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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations
The Graduate School
2005
The Castles and Europe: Race Relations in
Ragtime
Christopher Tremewan Martin
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS AND DANCE
THE CASTLES AND EUROPE: RACE RELATIONS IN RAGTIME
By
CHRISTOPHER TREMEWAN MARTIN
A Thesis submitted to the
Department of Dance
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
Degree Awarded:
Spring Semester, 2005
The members of the Committee approve the Thesis of Christopher Tremewan
Martin defended on March 31st, 2005.
John O. Perpener III
Professor Directing Thesis
Tricia Young
Committee Member
Sally Sommer
Committee Member
The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named
committee members.
ii
This work is dedicated to those who toil in the fields of social dance instruction.
May your labors bear fruit.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire faculty of the Department of Dance at Florida
State University, and particularly John O. Perpener III, Patty Phillips, Sally
Sommer, and Tricia Young, without whom none of this would have happened.
Special thanks as well to my family for their unrelenting support of my quest for
knowledge.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract
……………………………………………. vi
FOREWORD ………………………………….….………………. 1
1. CONTEXT: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA …..……………...….. 5
2. BIOGRAPHICAL OVERVIEW …………………………….. 17
3. THE MOVEMENT OF RAGTIME ..………………………… 42
4. RACE RELATIONS AND RAGTIME ….…………………… 62
CONCLUSION ………………………………………………….. 83
REFERENCES …………………………………………………... 85
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ……………………………………... 87
v
ABSTRACT
Were Vernon and Irene Castle drawing upon African American music and dance
to advance their personal ambitions? Yes. Was the transmission of cultural elements
between black and white society as simple as commodification and appropriation? No.
The Castles’ work with James Reese Europe and the musicians in his Society Orchestra
was extremely liberal for the times, complicating any attempt to simplify their efforts to
popularize black music and dance forms.
The first part of this paper lays out the racial conflicts that were everywhere in the
Progressive Era. A simple biographical sketch of the affairs of the Castles and Europe
follows. An examination of the physical elements of Ragtime dancing, detailing the
elements that concerned the moralists of the time, and the efforts the Castles took to
remove the blackness from movement is found in the third section. Finally, the
implications of the Castles work is considered, looking at the context of the philosophies
of racial uplift dominant at the time, and the Castles and Europe are found to be
migratory agents of cultural transmission, collaborating to achieve personal ends while at
the same time advocating positive racial relations.
vi
FOREWORD
This study, of the artistic collaboration between white and black artists in the
years before World War One (WWI), came about for many reasons, and as research
projects often do, developed in several directions unanticipated at the outset. As the
research evolved, it confirmed the importance of recent approaches to dance studies
stressing the wider cultural, social, and political contexts that shape aesthetic practices.
The life histories and creative innovations of Vernon Castle, Irene Castle, and James
Reese Europe (Jim Europe), set against the backdrop of the Progressive Era, speak to
many of the concerns and issues that are at the center of dance studies today. What are
the effects of class and race distinctions on popular arts and the development of artistic
hierarchies? How do the dynamics of ordinate – subordinate power structures impact
cultural appropriation and hybridity? These, and related, issues are at the heart of the
blend of European American and African American arts that comprised Ragtime dancing.
Ragtime dances were hybrid forms, in which African American movement aesthetics
were grafted onto the base European American form of walking, partnered dance. The
cycles of appropriation and re-appropriation that sometimes drives the creation of new art
forms can be clearly seen in the Castles’ restructuring of Ragtime dances for European
American consumption.
I came to this study with two goals. First, to begin to contribute to a deeper
understanding of the impact that partnered social dancing has had on American culture
since the beginning of the 20th Century, and second, to reposition the Castles in history as
socially and racially progressive figures. As a social dancer and dance teacher, I knew
that the elements of physical contact, proximity, and active participation in partnered
social dance made for a powerful experience. In academia, however, I found a
disproportionate focus on performative concert dance, and a concomitant inattention to
those forms not falling neatly within the categories of classical ballet or contemporary
modern dance. In the last twenty years, however, a trend giving attention to forms not
falling under the rubric of concert dance has emerged, and in that vein I found support for
the thrust of my studies. Partnered social dance is one area that has not yet, I believe,
1
received the scholarly attention that it merits. Today, in 2005, it is not a fashionable or
“hot” subject for research, yet in almost every town across America, on almost every
night of the week, some form of partnered social dance is being performed. Literally
millions more Americans dance socially than will ever see a dance concert, and I hoped
in this study to add to the body of work on this under-researched dance form.
Yet popular social dance forms, in the last twenty years, have not been partnerbased. True, there are some exceptions. The strong presence of Latin-American cultures
in parts of America has kept Afro-Caribbean partner dance forms such as Salsa and
Merengue in the public eye and throughout the south and west, Two Step and Swing
dances retain a niche within the Country-Western aesthetic, though line dances have
largely pushed partner dances to the side. Swing dance forms underwent a renaissance of
sorts recently as part of a Retro trend – American popular culture recycling itself – and
Argentine Tango remains a mysterious enigma that, a century after its first debut in
America, still intrigues whenever the latest incarnation of Forever Tango comes to the
local civic center. But by and large, when America dances today, she dances as an
individual in a group of individuals.
As a teacher of partner dance forms, I have often wondered how the country fell
away from partnered dance. Many dance teachers blame music, such as the Beatles, or
Disco, or simply say that the world moved on, and the dances failed to move with them.
Those explanations always rang false to me, too easy or not sufficient. In researching the
Castles and Jim Europe, I may have stumbled onto one factor answering my curiosity.
I’ve come to wonder if everything didn’t start to go wrong for American partner dance at
the Castle House.
The Castles, guided by their agent Elizabeth Marbury, opened Castle House, a
dance school for the well-to-do on E. 46th street in Manhattan, and there taught the elite
families of the times the proper way to perform the new Ragtime dances. The Castles
can easily be positioned as the first dancing masters of the 20th Century, establishing lists
of rules and publishing a manual of instruction, following in a long tradition stretching
back centuries. They also opened another school, Castles by the Sea, for the summer
months when no one with the funds would stay in the city. Primarily performers, the
Castle schools were a source of some income and a way to connect with the patrons who,
2
Marbury believed, most needed to be wooed for the Castle’s success. Instruction was
mostly by Vernon himself, who had a knack for it – Irene had no patience for teaching –
and in the operation of these sidelines to their career, the Castles differed only slightly
from the dancing masters who had gone before them. In the past, the dance masters went
to the elite to teach them in their homes – but the Castles had sufficient personal fame to
create a new paradigm, where the elite would come to their place of business to learn
what they had to teach, an important reversal of the power flow that typically existed
between those rich in money and those rich in knowledge.
This turned out to be an important shift, however. One of the Castle’s students
was a young man named Arthur Murray. Many years after WWI, Murray would
transform the instruction of dance in America by creating a viable franchise, one which
tried to recapture the rarified atmosphere of Castle House, in any city that had a suitable
economic base to support the instruction. Murray was tremendously successful in his
time, inspiring the competition of the Fred Astaire dance schools – and these two chains
are the largest corporate instructors of dance in America today.
