I had to leave my Time Machine at a Lenox Avenue body repair shop and was forced and fortunate to have to spend a second week touring the African-American jazz capital of America in the 1930s. This gave me more of a chance for mixes with the classes and a widened spectrum of skin tones.
There were so many clubs to visit, each with a band that held future Jazz immortals in their ranks. I tried Connie’s Inn, the Savoy ballroom, the Daisy Chain, The Grand Terrace and every club I could find.
You see, throughout the 1930s, Harlem is where white folks like me who wanted to be “woke” went. Each nightspot, except the Cotton Club, was integrated and served in part as dance studio where swing lovers learned the latest moves and grooves, and kept step and stoned. The “wicked weed” was still legal and reefer men arrived hourly. In this medley, you will be given the chance to cut a rag doing the Lindy Hop, the shim-sham, the sugar foot stomp, the snake hips, and the Harlem Twister, among others. You will learn to follow party lines of joy only Harlem offers in such encyclopedic abundance. Here red, white and blue refer to states of mind and are apolitical. So get ready to tap toes to Harlem’s best band, including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford, Chick Webb, Cab Calloway, Teddy Hill, the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, Lil Hardin Armstrong, the Harlem Hamfats and vocal groups like the Ink Spots and the Delta Rhythm Boys. This medley is so, pun intended, jam-packed that you feel like you’rer at the jazz equivalent of the Indy 500.
Once my Time Machine was repaired, I headed back to the future, making some stops in the 1950s and the 1960s. There’s a lot of music here. Hope you enjoy it.
The Delta Rhythm Boys, Take the ‘A’ Train, 1941
The Harlem Hamfats, Harlem Jamboree, 1938
Teddy Hill, Uptown Rhapsody, 1936
Teddy Hill, At The Rug Cutter’s Ball, 1936
Mills Blue Rhythm Band, Harlem After Dark, 1936
Lil Hardin Armstrong, Harlem on a Saturday Night, 1936
Lil Hardin Armstrong, Lindy Hop, 1937
Chick Webb, Lindyhopper’s Delight, 1939
Chick Webb, Harlem Congo, 1937
Henry ‘Red’ Allen, Sugar Hill Function, 1930 (Sugar Hill was a district in Harlem where the African-American nouveau riche lived)
Rex Stewart with Duke Ellington, Sugar Hill Shim-Sham, 1937
Jimmie Lunceford, Harlem Shout, 1936
Teddy Hill, The Harlem Twister, 1937
Ace Harris, Rhythm ‘Bout Town, 1937
The Ink Spots, Stompin’ at the Savoy, 1936
Fletcher Henderson, Grand Terrace Rhythm, 1936
Count Basie, Swinging at the Daisy Chain, 1937
Lionel Hampton (feat. Irving Ashby, guitar), Open House, 1940
Harlem Hamfats, Hamfat Swing, 1936
Fats Waller, The Joint is Jumpin’, 1937
Rene Hernandez, Harlem Jamboree, 1955 (Not the same jamboree as before)
Ben E. King, Spanish Harlem, 1961
Bob & Earl, Harlem Shuffle, 1964