Jazz and the Popular Front

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Jazz and the Popular Front: Swing

Musicians and the LeftWing Movement

of the 1930s1940sJonathon Bakan

Published online: 21 Apr 2009.

To cite this article:Jonathon Bakan (2009) Jazz and the Popular Front: Swing Musicians

and the LeftWing Movement of the 1930s1940s, Jazz Perspectives, 3:1, 35-56, DOI:

10.1080/17494060902778118

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Jazz and the Popular Front: Swing

Musicians and the Left-WingMovement of the 1930s1940sJonathon Bakan

This paper locates the jazz music of the 1930s and 1940s1 within the context of the

left-wing political movement of that era. For during the same years that jazz was

emerging in the form of swing as a centrally important aspect of the American

popular music industry, a radical oppositional movement closely associated with, butnot limited to, the American Communist Party was growing rapidly, especially within

Americas immigrant and African American communities. Associating jazz music

with oppositional political discourses is not new, but this connection has usually been

made with regard to post-Depression jazz stylistic trends, such as bebop, or the free

jazz of the 1960s.2 Until recently, very little scholarly work had been done exploring

1 As Scott DeVeaux has noted in his important article, Constructing the Jazz Tradition (Black

American Literature Forum25 [Fall 1991]: 525560), the notion of a singular and unified historical jazz

tradition is an historiological construct, a broad consensus forged out of decades of critical debate,

conflict, and compromise over what does, and what does not, constitute jazz music. A critique of the

assumptions implied by the notion of a singular jazz tradition goes beyond the bounds of this paper;

however, for the purposes of this discussion, I use the word jazz to include a wide range of urban

African American-inspired musics of the 1930s and 1940s, including big band swing, Harlem stride

piano, the music of performers such as Frank Sinatra and Lena Horne (who began their careers as big

band singers but later branched out in other areas of popular entertainment), as well as the music of

bebop musicians who emerged out of the big bands of the late 1930s and early 1940s.2 In Langston Hughess The Best of Simple, for example, the character Simple seems to argue that bebop was

an inspired reaction to the police brutality frequently endured by black Americans, saying Everytime a cop

hits a Negro with his billy club that old club says BOP! BOP! BE-BOP! ... BOP! BOP! That Negro

hollers, Oool-ya-koo! Ou-o-o! Old cop just keeps on, MOP! MOP! BE-BOP! MOP! Thats where

Be-Bop came from, beaten right out of some Negros head into them horns and saxophones and piano keys

that plays it. (Langston Hughes, The Best of Simple [New York: Hill & Wang, 1961], 117118.) AmiriBaraka (writing as Leroi Jones) likewise argued that the Negro music that developed in the forties had

more than an accidental implication of social upheaval associated with it. Leroi Jones,Blues People: Negro

Music in White America(New York: W. Morrow, 1963), 188. Similarly, Eric Lott has linked the emergent

bebop movement of the early 1940s with the labor and civil rights movements of those years. Eric Lott,

Double V, Double-Time: Bebops Politics of Style, in Jazz Among the Discourses, ed. Krin Gabbard

(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 244. More recently, Ingrid Monson has explored the

relationships linking jazz music of the 1950s and 1960s to the civil rights and anti-colonialist discourses of

the Cold War period. Ingrid Monson, Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2007). In the 1960s, the association of the jazz avant garde with ideas of radical

political opposition was made explicit at a concert event that was labeled The October Revolution in

Music by its organizers. Rob Backus,Fire Music: A Political History of Jazz (n.p., USA: Vanguard Books,

Emancipation, Black Graphics International, 1976), 69. In so naming their concert, the organizers seem to

have linked the revolutionary musical ideas of the contemporary jazz avant garde to the revolutionary

Jazz PerspectivesVol. 3, No. 1, April 2009, pp. 3556

ISSN 1749-4060 print/1749-4079 online # 2009 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/17494060902778118


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the connections between the jazz music of the Swing Era and the left-wing political

movements of the 1930s and early 1940s.3 This oversight is all the more striking given

the fact that New York Citys Harlem district, widely acknowledged as the epicenter

of Swing Era jazz, was also emerging during the Depression era as a key center of the

American Communist movement. Indeed, during the 1930s, many of Harlems

residents, especially among the communitys intelligentsia, found themselves

attracted to the left-wing milieu centered around the American Communist Party.

Americas labor movement grew in size and militancy during the Depression

years,4 and as it did, the Communist Party emerged as the largest, best-financed, and

best-organized section of the left-wing movement. Between 1934 and 1939, the

American Communist Party grew in size from about 26,000 to about 85,000

members.5 Of course, the left-wing movement of the Depression era went well

beyond the Communist Partys dues-paying membership, and it included activists in

political organizations such as the NAACP, a variety of labor, immigrant, and social

3 During the mid-1990s, a small number of American cultural historians outside of musicology did begin

to draw attention to the connections between jazz music and the left-wing movement of the 1930s and

1940s. See especially Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the

Twentieth Century (London: Verso, 1996); David Stowe, Swing Changes: Big-Band Jazz in New Deal

America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994); and David Stowe, The Politics of Cafe

Society, Journal of American History 84 (March 1998): 13841406. That research in turn provided thebasis for a number of more recent studies that have begun to further explore the social and political

ramifications of Swing Era jazz. See, for example, Lewis A. Erenberg, Swingin the Dream (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1998); Peter Townsend,Jazz in American Culture (Jackson, MS: University

of Mississippi Press, 2000); and Kenneth J. Bindas, Swing, That Modern Sound(Jackson, MS: University

Press of Mississippi, 2001). This paper is a further contribution to this body of research. I am particularly

indebted to the groundbreaking work of Michael Denning, whose important book, The Cultural Front,

provided many of the initial leads for this paper.4 In 1934, longshoremen in San Francisco, teamsters in Minneapolis, and auto-parts workers in Toledo

led three separate general strikes in their respective cities. In the same year, 400,000 textile workers

engaged in the largest strike to affect a single industry in American history. Irving Howe and Lewis Coser

have described the rising labor militancy of the 1930s in their history of American Communism, The

American Communist Party: In 1934 alone there had been the San Francisco general strike led by HarryBridges, a shrewd and ruthless unionist whose policies were seldom distinguishable from those of the

Communists; two violent teamsters strikes in Minneapolis led by the Trotskyist Dunne brothers, which

attracted national attention; and a spectacular strike at the Toledo Auto-lite plant, where workers

reinforced by thousands of unemployed, battled National Guardsmen for two days. All through 1935

wildcat strikes were bursting out in the auto plants. By May spontaneous strikes had occurred in the

Toledo Chevrolet and in Cleveland Fisher Body. In November the first great sit-down was staged in the

Akron Goodyear plantsa spontaneous outbreak, marking the real start, on a factory level, of the CIO

upsurge. From Akron the flames of industrial unionism spread to Flint, where another sit-down strike

forced General Motors to recognize the CIO auto union. Irving Howe and Lewis Coser, The American

Communist Party (New York: Praeger, 1962; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1974), 370.5 Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press,

1983), 45; see also Harvey Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade (New

York: Basic Books, 1984), 240, 307.

ideals that inspired Russias October Revolution of 1917. In 1966, saxophonist Archie Shepp stated that

jazz is anti-war; it is opposed to Viet Nam; it is for Cuba; it is for the liberation of all people. That is the

nature of jazz. Why is this so? Because jazz is a music itself born out of oppression, born out of the

enslavement of my people. It is precisely that. Down Beat,Music 66(Chicago: Maher Publishing, 1966),

20. Quoted in Backus, Fire Music,86.

36 Jazz and the Popular Front


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democratic organizations, and Marxists of various stripes. But while this emergent

movement culture6 included activists from a wide range of political perspectives and

organizations, the American Communist Party played a unique and central role in the

larger movement. As the largest organized section of the left-wing movement, the

Communist Party provided resources, networks, and physical spaceswhat sociologist

Alan Sears has described in another context as an infrastructure of dissent7that

could be used for any number of purposes, both political and personal, and by all

participants in the broader left-wing movement, even those who may have had

significant political disagreements with the current Party line. Indeed, the Communist