I have come to believe that these franchises finally won the long battle that the
dancing masters of old were fighting – to establish in the mind of the public the belief
that there was a single method for correctly performing dances. But in convincing
America that social dance instruction was something to be bought and sold, they ended
up losing the hearts and minds of the very people they sought as the prize of their fight;
the public decided that, if they had to pay to learn how to dance with someone else,
they’d be just as happy to dance by themselves. I will digress no further from the subject
of this study, except to say this – of the many issues central to this thesis, coming to
understand the manner in which partnered social dance has been developed as a
commodity in America in the 20th Century must start with the Castles.
Chapter One is an overview of the Progressive era, and establishes context for the
issues relevant to the ensuing chapters. I briefly outline the careers and belief systems of
two of the important race leaders of the time, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois,
as well as examining the forces at work in the social and political realms that the Castles
and Jim Europe breathed in as part of their daily existence. The Castles and Europe
operated within a cusp of opportunity for black artists, and while almost every aspect of
3
African American culture was under attack as inferior to white culture, black music was
an exception, accorded some value. The Castles’ ability to work successfully on both
sides of the race conflict is even more remarkable given the suspicion accorded to all
things coming from African American culture, and as a result, much of the work the
Castles did in and for the black community was underreported, and has since been
unacknowledged. Chapter Two presents the biographical details that I discovered in my
initial research of the Castles and Jim Europe, including the years prior to their
collaboration but focusing on the years 1912 to 1915. Their partnership came about as the
result of the popularity the Castles gained in transforming Ragtime dance from a purely
black social form to one that was acceptable to white society. When I began to examine
the movement vocabulary of Ragtime dance – as described in journals, newspapers,
dance manuals, and the autobiographies of Irene Castle – hints of the conflict between
European American and African American movement values began to emerge. After I
gained access to the 1915 short film The Whirl of Life, produced by Vernon and Irene
Castle, and saw people from different races and classes performing Ragtime dance, it
became clear to me that the conflict between cultural belief systems as reflected in dance
movement would be near the center of my study. This resulted in my research moving in
two major directions. The first, my close reading of the movements of Ragtime dance, is
found in Chapter Three, where I examine the underlying differences between European
American and African American movement vocabularies. The second, found in Chapter
Four, delves more deeply into the socio-political forces surrounding the Castles and
Europe. In pursuing this, I ran headlong into the issue that has plagued America for
centuries – the issue of race. Accordingly, I broadened the scope of my research to
include race relations at the turn of the century.
4
CHAPTER ONE
CONTEXT: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
Ragtime music was an African American form, and the dances that were
performed to it had several roots in the dance movements attributable to the African
American community. The Castles were foremost among those who advocated stripping
Ragtime dance of its Africanist elements, and Jim Europe was a black musician and
composer who collaborated with them in the production of their version of Ragtime
dances. Viewed from today’s perspective, this smacks of cultural appropriation, with Jim
Europe as a kind of musical Uncle Tom. However, looking at the actual interactions
between these artists reveals something far more complex. The racial politics of the
Progressive Era were repugnant, but in examining the environment that the Castles and
Europe operated in, something became clear: The Castles were, within the constraints of
their time, acting as agents of racial uplift for black Americans. What little scholarly
work there was on the Castles led me to expect to find them simply profiting from their
relationship with black artists, treating them as invisible accoutrements to their success.
After all, the Castles operated in a society that thoroughly ignored, marginalized, and
exploited African Americans. Instead, I discovered artists who were sensitive to the
concerns of the black community, valued in both word and action the dignity of their
associates regardless of race, and acted to raise the visibility of black artists.
Vernon Castle began his career in the theater as a moderately successful eccentric
comedian on Broadway, and Irene appeared occasionally in minor supporting roles. In
1911 they went to Paris, and became an overnight sensation performing the new Ragtime
dances. They returned to America and became embroiled in the controversy over the
propriety of Ragtime dancing. While the Castles did not in any way directly address
racial issues, they insisted that Jim Europe and his musicians were best qualified to
perform the Ragtime music to which they danced. In doing so, they placed African
American dance, music, and musical forms before a national audience, promoting to
5
Americans the idea that there were elements of black culture that were tremendously
valuable. Throughout the racially tense years between Reconstruction and WWI, all
aspects of African American life and culture were under constant attack in the white
media. As an unquestionably moral couple who embodied many of the aesthetic virtues
of European American society, the Castles became a powerful voice representing black
dance, music, and musicians in a positive fashion. Through their relationships with the
African American community and their treatment of black artists, Vernon and Irene
Castle demonstrated through example the possibility that black and white America could
come to coexist to the benefit of both groups.
Complicating the above view of the Castles as progressive cultural agents is the
fact that they benefited from their privileged racial position, allowing them to move
between the pervasive world of white American culture and the more insular world of
black American culture. They – as opposed to Europe – could travel these circuits
without acquiring any of the racial stigmas attached to the reality of being black in early
20th century America. Their privileged position can also be read as the kind of cultural
imperialism that was characteristic of European and American interactions with nonWestern cultures during the period. In examining the inequities, complications, and
contradictions that were embedded in the relationship between the Castles and Europe –
and the complicity of all three in the transposition of African-American cultural elements
– one can begin to see the complexity of race relations at the beginning of the century.
Their relationship may be seen as a microcosmic example of how black and white
Americans, who had reasons to cooperate for mutual gain, negotiated the entrenched
racist practices of American society while trying to acknowledge a common humanity.
If we take the more accepted point of view of the Castles as mere appropriators
and commodifiers of African American culture, then we can position them within the
model of the white Western exploiters of the “exotic other,” or at least as interlopers who
delved into other cultures and mined them for material that was colorful, exciting, and
appealing in its overall difference from Western aesthetic norms. This model was
exemplified by artists such as Ruth St. Denis, Maud Allan, and the numerous incarnations
of Salome that appeared on American and European stages. At the turn of the century,
the upper classes of America and Europe were experimenting with the flavors of other
6
cultures, presumably inferior to their own. Looked at in this way, the Castles were
drawing on African American culture as a way of capitalizing on the popular interest in
the exotic and “primitive” rhythms and syncopations found in African American music
and dance. But even in using this approach, the Castles pursued a different route than the
other appropriators mentioned above.
While St. Dennis, Allen, and the Salome’s took on the trappings of the Other in
their presentation of exotica, transforming themselves into alternative personas, the
Castles remained an unquestionably white couple performing on the cusp of what was
and was not acceptable for white dancers. They used their whiteness and cache as
celebrities to expand the boundaries of acceptable dance forms to include those that
originated in African American culture – but only when danced in the manner that they
advocated. From their privileged position, the Castles were able to pick and choose the
elements of black culture that suited their needs. When they danced, isolations and
articulations of the torso and pelvis were removed, and the driving beat of the rhythm was
retained. All visual elements of blackness were erased, leaving only the Ragtime sound
that Americans had already wholeheartedly embraced.
