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Bebop Spoken There

Spasmo Brown: “Jazz is an ice cream sandwich! It's the Fourth of July! It's a girl with a waterbed!”. (Syncopated Times, July, 2024).

The Things They Say!

Hudson Music: Lance's "Bebop Spoken Here" is one of the heaviest and most influential jazz blogs in the UK.

Rupert Burley (Dynamic Agency): "BSH just goes from strength to strength".

'606' Club: "A toast to Lance Liddle of the terrific jazz blog 'Bebop Spoken Here'"

The Strictly Smokin' Big Band included Be Bop Spoken Here (sic) in their 5 Favourite Jazz Blogs.

Ann Braithwaite (Braithwaite & Katz Communications) You’re the BEST!

Holly Cooper, Mouthpiece Music: "Lance writes pull quotes like no one else!"

Simon Spillett: A lovely review from the dean of jazz bloggers, Lance Liddle...

Josh Weir: I love the writing on bebop spoken here... I think the work you are doing is amazing.

Postage

17421 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 16 years ago. 695 of them this year alone and, so far, 100 this month (Sept. 30).

From This Moment On ...

October

Tue 08: ???

Wed 09: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free. Wed 09: Jason Isaacs @ St James’ STACK, Newcastle. 5:00-7:00pm. Free.
Wed 09: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 09: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free.
Wed 09: The Tannery Jam Session @ The Tannery, Gilesgate, Hexham. 7:00-9:00pm. Free. A ‘second Wednesday in the month’ jam session.
Wed 09: Shunya, Dudù Kouate & Seb Rochford @ The Cluny, Newcastle. 8:30pm (7:30pm doors). £21.00.

Thu 10: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free.
Thu 10: Gateshead Jazz Appreciation Society @ Brunswick Methodist Church, Newcastle NE1 7BJ. 2:00pm. £4.00. ‘Collaborations - it happened all the time’.
Thu 10: Indigo Jazz Voices w. the Little Big Band @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:45pm. £5.00.
Thu 10: Side Cafe Orkestar @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Free. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Thu 10: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman’s Club, Middlesborough. 8:30pm. With guests Donna Hewitt (sax); Bill Watson (trumpet); Graham Thompson (keys); Ron Smith (bass). Free.

Fri 11: Dulcie May Moreno @ The Old Library, Auckland Castle, Bishop Auckland. 1:00pm. £8.00.
Fri 11: The Jazz Quartet + Stratosphonic @ Tynedale Rugby Club, Corbridge. 7:00pm. £15.00. A Rotary Club of Hexham event. The Jazz Quartet (Jude Murphy & co), Stratosphonic (blues/rock).
Fri 11: Joe Steels Trio @ The Pele, Market Place, Corbridge NE45 5AW. 7:30pm. Free.
Fri 11: Crooners @ Tyne Theatre, Newcastle. 7:30pm.
Fri 11: Mo Scott Band @ Blues Underground, Nelson St., Newcastle. 9:00pm. Free.

Sat 12: Milne-Glendinning Band @ The Vault, Darlington. 7:00pm. Free.
Sat 12: Michael Woods @ Victoria Tunnel, Ouseburn, Newcastle. 7:00pm. £12.00. (£10.00. adv.). Country blues guitar & vocals.
Sat 12: Nauta @ Cobalt Studios, Newcastle. 7:00pm. £13.28, £11.16, £9.04. A two-track recording launch gig.
Sat 12: Stuart Turner @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Rockabilly, rhythm & blues etc. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig.
Sat 12: Lapwing Jazz Trio @ The Ship Inn, Low Newton. 8:00pm. Free. New trio: Paula Whitty, Richard Herdman, Jude Murphy.

Sun 13: Am Jam @ The Globe, Newcastle. 2:00pm. Free.
Sun 13: Emma Wilson @ Tyne Bar, Newcastle. 4:00pm. Free. Blues.
Sun 13: Catfish Keith @ The Cluny. 7:00pm. Country blues.
Sun 13: Cath Stephens & Paul Grainger @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 7:00pm. A ‘Jar on the Bar’ gig. Stephens & Grainger, one third of a triple bill.
Sun 13: Dulcie May Moreno Quartet @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm.

