A National Band From the Southwest- The Don Albert Orchestra

A National Band from the Southwest: The Don Albert OrchestraAuthor(s): Christopher WilkinsonReviewed work(s):Source: American Music, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 313-351Published by: University of Illinois PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3052602 .Accessed: 09/05/2012 09:01

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CHRISTOPHER WILKINSON

A National Band from the

Southwest: The Don Albert

Orchestra

From 1929 until 1940 New Orleans-born trumpet player Don Albert (1908-80) led a jazz band based in San Antonio, Texas, known first as "Don Albert and His Ten Pals" and later as "Don Albert and His Mu- sic, 'America's Greatest Swing Band."' Within jazz historiography it has been categorized as one of the numerous "territory bands" that emerged in the south-central United States during the 1920s and 1930s.

The history of the territory bands is complex and by no means completely understood. The earliest studies of the territory bands of Ar- kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, and Missouri (the region known to jazz historians as "the Southwest") by Franklin Driggs, Ross Rus- sell, and Gunther Schuller vary in their assessments of the importance of these groups. Russell offers the most dismissive evaluation.' In his view, although some of these ensembles included at one time or another a player who would later have a distinguished career in one of the celebrated national bands, the territory bands themselves did little to merit closer attention, since they rarely toured, made few if any recordings, and thus apparently had limited influence on jazz history. To Russell, these groups, presumably consisting largely of local performers as well as "random barnstorming musicians who drifted into the area," were essentially "large frogs in small ponds." He goes on to assert that almost all territory bands failed in their attempts to reach a larger audience, "destroyed by their own ambitions and the many uncertainties and frustrations of show business."2

Christopher Wilkinson, an associate professor of music history at West Vir- ginia University, is currently working on a monograph on the life of Don Al- bert. His most recent publication, "The Influence of West African Pedagogy upon the Education of New Orleans Jazz Musicians," Black Music Research Journal 14, no. 1 (Spring 1994), is devoted to another phase of Albert's life.

American Music Fall 1996 @ 1996 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

314 Wilkinson

More recent research has demonstrated the significant impact some of these bands had on popular music in the period between the two world wars. Although in the 1920s the music played by various

groups reflected the influence of distinctive combinations of musical traditions indigenous to the territory in which each resided, by the

early 1930s, in part reflecting the culturally homogenizing influence of the newly emergent mass media of radio and recordings, regional styles yielded to a national style of jazz, which in various ways re- tained elements of the formerly regional practices while transcend-

ing the boundaries that had divided the territories in which they had

developed.3 Evidence of the territory bands' role in the development of big-band

jazz challenges the earlier view that territory bands resembled minor-

league baseball teams: collections of seemingly randomly selected players of decidedly mixed abilities, some with talent that would eventu-

ally allow them to move up to organizations having national

reputations, others on their way down from earlier fame to future ob-

scurity, and still others who had reached the pinnacle of success mere-

ly by being a part of these ensembles. In truth all national bands be-

gan life as territory bands and acquired their elevated status through a combination of their own collective talents and the increasingly pow- erful music industry, with its "complex series of alliances and partner- ships" among booking agents, recording companies, radio stations and networks, the corporate sponsors of broadcasts, owners of hotels and

nightclubs, and the American Federation of Musicians.4 This collection of capitalistic enterprises appears to have changed

the environment in which jazz was created and performed during the 1930s. According to Thomas J. Hennessey, "After 1929, the national nature of the band business and the pressures of the Depression squeezed most regional styles out of existence." By the summer of 1935, when Benny Goodman's triumph at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles "officially" ushered in the swing era and established jazz as the prevailing style of American popular music for a decade, the transformation was complete.5

The history of Don Albert's band is one of a band that was formed at the beginning of this period of transformation and that broke up in 1940, the midpoint of the swing era. It is a history shaped by two

seemingly contradictory forces. The more apparent force was the power of the music industry's complex alliances to regulate, and in this instance frustrate, the ambitions of a band that often found itself on the fringes of the industry's ever-expanding domain. The less apparent force was that of this band's popularity, particularly with black audiences, despite the absence of support from the music industry. The reputation of Albert's band cannot be measured by the number

A National Band from the Southwest 315

of recordings made-there were only eight--or by the amount of cov-

erage in the mainstream press-the attention paid Albert by white- owned newspapers and magazines was negligible. Instead it is documented in the black press of the period and demonstrated by the numerous and extensive tours undertaken between 1931 and 1940. The memories of Albert and a number of associates have provided corroborating evidence of the documented record of his achievement.

Thus the history of Albert's band contradicts certain assumptions about the territory bands' place in the hierarchy of jazz ensembles

during the 1930s. It also calls into question the premises on which that

hierarchy appears to have been founded. The first premise is that one

may fairly evaluate the quality of these bands on the basis of their often limited number of recordings. The second assumption derives in part from the first: given the limited number and, at times, uneven

quality of the recorded performances, these territory bands must have had fundamental artistic limitations that account for their failures to make names for themselves in the major centers of jazz, such as Kan- sas City or New York. The third assumption, and perhaps the most

significant, is that the fate of these bands was largely within their own control, and thus their failures were their own responsibility. This as-

sumption ignores the reality that the majority of the territory bands (almost all of which were black) faced daunting barriers created to maintain racial segregation that severely inhibited or even totally blocked their access to white audiences, whose attention may be presumed to equal national recognition. It also ignores the fact that, as the 1930s unfolded, the music industry's increasing control of performance opportunities required the support and intervention of various gatekeepers, almost all of whom were white.

All these assumptions have obscured the significant reputation that Don Albert's band earned as a result of its work in locations far removed from the "small pond" of the Southwest. Newly discovered documents reveal that this band enjoyed considerable fame within African America during much of its existence. Although initially confined to the Southwest, its reputation would eventually extend across the eastern half of the country as a consequence of countless

performances throughout twenty-four of the continental states. This evidence not only challenges the prevailing view that the Don Albert Orchestra was merely another territory band of the 1930s but also supports the conclusion that for a period in the later 1930s, at the be-

ginning of the "official" swing era, it acquired the status of a national band within the African American community.

In 1908 the leader of this band was born Albert Anit6 Dominique in the area known as the Seventh Ward, the principal Creole community of New Orleans. As a youth Don Albert, as he later renamed him-

316 Wilkinson

self, studied with several master musicians from the Creole commu-

nity, including "Papa" Louis Tio and Milford Piron. From the ages of fourteen to eighteen Albert played sporadically with various bands both in and around New Orleans.6 In September 1926, at the age of

eighteen, he left New Orleans for Texas with two other young musicians. He had been hired to play in the house band of a bar called the Tip Top, which he later described as "the raggediest and worst

place" in the Central Track area of downtown Dallas.7 Shortly thereafter Albert met Alphonso Trent, the preeminent black bandleader not only in Dallas but of the entire Texas-Arkansas-Oklahoma region in the late 1920s. Of more immediate importance to Albert's career was his developing friendship with Trent's first trumpet player, Chester Clark. Thanks to Clark's assistance and advice, at the end of 1926 Al- bert was hired as lead trumpet player in Troy Floyd's band, which was based in San Antonio.8 He remained with Floyd for almost three

years. In August 1929 an investor named Bernard Goldberg, having heard

him perform with Floyd's band, gave Albert a thousand dollars to form a group to play engagements during the Texas State Fair, which would last from October 12 to 27.9 Contrary to Russell's generalization concerning the personnel of territory bands, Albert did not hire local talent-not even raiding Troy Floyd's band in the process of

forming his own. With one exception, he employed musicians work-

ing in New Orleans who either were known to him from his youth or had established reputations there subsequent to his departure in 1926. The exception was trumpet player Hiram Harding of Dallas. The band, known as "Don Albert and His Ten Pals," began its eleven-year existence with the following personnel:

Don Albert trumpet and leader Hiram Harding trumpet Frank Jacquet trombone Herbert Hall baritone and alto saxophones, clarinet Louis Cottrell Jr. tenor saxophone and clarinet Arthur Derbigny alto saxophone and clarinet Al Freeman Jr. piano Ferdinand Dejan banjo Henry Turner tuba Albert Martin drums Sidney Hansell vocals

Interviews with Albert suggest that he placed great importance on his sidemen being "finished musicians," that is, able to read music. His experience with members of Troy Floyd's band, most of whom apparently played only by ear, was undoubtedly a major factor in his


decision to return home to find players; finished musicians would be

easy to find in New Orleans.10 As he later recalled, "because the band formed so quickly, we had to have some music." The "music" was a collection of stock arrangements given Albert by the leader of a band of white musicians performing at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. The

presence of reading musicians was therefore obviously essential to the band's initial success."

The early months of the band's history have been difficult to re- construct. What is known is that shortly after the conclusion of the state fair, the group went to San Antonio and became the house band for a nightclub known variously as the Chicken Plantation or the Chicken Shack and run by a man named Raul Estes. That his fledg- ling band was hired for an extended engagement suggests that Al- bert probably capitalized on a reputation earned in San Antonio dur-

ing his three-year stint as lead trumpet with Floyd. Nonetheless, even in its extreme youth, playing a repertory of head and stock arrangements, his band must also have demonstrated that it could provide the kind of music sufficient to the purposes of this club's proprietor. The Chicken Plantation went out of business early in 1930 when Es- tes apparently decided to take a job at Shadowland, a roadhouse on the outskirts of San Antonio. The Ten Pals also moved there, replac- ing Troy Floyd's band; they played for dancing every night and also backed touring singers and dance teams occasionally engaged to perform there.12

The Ten Pals remained at Shadowland until May 1931, when, hav-

ing bought a second-hand bus with savings from the tips they earned from playing requests, they left on the first of what would ultimately be twelve tours. The band traveled every year but one during its existence, the final tour ending four months before the group broke

up in 1940. Although the shortest of these trips lasted only two or three weeks, the longest lasted more than a year. Evidence preserved in contemporary newspapers reveals that during its ten-year-and- eight-month life, the band was on the road the equivalent of at least four years and ten months, or 45 percent of its existence. This con- servative estimate does not include short out-of-town engagements that the band played while it was ostensibly resident in San Anto- nio. Moreover, several gaps in the newspaper record, each of a month or more, suggest the possibility of still other tours besides those it has been possible to document.

In the course of these journeys the band played in cities and towns from Texas to Florida, north to upstate New York, west to South Da- kota, and back down again to Texas, as well as in all the states between. It played in the major cities of New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh and in small towns such as Thomasville, Georgia;

318 Wilkinson

Rocky Mount, North Carolina; and Beckley, West Virginia. Not only did it play for dances in hotel ballrooms, nightclubs, and high school gymnasiums, but at times it provided stage shows for movie theaters and toured with entertainers. In later years the band took its own troupe of entertainers on tour. When the opportunity presented itself, the band broadcast over local radio stations, including those in San Antonio, New Orleans, Little Rock, and Miami, among other cities. Detailed discussion of every tour is not necessary to demonstrate the

widespread activity of this band. Consideration of three will suffice, since taken together they provide evidence of the band's growing popularity, types of performances, and range of travels.

That the band toured was typical of all bands during the 1930s. Only recently, however, has the extent of the travels of the Albert band been documented. Its first tour came at a time when, evidence suggests, many bands were beginning to travel in search of new audiences. The obvious reason touring became attractive was money. As Walter Bar- nes, a bandleader and columnist for the Chicago Defender, noted in March 1931: "Times have changed-and how. Bands, I mean big bands are now taking to the road rather than hold one stand indefinitely. There's more money on the road and in barnstorming, even in one-

night jumps.... Radio has so popularized good music that the smaller towns want and are willing to pay to hear good bands in person."13

Only two months later the Ten Pals were on tour for the first time.

Although they had obviously been planning to tour for some time (otherwise why save tip money to buy a bus?), Barnes's words may have provided further encouragement. The fact that only two months later the Defender would print news of the Ten Pals in a form that suggests Albert or an associate was the source of information lends credence to this idea.

