Preston Lauterbach

Preston Lauterbach has written here a perfect companion to Robert Palmer's magisterial blues history, Deep Blues. While the chitlin' circuit lives on in truncated form--and Mr. Lauterbach explains how aptly--this is a book written in the past tense, and therefore serves as an elegy to a colorful but bygone era. That rock and roll would not exist without pioneering performers like Louis Jordan, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Big Maybelle, Walter Barnes and Big Mama Thornton goes without saying, but it is the African-American entrepreneurs, booking agents, promoters, nightclub owners, record label impresarios and the like that were for me the most fascinating dimension of this story. These were men and women operating against almost impossible odds--racist municipal administrations, corrupt cops, the KKK, a largely indifferent culture, etc--who nonetheless abetted the creation of what is arguably one of the few original aspects of American culture: the Blues in all its permutations.

Most of this information wasn't new to me; I knew well that the early rock and roll records (by white artists) were ripoffs of African-American artists. Big Mama Thornton had a hit on the Billboard "race records" chart with "Hound Dog" (and Rufus Thomas answered back with "Bear Cat") years before Elvis Presley recorded the song; and let's not forget that the first song Elvis cut at Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording Service (which later became the legendary Sun Records) was Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's blues number "That's All Right." When Phillips understood what he had in Elvis Presley, he produced Elvis's version of Roy Brown's huge hit "Good Rockin' Tonight."

In any case, I rate this at three stars both because it told me very little new, but also because at times Mr. Lauterbach's narrative, historically valuable though it clearly is, bogs down in the minutiae of booking practices, pay scales, and, particularly tediously, tour dates. Nonetheless, this is a particularly valuable book in that it assigns credit for the birth of rock and roll where it firmly belongs, to the hearts, minds and souls of the African-American artists who rode the chitlin' circuit.… (més)

There is a version of early jazz history that traces the music back to New Orleans, then upriver to the saloons and sporting house of the Mississippi basin and on to Chicago and beyond, with the sound of the music evolving from the raggy clamor of street ensembles to the smooth arrangements of large dance bands in fancy ballrooms by the 1930s. This version explains the evolution of the jazz sound as a consequence of promoters striving to appeal to larger, whiter audiences. In the conventional narrative, the audience for jazz fragmented in the 1940s with the emergence of ‘modern’ jazz, then shrunk dramatically as the public embraced other forms of popular music.

What this version leaves out is the music played for black audiences in black communities by black musicians. That music held firmer to the blues tradition and what Albert Murray called the Saturday Night Function: dance music as an exuberant affirmation of resilience in the face of despairing circumstances. Segregation and racial discrimination forced black businessmen and musicians to depend upon their own limited resources. As Preston Lauterbach relates in The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘n’ Roll, black audiences and musicians continually adapted to shifting social and economic forces, and the music remained vital, cathartic and danceable. The sound of the music may have changed over time, but on the Chitlin’ Circuit the distinctions between Jazz, Blues, Rhythm & Blues, Rock ‘n’ Roll and Funk were more a matter of degree than kind.

The Great Migration in the first decades of the 20th c. created black communities in places where they had not been before. Neighborhoods of Southern black emigres—”Bronzevilles”—functioned as black towns within white cities throughout the segregated North. Lauterbach tells how a few enterprising sorts like Walter Barnes in Chicago and Denver Ferguson in Indianapolis saw the lucrative opportunity in these new communities and helped establish regional entertainment networks. Barnes got his start in Jelly Roll Morton’s band in Chicago in the mid-20s, then formed his own group, the Royal Creolians, which became the house band at Al Capone’s Cotton Club in Cicero, Ill. The Creolians were the first black Chicago band to be broadcast on radio, thanks to Capone. When Capone went to jail, Barnes took his band on the road and helped reinvigorate a network of dusty dancehalls and low-watt radio stations that had once featured the black vaudeville troupes that were put out of business by the Great Depression. Barnes also wrote a column for the Chicago Defender, which served as a source of information on promoter contacts, venue locations, and black-friendly lodging and cafes.

