Tag Archives: James Reese Europe

James Reese Europe and the Harlem Hellfighters

James Reese Europe

(22 February 1881 – 9 May 1919) was an American ragtime and early jazz bandleader, arranger, and composer. He was the leading figure on the African American music scene of New York City in the 1910s. Europe was born in Mobile, Alabama. His family moved to Washington, D.C. when he was 10 years old. He moved to New York in 1904.

In 1910 Reese organized the Clef Club, a society for African Americans in the music industry. In 1912, they made history when they played a concert at Carnegie Hall for the benefit of the Colored Music Settlement School. The Clef Club Orchestra was the first jazz band to play at Carnegie Hall. It is difficult to overstate the importance of that event in the history of jazz in the United States — it was 12 years before the Paul Whiteman and George Gershwin concert at Aeolian Hall, and 26 years before Benny Goodman‘s famed concert at Carnegie Hall. Reese’s orchestra also included Will Marion Cook, who had not been in Carnegie Hall since his own performance as solo violinist in 1896. Cook was the first black composer to launch full musical productions, fully scored with a cast and story every bit as classical as any Victor Hugo operetta. In the words of Gunther Schuller, Reese “…had stormed the bastion of the white establishment and made many members of New York’s cultural elite aware of Negro music for the first time.” In other words, Europe provides a case as the very first example of jazz as a blues-based departure from ragtime.

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