TIme to ditch Lassus Trombone

[yeodoug]

As readers of trombonechat.com know, I post to this forum very infrequently. This is post number 21 from me in over two years since I joined the club. My life is full and happily busy with performances, teaching, writing, travel, and the joy of living near our grandchildren. I don’t use social media. Most of my posts to trombonechat.com have been to ask questions of the community to help inform some of my research projects. I have not joined in on this discussion about Henry Fillmore’s The Trombone Family since what I have to say on the subject has already been said in the several articles I have recently published on my blog. Others have been directing the conversation here.

So, I won't comment further on the issues that I brought up in my articles. But I thought, particularly for the benefit of our young members (and perhaps some others), I would add a few thoughts that might answer a question that some might have. That is:

“What qualifies Douglas Yeo to make statements about Henry Fillmore, Lassus Trombone, and the intersection of race/racism on music?”

That’s a really good question.

First, anyone can have an opinion about anything. One does not need to be an “expert” to have an opinion.

Having an opinion is fine. Having a well-considered, well-thought out, well-articulated opinion is even better. But having extensive knowledge that informs that opinion helps one offer a little more to any discussion. A little bit about how I came to learn what I know about The Trombone Family and the views I have expressed on race, racism, and minstrelsy might be helpful to others who, as they travel life’s path, find subjects that interest them that they may wish to comment upon with an informed view.

Some on this forum know about my long career as a trombonist and educator. Some may also know of my many years of work as an historian, researcher, and author. The ITA Journal has published many of my articles that have been the product of many years of research. Among them include (with a few links):

A Pictorial History of Low Brass Players in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1887-1986
International Trombone Association Journal, Volume XIV, Number 4, Fall 1986.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_ITA ... s_1986.pdf

Edward Kleinhammer: A Life and Legacy Remembered
International Trombone Association Journal, Vol. 42, No. 2, April 2014.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_ITA ... ribute.pdf

Evolution: The Double-Valve Bass Trombone
International Trombone Association Journal, Vol. 23, No. 3, July 2015.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_ITA ... ombone.pdf

Take It, Big Chief: An Appreciation of Russell Moore
International Trombone Association Journal, Vol. 45, No. 3, July 2017.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_ITA ... _Moore.pdf

Finding Marguerite Dufay
International Trombone Association Journal, Vol. 47, No. 1, January 2019

Keith Brown: Renaissance Man
International Trombone Association Journal, Vol. 47, No. 3, July 2019.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_ITA ... ribute.pdf

These articles all began because I had an interest in the subject. From interest came a motivation to learn more which lead to research. Not pawing through pages of Google search pages, but research in libraries and archives, conducting interviews with others, asking questions. None of these articles were what the academy refers to as “peer reviewed.” A peer reviewed article or book is one that is not published until the publisher convenes a panel of experts, known as “referees,” to review the author’s work. The selection of the referees is an important part of the process, and referees can and should be very tough on an author. They check an author’s sources, review the author’s presentation of factual material, and ensure the publication is factually accurate. The ITA Journal is not peer-reviewed, but in my research articles that it has published, I have conducted my research and writing in the same way I do for my peer-reviewed publications. A look at the articles mentioned above will show that I often have a long list of people to thank who informed my research and writing. Many of my articles are copiously footnoted to give my sourcing.

In addition to my many articles for the ITA Journal and many other journals and magazines, I have also had many peer reviewed articles, dictionary entries, and book chapters published. These have been rigorously vetted by peer referees. Each went through multiple revisions and were accepted for publication. These include:

Serpentists in Charles Wild’s Choir of the Cathedral of Amiens, c. 1826.
Historic Brass SocietyJournal, Volume 13, 2001.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_HBS ... s_2001.pdf

A Good Old Note: The Serpent in Thomas Hardy’s World and Works.
The Hardy Review (Journal of the Thomas Hardy Association), Volume XIII, Number 1, Spring 2011. [This is the print version of a paper I presented at a conference at Yale University.]
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_Ser ... w_2011.pdf

Serpents in Boston: The Museum of Fine Arts and Boston Symphony Orchestra Collections
Galpin Society Journal, Volume LXV, March 2012.

Book chapters: The Serpent in England: Evolution and Design, and The Serpent in England, Context, Decline and Revival
Florence Gétreau, editor, Le serpent: itinéaires passés et présents. CNRS Editions, 2013. [This is the print version of a paper I presented at a conference in Paris.]

Serpent
Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Second edition. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Buccin
Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Second edition. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Homer Rodeheaver: Reverend Trombone
Historic Brass Society Journal. Vol. 27, 2015.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_HBS ... r_2015.pdf

Book chapter: Marches and Divertimenti: Haydn and the Serpent
Monica Lustig, editor, Der Zink – Geschichte, Instrumente und Bauweise. Michaelsteiner Konferenzberichte Band 79, 2015. [This is the print version of a paper I presented at a conference in Michaelstein, Germany.]

Concurrent with these kinds of research projects has been my work on several book projects for major publishers. Two are in progress:

The Trombone Book
Oxford University Press

An Illustrated Dictionary for the Modern Trombone, Euphonium, and Tuba Player
Rowman & Littlefield

Another book is now in production for publication in spring 2021:

Homer Rodeheaver and the Rise of the Gospel Music Industry (coauthored with Kevin Mungons)
University of Illinois Press

And it is my work on this book on Homer Rodeheaver that informed, in large part, my recent articles about Henry Fillmore, The Trombone Family, minstrelsy, and race.


Homer Rodeheaver with his Lyon & Healy trombone, c. 1908.

Rodeheaver is an interesting subject for a biography. I began researching him in 2012 after I became aware of him and his connection to the trombone. After all, the man played the trombone in front of over 100 million people during his lifetime (1880-1955). I wanted to know more about him. As I learned more, I thought about writing an article about Rodeheaver for the Historic Brass Society Journal. In the course of my research—actually when I was trying to track down a copy of an endorsement Rodeheaver had made for Conn trombones—I contacted my friend, Margaret Downie Banks, Associate Director of the National Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota. With the museum’s large collection of Conn instruments and related materials, she was very helpful. But she also mentioned that I might want to contact someone who had been asking her some questions about Rodeheaver for a number of years. That led me to connect with Kevin Mungons who had been researching Rodeheaver for a long-planned book project. As we got to know each other, we learned that we had a lot of shared interests (Kevin is also a trombone player), and we thought we might put our heads together (using the old "two heads are better than one" idea) and co-author a biography of Homer Rodeheaver. Even before the publication of my peer-reviewed article about Rodeheaver in the Historic Brass Society Journal—the article focused on Rodeheaver’s work as a trombone player and trombone icon, although it touched on other aspects of his life and work—we began working write a book. Our book proposal was accepted by University of Illinois Press and several years and 130,000 words later, we had a manuscript to submit to the Press.

Here is our abstract for the book:

Homer Rodeheaver rose to national prominence in the early 20th century as the trombone-playing songleader for Billy Sunday. For twenty years they captured attention with city-wide revival meetings, a mix of sincere devotion, popular religion, and modern marketing methods. In an era when music styles were emerging as marketable genres, Rodeheaver created a brand of gospel music that cast an enormous influence on popular music. Borrowing from evangelical hymns, African American spirituals, and popular music, he built a publishing empire in Chicago, selling hymnals as a way to encourage community singing. When tabernacle revivalism declined after World War I, Rodeheaver shifted to other ventures, bolstered by his personal popularity in a growing celebrity culture. He started the first gospel record label in 1920, then shifted to radio, where his community sing programs ran on three national networks. Near the end of his life, he strongly influenced Billy Graham and Cliff Barrows, the next generation of evangelical revivalists.

The authors explore the birth of the commercial Christian music industry and its roots in congregational singing—its early rise as a communal, populist form that would later divide into racial and regional distinctions known as southern gospel and black gospel. As the first major biography of Homer Rodeheaver, the book explores the impact of racial segregation, the influence of technology, and the consequences of commercial Christian music.

As I mentioned above, Rodeheaver is an interesting subject. He and Henry Fillmore were good friends; one can read a little about their friendship and activities together on a revival tour when the two of them were young men in Paul Bierley’s biography of Fillmore, Hallelujah Trombone! The Story of Henry Fillmore (Columbus: Integrity Press, 1982), 24-26. Fillmore later published an arrangement of gospel songs to which Rodeheaver owned the copyright, Billy Sunday’s Successful Songs (Cincinnati: Fillmore Brothers, 1916). Kevin interviewed Bierley in the course of our research for this book (Bierley died in 2016).

