Perspectives on Dance Bands - the Ethnic Melting-Pot

The idea of America as a "melting pot" is often expressed in two areas - music and cuisine.   Cuisine is a whole different area of discussion, because we want to discuss music, in particular our ongoing discussion of big dance bands.  In the earliest years of the recording industry, it was not coincidental that one of the greatest waves of immigration also happened.  A lot of the traffic that came through Ellis Island would in time end up on an Edison disc, and so it was in the case of some of America's most successful popular music for 50 years.

One of the greatest contributors by far to American entertainment was the Jewish community - whether in vaudeville, music, movie production, etc., the Jewish contributions were epic.  The majority of the composers of the "Great American Songbook," for instance, were all of Jewish heritage (Gershwin, Kern, Berlin, etc.).  Also, the earliest movie production companies were all the brainchildren of Jewish entrepreneurs (MGM comes to mind in particular).   Music, likewise, was a great center of Jewish culture, and the dance bands were definitely well-represented when it came to Jewish maestros in the early days - pioneering bandleaders such as Ted Lewis, Sam Lanin, Ben Selvin, Boyd Senter, and later younger talents such as Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Irving Fazola, and Mel Torme (among MANY others!) were all of Jewish heritage.  For Jewish musicians, dance orchestras were a natural transition, as many of them came from generations of musicians called klezmorim, and represented a great Jewish music tradition called klezmer.  The klezmer contribution to American big bands cannot be underestimated as well, and it even shows up in popular songs of the 1930's such as "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" and "And the Angels Sing" (the later was an adaptation of a klezmer dance called the freilach, and made jazz history around 1937 when a young Jewish-American trumpeter with Benny Goodman's orchestra, Ziggy Elman, made it famous and a standard).  It is at this point I want to discuss klezmer in particular and go into some history.

Seth Rogovoy points out in his book, The Essential Klezmer (Chapel Hill, NC:  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2000), that contemporary klezmer as we know it today originated with 19th-century Jewish (and Gypsy - more on that momentarily) musicians from Eastern Europe.  These musicians played all sorts of dances, weddings, and other functions, and when they came to the US, they also adopted popular styles of the time (jazz and ragtime) to their repertoire, and that is also how so many of them ended up integrating into the early jazz and dance band culture in the US.  Klezmer's tradition goes back as far as the 14th century with the Jewish Diaspora, and these musicians formed active guilds of musicians as far back as the 16th century (Rogovoy, p. 23).   What is really interesting is that the standard instrumentation one sees in dance bands and jazz groups of the 1920's through the 1940's was already utilized by klezmorim in Europe centuries earlier, which indicates a proto-dance band tradition being in existence well before the era of recorded sound.  I mentioned Gypsies, and indeed, Gypsies were often employed for their own musical talent in klezmer ensembles, and some of them rose in prominence on their own, notably Russian Gypsy accordionist Mishka Ziganoff (1889-1967).  Gypsies would later make a huge impact of their own on jazz and big band music when Django Reinhardt would pioneer the genre known as "Gypsy jazz," but that merits a story of its own.  For now, the contribution of Gypsies to klezmer (and subsequently, dance bands) is what is pivotal at this stage.

Russian Gypsy klezmer accordionist Mishka Ziganoff

An early klezmer orchestra

In time, klezmer and big band musicians really began to overlap, and from the jazz end was Ziggy Elman (1914-1968), who turned the klezmer dance into a jazz standard with a 1937 recording by Benny Goodman's orchestra of the pop standard "And the Angels Sing."  The subtitle of this was interesting enough "Freilach in Swing," and was also based on a much earlier klezmer recording called "Der Shteiller Bulgar" by pioneering American klezmer recording artist and bandleader Abe Schwartz in 1918.  Other klezmer techniques - notably Boyd Senter's "laughing clarinet," which was also noted on Sydney Bechet recordings as well - began to find their way into jazz and big band arrangements, and a musical legacy was born.  

Noted big band and jazz trumpeter Harry "Ziggy" Elman

Another personality worth discussing here is a more purely klezmer figure named Dave Tarras (1895-1989).   Tarras was a Russian-born Jewish immigrant who personified American klezmer, but he also integrated the best of American popular music into his own repertoire.  Tarras played with many pioneering klezmer orchestras, and even led for a short time a klezmer big band in the early 1940's  that played some fairly good swing arrangements as well.  In the mid-1950's, Tarras teamed up with his son-in-law Sam Musiker (a jazz/klezmer clarinetist who was also a sideman with Gene Krupa's orchestra in the 1940's) to produce a phenomenal LP for Columbia called Tanz!  Any discussion of klezmer must essentially reference Tarras at some juncture, as his legacy is extremely important to the genre as a whole. 