In addition to the attraction of making more money through traveling, another factor may have played a role in initiating the band's first tour at this time. Years later Herbert Hall, baritone saxophonist with the band, told Franklin Driggs, "we left the Shadowland when

things got bad during the Depression, and they cut us down to three nights a week." Three nights was half the length of what had earlier been their normal workweek.14

The Ten Pals' first tour began in May 1931 and concluded in early December of the same year. It was dominated by extended residenc- es in Little Rock and Oklahoma City, each covered extensively in the local press. Reports in the national black newspapers (and subsequent recollections in oral histories) indicate that the Ten Pals also played in cities in Tennessee and Louisiana. Although there is little reason to doubt these reports, it has not been possible to corroborate them through advertisements or articles in local newspapers.15


The absence of such "on-site" verification is especially frustrating in the following instance. On December 4, 1931, an article on the entertainment page of the San Antonio Register reported that the band had performed "a concert engagement" at Fisk University during the course of this tour. It has not been possible to determine precisely when this occurred. If the Register's story is accurate, this may have been one of the earliest concert performances of jazz to take place at a college or university.16

The extent and direction of this tour is illustrated by the map in

figure 1. In this (and in subsequent maps in this article) the precise sequence of the band's travels from one town to the next is shown

by solid lines, where this can be documented. More often, however, available information has not permitted such precision, because there are gaps in the record of the band's movements. Thus dashed lines

Figure 1. Tour no. 1 of the Don Albert band , May 11 to ca. December 3, 1931.

--C )37~-~ 1' rl 4

n//

r

Key: lines indicate documented routes; dashed lines indicate possible routes between documented performance sites.

1. San Antonio, Tex.: band departed on May 11, 1931, for Little Rock, Ark. 2. Little Rock, Ark.: band in residence from May 14 to July 12. It returned

to perform from ca. Aug. 22 to ca. Sept. 3. 3. Oklahoma City, Okla.: band in residence from July 13 to ca. Aug. 21. It

returned to perform from Sept. 4 until sometime after Sept. 24. 4. Subsequent routes and sites cannot be fully documented, but apparently

they included towns in Oklahoma, Fisk University in Nashville (see site 4 on map), as well as locations in Louisiana. The band returned to San Anto- nio before Dec. 4, 1931.

320 Wilkinson

indicate possible connections between known performance sites. Where these occur, it may reasonably be assumed that the band traveled elsewhere for brief engagements or stopped en route to a documented location to perform. At one point on this first tour, the band was reportedly contracted to play for a chain of movie theaters in eastern Oklahoma after its departure from Oklahoma City, but the locations of those theaters remain elusive.

The content of the newspaper coverage of the Ten Pals offers important insight into two institutions that contributed significantly to the band's fortunes: the black press and the booking agent. Working with agents represented Albert's first contact with the music industry. Until his band developed a greater reputation, these individuals were essential for securing engagements outside San Antonio. News- papers, particularly two of the nation's leading black papers, the Pitts- burgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, played major roles in making the band known to readers far from the Southwest.

Albert's band first received notice in the Chicago Defender on May 16, 1931, near the beginning of its first tour. Datelined Little Rock, thus probably telephoned to the paper by Albert or an associate, the brief article noted that the Ten Pals had "just completed a two-year contract at the Shadowland club of San Antonio, Texas, and are working a temporary engagement in Little Rock." It gave an address where Albert might be reached, presumably in hopes of generating more engagements, and it listed the band's personnel, revealing that since its founding nineteen months earlier, the Ten Pals had become a twelve-piece band.17 Much later Albert recalled that during this period the band was often billed as "Don Albert and His Ten Pals-All Twelve of Them."'18 The ensemble now consisted of the following musicians:

Don Albert trumpet Hiram Harding trumpet Frank Jacquet trombone Herbert Hall baritone and alto saxophones, clarinet Philander Tiller alto saxophone Louis Cottrell Jr. tenor saxophone Al Freeman Jr. piano Ferdinand Dejan banjo Henry Turner tuba Jimmie Johnson string bass Albert Martin drums Anderson Lacey vocals

The increase in the band's size was apparently gradual and was accompanied by some turnover in personnel. One of the earliest


known photographs of the band was taken probably in the second half of 1930 (fig. 2). Included were Sidney Hansell, the band's first

singer (third from the right), and bass player Jimmie Johnson (second from the right), a new member of the band. Not included was the tuba player, Henry Turner, who apparently missed the photo session. Hansell, along with alto saxophonist Arthur Derbigny (standing on the extreme left), had already left the band and returned to New Orleans by the time the first tour began.

Derbigny's successor was Philander Tiller of Little Rock, who was also the first of what ultimately became a total of six player-arrangers in the band. His charts helped to free the Ten Pals from the conventional stock and head arrangements on which they had depend- ed and contributed to the formation of the band's own sound, a major source of its later popularity.19 Anderson Lacey succeeded Sidney Hansell as vocalist, but by September 1931 he too had departed, to be replaced by Sam Birt.20 Bass player Jimmie Johnson's arrival not

only enlarged the band; according to Albert, it introduced the string bass to Texas jazz. (It should be noted that Johnson also represented

Figure 2. Don Albert and His Ten Pals, ca. late 1930. From left to right: Fer- dinand Dejan, Albert Martin, Al Freeman Jr., Hiram Harding, Herbert Hall, Louis Cottrell Jr., Frank Jacquet, Sidney Hansell, Jimmie Johnson, and Arthur Derbigny. Don Albert is seated. From the collection of Christopher Wilkinson.

IV V

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322 Wilkinson

a link to the earliest years of jazz history. As a young man he had performed with Charles "Buddy" Bolden in what many regard as the

prototypical New Orleans jazz band.)21 During their almost two-month stay in Little Rock, Don Albert and

His Ten Pals broadcast at least two half-hour programs from the stu- dios of radio station KLRA and played in two different nightclubs, as well as at the Arkansas Movie Theater. At the theater they performed on at least one occasion in May between screenings of the feature film The Way of All Men, starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr.22

Departing from Little Rock shortly after July 12, 1931, the band went to Oklahoma City. Possibly as early as July 13, it was playing there at a nightclub called the Showboat.23 By this time Don Albert had apparently hired his first manager and publicist, James B. Bryant of Little Rock. Bryant is mentioned in a Pittsburgh Courier article dated July 22 that indicates that not only had the band "opened for an indefinite run" at the Showboat but it was "booked through Arkansas and Ten- nessee for the next three months."24 Those bookings, for which Bry- ant was probably responsible, would include "a battle of music" with T. Holder's Casa Loma Orchestra at an amusement park called Wil- low Beach (near Little Rock) on August 22. Having read the announcement of a contest to identify "America's most popular orchestra" in the Pittsburgh Courier of August 8, 1931, Bryant wrote a letter promot- ing the Ten Pals that received "special mention" in the August 22 issue of the newspaper.25

Where else the band may have played that month is unclear, but

early in September Bryant arranged for it to return to the Showboat in Oklahoma City for a six-week engagement. The Ten Pals occasion-

ally performed in Oklahoma City at two other venues, the Ritz Ball- room and Forest Park, presumably on nights when the Showboat was closed. In an article in the local African American newspaper, the Black

Dispatch, we learn that the band (now billed as "the South's Greatest Dance Orchestra") was so popular that it found itself "unable to ac-

cept all invitations extended it... which goes to prove its extraordi-

nary ability."26 It is difficult to trace the band's precise movements after its second

departure from Oklahoma City. It reportedly toured Oklahoma on the

"Majestic Movie Theater Circuit," traveled to Tennessee to play the Fisk University "concert," and then passed through Louisiana before

returning to San Antonio and Shadowland for a thirteen-week engagement, as well as half-hour broadcasts on a local radio station three

evenings a week.27 At first glance the geographical range of this tour seems to support

Ross Russell's view that, like all territory band leaders, Albert pre- sided over an organization of merely regional significance. Examined


more closely, however, the same evidence points to other conclusions.

Obviously this tour was no overnight "run-out" from San Antonio to one or more nearby communities, a fact that contradicts Russell's

suggestion that territory bands stayed close to home. Equally apparent is that, having made debuts in both Little Rock and Oklahoma

City, the Ten Pals were later hired in each town to play extended en-

gagements. Additionally the band was later reengaged in both communities, evidence of its ability both to develop and to maintain a

following beyond southwest Texas. Little Rock and Oklahoma City had their own local bands. Contrary

to Russell's generalization that territory bands avoided competition from similar ensembles, Don Albert showed no interest in playing the role of "the large frog in the small pond" of San Antonio. He was will-

ing to battle T. Holder's band in Little Rock and for a time was resident in Oklahoma City, home of Walter Page's Blue Devils. At that time the Blue Devils were in decline, partly because of the perilous economy of the early years of the depression and partly because of the periodic "raids" on its personnel by Bennie Moten of Kansas City. If this had been the Ten Pals' only tour or if all subsequent travels had been limited to states adjacent to Texas, the view that this band

stayed in its territory might be valid; that was not the case, however. Back in San Antonio the band had its thirteen-week contract at

Shadowland extended to six months; it once again became the establishment's house band, playing six nights per week. At the same time it played engagements in downtown San Antonio for the black com-

munity, including dances held on Christmas and Easter morning. The "Breakfast Dance Xmas Morning" was announced both in an advertisement in the San Antonio Register and in a short article entitled "Lo- cal Orchestra Gives Xmas Dance."28

The Easter morning dance had an unusual consequence. Under the headline "Don Albert's Dance Brings a Challenge," in the Register of

April 1, 1932, we read that the Albert "played to a crowded house Easter morning [and] created quite a furore in musical circles by his wonderful showing." The reporter noted that a number of musicians from other local bands attended the performance, among them Troy Floyd, who later wrote a letter to the newspaper challenging Albert's band to a "Musical Contest at any time and place so designated by them so as to let the public know and decide whether or not they have at last had a treat as advertised by them at their recent dance at the Recreation Center."

The contest, obviously another "battle," did not occur until June 22. Three local musicians acted as judges, but after hearing each band perform several numbers, they could not agree on the winner. The audience was invited to make a decision. Although the Ten Pals "ren-

324 Wilkinson

dered a number that met with a roaring applause," the Floyd band's

subsequent performance "was greeted with such hearty and deafen-

ing applause that the music was completely drowned out. The dem- onstration that followed the completion of this number lasted fully ten minutes, until Troy Floyd was ushered to the platform and de- clared winner."29

In an interview in 1969 with Richard Allen, Albert stated that al-

though the ostensible purpose of such contests was to determine which of the competing groups was superior, the virtue of these "battles" was that they were "one way of enticing the public in." It was

typical for bands to be paid a percentage of the establishment's re-

ceipts. The larger the crowd, the more money would be made. Albert's band battled other groups on later occasions as well. Al-

bert asserted that on one occasion his band battled Count Basie's, an event also recalled by one of his sidemen, trumpeter Alvin Alcorn. Contests with other bands were also noted in various newspaper re-

ports. In one instance, during the course of a tour in 1938, Albert's band reportedly engaged in a series of battles with the Hartley Toots Orchestra from Miami, each in a different city.30

On June 23, 1932, the day after its "defeat" by Floyd's band, the Ten Pals departed for a two-month trip that began with engagements in Lake Charles and New Orleans and proceeded to various sites in

Mississippi. By August 19 the band had returned to San Antonio and to Shadowland, where it played for a little more than fourteen months.31

Sometime during this period Albert began to refer to his group as "America's Greatest Swing Band." He would always assert that he was the first to identify the music he played as "swing." If one be- lieves that the terms swing and the swing era became part of the Amer- ican vernacular only after Benny Goodman's triumph at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles in August 1936, then Albert is correct. He claimed that at first he was asked whether his was "America's Great- est String Band," which suggested that the term was new to at least some of his audience in 1932.32 The new label has added significance in that it seems to reflect the band's growing ambitions to create a national audience for itself through tours that took it farther and farther from the south-central part of the country. By February 1934 the band was being billed as "Don Albert and His Music: America's Greatest Swing Band."33

As evidence of the desire to expand its reputation, early in Septem- ber 1933 the band departed on a three-week tour that took it first to Little Rock, where it performed in at least two venues, and then north to towns in Illinois and Missouri, its first foray into the Midwest. Al- though it has not been possible to document precisely where the band


went in that region, almost certainly it stopped (and perhaps played) in Kirksville, Missouri, for a week or more when its bus broke down, and it may have played in Carbondale, Illinois, as well.34

After wintering at Shadowland, the band left town in May 1934 on a tour of Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi. An account in the Chicago Defender of September 22, 1934, indicates that this trip included an engagement at a nightclub in Harlan, an eastern Kentucky coal-mining town. A five-week tour beginning at the end of January and ending early in March 1935 took the band to New Orleans, as well as to towns in Mississippi and Alabama.35

The slogan "America's Greatest Swing Band" was emblematic of Albert's dreams of making it to the top, and the band's sixth tour represented the bandleader's most ambitious effort to reach that goal. What happened during the course of that odyssey illustrates the ob- stacles to national fame facing bands aspiring to reputations comparable to those of, say, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Andy Kirk, or Jim- my Lunceford. This tour began late in March 1935, the year in which

Benny Goodman's rise to fame would introduce the swing era for most Americans. Before the tour ended in March 1936, the Albert band had traveled through fourteen states (see fig. 3). In several instances

engagements lasted several weeks. Given that the band played in certain cities more than once, it no doubt found appreciative audiences in more than one place.