Rodeheaver’s life had complex intersections with African Americans and the subject of race. In the course of our research, I did a deep dive into this, collecting over 100 books that informed my knowledge of African American spirituals, black and white gospel music, race records, coon songs, minstrelsy, blackface, racial segregation, lynching, and the Ku Klux Klan. Add to that hundreds of newspaper articles, peer reviewed articles, journal articles (some dating back to the 1880s), recordings, and interviews. And many hundreds of hours in libraries and archives, digging through piles of papers and photographs. Kevin did the same, and together, we amassed a large library of materials. Why did I do this, you might ask? Because all of these subjects were tied up in Rodeheaver’s life. As we write in our abstract for two of the book’s chapters:

Chapter 7: Spirituals and Minstrelsy
The African American spiritual emerged as a devotional and performance idiom in the early twentieth century, promoted in black and white communities and churches through the work of Jubilee Singers, and in secular and sacred contexts. Homer Rodeheaver played an important role in their early commercial history by transcribing performances of spirituals for publication in his hymnals, championing them in evangelistic meetings, and recording them with black gospel singing groups. The authors explore Rodeheaver’s quest for authenticity in spirituals, their transformative religious meaning, their connection to minstrelsy, and their influence on their development American popular music, Rodeheaver’s personal interest in black culture is also examined through his performances of the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, presented in dialect and blackface.

Chapter 8: Jim Crow Revivalism Meets the Klan
Racial segregation and Jim Crow affected nearly every aspect of American life in the 1920s, including revivalism. When southern audiences demanded segregated tabernacle meetings, Billy Sunday and Homer Rodeheaver tried to ameliorate the situation by meeting with black ministers and organizing choirs from black churches. But despite Sunday and Rodeheaver’s fame for preaching against every form of sin, they were noticeably silent on racism. Their policy of welcoming every group to the tabernacle sometimes included delegations from the Ku Klux Klan, who gave Sunday donations that he never refused. Despite Rodeheaver’s genuinely harmonious relationships with African Americans and his lifelong promotion of the spirituals, his far-flung business interests created awkward contradictions. His Chicago studio made custom recordings for the Klan, including a parody of Rodeheaver’s “The Old Rugged Cross” with KKK lyrics, “The Bright Fiery Cross.”

As you can see, I’ve been immersed in this for the last several years. It was in the course of my research about Fillmore, Rodeheaver, and various subjects relating to race that I uncovered the racist advertisements for Fillmore’s The Trombone Family. The subject is fraught with complexity, and Kevin and I worked to untangle some of it. This untangling led to conversations with leading voices—both academic and popular, both white and black—on the subjects, and the many sources we collected allowed us to address Rodeheaver’s intersection with race with an informed view. It became clear to us that many scholars who have made assumptions about some of these issues did not take into account important primary source materials that are in some cases over 150 years old. We are now living in a golden age of research tools, and so many materials are now available to us that were not available in the past. We learned that it is not enough to learn what “the experts” say about issues. It was important to dig deeply to discover previously overlooked sources and learn what had been said by voices that had been silenced.

When we completed our manuscript, the three peer referees did their work. We then worked to answer their questions, defend our research, gather new information, and engage in a rewrite that addressed their comments and those of our editor. The revised manuscript went back out for peer review once again, and after working through their comments, our manuscript was presented to the faculty review board for University of Illinois Press. With their approval, the book has now moved into production with a planned publication date of sometime in spring 2021.

I hope that our young readers, and perhaps some who are not so young, are seeing that the matter of research is a complex, time-consuming enterprise. One does not sit down and write about complicated, thorny subjects without first having done one’s homework. Writing a peer-reviewed article or book is not like writing a term paper on “My Summer Vacation.” Rigorous standards of research must be met; every source is checked, every assumption is challenged, every word is parsed. But at the end of the process, one hopefully has something that, once published, will inform the public with an accurate and, hopefully, an engaging portrayal of historical events and personalities.

My recent articles about Henry Fillmore’s The Trombone Family were informed by this research, these many years of immersion with primary source materials, individuals, and commentaries. My recent articles were not footnoted since I provided all of the sources for the materials I cited in the article itself. But the basis for my research is sound, having already been vetted previously.

When I was Professor of Trombone at Arizona State University (2012-2016), I had the pleasure of serving as advisor for several doctoral students who had to write dissertations/research papers. My commitment to academic rigor sometimes proved to be a challenge for them, as I always insisted that they quote primary sources, and I insisted they should NEVER quote a secondary source unless a primary source could not be found. Some of them were a little discouraged when they learned that the process of researching usually costs money. Sometimes you need to pay for access to materials, or to have an archive make scans (or, in the “old days,” microfilm) of manuscripts or letters. For instance, for my article about Haydn and the serpent (referenced above), I had to spend about $3000 to obtain music and letters from archives in England and Germany that not only informed my research, but added new insights to what we know about Haydn in England. For the Rodeheaver book, I’ve spent multiple thousands of dollars in the collection of source materials, trips to archives and libraries, and such. Not everything is on the internet. But when we want to become deeply informed about a subject, all of the cost is well worth it for the knowledge that we gain.

All of this is to say that the subject of research and who is qualified to speak on a subject is one that is very, very complex. I don’t think anyone is ever an “expert” on anything. There is always more to learn. But I think we can all be grateful for the work of researchers, historians, and authors who spend years learning about various subjects and then share those insights with others. Likewise, as our moderator has just wisely said, it is foolish to think anyone but a "recognized academic" can have useful insights about a host of subjects. One is not born knowledgable. Living life gives us knowledge. And knowledge can lead us—any of us—to learn more, dig more deeply, and share what we have learned. When that sharing is done with the background of a rigorous approach, the results can be especially informative and helpful. Every researcher—whether a "recognized academic" like me or a layman—lays the groundwork for the next researcher. The work is never done; nobody ever has the last word. Sometimes research brings up ugly truths. But when such ugly truths are exposed, they can lead to understanding and action as we learn from the lessons of history.

With kind regards to all,

-Douglas Yeo

[Doug Elliott]

Excellent, thank you.

[Vegasbound]

Doug

Don't know about anyone else, but I will be buying the book on Rodeheaver having read your previous post

Thanks

[Savio]

As readers of trombonechat.com know, I post to this forum very infrequently. This is post number 21 from me in over two years since I joined the club. My life is full and happily busy with performances, teaching, writing, travel, and the joy of living near our grandchildren. I don’t use social media. Most of my posts to trombonechat.com have been to ask questions of the community to help inform some of my research projects. I have not joined in on this discussion about Henry Fillmore’s The Trombone Family since what I have to say on the subject has already been said in the several articles I have recently published on my blog. Others have been directing the conversation here.

So, I won't comment further on the issues that I brought up in my articles. But I thought, particularly for the benefit of our young members (and perhaps some others), I would add a few thoughts that might answer a question that some might have. That is:

“What qualifies Douglas Yeo to make statements about Henry Fillmore, Lassus Trombone, and the intersection of race/racism on music?”

That’s a really good question.

First, anyone can have an opinion about anything. One does not need to be an “expert” to have an opinion.

Having an opinion is fine. Having a well-considered, well-thought out, well-articulated opinion is even better. But having extensive knowledge that informs that opinion helps one offer a little more to any discussion. A little bit about how I came to learn what I know about The Trombone Family and the views I have expressed on race, racism, and minstrelsy might be helpful to others who, as they travel life’s path, find subjects that interest them that they may wish to comment upon with an informed view.

Some on this forum know about my long career as a trombonist and educator. Some may also know of my many years of work as an historian, researcher, and author. The ITA Journal has published many of my articles that have been the product of many years of research. Among them include (with a few links):

A Pictorial History of Low Brass Players in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1887-1986
International Trombone Association Journal, Volume XIV, Number 4, Fall 1986.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_ITA ... s_1986.pdf

Edward Kleinhammer: A Life and Legacy Remembered
International Trombone Association Journal, Vol. 42, No. 2, April 2014.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_ITA ... ribute.pdf

Evolution: The Double-Valve Bass Trombone
International Trombone Association Journal, Vol. 23, No. 3, July 2015.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_ITA ... ombone.pdf

Take It, Big Chief: An Appreciation of Russell Moore
International Trombone Association Journal, Vol. 45, No. 3, July 2017.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_ITA ... _Moore.pdf

Finding Marguerite Dufay
International Trombone Association Journal, Vol. 47, No. 1, January 2019

Keith Brown: Renaissance Man
International Trombone Association Journal, Vol. 47, No. 3, July 2019.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_ITA ... ribute.pdf

These articles all began because I had an interest in the subject. From interest came a motivation to learn more which lead to research. Not pawing through pages of Google search pages, but research in libraries and archives, conducting interviews with others, asking questions. None of these articles were what the academy refers to as “peer reviewed.” A peer reviewed article or book is one that is not published until the publisher convenes a panel of experts, known as “referees,” to review the author’s work. The selection of the referees is an important part of the process, and referees can and should be very tough on an author. They check an author’s sources, review the author’s presentation of factual material, and ensure the publication is factually accurate. The ITA Journal is not peer-reviewed, but in my research articles that it has published, I have conducted my research and writing in the same way I do for my peer-reviewed publications. A look at the articles mentioned above will show that I often have a long list of people to thank who informed my research and writing. Many of my articles are copiously footnoted to give my sourcing.

