by Phil Keith
Bullard’s first big break in the music world came via the legendary Paris club impresario Joe Zelli. An Italian by birth, Zelli had immigrated to America as a boy with his parents, who settled in Manhattan. As a teen, he took jobs as a waiter to learn the restaurant business from the ground up and the inside out. By 1909, at age twenty, he was already part owner of a bistro at the corner of 43rd and Madison Avenue. When World War I broke out, Zelli, who had not attained American citizenship, was drafted into the Italian Army (allied with America, Britain, and France in this war). He returned to his native country and served honorably in an artillery regiment for the duration of the Great War.
After the Armistice, Zelli landed in Paris where he soon secured a job as head bartender for the American Officers’ Club. His ebullient personality as well as his veteran status soon won him a following among the many officers who were left behind in Paris, stationed there after the war to keep the peace and handle the many duties of the Armistice. Zelli decided to stay, too, and soon formed an ambition to have his own club—but one that differed significantly from the many other jazz spots popping up all over the city.
Zelli had heard—correctly, as it turned out—that there was a quirk in the French bar and restaurant regulations that allowed so-called “bottle clubs” to stay open much longer than regular bars, which typically were required to close at midnight. Bottle clubs could only sell liquor by the entire bottle (typically champagne), which allowed the patron to “own” a table as long as there was liquor in the bottle. (The purchase of additional bottles was, of course, always encouraged.) The challenge was that securing a bottle club license was particularly difficult. Translation: to get permission to open a bottle club you had to “know someone” and that someone or his licensing department had to be handsomely compensated in under-the-table cash. It would also help if you had fought for France in the recent conflict.
To get his foot in the door, Zelli managed to scrape enough money together, with other backers, to buy a traditional club, the Chez Florence, at 17 rue Caumartin in Montmartre. It just so happened that Eugene Bullard was the eager new drummer in the club’s band. The two got to know one another and Zelli shared his bottle club ambitions with Bullard.
Zelli spoke Italian, of course, and English. Bullard spoke English, French, and passable German. He was also a decorated and widely admired hero of France. Even better, Bullard had come into the orbit of a very well-known French lawyer by the name of Henri-Robert (also known as Robert Henri). Henri-Robert, an illegitimate child who had been abandoned at birth and sent to an orphanage, was a brilliant criminal lawyer who after the war switched to the practice of civil law. Among his clients were Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet, Pierre Renoir, Camille Saint-Saens, and the actress Sarah Bernhardt. He was a former head of the Paris Bar Association and a Commander of the Legion of Honor.
Henri-Robert had gotten to know Bullard during the war and was taken with the young pilot as another example of someone who had come from nowhere and nothing and accomplished so much (just as he had done). Henri-Robert, who was too old to fight for France by the time war broke out, supported heroes, like Bullard, who did the actual fighting.
Putting two and two together, Bullard came up with the winning combination for his new friend, Joe Zelli. He approached Henri-Robert with the challenge of getting the bottle club license. With Bullard’s status as a citizen hero, Zelli’s funds, and Henri-Robert’s standing, the application sailed through and Club Zelli was born.
Zelli’s was an instant hit. Jazz fever had completely transformed the Paris music scene. Jazz made people move. Jazz made people happy. Jazz was so unlike any music form before it that it lifted people’s spirits and pushed memories of the recent catastrophic war deep into the recesses of their minds. Nowhere in Paris was jazz performed more enthusiastically—and all night—than at Zelli’s. When other cabarets and clubs were required to close at midnight, Zelli’s was just opening. Patrons bought their bottles, and unconsciously kept buying bottles, until dawn, at which time Zelli’s would serve a robust breakfast then shut down for the remainder of the day.
