The Swing Book Read Online Free PDF Page B

against each other that night. According to electrified accounts of the evening,
     the bands blew so hard at each other, it seemed as if the walls of the Savoy were about to fall down. While battles of the
     bands weren’t actually judged competitions, the audience would often clearly clap more for one orchestra than another. But
     the crowd’s reactions to Webb and Basie were so close that the debate over who had triumphed lasted long after the night was
     over.
    Despite these scenes of black and white musicians playing and socializing together at the Savoy and Carnegie Hall, there were
     still serious inequities that even the most famous African-American bandleaders suffered because of their color. White bands
     enjoyed a number of advantages, getting lucrative hotel bookings and radio shows that few black bands could nail down. If
     a white group and a black group recorded the same song, as with Goodman’s and Basie’s versions of “One O’Clock Jump,” the
     white band’s version stood a much greater chance of being a hit. And without long-term hotel contracts, black bands were forced
     to take endless tours made up mostly of one-night gigs. Traveling, especially in the South, was often a series of painful
     humiliations and difficulties. Black musicians couldn’t stay at most hotels, even the ones at which they were performing.
     In some cities they sometimes couldn’t even find a restaurant that would serve them. Cab Calloway was beaten in Kansas City
     when he tried to enter the Pla-Mor Ballroom, where his friend Lionel Hampton was playing. In another unconscionable incident,
     a theater manager in Detroit forced Billie Holiday to wear greasepaint onstage during an appearance of the Count Basie Orchestra.
     His reasoning? He worried that the light-skinned Holiday might look white under the stage lighting and that the audience would
     be offended. As Holiday once said about the racism she encountered as an entertainer, “You can be up to your boobies in white
     satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.”
    In other ways, however, the swing movement was a model of pluralism and racial equality. Many bands, arguing that they wanted
     to play the best music possible, fought for integration. In addition to Goodman’s quartet, other breakthroughs included white
     bandleader Artie Shaw’s hiring of Billie Holiday, and black trumpeter Roy Eldridge’s addition to Gene Krupa’s orchestra. A
     number of black bands, including those of Lucky Millinder and Earl Hines, began to include white members as well. “The arts
     led the way in breaking down the discrimination against our people,” says Norma Miller. “It was the arts that opened the door
     for black people to go through.” The sentiment expressed at the time was that song (and also dance at places like the Savoy)
     was a common meeting ground. “Audiences don’t draw color lines when they’re listening to music,” said Goodman pianist Teddy
     Wilson. (Women, on the other hand, were pointedly not given equal status in the swing world. While most bands had female singers,
     few orchestras, white or black, would consider hiring anything but male instrumentalists.)
    Was it this newfound harmony that fueled the success of swing? The late thirties, a moment when cross-fertilization between
     black and white musicians was at its greatest peak, is often considered the high point of the swing era. Duke Ellington was
     then moving into a period of enormously inspired activity. Spurred by the arrival of composer Billy Strayhorn, bassist Jimmy
     Blanton, and saxophonist Ben Webster to the band, Ellington began creating such classics as “Take the ‘A’ Train” and “Cotton
     Tail.” The integrated nightclub Café Society opened in 1938 in Greenwich Village. The boogie-woogie piano style of Kansas
     City caught on as a national craze. From Basie to Goodman, from Lunceford to Barnet, swing