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New York, Jimmie Lunceford, the Great Lakes, and the First Gerald Wilson Orchestra

Steven Loza

in The Jazz Pilgrimage of Gerald Wilson

This chapter focuses on Gerald Wilson's experience with the Jimmie Lunceford orchestra through the formation of his own and first orchestra. He joined Jimmie Lunceford in 1939, and it was Dizzy ... More

This chapter focuses on Gerald Wilson's experience with the Jimmie Lunceford orchestra through the formation of his own and first orchestra. He joined Jimmie Lunceford in 1939, and it was Dizzy Gillespie who showed him the ropes around New York. He stayed with Lunceford's band for three years. They would play in all the big places, but they still could not stay in hotels across the country. In 1940, they were supposed to tour Europe. However, they received a letter from the State Department that said they wouldn't be able to leave because there was a war. They also toured the country and made the movie Blues in the Night in 1941.Less

I Dream of Her and Avalon: 1930s Sweet Jazz, Race, and Nostalgia at the Casino Ballroom

in Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and ’40s

This chapter introduces white bandleader Jan Garber, and also investigates several versions of “Avalon.” The story of Santa Catalina's Casino Ballroom offered novel perspectives on how popular music ... More

This chapter introduces white bandleader Jan Garber, and also investigates several versions of “Avalon.” The story of Santa Catalina's Casino Ballroom offered novel perspectives on how popular music presented American experiences of place. The sweet “Avalon” of Jan Garber's band illustrated musical relationships and values that were well mixed to the ideology of island's promoters. The Santa Catalina Island Company adopted it as an unofficial anthem for the island. Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra, the Casa Loma Orchestra, and Jan Garber and His Orchestra produced the three commercially recorded versions of “Avalon.” Garber's “Avalon” was an excellent match to the ideology of the real Avalon. Considered together, the Lunceford and Casa Loma bands developed a musical “Avalon” that is far more open to other voices. Throughout the 1930s and '40s, “Avalon” was an easily accessible and widely understood sign for a complex of nostalgic emotions: yearning, loss, and memory.Less

Conclusion: Air Spaces

in Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and ’40s

This chapter reports a brief coda that looks at an emerging spatial experience—flight—the notion of which was a significant trope in African American culture generally and jazz in particular. The ... More

This chapter reports a brief coda that looks at an emerging spatial experience—flight—the notion of which was a significant trope in African American culture generally and jazz in particular. The Charlie Barnet Orchestra recorded “Wings over Manhattan,” one example of the many associations at the time between popular culture and the fascination with airplanes and air travel. “Flying Home” utilized the airplane and the idea of “flying” to demonstrate the perilous conditions of African American existence. Jimmie Lunceford's two-beat executed a style of mobility that takes on special meaning in the context of the leader's obsession with flight. Dance band jazz, later dubbed “swing,” was not the only popular music of the era, but it reached across class, race, and ethnic lines in ways strikingly different from the fractured musical-cultural landscape of today.Less