David Bowie Made Me Gay

by Darryl W. Bullock

  ‘Tony was instrumental in my going to Chicago the first time,’ Morton revealed to Alan Lomax. ‘Very much to my regret, because there was more money at home. We were very, very good friends and whenever he spotted me coming in the door, he would sing a song he knew I liked – “Pretty Baby”, one of Tony’s great tunes that he wrote in 1913 or 14 and was a million-dollar hit in less than a year.’ Glover Compton, another contemporary of Tony’s who had first encountered him at the Cosmopolitan Club in Louisville, Kentucky in 1904, insisted that he wrote ‘Pretty Baby’ when he was working at the Elite Number Two in 1911. Compton – who also performed with Alberta Hunter in Chicago in the early 1920s – said that his style ‘and the styles of Tony Jackson and Jelly Roll Morton were about the same, but Morton played better without songs (i.e. on instrumental pieces), while Jackson was better with songs’. Compton and Jackson became good friends: Tony called Glover ‘Bill’, and the two of them composed several songs together. Jackson wrote the song ‘You’re Such a Pretty Thing’ for Compton’s wife Nettie Lewis, and the men kept in touch: Compton played at Jackson’s funeral. Once, when Tony sent Glover a photograph of himself with an unidentified male friend, he wrote, ‘That medal you see on my coat I won down here in a contest on the piano’. Morton told a story about how he bested Jackson in a competition: ‘I finally stayed for a battle of music that came up and I won the contest over Tony. That threw me first in line, but, even though I was the winner, I never thought the prize was given to the right party; I thought Tony should have the emblem.’ Roy Carew, writing in The Record Changer in 1943, recalled how Morton ‘told me with considerable pride that he had beaten Tony once in a contest. Jelly Roll said that, as the other contestants were seated on the stage while Tony was playing, he (Jelly) was seated near enough to the piano to keep telling Tony, sotto voce, “You can’t sing now … You can’t sing now.” I don’t know if that affected Tony’s playing any, but Jelly Roll won the contest.’ Perhaps the medal Tony wore so proudly in that photograph was for second place, and Morton’s admission that Jackson should have won the competition was his way of assuaging his guilt.

  It’s thanks to Morton’s Library of Congress recording that we have the only example of Jackson’s original lyrics:

  You can talk about your jelly roll

  But none of them compare with pretty baby

  With pretty baby of mine

  Pretty baby of mine

  Those words might seem pretty tame by today’s standards, but ‘jelly roll’ was a slang term for both the penis and the vulva: Jackson’s words reveal that he was not interested in sex with anyone else, as they could not measure up to what he was getting at home. Although Tony wrote ‘Pretty Baby’ around 1911, the song as it exists today was copyrighted in 1916, is credited to Jackson, Gus Kahn and Egbert Van Alstyne and features very different lyrics to those Jackson first penned. The song was originally about one of Jackson’s male lovers: in his book Vaudeville Old and New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performances in America, Frank Cullen states that the song ‘was inspired by a young male prostitute to whom Jackson was attracted’. The chances are that one cynical line that remains in the sugary confection we now know as ‘Pretty Baby’ – ‘Oh, I want a lovin’ baby and it might as well be you’ – is one of the few phrases to remain from Jackson’s original.

  Kahn and Van Alstyne first heard Jackson performing his version of the song (then, according to Kahn’s son Donald, known as ‘Jelly Roll Rag’) in a black nightclub in Chicago, and they persuaded their publisher to buy it. After forking over the fee (a paragraph in the Xenia Daily Gazette of 15 January 1917, claims that he ‘only received $45 for the great song hit’ and that he was ‘still pounding the piano every night for a few dollars’), Van Alstyne rewrote some of the music, adapting one of his own earlier songs, and Kahn set about cleaning up Jackson’s somewhat bawdy lyrics. The new version of the song first appeared in The Passing Show of 1916 (also known as A World of Pleasure); it later featured in the MGM musical Broadway Rhythm. In the years that followed, Van Alstyne and Khan were often accused of plagiarism, but this is simply not true. Tony was no fool, and it was common practice for songs to be rewritten to suit their purpose. ‘Pretty Baby’ debuted in a musical revue where it would have been wholly unacceptable to use a song that repeatedly used the phrase ‘jelly roll’. Jackson certainly didn’t feel cheated, as he collaborated with the pair again the following year on the song ‘I’ve Been Fiddle-ing’.

