8. Jass
Jimmy felt like he had to be in church every time the doors opened; Sunday school at 8 a.m., worship service at 11 a.m., evening worship at 7 p.m., and prayer meetings on Tuesday and Thursday nights. One weeknight there was thunder and lightning and Jimmy didn’t want to go. Betsy scoffed.
“What better place is there to be when God vents His wrath than in His house,” she said.
So Jimmy saddled the family’s little mare and rode her at a slow walk down Hahnville Lane. They were almost to the River Road when a bolt of lightning struck a tree right in front of them. The jittery little mare reared up, about-faced with her forefeet in the air, and made a beeline for home. Jimmy wrapped his arms around her neck; it was all he could do to keep from being thrown. At the gate she realized that it was closed and stopped. Jimmy lost his grip, flipped over her head, cleared the fence, and landed in a puddle in the yard. He got up, soaked but unhurt, but soured against church.
When Jimmy wasn’t at home he was usually at Uncle Nelson’s with Phillip or at Tante Susan’s or Tante Irie’s, or playing ball with Mel Collier, Sidney Davis and the team. Jimmy played catcher and he was hoping to be discovered by the Negro Leagues and go north. In 1846 Walter Brown, foreseeing the potential of colored baseball in the big cities up north, had formed the National Colored League and had organized the League’s first team, the Chicago Colored Unions. In 1888 Frank C. Leland, a Fisk graduate, moved to Chicago and started the Union Baseball Club, a colored team that was financed by a group of colored investors. When they were refused a permit to play in Chicago they changed their name to the Page Fence Giants and played out on the prairies. In their first season they chalked up a string of victories. The next year they were granted a permit to play in town and they changed their name to the Chicago Unions. By 1889 Leland was working as an umpire and was able to use his connections at City Hall to get the Unions a permit to play on a raggedy field at 37th Street and Langley Avenue on the South Side. In 1894 the Chicago Cubs vacated Southside Park and Leland got the Unions a permit to play there. On Sundays they played against white semi-pro teams from the Chicago City League and during the week they barnstormed. In the 1896 season they had 82 wins and 19 losses and they challenged the Cuban Giants to play for the Colored Championship. The fifteen games of the championship series, played across the upper Midwest, ended colored baseball’s rustic image and a team calling itself the Cuban X Giants formed in New York City. John Bright, the coach of the Cuban Giants, sued, but the finding of the court was that because the Cuban X Giants were not incorporated they could use the name. Coach Bright’s only recourse was to defend his team’s honor on the field. He challenged the Cuban X Giants to a best of three at Weehawken, New Jersey on three successive Sundays. The Cuban X Giants won the first two games, declared themselves the colored champions, and Coach Bright changed his team’s name to the Genuine Cuban Giants.
At the turn of the century the focus of colored baseball shifted to the inner cities. In 1902 Walter Schlichter assembled the Philadelphia Giants and in Chicago Alvin H. Garrett formed the Columbia Giants. In 1903 the Cuban X Giants’ tour of Cuba sent Havana into a baseball-playing frenzy. In 1906 Bruce Petway, thought by many to be the best catcher in baseball, dropped out of Meharry Medical School to play for the Leland Giants. Other fans were calling John Henry (Pop) Lloyd, the catcher for the Philadelphia Giants, the black Honus Wagner, though keeping in mind that Wagner was a shortstop. In 1907 pitcher Andrew (Rube) Foster led the Leland Giants to a record 110-10 season that included 48 straight wins. Foster become the Giants’ manager and won 123 out of 129 games with what many considered to be the greatest team of all time – Pop Lloyd, the streak hitter Pete Hill, Grant “Home Run” Johnson, Bruce Petway, and pitchers Frank Wickware and Pat Dougherty.
