When did the big bands integrate 1940's or 1950's?

[Mr_Quatro]

I have been watching the old big band era and noticed the same problem sports teams use to have. This movie clip has an all black band and dancers.

clip from the movie “Stormy Weather” (1943) featuring Cab Calloway and his orchestra performing “Jumpin Jive”.

[Telemark]

Benny Goodman played in integrated groups in the 1930’s, sitting in with Fletcher Henderson’s band in Chicago. The famed 1938 Carnegie Hall concert had several black musicians in the orchestra (Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson) and they played with Goodman for several years.

[RealityChuck]

Interesting question. There were integrated bands as far back as the 1930s: Benny Goodman often performed publicly with Black musicians. His Carnegie Hall concert in 1938 included people like Count Basie and Lionel Hampton. Hampton was a regular member of the band.

But he was an outlier. Even in the 60s and 70s, integrated bands were few. It probably has more to do with societal issues than any prejudice on the part of the musicians.

[Chefguy]

Integrated bands were not all that common. Art Pepper relates in his autobiography as to how they were musicians first and foremost. Color made no difference if you could swing. Pepper played in all the clubs along Central Avenue (which was the Black nightclub district) in Los Angeles in the early 50s, . Going on tour created problems because of segregated hotels and restaurants, of course. As mentioned, Goodman was an example of someone who put the music foremost, and was probably the earliest bandleader to integrate.

[Bridget_Burke]

OK, I cheated & checked Wikipedia.

Benny Goodman hired guitarist Charlie Christian for recordings. But Christian played in his sextet, not his big band. However, I found this:

In November 1935 Goodman accepted an invitation to play in Chicago at the Joseph Urban Room at the Congress Hotel. His stay there extended to six months, and his popularity was cemented by nationwide radio broadcasts over NBC affiliate stations. While in Chicago, the band recorded If I Could Be with You, Stompin’ at the Savoy, and Goody, Goody. Goodman also played three special concerts produced by the Chicago socialite and jazz aficionado Helen Oakley. These “Rhythm Club” concerts at the Congress Hotel included sets in which Goodman and Krupa sat in with Fletcher Henderson’s band, perhaps the first racially integrated big band appearing before a paying audience in the United States.

Then I found this reply to a letter to the* New York Times. *

It is indeed ‘‘common knowledge’’ that Benny Goodman was a pioneer in the racial integration of jazz, one of the first white artists to perform and record regularly with black musicians. But the fact is that he did not have an integrated big band until 1939.

So, looks like Benny Goodman was the first white man to integrate his big band–in 1939. Integrated recording, special concerts & white guys sitting in with black bands happened earlier…

If we’re just looking at integrated studio & stage sessions, Jimmie Rodgers (born in Meridien MS) was a pioneer.

Although most of Rodgers’s songs were original, some of his most popular were versions of blues classics. “Frankie and Johnnie” was an African American ballad about a murder in St. Louis in 1899, and blues artists including Jim Jackson from Hernando, Mississippi, had made earlier recordings of “In the Jailhouse Now.” Rodgers employed African American musicians in the studio, including Louis Armstrong, who, along with his pianist wife Lil, backed Rodgers on “Blue Yodel No. 9.” Other sessions featured blues guitarist Clifford Gibson and the Louisville Jug Band.

In early 1929 Rodgers toured Mississippi with a vaudeville show that included blues singer Eva Thomas. Bluesmen who claimed to have met, traveled, or performed with Rodgers included Hammie Nixon, Rubin Lacy, and Houston Stackhouse, who recalled that he and Robert Nighthawk accompanied Rodgers in a show at the Edwards Hotel in Jackson (c. 1931). Rodgers’s influence on African American musicians from Mississippi is evident in recordings by the Mississippi Sheiks, Tommy Johnson, Furry Lewis, Scott Dunbar, and Mississippi John Hurt, whose song “Let the Mermaids Flirt With Me” was based on Rodgers’s “Waiting For A Train.” Howlin’ Wolf attributed his distinctive singing style to Rodgers, explaining, “I couldn’t do no yodelin’, so I turned to howlin’. And it’s done me just fine.”

Rogers also recorded with Hawaiian musicians–who brought slide guitar to America.

[Mr_Quatro]

I was looking for big band music on youtube that would get me out of this chair more often when I found the “Stormy Weather” movie clip.

Thank you for your answers … what will SD do when you smart (old and young) guys are gone?

[Urbanredneck]

Well sometimes audiences preferred all black bands.

I remember seeing an advertisement for an “all-negro” band.

[Mr_Quatro]

Do you have (8) minutes to spare? This is a great video showing an all white band playing for some really great black dancers on the same stage, but the band is at one end and the set for the black dancers on the other side: Glenn Miller - Chattanooga Choo Choo - Sun Valley Serenade (1941) HQ - YouTube

Glenn Miller - Chattanooga Choo Choo - Sun Valley Serenade (1941)

Sun Valley Serenade is the first of the only two movies featuring The Glenn Miller Orchestra

[obbn]

The Soggy Bottom Boys were integrated in the late 1920’s. People didn’t mind that they were integrated.

[ftg]

@obbn

The Soggy Bottom Boys were integrated in the late 1920’s. People didn’t mind that they were integrated.

Um, actually they first recorded together in 1937. If anything, the cousin talking about the “deepression” should have clued you in that it wasn’t the 20s.

Also a foursome, not a big band.

[Boozahol_Squid_P.I]

@ftg

Um, actually they first recorded together in 1937. If anything, the cousin talking about the “deepression” should have clued you in that it wasn’t the 20s.

Also a foursome, not a big band.

Also, not real.

[Urbanredneck]

@obbn

The Soggy Bottom Boys were integrated in the late 1920’s. People didn’t mind that they were integrated.

Well yes and no.

That was the thing about racism - it also had some “pluses”. Like it was ok for a white person to say “I really like listening to negroes”. Yes, people said those things. And people would pay money to listen to them.