The band left Texas, heading east along the Gulf Coast to Florida, and then turned north. After playing engagements in Valdosta, Ma- con, and Savannah, Georgia, in early May it made its way out of the South. No documentation provides precise information on its route until it turns up at the Cafe Vendome in Buffalo, New York.36 One stop may have been at a dance hall just outside Rocky Mount, North Caro- lina, where the band played for a dance that was part of a local festival known as the "June-Germans." In the afternoon before that en-

gagement began, the band's drummer, Albert "Fats" Martin, discovered that the venue served as the local headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan. Not surprisingly, although contrary to its usual policy, the band played every song requested that night (whether the musicians knew it or not). They then packed up and were on the road within half an hour of finishing the engagement, instead of taking the usual

ninety minutes to stow their equipment and themselves aboard the band's bus.37

Having reached the north-central United States, the band criss- crossed the region, playing engagements in Buffalo, Detroit, and Pitts-

burgh, as well as in the greater New York area. It was a hit at De- troit's Greystone Ballroom sometime in late June or early July, after which it returned to Buffalo and, from mid-July through Labor Day,

326 Wilkinson

Figure 3. Tour no. 6 of the Don Albert band , March 22, 1935, to ca. March 5, 1936.

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3

5


1. San Antonio, Tex.: band departed Mar. 22 for Florida. 2. Pensacola, Fla.: band performed a single engagement ca. Apr. 1-4. 3. St. Petersburg, Fla.: band performed for a radio broadcast on the Mil-

lion Dollar Steel Pier on Apr. 18. 4. Miami, Fla.: band visited sometime during late Apr. or early May. 5. West Palm Beach, Fla.: band visited sometime during late Apr. or early

May. 6. Tampa, Fla.: band visited sometime during late Apr. or early May. 7. Orlando, Fla.: band visited sometime during late Apr. or early May. 8. St. Augustine, Fla.: band visited sometime during late Apr. or early May. 9. Valdosta, Ga.: band performed sometime during the week of Apr. 28-

May 4. 10. Macon, Ga.: band played three engagements in one day (a broadcast,

a concert, and a dance) during the week of Apr. 28-May 4. 11. Savannah, Ga.: band stopped here and may have performed ca. May 9. 12. Rocky Mount, N.C.: band may have played during this tour for the

"June-Germans" festival at the headquarters of the local Ku Klux Klan. 13. Buffalo, N.Y.: band played a six- to eight-week engagement at the Ven-

dome Ballroom, starting perhaps as early as July 7-13 and concluding after Labor Day, Sept. 2. Following this engagement, the band was to have begun a tour of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia during the balance of Sept.

14. Detroit, Mich.: band may have played at the Greystone Ballroom dur-

ing Sept. or early Oct. It returned there in late Oct. 15. Charleston, W. Va.: band played in the Charleston Armory for the

"Homecoming Dance Classic" on Nov. 2, following a football game between West Virginia State College and Bluefield State College.


16. Pittsburgh, Pa.: band debuted at the Pythian Temple on Nov. 3. It returned there on Jan. 1, 1936, to make up for an engagement missed on Nov. 28, Thanksgiving night.

17. Beckley, W. Va.: band performed at the Rose Garden Inn on Nov. 15. 18. Newark, N.J.: band rehearsed with the Ralph Cooper troupe from Nov.

16 until at least Nov. 26; it may have played other engagements in the greater New York area during this period.

19. Glens Falls, N.Y.: band and Cooper's Revue performed at a local theater from Nov. 27 through early Dec. The band missed contracted engagements in Akron, Ohio, and Pittsburgh, Pa., as a result.

20. New Orleans, La.: band played at the Golden Dragon on "Lundi Gras," Feb. 2, 1936. It returned to San Antonio shortly before Mar. 5.

played an extended engagement at the Cafe Vendome, where it might have been heard by booking agents from New York City. It returned to the Greystone Ballroom in October, brought back by popular de-

mand.38 Later it made a successful debut in Pittsburgh. Both the extended and the return engagements testify to the band's

popularity in several northern cities, as do assessments of the band's

performances published in various newspapers. The Pittsburgh Cou- rier seems to have been one of its strongest supporters during this

period. Having tracked the progress of Albert's band during the course of this tour, the paper printed a glowing review of the band's

Pittsburgh debut in its edition of November 9, 1935, which suggests ,that the band had established itself as one of the major bands of the

period. William G. Nunn, the Courier's entertainment editor and prob- able author of the review, proclaimed:

Folks, I'm telling you... this band is the answer to a jaded public's prayer! Fifteen men... clean, healthy, virile, peppy.., .who can play, DO play and put their whole hearts and souls into their

work.., .are a sight to behold. Upstanding examples of the race at its youngest, finest, and most optimistic, they play music which reaches the soul. Theirs is the music of Dixie in modern tempo. Theirs is the soft wail and chant of slave days brought up to a '35 standard. They swing sweet.., .with haunting refrains and muted cadences that tear you apart. They swing hot... and how with a seven-piece brass section and a background of an excep- tional reed section like you've never heard before. Swing music... you said it. And when they "go to town," you'll get dancing feet, so help me.... Their arrangements are all original, and they know what they are doing.39

Although Buffalo, Detroit, and Pittsburgh were hospitable, Albert did not overlook smaller communities where single engagements were available. On November 2, 1935, the night before the band opened in Pittsburgh, the band played for a dance held in conjunc-

328 Wilkinson

tion with a football game between West Virginia State College and Bluefield State Teachers College in Charleston, West Virginia, the state's two black institutions of higher education. Two weeks later, on November 15, 1935, after its success in Pittsburgh, and undoubtedly as a result of positive response in Charleston, "Don Albert's Music" played for a dance held at the Rose Garden Inn in Beckley, West Virginia, sponsored by Bluefield State Teachers College, follow-

ing its football victory over Shaw University from North Carolina, another black college. The dance lasted from 10:00 P.M. to 3:00 A.M., after which the band departed for a nonstop drive to New York City, which, given the state of the highway system during that period (particularly in the Appalachians), must have been quite an ordeal for bus and passengers alike.40

The principal goal of this tour-indeed, the major ambition of the entire band, according to Albert-was to break into the musical world of New York City, where large audiences might be found, record contracts negotiated, and national management obtained. Up to this point Albert had relied on a succession of managers from various parts of the South and Midwest ("territory managers," in other words), as well as his own ingenuity, to arrange engagements during his various tours. Prior to beginning this tour (as early as March 1935), a man named Al Travers, who was with a company named Associated Or- chestras Corporation of America, had become the band's personal manager.41

By October 17, 1935, Travers had arranged for Albert to sign one contract to appear at the Club Continental in Newark, New Jersey, and another to make four recordings early in November for an un- named company, possibly Brunswick.42 The 700-mile "jump" from

Beckley to New York on November 15 was required to get the band to Newark to begin rehearsals for a revue staged by the showman-

impresario Ralph Cooper that was tentatively scheduled to open on

Friday, November 29, 1935, at Newark's Paramount Theater; after

opening, the show was supposed to go on tour.43 The band rehearsed with Cooper in Newark throughout the sec-

ond half of November, in anticipation of the Paramount engagement. In addition Travers, following up on the band's success in Pittsburgh early that November, signed a contract for the band to return to Pitts- burgh and play on Thanksgiving night. That the enormous success of an earlier engagement prompted a return is indicated by the Pitts- burgh Courier in its announcement of November 16, 1935: "Don Al- bert 'master of 'em all' when it comes to swing bands is coming back to Pittsburgh! Dixie's dashing idol-tall, slim handsome, and regu- lar-has been booked for a return engagement at Pythian Temple in the biggest holiday attraction of the year because hundreds of peo-


ple who thrilled to his music upon his first appearance here have been shouting his praises from the house-tops.""44

Taking advantage of the proximity of the two towns, Travers also signed a contract with a local agent named Booker T. Brooks for the band to perform in Akron, Ohio, on Wednesday, November 27, the night before the Pittsburgh performance. The band did not show up to play either engagement. Instead it continued to rehearse with Ralph Cooper's company of dancers and other entertainers, although no longer in anticipation of opening in Newark on November 29 because of a last-minute change of plans. Now Cooper's revue was to open on November 22 in a theater in Glens Falls in upstate New York.

Albert's failure to appear either in Akron or in Pittsburgh infuriated William G. Nunn, of the Pittsburgh Courier, who wrote an article entitled "Don Albert!-You Made a Grievous Mistake, We Think, in Dis- appointing Dance Crowds," which spelled out the magnitude of what was clearly a catastrophe for Albert's professional reputation and the band's prospects. After chastising the bandleader for "a contemptuous trick," Nunn went on to say that a prompt and candid explanation was called for because "You knew weeks ago that you were booked to play for Booker T. Brooks in Akron, Ohio, on Wednesday midnight, Novem- ber 27th, and for Promoter Bob Ellis at Pythian Temple in this city the next night. Perhaps you didn't know it ... but Mr. Brooks had sold over 600 ADVANCE SALE tickets in Akron... and a crowd of more than 1,100 people turned out in Pittsburgh."

Nunn went on to reveal that he was also aware that Albert (or Travers, on Albert's behalf) had requested and received an advance of $75.00 from Bob Ellis. Drawing on information provided by a New York correspondent for the Courier, Nunn further reported that Coo- per's company and Albert's band had gone to upstate New York. As far as Nunn was concerned, Albert had a duty to explain his conduct to his fans and to compensate both Ellis and Brooks for their losses. On behalf of "the dance people in both towns you disappointed," Nunn closed with the following admonition: "And in the future, friend of mine, don't cause your public and your friends to lose faith in you by cheap, shoddy, underhand, chiseling tricks. You're too fine a fellow, now, to let the influence of unscrupulous promoters ruin you. And if you keep up what you're doing, you're riding for a fall!"45

Serious damage had been done to the band's reputation. The De- cember 14 issue of the Pittsburgh Courier carried a story based on a letter of explanation and apology sent to Nunn by Travers, who accepted complete responsibility for what happened. Travers asserted- that the problem was caused largely by the fact that Cooper's revue unexpectedly moved its opening date up a week, to November 22, and changed the location of the performances to upstate New York.

330 Wilkinson

When that occurred, Travers claimed, "I had every intention of noti-

fying Brooks and Ellis of the contemplated substitution of bands." In addition Travers maintained that after the show was moved to Glens Falls, he became the victim of unidentified associates of Cooper's who convinced him not to leave the revue stranded in northern New York while the band jumped back to Akron and Pittsburgh to play the

Thanksgiving-week engagements. Nowhere did Travers identify the band or bands he proposed to

send to Akron or Pittsburgh in lieu of Albert's, nor does it appear to have occurred to him that neither Brooks nor Ellis might have been interested in any such substitutions. In closing Travers wrote of Al- bert's disappointed fans: "They have a right to be angry. But please ask them not to blame Don. He's too fine a fellow. I take the blame, and now that the damage has been done I'm working to do all I can to rectify my mistake."46

From subsequent documents and Albert's own recollections, it is obvious that this marked the end of Travers's affiliation with Don Albert. It is also apparent that this debacle marked a turning point in his band's history. Only once more would it venture into New York

City, and after a "make-good" engagement at the Pythian Temple on

January 1, 1936, it apparently returned to Pittsburgh only once as well, and that would not be until Memorial Day 1939. Almost a year elapsed before Albert was able to resolve matters with Booker T. Brooks, during which time the bandleader was reportedly suspended from the American Federation of Musicians, of which he was a

loyal member, and was thus prevented from playing in the North.47 From its engagement in Pittsburgh on January 1, 1936, until March

5, when it returned from its longest tour to play for hometown fans at the Avalon Grill in San Antonio, the movements of the Don Albert Orchestra are lost to view.48 There was, however, one further conse-

quence of its abortive New York sojourn. The Pittsburgh Courier of

February 8, 1936, carried a notice addressed to Albert and asking him to get in touch immediately with Joe Glaser in New York or William Nunn at the newspaper.49 Glaser, perhaps best known as Louis Arm-

strong's manager, beginning in 1935 managed a number of bands for the Rockwell-O'Keefe agency. This notice suggests that Glaser wished to offer his services to Albert. Although nothing is known of Al Travers's prior experience as manager of a band, given the available evidence it seems clear that he was far less expert (and possibly less

principled) than was Glaser, who had been managing various nightclubs as well as the careers of jazz and blues musicians both in Chi- cago and New York since the 1920s. Undoubtedly Glaser could have provided Albert with the benefit of his contacts with the larger and potentially more lucrative white venues that were otherwise closed


to African Americans by the racial segregation of that time. Whether Glaser's management would have been beneficial is uncertain.50 In any case, the price of Glaser's services was more than Albert was prepared to pay.

