doin' The Voom Voom” (Brunswick), “Swanee Shuffle” (Victor), “The Dicty Glide” (Victor), “Syncopated Shuffl”e (Okeh) and “Oklahoma Stomp” (Brunswick). It is notable that none of these are seen to be significant recordings within the Ellington canon.

⁴⁹“Cotton Club Stomp” on Brunswick and “Double Check Stomp” on Victor.

⁵⁰Stanley B.Walker, The Night Club Era (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1933); Paula S. Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977); Eve Brown (pseud), Champagne Cholly. The Life and Times of Maury Paul (E. P. Dutton & Co.: New York, 1947), 324.

⁵¹Lewis A. Erenberg, Steppin' Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890–1930 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981).

⁵²Ibid.

⁵³Ellin Mackay, “Why We Go To Cabarets; A Post-Debutante Explains,” The New Yorker (28 November 1925), 237.

⁵⁴Clifford John Doerksen, American Babel.

⁵⁵In a US radio network, the originating station is the station where most of the programs originate. The programs are distributed to affiliate stations on the network. WABC was the primary station of the CBS network until 1946, when it became WCBS. The WABC call sign was re-activated in 1953, when it became the originating station for the new ABC network. The two stations have no historical relationship beyond a shared name. See Jaker, Sulek, and Kanze, The Airwaves of New York, 84, 124; see also Ken Steiner, Cotton Club Broadcasts on NBC, 2008, http://www.depanorama.net/dems/083.htm.

⁵⁶Radio Digest, “Columbia System Ready To Go,” Radio Digest (September 1927); Thomas A. Delong, The Mighty Music Box: The Golden Age of Musical Radio (Los Angeles, Ca.: Amber Crest Books, 1980), 45–47.

⁵⁷Douglas, Listening In, 93–94.

⁵⁸“Cotton Club Stomp,” “Misty Morning,” “Going to Town,” “Freeze and Melt.” “A Nite at the Cotton Club” is available as part of A Nite at the Cotton Club Giants of Jazz Recordings 53304 (2004).

⁵⁹It is also worth noting that Ken Burns juxtaposes edited versions of these recordings with images of radio sets and listeners to “recreate” the Cotton Club remotes in Jazz.

⁶⁰See Chadwick Jenkins, “A Question of Containment,” 415–441; and Spike Hughes, “Impressions of Ellington in New York,” in The Duke Ellington Reader, edited by Mark Tucker (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993 [orig. 1933]), 70.

⁶¹Elizabeth McLeod, The Network Paley Didn't Found – Revisiting the First Year of the Columbia Broadcasting System, 2006, http://www.midcoast.com/~lizmcl/cbs.html.

⁶²Douglas Gomery, A History of Broadcasting in the United States (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008).

⁶³John Louis Howland, “Ellington Uptown”: Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, & the Birth of Concert Jazz (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009).

⁶⁴Mark Tucker, “The Renaissance Education of Duke Ellington,” in Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays, edited by Samuel A. Floyd (New York and London: Greenwood Press, 1990).

⁶⁵Arnold Shaw, The Jazz Age: Popular Music in the 1920s (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).

⁶⁶Henry O. Osgood, So This Is Jazz (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1926).

⁶⁷Spike Hughes, “Impressions of Ellington in New York,” 70; Spike Hughes, “Ellington at the Palladium,” in The Duke Ellington Reader, edited by Mark Tucker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1933a/R1993).

⁶⁸Tucker, “The Renaissance Education of Duke Ellington.”

⁶⁹Vernon Castle and Irene Castle, Modern Dancing (New York: Da Capo Press, 1980 [1914]).

⁷⁰Jenkins, “A Question of Containment,” 415–441; Carney, Cuttin' Up, 78–99.

⁷¹Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 5, 96.

⁷²Carl Van Vechten, Nigger Heaven (London: Knopf, 1926); Nancy Cunard, Negro (London: Published by Nancy Cunard at Wishart & Co., 1934).

⁷³Leon Coleman, Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Critical Assessment (New York and London: Garland Pub., 1998); Francois Buot and Nancy Cunard (Paris: Pauvert, 2008).

⁷⁴Sieglinde Lemke, Primitivist Modernism: Black Culture and The Origins of Transatlantic Modernism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

⁷⁵Alain Le Roy Locke, The New Negro: An Interpretation (New York: A. and C. Boni, 1925); Samuel A. Floyd, Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays (New York and London: Greenwood Press, 1990).

⁷⁶Tucker, “The Renaissance Education of Duke Ellington.”

⁷⁷Alain Le Roy Locke, The Negro and His Music (Washington, DC: The Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1936), 90.

⁷⁸Ted Vincent, Keep Cool: The Black Activists Who Built the Jazz Age (London East Haven, Conn.: Pluto Press, 1995), 145, 172.

⁷⁹Lawrence, Duke Ellington and His World, 81, 409.

⁸⁰Haskins, The Cotton Club, 57.

⁸²Krin Gabbard, Jammin' at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 166.

⁸¹Susan Delson, Dudley Murphy, Hollywood Wild Card (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press; Bristol: University Presses Marketing [distributor], 2006); Thomas Cripps, Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900–1942 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 205.

⁸³The earlier films are collected on the 19-hour, 7-disc DVD Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1894–1941, while Black and Tan most often appears on Ellington compilations like Duke Ellington & His Orchestra 1929–1943, along with extracts from other films in which the orchestra is portrayed in performance.

⁸⁴WJZ was, confusingly for our account of Ellington's early radio appearances, separated from NBC with the whole Blue Network in 1943 to become WABC, the originating station for the whole ABC network. As I indicated previously, the earlier WABC station had become WCBS.

⁸⁵Steiner, Cotton Club Broadcasts on NBC, 2008, http://www.depanorama.net/dems/083.htm.

⁸⁶The one exception was on Tuesday 28 October 1930, when they broadcast from 11:00 to 11:30 pm.

⁸⁷Elizabeth McLeod, The Original Amos 'n' Andy: Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll, and the 1928–1943 Radio Serial (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005), 8, 17.

⁸⁸Gabbard, Jammin' at the Margins, 166.

⁸⁹Ibid.

⁹⁰Spike Hughes, “Meet The Duke,” in The Duke Ellington Reader, edited by Mark Tucker (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933/R1993), 72–74.

⁹¹Ellington was to broadcast on WMCA in the late 1940s, but then as a DJ (Delong 1980, 272).

⁹²Douglas, Listening In, 93–94; Cited in William Barlow, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999), 19–20.