Party provided important media space, performance venues, organizational networks,

and economic backing for a wide range of cultural events that were important in

conditioning the history and reception of jazz music. Even among those who

vociferously disagreed with the Communist Party, there were many who participated in

the activities it initiated or sponsored, and whose contributions to the popular discourse

of the period were conditioned by the political positions the Party espoused. For thisreason, this paper will address not only the Communist Party and its circle of committed

activists, but will also focus, as historian Michael Brown suggests, on those of varying

degrees of commitment who worked within and around Party organizations, and the

greater number of peoplewhether official members or notwhose experiences of

agency, moral urgency, and politics were influenced by [the Communist Party] in the

various settings in which they lived and felt the need to take action.8

During the Depression years, Harlem emerged as a major center of left-wing

activism. This represented a significant shift in the communitys political tenor. As

historian Mark Naison has observed, few Harlemites had been actively engaged in anykind of mass-based militant political activity prior to the 1930s.9 However, with the

onset of the Depression, the mood in Harlem began to change. By the mid-1930s,

political demonstrations had become a common occurrence on its streets, and the

community was buzzing with political activity, often of a highly militant nature.10 In

Naisons words, Harlems shift towards mass political activity reflected an

extraordinary change that had occurred since the Depression. In a community

where even the most militant spokesmen had failed to disturb the peace of the

postwar era (191928) with a major strike or boycott, [now] the butcher, the baker,

and the candlestick maker were all taking to the picket line.11

6 Denning, Cultural Front, 67.7 Alan Sears, Creating and Sustaining Communities of Struggle: The Infrastructure of Dissent, New

Socialist Magazine, July-August 2005, 3233.8 Michael E. Brown, ed.,New Studies in the Politics and Culture of U.S. Communism (New York: Monthly

Review Press, 1993), 17.9 The socialist labor leader A. Philip Randolph and Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey each had significant

followings in Harlem during the 1920s. Both were renowned for their militancy, though they avoided the

kind of mass-based, direct-action forms of popular protest that would later characterize Harlem during

the 1930s. Naison, Communists, 21.10See Ibid., 115165.11 Ibid., 115.

Jazz Perspectives 37


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As these protests grew, so did the Harlem Communist Party. At the onset of the

Depression, there were at most 15 black members in the Harlem Party, and by 1930

there were still less than 50. By 1933, the Harlem Party had grown to just 87 black

members. In January 1935, the Harlem Communist Party claimed 300 black

members. By August of the same year, the number had more than doubled to 700.12

However, these figures only tell part of the story, for the influence of the Communist

Party in Harlem went far beyond its own membership. Thus, in January of 1935

(when the Harlem Communist Party could still claim only 300 black members), the

Communist-led Upper Harlem Unemployed Council had 3,000 members, the

Harlem International Labor Defense claimed 1,090 members, and Communists had

organized 18 Party-led shop units in various Harlem workplaces.13 By 1938, the

Harlem section of the Communist Party had about 1,000 black members with

perhaps another 2,000 organized into Party-led organizations.14 If one includes those

who passedthroughthe Communist Party, the numbers are still larger. According to

Naison, between the spring of 1936 and the spring of 1938, the Communist Party inNew York State recruited 2,320 blacks and lost 1,518. Naison estimates that two-

thirds of these were affiliated to the Harlem section of the Party.15

A June 4, 1938, article in the Saturday Evening Post described the wide scope of

Communist activities in Harlem:

12 Ibid., 25, 38, 96, 158.

13 Ibid., 134.14 Ibid., 279.15 Ibid., 280. Naison attributes the high turnover in black membership to what he calls a gap between

the political culture of the Party, and that of the Harlem masses. While Communists garnered high

regard from grass-roots Harlemites for their organizing around day-to-day issues such as housing and

social relief, the Party did have consistent difficulties holding the working-class blacks it recruited

(perhaps ironically, the Party had much greater proportional success recruiting and holding members

from among Harlems intelligentsia). Even among those working-class Harlemites who were inspired to

sign membership cards, many did not become actively involved in the Partys broader activities, or its

many social, cultural, and educational activities outside of Harlem. One source of cultural tension

appears to have been the insistence that all Party meetings and social gatherings be racially integrated,

even when black members wanted to meet separately from their white comrades. Naison cites Abner

Berry, a leading member in the Harlem Party as recalling, The thing I came up against most often inHarlem was that the blacks wanted to be together. They didnt mind on occasion being integrated, but

in general, they wanted to be involved in something they could call their own, something they organized

and led. This was not a hate-whitey thing. Rather they had some things they wanted to discuss by

themselves, for themselves. The Party was dead set against this. Ibid., 279280. This situation reflected

an ongoing tension among Communists over the question of the independent organization of blacks

within the Party. In 1928, the Communist Party officially adopted the position that African Americans

constituted a distinct nation oppressed under imperialism, and argued for political self-

determination in the Southern black belt. This position was attractive to those black activists who

had been introduced to politics through the pan-Africanist nationalism of the Garvey movement. At the

same time, however, the Partys national leadership insisted that all Communist Party organization be

done under the slogan of interracialism and proletarian internationalismnot on the basis of

independent organization of oppressed nationalities. See Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture,

Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1996), 103121.



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The most important center of Communist agitation in the [American] North is theNegro headquarters of the party in New Yorka much-placarded building onLenox Avenue in Harlem.

Communist Party Headquarters is a place where every Negro with a grievancecan be sure of prompt action. If he has been fired, the Communists can be countedon to picket his employer. If he has been evicted, the Communists will guard hisfurniture and take his case to court. If his gas has been cut off the Communists willtake his complaint, but not his unpaid bill, to the nearest office. There is never alabor parade, nor a mass meeting of any significance in the colored community, inwhich the Communists do not get their banner in the front row and their speakerson the platform.16

Jazz musicians were not immune to this environment, and several prominent players

were drawn into the left-wing milieu. Indeed, at least some prominent members of

Harlems jazz community were in contact with the Communist Party as early as 1930.17

On March 22 of that year, Duke Ellingtons bandwhich was still working as the house

orchestra at Harlems exclusive Cotton Clubprovided the music at an interracialBall sponsored byThe LiberatorandLabor Unity, two publications affiliated with the

Party.18 In the words of Earl Ofari Hutchinson (who mistakenly puts the date of

Ellingtons appearance at the Communist rally in 1931, rather than 1930):

Ellington was so impressed with the spirit the Reds aroused in Harlem that heagreed to provide entertainment for a Party-sponsored dance at Harlems RocklandPalace in March 1931 [sic]. More than one thousand black and white activistsshowed up for the affair. In between dancing to Ellington, they sang theInternationale, watched an interracial dance troupe, and listened to speeches byParty leaders. [Communist leader William Z.] Foster, basking in the glow of the

evenings revelry, promised to organize Negro workers side by side with whiteworkers and that Communists would be in the street shouting death penalty tothe murderers.19

16Stanley High, Black Omens, Saturday Evening Post, June 4, 1938, 38.17While the subject goes beyond the bounds of this paper, connections linking prominent figures in the

history of jazz to organized radical groupings may be drawn still earlier than this. During the late 1910s

and early 1920s, the African American poet and soon-to-be song lyricist, Andy Razaf, was closely

associated with the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), an early black radical organization strongly

influenced by the politics of both pan-African black nationalism and Soviet Bolshevism. ABB members,

including the groups founder Cyril Briggs, would become the first members of the Harlem Communist

Party. See Naison, Communists, 510; and Mark Solomon, The Cry Was Unity: Communists and AfricanAmericans, 19171936 (Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 1998), 429. Andy Razaf, who

famously wrote lyrics for songs composed by Fats Waller, Eubie Blake, and many others, was an editor

and writer for the ABB publication Crusader, as well as a contributor to Marcus Garveys Negro World

and A. Philip Randolphs Messenger. See William J. Maxwell, New Negro, Old Left: African-American

Writing and Communism Between the Wars (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 25; and

Vincent,Keep Cool,1213. For an interesting discussion of Andy Razafs politics and publications in the

Crusader, and the broader significance of his work within the Harlem Renaissance literary milieu, see

Maxwell, New Negro, 1361. Ted Vincent argues that the pioneering African American composer and

musician W. C. Handy also had close relations with the ABB, and was close to the Garvey movement

for a time. Vincent, Keep Cool, 48.18See Liberator, March 1, 1930, 4; Naison, Communists, 3637.19Earl Ofari Hutchinson,Blacks and Reds: Race and Class in Conflict, 19191990(East Lansing: Michigan

State University Press, 1995), 70.