In addition to my many articles for the ITA Journal and many other journals and magazines, I have also had many peer reviewed articles, dictionary entries, and book chapters published. These have been rigorously vetted by peer referees. Each went through multiple revisions and were accepted for publication. These include:

Serpentists in Charles Wild’s Choir of the Cathedral of Amiens, c. 1826.
Historic Brass SocietyJournal, Volume 13, 2001.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_HBS ... s_2001.pdf

A Good Old Note: The Serpent in Thomas Hardy’s World and Works.
The Hardy Review (Journal of the Thomas Hardy Association), Volume XIII, Number 1, Spring 2011. [This is the print version of a paper I presented at a conference at Yale University.]
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_Ser ... w_2011.pdf

Serpents in Boston: The Museum of Fine Arts and Boston Symphony Orchestra Collections
Galpin Society Journal, Volume LXV, March 2012.

Book chapters: The Serpent in England: Evolution and Design, and The Serpent in England, Context, Decline and Revival
Florence Gétreau, editor, Le serpent: itinéaires passés et présents. CNRS Editions, 2013. [This is the print version of a paper I presented at a conference in Paris.]

Serpent
Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Second edition. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Buccin
Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Second edition. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Homer Rodeheaver: Reverend Trombone
Historic Brass Society Journal. Vol. 27, 2015.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_HBS ... r_2015.pdf

Book chapter: Marches and Divertimenti: Haydn and the Serpent
Monica Lustig, editor, Der Zink – Geschichte, Instrumente und Bauweise. Michaelsteiner Konferenzberichte Band 79, 2015. [This is the print version of a paper I presented at a conference in Michaelstein, Germany.]

Concurrent with these kinds of research projects has been my work on several book projects for major publishers. Two are in progress:

The Trombone Book
Oxford University Press

An Illustrated Dictionary for the Modern Trombone, Euphonium, and Tuba Player
Rowman & Littlefield

Another book is now in production for publication in spring 2021:

Homer Rodeheaver and the Rise of the Gospel Music Industry (coauthored with Kevin Mungons)
University of Illinois Press

And it is my work on this book on Homer Rodeheaver that informed, in large part, my recent articles about Henry Fillmore, The Trombone Family, minstrelsy, and race.


Homer Rodeheaver with his Lyon & Healy trombone, c. 1908.

Rodeheaver is an interesting subject for a biography. I began researching him in 2012 after I became aware of him and his connection to the trombone. After all, the man played the trombone in front of over 100 million people during his lifetime (1880-1955). I wanted to know more about him. As I learned more, I thought about writing an article about Rodeheaver for the Historic Brass Society Journal. In the course of my research—actually when I was trying to track down a copy of an endorsement Rodeheaver had made for Conn trombones—I contacted my friend, Margaret Downie Banks, Associate Director of the National Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota. With the museum’s large collection of Conn instruments and related materials, she was very helpful. But she also mentioned that I might want to contact someone who had been asking her some questions about Rodeheaver for a number of years. That led me to connect with Kevin Mungons who had been researching Rodeheaver for a long-planned book project. As we got to know each other, we learned that we had a lot of shared interests (Kevin is also a trombone player), and we thought we might put our heads together (using the old "two heads are better than one" idea) and co-author a biography of Homer Rodeheaver. Even before the publication of my peer-reviewed article about Rodeheaver in the Historic Brass Society Journal—the article focused on Rodeheaver’s work as a trombone player and trombone icon, although it touched on other aspects of his life and work—we began working write a book. Our book proposal was accepted by University of Illinois Press and several years and 130,000 words later, we had a manuscript to submit to the Press.

Here is our abstract for the book:

Homer Rodeheaver rose to national prominence in the early 20th century as the trombone-playing songleader for Billy Sunday. For twenty years they captured attention with city-wide revival meetings, a mix of sincere devotion, popular religion, and modern marketing methods. In an era when music styles were emerging as marketable genres, Rodeheaver created a brand of gospel music that cast an enormous influence on popular music. Borrowing from evangelical hymns, African American spirituals, and popular music, he built a publishing empire in Chicago, selling hymnals as a way to encourage community singing. When tabernacle revivalism declined after World War I, Rodeheaver shifted to other ventures, bolstered by his personal popularity in a growing celebrity culture. He started the first gospel record label in 1920, then shifted to radio, where his community sing programs ran on three national networks. Near the end of his life, he strongly influenced Billy Graham and Cliff Barrows, the next generation of evangelical revivalists.

The authors explore the birth of the commercial Christian music industry and its roots in congregational singing—its early rise as a communal, populist form that would later divide into racial and regional distinctions known as southern gospel and black gospel. As the first major biography of Homer Rodeheaver, the book explores the impact of racial segregation, the influence of technology, and the consequences of commercial Christian music.

As I mentioned above, Rodeheaver is an interesting subject. He and Henry Fillmore were good friends; one can read a little about their friendship and activities together on a revival tour when the two of them were young men in Paul Bierley’s biography of Fillmore, Hallelujah Trombone! The Story of Henry Fillmore (Columbus: Integrity Press, 1982), 24-26. Fillmore later published an arrangement of gospel songs to which Rodeheaver owned the copyright, Billy Sunday’s Successful Songs (Cincinnati: Fillmore Brothers, 1916). Kevin interviewed Bierley in the course of our research for this book (Bierley died in 2016).

Rodeheaver’s life had complex intersections with African Americans and the subject of race. In the course of our research, I did a deep dive into this, collecting over 100 books that informed my knowledge of African American spirituals, black and white gospel music, race records, coon songs, minstrelsy, blackface, racial segregation, lynching, and the Ku Klux Klan. Add to that hundreds of newspaper articles, peer reviewed articles, journal articles (some dating back to the 1880s), recordings, and interviews. And many hundreds of hours in libraries and archives, digging through piles of papers and photographs. Kevin did the same, and together, we amassed a large library of materials. Why did I do this, you might ask? Because all of these subjects were tied up in Rodeheaver’s life. As we write in our abstract for two of the book’s chapters:

Chapter 7: Spirituals and Minstrelsy
The African American spiritual emerged as a devotional and performance idiom in the early twentieth century, promoted in black and white communities and churches through the work of Jubilee Singers, and in secular and sacred contexts. Homer Rodeheaver played an important role in their early commercial history by transcribing performances of spirituals for publication in his hymnals, championing them in evangelistic meetings, and recording them with black gospel singing groups. The authors explore Rodeheaver’s quest for authenticity in spirituals, their transformative religious meaning, their connection to minstrelsy, and their influence on their development American popular music, Rodeheaver’s personal interest in black culture is also examined through his performances of the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, presented in dialect and blackface.

Chapter 8: Jim Crow Revivalism Meets the Klan
Racial segregation and Jim Crow affected nearly every aspect of American life in the 1920s, including revivalism. When southern audiences demanded segregated tabernacle meetings, Billy Sunday and Homer Rodeheaver tried to ameliorate the situation by meeting with black ministers and organizing choirs from black churches. But despite Sunday and Rodeheaver’s fame for preaching against every form of sin, they were noticeably silent on racism. Their policy of welcoming every group to the tabernacle sometimes included delegations from the Ku Klux Klan, who gave Sunday donations that he never refused. Despite Rodeheaver’s genuinely harmonious relationships with African Americans and his lifelong promotion of the spirituals, his far-flung business interests created awkward contradictions. His Chicago studio made custom recordings for the Klan, including a parody of Rodeheaver’s “The Old Rugged Cross” with KKK lyrics, “The Bright Fiery Cross.”

As you can see, I’ve been immersed in this for the last several years. It was in the course of my research about Fillmore, Rodeheaver, and various subjects relating to race that I uncovered the racist advertisements for Fillmore’s The Trombone Family. The subject is fraught with complexity, and Kevin and I worked to untangle some of it. This untangling led to conversations with leading voices—both academic and popular, both white and black—on the subjects, and the many sources we collected allowed us to address Rodeheaver’s intersection with race with an informed view. It became clear to us that many scholars who have made assumptions about some of these issues did not take into account important primary source materials that are in some cases over 150 years old. We are now living in a golden age of research tools, and so many materials are now available to us that were not available in the past. We learned that it is not enough to learn what “the experts” say about issues. It was important to dig deeply to discover previously overlooked sources and learn what had been said by voices that had been silenced.

When we completed our manuscript, the three peer referees did their work. We then worked to answer their questions, defend our research, gather new information, and engage in a rewrite that addressed their comments and those of our editor. The revised manuscript went back out for peer review once again, and after working through their comments, our manuscript was presented to the faculty review board for University of Illinois Press. With their approval, the book has now moved into production with a planned publication date of sometime in spring 2021.

