Wilbur C. Sweatman and Early Jazz

After reading Mark Berresford's That’s got ’Em! : the life and music of Wilbur C. Sweatman, one can see more clearly the significance of Sweatman in the rise of jazz music. As a transitional figure whose life encompassed all the 19th and early 20th century musical forms that contributed to jazz, Sweatman, like James Reese Europe, is a perfect figure to study for understanding the transition to jazz and blues in the late 1910s and 1920s. In the case of Sweatman, Berresford emphasizes his past in minstrel, vaudeville, and circus or tent show performances. It also seems very reasonable to agree with the author that the rise of jazz could never be understood solely as a New Orleans phenomenon. Last, but certainly not least, one can see the centrality of ragtime as a musical genre that laid the foundation for the musical changes occurring in the first two decades of the 1900s. 

Further, it would seem that appearance of blues and jazz and the rise of African American popular music in the 20th century owes far more to minstrel, vaudeville, and ragtime-influenced tours that created conditions for African Americans to travel across the continent and exchange musical ideas. P.G. Lowery's group, or Sweatman's later career on the vaudeville circuit, or Chicago's South State Street black cabarets created a propitious climate for the exchange of musical ideas. All these aforementioned aspects of African American music would go on to make Sweatman a pivotal figure in early jazz. His unique clarinet style also included early jazz phrasing, particularly on his recording of "Down Home Rag" for Emerson. His singular sound on clarinet and "hot" style almost makes it plausible that he was playing "jazz" as early as his Chicago years. It also explains why Columbia and Pathé were drawn to Sweatman, who already had an established reputation, for a black jazz band to catch up to the jazz craze. 

Berresford's text, while full of informative details pertinent to recordings and tour dates, can be a tedious read. Ultimately, this study is limited by the loss of Sweatman's autobiographical notes and countless papers and records of his and Scott Joplin that would have shed so much light on ragtime and early jazz. Nonetheless, Berresford's biography convincingly demonstrates the significance of Sweatman in the history of jazz. Several prominent jazz musicians of the 1920s and 1930s were once associates or former sidemen of Sweatman, whose business acumen, showmanship, and experience impacted luminaries such as Duke Ellington and Jimmie Lunceford. Berresford's study also speaks to the theme of racial integration in jazz and popular music, an area in which Sweatman was a pioneer. 

What is required now is a detailed study of Sweatman's recordings, though Berresford nicely contextualizes the limitations of recording technology, Columbia's control on material, and the competing influence of the New Orleans polyphonic sound versus the large New York syncopated orchestras of the 1910s. One would also have liked to learn more about the relationship between Joplin and Sweatman, and, if possible, any reasons why Sweatman never joined the Clef Club or Tempo Club. What did Sweatman think of "jazz" and ragtime in the context of the "race" and its place in the development of black music? Unless someone locates the lost papers of Sweatman, perhaps we shall never know.