By the time Jim Europe began his association with the Castles in 1913, he had had
extensive associations with elite white social circles through his connections with the
Wanamakers, a fortune 500 family from Philadelphia. Europe’s Society Orchestra was a
regular fixture at the parties of the Vanderbilts and the Garys, and, as head of the Clef
Club, an organization of black musicians, he was accustomed to negotiating the racial
boundaries between the African American musical community and upper class white
society. However, he very likely realized that his access to the white community would
always be limited. His role in white society was that of a mediator, a necessary gobetween for those who needed access to the then-fashionable black musicians. As token
performers in venues that normally excluded blacks, Europe and his men were probably
perceived by many in white society as little more than cleaned-up minstrels. These black
artists were consciously working to change such perceptions, while at the same time
working in the relatively lucrative and less servile field of popular music performance.
Europe’s position as a collaborator with the Castles was further complicated by
the African American community’s shifting perception of his role as a race leader. When
7
Europe was named a “Man of the Month” by W.E.B. DuBois’ The Crisis in 1912 for his
leadership of the concert of African American music at Carnegie Hall, he was
indisputably one of the men associated with racial uplift in the black community. By
1914 his close association with the Castles led some to believe that he had abandoned his
fellow African Americans in pursuit of personal profit and ambition. In spite of these
perceptions, the record shows that he remained active in charitable organizations and
continued to make vital contributions to the development of black musicians, black
music, and black culture in general. However, it seems that the ongoing erosion of
Europe’s relationship with the black community was an inevitable and uncontrollable
result of a double standard that existed in race relations. Europe, as a member of the
underclass, was perceived with suspicion by his peers when he crossed racial boundaries,
while the Castles were able to negotiate the same boundaries without being stigmatized.
The relationship between the Castles, Europe, and the transmission of aesthetic
elements between their respective cultures was far more complicated than simple
appropriation, or commodification. Ragtime dance, presented under many names but
essentially consisting of variations on the “One Step,” was a fusion of European
American partnered dance forms and the syncopated and isolated movements common to
African American social dances. Many European American social arbiters opposed the
new dance forms, deeply concerned about the performance of African American dance
movements by whites. Advocating the removal of African American movement elements
while retaining the black music that was inarguably an improvement on western forms,
the Castles positioned themselves between the people who appreciated black Ragtime
dance and those who would only accept a sanitized version of it – and then only
reluctantly. When advocating the removal of Africanist elements offensive to Victorian
moralists – the main cultural arbiters of European American society – the Castles were
not denying the value and worth of African Americans, in fact quite the opposite. While
maintaining that certain movement styles were inappropriate for white dancers, the
Castles simultaneously valorized Ragtime, unambiguously African American music, and
African American musicians. In supporting Europe and his orchestras, in respecting and
representing them as polished professionals rather than as offensively comedic minstrels,
8
the Castles defied the accepted mode of interaction between whites and blacks in the
Progressive Era.
In understanding the relationship between the Castles and Jim Europe, there is no
factor more important than the racial dynamic that affected every aspect of American life
at the turn of the century. In 1910 America was at the end of a post-reconstruction
backlash against African Americans, with virulent bigotry being supported by scientists
both empirical and social. Although a rising tide of voices in the academic community
spoke out against the misuse of science in support of white supremacist theories, these
moderate voices were largely drowned out by the popular press of the time, which almost
entirely supported the disenfranchisement of African American citizens.
The “Progressive Era” was in many ways a contradiction of itself. On one hand,
the era saw sweeping reforms seeking to implement the power of the government to
supplant and reduce dependence on private philanthropic institutions as a means of
solving social and economic inequalities perceived as a source of societal ills. The power
of government to regulate private life was increased to improve the lot of the common
man. Labor, land, trade, capital, and tax reforms were all put into place during this era,
not as a reaction to war or general economic distress, but rather as a proactive endeavor
to increase well-being during an era of peace and prosperity. Those disadvantaged by
the market system came to be perceived as victims, subject to forces beyond their control,
and government intervention on their behalf, previously regarded as hindering the laissezfaire policies that were believed to drive capitalism, were legitimized. The pioneers of the
modern welfare state were those in the Progressive Era who were “the first to assert with
any real practical success that government should be a positive agent responsible for the
welfare of its citizens, and for the poor and powerless citizens.”1
On the other hand, political participation of marginalized groups utterly failed to
match the innovative expansion of policies that characterized the reforms of government.
Rather, both national and local courts and governments pursued policies of
disenfranchisement based on race, class, and gender. “In short, many progressives
wanted either drastic curtailment of the new immigration or its total stoppage, and almost
all agreed that America had no place for cultural diversity, that the only good immigrants
1
Richard Hofstadter, The United States in the 20th Century, v.1, p.149
9
were thoroughly Americanized immigrants.”2 No lesser liberal than Louis Brandies, who
became the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice in 1916, wrote in 1905 that “habits of
living or of thought which tend to keep alive differences of origin or to classify men
according to their religious beliefs are inconsistent with the American ideal of
Brotherhood, and are disloyal.”3 Legislation was enacted constricting political
participation via voting qualifications, effectively resulting in the disqualification of large
groups of immigrants in the North, African Americans in the South, and Asians in the
West. Historian Robert McDonald posits that the anti-civil rights bent of the times was
evinced in three ways.
First, many laws were negative in content and therefore directly curtailed the civil
liberties or civil rights of targeted groups. Second, there is evidence of the
‘unresponsive bystander’ phenomenon, in which legislative bodies, through
inaction, failed to correct widely recognized gross violations of the civil rights
and liberties of some groups. Third, legislation positive in civil rights content was
undermined when its passage and/or implantation was combined with anti-civil
rights rationales subverting its empowerment of disadvantaged groups.4
Broadly speaking, intellectuals at the turn of the century were enamored of two
propositions that sat at odds with each other. One was a sort of reverse-social
Darwinism, in which society could be engineered, as by an architect, and the population
would in short order be forced to evolve to a new and higher state. The other was an antiphilosophical philosophy of pragmatism, “theory and dogma be damned, for the only real
measure of the value of an action or an idea was whether it worked, whether in practice it
brought about desirable results.”5
To illuminate the way these overarching themes were reflected in society at large
and in the relationship of the principal subjects of my study, the ideas and philosophies
propounded by two prominent figures in race relations during the Progressive Era,
Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois will be briefly examined. Both Washington
and DuBois generated an amount of scholarship that is daunting, and today new analysis
and interpretations of their work add to the volumes authored in the last century. My
2
McDonald, The United States in the 20th Century, v.1, p. 127
Brandies, quoted in McDonald, The United States in the 20th Century, v.1, p. 128
4
McDonald, The United States in the 20th Century, v.1, p 156.
5
Ibid., p 135
3
10
portrayal of their activities will be a sketch only, offered as an aid in shaping the lens in
which the relationship between the Castles, Jim Europe, and the grounding philosophies
of racial uplift can be understood. The interactions which shaped the popularization of
Ragtime all occurred against the background of a highly racialized environment.