The sandlot team in Hahnville played on Sundays because most of the guys worked or went to school during the week and some of them also worked on Saturdays. Betsy didn’t mind if Jimmy practiced with the team during the week but she wouldn’t let him play on Sundays. She said that Sunday baseball was the Devil’s way of keeping young men out of church where they belonged. On Sunday mornings Jimmy would run home after Sunday school, grab a quick breakfast, and accompany his mother, Uncle Nelson, Tante Susan and Tante Irie to the morning worship service. He would sit as close as he could to a window and during the service he would gaze absent-mindedly out at the trees blowing in the gentle wind. A wagon rattled down the River Road, filled with noisy youngsters whose parents had allowed them to attend the game, the boys in their baseball clothes and the girls wearing lovely summer dresses and holding parasols against the sun. The ball field was on the other side of the courthouse from the church and during the service Jimmy would hear an occasional shout and would wonder if his team had done something.
Reverend Thornton’s sermons had no time limit. They would become even more flamboyant after he ran out of material. When he removed his coat there were wet patches in the armpits of his white shirt. Somebody brought him a pitcher of water. The congregation encouraged him with cries of ‘Yes, Lord!’, "Preach it, Reverend!’ and "Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Jesus!” Others rose from their seats, danced and threw their fists out in all directions. Women fainted and had to be carried out. Teams of men ran up and down the aisles, helping to carry the women out. Rumor was that some of the men had girl friends among the women they carried out. Older children got tickled until their mothers gave them The Look. The mothers fluttered cardboard fans over their younger children who were asleep in the mothers’ laps. Reverend Thornton asked for testimonies and one by one those who wanted to testify stood up. They went into specifics about where they had found the Lord and described everything that happened on the day that they were born again. The service ended at 2 o’clock and Jimmy waited by the door while Betsy chatted with her friends. One Sunday she actually got into an argument with one of the sisters over which of them was going to be happiest to get to Heaven.
A boys’ band was organized in Hahnville, Ama and Luling and the bandmaster was looking for as many boys as he could find. He came around to try to get Richard, Jr. and Jimmy into the band. Un’ Dick was in the fields, but he talked to Betsy. Jimmy listened anxiously outside the kitchen window.
“It’s the work of the Devil,” he heard her say.
Richard, Jr. secretly joined the band and the bandmaster gave him a cornet, which he kept hidden in the false bottom of the footlocker that was in a corner of the room he shared with Jimmy. When he went to rehearsals he would smuggle the horn out under his coat and he practiced in the woods where no one could hear him, but he was not able to devote the time that was required to learn the horn properly and he finally had to give it up.
In a picture of Betsy that has survived she has high cheekbones and a stern look, softened by light brown eyes. Her blouse is buttoned to the neck and her hair is parted up the middle and tied in a bun. At night she would shake Jimmy awake to accompany her when she went to visit the sick or deliver a baby. She formed her opinion of music from what was happening in the Little District of New Orleans, between Perdido, Gravier, Locust Street, and Franklin Avenue. Stately rags could be heard at cotillions in the Garden District, work chants echoing back to Senegal and Gambia could be heard on the old Congo Square, now called Beauregard Square, spirituals could be heard on the campus of Leland College uptown, and spasm bands on wagon tailgates strummed cheese box banjos and beat cooking spoons on pot bottoms. Opportunities for musicians increased after the opening of the Big District on North Rampart. Decrepit houses were turned into cribs and ‘Professors’ sat in their parlors and played Meet Me in St. Louis, Be My Little Bumble Bee, and Baby Won’t You Please Come Home.
Then a new type of music emerged in the Little District. Whites thought that it was from the French word ‘chasse’, which meant ‘fool around’, ‘mess around’, or ‘screw around’. The Madagascans said that it was from a Mandingo word, “jazi”, which meant ‘to act out of the ordinary’. Classically trained Creole musicians suppressed their African roots and looked down their noses at jass as a way for darker-skinned Negroes to shun work. That changed after an 1890 law requiring that trains provide whites and Negroes with separate but equal accommodations. The penalty for sitting in the wrong car was $25 dollars or twenty days in jail. Homer Plessy, a 30-year old shoemaker who was one-eighth Negro, was jailed for sitting in a white car on the East Louisiana Railroad. Judge John Howard Ferguson’s decision in the case was that Louisiana could mandate separate but equal railroad cars as long as the train did not leave the state. Plessy appealed to the State Supreme Court. That court upheld Judge Ferguson’s decision. In 1896 Plessy appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which also upheld Judge Ferguson’s findings. The high court’s decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson marked the beginning of state-imposed segregation. Creole musicians were now officially Negroes and they began to mix their knowledge of theory and their ability to execute with the creativity and intensity of the darker-skinned musicians. In 1898 the Spanish-American War ended, regimental bands broke up, and pawn shops began to display musical instruments that even a poor boy could buy. A journalist came down from Chicago to do a story on the new music. He was having a drink at a bar in the French Quarter when he heard one member of the house band say to another:
“Stop jassin’ around and play what the boss wants or we’re going to get fired.”