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Two years later, the Communists campaign to defend the Scottsboro Boys

brought several other prominent Harlem jazz players into contact with the Party. The

Scottsboro Boys were nine young black men and boys, aged 13 to 21, who, in 1931,

were arrested in Scottsboro, Alabama, on charges of rape. As Naison puts it,

the flimsiness of the states evidence mattered little in the hysterical atmospherethat the rape charge had created. Soon after the arrest, crowds began to gatheroutside the jail, and the National Guard had to be called to prevent a lynching.Within two weeks of the incident, the defendants had been indicted, tried, andsentenced to death.20

The American Communist Party, through its legal group, the International Labor

Defense (ILD), was quick to offer support to the Scottsboro defendants, and soon

took charge of their case. It was their leadership of the Scottsboro defense in the early

1930s that first marked the emergence of the Communist Party as a significant

political force among African Americans, particularly in Harlem.21 In the summer of

1932, Communists initiated the Scottsboro Unity Defense Committee, a broadcoalition which attracted participants far beyond the Partys own ranks. The first

public meeting of the Scottsboro Unity Defense Committee was held in Harlem, and

was attended by about 45 people, mostly African Americans. Significantly, among

those in attendance was a young John Hammond, who would soon emerge as a

highly influential jazz promoter, writer, and record producer.22 Notably, in 1933,

Hammond wrote two articles covering the Scottsboro trial for the Nation.23

Communists led the organization of several large benefit rallies for the Scottsboro

defendants. The Daily Worker of May 17, 1932, describes one such mass meeting

and concert, at which over 2,000 people were reported to be in attendance.Entertainment at the event was provided by a wide range of stage performers,

including Cab Calloways orchestra, Martha Graham and her dance troupe, and other

prominent performers, both black and white.24 At subsequent rallies, John

Hammond was instrumental in recruiting the participation of musicians such as

Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Benny Carter, Fats Waller, and W. C. Handy in

20Naison, Communists, 58.21See Ibid., 57; Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Blacks and Reds, 69.22Naison, Communists, 71.23

See John Hammond, Due Process of Law in Alabama, The Nation, December 20, 1933, 701702;and John Hammond, The South Speaks, The Nation, April 26, 1933, 465466. John Hammond will

reappear throughout this paper as an active participant in the left-wing movement. In his recent book,

Blowin Hot and Cool, John Gennari describes Hammond as an anticommunist liberal[], citing

Hammonds disagreements with the Communists on various issues. John Gennari, Blowin Hot and Cool:

Jazz and Its Critics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 34. However, the use of the term

anticommunist in this context seems to oversimplify Hammonds relationships, criticisms, and

alliances with various Party activists and organizations during the 1930s and 1940s. Gennari does

however acknowledge both that Hammonds activism grew out of the tradition of Leftist politics in the

jazz world that started in the early 1930s and intensified with the Popular Front initiative of the

Communist Party after 1935, and that Hammond was part of a group of young blacks and Jews

associated with the Harlem branch of the CPUSA. Ibid.24See Naison, Communists, 70; 2000 Pledge Support to Mass Fight for Scottsboro Boys at Harlem

Meeting, Daily Worker, May 17, 1932, 2.



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the defense campaign.25 In his autobiography, Hammond described his involvement

in the campaign:

In December of 1932, [Harlem Communist Party leader William Patterson26] askedme to arrange the entertainment for a benefit the ILD [International LaborDefense] was planning for the Scottsboro Defense Committee. I knew Patsposition, just as he knew I was not a Communist sympathizer, but I was asinterested in the new trial as he was, so I agreed to do what I could.

The benefit was held at the Rockland Palace at 155th Street and Eighth Avenue,underneath the elevated tracks next to the Polo Grounds. It was dingy and decrepit,but as large as the Savoy Ballroom. I got Benny Carters orchestra and DukeEllingtonsoloand the benefit was a great success. Miriam Hopkins andTallulah Bankhead were there, and it also was the show-business debut of a fifteen-

year-old singer named Martha Raye. Martha, the daughter of vaudevillians, was aprotegee of Irving Mills, Ellingtons manager and mentor, who met her throughanother of his clients. My best memory is of the young girl singing in front ofthe Carter orchestrawith Duke at the pianoat this benefit.27

The Communists success in leading the Scottsboro campaign was undoubtedly

due, at least in part, to a willingness on the part of Harlem Party activists to tone

down the sharply polemical attacks against both Harlems middle class and African

American popular music that had characterized much of their literature during the

early 1930s.28 Indeed, the fact that Communists were willing to organize Scottsboro

25See John Hammond and Irving Townsend, John Hammond on Record (New York: Summit Books,

1977), 85; Burton W. Peretti, Jazz in American Culture (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1998), 72; and Naison,

Communists, 72.26

Patterson was a prominent Harlem lawyer who joined the Party in the mid-1920s. He rose to become aleader in the national organization, leading both the Partys legal organization the International Labor

Defense, and serving as a member of the Partys leading Political Bureau (Politboro). Patterson played a

significant role in shaping the cultural politics of the Harlem Communist Party. He would eventually

marry Louise Thompson, another important figure who helped to bring several leading members of

Harlems artistic intelligentsia into the Communist milieu. Thompson was well-known among leading

Harlem Renaissance thinkers, and in the early 1930s she began hosting political discussions at her

apartment. These meetings included many of Harlems most prominent artists and intellectuals. She

herself joined the Communist Party around the same time. Interestingly, Thompson was also a friend of

John Hammond. In 1932, Hammond, Thompson, and others became involved in a Soviet-sponsored

project to produce a film about working-class blacks in America. Hammond provided the funding that

sent a delegation of black writers and actors to the Soviet Union for work on the project. See Denning,

Cultural Front, 65; Naison,Communists, 4243, 68, 100; and David Levering Lewis,When Harlem Was inVogue(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981; reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 288291.27Hammond and Townsend, John Hammond on Record, 85.28During the early 1930s, popular jazz music had often been condemned by leading Communists as a

non-proletarian art form. For example, in the February 1930 issue ofNew Masses magazine, editor Mike

Gold wrote that the Harlem Cabaret no more represents the Negro Mass than a pawnshop represents a

Jew, or an opium den the struggling Chinese nation. Quoted in Naison,Communists, 92n53. Gold also

wrote that This cabaret obsession is but an infantile disease, a passing phase. Negroes are plowing

into the revolutionary movement. It is the Negroes [sic] only remaining hope. And among these masses

the Negro will at last find his true voice. It will be a voice of storm, beauty and pain, no saxophone

clowning, but Beethovens majesty and Wagners might, somber as night with the vast Negro suffering,

but with red stars burning bright for revolt. Quoted in George Hutchinson, The Harlem Renaissance in

Black and White(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995), 272. This negative

attitude towards popular African-American culture was also expressed in the poem Break That Banjo,



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events featuring such an array of prominent jazz and popular music performers

points to the inconsistencies and ambiguities of official Communist views regarding

popular music (and especially African American popular music) during the early

1930s. It also indicates the relative independence of the Harlem Party from the

national Communist leadership during those years, a situation that generated

significant tensions between the Partys national leadership and its Harlem activists.

As Robin D. G. Kelley has argued, many of the earliest black members of the Harlem

Party were strongly influenced by nationalist notions of racial self-reliance and Pan-

Africanism, a situation that sometimes caused friction between the Partys leadership

and its Harlem section.29

The independent organizational attitude of Harlem Party activists was reflected in

the Scottsboro defense campaign, where Harlem Communists began, in practice, to

reject the virulently sectarian rhetoric that had until then characterized much of the

Partys literature and political activities. As it happens, the Harlem activists

newfound openness to nonsectarian organization was extremely successful, and theScottsboro campaign firmly established the Communist Party on Harlems political

landscape. Later, when the national leadership of the Communist Party officially

adopted the broadly tolerant Popular Front strategy in 1935,30 the nonsectarian

approach that had characterized the Scottsboro campaign became more generalized

throughout the national Partyand made the Communists appear still more

congenial to Harlems intelligentsia. While there had been a small number of high-

profile black intellectuals in or around the Party since at least the early 1930s, as

29For example, in 1930, Harlem Communists launched the auxiliary organization, the League of

Struggle for Negro Rights (LSNR). The LSNRs newspaper,Liberator, was presented as the agitator

and organizer of the Negro Liberation Movementa role the national Communist Party was jealous to

claim for itselfand published material written in a similar language, tone, and spirit as that published in

the Garveyist newspaperNegro World. This was apparently too much for the Partys Central Committee,

which insisted in 1931 that the Liberatornot be presented as a racialized, Negro publication, and thatthe LSNR not substitute for the Party, which at all times must retain its leading role in the struggle for

full equality. Naison, Communists,42; Liberator, February 21, 1931, quoted in Kelley,Race Rebels, 110;

for Kelleys discussion of the similar tone and style of the Liberatorand Negro World, see ibid., 103104,

and 112.30 In response to the growing threat of fascism in 1935, the international Communist movement formally

initiated a major change in political strategy known as the Popular Front. The new policy urged

Communist Parties around the world to cease advocating for the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist

system, and instead concentrate on building broad coalitions of all individuals and organizations that

were opposed to fascism, including non-revolutionary social democrats, trade unionists, and even non-

socialist liberals. With the adoption of the Popular Front strategy, the primary and overriding task of

Communist Parties around the world became building the widest possible movement against fascism.