Lauterbach tells how a new infrastructure grew up around the regional ‘territory bands’ in the 1930s. Territory bands made up the lower stratum of the black swing world, below the ‘syndicate’ circuit, which was organized by powerful management firms, the musicians’ union, and the mob, and featured the bands of Andy Kirk, Erskine Hawkins, Chick Webb and others. (Duke Ellington, who rarely played for black audiences, worked what Lauterbach calls the ‘thin upper crust’: big-city theatres in New York, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles, with performances broadcast by the NBC radio network). The territory bands had to hustle without the support of a syndicate, and became adept at a range of musical styles, from Dixieland to swing, and served as the training ground for a generation of outstanding musicians, and as incubators of the ‘modern’ sounds to come (ref. Ira Gitler, Swing to Bop).

The syndicate courted white audiences, writes Lauterbach, and neglected the bluesier artists whose records were popular in black communities. Denver Ferguson struck up a promotional deal with Bluebird Records out of Chicago, and started a talent agency to book blues artists and low-priority syndicate bands across the South. Under Ferguson’s promotion, a number of territory bands—like the Carolina Cotton Pickers, and Jay McShann’s band—enjoyed wider exposure. What these bands lacked in terms of technical precision they made up for with creativity and spontaneity, says Lauterbach. Rhythms were punchier, and originality was encouraged. A number of musicians who went on to make a name for themselves in the world of jazz started out in territory bands playing the Chitlin’ Circuit, like J.J. Johnson, Fats Navarro and Ray Brown with the Snookum Russell Band, and Gene Ammons and John Coltrane with King Kolax. Bands on the circuit sometimes played towns that were too small to support black hotels, so promoters would arrange for traveling musicians to stay in private homes, where they were typically fed supper and breakfast, and offered advice on how to avoid local trouble spots. From Lauterbach we get a sense of how interactions between businessmen, working musicians and local communities shaped a black music world mostly unknown to whites at the time.

Lauterbach also fills out our view of the jazz and blues world in the 1940s. When wartime restrictions on fuel and rubber made big-band travel prohibitive, promoters began to favor singers and small combos. A musicians’ strike crippled the recording industry but did little to reduce the demand for live music, especially in black communities, where wartime wages solved (if only temporarily) the problem of chronic underemployment. On the Chitlin’ Circuit, showmanship was still the draw. A good five-piece band could play as well and as loud as a 17-piece band, and a crowd-pleasing singer could travel the network of rural joints and small-town nightclubs on his own, assured of finding a band to play with at the next stop. Performers like Louis Jordan and Roy Brown ‘blended downhome diction and uptown tempo,’ signifying for many the new urban realities of black life a generation removed from the country. Cities and towns that had been backwaters grew into regional hubs with nightclub work and recording opportunities; Memphis and Houston began to attract musicians the way Chicago and New York had before. Lauterbach traces the so-called Memphis sound back to the Domino Lounge (opened 1945) and its proprietor, Andrew ‘Sunbeam’ Mitchell, who promoted a blend of the rowdy urban blues favored by audiences and the tight, refined jazz preferred by musicians. As Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka) wrote in Blues People, the music was always an expression of the experience of the people.

Lauterbach’s book is filled with colorful characters and fascinating anecdotes, and the story he tells of the evolution of jazz and blues on the Chitlin’ Circuit suggests an opening up of musical worlds rather than a closing down or shutting off. You can read in the jazz bibliography that jazz died in 1927, or 1935, or 1942, or 1959, but from the vantage point of the 21st century the history of jazz and blues (and R & B and Rock and Funk) looks like a continuous flow. The stream is broader now; the sound evolved, musicians followed their ambitions, and audiences found ways to enjoy whatever struck their fancy. We can nitpick labels and styles, but the music plays on.… (més)

This is a biography of photographer Ernest Withers and his city Memphis during the 1950's and 1960's He is important for two reasons - he is a great photographer and he is a secret source for the FBI used to monitor the Civil Rights movement in Memphis. He is well known and accepted in the Black community and therefore gets an inside look at events as they unfold. The book culminates with the shooting of Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Hotel.A really interesting look at a complex man and period in American History.… (més)

This is where rock 'n' roll really began, in the hundreds of little shacks all around the South, where music, drink and food - and sex - flowed with equal abandon. The Chitlin' Circuit.

This book traces the black successor of the old vaudeville circuit, where entertainers honed their craft after the '40s.

All the big stars began in this Deep South circuit, from James Brown to B.B. King to Little Richard, and dozens of artists you've never heard of but who influenced everybody that came after them.

This is a great read for any music fan and for those interested in the history of cultures hidden just beyond the eyes of most. Well worth it.

More reviews at my WordPress site, Ralphsbooks.… (més)