I hope that our young readers, and perhaps some who are not so young, are seeing that the matter of research is a complex, time-consuming enterprise. One does not sit down and write about complicated, thorny subjects without first having done one’s homework. Writing a peer-reviewed article or book is not like writing a term paper on “My Summer Vacation.” Rigorous standards of research must be met; every source is checked, every assumption is challenged, every word is parsed. But at the end of the process, one hopefully has something that, once published, will inform the public with an accurate and, hopefully, an engaging portrayal of historical events and personalities.

My recent articles about Henry Fillmore’s The Trombone Family were informed by this research, these many years of immersion with primary source materials, individuals, and commentaries. My recent articles were not footnoted since I provided all of the sources for the materials I cited in the article itself. But the basis for my research is sound, having already been vetted previously.

When I was Professor of Trombone at Arizona State University (2012-2016), I had the pleasure of serving as advisor for several doctoral students who had to write dissertations/research papers. My commitment to academic rigor sometimes proved to be a challenge for them, as I always insisted that they quote primary sources, and I insisted they should NEVER quote a secondary source unless a primary source could not be found. Some of them were a little discouraged when they learned that the process of researching usually costs money. Sometimes you need to pay for access to materials, or to have an archive make scans (or, in the “old days,” microfilm) of manuscripts or letters. For instance, for my article about Haydn and the serpent (referenced above), I had to spend about $3000 to obtain music and letters from archives in England and Germany that not only informed my research, but added new insights to what we know about Haydn in England. For the Rodeheaver book, I’ve spent multiple thousands of dollars in the collection of source materials, trips to archives and libraries, and such. Not everything is on the internet. But when we want to become deeply informed about a subject, all of the cost is well worth it for the knowledge that we gain.

All of this is to say that the subject of research and who is qualified to speak on a subject is one that is very, very complex. I don’t think anyone is ever an “expert” on anything. There is always more to learn. But I think we can all be grateful for the work of researchers, historians, and authors who spend years learning about various subjects and then share those insights with others. Likewise, as our moderator has just wisely said, it is foolish to think anyone but a "recognized academic" can have useful insights about a host of subjects. One is not born knowledgable. Living life gives us knowledge. And knowledge can lead us—any of us—to learn more, dig more deeply, and share what we have learned. When that sharing is done with the background of a rigorous approach, the results can be especially informative and helpful. Every researcher—whether a "recognized academic" like me or a layman—lays the groundwork for the next researcher. The work is never done; nobody ever has the last word. Sometimes research brings up ugly truths. But when such ugly truths are exposed, they can lead to understanding and action as we learn from the lessons of history.

With kind regards to all,

-Douglas Yeo

[DougHulme]

Doug Yeo - I thank you for such a thorough and flawless post. I know how long these posts and communications take to formulate, so much better than 'firing from the hip' its one of the reasons I also dont use social media.

Doug Elliot - well said, I add my voice to your commendation.

Kind regards to you all

Doug Hulme

[8parktoollover]

As readers of trombonechat.com know, I post to this forum very infrequently. This is post number 21 from me in over two years since I joined the club. My life is full and happily busy with performances, teaching, writing, travel, and the joy of living near our grandchildren. I don’t use social media. Most of my posts to trombonechat.com have been to ask questions of the community to help inform some of my research projects. I have not joined in on this discussion about Henry Fillmore’s The Trombone Family since what I have to say on the subject has already been said in the several articles I have recently published on my blog. Others have been directing the conversation here.

So, I won't comment further on the issues that I brought up in my articles. But I thought, particularly for the benefit of our young members (and perhaps some others), I would add a few thoughts that might answer a question that some might have. That is:

“What qualifies Douglas Yeo to make statements about Henry Fillmore, Lassus Trombone, and the intersection of race/racism on music?”

That’s a really good question.

First, anyone can have an opinion about anything. One does not need to be an “expert” to have an opinion.

Having an opinion is fine. Having a well-considered, well-thought out, well-articulated opinion is even better. But having extensive knowledge that informs that opinion helps one offer a little more to any discussion. A little bit about how I came to learn what I know about The Trombone Family and the views I have expressed on race, racism, and minstrelsy might be helpful to others who, as they travel life’s path, find subjects that interest them that they may wish to comment upon with an informed view.

Some on this forum know about my long career as a trombonist and educator. Some may also know of my many years of work as an historian, researcher, and author. The ITA Journal has published many of my articles that have been the product of many years of research. Among them include (with a few links):

A Pictorial History of Low Brass Players in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1887-1986
International Trombone Association Journal, Volume XIV, Number 4, Fall 1986.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_ITA ... s_1986.pdf

Edward Kleinhammer: A Life and Legacy Remembered
International Trombone Association Journal, Vol. 42, No. 2, April 2014.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_ITA ... ribute.pdf

Evolution: The Double-Valve Bass Trombone
International Trombone Association Journal, Vol. 23, No. 3, July 2015.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_ITA ... ombone.pdf

Take It, Big Chief: An Appreciation of Russell Moore
International Trombone Association Journal, Vol. 45, No. 3, July 2017.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_ITA ... _Moore.pdf

Finding Marguerite Dufay
International Trombone Association Journal, Vol. 47, No. 1, January 2019

Keith Brown: Renaissance Man
International Trombone Association Journal, Vol. 47, No. 3, July 2019.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_ITA ... ribute.pdf

These articles all began because I had an interest in the subject. From interest came a motivation to learn more which lead to research. Not pawing through pages of Google search pages, but research in libraries and archives, conducting interviews with others, asking questions. None of these articles were what the academy refers to as “peer reviewed.” A peer reviewed article or book is one that is not published until the publisher convenes a panel of experts, known as “referees,” to review the author’s work. The selection of the referees is an important part of the process, and referees can and should be very tough on an author. They check an author’s sources, review the author’s presentation of factual material, and ensure the publication is factually accurate. The ITA Journal is not peer-reviewed, but in my research articles that it has published, I have conducted my research and writing in the same way I do for my peer-reviewed publications. A look at the articles mentioned above will show that I often have a long list of people to thank who informed my research and writing. Many of my articles are copiously footnoted to give my sourcing.

In addition to my many articles for the ITA Journal and many other journals and magazines, I have also had many peer reviewed articles, dictionary entries, and book chapters published. These have been rigorously vetted by peer referees. Each went through multiple revisions and were accepted for publication. These include:

Serpentists in Charles Wild’s Choir of the Cathedral of Amiens, c. 1826.
Historic Brass SocietyJournal, Volume 13, 2001.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_HBS ... s_2001.pdf

A Good Old Note: The Serpent in Thomas Hardy’s World and Works.
The Hardy Review (Journal of the Thomas Hardy Association), Volume XIII, Number 1, Spring 2011. [This is the print version of a paper I presented at a conference at Yale University.]
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_Ser ... w_2011.pdf

Serpents in Boston: The Museum of Fine Arts and Boston Symphony Orchestra Collections
Galpin Society Journal, Volume LXV, March 2012.

Book chapters: The Serpent in England: Evolution and Design, and The Serpent in England, Context, Decline and Revival
Florence Gétreau, editor, Le serpent: itinéaires passés et présents. CNRS Editions, 2013. [This is the print version of a paper I presented at a conference in Paris.]

Serpent
Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Second edition. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Buccin
Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Second edition. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Homer Rodeheaver: Reverend Trombone
Historic Brass Society Journal. Vol. 27, 2015.
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/Yeo_HBS ... r_2015.pdf

Book chapter: Marches and Divertimenti: Haydn and the Serpent
Monica Lustig, editor, Der Zink – Geschichte, Instrumente und Bauweise. Michaelsteiner Konferenzberichte Band 79, 2015. [This is the print version of a paper I presented at a conference in Michaelstein, Germany.]

Concurrent with these kinds of research projects has been my work on several book projects for major publishers. Two are in progress:

The Trombone Book
Oxford University Press

An Illustrated Dictionary for the Modern Trombone, Euphonium, and Tuba Player
Rowman & Littlefield

Another book is now in production for publication in spring 2021:

Homer Rodeheaver and the Rise of the Gospel Music Industry (coauthored with Kevin Mungons)
University of Illinois Press

And it is my work on this book on Homer Rodeheaver that informed, in large part, my recent articles about Henry Fillmore, The Trombone Family, minstrelsy, and race.


Homer Rodeheaver with his Lyon & Healy trombone, c. 1908.

