Hot and Sweet: Big Band Music in Black West Virginia before the Swing Era

By Christopher Wilkinson

For many people, West Virginia's musical culture appears well defined. Its country roads take one home to "old-timey" and bluegrass music, to repertories played by string bands and their electronically amplified descendants, to lovingly maintained folk traditions that some local practitioners still argue evolved primarily from those of the British Isles. Such a perspective ignores the fact that for more than a century the Mountain State has been home to a diverse population whose ancestors did not all emigrate from the United Kingdom and that, as a consequence, the musical culture of the state is equally diverse. Along with many other ethnic groups, thousands of African Americans made West Virginia home, thanks largely to the opening of its coal fields beginning in the 1880s. Though blacks and whites shared a musical culture consisting of fiddle tunes, ballads, and varieties of church music, there were musical styles associated with African American culture not widely embraced by other residents of the state. Among these was big-band jazz and dance music which, during the 1930s, played a major role in the musical life of black Mountaineers. Just prior to the swing era, "hot" as well as "sweet" music was a continuing presence in the life of West Virginia's black communities. Its cultivation was not dependent primarily upon the occasional performance by touring big-city bands but was sustained principally by the enterprise of local entrepreneurs, the talents of local musicians, and the tastes of local residents.