THE ARTS | Reshaping ideas, expressing identity
29 July 2008
Jump Blues
Small rhythm and horn driven jump bands achieve early success
(The following is excerpted from the U.S. Department of State publication, American Popular Music.)
Jump blues, the first commercially successful category of rhythm & blues, flourished during and just after World War II. During the war, as shortages made it more difficult to maintain a lucrative touring schedule, the leaders of some big bands were forced to downsize. They formed smaller combos, generally made up of a rhythm section and horn players. These jump bands specialized in hard-swinging, boogie-woogie-based party music, spiced with humorous lyrics and wild stage performances.
The most successful and influential jump band was the Tympany Five, led by Louis Jordan, who began making recordings for Decca Records in 1939. Jordan was tremendously popular with black listeners and able to build an extensive white audience during and after the war.
Jordan’s first big hit, “G.I. Jive,” reached Number One on Billboard’s “Harlem Hit Parade,” as the R&B chart was labeled in the earlier 1940s, held the top spot on the pop music charts for two weeks, and sold over a million copies. From 1945 through 1948 Jordan, working with a white record producer named Milt Gabler, recorded a string of crossover hits, including “Caldonia,” “Stone Cold Dead in the Market,” and “Ain’t Nobody Here but Us Chickens.” The popularity of the Tympany Five was reinforced by a series of films featuring the band. These short musical features were rented to individual movie theaters and shown as a promotional device a few days before the band was due to hit town. Jordan’s films, like his records, were popular in white as well as black movie theaters, even in the Deep South. However, the fact that his music appealed to an interracial audience should not lead us to assume that Jordan’s career was unaffected by racism.
As R&B artists like Jordan began to attract a more diverse audience, the separation between white and black fans was maintained in various ways. Sometimes white R&B fans sat in the balcony of a segregated theater or dance hall, watching the black dancers below in order to pick up the latest steps. At other times a rope was stretched across the middle of the dance floor to “maintain order.” Then, as at other times, the circulation of popular music across racial boundaries did not necessarily signify an amelioration of racism in everyday life.
[This article is excerpted from American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3 by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman, published by Oxford University Press, copyright (2003, 2007), and offered in an abridged edition by the Bureau of International Information Programs.]