See, for example, Albert Fried, Communism in America: A History in Documents (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1997), 227247.

written by I. D. W. Talmadge, and published in the Daily Workerof August 2, 1929: Break that banjo,Black Man, / Sing no more them blues / Our foes fear not our sighs / This soft euphonious wailing

/ Damn Booker T. and all his pious crew / Were Uncle Toms no more / We know our foe. / There are

no race distinctions / Were colored all: / Our color is RED / Let yellow-livered curs lick the white

plutess boots / We, Reds, have learned to fight! / Come LOuverture, / Blast forth your call again. / In

battle we shall win our rights / Or / die as men. (Ellipses in original. I. D. W. Talmadge, Break That

Banjo, Daily Worker, August 2, 1929, 6. Courtesy of Peoples Weekly World, www.pww.org.)



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Naison notes, it was only during the Popular Front period that the Harlem

Communist Party really emerged as an important focal point of political and

cultural activity by Harlem intellectuals.31

Significantly, after the adoption of the Popular Front strategy, and following on the

success of the Scottsboro campaign, a number of young American Communists

outside of the Harlem Party also began to articulate a strong interest in jazz music,

describing and advocating for the music in terms of its social implications and

political potential.32 This was reflected in Party-sponsored literature, which began to

feature articles praising hot jazz and swing with increasing regularity. 33 For

example, writer James Dugan declared in theYoung Communist Reviewthat Hot jazz

is a democratic music, and Swing is as American as baseball and hot dogs. There

is a good deal of audience participation in swing, a kind of give and take and mutual

inspiration for the musician and the crowd, a rough democratic air invading the

sacred halls of music.34 In these discussions, the leading role of African Americans

was often emphasized. Dugans article in the Young Communist Reviewthus states,Hot jazz comes right out of the music of the American Negro, the oppressed

Negro. Slick musicologists, forced at last to notice the phenomenon, are busy weaving

other origins, but you listen to the music and you know they talk nonsense. 35 Daily

Workerwriter Max Margulis similarly declared, Negro musicians have been the

decisive figures behind [swings] history, development, and course.36

As a result of this new official openness to the music, by the late 1930s,

Communist-led organizations were frequently featuring jazz or swing bands at their

social functions and benefits. For example, Chick Webbs band with Ella Fitzgerald,

the Savoy Sultans (the house band at Harlems Savoy Ballroom), and the prominent

31Naison, Communists, 193; see also Harvey Klehr and John Earle Haynes, The American Communist

Movement: Storming Heaven Itself(New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992), 7791.32Naison, Communists, 211. It is interesting to note that a number of influential white American jazz

writers of the 1930s and 1940s were also informed by their involvement in the left-wing movement, and

some even before the Popular Front years. John Hammond (whose involvement in the Scottsboro

campaign has been mentioned above) continued his involvements in the left-wing movement into the

1940s. In 1933, Charles Edward Smith, another important jazz writer, contributed an article to the

CommunistDaily Workerunder the headline Class Content of Jazz Music, where he stated that the

revolution must be fought out on every front, cultural as well as economic. According to John Gennari

and James Lincoln Collier, writers Otis Ferguson and B. H. Haggin can also be counted among thosejazz writers who were involved in the leftist discourse of the 1930s. Bruce Boyd Raeburn adds jazz writer

Al Rose to this list, noting that Rose was involved in the non-Stalinist left, eventually joining the post-

Trotskyist organizations of Max Schachtman and C. L. R. James in the 1940s. See Charles Edward

Smith, Class Content of Jazz Music, Daily Worker, October 21, 1933, 7; John Gennari, Jazz

Criticism: Its Development and Ideologies, Black American Literature Forum 25 (Autumn 1991): 472;

James Lincoln Collier, The Faking of Jazz: How Politics Distorted the History of the Hip, New

Republic, November 18, 1985, 37; and Bruce Boyd Raeburn, New Orleans Style: The Awakening of

American Jazz Scholarship and Its Cultural Implications (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1991), 3839.33Naison, Communists, 210, 224n75.34James Dugan, Stop Before You Jitter, Young Communist Review, July 1939, 3.35 Ibid.36Max Margulis, Swing-Hi-De-Ho, Sunday Worker, September 12, 1937, 4. Note that the author of

this article appears to be the same Max Margulis who later went on to cofound Blue Note Records.



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swing bands of Lucky Millender, Reggie Childs, and Charlie Barnet, were among

those featured at Communist sponsored events in 19381939.37 Furthermore, unlike

the earlier Scottsboro benefits, these events were neither geographically limited to,

nor primarily directed towards, Harlems black community (although Harlem itself

remained a major center of Communist Party activity). Beginning in the late 1930s,

jazz events presented under the auspices of Popular Front organizations were

becoming more commonplace not only in Harlem, but also in downtown Manhattan

and as far afield as Los Angeles, where the film industry was emerging as a center of

left-wing activity. For example, in 1937 and 1938, a number of major jazz concerts

were staged under the sponsorship of Popular Front organizations. These included

events put on by the anti-fascist Musicians Committee for Spanish Democracy,38

which presented two concerts at Carnegie Hall involving performances by leading

jazz performers Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Fats Waller, and Jimmy Lunceford, as

well as the composer W. C. Handy.39 Similarly, the American Labor Party (which at

that time was heavily influenced by Communist Party trade unionists and

37According to David Stowe, in 1938 Harlems Communist Party founded an interracial swing club

and promoted jitterbugging, while the Young Communist League sponsored a Swing America pageant

at its 1939 convention. Stowe, Swing Changes, 65. These sorts of events were fairly common. For

example, Chick Webbs band was featured with Ella Fitzgerald at shows hosted by the Harlem Bureau of

the Daily Worker. Denning, Cultural Front, 334. Likewise, on November 23, 1938, the Young

Communist League presented a Night O Swing featuring the orchestras of Charlie Barnet and Reggie

Childs. Daily Worker, November 22, 1938, 8. And, on December 3, 1938, the Twenty-Seventh New

Masses Ball featured Dancing until three to the music of the Savoy Sultans. See Daily Worker,

December 2, 1938, 10. The Savoy Sultans were also featured at the New Masses Spring Ball held on

March 31, 1939, and at a dance advertised under the slogan Swing Against Fascism sponsored by theFederal Writers Anti-Fascist Committee, held on March 5, 1938. See New Masses, February 28, 1939,

30; New Masses, March 8, 1938. On December 17, 1938, the Fur, Floorboys, and Shipping Clerks

Union held a benefit dance for the Friends of the Lincoln Brigade. The event featured a Battle of

Swing between Lucky Millinder and his Blue Rhythm Band and Charles Barnet and his Make

Believe Ballroom Orchestra. See Daily Worker, December 16, 1938, 4.38Naison has written: The [Communist] partys campaign in behalf of the republican government

dwarfed [other Communist-led anti-fascist campaigns] in breadth and political significance. The revolt

of the Spanish army against a freely elected, popular government, undertaken with German and Italian

support, provided a textbook case of the conflict between democracy and fascism which Communists

constantly spoke of. Astonishingly, not one Western government would provide military aid to the

Spanish Republic; the United States, Britain, and France all kept out of the conflict while Mussolini sent

troops and Hitler used the war to test his most advanced military technology. The Soviet Unionsdecision to send arms to the Spanish Republic, and the Cominterns sponsorship of an international

brigade to fight on the republican side, inspired a groundswell of goodwill among U.S. liberals. Spanish

aid committees quickly formed throughout the country, incorporating trade unions, religious bodies,

ethnic associations, and artists and writers groups, as well as the party. But the most dramatic

manifestation of U.S. support was the formation of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a contingent of more

than 3,000 young Americans who volunteered to fight with the republican armies. Although people of

many political backgrounds participated in the brigade, rank-and-file Communists, drawn from unions

and neighborhood organizations, composed more than 60 percent of the recruits. Their experience

dramatized the spirit of heroism and sacrifice which U.S. Communism could inspire in its best moments.

Half of the brigade died in battle; half of those who returned had serious wounds. Mark Naison,

Remaking America: Communists and Liberals in the Popular Front, in New Studies in the Politics and

Culture of U.S. Communism, ed. Michael E. Brown (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993), 56.39Denning, Cultural Front, 334.