In turn, then, the dynamic change being brought to the African American form of
Ragtime dance can be seen not as mere capitalist commodification, but rather as part of
the complex, cyclical exchange of cultural information between African American and
European American cultures. The Castles, aided by their partnership with James Reese
Europe, helped bring African American culture into the hegemonic aesthetic paradigm in
a fashion advocated by both white and black leaders of the time.
Traditionally, even now, the central thrust of black protest has always struck at
discrimination and segregation; the central demand has always been for equal
treatment with other citizens. Yet a salient characteristic of twentieth century
Negro protest has been an extraordinary amount of controversy within the black
community over tactics and strategy to follow—a nearly constant warring
between ‘conservatives’ and ‘radicals’. Early in the century active propaganda,
legal action, and lobbying for legislation were considered ‘radical’ techniques, for
they contrasted sharply with the soothing soft words of the accomodationists.6
Booker T. Washington was born a slave in Hale's Ford, Virginia, April 5, 1856.
When he was 16, the Washington family was living in Malden, West Virginia. His
parents allowed him to quit work to go to school, but they had no money to help pay for
his expenses. Washington walked nearly 400 miles to attend the Hampton Institute in
Virginia, and paid his tuition and board there by working as the janitor. 7 He went on to
become a teacher, first in his home town, then at the Hampton Institute, and then in 1881
he founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. As head
of the Institute, Washington traveled the country unceasingly to raise funds from both
blacks and whites, and he soon became a well-known speaker.
Washington came of age in a country that was set against the African American.
The portrait presented of African Americans in America by white newspapers and
periodicals of the time was, bluntly, hateful and demeaning. Almost without exception,
6
August Meier & Elliot Rudwick from the introduction to Black Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century,
p. xii
7
Accounts of the distance differ, oddly enough. Alternate texts give distances from 200 to 500 miles.
Today, the distance between Malden, WV, and Hampton, VA, is 390 miles.
11
the stereotypes of “Jim Crow” and “Zip Coon” were used to portray the African
American as a lazy, deadbeat, shifty, sexual predator who would do or say anything to
avoid work or enjoy sexual congress with white women. J. Michael Hogan summed up
the racial assumptions of the time.
If one commonplace existed for all those who perceived themselves as white . . . it
was the inferiority of the African Americans as a group. The moral and practical
implications of this common perception were not particularly obvious, and
debates about what, if anything, should be the response to this inferior race in
white America were commonplace at the time.8
Minstrel shows reinforced these stereotypes with what became known as “coon
songs,” sprightly tunes that featured relentlessly racist lyrics. Sheet music of “All Coons
Look Alike to Me” sold over one million copies within a few years of its release in 1896.
“One could not receive American popular culture or news in the 1890’s without getting
constant repetition of the stereotyped African American, an image of laziness, stupidity,
immorality, and criminality.”9
In his famous and oft-quoted speech at the 1895 Atlanta Exposition, Washington
challenged this presentation of black Americans, saying blacks “were a people of love
and fidelity” to the whites, a “faithful, law-abiding and unresentful people.”10 “In all
things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers,” he shouted, holding his
open hand aloft, “yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress,”
clenching his fist.11 This mantra of “Separate but Equal” foreshadowed the U.S. Supreme
Court Judgment of 1896, “Plessy v. Ferguson.” That landmark case, in which a black
man was convicted for riding in a whites-only railroad car, gave federal blessing to statesponsored segregation. Of the nine justices on the Supreme Court, only one dissented,
and in his remarks, the dissenting justice John Marshall Harlan observed:
The present decision . . . will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal
and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the
belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent
8
J. Michael Hogan, Rhetoric and Reform in the Progressive Era, p 312
Robert J. Norrell, Another Look at the Age of Booker T. Washington, p. 61, in Booker T. Washington and
Black Progress: Up from slavery 100 years later
10
Washington, quoted in Norrell, p. 64
11
quoted in Louis R. Hamilton, Up From Slavery as History and Biography, p. 20
9
12
purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the
recent [the 13th and 14th] amendments of the Constitution.12
That Washington subscribed to the “Jim Crow” policy of separate-but-equal has
long been held against him. Only recently has scholarship closely investigated the
reasons why he might have held such a belief, and what value might have been gained for
African Americans in pursuing such a policy. In his 1901 autobiography Up From
Slavery, Washington promoted Victorian virtues of cleanliness, thrift, hard-work,
sobriety, and self-discipline as the means by which African Americans would be able to
achieve self-sustaining economic growth. “The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory
just now is more important than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house.”13
Washington believed that without the ability to sustain economic independence, African
Americans would never be allowed the rights and responsibilities of full political
enfranchisement.
As far as white America was concerned, in the 20 years from 1895 to 1915
Booker T. Washington was the leader of the black American community. And despite
challenges to his authority by W. E. B. DuBois and others, Washington was largely seen
as the leading spokesman of his race by the black community. Washington, “The Wizard
of Tuskegee,” has been the subject of intense analysis in the last half of the twentieth
century, with his role in history books wavering between the extremes of “Uncle Tom”
and “Dedicated Champion of his Race.” Scholar W. Martin has said “Washington
incessantly traversed the border between accommodation and resistance, seeking a
middle ground where resistance conflated with accommodation.”14 Washington strove
towards two ends: First, to present a positive picture of Negro America, contrasting the
image portrayed in the dominant white press, and second, to raise the cultural capital of
African Americans through the creation of a viable labor force.
Booker T. Washington’s most serious rival for the intellectual leadership of black
America in this period was William Edward Burghardt (W. E. B.) DuBois. Although they
shared many of the same ideals and goals for African Americans, and the concrete steps
that they considered important for achieving them were markedly similar, they differed
12
John Marshal Harlan, dissenting opinion, “Plessy v. Ferguson,” 1896
Booker T. Washington, quoted in Cooper, Pivotal Decades in the United States, p. 75
14
Waldo Martin, In search of Booker T. Washington, in Booker T. Washington and Black Progress, p. 42
13
13
strongly on the order in which their goals should be pursued, and over the years, what had
been a collegial relationship devolved into what amounted to open warfare. In contrast
to Washington’s belief that enfranchisement would follow economic independence,
DuBois posited that economic independence could never be achieved without the vote.
Although DuBois allowed as how Washington was “striving nobly to make Negro
artisans, businessmen, and property-owners,” he maintained that “. . . it is utterly
impossible, under modern competitive methods, for the workingmen and property owners
to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.”15
W. E. B. DuBois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on February 23,
1868. He received a bachelor's degree from Fisk University, an institution determined to
give young African American men a solidly European American education.16 He went
on to earn a second bachelors as well as a Ph.D., from Harvard. He was a professor of
Latin and Greek at Wilberforce and the University of Pennsylvania, and also served as a
professor of economics and history at Atlanta University.