Joe Zelli packed them in and took their money, yet he never refused anyone a drink because they couldn’t pay. He would take their checks if they had no cash. Joe’s wife, who was an assiduous bookkeeper and excellent tabulator of records, reportedly had a thick stack of checks that could not be cashed—all from customers whose accounts were empty. Joe never pursued them. He believed that none of his patrons would ever stiff him and if they couldn’t settle their tabs currently, well, they would someday. His largesse was well-known and apparently well rewarded. At the end of his first five years in business he would be worth half a million dollars—a staggering sum in those days, especially for someone who had been cashing a barkeep’s paycheck only a few years prior.
Eugene Bullard studied his methods and learned from Zelli. When the time would come, as it did, for Bullard to start his own venture, he would copy Zelli’s methods, right down to the handshakes for every patron and a free drink if your pockets were empty.
* * *
Through the years 1920 and 1921, Zelli’s flourished, and so did Bullard. He kept a grueling schedule, though: long workouts at the gym during the day, followed by playing in the band all night. His drumming became better and better. Joe Zelli also gave him the job of booking all the club’s talent and managing the acts that were contracted. This put him in contact with the finest musicians, singers, and performers working in Paris during that time.
Yet Bullard still had an itch to fight; he had not gotten the boxing game out of his system. His rise in the ring, as a fairly good middleweight contender on the European circuit, had been interrupted by the war. He had no illusions about his somewhat advanced age of twenty-six or the condition of his body considering his war injuries, but the desire was still strong, and his heart told him he had to give it one more try.
* * *
Using connections he had maintained in the boxing profession, Bullard finagled two bouts billed as comeback fights in Cairo, Egypt, slated for early 1922. To pay for the trip and his expenses, he also signed a contract to perform with a five-piece jazz ensemble that had obtained a six-month gig at Cairo’s swank Hotel Claridge. With Joe Zelli’s blessing, and an open invitation to come back to Zelli’s club, Bullard and his band sailed for Egypt in early December 1921. They opened to rave reviews at the Claridge on Christmas Eve.
Bullard went into the ring in Alexandria on February 15, 1922, to fight a fifteen-rounder against an Egyptian fighter who outweighed him by twenty pounds. (Bullard was a lean and muscular 145 pounds.) It was a lively and bruising match that went the distance and ended in a draw. Bullard and his manager, an old army buddy by the name of Opal Cooper, were outraged. They felt they had won on points. They probably had, but they discovered after the fight that the referee was his opponent’s brother-in-law.
Two other factors made things worse: First, Bullard hurt his right hand badly in the fight and it swelled to almost twice its normal size. The injury left a permanent, hard knot and the hand was never the same again. Second, the promoter disappeared after the fight, out a back door, without paying Bullard his cut.
A frantic chase down dark unfamiliar alleys ensued, but Bullard was a determined pursuer. He eventually caught up with the scoundrel when he tripped in the dark and went sprawling into a handcart full of dates. Bullard throttled the man and threatened to slice him to ribbons with his pocketknife if he didn’t pay up. The man feigned he had no money, which Bullard knew was impossible, having watched the overflow crowd pay up to see the fight. He promptly turned out the man’s pockets and found, hidden in his coat, two large rolls of bills. Bullard peeled away the $600 the man had promised him and returned the rest, leaving the bedraggled promoter squatting in the pile of dried fruit and perhaps grateful that Bullard had not completely emptied his pockets.
His second—and very last—fight also occurred in Al
exandria, on April 28. His hand had not healed but a contract was a contract and fifteen more rounds it would be, unless he could knock out the other guy and end it quicker. Four-ounce gloves were used, hardly enough to say it was not a bare-knuckle fight (twelve-to fourteen-ounce gloves were more standard). Bullard’s opponent this time was Gabriel Zammar, an Egyptian welterweight of middling distinction, but someone who was durable and tough.
Bullard and Opal Cooper made sure this time there were no hidden agendas and unknown relatives as referees. They also insisted that the prize money be posted up front and held by an independent third party. The match went fifteen rounds, again, and was also scored as a draw, but this time all agreed the result was fair and the crowd agreed, too. In fact, after the fight, a startled Bullard was greeted in his dressing room by none other than a real Egyptian prince, a first cousin of King Faud himself.
