James Reese Europe - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

James Reese Europe was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

Ragtime

Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...

and early jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

bandleader

Bandleader

A bandleader is the leader of a band of musicians. The term is most commonly, though not exclusively, used with a group that plays popular music as a small combo or a big band, such as one which plays jazz, blues, rhythm and blues or rock and roll music....

, arranger

Arranger

In investment banking, an arranger is a provider of funds in the syndication of a debt. They are entitled to syndicate the loan or bond issue, and may be referred to as the "lead underwriter". This is because this entity bears the risk of being able to sell the underlying securities/debt or the...

, and composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

. He was the leading figure on the African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

music scene of New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

in the 1910s.

Biography

James "Jim" Reese Europe was born in Mobile, Alabama

Mobile, Alabama

Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...

. His family moved to Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

when he was 10 years old. He moved to New York in 1904.

Band leader

In 1910 Reese organized the Clef Club

Clef Club

The Clef Club was a popular entertainment venue and society for African American musicians in Harlem, achieving its largest success in the 1910s. Incorporated by James Reese Europe in 1910, it was a combination musicians' hangout, fraternity club, labor exchange, and concert hall, across the street...

, a society for African Americans in the music industry. In 1912, the club made history when it played a concert at Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

for the benefit of the Colored Music Settlement School

Colored Music Settlement School

The Colored Musical Settlement School was a New York City school established and operated to provide music education for African-American children, who were generally excluded from other music schools....

. The Clef Club Orchestra, while not a jazz

Jazz

band, was the first band to play proto-jazz at Carnegie Hall. It is difficult to overstate the importance of that event in the history of jazz in the United States — it was 12 years before the Paul Whiteman

Paul Whiteman

Paul Samuel Whiteman was an American bandleader and orchestral director.Leader of the most popular dance bands in the United States during the 1920s, Whiteman's recordings were immensely successful, and press notices often referred to him as the "King of Jazz"...

and George Gershwin

George Gershwin

George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...

concert at Aeolian Hall

Aeolian Hall (New York)

Aeolian Hall was a concert hall near Times Square in Midtown Manhattan, New York City located on the third floor of 29-33 West 42nd Street across the street from Bryant Park. The Aeolian Building was built in 1912 for the Aeolian Company, which manufactured pianos...

, and 26 years before Benny Goodman

Benny Goodman

Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...

's famed concert at Carnegie Hall. The Clef Club's performances played music written solely by black composers, including Harry T. Burleigh and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an English composer who achieved such success that he was once called the "African Mahler".-Early life and education:...

. Reese's orchestra also included Will Marion Cook

Will Marion Cook

William Mercer Cook , better known as Will Marion Cook, was an African American composer and violinist from the United States. Cook was a student of Antonín Dvořák and performed for King George V among others...

, who had not been in Carnegie Hall since his own performance as solo violinist in 1896. Cook was the first black composer to launch full musical productions, fully scored with a cast and story every bit as classical as any ictor Herbert) operetta. In the words of Gunther Schuller

Gunther Schuller

Gunther Schuller is an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, and jazz musician.- Biography and works :...

, Reese "...had stormed the bastion of the white establishment and made many members of New York's cultural elite aware of Negro music for the first time." The New York Times remarked, “These composers are beginning to form an art of their own,” yet by their third performance a review in Musical America said Europe’s Clef Club should “give its attention during the coming year to a movement or two of a Haydn Symphony.”

Europe was known for his outspoken personality and unwillingness to bend to musical conventions, particularly in his insistence on playing his own style of music. He responded to criticism by saying,” We have developed a kind of symphony music that, no matter what else you think, is different and distinctive, and that lends itself to the playing of the peculiar compositions of our race…My success had come…from a realization of the advantages of sticking to the music of my own people.” And later, “We colored people have our own music that is part of us. It’s the product of our souls; it’s been created by the sufferings and miseries of our race.”

His "Society Orchestra" became nationally famous in 1912, accompanying theater headliner dancers Vernon and Irene Castle

Vernon and Irene Castle

Vernon and Irene Castle were a husband-and-wife team of ballroom dancers of the early 20th century. They are credited with invigorating the popularity of modern dancing. Vernon Castle was born William Vernon Blyth in Norwich, Norfolk, England...

. The Castles introduced and popularized the foxtrot — "America learned to dance from the waist down." In 1913 and 1914 he made a series of phonograph records

Gramophone record

A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...

for the Victor Talking Machine Company

Victor Talking Machine Company

The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey....

. These recordings are some of the best examples of the pre-jazz hot ragtime style of the U.S. Northeast of the 1910s. These are some of the most accepted quotes that are in place to protect the idea that the Original Dixieland Jass Band

Original Dixieland Jass Band

The Original Dixieland Jass Band were a New Orleans, Dixieland jazz band that made the first jazz recordings in early 1917. Their "Livery Stable Blues" became the first jazz single ever issued. The group composed and made the first recordings of many jazz standards, the most famous being Tiger Rag...

recorded the first jass (spelling later changed) pieces in 1917 for Victor. Unlike Europe's post-War recordings, the Victor recordings were not called nor marketed as "jazz" at the time, and were far from the first recordings of ragtime by African-American musicians.