Rodeheaver is an interesting subject for a biography. I began researching him in 2012 after I became aware of him and his connection to the trombone. After all, the man played the trombone in front of over 100 million people during his lifetime (1880-1955). I wanted to know more about him. As I learned more, I thought about writing an article about Rodeheaver for the Historic Brass Society Journal. In the course of my research—actually when I was trying to track down a copy of an endorsement Rodeheaver had made for Conn trombones—I contacted my friend, Margaret Downie Banks, Associate Director of the National Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota. With the museum’s large collection of Conn instruments and related materials, she was very helpful. But she also mentioned that I might want to contact someone who had been asking her some questions about Rodeheaver for a number of years. That led me to connect with Kevin Mungons who had been researching Rodeheaver for a long-planned book project. As we got to know each other, we learned that we had a lot of shared interests (Kevin is also a trombone player), and we thought we might put our heads together (using the old "two heads are better than one" idea) and co-author a biography of Homer Rodeheaver. Even before the publication of my peer-reviewed article about Rodeheaver in the Historic Brass Society Journal—the article focused on Rodeheaver’s work as a trombone player and trombone icon, although it touched on other aspects of his life and work—we began working write a book. Our book proposal was accepted by University of Illinois Press and several years and 130,000 words later, we had a manuscript to submit to the Press.

Here is our abstract for the book:

Homer Rodeheaver rose to national prominence in the early 20th century as the trombone-playing songleader for Billy Sunday. For twenty years they captured attention with city-wide revival meetings, a mix of sincere devotion, popular religion, and modern marketing methods. In an era when music styles were emerging as marketable genres, Rodeheaver created a brand of gospel music that cast an enormous influence on popular music. Borrowing from evangelical hymns, African American spirituals, and popular music, he built a publishing empire in Chicago, selling hymnals as a way to encourage community singing. When tabernacle revivalism declined after World War I, Rodeheaver shifted to other ventures, bolstered by his personal popularity in a growing celebrity culture. He started the first gospel record label in 1920, then shifted to radio, where his community sing programs ran on three national networks. Near the end of his life, he strongly influenced Billy Graham and Cliff Barrows, the next generation of evangelical revivalists.

The authors explore the birth of the commercial Christian music industry and its roots in congregational singing—its early rise as a communal, populist form that would later divide into racial and regional distinctions known as southern gospel and black gospel. As the first major biography of Homer Rodeheaver, the book explores the impact of racial segregation, the influence of technology, and the consequences of commercial Christian music.

As I mentioned above, Rodeheaver is an interesting subject. He and Henry Fillmore were good friends; one can read a little about their friendship and activities together on a revival tour when the two of them were young men in Paul Bierley’s biography of Fillmore, Hallelujah Trombone! The Story of Henry Fillmore (Columbus: Integrity Press, 1982), 24-26. Fillmore later published an arrangement of gospel songs to which Rodeheaver owned the copyright, Billy Sunday’s Successful Songs (Cincinnati: Fillmore Brothers, 1916). Kevin interviewed Bierley in the course of our research for this book (Bierley died in 2016).

Rodeheaver’s life had complex intersections with African Americans and the subject of race. In the course of our research, I did a deep dive into this, collecting over 100 books that informed my knowledge of African American spirituals, black and white gospel music, race records, coon songs, minstrelsy, blackface, racial segregation, lynching, and the Ku Klux Klan. Add to that hundreds of newspaper articles, peer reviewed articles, journal articles (some dating back to the 1880s), recordings, and interviews. And many hundreds of hours in libraries and archives, digging through piles of papers and photographs. Kevin did the same, and together, we amassed a large library of materials. Why did I do this, you might ask? Because all of these subjects were tied up in Rodeheaver’s life. As we write in our abstract for two of the book’s chapters:

Chapter 7: Spirituals and Minstrelsy
The African American spiritual emerged as a devotional and performance idiom in the early twentieth century, promoted in black and white communities and churches through the work of Jubilee Singers, and in secular and sacred contexts. Homer Rodeheaver played an important role in their early commercial history by transcribing performances of spirituals for publication in his hymnals, championing them in evangelistic meetings, and recording them with black gospel singing groups. The authors explore Rodeheaver’s quest for authenticity in spirituals, their transformative religious meaning, their connection to minstrelsy, and their influence on their development American popular music, Rodeheaver’s personal interest in black culture is also examined through his performances of the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, presented in dialect and blackface.

Chapter 8: Jim Crow Revivalism Meets the Klan
Racial segregation and Jim Crow affected nearly every aspect of American life in the 1920s, including revivalism. When southern audiences demanded segregated tabernacle meetings, Billy Sunday and Homer Rodeheaver tried to ameliorate the situation by meeting with black ministers and organizing choirs from black churches. But despite Sunday and Rodeheaver’s fame for preaching against every form of sin, they were noticeably silent on racism. Their policy of welcoming every group to the tabernacle sometimes included delegations from the Ku Klux Klan, who gave Sunday donations that he never refused. Despite Rodeheaver’s genuinely harmonious relationships with African Americans and his lifelong promotion of the spirituals, his far-flung business interests created awkward contradictions. His Chicago studio made custom recordings for the Klan, including a parody of Rodeheaver’s “The Old Rugged Cross” with KKK lyrics, “The Bright Fiery Cross.”

As you can see, I’ve been immersed in this for the last several years. It was in the course of my research about Fillmore, Rodeheaver, and various subjects relating to race that I uncovered the racist advertisements for Fillmore’s The Trombone Family. The subject is fraught with complexity, and Kevin and I worked to untangle some of it. This untangling led to conversations with leading voices—both academic and popular, both white and black—on the subjects, and the many sources we collected allowed us to address Rodeheaver’s intersection with race with an informed view. It became clear to us that many scholars who have made assumptions about some of these issues did not take into account important primary source materials that are in some cases over 150 years old. We are now living in a golden age of research tools, and so many materials are now available to us that were not available in the past. We learned that it is not enough to learn what “the experts” say about issues. It was important to dig deeply to discover previously overlooked sources and learn what had been said by voices that had been silenced.

When we completed our manuscript, the three peer referees did their work. We then worked to answer their questions, defend our research, gather new information, and engage in a rewrite that addressed their comments and those of our editor. The revised manuscript went back out for peer review once again, and after working through their comments, our manuscript was presented to the faculty review board for University of Illinois Press. With their approval, the book has now moved into production with a planned publication date of sometime in spring 2021.

I hope that our young readers, and perhaps some who are not so young, are seeing that the matter of research is a complex, time-consuming enterprise. One does not sit down and write about complicated, thorny subjects without first having done one’s homework. Writing a peer-reviewed article or book is not like writing a term paper on “My Summer Vacation.” Rigorous standards of research must be met; every source is checked, every assumption is challenged, every word is parsed. But at the end of the process, one hopefully has something that, once published, will inform the public with an accurate and, hopefully, an engaging portrayal of historical events and personalities.

My recent articles about Henry Fillmore’s The Trombone Family were informed by this research, these many years of immersion with primary source materials, individuals, and commentaries. My recent articles were not footnoted since I provided all of the sources for the materials I cited in the article itself. But the basis for my research is sound, having already been vetted previously.

When I was Professor of Trombone at Arizona State University (2012-2016), I had the pleasure of serving as advisor for several doctoral students who had to write dissertations/research papers. My commitment to academic rigor sometimes proved to be a challenge for them, as I always insisted that they quote primary sources, and I insisted they should NEVER quote a secondary source unless a primary source could not be found. Some of them were a little discouraged when they learned that the process of researching usually costs money. Sometimes you need to pay for access to materials, or to have an archive make scans (or, in the “old days,” microfilm) of manuscripts or letters. For instance, for my article about Haydn and the serpent (referenced above), I had to spend about $3000 to obtain music and letters from archives in England and Germany that not only informed my research, but added new insights to what we know about Haydn in England. For the Rodeheaver book, I’ve spent multiple thousands of dollars in the collection of source materials, trips to archives and libraries, and such. Not everything is on the internet. But when we want to become deeply informed about a subject, all of the cost is well worth it for the knowledge that we gain.

All of this is to say that the subject of research and who is qualified to speak on a subject is one that is very, very complex. I don’t think anyone is ever an “expert” on anything. There is always more to learn. But I think we can all be grateful for the work of researchers, historians, and authors who spend years learning about various subjects and then share those insights with others. Likewise, as our moderator has just wisely said, it is foolish to think anyone but a "recognized academic" can have useful insights about a host of subjects. One is not born knowledgable. Living life gives us knowledge. And knowledge can lead us—any of us—to learn more, dig more deeply, and share what we have learned. When that sharing is done with the background of a rigorous approach, the results can be especially informative and helpful. Every researcher—whether a "recognized academic" like me or a layman—lays the groundwork for the next researcher. The work is never done; nobody ever has the last word. Sometimes research brings up ugly truths. But when such ugly truths are exposed, they can lead to understanding and action as we learn from the lessons of history.

With kind regards to all,

-Douglas Yeo

Personal opinions aside, I have to say that your articles are very well thought out and well researched.

[andym]

Based on reading your writing over many years (back to trombone-l email days), when I posted your article on Facebook, I called you a careful scholar. Clearly, you do that at the highest level.

[King2bPlus]

Does this include all arrangements of Lassus Trombone or just the original? I don't think I've ever played the original. I can't recall ever playing it. Just arrangements by Wolpe and Camarata.