The journalist asked the musician what he meant by ‘jassin’ around. The musician told him to come back after hours and he’d find out. That night the journalist came back and listened to some Negroes jassin’ around. On his way back to Chicago he wrote his story. He arrived in Chicago and handed the story to his editor. Somebody on the copy staff thought that the word jass was spelled with two ‘z’s and when the story went into syndication that was the spelling that spread across the nation.
Self-respecting residents Back o’ Town didn’t listen to jazz. They called it whorehouse music and associated it with dancing and sex. During the day Buddy Bolden sat in his favorite barbershop on Franklin Avenue so much that some people thought he owned it, but at night he played the low-down blues that the whores at Funky Butt Hall liked to dance with their customers. Jelly Roll Morton was the professor at Mahogany Hall, Lulu White’s establishment. Brass bands organized by the Knights of Pithian played Nearer My God to Thee at their members’ funerals, but on the way home they formed a main line and played Oh Didn’t He Ramble. Spectators formed a second line and danced down the middle of the street waving open umbrellas.
The Timber Act of 1876 opened vast tracks of yellow pine and cypress to northern timber interests. In 1886 innovations in technology made it easier to pull cypress logs out of swamps with boats instead of waiting for flooding to float them out. The bald cypress was decay-resistant and valuable as timber. In 1884 the Lutcher and Moore Lumber Company bought 260,000 acres in Calcasieu Parish and Beauregard Parish, 60,000 acres of cypress swamp near Lutcher in St. James Parish, and 100,000 acres in Newton County, Texas. They built the Gulf, Sabine and Red River Railroad Line and ran it east from Niblett’s Bluff. They hauled logs from St. James Parish to Niblett’s Bluff, floated them down the Sabine River, and shipped them through the Port in Orange, Texas. They completed 20 miles of tram road and shipped three locomotives and 40 log cars up from Orange. By 1894 their mill was cutting 125,000 feet of lumber a day. They added a second mill and were soon cutting 250,000 feet of lumber daily. They had a logging camp at Fields and one at Stark. The company headquarters at Fields had a commissary, a boarding house, a blacksmith shop, a machine shop, and a school. Negroes were warned not to go into Orange on the company trains because nearby Vidor was a Klan stronghold and had a ‘no Negroes after dark’ policy.
"They barbecue niggers in Orange, Texas," said one of the Negroes at Fields.
Even today the African American population in Vidor is at 0.07 per cent.
In 1889 the introduction of the band saw created a boom in timber production. In 1897 the Louisiana Cypress Lumber Company opened a large cypress mill in Harvey, on the West Bank. Richard, Jr. was offered a job cutting trees down and floating them through the swamps. At the end of his 7th grade year he quit school and took the job. It was heavy work. They cut down the trees, floated the logs through the swamps to the railway, and cut them up to make rail ties. They were paid 25 cents per log delivered. They worked four days a week in mixed gangs and all of them trapped a little on the side. While he was at the timber company Richard was offered a job as a longshoreman. Longshore pay was better, so he quit the timber company and took it. He also worked part-time for a plumbing and heating company in a neighboring parish.