  Original sheet music for ‘Pretty Baby’

  One of the many stories about Jackson is that he would not allow his songs to be published, saying that ‘he would burn them before he would give them away for five dollars apiece’19 but this is not borne out by the facts. Following the success of ‘Pretty Baby’, a number of Jackson’s songs were made available as sheet music, including ‘Some Sweet Day’ (first recorded in 1917 by Marion Harris: Louis Armstrong recorded a version in 1933. His version ‘provides a direct link with music performed in New Orleans before the turn of the century,’ according to jazz historian Floyd Levin), ‘Ice and Snow’, ‘Miss Samantha Johnson’s Wedding Day’, ‘I’ve Got ‘em! There Ain’t Nothin’ to That’, ‘Waiting at the Old Church Door’, ‘I’m Cert’ny Gonna See ‘bout That’ (recorded by Fats Waller) and ‘Why Keep Me Waiting So Long?’ (which was popularised by Sophie Tucker). ‘Why Keep Me Waiting So Long?’ is the story of young Mandy Brown, a girl who is desperate to understand why her beau refuses to make love to her when her ‘poor heart cries out for loving, good and strong’. Was Tony alluding to his own sexual desires in his lyrics?

  Unfortunately, Tony Jackson never recorded, and sadly it appears that no examples of his playing have been preserved for posterity on piano rolls, unlike that of fellow ragtime maestro Scott Joplin. However, several of Jackson’s tunes were transcribed for player piano in 1916 by Jackson’s contemporary, the Chicago-based pianist Charley Straight, and listening to these ‘recordings’ is probably the closest any of us will ever get to experiencing Tony’s style. While he may not have recorded the song himself, ‘Pretty Baby’ became a jazz standard and has been recorded by dozens of acts from the Emerson Military Band and Billy Murray (who released the first recorded versions of the song in 1916), through to Al Jolson, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Doris Day and Brenda Lee. Murray, one of the most popular singers of the early recording era, deserves special mention for having recorded the song ‘Honey Boy’ in 1907, a song about a girl missing her sailor boyfriend which, when sung by a male vocalist, takes on a whole new meaning.

  By 1917, Jackson was back in Storyville, playing piano in a house owned by the opera loving and cornet-playing Madame Antonia Gonzalez when the US Navy – concerned at the open availability of prostitution to its young sailors – closed the area down for good. ‘Some sailors on leave got mixed up in a fight and two of them were killed. The navy started a war on Storyville,’ wrote Louis Armstrong in his autobiography Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans. ‘The police began to raid all the houses and cabarets. It sure was a sad scene to watch the law run all those people out of Storyville. They reminded me of a gang of refugees. Some of them had spent the best part of their lives there. I have never seen such weeping and carrying-on.’20 Tony Jackson packed up his few belongings and returned to Bronzeville: Lulu White and her girls moved to Bienville Street, a hovel compared with her former palace of passion, where she was regularly arrested and charged with ‘operating a disorderly house’. ‘Chicago was different,’ recalled jazz clarinettist Willie Humphries, who grew up around the musicians of Storyville and – like countless others – blew into the Windy City after the red-light district was forced to clean up its act. ‘It was wide open. We took root there. [But] The District’s where we learned to play the music that could corrupt the angels.’21

  In August 1919 – the year that the city saw its worst race riots after 17-year-old Eugene Williams was killed by a hostile crowd of whites – Jackson was arrested in connection with a spate of recent murd
ers on the South Side of Chicago. He was released without charge, but life in Chicago was becoming tougher: a stray bullet killed Alberta Hunter’s accompanist and she fled for New York. The introduction of prohibition in January 1920 – and the criminal activity, illegal underground drinking establishments and speakeasies that went hand-in-hand with the ban on the sale of alcohol – only made the city even more difficult to get by in, especially for a black man who was openly homosexual.

  Although he was not yet 40, Jackson’s health was in steep decline. On 17 February 1921, knowing full well that the end was near, some of his friends held a fundraising benefit for him. The All Star Tony Jackson Testimonial took place at the Dreamland Café on South State Street, Chicago, arranged ‘as a proper and fitting demonstration of their loyalty and friendship’ to raise enough money to send Jackson on ‘a long and much needed vacation at Hot Springs’. The benefit, which raised $325, all of it handed over to Jackson,22 featured ‘one of the greatest programs ever arranged, in which the leading cabaret and vaudeville stars, as well as several boxers and wrestlers, participated’.23 Unlike many other jazz musicians, Tony Jackson was not interested in drugs, however he was a heavy drinker (in Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya Alberta Hunter is quoted as saying, ‘he always had a drink on the piano – always!’), and there’s no way of knowing what damage illicit liquor was doing to his already weak body. Jackson died in April 1921; the official line is that his rather bizarre end came as the result of a seizure after suffering ‘eight weeks of the hiccups which the efforts of doctors could not relieve’. Several accounts state that he was also suffering from the ravages of syphilis.