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community activists40) sponsored a concert of Negro Music, Past and Present,41

and in December 1938 John Hammond staged the first of his well-known Spirituals

to Swing concerts with funding provided by the Communist sponsored New Masses

magazine.42 Hammonds and James Dugans program notes for the latter concert

notably declared hot jazz style is uniquely American, the most important cultural

exhibit we have given the world. Playing the biggest role in originating and nurturing

it is the American Negro, the oppressed American whose musical qualities have long

been recognized in Europe and neglected at home.43 In October 1939, the

pioneering African American composer and music publisher, W. C. Handy, was a

featured lecturer at the Communist-run Workers School, where he spoke on the role

of African Americans in American music. Likewise, on February 2, 1939, Daily

Worker columnist Mike Gold and James Dugan gave a public lecture titled Has

Swing a Social Significance?44

Meanwhile, at least some leading jazz musicians were also finding themselves in

sympathy with the anti-Fascist and anti-racist politics of the broader Popular Frontmovement. For example, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman were both high-

profile members of the Musicians Committee for Spanish Democracy.45 In fact, Duke

Ellington was an extremely active participant in the Popular Front movement,

although in spite of his earlier willingness to play at the Communist Partys functions,

Ellington appears to have been quite critical of the Party itself.46 Nonetheless, his

40See Naison, Remaking America, 51.41Naison, Communists, 212.42See Hammond and Townsend, John Hammond on Record, 199206; and New Masses, December 20,

1938, 23. Hammond staged a second Spirituals to Swing concert in December 1939. He later claimedthat he sought financing for the first of these concerts from the New Masseseditor Eric Bernay only when

he was refused support by both the NAACP and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Ibid,

199200. Interestingly, Bernay later went on to found the independent record label Keynote, where John

Hammond served first on the companys board of directors, and later as its president. According to

Denning, Keynote began as a small left-wing folk and jazz label, releasing Marc Blitzsteins No for an

Answer, the Almanac Singers Talking Union, and Josh Whites Southern Exposure, as well as small

sessions with Lester Young, Teddy Wilson, and Count Basie. Denning, Cultural Front, 95. Whitney

Balliett has underscored the historic importance of Keynotes jazz recordings, writing that artists and

repertoire man Harry Lim supervised fifty or so small-band sessions for the Keynote label, nearly a third

of which are among the best of all jazz recordings. Whitney Balliett, The Keynotes, in Goodbyes and

Other Messages: A Journal of Jazz, 19811990(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 189.43

James Dugan and John Hammond, program notes for the From Spirituals to Swing concert, CarnegieHall, New York, December 1938; reprinted in The Black Perspective in Music 2 (Fall 1974), 194.44See Naison, Communists, 299; and New Masses, January 31, 1939, 26.45Stowe, Swing Changes, 71.46 In the April 1939 issue ofDown Beat,Ellington went so far as to engage in some mild red-baiting against

John Hammond, who, he argued, lacked impartiality as a swing critic. Here, Ellington claimed that

Hammond, has consistently identified himself with the interests of the Negro peoples, to a lesser degree,

the Jew, and to the underdog, in the form of the Communist Party. Ellington further argued that Perhaps

due to the fever of battle, Hammonds judgment may become slightly warped, and his enthusiasm and

prejudices a little bit unwieldy to control. Situation Between the Critics and Musicians Is Laughable

Ellington,Down Beat, April 1939, 4, 9. It should be acknowledged, however, that in spite of the negative

rhetorical spin of his comments, Ellington was not wrong to point out that Hammonds multiple roles as

music producer, talent scout, music critic, and even financial backer of various musical enterprises, precluded

him from being considered an impartial judge of the musical merits of various swing or jazz bands.



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activities in the Communist-led Popular Front movement were enough to bring him

under the suspicious eye of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to David

Stowe,

In May 1938 [Ellington] was listed as an endorser of the first All-Harlem Youth

Conference, and in July 1941 he appeared with part of his band at a barndancefor the Hollywood chapter of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.Later that year Ellington was a sponsor of a dinner given by the AmericanCommittee to Save Refugees, the Exiled Writers Committee, and the UnitedAmerican Spanish Aid committee, all regarded by the FBI as suspectorganizations.47

In 1941, Ellingtons musical revue, Jump for Joy opened in Los Angeles.48 This

social significance show49 appears to have been consciously crafted as a statement

of political protest. In Ellingtons own words,

In 1941 a team of scholarly Hollywood writers decided to attempt to correct therace situation in the U.S.A. through a form of musical propaganda. Thisculminated in meetings at which the decision was made to do Jump for Joy, a showthat would take Uncle Tom out of the theater, eliminate the stereotyped image thathad been exploited by Hollywood and Broadway, and say things that would makethe audience think.

The show was never the same, because every night after the final curtain wehad a meeting up in the office. All fifteen writers would be present wheneverpossible, and we would discuss, debate, and make decisions as to what should comeout of the show the next night.

The show was done on a highly intellectual levelno crying, no moaning, but

entertaining, and with social demands as a potent spice. Anyone who attendedthose backstage meetings for twelve weeks got a full college education in socialsignificance.50

In a similar manner, pianist James P. Johnson began work in 1938 with Langston

Hughes onDe Organizer, A Blues Opera in One Act.De Organizerwas performed

in 1940, at a convention of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union

(ILGWU).51 According to Johnsons biographer, Scott Brown:

The action takes place on a backward plantation in the South. The sharecroppershave gathered and await the arrival of the Organizer who will help them establish a

union.

47Stowe, Swing Changes, 6970.48The original score and script to Jump for Joy have not survived intact, nor has the score been recorded

in its entirety. What has been recorded has been collected on Jump for Joy,Smithsonian R 037 DMM 1-

0722, 1988; these recordings have also been released on Duke Ellington, Jump for Joy, Jazz Hour

00022752, 2005, compact disc. See also Denning, Cultural Front, 524n63.49Edward Kennedy Ellington, Music Is My Mistress (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), 460.50 Ibid., 175176.51Scott E. Brown and Robert Hilbert, James P. Johnson: A Case of Mistaken Identity (Metuchen, NJ:

Scarecrow Press and the Institute for Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, 1986), 219220.



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The Organizerexpounds not only racial equality but [also] socialist ideasinvolving unionization. Ideas concerning social reform were of great importanceto Langston Hughes and pervade much of his work. Johnsons interest [in socialissues] was almost certainly more than passing. Willie The Lion Smith hinted atJohnsons interest in social reform and people he associated with who shared his[political] views.52

It is of course difficult to determine all the factors that may have led musicians

even those who appear to have made no strong political commitments one way or the

otherto participate in the left-wing milieu. However, one can speculate that for

those musicians who became active in left-wing cultural activities, and for whom

there is no record of any political commitment, it is likely that many did find

themselves aligned in various ways with the Popular Front movement.53 For some,

this alignment may have simply involved finding the left-wing movement to be a

more-or-less congenial environment in which to find employment. For others, there

52 Ibid. Unfortunately, Brown gives no indication where, when, or how Smith made this known to him.53The words alignment and commitment are used here in the sense described by Raymond

Williams. See Raymond Williams, The Writer: Commitment and Alignment, in Resources of Hope:

Culture, Democracy, Socialism, ed. Robin Gable (London: Verso, 1989), 7787. With these terms,

Williams provides a useful way to understand the complex and multiple relationships that existed

between the Communist Party and the broader left-wing movement. Following Marx, Williams argues

that the act of becoming consciously committed to a specific political or class outlook is predicated on

the achievement of a self-conscious awareness of ones immediate needs, interests, desires, etc., which all

individuals must pursue if they are to survive in their life circumstances. These immediateand initially

unconsciousinterests constitute what Williams calls our political alignments. As Williams states,

Marxism, more clearly than any other kind of thinking, has shown us that we are in fact aligned before

we realize that we are aligned. For we are born into a social situation, into social relationships, into a

family, all of which have formed what we can later abstract as ourselves as individuals. Much of this

formation occurs before we can be conscious of any individuality. The alignments are so deep. They

are our normal way of living in the world, our normal ways of seeing the world. [O]ur own actual

alignment is so inseparable from the constitution of our own individuality that to separate them is quite

artificial. Ibid., 8586. These alignments inform much of what we do, providing the basis for our

most pressing political choices. For example, while the majority of the rank-and-file participants in the

left-wing political movement of the Depression era (such as those who participated in the strike wave of

1934 and the CIO organizing drives that followed) found themselves aligned to the left-wing

movementto its fight for industrial union rights, fair employment practices, economic security, and an

end to racial and ethnic intoleranceonly a minority of those participants were prepared to commit

themselves to the various organizations that provided the political and strategic leadership of themovement, and, in the case of the Communist Party, much of its infrastructure. In this understanding,

alignment does not exist in opposition to commitment, but rather provides the unconscious

prerequisite from which political commitment can develop. Indeed, Williams argues that political

commitment is simply a result of the conscious recognition of the deeply social nature of our

alignments and the changes in attitude necessitated by that shift in consciousness. As Williams states,

political commitment means becoming conscious of our own real alignments. This may lead to us

confirming them, in some situations. Or it can often lead to changing or shifting or amending them, a

more painful process than it sounds. In fact even when we confirm our deepest alignments, but now

very consciously and deliberately, something strange has happened and we feel quite differently

committed. Because really to have understood the social pressures on our own thinking, or when we

come to the wonderful although at first terrible realization that what we are thinking is what a lot of other

people have thought, that what we are seeing is what a lot of other people have seen, that is an

extraordinary experience. Ibid., 8687.