In 1871 Leland University was founded in the basement of the Tulane Avenue Baptist Church, Reverend A.S. Jackson, pastor. The University was named after Lela Chamberlain, wife of Holbrook Chamberlain, who had donated money for an addition to the church. The university had an integrated faculty and student body, but by 1905 it had become one of the best Negro Baptist colleges in state with two buildings on ten acres along St. Charles Avenue where Newcomb Boulevard is today, and preparatory schools, called academies, in New Iberia, Donaldsonville, Gibsland, Monroe, Ruston, Opelousas, Cheneyville, Bunkie, and Belle Alliance. The university offered high school classes, normal school classes, and college classes. Courses at the academies were taught by the University’s faculty. Jimmy was regarded as the smart one in the family and in 1905 Un' Dick and Aunt Betsy moved him in with Louvenia and enrolled him at Leland’s high school preparatory class. Four years later he progressed to college classes. His best friend in the Irish Channel where Louvenia lived was Ernest Antoine, whose mother was from Hahnville. They were related to Reverend Alfred Willis, Reverend Thornton’s successor at Bethlehem Baptist. Ernest’s wife, Viviane, was the daughter of violinist John Robichaux who conducted a jazz orchestra at the music pavilion in Johnson Park and at the Lyric Theater, a colored vaudeville house on Iberville Street. Jim was seeing Bertha Robinson. Bertha spent part of her time in Hahnville with her grandparents, Washington and Patience Braxton, but she didn't like it in the country and preferred New Orleans. Her grandfather, Washington Braxton, had been born in Mississippi in 1840 and his wife Patience had been born in Alabama in 1841, but by the time of the 1880 Census they were living in Hahnville. Seven children were listed in their household on the 1880 census; Susan, Martha, Henry, Fidonia, Rosa (Rosaline), Elisabeth (Lizzie), and Dora (Nora). In the 1880 Census, Washington was 51 years old, Patience was fifty, Susan was twenty, Martha was fifteen, Henry was ten, Fidonia was seven, Rosa was four, Lizzie was three, and Nora was two months. Washington and Patience's oldest child may have been Joseph (Jose) Batiste Braxton who, in 1880 would have been 22 years old. The only Joseph Braxton listed in the 1880 Census in Hahnville was a Joe Brackston, which may have been a misspelling. According to Jimmy Smith's children, Jose was disgusted that no whites would sell land to him and he joined the migration of Exodusters to Kansas. Benjamin Singleton, the leader of the Exodusters, had urged Negroes to buy land in his home state of Tennessee, but whites there had vowed not to sell to Negroes and Singleton had scouted out Kansas as an alternative. Between 1877 and 1882, twenty thousand Exodusters migrated to Kansas. Their glowing letters home were read aloud at church services throughout the South. But Kansas was no paradise either. Many of the Negroes from Louisiana had gone there to escape a yellow fever epidemic and they arrived in Kansas sick and broke. Jose Batiste gave up in disgust again and returned to Hahnville
Henry and his wife Rosemary had a daughter named Patience, after her grandmother. There is no official record of Henry and Rosemary's marriage (Louisiana's Napoleonic Code recognized common-law marriage) and Jimmy's children later mentioned only that Uncle Henry took in nieces and nephews whose parents had either died or split up. In 1897 Nora had a daughter named Virginia (Nootsy) by William Straughter. In 1905 Nora married Louis Gus Davis. Lizzie lived at first in New Orleans, where she also started taking in her nieces and nephews whose parents had died or divorced, then she moved to Chicago, where she became the aunt that everyone stayed with when they migrated north. She had two children, Olivia Howze (Sister) and Son (which may have been a nickname). Son had two children, named Bessie and Junior. Rosaline's married name was Rosaline Davis. Her husband had been married before and he had a daughter named Dora Davis. Rosaline and her husband split up and Dora Davis lost touch with her father. Rosaline then married James Robinson (Old Jimmie). Old Jimmie had been married before and he had a daughter and a son named James Robinson (Young Jimmie) His daughter married a man whose last name was White and they had two children, Charles Peter and Alma. Old Jimmie and Rosaline had four children; Boysie, Leroy (Bud), Washington (Wash) and Bertha (Sweetie). Old Jimmie died and Rosaline had a daughter by someone else. That younger daughter was not in touch with her half siblings until years later when Bertha found her and her father and Dora’s father. Uncle Henry took Boysie, Bud, Wash, and Bertha in to remove them from the confusion. He also took in Charles Peter and Alma in after their parents split up. Patience had short patience with these cousins who lived with her. Uncle Henry overcompensated her for having to put up with them and she grew up to be selfish and spoiled, even to the point of taking a pair of earrings that she liked off baby Alma’s ears and put them on. When she got to be a young woman she was surrounded by doting suitors whom she enjoyed leading on. One of them, Emile Moses, followed her everywhere and wanted desperately to marry her. They never did marry, but they did have twin girls; Ella and Gertrude.