Klezmer clarinet legend Dave Tarras

In addition to klezmer, it is also important to mention another genre of music which impacted the big bands that also came from Eastern Europe.  In this case though, the custodians of the music were ethnic Slavs instead of Jewish musicians, and the music we speak of is polka.  Polka is much-aligned in American society, often being dismissed as "corny" and such, but in reality it had a tremendous impact on American popular music.   Perhaps the greatest polka musician who also made a mark on the big bands is Lawrence Welk (1902-1992), whose famous TV program was on for over 30 years,  although Welk himself had been leading orchestras since 1927.  Welk, however, was not a polka purist, as that designation would go to one of his older contemporaries, the late "Whoopie John" Wilfahrt (1893-1961) of Minnesota.  "Whoopie John" was the earliest person we could safely call a "Polka King," and his Swiss/German roots are also reflected in the "Dutchman-style" polkas he recorded that are characteristic of the upper Midwest.  However, much like Dave Tarras, "Whoopie John" was not afraid of incorporating popular music of the day into his repertoire, and this resulted in a prolific catalog of recordings beginning in the 1920's and continuing well until his death.  Although "Whoopie John" could be said to be the most popular of polka bands of his time, polka itself also dates back many centuries.

Polka legend and bandleader "Whoopie John" Wilfahrt

Polka's influence on popular music is often overlooked, but it is still integral in particular to dance bands, but in one unlikely area - Western Swing.  Western Swing was a style of music that had its origins in an adaptation of jazz technique into the traditional cowboy string band music of the Southwest.  What is less-known though about that development is that in the late 1800's. Texas became the focus of a great immigration of Czech and German immigrants, particularly in the south-central "Hill Country" area adjacent to San Antonio (Victor Green, A Passion for Polka. Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1992. p. 23).  Many of the immigrants assimilated into Texas culture, and their native polkas and waltzes also influenced the local music.  We see that in the fact that many of the best-known Western Swing bands of the 1930's through the 1950's - Adolph Hofner, Milton Bruner, Hank Thompson, and Pee Wee King - were led by guys who were of either German or Slavic heritage.  Even country legend Willie Nelson cut his professional teeth in one of those Tex-Czech polka bands then.  Even today, central Texas remains a cultural hub for polka music as a result. 

The other area of influence regarding polka music came from its beginnings.  Polka is primarily a dance music, and it was played originally in the Old Country by orchestras that were remarkably similar in instrumentation to jazz and dance bands in the US.  Also, many Jewish klezmorim in the Old Country also incorporated polkas as part of their catalog of arrangements.  The first polka bands to record in the US were largely local, from areas such as around Denver (the Volga German "Dutch Hop" style), Chicago (the more "Honkey" Polish small-band style), New England (the Polish big-band style), and Cleveland (small-group Slovenian polkas).  A more Russian/Eastern European polka tradition also sprung up in Canada's Great Plains, where a large population of Ukrainians settled.  There were also some overseas polka pioneers, namely Will Glahe (1902-1989), who actually started in the 1930's with a society-style tipica orchestra similar to the Argentine and Uruguayan tango orchestras (this is also why Mantovani, who is noted more for light classical "elevator music," is included as part of the dance band legacy, as he too had a similar tipica orchestra at around the same time).  Glahe later recorded more polkas, and is considered today to be a polka legend.  Other than perhaps Bernie Witkowski, an early polka pioneer in New England, and the Baca family in Texas, there is little information about these early polka bands that precede 1920, but they do have recordings that can be found if one knows where to look.  In time, with Dick Rodgers, Larry Chesky, and Jimmy Sturr, the polka would be fully integrated into the big band format.  

There are other ethnic influences that could be noted as well - the Cuban danzon orquestras, Argentine tango orchestras, and others.  Also, individuals who played a role should be noted, in particular Russian-Jewish mandolinist Dave Apollon (1898-1972) as well as Italian-American accordionist Charles Magnante (1905-1986), both of whom made an amazing impact on popular music for decades to come.  As I conclude this overview, it is important to know that the American dance band tradition exemplifies the "melting pot" in the truest sense - it represents a lot of ethnic contributions to what would be a uniquely American art form.  And, this also establishes as well that it was not only Blacks who helped create jazz, but a number of cultures made their contribution.  Hopefully, those reading this will gain a greater appreciation for the dance bands of the 1920's-1950's, and will see that they didn't just appear out of a vacuum.  So long until next time.