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may have been a full or partial agreement with various aspects of the movements

ideological thrust. 54 For example, Count Basie does not appear to have committed

himself to any particular political organization. Nonetheless, he was a prominent

participant in the Popular Front milieu. In January 1938, Basie performed at aNew

Masses-sponsored event, Hitting a New High, which also featured the music of

Marc Blitzstein and Aaron Copland.55 In 1939, the Communist PartysDaily Worker

ran an extended article on Count Basie entitled New Miracles in Music. In this

article, Basie is quoted as telling reporter William Wolf, when the bonds of race

discrimination have been broken, the world of music, for one, will witness miracles of

achievement, never before dreamed of.56

In 1940, on the urging of John Hammond, Basie recorded the political song, Its

the Same Old South. According to the songs lyricist, Ed Eliscu, this number

expressed what I felt about the vicious racial injustice that was so common in the

30s.57 The lyrics present a biting parody of Southern American life, declaring, Its

the same old South, a regular childrens Heaven, where they dont start to work tiltheyre seven. The text goes on to describe the American South as a culture

characterized by conservatism, bigotry, and pellagra, where the bloodhounds that

once chased Liza, [now] chase the CIO organizer.58

Interest in the civil rights agenda of the Popular Front also grew across racial lines,

and extended to involve white as well as black jazz and popular music performers.

For instance, white bandleader Artie Shaw was a high-profile participant in the

movement. According to Denning, Artie Shaw supported various left-wing peace

groups and was active in the campaign for civil rights in employment.59 Denning

adds that Shaw was a self-described activist in the crucial organization of theHollywood Popular Front, HICCASP (the Hollywood Independent Citizens

Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions).60 As a result of these activities,

Shaw was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in

1953.61

54Of course it should also be noted that not all jazz musicians who came in contact with the left-wing

movement found themselves comfortable within its social and political milieu. For a negative account of

the relationship between left-wing activists and jazz musicians during the Popular Front era, see Willie

The Lion Smith and George Hoefer, Music On My Mind: The Memoirs of an American Pianist(New

York: Da Capo Press, 1964; reprint, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), 234237.55Denning, Cultural Front, 334.56 New Miracles in American Music, Sunday Worker, June 4, 1939, 7.57Quoted in Michael Brooks, liner notes to Count Basie Super Chief, C 31225 Columbia Records, 1971,

LP.58Count Basie, The Chronological Count Basie and His Orchestra: 19401941, Classics Records, Classics

623, 1991, compact disc. In Stowes words, the lyrics sharply satirized southern poverty and racial

practice. Stowe, Swing Changes, 71.59Denning, Cultural Front, 334.60 Ibid. Jon Wiener writes that HICCASP had been a broad coalition of pro-Roosevelt liberals and

leftists, ranging from Thomas Mann to Rita Hayworth. Jon Wiener, When Old Blue Eyes Was Red,

in Professors, Politics and Pop (London: Verso, 1991), 265. Duke Ellington served on the organizations

executive board. See Stowe, Swing Changes, 70.61Denning, Cultural Front, 334.



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Singer and actor Frank Sinatra was likewise connected to the broad left-wing

movement during the 1940s. In 1945, Sinatra played the lead role in an explicitly

anti-racist short film scripted by Communist screenwriter Albert Maltz entitled The

House I Live In.62 The films title song, recorded by Sinatra, was composed by former

Composers Collective member Earl Robinson.63 The songs lyrics were written by

Communist Party member Abel Meeropol.64 As cultural historian Jon Wiener has

argued, The House I Live [I]nwas a [political] turning point for Sinatra, and he

remained active in the Popular Front until the postwar right-wing backlash nearly

ended his career in 1949.65

Like Shaw, Sinatra was an active participant in HICCASP, and he even served as

vice president of the organization in 1946. And while Sinatra never joined the

Communists,66 he was nonetheless working closely with them during this period. Jon

Wiener writes,

Sinatra moved closer to the Communist Party when he served as vice presidentof [HICCASP]. Sinatra became an officer [of HICCASP] during a faction fightin which Communists pushed liberals out of the organization and steered it towardHenry Wallaces left-wing challenge to Truman in 1948.67

Sinatra appears to have been primarily attracted to the anti-racist stance that

characterized the Popular Front movement, and Communist activists in particular.

Sinatras anti-racist and anti-fascist sympathies were evident in a letter, dated

August 31, 1945, written to Albert Maltz in praise of the left-wing screenwriters

script to Pride of the Marines (Warner Bros., 1945). Here Sinatra praised Maltzs

work, saying,

my anxiety and interest in our social and discrimination (or what have you)problems have been hungrily awaiting such valuable assistance [as is provided byPride of the Marines]. When I think of the tremendous amount of Americans whowill see and hear and be made aware of this deplorable problem, I tell you, Albert,its wonderful.

Please dont think Im going completely overboard on this thing; its just thatIm completely convinced that the greatest, most effective weapon has suddenly

62

Wiener, When Old Blue Eyes Was Red, 263.63Denning, Cultural Front, 35. The Composers Collective was a radical grouping of modern

American composers. The group took upon itself the task of developing a new music, simultaneously

revolutionary in content and form, which would inspire class struggle and uplift the musical tastes of

American workers. David Dunaway, Charles Seeger and Carl Sands: The Composers Collective

Years, Ethnomusicology 24 (May 1980): 159160; see also Denning, Cultural Front, 288.64Abel Meeropol, who wrote under the pseudonym Lewis Allen, also composed the anti-lynching song

Strange Fruit, which was recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939 (see footnote 87 below). It is interesting

to note that in later years, Meeropol adopted the two young children of Communists Ethel and Julius

Rosenberg, who were put to death by the United States Government in 1953. See Donald Clarke,

Wishing on the Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday (London: Penguin, 1994), 163.65Wiener, When Old Blue Eyes Was Red, 263.66Wiener, When Old Blue Eyes Was Red, 264.67Wiener, When Old Blue Eyes Was Red, 265.



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come to life for the millions of bigoted, stupid, anti-everything people. Youvegot to hit em right in the kisser with it and, baby, you really did. 68

Maltz replied with another letter, dated September 24, 1945, in which he praised an

article recently written by Sinatra for Modern Screenmagazine. Here Maltz wrote,

Often one reads a general article about tolerance. This is okaybut the very personwho says, carelessly, I see they lynched another nigger in Georgia, will read thearticle, nod his head in agreement, and go right on in the path of unthinkingprejudice.

But your [Modern Screen] article makes that impossible. [You] posed the issuein day to day language, about day to day problems, and each reader was forced by

you to decide whether he was going to continue to say sheeny, mick, wop[sic].

A few years ago, when [right-wing populist, Father] Coughlin was on the air andpublishing his magazine, I would listen to him and read him, and turn awayphysically sick, seeing already the marching storm troopers in our cities. And I

would think, where are the decent voices, where are the major American figures tooppose their weight and prestige to the power of Coughlin and his allies?

That you have chosen to fight on the particular question of race prejudice,seems to me an awfully lucky throw of the dice. Your instinct has brought you to amain battleground, in which we will either win or lose, and in which your weightcan be worth an army of other men.69

Sinatras involvement in the Popular Front eventually attracted the suspicions of

right-wing politicians. At hearings of the House Committee on Un-American

Activities (HUAC), Sinatra was named twelve times as a suspected Communist

sympathizer.70 By 1950, the backlash against him was in full swing, and Sinatras

career was in disarray. Says Wiener:

Sinatra wrote an open letter in The New Republicto [Progressive Party presidentialcandidate Henry] Wallace at the beginning of 1947, calling on him to take up thefight we like to think of as oursthe fight for tolerance, which is the basis of anyfight for peace. Within three months headlines appeared linking [Sinatra] to theCommunists. A month later he was fired from his radio show; six months after thathis New York concerts flopped. By December 1949 his affair with Ava Gardnerhad become an open scandal. Columbia Records was trying to get back the advancethey had given him. In 1950 he was released from his MGM contract, and his ownagent, MCA, had dropped him.71

69Albert Maltz to Frank Sinatra, September 24, 1945, photocopy in authors possession. Original in the

Maltz collection at State Historical Society of Wisconson. I am indebted to historian Paul Buhle for

providing me with a photocopy of this written exchange between Sinatra and Maltz.70Wiener, When Old Blue Eyes Was Red, 264.71 In the 1950s, Sinatra managed a comeback and his career recovered. He remained politically active

in the Democratic party, contributing to the campaigns of both Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and John F.