[BGuttman]

Does this include all arrangements of Lassus Trombone or just the original? I don't think I've ever played the original. I can't recall ever playing it. Just arrangements by Wolpe and Camarata.

I'm pretty sure Doug refers to any arrangement of the tune, regardless of who did it.

[PhilE]

Thanks Doug Yeo for your first post to this thread that kicked it off and for your most recent post.
Like many others I've played Lassus without knowing anything of its origin but now I do.
Be sure to let us know when your Rodeheaver book is available.
Thanks
Phil

[ChadA]

I play a lot of educational brass quintet concerts, many in inner city schools. We’re trying to get young people interested in learning about music. We’ve done Lassus before, but usually opt for Shoutin LIza. Knowing what I know now, I don’t want a student to hear us play, get excited about music, go home and Google what we played, and see the background of those pieces. It’s just not worth it.

For those wondering about Doug’s suggested replacement, here’s a quintet version, arranged by a friend of mine: https://somusic.com/product_info.php?products_id=763 . The website’s shopping cart is down, but you can contact the site’s owner to purchase it.

[Posaunus]

Pretty amusing that the computer rendition of Slidus Trombonus cannot simulate the glissandi!

[conical]

Burgerbob wrote "Again, this is not about the slippery slope! This is about Fillmore and his pieces."

In the short view you are correct. The editorial was about Filmore. But in the long view it's about the precedent that it sets throughout all of the arts.

Exactly! That is the larger and ultimate question. And should we cease to perform Jazz because of its roots in slavery? Without slavery in this country, Jazz would would not have developed.

[Burgerbob]

Burgerbob wrote "Again, this is not about the slippery slope! This is about Fillmore and his pieces."

In the short view you are correct. The editorial was about Filmore. But in the long view it's about the precedent that it sets throughout all of the arts.

Exactly! That is the larger and ultimate question. And should we cease to perform Jazz because of its roots in slavery? Without slavery in this country, Jazz would would not have develpoed.

Whoa. That's a pretty gigantic stretch.

[conical]

The evolution of Jazz is well documented.

[Burgerbob]

The evolution of Jazz is well documented.

And what about it means we shouldn't play it? I get the feeling you haven't read any of this thread...

[Posaunus]

The evolution of Jazz is well documented.

So?

Please read the entire thread, or at least Doug Yeo's thorough and illuminating posts before you comment again.

There is no benefit to going off onto such a direction (I was going to write "tangent," but the evolution of jazz is not tangent to Lassus Trombone).

[Digidog]

I guess this whole thread is about moving on; without loosing the connections to the bad and good of the past.

There is a clear distinction between individual phenomenons that are fairly easy to determine whether they are bad or good, and general ditos that sometimes cannot be deemed to be either.

Some examples would be that most of our medical and technical inventions and methods, have been developed solely for the purpose of war and warfare. Wrist watches, blood transfusions, anaesthesia and transplant surgery (f.ex.), are direct results from general trends from the bad individual phenomenon war. We won't stop using these things for the sake of preventing war, because they are general and have a use in an equal, civil society.

The weapons themselves, like (f.ex.) mustard gas or a 6" shell, have no use outside the bad individual phenomenon, and can thus be deemed bad in a civil, equal society.

It may seem nitpicking, but I think it's worth the thought that jazz can be seen as a general product of a bad individual phenomenon (slavery) since jazz has a use outside that phenomenon (I know some will disagree ), whereas racism has no function outside its harboring phenomena (f.ex. slavery or nazism), and thus can be deemed bad in this equal and civil society.

If, then, a piece of music has strong connections to stereotyped, condemning, demeaning and belittling views of a specific group of people (be they black, asian, gay, female) it can be said that that music contains, in this case, multiple individual phenomenons that are not useful outside their context(s), and thus can be deemed bad. With contexts for music, I mean racism, fun making on the expense of others et.c.

Of course the world isn't as schematic as I reason above, but I think it's important that we distinguish between the individual phenomenons and what they contain and generate as general outcomes. Most often it's not those affected by the phenomenons that benefit from their generalistic outcomes, but rather us living a safe distance behind, afterwards. As an example of this, it can be said that there was a significant economic and civil boost to Europe some thirty to fifty years after the Black Death.

I only briefly played "Trombone Lassus" many, many years ago, and found the music to be lacking and uninspiring, but my general opinion is that if it is alluding to racist views of black people, it should not be played. Most likely it will, consciously or not, be seen as useless outside it's individual phenomenon and be abandoned as such.

[andym]

Interesting, Digidog. I would make a different distinction between jazz and Lassus and its ilk. There is a difference between art made by the oppressed, often in response to oppression, and art made by the oppressor as part of oppression, including disrespectful appropriation of art that was created by the oppressed. Taken purely as art without context both could have equal utility. But oppression creates inequality, a context that should not be ignored, and hence an unequal acceptability for art that comes from the two sides of the oppression.

[Digidog]

Interesting, Digidog. I would make a different distinction between jazz and Lassus and its ilk. There is a difference between art made by the oppressed, often in response to oppression, and art made by the oppressor as part of oppression, including disrespectful appropriation of art that was created by the oppressed. Taken purely as art without context both could have equal utility. But oppression creates inequality, a context that should not be ignored, and hence an unequal acceptability for art that comes from the two sides of the oppression.

I fully agree. In my reasoning above, the unequality is a specific phenomenon that is useless without its context, and thus can be deemed bad.

Cultural appropriation from oppressed and/or lower ranking groups is, to me, the evidence that it takes so much cultural, intellectual and physical force to oppress others, that there isn't much left to create something own from the oppressor. One example here, is that the (mainly) white population that upheld the South African apartheid system, never produced any lasting cultural creations in any amount, nor of any significance, whereas the black community created a lot - albeit some in exile and some with outside help.

[MoominDave]

Having read through it, much of this thread was as I expected it to be. Doug Yeo turning up as a Deus ex Machina and righteously setting it back on its axis was a very welcome rescue, thank you Doug.

I have little to add to the conversation at this point. Perhaps a couple of thoughts:
1) In an age where we try to do better, consider the message sent out by objecting to trying to do better to those who have suffered racist problems. One might be able to logically and/or emotionally wriggle around in defence of these pieces, but the wriggling in itself will be perceived as telling by those who have experienced the sharp end of race dynamics.
2) Just play J. A. Greenwood's "The Acrobat" instead, which has been the staple UK glissando trombone feature since it was penned in 1918. It's just as catchy in its corny glissiness, but it's not freighted with cultural problems. Personally, I think it's better music, too, though neither piece exactly shines.

[timothy42b]

I have little to add to the conversation at this point. Perhaps a couple of thoughts:

I ducked out when it became clear only one opinion without nuances was allowed, and was harassed publicly AND privately.

I don't disagree with not playing Lassus but there are many pieces and composers more egregious that we will not give up.

[Digidog]

I ducked out when it became clear only one opinion without nuances was allowed, and was harassed publicly AND privately.

To be opposed in a discussion, and maybe sometimes attacked, is one thing in the heat of the dispute. It's only acceptable if it's done objectively and to the point of the discourse.

To be attacked personally, by PM or mail, from a discussion here on a small internet forum, is totally unacceptable and the person (persons?) that did that should be hung out to dry. Or better yet: Be reported to an admin and suspended - indefinitely if the transgression was bad and extensive.

In my opinion it should be a violation of forum rules to use PM's to lash out at those who oppose you in a public discussion here - if it isn't already.

I don't disagree with not playing Lassus but there are many pieces and composers more egregious that we will not give up.

I somewhat agree; but we have to start where we can and where we are, at any time there is a possibility to start. It's not always useful to root out bigger structures, until the weeding has cleared the path up to them.

[Reedman1]

Thanks for the suggestions, Doug. I think they are as good as the Fillmore pieces in terms of simplicity and entertainment value.

My disagreement stems from the rejection of Minstrelsy. It's a part of our musical heritage and suffuses through late 19th and early 20th Century music. Too much very popular music would be purged from the repertoire. Including the State song of Kentucky. Do we need a rebirth of the genre? No. We might eve be able to "whitewash" some of it provided we can find a way to separate its past. Most people don't seem to know what the Darktown in "Darktown Strutters' Ball" is.

We should purge things intended to downgrade any ethnic or racial group. The use of the Confederate battle flag, Nazi Swastika flag, or statues erected in the late 19th Century honoring Confederate generals are all possible candidates. Renaming military bases honoring [sometimes incompetent] Confederate generals is appropriate -- we have plenty of honorable and heroic military leaders from other wars who deserve remembrance.

I'd bet that if Fillmore were writing today he would have given the Trombone Family different titles and probably used the subtitle "Characteristic".