In 1903 he published The Souls of Black Folk, in which he expressed criticism of
Washington’s willingness to forego political power, insistence on civil rights, and the
higher education of Negro youth in favor of industrial education. “As a result of this
tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return?” DuBois asked.17 In the ten years
since this policy has been triumphant, DuBois said, three things had occurred: the
disfranchisement of the Negro, the legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority,
and the steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro.
DuBois did not attribute these developments directly to Washington’s teachings, but,
DuBois said, “his propaganda has, without a shadow of a doubt, helped their speedier
accomplishment.”18 Over the next twelve years, until Washington’s death in 1915, the
conflict between the two men widened.
Led by W.E.B., the Niagara Movement formed in 1905 to oppose Washington’s
program, which they denounced as a failure. On nearly every issue they stood in
direct contrast to Washington. Niagara placed full responsibility for the race
problem on whites, denounced inequities of segregation, separate-but-equal
15
DuBois’, Dial 31, July 16, 1901 53-55. Quoted in Norrel, p. 58
Graduates of Fisk University were sometimes referred to as Black Puritans, or Afro-Saxons.
17
Francis L. Broderick, W.E.B. DuBois, Negro Leader in a Time of Crisis, p. 56
18
Ibid., p. 56
16
14
doctrine, and disenfranchisement laws. Niagara maintained that economic
progress was not possible in a democratic society without the protection of the
ballot. They insisted, above all, that Negroes would only gain their rights through
agitation and complaint.19
The Niagara movement did not flourish. However, from its failure grew an
organization that has had tremendous influence on the course of race relations in the
twentieth century – the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP). In 1909, the NAACP was formed to fight for the black man’s constitutional
rights; unstated was the aim of curbing Washington’s power.
Though the founders of the NAACP regarded themselves as the spiritual heirs of
the abolitionists, they really owed more the reform impulse of the Progressive
movement, then at its height. The attitudes of Progressives on the subject of race
ranged from profound prejudice to sincere equalitarianism, but an influential
minority among them was deeply concerned that oppressed Negroes should be
included in the program of reform. Given the context of the times it was the
wealth, prominence, and influence of this small band of concerned whites that
made it possible for the radical Negroes to push their program with some degree
of effectiveness. From the start, the NAACP branches were typically black in
both members and leaders, but at the national headquarters DuBois, as editor of
The Crisis and director of research, was the only black executive until 1921.20
At the root of DuBois’ concerns about Washington’s programs was his lack of
emphasis on higher education. DuBois was convinced that only by educating the best
and brightest Negroes could blacks in America develop the leaders who would bring the
race fully into American society as equals. The talented tenth of the race would “leaven
the lump . . . guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the worst, in their
own and other races.”21 Preachers, teachers, professional men; these were the kinds of
workers DuBois envisioned as the talented tenth of his race. “To attempt to establish any
sort of system of common and industrial school training, without first, (and I say first
advisedly) providing for the higher training of the very best teachers, is simply throwing
your money to the winds.”22 DuBois agreed industrial training was important, but
Washington’s program was “. . . industrialism drunk on its vision of success, to imagine
that its own work can be accomplished without providing for the training of broadly
19
August Meier & Elliot Rudwick, Black Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century, p. xxvi
Ibid., pp. xxvii - xxviii
21
DuBois, Booker T. Washington et al., The Negro Problem, pp. 63, 33. Quoted in Broderick, p. 51
22
Ibid., pp. 58-59, Quoted in Broderick, pp. 73-74
20
15
cultured men and women to teach its own teachers, and to teach the teachers of the public
school.”23
In addition to his opposition to Washington, DuBois was the first in the black
community to promote the idea that African American arts and culture were valuable in
their own right, a claim that, while obvious today, was far from clear a century ago. Jim
Europe and the Castles, in espousing their belief that black music, played by black
musicians, was best for dancing, were a powerful voice in validating African American
culture. An examination of the biographical details of Vernon Castle, Irene Castle, and
Jim Europe will reveal a number of additional connections that led to the unique
collaboration of these individuals and their resultant contributions to harmonious race
relations.
23
Ibid., p. 61, Quoted in Broderick, pp. 73-74
16
CHAPTER TWO
BIOGRAPHICAL OVERVIEW
Vernon Blythe was born in 1877 in Norwich, England, the only son in a family
with four older daughters. Vernon’s mother died when he was ten, leaving his father,
who owned a pub, to raise the five children. Vernon trained at Birmingham University as
an engineer, and might have gone on to a very different career if he hadn’t decided to
accompany his father and sister on a vacation to the United States.24 Although he became
a very successful performer on Broadway and in Vaudeville, Vernon’s first appearance in
the theater started as a lark. His sister Coralie had been cast in Lew Fields’ The Orchid,
and Vernon and their father sailed with her to America. Mr. Blythe, senior, did not find
New York to his liking, and sailed back to England after a week. Vernon stayed in the
city, hanging around rehearsals, taking a small part in the show. The Orchid never
actually opened, but large sections of it were worked into the 1906 show About Town.25
Coralie Blythe was a serious actress, and her husband, Lawrence Grossman was
also appearing in the show. Since Coralie was billed as “Coralie Blythe,” it was decided
that Vernon needed a stage name to avoid confusion. Accordingly, Lawrence dubbed his
brother-in-law “Vernon Castle,” supposedly after Windsor Castle. Between 1906 and
1911, Vernon worked in several of Field’s productions, playing comic roles; the lanky,
eccentric Englishman acting as a foil to Lew Fields’ portly German immigrant.
Vernon performed his first professional dance number in The Midnight Sons
(1909) with Lotta Faust, the star singer of “Sammy” from the 1903 Broadway production
of The Wizard of Oz.26 His rail-thin frame reportedly made him a comic figure in the
24
Several accounts of his life mention that he received a degree in engineering from Birmingham
University (U.K.) in 1907, though in 1906 he is listed in the program of the Broadway show About Town,
which opened August 30th of that year, and Vernon performed in the show when it went on the road.
25
Irene Castle, My Husband, p 10
26
http://www.hungrytigerpress.com/tigertunes/sammy.shtml
17
dance—Vernon was 5’11,” 118 pounds. In the summer of 1910, Vernon met Irene Foote,
the young daughter of a Long Island physician. 27
Irene was fascinated by the theater -- as a youth she took dancing lessons, and
performed in local theatrical productions. In her biographies, she reports that she did not
think much of Vernon at first. However, upon discovering that he was an actor working
with impresario Fields, her interest was piqued. She later recalled: “If Lew Fields could
be persuaded to take one look at my dancing, my career would be on its way.”28 At
Vernon’s urging, in January of 1911, two weeks before The Summer Widowers was to
close, Fields allowed Irene to take the stage in a small part. Vernon and Irene were
engaged in March of 1911, and married in May of 1911. Soon after they were married
the Castles auditioned for Fields, and although he was on good terms with Vernon, Fields
refused to allow them to dance together in his shows, apocryphally asking, “Who is going
to pay money to watch a man dance with his wife?” 29 In the spring of 1911, the Castles
were making $125 a week -- Vernon $100, Irene $25 for her small speaking part.30
During the fall 1911 tour of Lew Fields production The Hen-Pecks, a French
producer approached Vernon and asked him to re-create the “Barbershop Scene” in Paris.