Kennedy in 1960. Ibid., 255266.

68Frank Sinatra to Albert Maltz, August 31, 1945, photocopy in authors possession. Original in the

Maltz collection at State Historical Society of Wisconson.



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The connections between jazz and the Popular Front movement were perhaps

most prominently manifested at the Manhattan nightclub known as CafeSociety, and

later its sister club, Cafe Society Uptown. The first of these venues, Cafe Society,

opened in Greenwich Village in December 1938. It was notable not only for being a

favored nightspot of New Yorks left-wing artistic and intellectual circles, but also for

being Manhattans first major nightclub with a strict policy of racial integration.

Significantly, many of those involved in Cafe Societys day-to-day operations had

close personal associations to the Popular Front movement, and to the American

Communist Party in particular. The club was owned and operated by Barney

Josephson, whose brother Leon Josephson was a leading American Communist. As

David Stowe has noted, Leon Josephson was not only a business partner in Cafe

Society, he was also one of the more prominent and outspoken American

Communists of the era, and a lawyer for the Communist-led legal organization, the

ILD (International Labor Defense).72 Barney Josephson later claimed that he too had

joined the Communist Party in 1937, but he only remained a member for sixmonths.73

According to Stowe, those in attendance at Cafe Society (and later Cafe Society

Uptown) constituted a microcosm of an important segment of the urban Roosevelt

coalition: labor leaders, intellectuals, writers, jazz lovers, celebrities, students, and

assorted other leftists.74 CafeSociety also became a favored gathering place for much

of New Yorks left-wing African-American intelligentsia. In the words of writer Gail

Lumet Buckley, Cafe Society was the favorite night spot of the intellectual black

middle class. [C]onversation was terrific. Barney Josephson basically considered

his nightclub to be a seminar with drinks and entertainment.75

John Hammond played an important role in bringing Cafe Society many of its

performers by serving as an unpaid musical advisor to the clubs owner, Barney

Josephson.76 And while Josephson held the ultimate responsibility, Hammonds

influence was evident in CafeSocietys musical programming during its first years of

operation. Hammond organized the first house orchestra at CafeSociety around the

African American trumpeter Frankie Newton. Newton had known Hammond since

at least 1932.77 Newton too was an outspoken leftist, and was almost certainly either a

member of the Communist Party or very close to it. Newton was featured at various

72David Stowe, The Politics of Cafe Society, Journal of American History 84 (March 1998): 1396,

1397. Leon Josephson had been involved in left-wing politics since at least 1924, when he became a

member of the Workers Party. In 1935, Leon Josephson was arrested in Copenhagen on charges of being

involved in a Soviet conspiracy to assassinate Adolph Hitler. In 1947, Leon Josephson was sentenced to

imprisonment for his refusal to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Ibid., 1397.73 Ibid.74 Ibid., 1391.75Gail Lumet Buckley, The Hornes: An American Family (New York: Applause Books, 1986), 144145.76On Hammonds role as a musical advisor, see Whitney Balliett, Ecstasy at the Onion (Indianapolis:

Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1971), 251; Helen Lawrenson,Whistling Girl(Garden City, NY: Doubleday,

1978), 88.77Hammond and Townsend, John Hammond on Record, 67.



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Party sponsored dances and shows, and at the Communist resort, Camp Unity.78 Jazz

historian John Chilton quotes an unnamed musician from Cafe Society as saying At

Cafe Society, Frankie Newton, who could be a very serious guy, would get some

listeners round him, and hed talk about pretty deep subjects like the economics of

Marcus Garveys return to Africa scheme, or The Soviet Five Year Plan.79 In

another context, Chilton notes that Newton was deeply interested in politics and

often propounded left-wing views.80 Dizzy Gillespie also remembered Newton as

being very outspoken politically.81 Furthermore, Cotton Club dancer and

Communist Party activist Howard Stretch Johnson wrote in his autobiography

that Newtons politics inspired Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm to write The Jazz

Scene82 under the pseudonym Frances Newton:

Sir Eric Hobsbawm, leading British Marxist political scientist did a book on AfricanAmerican classical music called The Jazz Scene [sic]. It was under the pseudonym,Francis Newton. From curiosity, knowing that Frankie Newtons real name was

Francis, I wrote Sir Eric asking had he used that name Francis Newton afterFrankie. He replied, Yes, because Frankie was the only Black Marxist in jazz that Iknow. I had spent many pleasant hours with Frankie when he had an all-star bandthat included my dear friend and magnificent pianist, Calvin Jackson, on piano atCamp Unity discussing the class and the ass struggle. I also informed Sir Eric thatthere were many more Black Marxists in the jazz field.83

Other performing artists at Cafe Society may also have had ideological

commitments to the left-wing movement. In her autobiography, In Person Lena

78See, for example, John Chilton, Sidney Bechet: The Wizard of Jazz (Hong Kong: Macmillan Press,

1987), 144. Newton performed with his Cafe Society Orchestra at the Young Communist Leagues 1943convention, Unity Dance. Daily Worker, October 15, 1943, 6. He again performed with the Cafe

Society Orchestra on Saturday, November 6, at the Freedom Follies, a weekly revue and dance

produced for, of, and by young people sponsored by The N.Y. State Organizing Committee,

American Youth for Democracy. Daily Worker, October 30, 1943, 6, and Daily Worker, October 31,

1943, 6.79John Chilton, Billies Blues (London: Quartet Books, 1975), 67. These were topics that any active

Communist Party member would have been quite conversant with.80Chilton, Sidney Bechet, 119.81Dizzy Gillespie,To Be, or Not to Bop: Memoirs(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979), 287. Gillespie

was himself well acquainted with the left-wing movement, and for a time he held membership in the

Communist Party (although he later claimed that he joined the party for work-related reasons rather than

ideological concerns). Other members of Gillespies family also appear to have been involved inprogressive politics. For instance, in his autobiography, Howard Stretch Johnson remembered

Gillespies brother as a leader of the Cheraw chapter of the United Negro and Allied Veterans of America

(UNAVA), an advocacy group for black veterans that was initiated by Communist Party activists in

the years following World War II. Johnson writes: In Cheraw, Dizzy Gillespies brother was the key man

in organizing its [UNAVA] chapter. The Gillespie family had a long history of struggle against the

crackers and helping every positive thing that took place in the community. Part of this heritage

explained to me why Dizzy had always been such a great admirer of Paul Robeson and rarely spoke in

interviews or even at his jazz performances without mentioning what a great man he felt Paul Robeson

was. Howard Johnson, unpublished manuscript for autobiography, n.d., 101. I am grateful to Wendy

Johnson who supplied me with a copy of her father Howard Johnsons unpublished autobiography.82Francis Newton (a.k.a. Eric Hobsbawm), The Jazz Scene (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1960;

reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1975).83Howard Johnson, unpublished autobiography, 103.



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Horne, singer Lena Horne remembered performing for political benefits while

employed at CafeSociety:

The surprises rained down upon me thick and fast. As I recall it, I was first leftopen-mouthed by the other performers in the cast [at CafeSociety]. Id never metNegroes like them before.

I got my first inkling that they were different when one of them came to meabout my second week on the job [at CafeSociety] and said, Say Lena, weve got arequest here to do a benefit next Monday night. Theres a bunch of people [who]want to raise some money to force the landlords in Harlem to do somethingbesides collect rent. Want to go up there and sing for em?

This was to be the first of many, many benefits I was to play with the CafeSociety cast. At Cafe Society, as with any other company, we did benefits thatwould be good publicity for the house. However, I was to learn that theseperformers gave most of their spare-time efforts to organizations which werefighting to help themto help all our people.

I can still remember my astonishment on that initial Monday evening. The

address we were given was a big, barren, drafty hall in Harlem. When I arrived theplace was jammed to overflowing.

It was a long program, and very little of it was entertainment. Oh, I sang the twonumbers Id prepared and the others in the Cafe Society company played theirinstruments, but everybody else on the platform made a speech.

The quality and content of those speeches baffled me. Some of them wereimpressive and legal-sounding and some of them were in simple, easy words thatanyone could understand. But every single one of themwhether the speaker wasblack or whitewas a denunciation of the very things I had been complainingabout. It seemed that all these people were holding a meeting to talk about thehousing conditions we hated so, and to organize to do something about them.

