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BLACK ENTERTAINERS
ON RADIO, 1920-1930
BY WILLIAM RANDLE, JR.
When the sound films came in they hired white people. There was no room for us.
Radio and films changed things, the Negro lost out. When we performed personally
in public, the Negro had a chance.
James P. Johnson1
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68 THE BLACK PERSPECTIVE IN MUSIC
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BLACKENTERTAINERSON RADIO 69
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70 THE BLACK PERSPECTIVE IN MUSIC
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BLACK ENTERTAINERS ON RADIO 71
at the Alabam and later at Roseland Ballroom, where he appeared
regularly on broadcasts between 1924 and 1928.
The most consistent black broadcasts from New York began in
1928 and featured Duke Ellington and His Orchestra. Ellington had
been featured at a number of New York clubs and had also toured a
ballroom circuit in New England. His band was the "rage" of the East
and his appearances on radio, at first locally, then on the CBS network,
broadened his audiences across the country. According to the record
there were no fewer than 210 Ellington broadcasts during the years
1927-1930, most of them coming from New York, a few from Chicago.
The songs played most frequently by Ellington during this period
were: "Black Beauty" (a tribute to Florence Mills), "Black and Tan
Fantasy," "The Mooche," "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo," "Three Little
Words," "Creole Love Call," "Diga Diga Doo," and "St. Louis Blues."16
Ellington represented the peak of performance by black musicians
on radio during the last years of the decade. His band broadcast a series
for CBS that was heard throughout the country, week after week. His
earlier broadcasts on WHN had started his band on its road to the top
clubs and dance halls, and the CBS shows made him nationally
famous. 17
Black performers and bands appeared in every city and on every
radio station, with few exceptions, where there was a concentration of
black population. Traveling entertainers would broadcast programs
on stations in the cities they visited. In June 1922 the Symphonium
Serenaders, a black band, appeared on KDKA, Pittsburgh. Bradford's
Orchestra, a twelve-piece dance band, was on KDKA in October.
Clarence Jones and His Wonder Orchestra, a Chicago theater group,
were on KYW in October, 1922. Sissle and Blake were also on Chicago's
KYW with the Shuffle Along cast in March 1923. WDT had a blues
marathon in 1923.
WSB of Atlanta used black performers beginning as early as 1923.
The entertainment offered by blacks included performances by a large
church choir, three dance bands, the Early Brothers String Band, two
university glee clubs,jubilee singing groups, and a number of quartets.
At least one black artist appeared each week on WSB.
There are extant programs for nearly 800 broadcasts which were
made from 1921 to 1930 by black performers.18 These programs
featured a variety of entertainment, from dance bands and operatic
stars to blues singers and revival meetings. The stations ranged from as
far west as Los Angeles, south to New Orleans, Dallas, and Atlanta, and
north to Chicago, Detroit, and New York. Such bands as Duke Elling-
ton, Sammy Stewart, and Troy Floyd became famous on the networks;
others were only locally publicized. Some black entertainers were tran-
sient, appearing once and not again; others became regulars-among
them, Andy Razaf, who was known as "Crooning Andy" on the radio;
Art Tatum (later famous as a jazz and concert star), who was a staff
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72 THE BLACKPERSPECTIVEIN MUSIC
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BLACKENTERTAINERSON RADIO 73
"Arkansas Blues,"
"Baby Won't You Please Come Home,"
"Backwater Blues,"
"Down Hearted Blues,"
"Everybody Loves My Baby,"
"Georgia Grind,"
"Gulf Coast Blues,"
"I Can't Give You Anything But Love,"
"Love Will Find a Way,"
"Oh Daddy Blues,"
"Someday Sweetheart,"
"Squeeze Me,"
"Strut Miss Lizzie," and
"Tain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do."
With few exceptions, these songs were written by black composers.
Despite the radio "boom" from the beginning of the decade, black
show business flourished during the 1920s as it never had before. By
1925 black performers were active in most areas of the entertainment
industries, and black dance bands by the hundreds were appearing
regularly throughout the country. Black singers made thousands of
records after Mamie Smith's CrazyBlues became a hit in 1920. Broad-
way became a haven for black writers and entertainers after the success
of Shuffle Along.
The idea, however, that black musical theater was a consistent
success on Broadway is false. Most black shows flopped! But, on the
other hand, there were many black shows produced on Broadway.
Moynihan and Glazer are incorrect in contending that "Negro enter-
tainers were a rarity on Broadway, and one had to go above 125th
Street to find them," for there were numerous black musical comedy
performers during the period.20 When Gilda Gray, a well-known white
entertainer, sang the song entitled It's GettingDark on Old Broadwayin
1922, she was not commenting on the lack of street illumination in the
area!
University of Cincinnati
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74 THE BLACKPERSPECTIVEIN MUSIC
NOTES
1. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, TheyAll Played Ragtime (New York, 1950) p. 205.
2. Carter G. Woodson, The Negro ProfessionalMan and the Community(Washington, 1934)
pp. 250-251; The Black Perspectivein Music 3 (Spring 1975): 77-83.
3. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York, 1944), pp. 959-960.
4. Many critics disagree. They focus on the fact that more places of entertainment per
capita are found in lower class sections of cities, historically, than in any other area.
5. Charles Edward Smith, "The Blues was the Mother,"Jazz Quarterly, No. 5 (Winter
1960): 27.
6. Recent Social Trends in the United States (New York, 1933), p. 567.
7. Myrdal, AmericanDilemma, p. 190.
8. Blesh and Janis, TheyAll Played, p. 104.
9. Ibid.
10. Marshall, F. Ray, The Negro and OrganizedLabor (New York, 1965), pp. 96, 103, 281.
This was true of Cleveland.
11. Oddly enough, some of the resistance to desegregation was from the black members
with vested interests in their own local.
12. Myrdal, AmericanDilemma, p. 330.
13. Chicago Defender, 16 September 1922, p. 8.
14. Samuel Charters and Leonard Kunstadt, jazz: A History of the New YorkScene (New
York, 1962), p. 167.
15. Jazz, Nat Hentoff and Albert McCarthy, eds. (New York, 1959), p. 165.
16. I have notes for this number in my personal research files.
17. Nat Hentoff and Nat Shapiro,HearMe Talkin'to Ya! (New York, 1955), pp. 231-233.
18. Materials in my personal files.
19. Paul Oliver, Conversationwith The Blues (New York, 1965), p. 141.
20. Daniel P. Moynihan and Nathan Glazer, Beyondthe Melting Pot (Cambridge, 1963),
p. 27.
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