It is one of the sad paradoxes in jazz history that for almost as long as this American music has existed, many of its foremost figures have chosen to live in exile. From Sidney Bechet in the 1920’s to Johnny Griffin in the 1980’s, these jazz expatriates acted out of a sense of imperative and necessity – the necessity to work, the necessity to be accepted as an artist, the necessity to be treated as a human being. Europe also offered pronounced commercial advantages, particularly when the American jazz scene began wilting under the assault of rock-and-roll.

Leaving one’s own country is never easy, and for a jazz musician it meant losing contact not only with friends and family but the social, racial and musicological well-springs of the sound.

For the jazz expatriates, life in Europe also proved rather less than idyllic. Many musicians had discovered that for all that recommended Europe, life on the Continent came at the price of dislocation, the loss of a sense of “home”. Some also learned that racism existed east as well as west of the Atlantic. 

Few of the jazz musicians who moved to Europe initially intended to do so. Most visited the Continent for limited tours and, finding an appreciative atmosphere, decided to stay. From overseas, the problems of America stood in painfully clear relief.

American jazz history abounds in racial horror stories from both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. ” ‘Round Midnight” alludes to the World War II court-martial of Lester Young, an action widely regarded as retribution for his marriage to a white woman. While touring with the Artie Shaw band, Billie Holiday was ordered to use the service elevator in the group’s hotel. The trumpeter Miles Davis, like Bud Powell, received an infamous beating by the police.

Yet many musicians returned to the U.S. Dexter Gordon, who was such a hero in Denmark that the locals dubbed him ”The King of Copenhagen,” missed the American black community. ”The happiest moments in Europe,” he said, ”were when you’d run into other cats and bands and someone would say, ‘Hey, you long, tall. . .’ Or the get-togethers when someone would get a care package from home – red beans and greens and grits. Just that taste of home.”

Music: From 1986, Dexter Gordon with “’Round Midnight.”

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Art Blakey’s The Freedom Rider is not only a testament to the symbiotic relationship between jazz and the civil rights movement. It’s a sonic rallying cry to stand and protest. Recorded in 1961 for Blue Note Records, this album is a rhythmic and sonic history lesson encapsulating an era fueled by the activism required to effect societal change.

In 1961, a group of courageous people called the Freedom Riders risked life and limb, challenging segregation in the Deep South with their model of nonviolent resistance and strategic planning. They rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. The Freedom Riders challenged this status quo by riding interstate buses in the South in mixed racial groups to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation in seating.

The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American civil rights movement, and called national attention to the disregard for the federal law and the local violence used to enforce segregation in the south. Police arrested riders for trespassing, unlawful assembly, violating state and local Jim Crow laws, and other alleged offenses, but often they first let white mobs of counter-protestors attack the riders without intervention. In some places, such as Birmingham, Alabama, the police cooperated with Ku Klux Klan chapters and other white people opposing the actions and allowed mobs to attack the riders.

Blakey’s percussive narrative pays homage to their resilience as he leads his world-class band to join him in a call to action that still resonates decades later. Trumpeter Lee Morgan, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Bobby Timmons, and bassist Jymie Merritt are all in lockstep with Blakey. Blakey sounds more emotionally invested here than usual because he literally had skin in the game. Art Blakey was beaten badly by police in a racially charged confrontation while on tour during the 1940s, requiring surgery and the placement of a steel plate in his head. This record wasn’t just musical or political—it was personal. 

The Freedom Rider not only commemorates a pivotal historical movement but also underscores the enduring power of music as a vehicle for social change. It’s a reflection on the past that can inspire future generations, and a reminder that the movement isn’t over, and neither is the fight. And that as long as there’s rhythm, there’s resistance. 

Music: From 1961, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers “The Freedom Rider.”

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In the 1930s, Midtown Manhattan clubs were packed with the bourgeoisie, tuxes and evening gowns, tables and banquettes of rich white people drinking champagne, often entertained by Black performers borrowed from the Harlem music scene.

It was putting on the ritz, it was dancing cheek to cheek. ‘Same-colored’ cheeks.

It was the embodiment of the phrase ‘café society‘, coined by the one of the scene’s wittier celebrities Claire Booth Luce, a darling toast of Broadway.

But what would become one of the New York music world’s most fertile spots for musical innovation was far, far downtown from the ‘real’ nightlife — at 1 Sheridan Square in the West Village.

Café Society was a New York City nightclub open from 1938 to 1948 on Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village. It was managed by New Jersey shoe salesman Barney Josephson. Over the course of its ten-year run — and that of a second location, placed at 58th and Park — Josephson and his partners would host dozens of soon-to-be jazz stars, in many cases paving the way to their success. Josephson created the club to showcase African American talent and to be an American version of the political cabarets he had seen in Europe. As well as running the first racially integrated night club in the United States, Josephson chose the name to mock the rich patrons of more upscale nightclubs. Josephson trademarked the name Café Society, and he also advertised the club as “The Wrong Place for the Right People”.

The club prided itself on treating black and white customers equally, unlike many venues, such as the Cotton Club, which featured black performers but barred black customers except for prominent black people in the entertainment industry. The club featured many of the greatest black musicians of the day, often imposing a strongly political bent. Billie Holiday first sang “Strange Fruit” there; at Josephson’s insistence, she closed her set with this song, leaving the stage without taking any encores, so that the audience would be left to think about the meaning of the song. Lena Horne was persuaded to stop singing “When it’s Sleepy Time Down South”, Pearl Bailey was fired for being “too much of an Uncle Tom”, and Carol Channing was fired for an impersonation of Ethel Waters.

Relying on the keen musical judgment of John Hammond, the club’s “unofficial music director”, Josephson helped launch the careers of Ruth Brown, Lena Horne, Hazel Scott, Pete Johnson, Albert Ammons, Big Joe Turner, and Sarah Vaughan.

Josephson’s club was the scene of numerous political events and fundraisers, often for left-wing causes, both during and after World War II. In 1947, Josephson’s brother Leon Josephson was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which led to hostile comments from columnists Westbrook Pegler and Walter Winchell. The FBI even staked out the club, photographing patrons, and Hoover soon ‘opened a file’ on Barney himself. Both locations of Café Society were closed by 1950.

But Josephson managed to pick himself up and soon opened another influential downtown jazz club, the Cookery, which stayed open into the 1980s.

Music: From 1940, Joe Sullivan and His Cafe Society Orchestra with “Solitude.”

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