For what it’s worth, “Darktown Strutters’ Ball” was written by Shelton Brooks, a black songwriter, who also wrote “Some Of These Days”. Both of these songs were premiered by Sophie Tucker, an openly Jewish performer, and became hits that are still played today. Darktown’s lyrics, by the way, make no reference to ghettos, poverty, or race.

For what else it’s worth, this conversation is also held in traditional/Dixieland/hot jazz forums, but on steroids. The thing with jazz is that, up to at least 1940, there was very often a racial component. The art of Jazz transcends that, but can never be fully separated from it. We learn to live with ambiguity.

[BGuttman]

Reedman, Black ghettos were referred to as "Darktowns".

There are no racial lyrics to any of the Fillmore Trombone Rags, just racist titles.

I don't feel that the titles alone are a reason to dump music. Otherwise we'd need to stop playing most of Stephen Foster

[droffilcal]

Yet the old copy surfaces and people take umbrage. Seems mostly people who are more worried about image.

This may sound crazy, but why not ask some actual black people?

Try this before your next concert where you play Lassus Trombone: gather up a room full of black people and show them the original materials. Feel free to explain to them that although this piece was racist in content and conception, it has been redeemed because some people like it; make sure you explain to them that though the piece was explicitly intended to depict black people as subhuman caricatures for the amusement of white folks, and for the composer to cash in on the popularity of that type of racist entertainment, you're not offended (nor should they be) because all that bad stuff was scrubbed away by time. Plus, you know, post racial society and all that.

Or how about I bring my kids to your concert and you can explain to them how it's okay to play a piece that depicts one entire side of their family as subhuman? Make sure you show them the original materials; I want to be there when you explain to them that the original conception of the piece doesn't matter anymore because it's not offensive to you.

[henrikbe]

I won't comment on the play Lassus/don't play Lassus question, as I probably don't understand all of the arguments well enough (and everything related to racism, woke, etc is very different in the USA than here in Europe, I suspect, so it's hard for us Europeans to really understand these issues).

But I was thinking about one thing. If people don't want to play this particular piece, it should be as simple as that: don't play the piece. But I think you could go further. I mean, not playing a piece won't erase it. You may be able to convince a lot of players not to play it, but the piece will still exist, and as long as large parts of the audience enjoy it, it will still be played.

So wouldn't it be better to try to do something to the piece itself? Try to "reclaim it" as a non-racist piece? According to IMSLP, the piece is "very likely to be public domain in the USA". If it is, it could be renamed to something non-racist (e.g. "The Slide Trombone Rag" or whatever), edited, and republished as a completely different piece. I mean, the music would obviously be the same, and the name of the composer will be the same (but as I understand it that's not the main issue here), but with a different title, and without any racist subtitles, annotations, marketing etc. I'm sure there must be someone here with connections capable of doing something like this?

Granted, such a republishing would keep this piece alive, which I suppose some of you might find a bad thing. But on the other hand, the republished version, new name etc, might within a decade or two be able to more or less completely replace the old version. As a consequence, it might be the case that in 20 years from now, no one will know what "Lassus Trombone" is, but everyone will know this cool piece "The Slide Trombone Rag". If anyone does this, instead of just not playing the piece, he will then have actually achieved a real change, making a real difference.

As a side note, I'm writing this sitting in a building built by the nazi occupation of Norway. After the war, the Norwegians "reclaimed it", that is, we put it to use in other purposes than the nazis had built it for. And now, no one cares if I tell them this building was built by nazis. It's not currently being used for nazi purposes, and that's all that counts. IMHO it's the same with music: If someone writes a piece of music specifically to promote racist ideas, the music can still be used to promote other ideas. Or just to entertain. But it may require some work to "reclaim it". If no one does that, the music will still be there, with it's racist title, annotations etc. And in 20 years, someone will rediscover it and start playing it again.

[henrikbe]

Try this before your next concert where you play Lassus Trombone: gather up a room full of black people and show them the original materials. Feel free to explain to them that although this piece was racist in content and conception, it has been redeemed because some people like it; make sure you explain to them that though the piece was explicitly intended to depict black people as subhuman caricatures for the amusement of white folks, and for the composer to cash in on the popularity of that type of racist entertainment, you're not offended (nor should they be) because all that bad stuff was scrubbed away by time. Plus, you know, post racial society and all that.

Problem is, of course, that this is indeed a slippery slope. You could say this about a lot if things. The VW company was founded by nazis, have a look at this picture:



Now, try this before your next ride with a VW (if you ever drive VW, that is). Gather up a room full of jews and show them this picture, and similar early VW ads with swastikas etc. Feel free to explain to them that although this company was anti-semitic in content and conception, it has been redeemed because some people like it; make sure you explain to them that though the piece was explicitly intended to boost the economy of the nazi regime, thus allowing them to exterminate a large part of the jewish population of Europe, you're not offended (nor should they be) because all that bad stuff was scrubbed away by time. Plus, you know, post nazi society and all that.

[LeTromboniste]

People from the oppressed community get to reclaim things that were meant to hurt them, not people from the oppressor class.

[henrikbe]

People from the oppressed community get to reclaim things that were meant to hurt them, not people from the oppressor class.

Problem with this is, people of colour today do not belong to those communities that were oppressed, since those communities are no longer oppressed at the same scale (and in many cases, I would hope, not oppressed at all). And not one of use were alive a hundred years ago, so no one here can be blamed for the oppression discussed here, thus a term like "the oppressor class" refers to no one alive today.

I simply do not subscribe to the idea that because some white people did horrible things in the past, I as a white person has any responsibility whatsoever. And that because lots of black people were suppressed in the most horrible ways, black people living today are to be regarded as oppressed.

That's not to say that black people are not oppressed today, of course some are, and some are not. But in any case the oppression today is far less than the oppression a hundred years ago, so talk about "oppressed community" and "oppressor class" today is quite meaningless when we talk about this concrete case of historical oppression. If I understand this correctly (and I'm not sure that I do), the oppression in this case was in the form of minstrel shows. And no one (as far as I know) are oppressed in minstrel shows today. Thus the "oppressed community", which in this case would be "people being oppressed by minstrel shows", no longer exist.

[BGuttman]

Henrikbe, the problem is that there is still racism here in the US. And our President is stoking this hatred. I don't know if the reports of demonstrations against Police preferentially killing Black suspects over White suspects is on your newscasts. There is most definitely a class of Americans who are treated as sub-human by some of the people.

I personally like the idea of reclaiming Fillmore's rags (and other works that had racist themes). Music isn't inherently racist -- it's the associations that create the racism. Wagner and Hitler didn't do much to ingratiate Wagner's music with Jews, although the music itself doesn't portray Jews in a bad light (except for pillorying Sixtus Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger).

[EdwardSolomon]

Wagner and Hitler didn't do much to ingratiate Wagner's music with Jews, although the music itself doesn't portray Jews in a bad light (except for pillorying Sixtus Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger).

As I have already amply demonstrated previously, Wagner is a case apart. Only Richard Wagner penned a screed entitled Das Judentum in der Musik, expressing his innermost thoughts on Jews in music. His music does not merely portray Jews in a bad light, it is positively dripping with antisemitism of the very worst sort. The character of Alberich in Das Rheingold is an archetypal caricature of a scheming, money-grubbing Jew out to gain control and wield power over everyone else. Mime in Siegfried tries to control Siegfried through subterfuge and is also a caricature of a whining Jew, while Hagen in Götterdämmerung is his illegitimate son and does the same as his father, wielding control over the Gibichungs. Whilst Beckmesser may be pilloried in Die Meistersinger, Wagner pulls no punches when it comes to Der Ring des Nibelungen. He firmly equates the dwarfs with the Jews, portraying them as snivelling, subterranean subhumans who are desperate to gain control over the rest of the world.

Tread extremely carefully when dealing with the subject of Richard Wagner, Bruce. His antisemitism is very well documented and there is absolutely no room for speculation or doubt about his feelings towards Jews.

[Kbiggs]

“Reclaiming” something sounds very similar to “revisionist history.” The history behind the piece will always be there for people to read and come to their own conclusions. (Although fewer and fewer people read, appreciate or understand history anymore...) But the history of these pieces, along with Fillmore’s chosen depictions, labels, and marketing of the piece, are certainly racist by the standards of Fillmore’s time and our own.

In keeping with Maximilien’s post:

“People from the oppressed community get to reclaim things that were meant to hurt them, not people from the oppressor class.”

I would add that suggesting we somehow “reclaim” a piece such as Lassus trombone is like putting lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig. It just has lipstick on it.

[timothy42b]

I think there are probably two kinds of harm in racist art (as opposed to more direct harm like not being hired, not being able to rent, not getting access to justice system, etc.)

One is the effect of offending members of the group.

The other is the effect of encouraging racism on the part of others. Remember the effect of our peer culture is powerful, and what seems normal doesn't seem wrong.

These are my own ideas, I have no idea if anyone else would agree.