The prince had been in the audience during the bout and he said, “Bullard, your fight was the best that my country has ever seen. Here, buy a drink on me,” at which moment the prince handed the shocked boxer an Egyptian hundred-pound note (worth about $500 US at that time). This “tip” was nearly equal to the money he made for the bout.
Three weeks later, Bullard’s six-month contract with the Claridge was up. He also knew that his boxing days were over: the right hand would not heal, and even gentle sparring told him that he would never again be strong enough to endure any more fifteen-round-plus matches. He had scratched his itch, however, and without any regret he returned to Zelli’s in late spring 1922. He took up with the Paris scene right where he had left off.
* * *
His boxing days may have been over but his “fighting” days were not. Sometimes to his regret, Eugene Bullard’s personality included having a hair-trigger temper and it apparently was almost impossible to control if he had taken one too many drinks. In short, he was never hesitant to use his fists to settle a dispute or a slight, especially so if it concerned race.
William Bullard had been absolutely right that the racial atmosphere in France in the early twentieth century was much different, and more accommodating, than what existed in contemporary America. Gene Bullard was able to take advantage of the liberality and fraternity of his French compatriots and fellow citizens. The atmosphere changed somewhat after the Great War but not because attitudes in France had morphed but because tens of thousands of “Sammies” (a nickname for the Americans), both black and white, had decided to stay in France and not go back to the States. In addition, the popularity of the postwar Paris art, music, and cultural scene attracted hundreds of thousands more Americans to spend their vacations and money in France.
Many of those who stayed or came to splurge brought their American-born prejudices with them. It rankled many Americans to see a black man walking down the Champs-Élysées with a white girl on his arm. It bothered Southern white men, in particular, to see Caucasian girls snuggling up or dancing with Negro men in the clubs. Accepted in France or not, there were white men in cafés along the boulevards who railed against the fact that these establishments did not have “coloreds only” sections, just like back home in good ol’ Mississippi (and elsewhere in the South).
Bullard took these encroaching attitudes particularly hard because he was not just a true American but also a citizen hero of France. He was rooted in both cultures and had to defend each. Nothing represented his dilemma more than an ugly incident that occurred on New Year’s Eve, 1922.
This extraordinary headline ran in the Chicago Tribune’s Paris Edition on January 2, 1923: “American Felled by Negro Armed with Brass Slug.” The smaller, secondary headline beneath said: “Hit As He and British Officer Escorted a Woman.” By “brass slug” the paper meant a set of “brass knuckles.”
The American was identified as Harry McClellan of Stockton, California, and he was accompanied by Lieutenant Ronald Reuter of the British Army. Reuter was a nephew of Marguerite, Baroness de Reuter, who, in turn, was the sister-in-law of James Gordon Bennett Jr., publisher of the New York Herald and the Paris Herald, who had died four years earlier. The men had been staying in the Baroness’s palatial Paris town house and had been, on that New Year’s Eve, out for a grand night on the town, with lady friends.
The story went that the McClellan/Reuter party was finishing a late-night dinner at a luxe restaurant on rue Daunou, had exited, and were immediately accosted by a rowdy group of “drunken Negroes.” The article further stated that “Dick” Bullard, identified as a “former jazz band drummer,” roughed up McClellan for no apparent reason. McClellan, reportedly, pushed back, at which time Bullard donned a set of brass knuckles and coldcocked McClellan. Other Negroes supposedly went after Reuter, knocking him down and trying to beat him up. The gendarmes soon arrived, and everyone was hauled off to the nearest precinct house.
The Tribune then related that “Dick Bullard” managed to present papers identifying himself as a “hero of France” from the recent war, so the French police let him go and didn’t even bother to search him for the brass knuckles.
The article then concluded, astonishingly, with this:
Dozens of Negroes are now said to be infesting Montmartre. It was pointed out by Americans yesterday that American authorities here, cooperating with the police, could see to it that many of these men, nearly all of whom have prison records, were deported.
