Published August 29, 2021
By Joseph Newkirk
Following
the end of World War I in November 1918, a celebratory spirit arose across the
United States accompanied by an increasingly popular and largely improvised
style of music known as jazz—originally a word meaning “vigor” or “pep.” As the
new decade approached, the esteemed National Association of Masters of Dancing
announced the obsolescence of the waltz and the ascent of the Charleston, the
Lindy hop and the shimmy. F. Scott Fitzgerald called it the Jazz Age, and it
began with a flourish.
Many soldiers who
had played in military bands during the war continued in civilian life as jazz
musicians. Quincy native Nick Musolino, a former member of the Army’s 5th
Infantry Band, returned to his hometown and played saxophone for a living. Soon
Maurice Dickson and Larry Foiz joined him and three other veterans to form the
impromptu group Sergeant Steed’s Six Syncopating Soldiers.
In June 1919, a
jazz club opened in Quincy and featured burgeoning bands like Highland
Syncopators, Rialto Jazz Band, and Red Jackets Orchestra. While white musicians
almost exclusively performed in Quincy bands, jazz itself had originated among
black players in New Orleans who fused several musical styles rooted in slave
culture to create a uniquely American sound.
Local audiences, though, often enjoyed and danced to “colored” bands who traveled up the
Mississippi River by steamboat and brought New Orleans jazz here. Among others,
the Peerless Union Jazz Band and Alabama Jazz Kings played to appreciative
crowds during an age when local hotels banned black people and restaurants
would not serve them.
An editorial in
the Quincy Daily Whig of January 14, 1919, commented: “Real jazz originated in
the South with the strumming of the banjo on the plantations… it takes real
colored musicians to produce jazz that has rhythm and swing to it that makes
everyone dance with pleasure, never before known with ordinary dance music.”
While young people
of every ethnic and racial group flocked to hear jazz, many older conservatives
swiftly and vehemently opposed this music, calling it “obnoxious noise” and
“jungle cries.” Herman Kessel, a local music teacher, said that music should
beautify life, not burlesque it like jazz. Mrs. Georgia Morey, director of Quincy’s Junior Music Club, banned jazz songs
from the club’s concert contests, and the Old Time Fiddlers Association
declared war on jazz. Ferdinand Gardner, a Quincy band and orchestra musician,
compared jazz to a masterpiece splashed with paint by vandals and a religious
hymn sung mockingly by drunken women in a brothel. At the city’s first annual
Radio Show, Erwin F. Swindell, musical director of station WOC in Dubuque,
Iowa, told the audience that radio would end jazz by giving listeners an
overdose of this music.
Movies produced by
opponents of “lewd music” like “Flaming Youth,” “Cheap Kisses,” and “Sinners in
Silk” played in local theaters to illustrate the dangers of jazz: petting
leading to promiscuity, marriages ending in divorce, and the illegal
consumption of alcohol.
The most zealous
opposition came from church pulpits. Rev. Harry L. Meyer of Quincy’s
Congregational Church said that jazz clogs the minds of young people at a time
when they need sounds of the pure sacred, heroic, and unselfish. Kentucky
Street Methodist Episcopal Church’s minister Rev. J. E (John) Tuschhoff
declared that the spirit of jazz is the spirit of rebellion proclaiming man is
nothing but an improved animal and Jesus nothing but an improved man. In the
May 5, 1924, Quincy Daily Whig, Unitarian Church pastor Rev. Celian Ufford
stated. “A jazz orchestra is like a band of wild Indians let loose in a boiler
factory on Armistice day…morally harmful and so nerve-racking, so enervating,
that it does actual harm to the public”
Jazz musicians
fought back. At a Quincy City Council meeting in June 1918, Johnathan
Merriweather of the Quincy Branch of the International Jazz Club, offered
council members a reprieve from long-winded speeches by aldermen by inviting
them instead to participate in a jazz jam session with local bands. On a motion
by Alderman James E. McNutt, the council unanimously voted to strike the word
“jazz” from the minutes. Alderman Sam Hyatt stood up and declared that no one
would stop him from talking because he had secured 845 votes for the mayor and
in his own election defeated three other men in his ward for a seat on the
council.
In January 1925,
Quincy’s Senior and Junior Music Clubs debated whether jazz is, or is not,
harmful to American composition. The Senior Club illustrated the demoralizing
effects of this music with the example of Dorothy Ellington, a San Francisco
woman who—in a scandal that made headlines across the country—had murdered her
mother. Prosecutors in the case argued that her excessive listening and dancing
to jazz during a reckless binge of partying provoked this killing.
The Junior Club
countered by stating that jazz is aesthetically pleasing and an original music
created on American soil with deep roots in our history and culture. After a
contentious debate, judges gave the nod to jazz’ rightful place in our national
repertoire. Younger Quincy musicians claimed victory for this increasing
well-liked music. Times and tastes were changing.
In 1928, five
years after the Vatican condemned jazz as flagrant immorality, Catholic Women
of Quincy sponsored a supper accompanied by the newly formed Quincy College
Jazz Band. One year later, the movie “The Jazz Singer” (the world’s first “talkie”)
starring Al Jolson in blackface premiered here to sold-out audiences and made
this music new fans. Franklin School’s PTA held a minstrel show with a jazz
background in June 1929, only six years after Quincy Public Schools had banned
“wild music” from the curriculum.
Four months after
the Franklin School show, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression
began, with the nation descending into its worst economic crisis in history.
During these hard times, jazz provided a welcome respite from widespread
destitution and suffering. Soon it would be universally performed and
appreciated and recognized as the United States’ sole contribution to the
world’s musical heritage.
Sources
“Jazz in
Theology is Deplored by Rev. J. E. Tuschhoff.”
Quincy
Daily Herald
, March
24, 1924, 3.
“Jazz Sounds
Wireless.”
Quincy Daily Herald
, Jan. 13, 1921, 4.
Jones, Leroi.
Blues People: Negro Music in White America
. New York: William Morrow, 1963.
“Pastor
Earnestly Warns Parents About Children in Present Jazz Age.”
Quincy Daily
Herald
, Sept. 8, 1925, 14.
“Relief Offered
Council From Long Winded Speeches by Quincy Branch of International Jazzers.”
Quincy
Daily Journal
, June 25, 1918, 3.
Shipton,
Alyn.
A New History of Jazz
. rev. and updated. London: Continuum International
Publishing Group, 2007.
“Steamer J.
S. Has a Classy Jazz Band.”
Quincy Daily Whig
, June 14, 1919, 5.
“Ufford
Attacks Jazz in Music Week Sermon.”
Quincy Daily Herald
, May 5, 1924,
4.
