Our Men In Paris
and the Harlem Renaissance in Paris....
To France
I have a dream of where (when I grow old,
Having no further joy to take in lip
Or limb, a graybeard caching from the cold
The frail indignity of age) some ship
Might bear my creaking, unhinged bones
Trailing remembrance as a tattered cloak,
And beach me glad, though on their sharpest stones
Among fair and kindly folk.
There might I only breathe my latest days,
With those rich accents falling on my ear
That most have made me feel that freedom’s rays
Still have a shrine where they can leap and sear, --
Though I were palsied there, or halt, or blind,
So I were there, I think I should not mind.
Countee Colin
Between 1928 and 1934, Countee Cullen traveled back and forth between France and the United States. He was at the epicenter of a new-found surge in literature known as the Harlem Renaissance and became an important figure in the exportation and development of the Harlem Renaissance in Paris. Here he is reading Heritage.
I believe the expatriation, particularly after the the Second World War, of American Jazz musicians to European cities like Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Paris, had less to do with the social political problems many experienced in the United States than it has been popular to report these days. In fact, I feel that popular belief actually minimizes their legitimate talents - why shouldn’t they want to enjoy one of the greatest European cities and that distinctive Parisian community?
Prior to World War II, many prominent Black figures of Paris: Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Ada “Bricktop” Smith, Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet, and many others established a confluence of Black culture in France that led to a renaissance of Black thought known as the Harlem Renaissance in Paris, as explained by Tyler Stovall in this short video you can find here. I also believe that the “good life” was perhaps not as good as the movies like Round Midnight proclaim and their reasons for returning home, although varied, in general centered around a common homesickness.
In a New York Times article shortly after the release of the movie Round Midnight Samuel Freedman wrote:
For the real jazz expatriates, life in Europe proved rather less idyllic than Round Midnight suggests. Some, like Don Byas, died abroad, embittered and obscure. Others, such as Mr. Gordon and the members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, eventually returned to the United States. Many musicians had discovered that for all that recommended Europe, life on the continent came at a price of dislocation; some learned that racism existed east as well as west of the Atlantic.
This quote makes me think of James Baldwin’s essay, Equal in Paris. In the essay, he describes the difficulty of assimilation and even though he came to Paris to start a new life, a life he thought would be more prosperous than what he had previously in the United States, he was let down by the fact that he will never become a native Frenchman. As long as he stays in Paris, he will never be treated as a native Frenchman, but as a person who is from America that is living in Paris.
I can understand this feeling. As an American serviceman in Germany during the 1980s, I worked in the British sector and lived in the small town of Eystrup near Verden in Niedersachsen. Even though I spoke their language and had a willingness to assimilate, I always felt dislocated from German culture. This feeling of dislocation made me long to return to a place called home, where I could simply watch on TV a football game or movie in English and feel a part of a community again that understood me - however flawed that community might be. Perhaps it was just a kind of homesickness. I think this feeling helps me understand first the desire to move across the Atlantic and assimilate in a new culture followed by a second desire, born from feelings of dislocation, to return home again.
Harlem Renaissance in Paris
Although Bud Powell and Dexter Gordon may be the most well known American Jazz expatriates in Europe, they were not the first. That tradition started at the turn of the century with artists like Henry Ossawa Tanner and then picked up momentum after the First World War.
In 1919, Sidney Bechet first went to Europe as part of Will Marion Cook’s New York Syncopated Orchestra, which he founded. Known also as the Southern Syncopated Orchestra, it sought to bring jazz and ragtime to a greater audience.
The Orchestra toured the United States in 1918 and then in 1919 went to England for a command performance for King George V.
In 1925, at the height of the jazz era in Paris, Sidney Bechet and a sensational cast of musicians and dancers from Harlem, assembled as La Revue Nègre, exploded on the stage of the Théâtre des Champs Élysées.
Its talented young star, Josephine Baker, captivated audiences with a wild new dance called the Charleston and became the high priestess of jazz culture in Paris. Inspired by the tremendous popularity of these performers, French poster artist Paul Colin created a portfolio entitled Le Tumulte Noir:
While in this production, Sidney Bechet became extremely well known in France. Two other very important American jazz artists from the 1920s to gain popularity in France were Duke Ellington and Louie Armstrong, even though they didn’t visit there. However, they did visit because of their phonographic records. By the end of the 1920s, they became very well known in Paris and and throughout Europe.