In his later years Albert stated that one of the worst mistakes he made as bandleader was to decline Glaser's offer because his terms seemed unacceptable."' Glaser wanted Albert to reduce the size of the ensemble from fourteen players to ten or eleven. At first glance a list of the personnel published in the Pittsburgh Courier on November 9, 1935, might seem to suggest the logic of such a proposal:

Don Albert trumpet Alvin Alcorn trumpet Billy Douglas trumpet Hiram Harding trumpet Frank Jacquet trombone Henry Turner tuba and valve trombone Louis Cottrell Jr. tenor saxophone Herbert Hall baritone and alto saxophones, clarinet James Taylor alto saxophone Lloyd Glenn piano and arranger Ferdinand Dejan guitar Jimmie Johnson string bass Albert Martin drums Merle Turner vocals

The presence of four trumpets in a fourteen-piece band might have seemed excessive to Glaser, but like other bandleaders of the period, Albert by this time spent most of his time "fronting" the band rather than playing in it. To have both a tuba and a string bass might also appear redundant, but Henry Turner's tuba was playing second trombone parts-indeed, as his entry in that roster demonstrates, he was doubling on valve trombone. If Albert's recollections were correct, essentially Glaser proposed to reduce the band to its original size. Al- bert resisted, later citing loyalty as his motivation: "I had an idea that these guys started with me and I... I just wanted them to reap the benefits of what we were really going to get into ... this big time. So I disagreed with puttin' 'em on the side. I wanted them in the band whether or not."52 What Albert did not assert, but what Harold Holmes, a later sideman of his, would recollect in 1961 was that by the mid- 1930s, "You'd be criticized-a band with 10 pieces, it can't be good. You had to have 12, 14, 15 men-five brass and four reeds, otherwise the people wouldn't come out. The people were used to good music."53

Another problem for Albert was that Glaser apparently planned to demand a guaranteed fee for the band's services. Albert had always

332 Wilkinson

accepted a percentage of the receipts of each engagement, which

might be as much as 70 percent. Like most black bands of the period that were not affiliated with one of the major booking agencies, Al- bert's was a "commonwealth" band, in which each performer received an equal share of the money from the night's proceeds as his wage, however large those proceeds might be. Albert kept two shares to cover both his labor and the band's expenses.54

Glaser's approach was typical of of the booking agencies' practices. Albert, a survivor of the rough-and-tumble music business of the darkest days of the depression, when 70 percent of a night's receipts in many towns in the deep South might allow each musician little more than a day's meal money, was apparently convinced that Gla- ser's approach could invite financial ruin if no engagements were found at venues willing to pay his price. As subsequent events would

prove, when Albert declined Glaser's offer, he closed the only door to national management his band would ever receive.

What will never be known, of course, is whether Albert's band could have prospered financially with Glaser in charge of its book-

ings. If Harold Holmes's memories were correct, it would have been doomed. Having just come through the ordeal caused by Al Travers, Albert was undoubtedly skeptical. He may have also realized that Glaser's management would have increased still further the band's overhead expenses, so that the larger sums to be charged the nightclubs and dance halls where the band played might not have neces-

sarily translated into significantly larger pay envelopes for the musicians. As Andy Kirk, whose band, "The Clouds of Joy," Glaser did

manage, recalled in his later years: "People may wonder if we were

exploited by agents. We all were. In contracts... Glaser got his cut, the territory bookers got their cut. We had what was left. But we were

happy to be playing, so we didn't think too much about the money."55 Albert apparently thought a great deal about the money and de-

cided he could do better on his own, particularly after the events of November 1935. Although discussions between Albert and Glaser

may have lasted from late February until April 1936, Albert ultimately declined Glaser's offer.56

As much as one can see the legitimacy of Albert's concerns, no available evidence suggests that he ever considered an immediate benefit of affiliating with Glaser: a rapid resolution of his troubles with the American Federation of Musicians. Given his experience and influence, Glaser undoubtedly could have expeditiously arranged for the band to perform in Akron for Booker Brooks, freeing Albert from both the stigma of the union's censure and the constraints that the censure had imposed on the band's movements.

Following a month's rest after the long eastern tour, early in April


1936 the band traveled to Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, playing in New Orleans and Little Rock, among other cities.57 Such a tour was possible because the American Federation of Musicians was a negligible force in the South and thus could not interfere with Albert's performances in that region. Evidence that he was still working under a cloud may be found in articles published in the Pittsburgh Cou- rier, which informed readers of the band's southern travels and reminded them, apparently at Albert's insistence, that Al Travers was no longer representing the band.58

By the middle of May 1936, when the band was playing in Little Rock, it was reported that Albert was being approached by "a prominent Pittsburgh booker, who has guaranteed a two-week tour of the district," which was to include towns and cities in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and West Virginia.59 No evidence suggests that this tour took place, however; quite possibly the union forbade it.60 By July the Albert band was back in San Antonio, where it would stay until the beginning of February 1937. It had several jobs, including an extended engagement as the house band not at Shadowland but rather at a nightclub for whites in the center of the city known as the Olmos Dinner Club. Albert's was reportedly the first black band to play there.61

It was during the course of this extended residence in San Anto- nio, on November 18, 1936, that the Don Albert Orchestra made what turned out to be its only records: eight sides for Brunswick's Vocalion label, quite possibly fulfilling the contract Travers had negotiated during the band's residence in the New York City area. Recording in a room at the Bluebonnet Hotel, the band was paid twenty dollars per number. The pieces included the band members' arrangements of three well-known standards: "The Sheik of Araby," "Liza," and "On the Sunny Side of the Street." In addition there were charts of two lesser-known compositions: "Tomorrow" and "True Blue Lou." Final- ly, there were three pieces written by band members: the band's theme song, "You Don't Love Me," as well as "Deep Blue Melody" and "Rockin' and Swingin'."62

Although few in number, these recordings reveal that Albert's band had a variety of arrangements and approaches to performance-qualities that undoubtedly made it popular with the discerning audiences and critics it had encountered on its major eastern tour. If saxophonist Herbert Hall's memories are correct, however, the sides inevitably distort the character of the original charts and, by exten- sion, the overall impact of the band's collective style. In an interview conducted by Lawrence Brown around 1984, he recalled: "The recordings we made in San Antonio in 1936 were all done in the morning. We had been playing these arrangements a long time, and we just

334 Wilkinson

went in and recorded them. Some of our arrangements might take seven, eight, or even ten minutes, so we had to cut some of them down so the time would be about three minutes."63 None of the available testimony concerning the selected pieces indicates that their se- lection was dictated by the Vocalion representatives who recorded the band; thus one may reasonably conclude that Albert and his sidemen chose what they regarded as the best (and possibly most popular) music for their recording debut.

Of the three standards in the collection, only "Liza" is performed in an instrumental arrangement. Each of the treatments of the other two

popular songs, "The Sheik of Araby" and "On the Sunny Side of the Street," displays a novel character no doubt appealing to live audiences. In the case of "The Sheik of Araby," the arrangement uses a call-

and-response treatment of the lyrics, one apparently associated with certain vaudeville comedy acts. The singer, Merle Turner, performs each line of the original text, after which members of the band respond with the line "with no pants on." Although this results in a seemingly inno- cent exchange for the first two lines, what might be termed a mildly salacious effect is achieved by the end of the second couplet:

Turner (vocal solo) Band (vocal response) I'm the Sheik of Araby, [with no pants on] Your love belongs to me, [with no pants on] At night when you're asleep, [with no pants on] Into your tent, I will creep. [with no pants on] [etc.]

According to Albert, on one occasion when they were broadcasting from a radio station in Pensacola, Florida, they were cut off the air

by the station's engineer in the midst of performing this chart.64 An- other notable part of this performance follows the vocal and a short transition by the brass: Herbert Hall's sixteen-measure solo on baritone saxophone. In 1959 it would be praised by Franklin Driggs, who asserted that apart from Harry Carney, of Duke Ellington's orchestra, there were few proficient players of this seemingly unwieldy in- strument. "Hall's work must be regarded as outstanding, and there is little doubt that he would have cut Carney to ribbons in a duel." Nine years later Albert McCarthy would echo Driggs's appraisal.65

The arrangement of "On the Sunny Side of the Street," by trumpet player Billy Douglas, features Douglas singing in an obvious imita- tion of Louis Armstrong's vocal style. Douglas is fairly effective in

imitating Armstrong's improvisation of a new melody for the song and throws in the occasional interjection ("Oh, Baby") and scat syl- lables as well. Toward the end of the arrangement his trumpet solo pays further homage to the master in its attacks, phrasing, and place-


ment of notes, ending with a short ascending unaccompanied solo that climaxes on the final chord.

Several commentators, among them Gunther Schuller, have ob- served that some of Albert's performances seem particularly indebt- ed to the sound of other, more famous bands, particularly Ellington's but also Jimmy Lunceford's.66 The Ellington sound is most prominent in two arrangements: "Rockin' and Swingin'" and "Deep Blue Melo-

dy." The first of these, by trombonist William "Geechee" Robinson, was surely one of the band's crowd pleasers, an up-tempo dance tune that would have appealed to the lindy hoppers for whom the band

played in Texas and elsewhere. The arrangements of "The Sheik of

Araby" and "On the Sunny Side of the Street" consist of sections of either eight- or sixteen-measure duration; each passage features either the reeds or the brass, alternating with solos of comparable length backed by the rhythm section. This arrangement becomes more com-

plex as the piece moves toward its climax, with a series of shorter solos and sectional material performed in a rapid-fire exchange. "Rockin' and Swingin"' was probably the most technically demand-

ing of the arrangements, particularly in the sections where the saxo-

phones play in a fast-moving chordal texture. The story behind the Ellington-like sound of "Deep Blue Melody"

is noteworthy for what it reveals about the band's intention to draw on Ellington's style for certain works of its own. This arrangement was by pianist Lloyd Glenn, who had joined the band in 1934 as successor to its first pianist, Al Freeman Jr., and who was the band's principal arranger between 1934 and 1938. Glenn later stated that he had written the chart "with the Ellington band in mind.... I intended to send Deep Blue Melody to Duke Ellington, but Don Albert's band

played it over, and Don liked it so much he persuaded me to keep it and record it with the band at the Vocalion session in 1936."67

Glenn's composition is replete with allusions to Ellington's style and his sidemen's sounds. The entire arrangement is dominated by the smooth, mellow sound of the reeds and muted brass. Hiram Har-

ding offers a "growl" trumpet solo a la Bubber Miley, following Harold "Dink" Taylor's alto saxophone solo emulating Johnny Hodg- es. Alvin Alcorn's muted solo, played in the manner of Arthur Whet- sol, introduces and closes the piece. Glenn's piano style honors the Duke's, punctuating a phrase with a rapidly ascending scale here, a pair of chords there, but in general staying in the background. The mood of "Deep Blue Melody" is quiet and introspective. Comparing "The Sheik of Araby" and this composition, one hears Albert's band explore a wide range of emotions.