Mon 14: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Free.
Mon 14: Black is the Color of My Voice @ Hippodrome, Darlington. 7:30pm. Apphia Campbell’s one-woman show inspired by Nina Simone, performed by Nicholle Cherrie.

Tue 15: Jam session @ The Black Swan, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Free. House trio: Alan Law (piano), Paul Grainger (double bass), Bailey Rudd (drums).

Reviewers wanted

Whilst BSH attempts to cover as many gigs, festivals and albums as possible, to make the site even more comprehensive we need more 'boots on the ground' to cover the albums seeking review - a large percentage of which never get heard - report on gigs or just to air your views on anything jazz related. Interested? then please get in touch. Contact details are on the blog. Look forward to hearing from you. Lance

Monday, April 20, 2020

The beginning of a century-long love affair between France and black American music ?

Ann Alex's review of BBC Radio 4's series Black Music in Europe: A Hidden History brought to mind a piece I wrote up last year after reading David Olusoga's* The World's War, about the forgotten soldiers of various European nation's empires, the USA and other countries made to participate in the First World War. There is a short section entitled The beginning of a century-long love affair between France and black American music ? - Brian Ebbatson.
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“The 93rd Division (Colored) had been assembled from various African-American National Guard units, volunteers and draftees from the more liberal Northern and North-eastern states. The 93rd contained four black regiments, the most famous of which was the 369th Infantry Regiment – formerly the 15th New York National Guard, soon to be known as the ‘Harlem Hellfighters’.


The 93rd was trained and dispatched to France on the firm promise that its men would be allowed to fight. They arrived at St Nazaire on board the USS PocahontasAmong the men of the 369th Infantry were the forty-four members of the regimental band, some of Harlem’s finest professional musicians, under the leadership of James Reese Europe, who was a pioneer of ragtime in New York City and the leading light of the legendary Clef Club. In the dockside at St Nazaire the band brought a little of Harlem to France, playing their arrangement of the ‘Marseillaise’. Some have pointed to this moment as being the first performance of jazz – or more accurately its musical precursor, ragtime – in France, an event that marked the beginning of a century-long love affair between France and black American music. The moment of history was somewhat lost on the French soldiers present, however, who were reportedly slow to stand to attention to their national anthem, the jazz arrangement was so inventive that it took several bars before they could recognize it for what it was.”      (pages 341-342)   (My emphasis – BE).

David Olusoga goes on to describe how 80% of approximately 200,00 African-Americans who served their country in the First World War were consigned to the Supply of Services (SOS) labour corps, rather than be the combat troops they were trained to become. Because the US command did not want African-Americans fighting alongside white Americans, four regiments of the 93rd Division were transferred to the French Army in March 1918. Of these the 369th Regiment suffered 1,300 casualties and were awarded the French Croix de Guerre for their bravery. (page 343) They were however not represented in the American Expeditionary Force’s contingent at the Paris Victory Parade on the 14th July 1919. (page 403).

On their return to the USA the 369th Regiment “marched through Manhattan in a special parade. Lined up sixteen abreast – an unfamiliar French formation – they marched up Fifth Avenue with the regimental band leading the way playing French military marches. The parade took them through central Manhattan, along streets lined with white Americans, then up to Harlem. ……. The leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Organisation, Marcus Garvey, was said to have wept at the sight of the 369th Infantry parading through the city. That whites, too, had lined Fifth Avenue was taken by some as a hopeful sign that …. the United States might be on the verge of a new era of black-white relations. But African Americans returning to their homes in the South quickly understood that …..  their overseas service had cast them in the minds of many whites as dangerous, radicalized black men who needed to be put back in their place.”

On Armistice Day Senator James Vardaman of Mississippi declared that: “Now that the war is over we shall soon be face to face with the military negro, and if this country is to be spared much trouble we shall need men in office who can realize the truth that where the negro constitutes any appreciable percentage of the population, he must be separated from the white people. Unless that policy shall be pursued, the result will be disastrous for the negro and unfortunate for the white man”. (pages 389-390)
Brian Ebbatson.

Members of the 369th Infantry Regiment (Harlem Hellfighters) band outside the YMCA canteen in La Bourboule, France.




More on James Reese Europe: 
* David Oligusa - of this manor (brought up on the Tyne).

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