In fact, Armstrong’s Chicago Hot Five and Hot Seven groups ultimately provided the name for the French jazz society called the Hot Club de France that in 1934 featured The Quintette du Hot Club de France, staring the great guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli:
However, perhaps one of the most influential American jazz artists to make their way to Paris was perhaps also the least well known, Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith (known more commonly as “Bricktop” due to her red hair). “Bricktop” was an American singer, dancer, and jazz-club proprietor who became a cornerstone of the Black jazz community in Paris. Here’s a great song and interview from 1970 in which she shares some cool early insights:
The first American-style bar in Montmartre, Le Grand Duc, anchored a growing black-American community, serving as an informal headquarters for Black entertainers. They gathered after-hours until early morning for jam sessions, down home food, gossip and news from home. It was also where “Bricktop” Smith first performed in 1924.
By 1926, she had opened her own club, called the Music Box (though it was often referred to simply as Bricktop’s). Later, in 1929, Chez Bricktop moved down the road to 66 rue Pigalley:
Bricktop’s was known for its friendly, highly fashionable atmosphere. Bricktop kept up with trends in American music through her mother, who smuggled Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington records through customs when she came to visit, in order avoid to expensive French taxes. By the end of the 1920s, in the French mind, Bechet, Ellington, and Armstrong were the titans of Jazz.
In the 1935, as we covered earlier in our jazz journey, Coleman Hawkins went to England to join Jack Hylton's band, who was making a continental tour. After playing in Paris, the band went up to the Netherlands. However, when Hylton's band moved on to Germany, Hawkins stayed behind - black folk were not welcome in Hitler’s country. Dutch bandleader Theo Uden Masman offered him a guest job with The Ramblers. However, he did not stay long in Europe and returned to the states in 1939, just prior to the war.
Post-War Expats
After the war, in September 1946, Don Byas went to Europe to tour with Don Redman's big band in Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany. They were the first civilian jazz big band to tour the old continent after the war.
After playing in Belgium and Spain, Byas finally settled in Paris. He would start a long line of American jazz musicians who headed to Europe for a change of scenery.
In 1956, bebop drummer Kenny Clark settled in France. Then, in 1959, Bud Powell moved to Paris with Altevia "Buttercup" Edwards and her son, John. In 1986, Francis Paudras wrote a book about his friendship with Powell, translated into English in 1997 as Dance of the Infidels: A Portrait of Bud Powell. The book was the basis for Round Midnight, a film inspired by the lives of Powell and Lester Young, in which Dexter Gordon played the lead role of an expatriate jazzman in Paris.
In 1963, with Bud Powell and Kenny Clarke, Dexter Gordon recorded Our Man in Paris, the first of his Blue Note albums in Paris. The bassist on the record was Pierre Michelot, the house bass player at the Parisian Blue Note.
Dexter Gordon
Dexter Gordon arrived in Europe in 1962 to play at the famous London jazz club Ronnie Scott’s. Soon he was living in Copenhagen, which became his home base until 1975, when he returned to the states.
Because of the movie, Round Midnight, Dexter Gordon is perhaps viewed as the quintessential expat jazz musician.
Dexter Gordon was a hero in Denmark and the locals dubbed him “The King Of Copenhagen”. He recorded many terrific albums in Europe and gained a level of stardom few if any jazz expats could match. However, in 1975 he moved back to America, and the obvious question is why? In his own words, “The happiest moments in Europe were when you’d run into other cats and bands and someone would say, ‘Hey, you long, tall….’ Or the get-togethers when someone would get a care package from home - red beans and greens and grits. Just that taste of home.”
Beyond the novelty welcomes and initial fanfare offered to American jazz musicians arriving in Europe, there were clear commercial advantages, which became even more pronounced later once rock-and-roll took the spotlight away from Jazz. In his book, Notes and Tones, Art Taylor remembers arriving in Paris in 1958 and within days lining up four weeks of work, seven nights a week. In the United States, a musician of his talent would more commonly get three to five nights of work at a club before trekking on to the next city. But the main question remains: If it was so great, why did so many go back home? I think it just comes back to that feeling of dislocation James Baldwin wrote about and I felt living in Germany.
Again, Art Taylor recalls, “When I first visited France, I met a critic and it was ‘A. T! A. T!’ Like I was a God. Then when I went there to live, got an apartment, settled down, I’d often see the same critic in the market. He would say to me, ‘Are you still here?’ ”
All I can say is, I was glad to be back home. Europe was a great place to visit, but living there for an extended time is difficult, even in good times.
Here’s one more for the road, recorded when Dexter was back in New York in 1976 for the Danish SteepleChase record label:
Next week, our journey will take us into the backwoods of album cover art. Early in my Jazz journey, I most often selected albums purely based on their album cover art, like this one:
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Until then, keep on walking….
Thanks for writing on this topic, Tyler. Dexter Gordon was a fantastic player, and even received an academy award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for that role in ‘Round Midnight!