Neither the Clef Club Orchestra nor the Society Orchestra were small "Dixeland" style bands. They were large symphonic bands to satisfy the tastes of a public that was used to performances by the likes of the John Phillip Sousa band and similar organizations very popular at the time. The Clef Orchestra had 125 members and played on various occasions between 1912 and 1915 in Carnegie Hall. It is instructive to read a comment from a music review in the New York Times from March 12, 1914: "...the programme consisted largely of plantation melodies and Spirituals ...[arranged such as to show that]...these composers are beginning to develop an art of their own based on their folk material..."

Military service

During World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

Europe obtained a Commission in the New York Army National Guard

New York Army National Guard

The New York Army National Guard is a component of the New York National Guard and the Army National Guard. Nationwide, the Army National Guard comprises approximately one half of the US Army's available combat forces and approximately one third of its support organization...

, where he saw combat as a lieutenant

Lieutenant

A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...

with the 369th Infantry Regiment (the "Harlem Hellfighters

Harlem Hellfighters

The 369th Infantry Regiment, formerly the 15th New York National Guard Regiment, was an infantry regiment of the United States Army that saw action in World War I and World War II. The 369th Infantry is known for being the first African-American regiment to serve with the American Expeditionary...

"). He went on to direct the regimental band to great acclaim. In February and March 1918, James Reese Europe and his military band travelled over 2,000 miles in France, performing for British, French and American military audiences as well as French civilians. Europe's "Hellfighters" also made their first recordings in France for the Pathé

Pathé

Pathé or Pathé Frères is the name of various French businesses founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France.-History:...

brothers. The first concert included a French march, and the Stars and Stripes Forever as well as syncopated numbers such as "The Memphis Blues", which, according to a later description of the concert by a band member "...started ragtimitis in France".

Post-war career

After his return home in February 1919 he stated, “I have come from France more firmly convinced than ever that Negros should write Negro music. We have our own racial feeling and if we try to copy whites we will make bad copies…We won France by playing music which was ours and not a pale imitation of others, and if we are to develop in America we must develop along our own lines.” In 1919 Europe made more recordings for Pathé Records

Pathé Records

Pathé Records was a France-based international record label and producer of phonographs, active from the 1890s through the 1930s.- Early years :...

. These include both instrumentals and accompanyments with vocalist Noble Sissle

Noble Sissle

Noble Sissle was an American jazz composer, lyricist, bandleader, singer and playwright.-Early life:...

who, with Eubie Blake

Eubie Blake

James Hubert Blake was an American composer, lyricist, and pianist of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, Blake and long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote the Broadway musical Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals to be written and directed by African Americans...

, would later have great success with their 1921 production of Shuffle Along, which gives us the classic song "I'm Just Wild About Harry". Differing in style from Europe's recordings of a few years earlier, they incorporate blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

, blue note

Blue note

In jazz and blues, a blue note is a note sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is a semitone or less, but this varies among performers and genres. Country blues, in particular, features wide variations from the...

s, and early jazz influences (including a rather stiff cover record of the Original Dixieland Jass Band

Original Dixieland Jass Band

's "Clarinet Marmalade").

Death

On the night of May 9, 1919 Europe performed for the last time. He had been feeling extremely ill all day, but wanted to continue on with the concert (which was to be the first of three in Boston’s Mechanics Hall). During the intermission Europe went to have a talk with two of his drummers, Steve and Herbert Wright. After criticizing some of their behavior (walking off stage during others’ performances) Herbert became very agitated and threw his drumsticks down in a seemingly unwarranted outburst of anger. He claimed Europe didn’t treat him well and that he was tired of getting blamed for others’ mistakes. He lunged for Europe with a pen knife and was able to successfully stab Europe in the neck. Europe told his band to finish the set and he would see them the next morning. It would be the last time they saw him alive.

News of Europe’s death spread fast to a stunned public. W.C. Handy wrote, “The man who had just come through the baptism of war’s fire and steel without a mark had been stabbed by one of his own musicians…The sun was in the sky. The new day promised peace. But all the suns had gone down for Jim Europe, and Harlem didn’t seem the same.” Europe was granted the first ever public funeral for an African American in the city of New York. Tanney Johnson said of his death, “Before Jim Europe came to New York, the colored man knew nothing but Negro dances and porter’s work. All that has been changed. Jim Europe was the living open sesame to the colored porters of this city. He took them from their porter’s places and raised them to positions of importance as real musicians. I think the suffering public ought to know that in Jim Europe, the race has lost a leader, a benefactor, and a true friend.”

At the time of his death he was the best-known African American bandleader in the United States. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery

Arlington National Cemetery

Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, is a military cemetery in the United States of America, established during the American Civil War on the grounds of Arlington House, formerly the estate of the family of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's wife Mary Anna Lee, a great...

External links

James Reese Europe on Jass.com Article with images
Europe's Society Orchestra Article and audio of the 1913–1914 recordings on redhotjazz.com
Jim Europe's 369th Infantry "Hellfighters" Band Article and audio of the 1919 recordings on redhotjazz.com
Songs Brought Back from the Battlefield
University of Michigan Exhibition
From Ken Burns film, Jazz.
An on-line discography