In contrast to Glenn's original composition, the arrangement of the standard "Liza" seems more conventional. It pays its respects to the

336 Wilkinson

sound of the Lunceford band in its distribution of material between the reeds and brass.68 The first, second, and fourth phrases of the first statement of this thirty-two bar song are each divided in half: the sax-

ophones present the ascending first four measures, and the brasses answer with the descending second half of each phrase. The third

phrase (the bridge) is played by Billy Douglas, who arranged the

song. Douglas reversed the presentation for the second statement: brasses play first and are answered by the reeds. In this instance he

improvises on the bridge material. Saxophonists Dink Taylor and Herbert Hall present the melody the third time, with Hall playing the

bridge. Later, brief solo passages are divided among the players, in-

cluding one by tenor saxophonist Louis Cottrell Jr. A moderate-tem-

po foxtrot, "Liza" is perhaps the "sweetest" arrangement of all the

recordings. Of the remaining three sides, "You Don't Love Me," "Tomorrow,"

and "True Blue Lou," the first merits particular attention for several reasons. "You Don't Love Me," also known by the alternative title "True," was the band's theme song and thus was routinely played at the beginning and end of engagements. Its origins are somewhat uncertain. Herbert Hall recalled that it was written expressly for the band by Lawrence "Snub" Moseley, at one time a trombonist in Al-

phonso Trent's orchestra and a friend of Albert's. On another occasion Don Albert took credit for the song, and other sources suggest that it was a collaboration between Albert and one or more of his sidemen.69 Arranged by Lloyd Glenn, it is dominated by vocalist Mer- le Turner, the muted trumpet playing by Alvin Alcorn, and section work by the reeds, after which Turner returns to sing the bridge and last phrase.

Apart from the lyrics of "On the Sunny Side of the Street," the text of "Tomorrow," with its promise of better days to come, is most reflec- tive of the times in which the band was at work. After Merle Turn- er's presentation, the chart is dominated by solo work by trumpeter Billy Douglas, saxophonists Dink Taylor and (briefly) Louis Cottrell

Jr., and trombonist Geechee Robinson. Like that of "Rockin' and Swin-

gin'," the tempo of this piece is appropriate to the lindy hop rather than the foxtrot.

Taken as a whole, the recordings introduce the listener to a vari-

ety of arrangements and to the qualities of the featured soloists.

They also reveal that the band had a number of fairly gifted players and was well disciplined. They may be best understood as a showcase of the Don Albert band, but for reasons to be explained later, they should not be mistaken for the band's entire repertory or approach to performance.


When these recordings were released, in all probability between

January and March or April 1937, they were paired as follows:70

True Blue Lou/Rockin' and Swingin' Vocalion 3401 Sheik of Araby/You Don't Love Me Vocalion 3411

Deep Blue Melody/ On the Sunny Side of the Street Vocalion 3423

Liza/Tomorrow Vocalion 3491

In his later years Albert did not appear to perceive these record-

ings as contributing significantly to the band's reputation, although they are the only historical evidence of its sound and style. Appar- ently in his experience recordings were not the way to build an audience. Of the electronic media then available, radio was his prefer- ence, even if a particular broadcast brought no revenue. Its effectiveness could be quickly measured in terms of the numbers who

subsequently appeared to hear the band live, and Albert's control of the choice of music played was virtually complete. By contrast, re-

cordings were released according to a timetable set by the recording company's executives; the number of copies and the extent of their distribution were likewise beyond the musicians' control.

Albert did feel that the recordings themselves were representative of the band's sound since they were based on arrangements by his sidemen. Given his accounts of the racially and geographically varied audiences for whom the band played, however, it seems clear that so few recordings could hardly be described as representative of the band's entire repertory or of its distinctive style, which contemporary critics and fans clearly enjoyed.7'

The first evidence of the recordings' release appeared in a caption for a photograph of Albert published in the Louisiana Weekly, in advance of a series of engagements the band played in New Orleans

during the Mardi Gras festivities of February 1937. In the final section of a review of a number of recordings published in Down Beat for May 1937, Paul Eduard Miller wrote almost in passing, "Don Al- bert's two recordings should make you sit up and take notice." Al-

though hardly a penetrating evaluation, this sentence does indicate that these recordings were neither totally ignored nor scorned. In Sep- tember 1937 Leonard Feather devoted his column in Melody Maker to a review of the recordings of "this surprisingly brilliant combination" and gave particular attention to the band's performance of "The Sheik of Araby."72

Although Albert's perception of the recordings' impact may have been limited, and the number of contemporary reviews few, there is one piece of anecdotal evidence to suggest that the band's reputation

338 Wilkinson

was enhanced by the discs' distribution. Pianist Billy Taylor, in the

year prior to his departure for college in the fall of 1938, was called on by various singers working in his hometown of Washington, D.C., to accompany their performances of the band's theme song, "You Don't Love Me." Unacquainted with the recording, at first Taylor im-

provised an accompaniment, but later two of his mentors, Harold Francis and Norma Shephard, provided him with a more polished version of the song's harmonies. Inasmuch as the recordings had been released early in 1937, Taylor's recollection suggest that they rather

quickly attracted the attention of musicians and audiences in the Af- rican American community of the nation's capitol. It seems reason- able to suppose that the recordings caught on elsewhere as well.73

Nevertheless things had changed for the band as a result of Albert's

experience with Al Travers and his decision not to accept Glaser's offer of management. The band's period of near-exile in San Antonio seemed to have resulted in its being marginalized, if not forgotten, by those in the Northeast, especially in New York. In addition it be-

gan to experience a more rapid turnover in personnel than had previously been the case. Those who left may have sensed better opportunities in other organizations or tired of being on the road for extensive periods. Albert recalled that many of the new players caused

problems because they seemed less committed to the band's fortunes. Some would quit without giving appropriate notice, and others bor- rowed money without bothering to repay it. Several apparently had

drug and alcohol problems as well.74 From February 1937 until April 1940 the band toured five times, the

tours lasting, in order, three months, twelve months, sixteen months, two weeks, and three months. In all the band was away from home for all but one of those thirty-six months. The second of these tours is of interest because it appears to have included a period of residence in Philadelphia of possibly six months' duration. If so, this would rep- resent the second time that Albert's band had penetrated the North- east, and undoubtedly both the band and its leader hoped that this occasion might be the opportunity at last to break into the big time.

What little evidence there is of this tour suggests that Albert had no better luck this time than he had when he first came east in 1935- 36, although his ambitions were not frustrated by the misdeeds of

managers. By now the music industry's organization of big band music was so extensive that lack of representation by one of the ma-

jor booking agencies meant that there was little hope of the band penetrating the market in the Northeast. The Pittsburgh Courier and the

Chicago Defender carried identical stories in mid-June 1937, reporting that Albert's band was "doing dance dates in New Jersey, Pennsyl- vania, and New York."75 There is no additional coverage of the band


for another four months. Harold Holmes, bass player in the band (beginning perhaps during the course of this tour) praised the band but also implied that it never found a niche in the Northeast: "I liked the Albert band and could have been loyal to it, but as I couldn't see any future in it, there was no point in staying. The band wasn't getting any place, even though we played good jobs-colleges, night clubs, and the best dance halls. We stayed in and around Philadelphia for about six months, but when they started back south I quit."76

Lacking a professional manager, Albert took charge of finding engagements for the band. Occasionally he would leave the band for several weeks at a time in search of jobs, leaving Louis Cottrell Jr. in charge, aided by Frank Jacquet and "Fats" Martin. Even that did not ensure success. Late in 1937, after the ill-fated residence in Philadel- phia, the band nearly collapsed, probably as a consequence of either an insufficient number of engagements or inadequate receipts from the dates it did play. Albert stated in 1969 that the band did in fact fold and that only a loan of several thousand dollars from a friend in New Orleans named Edwin "Beansie" Fouria allowed him to start it up again. Word of this near disaster must have reached San Antonio, for in January 1938 Celeste Allen's column in the San Antonio Regis- ter included this statement: "Dame Rumor has it that Don Albert and his world's greatest swing band are on the verge of a crackup. Here's hoping she's wrong for once." As if to confirm the seriousness of the situation, the same column mentioned that Lloyd Glenn, pianist and one of the most talented arrangers in the band, had quit and returned to San Antonio. Indeed, Glenn was not the only one to quit the band around this time. Herbert Hall, the saxophonist, one of the founding members of the group and an occasional arranger, left the band in Cincinnati to take a job for several months in Jimmy Watkins's band in Pittsburgh before joining Shudina Walker's band, which was based in Cleveland. Unlike Glenn's departure, Hall's was not permanent; by the end of 1938 Hall had rejoined Albert's band.77

Edwin Fouria, who had come to Albert's aid in 1938, would later have even closer connections with the band. Fuoria was the owner of a club on South Rampart Street in New Orleans called the Tick Tock Tavern. On the side he formed the Crescent City Attraction Compa- ny and apparently became Albert's manager through this company. Albert would later recall that he kept the band going principally to pay off the loan from his new backer. In an article published in the January 29, 1938, issue of the Pittsburgh Courier, Albert addressed (contrary to his later memories) the rumor to which Celeste Allen had drawn attention in his column, denying that the band had ever folded and asserting: "All of the bunch are still with us, and we are still going over big. We have had about $10,000 capital invested in our

340 Wilkinson

band, and we are ready to continue our march through the United States." Not surprisingly the band's first engagement after this announcement was at the Tick Tock Tavern, beginning on January 30, as part of Mardi Gras.78

The most extended tour of the band's final years began on May 29, 1938, in Tulsa. This was the band's tenth tour. Accompanied now by a troupe of dancers and other entertainers, the group covered well- traveled routes in the Southeast, as well as new locations, and it also reached into new regions of the Midwest (see fig. 4). The length of

engagements varied from one-nighters in numerous towns to a three-

Figure 4. Tour no. 10 of the Don Albert band, May 28, 1938, to ca. Septem- ber 25, 1939.

30

19

3132

22

3 21

219

I 19


1. San Antonio, Tex.: band departed ca. May 28 for Tulsa, Okla. 2. Tulsa, Okla.: band performed at the Crystal Palace on May 29 and again

on June 5. It also performed at the Blue Moon Night Club on June 3. After these engagements, the band played in unknown sites in Oklahoma until ca. June 10.

3. Oklahoma City, Okla.: band played at the Shrine Ballroom on May 30. 4. Brenham, Tex.: band performed on June 17-18. 5. Fort Worth, Tex.: band performed on June 19. 6. Galveston, Tex.: band played on "Splash Day," June 20. 7. New Orleans, La.: band played at the Tick Tock Tavern on July 17. 8. Lafayette, La.: band performed ca. July 20. 9. Miami, Fla.: band performed at Liberty Park on July 24 for the crown-

ing of "Miss Miami, 1938."


10. Tampa, Fla.: after Miami the band reportedly played engagements here (dates unknown).

11. Orlando, Fla.: after Miami the band reportedly played engagements here (dates unknown).

12. Ocala, Fla.: after Miami the band reportedly played engagements here (dates unknown).

13. West Palm Beach, Fla.: band performed on Aug. 4. 14. Lakeland, Fla.: band performed on Aug. 5. 15. Savannah, Ga.: after Lakeland the band reportedly played an engage-

ment here (dates unknown). 16. Opelika, Ala.: after Lakeland the band reportedly played an engage-

ment here (dates unknown). 17. Thomasville, Ga.: band performed at Douglass High School. A brawl

occurred; band members were arrested and fined on Aug. 9. 18. Macon, Ga.: band may have performed here on Aug. 10. 19. Nashville, Tenn.: band battled the Hartley Toots's Orchestra at the Sil-

ver Streak Ballroom on Aug. 14 and again on Aug. 21. 20. Memphis, Tenn.: Albert and Toots battled on Aug. 15. 21. Columbus, Miss.: Albert and Toots battled on Aug. 16. 22. Atlanta, Ga.: Albert and Toots battled on Aug. 17. 23. Knoxville, Tenn.: Albert and Toots battled on Aug. 18. 24. Indianapolis, Ind.: band engaged for two weeks at the Sunset Terrace

from Aug. 28 to Sept. 11, after which it reportedly played a series of one-night engagements that took it through Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and possibly as far west as Sioux Falls, S. Dak. It returned to Indianapolis to play one week at the Red Gables Inn from Oct. 24-30.

25. St. Louis, Mo.: band performed at the Castle Ballroom ca. Sept. 23. 26. Galesburg, Ill.: band performed once (sometime in late Sept. or early

Oct.). 27. Chicago, Ill.: band performed once (probably ca. Oct. 8-14), possibly

at the Savoy Ballroom. It returned there on Nov. 6, and again on Nov. 27, in a battle with the Kentucky State Collegians.