Bullard was in the Foreign Legion for a time during the war but obtained a transfer to aviation rather than go into the trenches. He was shifted out of aviation on the grounds that he declined to fly. Since the armistice he has frequented Montmartre occasionally playing in jazz bands.
A few salient facts: the Tribune’s Paris edition had been established in 1917 to cater to the doughboys pouring into France by the hundreds of thousands. It continued to report to the crowd that stayed behind after the war as well as the huge influx of American tourists. Many in this Parisian subculture wanted the news reported the way it would be reported back home. That meant, in this case, that the “Negroes” became the outrageous aggressors, the possessors of brass knuckles, who “infested”—like vermin—the streets of Paris looking for trouble. The additional comments about “prison records” and “deportations” were used for sensational effect and the aspersions about Eugene Bullard and his war record were clearly beyond the pale. The French would have howled, knowing Gene as they did, but Americans knew little to nothing about his exploits, which were never published in any American press, North or South, during the war, except for the one brief mention in the NAACP newspaper, The Crisis, in 1918 (cited earlier).
A second and much more accurate account was reported by Albert Curtis, an African American former soldier who was a correspondent for the Chicago Defender. (Founded in 1905, it was considered, at the time, and until well after World War II, one of the most reliable and essential publications in African American journalism.) Bullard had been dining at Ciro’s restaurant late on New Year’s Eve in the company of several black friends. A French woman at an adjacent table struck up a conversation with him, having overheard his friends talking about some of his exploits during the war. This unidentified woman was apparently McClellan’s companion for the evening.
McClellan took exception to Bullard’s attention to his lady friend and loudly shouted out that he didn’t want “any damn nigger talking to women in his company.”
Bullard’s short, wine-soaked fuse was lit. He called the man out, inviting him into the street in front of Ciro’s. McClellan took a swing, which Bullard easily sidestepped, and then his boxing skill took over. It was no contest—and no brass knuckles needed. McClellan’s pal, Reuter, took no part in the fight. When the police arrived, it was already over. Bullard, apparently well-known to the officers who responded, was immediately let go. McClellan and Reuter were hauled off to jail, where they spent the rest of the night.
With Reuter’s newspaper connections (he was, indeed, related not only to the New York Hera
ld but also the Reuter’s News Service) it was easy to get the slanted and totally biased story planted. What neither McClellan nor Reuter counted on, however, was the immediate intervention, once again, of Bullard’s old friend, Henri-Robert. Bullard sued, and the attorney won an easy victory on his behalf. Instead of money damages for libel, the plaintiff wanted and won the right to have his side of the story printed in the Tribune, on the front page, and in the same position as the original offending story.
On May 24, 1923, the headline “A Letter From Mssr. Bullard” appeared. The paper gave him plenty of column inches to vent his frustration and correct the record. His approach was threefold: to comment on his military record, then his employment status, and finally on the actual facts of the incident. Bullard then closed with some comments on the sad state of affairs in regard to some white Americans and Negroes in France. All in all, the rebuttal was longer than the original libelous piece.
It was important for Bullard to correct the record, and he did so—mostly. For some strange reason, he identified his mother as an “American,” which she was, but he did not mention that she was also a full-blooded Native American, and he stated incorrectly that his father was from Martinique. He also added that he had “turned down a lieutenant’s commission” offered by the American Air Service in 1917. Bullard knew this was incorrect, and so would have most of his friends. Why make this up? One plausible reason is that he did not wish to expose the prejudice heaped upon him by his countrymen, who had blocked him from getting a commission because of his race.
His letter concluded with the following forceful observations:
To finish with, let me add that I do not know to whom you refer when you speak of deported negroes who infest Montmartre but be sure that you may tell your readers that the pilot aviator, a black man and French, Eugene BULLARD, wounded during the war, cited, who has spilt his blood for his country, and for Justice. Alas! Justice is so often denied to his race, is not among those negroes. It is time to finish with these ridiculous prejudices of colors of People who forget too soon the German danger of yesterday and the German threat of tomorrow.2