This was a comic sketch from The Hen-Pecks in which Vernon, playing the part of a
pompous Lothario, was roundly abused by Lew Fields’ protective father in a comic,
slapstick fashion.31 Fields generously granted the Castles complete rights to the scene
and, as Irene put it, “We didn’t know exactly what we were going to do nor how we
would go about it. Had anyone urged us not to go, in all probability the trip would have
27
There is some discrepancy as to the details of their initial acquaintance. Irene clearly states that Vernon
was performing in The Hen-Pecks when she met him (My Husband, p 11). Yet, the League of American
Theater Producers’ website lists the opening date for the show as being February 4th 1911. In Reid
Badger’s biography of James Reese Europe, Badger reports that they met while Vernon was performing in
The Summer Widowers. (A Life In Ragtime, p.78) In Irene’s second attempt to serialize her life in print,
Castles in the Air, she says that Vernon was in The Summer Widowers when they met. (Castles in the Air,
p. 33) Certainly the reported dates for the shows make a better case for The Summer Widowers.
28
Irene Castle, Castles in the Air, p. 32
29
Apocryphal, as noted. The quote appears in RKO’s The Vernon and Irene Castle Story, 1939
30
$125 a week would be worth ~ $2,000 in 2005 dollars – an excellent wage. Samuel H. Williamson, What
is the Relative Value? Economic History Services, April 2004, URL : http://www.eh.net/hmit/compare/
This website has some very interesting alternate applications. The Castle’s $125 salary, when compared to
that of unskilled workers, comes to $11,000 – and that is per week!
31
The scene was reproduced in RKO’s The Vernon and Irene Castle Story, 1939. Astaire saw Vernon
perform several times as a young vaudevillian.
18
been called off. . . . So, since we had no reason to refuse—less, even, than we had for
going—we decided to set sail.”32
Arriving in Paris, the Castles discovered that the opening of the production in
which they were scheduled to perform had been postponed. They had arrived with very
little money, expecting in the naiveté of youth that the show would open and they would
be drawing a salary immediately. Almost six weeks went by before the show was ready
to open.
While waiting, they deposited their copper pennies in a silk bag hung by the door
–large coins, they didn’t want the inconvenience of carrying them around in their
pockets. Before long, those pennies were all the money they had left. They had
borrowed a thousand francs from the management of the theater, but the Castles could
never hold on to money, a pattern that followed them throughout their life together. At
this point, Irene recalled, they turned to the gambling winnings of Walter Ash, who
taught some of the other workers in the building the dice game “craps.” Ash “was an old
negro who had been a servant in my family a great many years.”33 Irene mentions him
fondly in the second chapter of her 1919 autobiographical account, My Husband.
Waiting for the show to begin rehearsals, she said:
Our evenings we spent playing “seven up” with Walter, a game he had taught us
and at which he always won, or walking with him through the Montmartre to peek
in at the dance-halls and cabarets. . . . Walter learned a few words of French very
quickly and did all the shopping. . . . Every time we paid the rent, however, we
had one good dinner and blowout. . . . Walter always went with us, for he was the
only person we knew in Paris, and we loved his company.34
There is another source of information on Walter Ash – the feature film The
Vernon and Irene Castle Story, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers. In the film,
Walter Ash’s character is central to the action. He appears in the scene in which Vernon
meets Irene, and is present at every major point in the story until the end of the film when
he delivers the news to Irene that Vernon has died. While some of Ash’s character and
actions may be attributed to the artistic license of the screenwriter — the actor who plays
Ash is white, a change made to pacify film distributors in the southern states —Irene
32
Irene Castle, My Husband, pp. 21-22
I. Castle, My Husband, p. 26
34
Ibid., pp. 31,32
33
19
Castle was a consultant on the film, and it seems likely that something of the real Walter
Ash was translated into the character that appears on screen. Walter Ash was one of the
possible influences that could explain why Vernon and Irene’s attitudes towards race
were more liberal than those of the average American during the early 1900s.
Throughout the film, Ash is portrayed in a warm, respectful way, almost as a father
figure, demonstrating a pugnacious protective streak which extends to Vernon after he
becomes Irene’s husband.
In the film, when Vernon and Irene receive the job offer to go to Paris, they are
excited by the prospect of a honeymoon combined with a job. Into this happy moment
Ash exclaims “When do we leave?” This moment is comedic – hahah, the servant wants
to go on the honeymoon – but Irene exclaims “Of course we’ll take Walter with us!”
Two possible explanations present themselves for this choice. Irene could be selfconsciously considering the status she would be presenting in Paris. Clearly, a couple
who have a servant attending them must be of a higher class than a couple on their own.
Alternately, she could have a sincere affection for the person who has been so close to
her since her childhood, and recognize that Walter would almost certainly never have
another opportunity to travel to Europe. My suspicion is that both of these factors were a
consideration in the real-world decision to have Ash accompany them to Paris. A
fortuitous decision, as it turned out, because without Ash’s skill with dice, the Castle’s
trip to Paris might have been cut short.
What would this have meant for two upper-middle class artists such as the
Castles? Perhaps depending on a servant to take care of them was something they took
blindly in stride, simply another part of Ash’s responsibilities. But this seems unlikely.
Instead of being in charge of the money and providing Ash’s salary, the Castles found
themselves beholden to their black servant’s ability to win money in order for them to
eat. If nothing else, such an experience would have brought home to the young white
artists Ash’s worth as a human being, as someone who went above and beyond the call of
duty to aid them in their hour of need. That this someone was black, and a servant, could
not have been easily overlooked. If one black man could demonstrate such a highly
valued quality as loyalty, the possibility arises that other African Americans would, at
20
least, not be prejudged in quite the same light as before. With Ash’s help, the Castles
were able to hang on in Paris until they got their “break” at the Café de Paris.
Eventually the show, Finally . . . A Review! opened at the Olympia theater.
According to Irene’s reports, it was pretty bad. Vernon’s French was barely passable,
and consequently the comic dialogue in the specialty act which he had been hired to
perform did not play well with French audiences.
The only things Irene did enjoy about
the show were the two dance numbers Vernon choreographed and convinced the
producers to allow them to perform. One told the fable of the “tin soldier and the paper
doll,” and the other was a new “Ragtime” dance.
Irene describes the way the Ragtime dance came about in two very different ways
in her two memoirs. First, from her 1958 Castles in the Air:
My mother had been sending us clippings describing the new dance rage which
was sweeping across America, a syncopated Ragtime rough and tumble called the
“Grizzly Bear” or Texas Tommy. We decided, as a finale for the show, to
introduce French audiences to the latest American dance furor. Unfortunately, we
had not seen the latest American dances and had only the vague newspaper
descriptions to go by.
Vernon decided, however, that if we hadn’t seen the Grizzly Bear, the French
hadn’t either, so they wouldn’t know whether we were doing it right or not.