28. Akron, Ohio: band performed at the East Market Gardens on Dec. 25. 29. Detroit, Mich.: band played an extended engagement at the Club Plan-

tation from Jan. 22 until the club closed on Apr. 16, 1939. 30. Louisville, Ky.: band performed for the Colonels Ball on May 5 and re-

turned to play at the Iroquois Club from June 1-3. 31. Dayton, Ohio: band played an extended engagement at the Merry-Go-

Round from ca. May 8 to ca. May 18. 32. Pittsburgh, Pa.: band battled the Sunset Royal Orchestra at the Savoy

Ballroom on May 29. 33. Youngstown, Ohio: band performed on May 30, after which its where-

abouts are unknown until early Aug. 34. Springfield, Ill.: band played a two-week engagement at the Villa Va-

lencia from Aug. 3 to Aug. 19. The band reportedly passed through Chicago ca. Aug. 28-31, after which its whereabouts are unknown until it returned to San Antonio (no later than Sept. 25, 1939).

month contract at the Club Plantation in Detroit from January 22 to

April 16, 1939.79 Jobs in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee included the aforementioned series of battles between Albert's band and the Florida-based band led by Hartley Toots.80

342 Wilkinson

Two large gaps appear in the newspaper record of this tour: one from June 3 to August 3, 1939, between the band's departure from Louis- ville, Kentucky, and its arrival in Springfield, Illinois; and the second between August 19 and September 26, after the band's departure from

Springfield and before its eventual return to San Antonio. Available

reports indicate that the band continued to tour the Midwest during both periods, possibly traveling as far as eastern South Dakota.81

Despite the setbacks that Albert had experienced, this tour demonstrated that even without a white manager to open doors to estab- lishments otherwise closed to black bands, Albert's band not only maintained a following throughout extensive portions of the eastern United States but also found new audiences. The cost of maintaining this reputation was largely paid for in the physical toll of spending day after day riding the bus and night after night setting up, performing, packing up, and getting on the road for the next engagement. Accommodations and meals were not always easily obtained, regardless of where the band worked. As the musicians were continually reminded, Jim Crow attitudes commonly associated with the South were to be found north of the Mason-Dixon Line as well.

By far the worst incident occurred in Thomasville, Georgia, on Au-

gust 9, 1938, during the third month of this tour. A dance at a black

high school was broken up when a patron picked a fight with Tom

Johnson, the tenor saxophonist and successor to Louis Cottrell Jr., who

by then had departed for his home in New Orleans. In the melde that followed, a number of the band members, including Albert, were arrested and taken to police headquarters. The police blamed the band for the brawl and confiscated the night's proceeds. At one point Al- bert's life appeared to be in danger when he did not address one of the officers as "Sir." The price he paid for allegedly being "a smart

nigger from New York" included having a service revolver pointed at his head as the officer pulled the trigger six times; only then was it clear the gun was not loaded.82

Because he was very light-skinned, Albert usually took the initia- tive in securing accommodations and meals for his band, which usu-

ally minimized discriminatory treatment. Not so in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; after Albert had reserved seven rooms in a hotel for his band, the proprietor, on seeing the rest of the musicians enter the establishment, announced that the rooms had already been reserved for another party. The band spent that night on the bus.83

After two more trips to various Texas towns and to New Orleans, in September 1940 the Don Albert orchestra broke up.84 Founded at the start of the depression when its leader was only twenty-one years old, it had lasted not quite eleven years. By a combination of hard work and (mostly) good fortune it had weathered the economic un-


certainties of the 1930s, which had been the downfall of many other bands of the time. One key element of the band's early success was

surely the loyalty of several founding members, who shared Albert's dream of making it to the big time, as well as Albert's devotion to

making music and entertaining audiences. Evidence of this loyalty may be seen in the personnel list for the band's final year. Although the band had experienced a fair amount of turnover during its ten-

year-plus history, the available evidence shows that of the original Ten Pals, five, in addition to Albert, were still members when the band folded: Ferdinand Dejan, Herbert Hall, Hiram Harding, Frank Jacquet, and Albert Martin.85

Although Albert never spoke of the end of his band in terms of larger economic forces, he was aware that many bands broke up in 1940. He did identify two reasons for the demise of organizations other than his in an interview with Richard B. Allen in 1973, stating, "because the Depression was almost coming back, they weren't in demand."86 Albert's sense that economically bad times were returning may have described circumstances in the Southwest territory to which his final tour took him, but the fact that his was by no means the only band to fold was due to other than regional factors. David Stowe has stated that by 1940 the popularity of swing among whites had led to the formation of numerous white bands that, regardless of their talents, captured the marketplace. "At a time when the swing industry was

glutted with more bands than it could profitably sustain, blacks were the first to be pushed out."87

Despite the seemingly anticlimactic end to the Don Albert Orches- tra, its reputation lived on, as is demonstrated by somewhat unusual evidence of its continuing popularity. In the fall of 1940 both the Chi-

cago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier ran contests to determine the most

popular band of the year. Late in September the Defender invited readers to vote for any of thirty-eight bands on its list, one of which was Don Albert's orchestra, even though it no longer existed.

Others on the list included the best-known bands of the period- Basie's, Calloway's, Ellington's, and Lunceford's among them, as well as bands of lesser reputation. During October, November, and early December the votes came in. After the first week Albert had received 3,600 votes and was ranked thirtieth, while Basie led the contest with 9,010 votes. One month later, on November 2, Ellington led with 23,910 votes, while Albert, now ranked thirty-third, had 11,800 votes. At the end of the month Ellington led with 61,900 votes, while Al- bert's total had risen to 43,450, although dropping his ranking to for-

ty-four. The contest ended the following week, with the Defender an- nouncing that his 101,740 votes had won Ellington the contest. How many votes Albert ultimately received is unknown, inasmuch as only

344 Wilkinson

bands with more than 50,000 votes were listed in the final tally. We do know that he received at least the 43,450 votes listed the week before and perhaps more.88

The significance of the results of this contest lies not only in the re-

spectable number of votes cast in support of Albert's band but also in the fact that those votes began to come in more than two months after the band had broken up and continued to do so for more than two months thereafter. If the Defender knew that the band no longer existed, it never let on. By contrast, on October 17, 1940, the Pittsburgh Courier published a story about the rumor that the band had folded. Not surprisingly, when it initiated its own popularity contest several weeks later, Albert received only a handful of votes and was dropped from the contest after a month.89

Obviously such contests are highly subjective. In the absence of more reliable means, however, they provide one of the few measures of the contemporary reputations of jazz bands during the swing era. In this instance the results support evidence from other sources, particularly the testimony found in newspaper coverage of the popularity of the Don Albert orchestra in a region far removed from what

might otherwise be presumed to be its own territory. The evidence documenting the number and extent of the band's tours

and the depth of its appeal, indicated both by the number of repeat engagements and the number of extended engagements in cities and towns far removed from the band's home in Texas, makes untenable the view that Don Albert's band was merely a territory band living an isolated existence, the view, based solely on the eight recordings of 1936, that it was, in Gunther Schuller's words, merely a "coarse, hard-swinging outfit, typical of mid-1930s provincial Texas jazz."90 It is impossi- ble that a band with such presumed limitations could have established and maintained the extensive following that has been documented.

The band's extensive tours and sustained reputation within Afri- can America during the 1930s lends credence to the idea that for the several years between its sixth tour (1935-36) and its tenth tour (1938- 39), it was recognized in the black community as a national band, even

though it was based in San Antonio, Texas, and not in New York City or Kansas City, where practically all other name bands resided when not on the road.91 Having rejected the services of Joe Glaser, in effect a white "gatekeeper" to the performing and recording opportunities that could have contributed significantly to an enduring reputation, Albert was unwittingly able to demonstrate what self-reliance and

seemingly boundless energy and commitment-the only alternative

strategy open to black musicians of his day-could produce by way of a following among those who wished to listen and dance to jazz of the swing era. Don Albert and His Ten Pals began life at what might


be regarded as a perimeter of the jazz world, but as "America's Great- est Swing Band," they traveled over a large part of that world and for a time made a significant impact on a major part of its audience.

NOTES

I gratefully acknowledge support of this research by an NEH summer stipend, an NEH travel to collections grant, a fellowship from the West Virginia Humanities Council, three West Virginia University development grants, and a West Virginia University fac-

ulty senate research grant, with additional support from the Office of Academic Af- fairs, West Virginia University. For its unfailing interest and assistance, I would also like to thank the staff of the William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane Universi-

ty, Bruce Boyd Raeburn, curator. I wish also to acknowledge with gratitude the valu- able suggestions made by Bruce Raeburn and Thomas J. Hennessey. Finally, I wish to thank Brett Scott for his careful attention to the preparation of the three maps.

1. The standard literature on this subject includes Franklin S. Driggs, "Kansas City and the Southwest," in Jazz: New Perspectives on the History of Jazz by Twelve of the World's Foremost Jazz Critics and Scholars, ed. Nat Hentoff and Albert J. McCarthy, 191-230 (New York: Rinehart, 1959); Ross Russell, "Territorial Bands," and "More Territorial Bands," in Jazz Style in Kansas City and the Southwest, 53-65 and 66-73 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971); Gunther Schuller, "The Big Bands," in Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development, 242-317 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), esp. 279-317; and idem, "The Territory Bands," in The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945, 770-805 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). To this list may be added Nathan W. Pearson Jr., Goin' to Kansas City, Music in American Life (Urbana: University of Illi- nois Press, 1987); and Thomas J. Hennessey, From Jazz to Swing: African-American Jazz Musicians and Their Music, 1890-1935 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994).

2. Russell, Jazz Style in Kansas City, 54. 3. Thomas J. Hennessey discusses the six territories into which the African Ameri-

can community was divided during the 1920s in "Territory Bands, 1914-1923," and he summarizes the causes of this transformation of American culture in "Territory Scuffles, 1923-1929" (From Jazz to Swing, 44-66, 103-21).

4. The growth of the music industry and its increasing control over the fortunes of musicians and bands during the 1930s is discussed by David W. Stowe in "The Incor-

poration of Swing," Swing Changes: Big-Band Jazz in New Deal America, 94-140 (Cam- bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994); see also Thomas J. Hennessey, "The Rise of the National Bands, 1929-1935," From Jazz to Swing, 122-39.

5. Hennessey, From Jazz to Swing, 11. 6. Don Albert, interview with Paul Crawford, June 6, 1961 (Hogan Jazz Archive,

Tulane University). Bands included Bill Phillip's Brass Band, in which Albert played while still a student of Milford Piron. Piron terminated Albert's lessons, saying that if his student could get work as a trumpet player, he did not need any additional lessons. Albert also played for Armand Piron on the Susquehanna, a steamship on Lake Pontchartrain.

7. Don Albert, interview with Howard Litwak and Nathan W. Pearson Jr., Apr. 17, 1977 (Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-Kansas City). According to banjo player John Henry Braggs, Don Albert was hired by the owner of the Tip Top on the recommendation of the leader of a New Orleans band passing through Dallas en route to an engagement in El Paso. Braggs identified the man sim-

ply as "Pajeaud," perhaps the trumpet player and bandleader Willie Pajeaud (1895-

346 Wilkinson

1960); see John Henry Braggs, interview with Sterlin Holmesley, Aug. 5, 1980 (Insti- tute of Texan Culture, San Antonio).

8. Albert, interview with Litwak and Pearson, Apr. 17, 1977; and with Sterlin Holm-

esley, Jan. 15, 1980 (Institute of Texan Culture). The following secondary sources also address Albert's association with Troy Floyd, but with varying degrees of complete- ness and accuracy: Dick Allen, "Don Albert and His Ten Pals," Storyville 31 (Oct.-Nov. 1970): 18-25; Orin Blackstone, "Don Albert Rose to Swing Leadership after Start with

Troy Floyd," Playback 2, no. 2 (Feb. 1949): 3-4; Lawrence Brown, "San Antonio Jazz: Don Albert," IAJRC Journal 22, no. 4 (Fall 1989): 1-6; Albert McCarthy, Big Band Jazz (New York, Putnam's, 1974), 103.