  Outside the recollections of Carew and Morton, Tony Jackson would have been wiped from history had it not been for the many recordings of his most popular song. In 1978 ‘Pretty Baby’ provided the inspiration for the Louis Malle film of the same name, with the director describing Jackson as ‘a very extravagant, very brilliant, and quite extraordinary character’.24 The film, which outraged audiences by having a 12-year-old Brooke Shields portray Violet, a child prostitute working in a New Orleans brothel, featured Antonio Fargas (star of TV’s Starsky and Hutch) as Professor, a whorehouse piano player loosely based on Tony. In 2008, the year that playwright Clare Brown debuted Don’t You Leave Me Here, a dramatisation of the relationship between Tony and Jelly Roll, ‘Pretty Baby’ was used in the British TV soap EastEnders, during a heartbreaking tour de force by the actress June Brown.

  ‘Tony was a versatile performer,’ theatre manager Shep Allen told George W. Kay (in an interview for Jazz Journal magazine, February 1963). ‘As a singer, he sounded something like Nat “King” Cole but he had more power and greater range. He could reach very high notes without getting a falsetto. He could play a great piano and he could play anything.’ His influence on jazz, and on the musicians coming out of New Orleans and Chicago, is immeasurable: Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and many, many more owe him a huge debt. ‘People believe Louis Armstrong originated scat,’ Morton told Lomax. ‘I must take that credit away from him, because I know better. Tony Jackson and myself were using scat for novelty back in 1906 and 1907 when Louis Armstrong was still in the orphans’ home.’25 ‘Pretty Baby’ may be the only song people remember, but many others have been attributed to him, including ‘Michigan Water Blues’ and ‘The Naked Dance’ (both recorded by Morton). Morton may have described him as ‘real dark and not a bit good-looking,’ but, as Carrie the prostitute and jazz trumpeter Bunk Johnson noted, Tony was ‘dicty’, and the way he dressed came to define the archetypical image of the ragtime pianist, with his bowler hat, diamond pin, waistcoat and sleeve garters. In his later years, Tony often performed, as if a concert pianist, in a dinner jacket and black tie, and it was said of other jazz pianists that if you couldn’t play like Jackson then you could at least look like him.

  In 2011, some 90 years after his death, Tony Jackson was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame. He was honoured for his musical contributions and for living ‘as an openly gay man when that was rare. His influence on Chicago’s music scene was immense [and he] helped to lay the foundation for Chicago’s reputation as a jazz capital.’1

  Ma Rainey

  CHAPTER 3

  Bull Dyker Blues

  ‘I went out last night with a crowd of my friends. They must’ve been women, cause I don’t like no men’

  ‘Prove it on Me Blues’ by Ma Rainey

  Written histories have tended to straightwash the stories of the female pioneers of the blues, yet many of these women were either lesbian or bisexual, and sang openly and joyously about having sex with other women. Around the time that Tony Jackson wrote ‘Pretty Baby’, two women who were instrumental in popularising the blues had their first encounter. Bessie Smith was just 14 (some reports say she was as young as 11) when she first met Gertrude ‘Ma’ Rainey, but the older and more experienced woman quickly became her mentor, instructor and – more than likely – her lover, as Rainey’s guitar player Sam Chatmon revealed.2 Both women were bisexual and did not care who knew, although both would marry men who would exert a massive influence on their lives and careers.

  With its roots in African American work songs and European folk music, from its earliest days the blues included elements of spirituals, work songs and storytelling ballads. Emerging towards the end of the nineteenth century, the songs were originally performed by one singer accompanying themselves on guitar or banjo, or by a singer accompanied by a pianist. With raw, simple lyrics full of emotion, blues songs dwelt on love and loss, with singers recounting tales of loneliness and injustice, of hard-done-by women and their cheating men. Named, if you believe her own story, by Ma Rainey sometime around 1902, blues is the music of the oppressed, of the experiences of black people at a time when they were considered by many to be second-class citizens. With the majority of singers and musicians all but illiterate, these songs were passed orally from musician to musician, adapted and improved along the way, with ribald slang and double entendres often used to get the far more risqué meaning of many of the songs past censors. The blues quickly became the most listened-to music (with the possible exception of gospel) by black audiences. ‘The Blues,’ poet, novelist and playwright Langston Hughes wrote in his 1927 collection Fine Clothes to the Jew, ‘unlike the spirituals, have a strict poetic pattern: one long line repeated and a third line to rhyme with the first two. Sometimes the second line in repetition is slightly changed, and sometimes, but very seldom, it is omitted. The mood of the Blues is almost always despondency, but when they are sung, people laugh.’3