Uncle Henry was soft-hearted and if one of the children got a bruise he would cry, thinking of how alone in the world they were. He lived Back o’ Town but turned a blind eye to the Little District and they made sure that the children turned a blind eye too. Wash grew tall, strong and muscular. He worked as a cane cutter at the La Branche Plantation in St. Rose. He would arrive each morning carrying a dinner pail hollowed out of stone. While the other cutters started on their rows he would sit under a tree, eat his dinner for breakfast, and take a nap. Then he would get up, stretch, and start on his row. By day’s end he had always cut more cane than any of the others.
William Armstrong was a hard-working man, but he took up with a part-time prostitute named Mary Albert (Mayanne) and they had two children, Beatrice (Mama Lucy) and Louis Daniel. William left Mayanne after Louis was born and got married. His wife's name was Gertrude and they had a son named Willie, Jr. Mayanne, Mama Lucy and Louis moved to 1233 Perdido Street, near the Little District. Uncle Henry was their neighbors and Louis Daniel and Cousin Pete White ran in the same gang. Uncle Henry died and while Aunt Lizzie was getting her house ready to take the children in, Pete was picked up by the police.
Juvenile court judge Andrew H. Wilson, was a terror to the waifs on the streets. When he learned that Pete’s parents had died and his guardian was also dead, Judge Wilson placed him in the Jones Home, which was also known as the Colored Waif’s Home. With help from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Captain Joseph H. Jones and his wife Manuella had bought an old building near one of the dairy farms at Chalmette and had started taking in colored boys who had no other place to go. They taught the boys reading, writing, arithmetic and gardening, and for recreation, Professor Peter Davis would march them around the yard with drums and wooden guns. In 1911 Professor Davis expanded the marching group and formed a brass band that became a mandatory part of the boys’ rehabilitation. Pete was on a snare drum. Once a week they would parade through New Orleans, wearing caps, gabardine coats, sneakers, black stockings, and pants turned up to look like knickers. Maybe two of the boys could read music; the others played their parts by ear. Their intonation was poor and they didn’t attack their notes clearly, but that didn’t matter. They were just glad to be out and around people.
Aunt Lizzie had Cousin Pete released to her care and she also took Alma in. During the day Mayanne Armstrong washed clothes in a big tin tub over a little coal furnace in the back yard of a rich family who lived on Canal Street and at night she hustled in the tonks. She would sometimes disappear with one of her male friends for a few days and Mama Lucy and Louis would be sent to stay with William’s mother, Josephine Armstrong. At dusk the band at Funky Butt Hall would play on the sidewalk to draw a crowd and Louis would go down there to hear Buddy Bolden. Buddy was untrained and played everything very loud in b-flat, but for what he lacked in technique, he made up in expressive embellishments. He played everything: blues, stomps, waltzes, rags, slow drags, spirituals and hymns. Louis and three of his friends formed a little quartet that performed on South Rampart for audiences made up mostly of pimps and prostitutes. Their most requested tune was My Brazilian Beauty (Down on the Amazon). Louis’ friends nicknamed him ‘Dippermouth’ or ‘Gatemouth’ because of his wide grin. On My Brazilian Beauty he would solo on a little slide whistle, moving it up and down like a slide trombone. At the end of each song they would pass the hat and they each managed to take home about a dollar a night.
On December 31, 1912 Louis was rummaging through some clothes in Mayanne’s trunk and found a .38 pistol and a box of blanks that belonged to Mayanne’s current boyfriend, with whom she was away on one of her absences. He loaded the blanks into the gun and took it with him when he went out that night. The clock struck midnight just as the quartet was looking for a place to set up. The crowd started lighting firecrackers and shooting pistols into the air. A kid across the street fired a cap pistol at Louis and his friends.