9. Don Albert, interview with Richard B. Allen, Aug. 4, 1978 (Hogan Jazz Archive); and with Holmesley, Jan. 15, 1980.

10. Albert, interview with Allen, Aug. 4, 1978; with Litwak and Pearson, Apr. 17, 1977; and with Holmesley, Jan. 15, 1980. See also Frank Driggs, "Don Albert," Jazz Monthly 5, no. 5 (July 1959): 4-6.

11. Albert, interview with Holmesley, Jan. 15, 1980; see also Don Albert and Her- bert Hall, interview with Richard B. Allen, Aug. 3, 1978 (Hogan Jazz Archive). It has been difficult to establish the identity of the bandleader who provided Albert with his first book. During the period of the state fair a band identified simply as "The Harris Orchestra" was playing at the Adolphus, but I have been unable to establish the name of its leader (Dallas Morning News, Oct. 10, 1929, p. 14).

12. Albert, interview with Litwak and Pearson, Apr. 17, 1977. 13. Walter Barnes, "Hittin' the High Notes," Chicago Defender, Mar. 2, 1931, p. 130. 14. Franklin S. Driggs, "A Biography of Herbert Hall," Jazz Journal 11, no. 1 (Jan.

1958), 10. 15. Throughout the history of the band, three black newspapers covered its activi-

ties fairly consistently: the Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, and San Antonio Regis- ter. Most extensive coverage was provided by the Courier. To publicize his band in smaller communities, Albert would send placards and business cards to the local promoter to display in the community. Where possible he would broadcast a short performance on the local radio station to announce a forthcoming engagement. Both strategies were

reportedly reliable and inexpensive means of attracting an audience (Albert, interview with Litwak and Pearson, Apr. 17, 1977; see also Herbert Hall, interview with Sterlin

Holmesley, Feb. 23, 1980 (Institute of Texan Culture). 16. Concerning the possible significance of the Fisk University "concert," see Scott

DeVeaux, "The Emergence of the Jazz Concert, 1935-1945," American Music 7, no. 1

(Spring 1989): 6-29. 17. "Don Albert's Pals End 2 Years Stand," Chicago Defender, May 16, 1931, p. 5. In

truth the band's "stand" at Shadowland was closer to fourteen months, from as early as Jan. 1930 to May 1931. The fact that the Defender reported the start of the band's first tour suggests the possibility that it was read by Albert or other band members, one of whom may have sent word to the newspaper of the band's travels to Arkansas.

18. Don Albert, interview with Richard B. Allen, Dec. 30, 1969 (Hogan Jazz Archive). 19. The other arrangers included, at different times, baritone saxophonist Herbert

Hall, trumpeter Billy Douglas, trombonist William "Geechee" Robinson, and pianists Lloyd Glenn and Jay Golson (Albert, interviews with Allen, Dec. 30, 1969, and Aug. 3, 1978-the latter with Herbert Hall; see also Albert's interview with Litwak and Pear- son, Apr. 17, 1977).

20. In addition to the personnel list printed in the Chicago Defender of May 16, 1931, p. 5, three additional lists appeared during the course of this tour: one each in the De-

fender's issues of July 25, p. 5, and Sept. 26, 1931, p. 5, and another in the Pittsburgh Courier of July 25, 1931, sec. 2, p. 8. At the end of the tour the San Antonio Register published a roster on Dec. 4, 1931, p. 1.


21. Jimmie Johnson was the bass player in the only known photograph of the Bolden Band, taken ca. 1905. See Donald M. Marquis, In Search of Buddy Bolden: First Man of Jazz (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978). Albert made the claim that his was the first band in Texas to use string bass in its rhythm section in 1978 (Albert and Hall, interview with Allen, Aug. 3, 1978).

22. Advertisements appeared in the Arkansas Democrat (Little Rock) at least once a week from May 11 to July 12, 1931. In addition several references to the band's broadcasts were printed in the "KLRA Radio Program" schedule found also on the newpa- per's entertainment pages. According to Thomas J. Hennessey, it became typical dur-

ing the 1930s for movie houses to engage touring bands for short periods of time. The advent of sound films had led in many instances to the demise of the pit orchestras that previously had accompanied silent films and vaudeville acts (From Jazz to Swing, 128).

23. Advertisement in the Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City), July 24, 1931, p. 10. 24. "Don Albert and Pals in West," Pittsburgh Courier, July 25, 1931, sec. 2, p. 8. 25. Advertisements in the Arkansas Democrat for Aug. 21, 1931, p. 17, and Aug. 22,

1931, p. 2. Bryant's letter is mentioned at the conclusion of a report on the band contest headlined "Duke, Fletcher and Cab Take Lead in Courier Contest," Pittsburgh Cou- rier, Aug. 22, 1931, sec. 2, p. 12.

26. "Don Albert Fetes Louis Armstrong," Oklahoma City Black Dispatch, Sept. 24, 1931, p. 5. Armstrong's band had played an engagement in Oklahoma City on Sept. 11; Albert later entertained him and two of his associates at the home of a mutual acquaintance.

27. "Don Albert and His Ten Pals Return," San Antonio Register, Dec. 12, 1931, p. 1. 28. The advertisement for the Christmas dance and an article concerning the dance

appeared in the San Antonio Register, Dec. 18, 1931, on pp. 6 and 7, respectively. 29. The article on the Easter dance appeared in the San Antonio Register, Apr. 1, 1932,

p. 8. The contest between Albert's and Floyd's bands was reported under the headline

"Troy Floyd Victorious in Tilt with Don Albert," San Antonio Register, June 24, 1932, p. 6.

30. Albert, interview with Allen, Dec. 30, 1969; see also Alvin Alcorn, interview with Richard B. Allen, Alma Williams, and Christopher Wilkinson, Mar. 5, 1990 (Hogan Jazz Archive). The running battle with the Hartley Toots Orchestra was first announced in the article "Don Albert Declares War on Hartley Toots," Pittsburgh Courier, July 23, 1938, p. 20. Further reference to this appeared in the article "Don Albert Draws 'Em in Mi- ami," Pittsburgh Courier, Aug. 6, 1938, p. 21.

31. The band's departure and return were noted in the San Antonio Register of June 24, 1932, p. 6, and Aug. 19, 1932, p. 19 respectively.

32. The first notice of this new title appeared in the San Antonio Register, Mar. 17, 1933, p. 3, during the course of a review of a recent dance date by Jones Hall Jr., which began, "for the past week music lovers have been given their share of the best music one should desire by Don Albert and His Ten Pals styled as America's greatest swing band." Jack Ellis's Chicago Defender column "The Orchestras" for June 24, 1933, p. 5, noted that "Don Albert and orchestra, commonly referred to as 'America's greatest swing band,' are appearing at the Shadowland Nightclub."

33. A major article, with a photo of Albert (bearing the caption "Don Albert's Ace Band to Tour East Coast" and the date "San Antonio, Tex.[,] Jan. 31"), begins, "Don Albert and His Music, America's greatest swing band, the pride of New Orleans and San Antonio, is the ace band of the Southwest, according to critics and music lovers who really know," Pittsburgh Courier, Feb. 2, 1935, sec. 2, p. 9.

34. The scope of this tour was announced in the San Antonio Register, Sept. 1, 1933, p. 6. An advertisement in the Arkansas Democrat, Sept. 4, 1933, p. 7, announced a performance at the Rialto Movie Theater between screenings of the film "Bed of Roses," starring Constance Bennett. Three days later another advertisement announced that

348 Wilkinson

"Don Albert and His Orchestra, America's Greatest Swing Band," would be performing at the Rainbow Garden (Arkansas Democrat, Sept. 7, p. 6). The incident in Kirks- ville was described by Louise Smith, formerly of that city, in a telephone interview with me, Mar. 22, 1992, and by Albert in his interview with Litwak and Pearson, Apr. 17, 1977.

35. Portions of the first of these two tours are documented by articles in the Arkan- sas Democrat, Apr. 29, 1934; the Chicago Defender, June 24 and Sept. 22, 1934; the Pitts-

burgh Courier, May 5, 1934; and the San Antonio Register, May 18, 1934. In his column "The Orchestras" Jack Ellis reported, "Don Albert and his boys are doing theirs at Har- lan's night club, Harlan, Kentucky" (Chicago Defender, Sept. 22, 1934, sec. 1, p. 8). The tour to New Orleans, Mississippi, and Alabama is documented in articles and advertisements published in the Louisiana Weekly of Feb. 16, 1935, p. 2, and Feb. 23, 1935, p. 2, and in the Pittsburgh Courier, Feb. 23, 1935, sec. 2, p. 9, and Mar. 2, 1935, sec. 2, p. 9.

36. The band's movements during this period were noted in various issues of the

Chicago Defender, Louisiana Weekly (New Orleans), Pittsburgh Courier, and San Antonio

Register published between Feb. 2 and May 11, 1935. According to a story dated "Sa- vannah, Ga.[,] May 9," published as "Don Albert, Swinging North on Record Break-

ing Dance Tour, Hailed by Dixie Radio Announcer as Sweetest Orchestra" in the Pitts-

burgh Courier on May 11, 1935, sec. 2, p. 8, the band performed three times in Macon: "a radio concert, a concert and a dance were the pieces de resistance."

37. Albert, interview with Holmesley, Jan. 15, 1980. 38. See issues of the Pittsburgh Courier for July 20, 1935, sec. 2, p. 7; Aug. 24, 1935,

sec. 2, p. 6; Oct. 19, 1935, sec. 2, p. 6; and Oct. 26, 1935, sec. 2, p. 6. An article entitled "Don Albert 'Sends 'Em' in Buffalo," in the San Antonio Register, July 26, 1935, p. 2, reported that "efforts are being made to have New York booking agents review the band while they are playing this spot."

39. "Don Albert's Band Ranks with the Nation's Best," Pittsburgh Courier, Nov. 9, 1935, sec. 2, p. 6. "The race" was the period's conventional term for African Americans.

40. The dance in Charleston, W. Va., was advertised in the West Virginia Weekly on two occasions: Oct. 25, 1935, p. 4, and Nov. 1, 1935, p. 3. The dance in Beckley, W. Va., was announced in the Beckley Post-Herald in an advertisement on Nov. 12, 1935, p. 8, and in an article on Nov. 15, 1935, p. 10. The trip from Beckley to New York City was discussed in Albert's interview with Holmesley, Jan. 15, 1980.

41. Travers's name first appears in connection with Albert's band in an article in the Chicago Defender, Mar. 26, 1935, p. 10.

42. "Don Albert's Band Scheduled for 'Big Time,'" Pittsburgh Courier, Oct. 19, 1935, sec. 2, p. 6.

43. Information provided in the article "Don Albert, Harriet Calloway at Temple," Pittsburgh Courier, Nov. 23, 1935, sec. 2, p. 6; see also the Pittsburgh Courier, Dec. 7, 1935, sec. 2, p. 7, and Dec. 14, 1935, sec. 2, p. 6. Ralph Cooper, who died on Aug. 4, 1992, in his middle to late eighties, had a multifaceted career in show business but is perhaps best known as the founder and master of ceremonies of the Amateur Night at the Apol- lo Theater in Harlem, which introduced numerous black entertainers to the public, Billie

Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Sarah Vaughan among them; see "Ralph Cooper, Who Found Stars at Apollo's Amateur Nights, Dies," New York Times, Aug. 6, 1992, sec. B, p. 11.

44. "Don Albert, Master of 'm All When It Comes to Swing Bands, Back at Temple on Thanksgiving," Pittsburgh Courier, Nov. 16, 1935, sec. 2, p. 6.

45. William G. Nunn, "Don Albert!-You Made a Grievous Mistake, We Think, in

Disappointing Dance Crowds," Pittsburgh Courier, Dec. 7, 1935, sec. 2, p. 7. 46. "'Don and I Were Tricked'-Travers Claims," Pittsburgh Courier, Dec. 14, 1935,

sec. 2, p. 6. 47. The resolution of this matter was reported in the article "Don Albert Gets O.K.


from Union," Pittsburgh Courier, Nov. 28, 1936, sec. 2, p. 7. Albert was one of the few

dues-paying members of New Orleans Local 496 of the American Federation of Musi-

cians, which during the 1930s had important financial benefits for the local at a time when many of its former members had quit. Louis Cottrell Jr., for many years the local's president and formerly tenor saxophonist with the Don Albert orchestra, recalled that "during the Depression... [it] looked like the Union had lost its prestige an' members had gotten out; it was jus'. . . mostly Don Albert's Band an' one or two others that kept the thing on balance an' that kept 'em going through that time" (Louis Cot- trell Jr., interview with William Russell, Aug. 25, 1961 [Hogan Jazz Archive]). Years later Albert suggested to Richard B. Allen that Travers disappeared after the debacle (Don Albert, interview with Richard B. Allen, May 27, 1972 [Hogan Jazz Archive]).

