I was perusing the catalog at Swann Auction Galleries recently when I came across a photo of Duke Ellington and his band, all handsome and stylishly dressed in heavy overcoats on what was apparently a cold day. The photo accompanied two claims forms that several band members had filed seeking payment for rehearsals for the show “Jump for Joy.”
I had never heard of the show, so I kept reading. The phrase “social significance show” popped out from the long narrative in the auction catalog, and I knew I was about to learn something amazing. Ellington had written the show in the 1940s as an antidote to the negative and stereotypical images of blacks at that time.
The auction house was selling the 1939 photo – which was not signed – and two 1941 claims against Jump for Joy Inc. The forms had the signatures of Ellington (certifying that the men should be paid by the company that was financing the show) and some other very famous names, including saxophonist Johnny Hodges. Click on the photo for a larger view.
I’m always coming across innocuous documents, photos or paraphernalia that often unlock doors into African American and American history. This was one such grouping, so I had to learn more.
Ellington and others conceived of the show serendipitously. He and his band were jamming – the joint was jumping, as someone described it – at the home of one of the collaborators, and he happened to mention that it was “jumping for joy.” And at that, this all-black musical revue was born.
The show ran at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles from July 10, 1941 to Sept. 29, 1941, and got some good reviews. Ellington thought he’d take it to Broadway, but it was too far ahead of its time, trying to buck a trend that was too ingrained in the culture.
From the beginning, Ellington knew what he wanted the show to be. He didn’t think that the Gershwins’ “Porgy and Bess (1935)” was authentic enough. He didn’t believe the music played well with the performances and failed to capture the essence of black life in Catfish Row. He set out to create a musical revue that captured the real lives of African Americans.
Described as “hip,” the show sought to cast black people as human – to “take Uncle Tom out of the theater, eliminate the stereotyped image that had been exploited by Hollywood and Broadway, and say things that would make the audience think,” Ellington wrote in his 1973 autobiography “Music is My Mistress.”
The show was songs, dances and sketches in two acts and 31 scenes, with the title song (its first line: “Fare thee well, land of cotton”) starting off the second act. Ellington and his band were in the pit, and the revue was accompanied by a choir, tap and other dancers and performers.
It had “no crying, no moaning, but entertaining, and with social demands as a potent spice,” Ellington wrote. And it had no blackface either.
Some songs and skits poked fun at the sentimentality of living in the South: “Passport to Georgia” showed blacks leaving the “Dixie necktie” behind for a place where the “cravat’s a correct tie” and “the sign reads, ‘Out to Lunch,’ not ‘Out to Lynch.'”
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a drive-in now” showed the cabin transformed into a restaurant: “Jemimah don’t work no more for RKO, she’s slinging hash for Uncle Tom and coinin’ dough, just turn on your headlights, and she’ll take a bow, cause Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a drive-in now.”
Both songs apparently were removed from the show (one site said that Passport was later returned) over death threats.
The revue featured some names I recognized. A teenage Dorothy Dandridge and longtime Ellington singer Ivie Anderson, who sang the two Southern-themed songs (as well as “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good”). Billy Strayhorn helped arrange the music. A Langston Hughes’ skit “Mad Scene From Woolworth’s” – it must have been a hoot – found its way into it. A 2002 biography of Hughes said it was cut after the writer asked for royalties.
Blues singer Joe Turner was such a hit that his fans arrived at the same time every night to see him perform for 15 minutes and then leave. “Dorothy Dandridge was lovely to look at and Wonderful Smith and Willie Lewis and Udell Johnson were very funny to listen to,” jazz writer Barry Ulanov noted in a 1946 biography of Ellington.
Wrote Ellington, “The Negroes always left proudly with their chests sticking out.”
This was not Ellington’s first musical revue. In 1924, he wrote “Chocolate Kiddies,” featuring Josephine Baker. Despite its short run, “Jump for Joy” spawned his “Black Brown and Beige,” a history of African Americans.
The documents at auction showed that Ellington’s band members rehearsed the entire week – July 5-9 – before the show opened in 1941. They bore the signature of several band members and his authorization that they get paid. One claim was for $93 owed to six band members, and the other for $81 owed to eight. The rehearsal rate appeared to be $1 per hour, $2 per hour for nighttime and overtime, and a flat $5 for Sundays.
The two claim forms sold for $850.