“Get him, Dipper!”
Louis pulled out the .38 and shot back. A police officer named Long John Gorman passed by, saw that the kid had a real gun, and grabbed him. Louis struggled, but Officer Gorman hauled him in. On January 2 Louis appeared before Judge Wilson. After learning that the father had left the family and the mother couldn’t be found, Judge Wilson placed Louis in the Waif’s Home.
It was mealtime when Louis arrived at the Home and a big pot of beans was making its way down the long table at which the boys were seated, but Louis wasn’t hungry. In fact, he was so sad and homesick that he didn’t eat for four days and Captain and Mrs. Jones were beginning to think that he couldn’t be rehabilitated. But then he discovered that some of the boys from his old gang were in the Home and that helped him to adjust.
“What instrument would you like to play?” Professor Davis asked him.
“I don’t know how to play nothing,” Louis said.
“Then what about the singing group?” Professor Davis suggested.
Louis didn’t know what to say to that, so Professor Davis placed him in the singing group, first under the direction of Mrs. Spriggins, who taught part time at the home and after she left, under Mrs. Jeanette Vigne, who taught in the afternoons. Professor Davis gave him a tambourine and Louis fooled around with that for a while. Then he gave him an alto horn and after much effort Louis was able to get out a note or two. Professor Davis then gave him a bugle, which Louis learned quickly because the professor assigned him to play ‘Reveille’ each morning and ‘Taps’ at night. Finally the professor gave him a cornet and taught him how to play ‘Home Sweet Home’.
James Brown and Red “Happy” Bolton were sharing snare drum duties when Louis joined the band and Isaac Smooth and Benny Williams were on the base drums. Cousin Pete had been released by then and was using his experience at the Home to get jobs playing in bands around town. On June 16, 1914 William Armstrong had Louis released to his care. William and Gertrude had had three children together, Willie, Henry, and Gertrude, and were absorbed with raising them. William also had a job at a turpentine factory; he was a straw boss with the authority to hire and fire other Negroes. He kept Louis for a while and then sent him back to Mayanne. Getting Louis released was the last thing William ever did for Louis. Louis refused to go back to school, but instead sold Times-Picayunes to make a little money and loaded and unloaded boats on the levees. A Russian family named Karnofsky hired him to work on their junk wagon and he also got a few jobs playing cornet in the Little District. Whenever he had a job playing music he would rent a cornet from Uncle Jake’s Pawnshop. When Uncle Jake put a nickel-plated Tonk Brother’s cornet on sale for $10 dollars, Louis borrowed a ten from Charlie the Paper Man and bought it. The horn was bent and had holes in the bell, but Louis scalded it out and played it on his very next job. Mayanne was working at Henry Matranga’s Honky Tonk on Perdido Street and she got Louis a job playing in the orchestra. On his nights off Louis would go down to hear the bands at Funky Butt Hall, Mahogany Hall, and the Come Clean Dance Hall over in the Irish Channel.
Joe Oliver was born on a plantation in Abend, Louisiana, near Donaldsonville. His mother was a cook. She died in 1900 and Joe’s older sister, Louise Davis, raised him. His first musical instrument was a trombone, but after playing that for a while he switched to the cornet. In 1904 he got a job as a substitute in the Onward Brass Band. That same year he went blind in his left eye. For the next ten years he played in brass bands, dance bands, and small groups. He always played sitting down or leaning against a wall with a hat pulled over his blind eye. In 1910, he became a regular in the Richard M. Jones Orchestra. When that ended he began working as a side man for Edward “Kid” Ory, whose orchestra was a fixture at Pete Lala’s Café on Iberville Street. Pete named Joe the new king of the cornet and from then on, he was known as “King” Oliver. He sometimes went over to Henry Matranga’s after Pete Lala’s closing time.
“I’m tired of seeing you playing that raggedy horn,” he said one night, and he gave Louis an old cornet that he didn’t want anymore.