  Hughes is describing the 12-bar, call-and-response music most of us recognise as the blues, yet the genre also encompasses folk-blues, country-blues, urban and electric blues. Although it grew from the cotton fields of the South this music developed in northern cities: in New York (specifically around Harlem), in Detroit where the production lines of the motor manufacturers desperately needed workers, and in Chicago alongside jazz. It was the pop music of its day, and its stars – far from the ragged minstrel described by W. C. Handy in his autobiography Father of the Blues – were well-regarded and occasionally highly paid.

  At the end of the nineteenth and in the first decades of the twentieth century, Harlem had become one of the chief destinations for black migrants from around the US and a centre for African American culture. The Harlem Renaissance was fuelled by black intellectuals, including writers, artists, musicians, photographers and poets – many of them gay (like Langston Hughes), lesbian or bisexual – who filled the formerly white, middle-class district. As writer and painter Richard Bruce Nugent put it, ‘Harlem was very much like a village. People did what they wanted to do with whom they wanted to do it … You just did what you wanted to do. Nobody was in the closet. There wasn’t any closet.’4

  The antics of Harlem’s lesbians provided fuel for gossip writers, including Archie Seale, whose Man About Harlem column often featured salacious – and anonymous – stories of
the area’s ladies, and Geraldyn Dismond, a reporter on the African American paper the Inter-State Tattler.

  Some venues in the notorious Jungle Alley district, including the world-famous Cotton Club, only welcomed white audiences even though they featured many of the most popular black entertainers of the day, among them Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong (Bessie Smith played there, while on the comeback trail, in 1935). Photographer and writer Carl Van Vechten was famously turned away from the Cotton Club because the party he arrived with was racially mixed; he vowed to boycott the club until black patrons could hear Ethel Waters singing there. Yet although racism, segregation and bigotry was rife throughout the country – even among the many black Americans who aspired to join the middle classes – for the most part, gay men, lesbians and bisexuals were an accepted part of the Harlem scene. Waters, who began her recording career in 1921 with the jazz number ‘The New York Glide’, but was signed as a blues singer by The Aeolian Record Company when they launched their race records line in July 1923,5 had been a fixture in New York since the beginning of the 1920s and was often seen fighting in public with whoever was her girlfriend at the time. For many years she lived openly with her lover, the dancer Ethel Williams, a relationship that led to them being nicknamed The Two Ethels. The hugely popular Drag Balls, which had thrived underground for more than three decades and had provided a haven for people of all races and all sexual persuasions, became more prominent. Often referred to disparagingly as the Faggot Ball (the first appearance of the word ‘faggot’ in print came in the sentence ‘All the fagots (sissys) [sic] will be dressed in drag at the ball tonight,’ in Jackson and Hellyer’s 1914 book A Vocabulary of Criminal Slang), one such event was held annually at the Savoy Ballroom and attracted many high-society voyeurs, black and white, gay and straight, among them Van Vechten, the novelist Max Ewing and the ‘poet laureate of Harlem’ Langston Hughes. Harlem’s Renaissance Ballroom and Casino hosted the Hamilton Lodge’s annual masquerade, which began in the 1890s and was infamous for the number of both white and black men dressed as women: ‘It seems that many men of the class generally known as “fairies”, and many Bohemians from the Greenwich Village section took the occasion to mask as women for this affair. They appeared to make up at least fifty per cent of the 1,500 people who packed the casino, and in their gorgeous evening gowns, wigs and powdered faces were hard to distinguish from many of the women,’ reported the New York Age.6 By the middle of the 1930s, the Hamilton Lodge ball had moved to the Rockland Palace, a building more suitable for its ever-growing attendance. As Brevities (formerly known as Broadway Brevities), the scandal sheet that called itself ‘America’s first national tabloid weekly’ crowed: ‘6,000 crowd huge hall as queer men and women dance … crowds of spectators gather to witness the horrible orgies of the perverted. Stern men and simpering women who show the marks of passion make up the crowd. Appearances are deceiving. Most of the “women” in attendance at the orgies are men in disguise. A majority of the people wearing tuxedoes are female.’7 ‘Harlem is the one place that is gay and delightful however dull and depressing the downtown regions may be,’ Max Ewing wrote in a letter to his parents. ‘Nothing affects the vitality and the freshness of Harlem’.8