Perforce, union protections in Dixie—meaning New Orleans—were weak, where they needed to be strong, given the prevailing atmosphere. Pianist and guitarist, Frank Amacker, born in the Crescent City in 1890, recalled that often club owners would not notify bands they were fired, and band members would only ascertain this upon arriving to play and finding a new band in their place.91
Despite the wealth they created for club owners, recording companies, and the like, these musicians often performed in adverse conditions, one factor among many in creating or worsening health problems.92 Cornetist and bandleader Joseph “King” Oliver also developed dental problems, “pyorrhea of the gums,” according to his spouse, and was blind in one eye. He felt compelled to grant loans to his sidemen, who often did not repay him. Oliver became depressed, though unlike others similarly situated, he steered clear of alcohol, but that only harmed relations with his bandmates, who were not so inclined.93 Evidently, the pyorrhea was an impediment to Oliver’s horn playing, making it difficult for him to play certain notes.94 Saxophonist George “Big Nick” Nicholas, born in 1922, asserted, “Saxophone player, trumpet player, they always have this problem with their teeth so I had some work done on my lower mouth and it cost me twelve hundred,” followed by a “partial bridge put up in my upper part of my mouth. That cost thirty-one hundred…. Through the years your mouth, your gums and your bone structure” are affected by the stress of playing with a device attached to your lips: “All that pressure through the years, you know, it wears away and the bone structure wears away and then your gums recede. So I had six caps put in in 1950 and my gums started receding.” Fellow horn man Maynard Ferguson “has all of his teeth capped … Sonny Rollins has got a lot of work … Coltrane had a lot of work done in his mouth.”95 The contemporary of Louis Armstrong, Norman Brownlee, recalled that the trumpeter roughened his mouthpiece by rubbing it on the curb and this roughness apparently combined with a lot of pressure, causing his lips to deteriorate.96 Reputedly, Sidney Bechet played a saxophone since the mouthpiece was easier on his teeth, compared to a clarinet.97 Such was the occupational hazard of the horn man, following in the footsteps of Oliver.
Sadly enough, it was not just teeth. Trumpeter Herman Autrey, born in 1904, said late in life, “I have glaucoma and cataracts and all that junk.” This meant a “cornea transplant,” adding, “I was blind once upon a time … two or three months, I guess.” He seemed to connect this malady to “bad whiskey” and did not mention the occupational hazard of playing often in smoky cellars. His spouse had a job, keeping them both afloat. There was no pension or support otherwise from the union. “From the union,” he spat out, “they wish you would drop dead soon, because they don’t want to pay that thousand,” speaking metaphorically. “That’s the worst union in the world,” he maintained furiously. “I told them that, too, and they know it … they don’t give a damn about nobody or help nobody,” certainly not this Alabaman. “They’re the worst bunch of bastards—I told them! They know me!” With gathering outrage, he proclaimed that if you “go in there 10:00, 11:00 o’clock [even] 2:30 they go home. The place is closed at 3:00.” With gathering outrage, he insisted, “I’ll starve to death before I go in there.”98
Pianist Oscar Peterson, born in 1925, was afflicted by the malady that often beset those who pounded the ivory keys for a living: arthritis in his hands. “It just hurts to play,” he said, just as it hurt his many fans to be deprived of his consummate artistry.99 Fellow keyboardist Horace Silver struggled with scoliosis: is it possible that the problem he suffered from, the curvature of his spine, emanated from—or was worsened by—long nights bending over the piano while playing?100
The cornetist Harrison Barnes, born in 1889, had dental problems too, an occupational hazard for those in his field (he played trombone, too). The seedy environments he performed in may shed light on why he contracted syphilis and how he was afflicted with a tumor—“big as a baseball,” he said. And yet, despite his skill as a musician, he was forced to work almost two decades as a flue welder, simply to pay the bills.101 Born in 1891, Joseph “Fan” Borgeau, whose nickname stemmed from his Chinese appearance, worked as a lottery vendor for thirty-six years, despite his ability as a pianist; one job was typical: the piano keys were so sharp that his hands could be left bloodied.102
Suggestive of the discomfiting reality that horrendous conditions endured by skilled musicians have yet to disappear is that Herbie Hancock, one of today’s leading keyboardists and now an elder statesman, recalled his early days when he was “playing music into the wee hours every night and then trying to deliver mail all day….” He was a “complete wreck,” he confessed, and “actually fell asleep standing up….” Unsurprisingly, he “got sick too.”103
There was also the occupational hazard of getting from one gig to another. Saxophonist Arnett Cobb, born in 1918, suffered from pleurisy and tuberculosis, but in 1956 he endured “a nearly fatal car accident [that] necessitated spinal surgeries and the use of crutches he’d require” until he died in 1989.104
Drummer Freddie Moore, born in 1900, endured an experience that was hardly atypical. He was playing in Duncan, Oklahoma, for a group of Euro-American customers, when one among this group—a “cracker,” in his words—pulled a blackjack and began to club him in the head. “King” Oliver grabbed the assaulter’s wrist while shouting “Don’t do that, don’t kill my drummer. That’s the only drummer I’ve got here.” The police were summoned but more than a dozen of the assaulter’s comrades declared they intended to lynch Moore. The shaken percussionist abandoned his drum set, clambered down a fire escape, and caught a freight train to Tulsa, the band’s next stop. He dared not register at the hotel where the band was slated to stay for fear of being found. Instead, he resided with an unnamed “landlady,” Three weeks later, he returned to Duncan with his face blackened and his hair longer, which foiled detection. But this adventure was not the end of his travails, for Oliver called him “skunk foot” since his feet perspired so much when drumming , which contributed to sore feet, at times hampering the removal of his shoes (not to mention generating a striking aroma).105 The superb drummer Max Roach once observed that “most of the good drummers have bad feet. Because you do a lot of exercising. You work. Sometimes I see somebody … walking strangely. I say, it’s got to be a drummer.”106 It was not just drummers. Reportedly, saxophonist Zoot Sims, born in 1925, had trouble with his feet because of having to stand and play on so many different engagements.107
It was not simply the arduousness of performing, it was also that artists often had to perform when they might have been better off in a hospital bed, quarantined. Pianist Horace Silver confessed, “I once played in San Francisco with a 104-degree temperature,”108 a product of “the show must go on” mentality, as well as the inadequate bargaining power by artists that was a by-product of this mantra.
Scholar Frederick J. Spencer is not far wrong in concluding recently that “it has become an accepted fact that jazz musicians tend to be more liable than other professionals to die early deaths … from drink, drugs, women [sic] or overwork.” The venues for their performance—speakeasies, clubs—encouraged drinking and often were controlled by unsavory characters not opposed to using violence to attain goals. According to Spencer, a few jazz businessmen even preferred to hire addicts: “Some record companies and club owners would only hire junkies. With them they could be sure they wouldn’t insist on their rights.”109 In addition, according to scholar Ronald L. Morris, “Most leading jazz entertainers after 1880 were closely allied with racketeers,” and the impresario and producer John Hammond “believed no fewer than three in every four jazz clubs and cabarets of this distant period were either fronted, backed or in some way managed by Jewish and Sicilian mobsters,” though those of Irish origin were also prominent.110
The new music, in short, got off to a rocky start, navigating—and influenced by—war, pogroms, racism, and adverse working conditions. Yet these formidable barriers could not restrain the rise of a music that proved to be sufficiently potent to overcome.
2. What Did I Do to