Reading between the lines of the newspaper stories, he evolved a close
approximation of the Grizzly Bear and the Texas Tommy to the tune of
“Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”
If the American version was rough, ours was even rougher, full of so many
acrobatic variations that I was in the air much more often than I was on the
ground. The French audience was enthusiastic . . . They stood up at the end of
the number and cried out “greezly bahr” until we appeared again.”35
On the other hand, in her 1918 memoir, My Husband, Irene notes that her stage
idol, Blossom Seeley, had been imported to Broadway from San Francisco’s Barbary
Coast to appear in The Hen-Pecks. Seeley, described by Irene as a “coon-shouter” in “the
Ethel Merman style,” displayed her legs doing the Texas Tommy dance after her song,
Toddling the Todelo. “This dance and song,” Irene wrote, “or what we remembered of it,
came to our rescue in Paris.”36
35
36
Irene Castle, Castles in the Air, pp.54,55
Irene Castle, My Husband, p. 21
21
In the last act of the Revue we sang “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” We followed
this with a sort of grizzly-bear dance. It was very rough, more so than any dance
we ever did over here. In later years we tried to get away as much as possible
from the acrobatic style of dancing, but at just this period it was the most popular.
I wore a little short pierrot costume and carried a big white teddy bear. It was a
sort of Texas Tommy dance. As this was entirely from memory of what we had
seen Blossom Seeley do in “The Hen-Pecks” it was quite unusual. Then too,
Blossom Seeley had danced alone, and were trying, both of us, to imitate her
Frisco style.37
The Castles left Finally . . . A Review, as soon as they had worked off the money
the theater had advanced them. They scraped by until they secured an audition at the
Café de Paris, one of Paris’ most prestigious nightclubs.
Every night the same people came . . . wealthy Argentineans with their dark and
beautiful women; members of the French nobility; Russians from the court of the
Czar spending the spring in Paris. They did not come to be entertained, for it was
not a restaurant where you sat down and waited for the entertainment to begin.
They were the entertainment. They came to see their friends and to laugh, and
later in the night they would go l’Abbaye Theleseme to dance and finally to
Maxim’s for breakfast.38
The evening before their scheduled audition, the Castles spent the last of their
savings at the Café, in order to get a feel for the space and the atmosphere. Later that
night a Russian noble recognized them from the Revue at the Olympia, and had the
Maitre’d ask them to perform. Reluctantly, they stood up from the table, as though they
were simply another couple there socially, and began to dance. To their great surprise,
they were a success. Vernon recalled: “We were terrible, really. Somehow, our dance
pleased some Russian prince, an awfully rich fellow, and he sent 2,000 francs over to us
as a gift.”39 The Café offered them a regular table, and free dinners every night, if they
would just come and dance. The Castles followed this pattern for the next several weeks.
The pretense that they were simply another couple who happened to get up and perform
was a conceit that became their signature. The Maitre’d sat them at the same table every
evening, and at some point they would get up and perform. Soon, they were invited to
37
Ibid., p. 35, see appendix 1 for costume sketch.
Irene Castle, Castles in the Air, pp. 56,57
39
Vernon Castle, “How the Castles Began to Dance,” in the Philadelphia Ledger, undated clipping, Castle
Scrapbooks, Billy Rose Theater Collection, New York Public Library, Quoted in Badger, p. 80
38
22
dance at private parties all over France, Germany, and England, and went from depending
on their servant’s gambling ability to champagne, caviar, and weekends in Monte Carlo.
During their tenure at the Café de Paris the Castles also came to the attention of
several prominent Americans, chief among them Elisabeth Marbury, a prominent woman
in New York City’s social and theatrical circles. Marbury, known as “Miss Bessie” or
“Pops,” was a literary agent, dramatic producer, and social reformer. Active in politics,
she was the first woman from New York to be named an official delegate to the national
political convention. After they returned to the States, Marbury became the Castle’s
agent, and her connections with the Top 400 families would enable much of the success
which followed. Vernon and Irene were soon repeating their performances at the Café de
l’Opera, the Café de Paris’ counterpart in New York City, and again they received
invitations to perform at upscale private soirees.40 Sometime in 1912 or 1913 the Castles
likely first crossed paths with James Reese Europe, an African American bandleader who
was to become their collaborator in the creation of several of the signature dances that
marked the highest point of their careers.
James Reese Europe, called “Jim,” was born February 22nd, 1880 in Mobile,
Alabama. His father, Henry, had been a slave, and his mother Lorraine was the freeborn
daughter of one of the most prominent members of the early African American Episcopal
Church of Mobile.41 When Benjamin Harris defeated Grover Cleveland in the
presidential election of 1888, John Wanamaker, the Postmaster General of the United
States, took over the responsibility for distributing jobs to party supporters under what
was known as the spoils system.42 Henry Europe was a staunch supporter of the
Republican Party in Mobile, and when Jim was nine years old Henry Europe received a
clerkship in the National Postal Service as a reward for faithful political service. During
Reconstruction, it was common practice for the Republican Party to award low-paying
government jobs to African Americans who helped bring black voters to the polls in their
districts. Knowing Henry’s job could be lost a few years later if the Democrats took
power, the Europe family optimistically relocated to Washington, D.C.
40
However, at their first private performance they were kept waiting in a coat closet for hours until the
guests had finished eating – a far cry from the lavish attention they had received in Paris.
41
Reid Badger, A Life in Ragtime, p. 10
42
It was not uncommon for hundreds of thousands of federal jobs to change hands whenever a new party
took over the white house.
23
Although educational opportunities were limited for African Americans at the
time, Henry and Lorraine Europe made every effort to see that their children received
schooling. Lorraine taught reading and writing to her children, and later they attended
church-sponsored private schools.43 Henry and Lorraine also shared their love of music
and musical knowledge with their family. Lorraine played piano, and Henry “could play
about everything that would emit a sound when properly coaxed, and wasn’t particular
about what.”44 There was some sentiment among the white developmentalists that
African Americans could use their “natural” talent for music to achieve recognition for
their race, and to this end they promoted both sacred and secular music within the black
community. This paternalistic – though well-intentioned – philosophy impacted many
African Americans, including the Europe children. In 1891, John Phillip Sousa moved to
318 B Street S.E., a few doors away from the Europe’s home.45 The Marine Band, which
Sousa directed beginning in 1880, provided musical instruction to promising black
children, and both Jim and his sister Mary took lessons in piano and violin with Enrico
Hurlei, the band’s assistant director. As Reid Badger, Europe’s biographer, observed “It
is entirely likely that this early training provided the foundation for Europe’s later
successes as a composer of marches and as the leader of a military band in WWI.”46
During this time Jim also studied violin with Joseph Douglas, grandson of the abolitionist
Fredrick Douglas. In high school, Jim was Color Sergeant for the “Captain James
Montgomery Prize Drill Company,” and continued to practice music, organizing concerts
and dramatic performances for younger members of his family’s church.