And the audience roared its approvalpoured its pennies and nickels and dimesinto the hats that were passed around like a church collection.

While one part of my mind listened, another part of it was saying, I like this. Idont believe it, but I hope its true. I dont know what its all about, but I like it.84

The pianist Teddy Wilson and the singer Billie Holiday were two other major

African American entertainers who became involved in the left-wing milieu around

the time of their tenures at Cafe Society.85 For example, in 1941, just months after

finishing her engagement at CafeSociety, Holiday was billed to sing the anti-lynching

song Strange Fruit86 to 75,000 unionists at a Communist-led May Day

84Lena Horne, Helen Arstein, and Carlton Moss, In Person Lena Horne (New York: Greenberg

Publishers and Ambassador Books, 1950), 174177.85Billie Holiday worked at Cafe Society, with short interruptions, from the clubs opening in December

1938 until November 1939, and again from October 17, 1940, until December 24, 1940. With the

exception of the period from mid-February 1941 through May 1941, Teddy Wilson was at Cafe Society

and Cafe Society (Uptown) almost without interruption from the week of June 30, 1940, until the week

of May 20, 1944.86Holiday first introduced Strange Fruit into her performances while working at Cafe Society. The

song was a powerful statement of protest against the racist practice of lynching, and it represents a clear

link between the left-wing movement of the late 1930s and the jazz world. Written by Abel Meeropol, a

union activist and Communist Party member, the song also proved to be a pivotal part of Holidays

repertoire. For more on Strange Fruit and its historical significance, see David Margolick, Strange

Fruit (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2000).



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demonstration in which the main slogans were against involvement in the war in

Europe. According to the Daily Worker, 10,000 ILGWU members attended the

demonstrationdefying the orders of ILGWU President David Dubinsky to stay

away.87

In 1940, Holidays association with the left-wing milieu attracted the attention of

FBI agents, who, in August of that year, forced the singer to remove The Yanks Are

Not Coming, an anti-war song associated with the Communists, from her

performances at Kellys Stables, a well-known swing club.88 New York Amsterdam

Newscolumnist Bill Chase wrote of the incident, saying that FBI agents got wind of

it and had the management restrain Miss Holiday from singing this type of song.

Just why its hard to say, except possibly that they felt it was very un-American for a

Negro to sing a pacifist song.89

As noted, Teddy Wilson also became an active participant in the left-wing

movement. In a 1988 interview with historian Gerald Horne, Howard Stretch

Johnson went so far as to describe Wilson as the Marxist Mozart.90 Similarly, in hisautobiography, Johnson again writes, we used to call Teddy Wilson a Marxist

Mozart in Mocha.91 According to Denning, Wilson was

a key figure in CafeSociety circles, both musically and politically. By the time CafeSociety opened, he was already the Jackie Robinson of swing, the first blackmusician in a white big band, appearing with Benny Goodman92. Wilson taught

jazz at the left-wing Metropolitan Music School, appeared at New Massesbenefits,[and] took part in the Russian War Relief benefit organized by Marc Blitzstein,Music at Work, in May 1942.93

In 1943, Teddy Wilson became the chairman of the Artists Committee to electCommunist leader Ben Davis to New Yorks City Council. In this capacity, Wilson

brought a large number of artists, many of whom had worked at Cafe Society, into the

campaign to elect the Communist councilman. In the words of Gerald Horne, Teddy

Wilson, who was chair of Daviss Artists Committee, played a key role in getting Lena

Horne, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Mary Lou Williams, Coleman Hawkins, Billie

87

For May Day,Daily Worker,May 1, 1941, 7; 75,000 in May Day March for Peace,Daily Worker,May 2, 1941, 1.88Holiday was between stints at Cafe Society. This phrase (i.e., The Yanks are not coming) was a

slogan advanced by Communists during the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 19391941. See Fried,

Communism in America, 241.89 All Ears, New York Amsterdam News, August 31, 1940, 11.90Horne, Black Liberation/Red Scare, 352n54.91 Ibid.92As Whitney Balliett has written, Wilson joined the Goodman band in 1936, and stayed three years.

Jess Stacey was Goodmans regular pianist, so Goodman had Wilson appear only with the trio and, later,

the quartet. It was a courageous time for Wilson. He was the first black musician to be attached to a big

white jazz bandthebig white jazz band, in fact. He was cheered on the bandstand but off the stand was

relegated to colored hotels and boarding houses. Balliett, Goodbyes, 50.93Denning, Cultural Front, 339.



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Holiday, Jimmy Lunceford, Art Tatum, Ella Fitzgerald, Lucky Roberts, Josh White,

Pearl Primus, and Fredi Washington to express public support for Davis.94

Finally, it appears that the relationship first established in the early 1930s between

at least some members of the jazz community and the Communist Party may have

continued into the 1950s and perhaps beyond. In 1952, saxophonist Charlie Parker

and drummer Max Roach played a benefit dance in Harlems Rockland Palace for

Communist leader Ben Davis. According to jazz writer Gary Giddins,

The event was a benefit for Benjamin Davis who was the last Communist to holdelected office in the United States. In a trial that flagrantly violated due process,Davis was sentenced to five years for advocating the violent overthrow of thecountry. The case became a cause celebre on the left. Bird played four or five setsthat night, with his quintet as well as the strings, and he was robust.95

According to Gerald Horne, the presence of leading jazz figures at the Communist

benefit

was not atypical. Just before this event [i.e., the benefit at Rockland Palace], MilesDaviss Orchestra, with J.J. Johnson and Sonny Rollins, played at the preconventiondance of the New York Labor League, a fraternal organization allied with the party.Miles Davis was blunt about this group [saying of them]: Theyre on the ball. Theyknow whats happening.96

Conclusion

To sum up, Harlem was not only a key geographic center of an emergent and

developing jazz music scene during the Depression years, it was also a highlypoliticized community and a major center of activity for the left-wing movement of

the day. It is therefore not surprising that during the 1930s a vibrant and dynamic

relationship developed between jazz and politics, eventually spreading and having

ramifications far beyond Harlems black community. The Scottsboro campaign of

1932 to 1934 marked the first major involvement of the Communist Party in the lives

of Harlems residents, and several leading jazz figures performed at rallies and

concerts in support of the jailed youths. In the years that followed, from the mid-

1930s into the 1940s, several more leading swing musicians took part in the growing

Popular Front milieu and its activities. As the Popular Front movement grew, and asswing became more and more popular among mainstream Americans, political

events that were sponsored by Popular Front organizations began to feature jazz

musicians with increasing frequency, both within Harlems black community and

94Horne,Black Liberation/Red Scare, 108; see also Paul Robeson to Head Cast at the Ben Davis Victory

Show Tomorrow, Daily Worker, October 23, 1943, 7. Michael Denning describes the mobilization of

support for Daviss 1943 election campaign as the apex of the jazz Popular Front, Denning, Cultural

Front, 334.95Giddins, Celebrating Bird, 113.96Horne, Black Liberation/Red Scare, 250.



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elsewhere. New Yorks first major nightclub with a policy of racial integration, Cafe

Society, was established in downtown Manhattan by active participants in the

Popular Front, and the venue became a prominent gathering spot for participants in

the left-wing movement.

Among the jazz musicians who were involved in this milieu, there were widely

varying degrees of commitment to the political movement and its organizations. For

some, their involvements in the Popular Front involved little more than performing

at left-wing gatherings, or providing interviews for publications such as the Daily

Worker. For otherssuch as Frankie Newton or Teddy Wilsonthere appears to

have been a much higher level of commitment to the politics or organizations of the

Popular Front movement, and sometimes the Communist Party itself.97 In the words

of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, There were a bunch of musicians more socially

minded, who were closely connected to the Communist Party. Those guys stayed

busy wherever labor was concerned.98 Howard Stretch Johnson (who joined the

Communist Party in 1938 and quickly rose to become a leading member) laterrecalled the heady mix of politics and expressive popular culture that permeated the

Harlem Communist Party during the Popular Front era. As he put it, Being a

communist in Harlem was like being the swinging present [sic] and the swinging

future simultaneously you were enjoying all the boogying and boozing and

everything in the present, while you had your socialist perspective to give you

inspiration to continue.99

Abstract

This paper locates the jazz music of the 1930s and 1940s within the context of the

radical political movement of that era. During the Depression, Americas pre-

eminent African American community, Harlem, underwent a profound political

transformation, emerging as a center of the left-wing Popular Front social

movement. Many of Harlems residents, especially am