Lassus is relatively insignificant on both counts. On the first, it's rarely played and it's even more rare that a listener would be aware of the past. Not impossible, but rare. On the second, I see no impact at all.

Wagner is a totally different case. It is hugely powerful for both reasons.

I went to Doug Yeo's web site to see if he is considering removing his links to Wagner excerpts but I got 404 File not found on all his links.

[patrickosmith]

I'm very late to the party here. But I find the polite discussion of such sensitive topics an apple cart too irrestible.

Yes, VW has a history with Hitler.
So what? My VW Golf R is an amazing daily commuter car.
And I'm going to drive it.
That doesn't make me a supporter of Hitler.

Yes, Wagner was a "racist" back in the late 1800's (decades before I was born).
So what? Wagner's music is genius.
And I'm going to play it and listen to it.
That doesn't make me antisemetic.

[Peacemate]

I'm very late to the party here. But I find the polite discussion of such sensitive topics an apple cart too irrestible to approach.

Yes, VW has a history with Hitler.
So what? My VW Golf R is an amazing daily commuter car.
And I'm going to drive it.
That doesn't make me a supporter of Hitler.

Yes, Wagner was a "racist" back in the late 1800's (decades before I was born).
So what? Wagner's music is genius.
And I'm going to play it and listen to it.
That doesn't make me antisemetic.

There's a difference between playing something written by someone who was a "bad" person and playing something that was written because they were a "bad" person.

Not saying anybody's playing it because they like the bad person, only saying that it was written because they were a "bad" person.

Bad is in quotation marks because reasons.

To put it in a better context, if I play something by a composer who supports healthcare workers, it is different than if I play a piece written because they support healthcare workers. Get my point?

P.S. I have no memory of what this thread is really about

[timothy42b]

I have formally left this thread (and several forums where it became too abusive) and will not comment on the content.

i will only say that to me, (and YMMV,) one of the recent posts has a "troll" feel. I think moderators might consider locking the thread.

[timbone]

Such a heavy topic. Too bad the cancel culture got inside the trombone world. I can guess 90% of those who condemn the music have never played it. Generations of trombone players will not know how to interpret the music. What was once the music that made the trombone the rock star is no more. I have all the first parts of the series. I really learned on the job with ringling brothers. There you barely have time to look at a title (or subtitle) when you are playing 2/4 marches in one.

[Burgerbob]

Such a heavy topic. Too bad the cancel culture got inside the trombone world. I can guess 90% of those who condemn the music have never played it.

Tim, I have a lot of respect for you and this comment is disappointing. I played Lassus probably 100+ times at work. I'm perfectly happy to set it aside forever, knowing the context in which it was born and the current state of the culture. Trombone and the music we play on it moves on- there's no reason we have to cease growing with it.

[timbone]

Bob, I respect your opinion with many others who would consider my approach wrong here but I said, this is a difficult topic, no question. Maybe some can’t look past the jargon, I get it. I look at the musical contribution, thats how I got here. If this is picking sides it’s politics racism, or music. I think it is also reflective of the times, and thats another discussion, and whether we agree or not.

[harrisonreed]

Such a heavy topic. Too bad the cancel culture got inside the trombone world.

It's okay to cancel racist music. Are you lamenting the loss of minstrel music and shows?

I can guess 90% of those who condemn the music have never played it.

That's probably not true. Most of the people on this forum have probably performed it.

Generations of trombone players will not know how to interpret the music.

Good

What was once the music that made the trombone the rock star is no more.

This isn't true either. There are tons of solo trombone pieces.

I have all the first parts of the series.

What about second and third?

I really learned on the job with ringling brothers. There you barely have time to look at a title (or subtitle) when you are playing 2/4 marches in one.

Not relevant really to this discussion. It's not like this is music that was taken by someone bad and perverted into their theme song without regard to the composer. This is music that was written on purpose to be racist. Just because we have a history of performing it doesn't mean you can't learn about the history of the piece and realize what it is that you're performing and choose to stop playing it.

Your argument is basically like saying "oh well, 90% of the women and men saying this is wrong have never lived in a world where women couldn't vote. End women's suffrage"

[brassmedic]

Gotta love these folks who are "late to the party", who don't have a god damn clue what's going on.

[BGuttman]

Actually, it seems that Timbone and I are coming from the same direction. We both abhor the subtitles of the Fillmore Trombone Rags, but like the music. If you want to be truly anal, in the new Ken Burns movie about Ben Franklin, it seems he owned slaves. This from a guy who later created an Abolitionist Society in Philadelphia. There are lots of contradictions in history. Wagner was a vicious anti-Semite. Does that mean we should stop playing his music? I don't lament the lack of popularity of Minstrel shows -- tastes change. I'll bet the folks in 1900 probably would hate AC/DC if they could have heard it. Also, if you are ditching Minstrel shows, do you also ditch the music of Stephen Foster, who wrote music for them?

I will agree that the Fillmore Trombone Rags are not of the same musical quality as Wagner. Not much music is. But the attitude toward "Race Music" has changed in the last 100 plus years. You wouldn't write a trombone solo called "Coon Band Revue" as Arthur Pryor did. Nor would you write a tune and call it "Darktown Strutters' Ball". The Fillmore Rags, as well as a lot of the great marches from Karl King and others were all used in the circus to back acts. You want a fast tune for acrobats and horses because it supports the speed and agility of the performers. At one time the marches we love to play ere called "One Steps" and "Two Steps" -- i.e. dance music. We don't do the dances any more but we sure play the music for them.

You don't want to play the Fillmore rags? Fine. I don't want to play Walter Piston. Or Procol Harem. But I have to say, playing Lassus Trombone on an open air band concert makes the audience smile. And I think we could change it to "Drunken [insert ethnic group here] Rag" and it won't change the feeling at all.

[MrHCinDE]

I'll bet the folks in 1900 probably would hate AC/DC if they could have heard it.

Bruce, whilst I have the greatest respect for you and appreciate the reasoned argument you are trying to put forward, I don’t think this point strengthens your position. There’s a difference between changing tastes or fashions and music which was specifically written to be racist. It’s not about liking or disliking the music itself. I think there’s room for more nuanced debate about some other examples you mentioned but Lassus Trombone, really?

You don't want to play the Fillmore rags? Fine. I don't want to play Walter Piston. Or Procol Harem. But I have to say, playing Lassus Trombone on an open air band concert makes the audience smile. And I think we could change it to "Drunken [insert ethnic group here] Rag" and it won't change the feeling at all.

Would you be prepared to stand up and explain the racist background to Lassus Trombone before you play it? Perhaps you could look a Black person in the audience right in the face and tell them you are fully aware of the disgusting, racist nature of the tune but are happy to play it to them as it makes some of the audience smile. I sure couldn’t.

[brassmedic]

Changing the name of the song doesn't "fix" racism. You are assuming nobody would recognize the tune and be aware of its racist history, which is an ignorant assumption.

[harrisonreed]

I can easily see certain orchestras or conductors choosing to never program Wagner because of his history -- I doubt the Israeli symphonies play his stuff much, who knows, maybe they do. I don't think he named any of his pieces racist or anti-Semitic titles or learned his music to be anti-Semitic or have anything to do with race.

It is harder to apply this logic to the Fillmore music.

[Jimprindle]

The history of racism in music is much beyond trombone titles. My parents had a collection of Edison cylinders that included titles like “Yaller Gal” and “If You’d Have A Coon For A Beau” and worse. The lyrics were horrible. Jim Crow was alive and healthy in the arts in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Should we look at it as a history or ignore and abhor it?

[BGuttman]

@Harrison: The Israel Philharmonic did ban Wagner at some time, mostly because he was Hitler's favorite composer. But times change and they now perform Wagner. No mention of Hitler in any program notes, though. Incidentally, Sixtus Beckmesser in "Die Meistersinger" was supposed to be a parody of a Jew. He's certainly not a pleasant individual and gets his comeuppance in the opera.

@Jim: My feeling is that this music is a product of its time. I feel that we have to understand the situation of the day. We can then choose to deal with the products or not. I saw an Antiques Roadshow where there was a Black who collected these obscene artifacts -- Lawn Jockeys, ash trays, etc. He claimed that it's a part of history regardless of how offensive it might be to him. The collection he showed was actually pretty laughable.

[hyperbolica]

It's hypocritical to ban one representative tune without banning generations of music that fulfill the same role. Hell, the English language has been used to perpetrate all sorts of evil, yet we still use it. Judge people as individuals, not by the evil that has touched them tangentially. By "educating" people about the malice that surrounded Lassus, you're perpetuating the evil without actually fixing anything. This entire argument is giving new life to the very thing it claims to want to eradicate. Can't see the forest for the trees...

[Redthunder]

I saw an Antiques Roadshow where there was a Black who collected these obscene artifacts -- Lawn Jockeys, ash trays, etc.

Calling a black person "a black" is a shitty thing to do Bruce, and this is not the first time it's been pointed out to you either.