48. "One hears that Don Albert... long since one of Alamo City's favorite ork

leaders.., .received a very RIOTOUS welcome last evening when the populace turned out in large numbers to greet him on his first return engagement" (see the society column "Jo' Jottings," San Antonio Register, Mar. 6, 1936, p. 6). See also the column written

by H. Floyd Ward entitled "San Antonio," Pittsburgh Courier, Mar. 28, 1936, sec. 2, p. 3. 49. "Notice! Don Albert," Pittsburgh Courier, Feb. 8, 1936, sec. 2, p. 7. 50. The role of managers and booking agencies in shaping the careers of bands in

the 1930s has most recently been assessed by David W. Stowe in "The Incorporation of Swing," Swing Changes, 100-107, and, more briefly, by Thomas J. Hennessey in "The Rise of the National Bands, 1929-1935," From Jazz to Swing, 123-30. The most insight- ful contemporaneous description of the economics of the big bands in the second half of the 1930s was written by Irving Kolodin: "The Big Band Business," Harper's Maga- zine, June 1941, pp. 72-82. An at times lurid account of the character and career of Joe Glaser appears in Ernie Anderson's memoir "Joe Glaser and Louis Armstrong, Part 1:

Early Days," Storyville 160 (Dec. 1994): 123-35. 51. The most complete account of his memories of Glaser's proposal appears in Al-

bert's interview with Holmesley, Jan. 15, 1980. 52. Albert, interview with Holmesley, Jan. 15, 1980. 53. "Harold Holmes: His Story Told to John Norris," Coda 4, no.4 (Aug. 1961): 24. 54. The "commonwealth," or "cooperative," practices of the band were recalled in

interviews with three of its members: Albert, interview with Holmesley, Jan. 15, 1980; Hall, interview with Holmesley, Feb. 23, 1980; and Alcorn, interview with Allen, Wil-

liams, and Wilkinson, Mar. 5, 1990. For a brief discussion of the strengths and weak- nesses of the cooperative approach in the face of the rising power of "celebrity bandleaders" and growing influence of the music industry, see David W. Stowe, Swing Changes, 100-101.

55. Andy Kirk, Twenty Years on Wheels, as told to Amy Lee, Michigan American Music series (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989), 93-94.

56. According to the article "Don Albert Is Riot at Texas 'Spot,"' "It is alleged that the orchestra might be booked by Joe Glaser, who handles Louis Armstrong" (Pitts-

burgh Courier, Apr. 18, 1936, sec. 2, p. 6). 57. In New Orleans the band played during Mardi Gras in February and returned

to play at the Golden Dragon Supper Club on Easter Sunday of that year (Louisiana

Weekly, Apr. 11, 1936, p. 4). 58. Passing reference to the consequences of the Travers episode was made in the

article "Don Albert Is Riot At Texas 'Spot.'" More explicit reference is made in the headline to an article carried in the Pittsburgh Courier, May 2, 1936: "Don Albert, Packing 'Em in on Tour of Dixie, Warns Promoters to Book Dates Only through Him" (sec. 2, p. 8).

59. The proposed tour was discussed in an article headlined "Effort Being Made to Get Don Albert into Mid-West for Fifteen-Day Dance Tour," Pittsburgh Courier, May 16, 1936, sec. 2, p. 6.

350 Wilkinson

60. The announcement of Albert's reinstatement in the American Federation of Musicians makes clear that he was denied opportunities to perform in the North until he resolved matters to the union's satisfaction: "Dance fans north of the Mason and Dixon line may soon hear Don Albert's swing band again. Don, who was suspended from the Musicians' Union a few months ago has been reinstated, it was learned from the leader himself, after matters with an Ohio promoter were straightened out satis-

factorily" (Pittsburgh Courier, Nov. 28, 1936, sec. 2, p. 7). 61. Its engagement at the Olmos Dinner Club was reported in the article "Don Al-

bert and His Band Get Call to Play in Swankiest Night Club In 'Lone Star State'" (Pitts-

burgh Courier, Nov. 7, 1936, sec. 2, p. 7). 62. Albert's recordings of "Liza," "On the Sunny Side of the Street," and "The Sheik

of Araby" are cited in Richard Crawford and Jeffrey Magee's Jazz Standards on Record, 1900-1942: A Core Repertory (Chicago: Center for Black Music Research, 1992), 45, 58, 69.

63. Lawrence Brown, "Herb Hall: An Interview," Storyville 113 (June-July 1984): 187. 64. Albert, interview with Litwak and Pearson, Apr. 17, 1977. 65. Franklin Driggs, "Don Albert," Jazz Monthly 5, no. 5 (July 1959): 5. Driggs's opin-

ion was echoed by Albert J. McCarthy et al. in Jazz on Record: A Critical Guide to the First 50 Years: 1917-1967 (London: Hanover House, 1968), 384.

66. Schuller claimed that the band "went all out to emulate Ellington, even in a near-

plagiaristic [emphasis added] fashion," particularly in connection with its arrangements of "Deep Blue Melody" and "Rockin' and Swingin"' (The Swing Era, 799). Albert discussed his enthusiasm for Ellington's sound and his delight in his band's ability to emulate it in two separate interviews given during the final years of his life (see Albert, interview with Litwak and Pearson, Apr. 17, 1977; and with Holmesley, Jan. 15, 1980).

67. Eric Townley, "San Antonio Piano Man," Storyville 78 (Aug.-Sept. 1978): 222. 68. Albert, interview with Litwak and Pearson, Apr. 17, 1977. 69. Franklin Driggs, "A Biography of Herbert Hall," Jazz Journal 11, no. 1 (Jan. 1958):

10. 70. Roger D. Kinkle, The Complete Encyclopedia of Popular Music and Jazz, 1900-1950,

4 vols. (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1974), 4: 2258-59. 71. Don Albert, interview with Litwak and Pearson, Apr. 17, 1977. 72. Louisiana Weekly, Feb. 6, 1937, p. 4. In the article "Brunswick Talent Scout Signs

Don Albert to Year's Recording Contract," guitarist Ferdinand Dejan indicated that all

eight sides were to be released; this did not apparently happen all at once, however

(Pittsburgh Courier, Feb. 27, 1937, p. 18). Miller's "review" appeared in his article "New Records Feature Good Solos and Ensemble Playing," Down Beat, May 1937, p. 17. See also Leonard Feather, "Feather Forecast and News: Mystery of Pantless Sheik," Melo-

dy Maker 13, no. 224 (Sept. 4, 1937): 2. 73. Billy Taylor, telephone interviews with Christopher Wilkinson, May 27 and Sept.

5, 1995. 74. Albert, interview with Allen, Dec. 30, 1969; see also Albert, interview with Holm-

esley, Jan. 15, 1980. 75. "Don Albert is Back in the East," Pittsburgh Courier, June 19, 1937, p. 21; see also

"Don Albert Is Swinging along Eastern Coast," Chicago Defender, June 19, 1937, p. 20. 76. John Norris, "Harold Holmes: His Story," Coda 4, no. 4 (Aug. 1961): 24-25. 77. Albert, interview with Allen, Dec. 30, 1969; see also Celeste Allen, "Sharps and

Flats," San Antonio Register, Jan. 14, 1938, p. 7, as well as Herbert and Annie Lou Hall, interview with Christopher Wilkinson, Mar. 11, 1991.

78. "Dapper Don Albert, Specialist on Swing, Has New Booking Tieup," Pittsburgh Courier, Jan. 29, 1938, p. 21. Trumpet player and sideman Alvin Alcorn later claimed that the band never broke up until Albert finally dissolved it in 1940 (Alvin Alcorn,

telephone interview with Christopher Wilkinson, Sept. 30, 1990).


79. "Don Albert Swings Out at the Club Plantation," Pittsburgh Courier, Jan. 28. 1939,

p. 20. See also "Don Albert's Contract Is Lengthened," Pittsburgh Courier, Feb. 18, 1939,

p. 20; "Four Reasons Why Detroit's Club Plantation Is Leapin'," Pittsburgh Courier, Mar.

18, 1939, p. 20; and the Michigan Chronicle, Jan. 21, 1939, p. 9, and Apr. 22, 1939, p. 9. 80. See "Don Albert Draws 'Em in Florida" and "Hartley Toots in Mid-West, Will

Tour Kentucky and Tennessee," Pittsburgh Courier, Aug. 6, 1938, p. 21. See also n. 30 for other references.

81. "Don Ameche Sang with Don Albert's Orchestra," Pittsburgh Courier, June 10, 1939, p. 20, describes engagements in Louisville prior to the Kentucky Derby and in

Pittsburgh on Memorial Day 1939. "Don Albert Seeking Some New Band Men," Pitts-

burgh Courier, Aug. 5, 1939, p. 20, mentions the fact that the band was in the early weeks of a projected three-month engagement at the Villa Valencia in Springfield, Illinois. Advertisements in the Illinois State Register, Aug. 5, 1939, p. 3, and Aug. 19, 1939, p. 2, reveal that the engagement was in fact only two weeks long. In his "Sharps and Flats" column, Celeste Allan mentioned receiving a postcard from Albert, who was then passing through Chicago (San Antonio Register, Sept. 1, 1939, p. 7). Albert discussed memories of traveling to South Dakota in several interviews, principally with Litwak and Pearson, Apr. 17, 1977; see also his interview with Holmesley, Jan. 15, 1980.

82. The incident in Thomasville was extensively covered in the Pittsburgh Courier in the article "Don Albert Band Members Beaten in Georgia," Aug. 20, 1938, p. 21. Not

surprisingly the coverage in the Thomasville Times-Enterprise of Aug. 10, 1938, was limited to a single sentence: "More than a dozen other negroes were also arrested last night and hauled to the barracks in the 'black maria' when police broke up a free-for-all fight reported to have occurred at a dance at a colored school house here." See Albert, interview with Allen, Dec. 30, 1969; Albert, interview with Litwak and Pearson, Apr. 17, 1977; Kenneth Dominique, interview with Christopher Wilkinson, Mar. 10, 1991; and Alcorn, interview with Allen, Williams, and Wilkinson, Mar. 5, 1990.

83. Don Albert, interview with Richard B. Allen, Dec. 30, 1969 (Hogan Jazz Archive); and with Litwak and Pearson, Apr. 17, 1977.

84. Celeste Allan referred to Albert's "ex-gang" in his column "Sharps and Flats," San Antonio Register, Aug. 2, 1940, p. 7.

85. Photograph with the caption "Don Albert Swings Out at Detroit's Club Planta- tion," Pittsburgh Courier, Jan. 29, 1939, p. 20.

86. Albert, interview with Allen, May 27, 1973. 87. Stowe, Swing Changes, 122. 88. The following articles published in the Chicago Defender provide an overview

of the contest: "The Year's Number 1 Band Contest," Oct. 5, 1940, p. 20; "Duke Elling- ton Regains Lead in Number 1 Band Poll," Nov. 2, 1940, p. 20; "Number 1 Band Con- test Closes on December 2," Nov. 30, 1940, p. 20; and "Duke Ellington Is Number One Band of the Year," Dec. 7, 1940, p. 20.

89. The band's demise was announced in a brief article headlined "Don Albert's Band Broken Up, Rumor," which began by stating: "According to unconfirmed information, Don Albert and his famous swing orchestra have reached the parting of the

ways," Pittsburgh Courier, Oct. 19, 1940, p. 20. This paper's band contest was announced in the article "Courier's National Contest Starts Moving," Pittsburgh Courier, Nov. 9, 1940, p. 21. Albert's name disappeared (along with those of other bands receving fewer than 130 votes) from the list of contestants published in the paper's "All American Band

Standing," Pittsburgh Courier, Dec. 14, 1940, p. 21. 90. Schuller, The Swing Era, 798. 91. This conclusion represents an elaboration of Hennessey's assessment (From Jazz

to Swing, 152).

A National Band From the Southwest- The Don Albert Orchestra

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