Swingin’ on Central Avenue: African American Jazz in Los Angeles by Peter Vacher (2015)

Just as New York had 42nd Street as the most important address if you wanted to play or hear first-rate jazz music in the 1930s, Los Angeles had Central Avenue. There, shortly before WWII, the African-American community significantly expanded due to the arrival of many musicians from Chicago and the southwest. This was a time when neither the sound nor the word „bebop“ was ever uttered; and big bands and large horn sections dominated the style of jazz.

Over a period of seven years, author Vacher has interviewed, researched and revisited the band personnel on the western coast, responsible for an early and individual jazz style. He talked to L.A. sidemen Andy Blakeney, John Richard Ewing, Gideon Honore, Betty Hall Jones, Chester Lane, Nathaniel McFay, Jack McVea, McLure “Red Mack” Morris, George Orendorff, Caughey Roberts Jr., Red Minor Robinson, Jesse Sailes, Chuck Thomas and others.

Actually, interview compilations that focus on jazz musicians are not exactly a new idea. There are dozens of those volumes. So by now, one should not expect groundbreaking news on famous bandleaders and arrangers.
This volume, however, is dedicated to those „in the background“ who provided solid instrumental backing but hardly ever saw their own names on the billboards. So this idea is new. The main attractions of the title in my eyes are the innumerable details we learn about club life, booking, the mob venues, band histories, segregation policies, recording locations and the micro network that kept music on Central Avenue alive. Since for black musicians it often was the only location where they could find work, playing music for white audiences.
Additionally, we learn about the many other daytime jobs that kept the black amateur musicians alive when there were no gigs to play, so we get some idea of the circumstances of working life in pre-war Los Angeles. So do not expect to find many household interviewees in the book. Actually, I could not recall one single name.

Music historian Peter Vacher has brought that time back into memory and with his sixteen chapters of oral history, some gaps in the musical history of California could be closed. While the history of New York jazz is documented very detailed, the early years of jazz in California – the pre-war years – could use some more and fresh data. Vacher has been interviewing musicians since the late 1950s and contributed countless pieces on jazz to the London Guardian.

Review by Dr. A. Ebert © 2015

Peter Vacher. Swingin’ on Central Avenue: African American Jazz in Los Angeles. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015, 374 p.