After the unexpected death of Henry Europe in 1899, Jim’s older brother John
went to New York City to find work in the burgeoning world of black music, while Jim
stayed on in Washington to support his mother and younger sister Mary. In 1902, after
his older sister Ida moved back home, Jim was finally able to join his brother in New
43
A copy of Mark Twain’s A Tramp Abroad (1880) in the possession of Mrs. Lorraine Johnson of
Washington D.C. bears the inscription “To my darling, Lorraine S. Europe, from her husband,” and is dated
April 13th, 1880, just two months after James Reese was born. As Reid Badger observes in his biography
of Europe, it reveals a great deal about the intellectual and educational climate of the Europe household.
44
Charles Welton, Filling France Full of Jazz, quoted in Badger, p. 16
45
There is something further to be investigated here – why would Sousa, the popular white bandleader, be
living in a district so close to African Americans? Perhaps housing segregation, which seems to be so
deeply ingrained in southern cities, hadn’t taken root yet?
46
Badger, p. 20
24
York.47 Initially trying to secure work playing the violin, Europe met with resistance.
Classical violin was not what club-goers were expecting to hear from a black musician in
the Tenderloin, New York City’s rough-and-tumble bohemian district where most of the
aspiring African American musicians sought work. Jim eventually turned to playing the
mandolin and piano, instruments that were more acceptable for Negro musicians. For the
next several years he worked his way to the top ranks of composers/conductors in the
black musical theater and Vaudeville circuit.48 Europe also played small orchestral
events, eventually making a connection with John Love, Rodman Wanamaker’s private
secretary. Rodman was the son of John Wanamaker, the Philadelphian developer and
department store owner who had given Henry Europe the clerkship that brought the
family from Alabama to Washington D.C. Shortly after their meeting, Europe was
contracted to supply the music for Rodman’s birthday celebration, a modest affair,
“lasting three days” in Atlantic City. Rodman Wanamaker was evidently pleased with
the music, as Europe was thereafter a part of every celebration held by the Wanamaker
family. Throughout Europe’s career the Wanamaker family facilitated his advance
through steady employment, professional respect, and introductions to Philadelphia and
New York’s social and financial elite.
As a musician/composer, Jim Europe was deeply engaged in Ragtime, the popular
African American music of the day. Mary Europe, his sister, was rising to prominence in
Washington D.C. as a pianist associated with “serious” music, most notably that of
Anglo-African composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. The accomplishments of the Europe
siblings serve as an excellent example of the different routes African American artists
were taking to advance the cause of the Negro race at the turn of the century. At that
time there was significant popular sentiment that African American music was the only
“true” American music, and as such it was to be cherished and nourished as a national
treasure. Antonin Dvorak, the renowned Czech composer and conductor who came to
the United States in 1893 to direct the National Conservatory of Music of America later
47
Both John Europe and Mary Europe had successful careers as musicians.
It is a pity to gloss over this period of Europe’s life so briefly. He was involved in several of the more
important black theatrical productions of the day, published several pieces of well received music in the
popular vein, and began organizing other musicians as a member of the African American musicians’
league, “The Frogs.”
48
25
opined that “the true American music is Ragtime.”49 Others in the black intelligentsia
felt that only through adopting and conforming to Euro-American standards of taste could
the Negro take his rightful place in American society. Coleridge-Taylor decried Ragtime
as “[T]he worst sort of rot. In the first place there is no melody and in the second place
there is no real Negro character or sentiment.”50 One music critic summed up the
shortsightedness and pedantic vagueness of the whole theoretical debate over the “new
music” and black folk traditions:
Those who have endeavored to follow the kindly advice of Doctor Dvorak and
make the folk-music of the negro the basis of their compositions have failed to
conquer the public because that public declined to embrace slave music when
dressed in the unbecoming robes of Teutonic tone poems. The arts do not
descend upon the people, but rise from them.51
Ragtime had in a few years evolved from a folk form unknown outside black folk
culture in the South and Midwest into the most popular musical form among elite whites
on the east coast. Shaped and organized by first-rate musical sensibilities, it had been
adopted by keen commercial arrangers and made a deep and lasting impact on the
American mind. In this sense, Ragtime was a harbinger, or precursor, of the
revolutionary new black musics – jazz and the blues – about to reach the general public.
The rhythms and feeling of Ragtime were disseminated and adapted by the whole music
industry.
Sousa’s band . . . made popular recordings of cakewalks and Ragtime marches . . .
Irving Berlin, at the beginning of his career, wrote Ragtime songs and firmly
identified Ragtime with ensemble styles through his evergreen ‘Alexander’s
Ragtime Band’. . . . The Castle’s had, with James Reese Europe’s musical
backing, popularized the new One Step, a dance designed for a new Ragtime
style, a faster, more effervescent music than the classic piano Ragtime of the
Midwest.52
49
Badger, A Life in Ragtime p. 50
Ibid. p. 50
51
W.J Henderson, “Ragtime, Jazz, and High Art,” Scribner’s, LXXVII (February, 1925), 204, quoted in
The Art of Ragtime, William Schafer and Johannes Riedel, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge,
1973, p. 44
52
Badger, p. 44
50
26
While his sister Mary was working on the respectable front, Jim Europe worked
to develop the legitimacy of black folk music. A significant step made in this direction
was the organization of New York City’s community of black musicians.
Prior to 1910 there was no central booking agency for black musicians, no place
where musicians could wait until a call for work came in. Europe was instrumental in
founding the Clef Club, a guild dedicated to .” . . inculcate the science of vocal and
instrumental music, technique, and execution of vocal and instrumental music, and to
promote good fellowship and social intercourse.”53 In addition to acting as a booking
agent/clearing house for black musicians, the Clef Club held several successful events –
Musical Mélange and Dance Fests – between 1910 and 1912. These concerts combined
minstrel entertainment and instrumental music, followed by an all night dance. These
events were so well received that several prominent friends of the Negro community
called for a more formal event, in a more prestigious venue.
On May 2nd, 1912, Jim Europe led the “Clef Club Orchestra and Chorus” in a
three-hour Concert of Negro Music at Carnegie Hall. The proceeds from the concert
went to the “Music School Settlement for Colored People” in Harlem, a school intended
to encourage and develop musical talent in Negroes. One reporter remarked “There is no
doubt that those taught will contribute to the pleasure of the public and make valuable
additions to the musical works of the country.”54 One hundred twenty-five black
musicians played an evening of African American music for an audience composed
equally of two races – no color line was drawn anywhere in the house – and Lester
Walton, who wrote the Theater and Music column for the African American newspaper
the New York Age, observed the lack of racial tension in his review of the concert.
Some of our leading white citizens sat in evening dress in seats next to some of
our highly respectable colored citizens, who were also in evening clothes. . . . No
calamity occurred because the colored citizens were not segregated. . . . The
whites present represented the best of their race, as did the colored people in
attendance. 55
53
Lester Walton, “Music and the Stage,” in The New York Age, February 20th, 1912.
The New York Evening Journal, May 1st, 1912, p.24
55
Lester Walton, “Negro Talent Revealed: New York Concertgoers Treated to Novel Entertainment,”
Musical America, in the New York Age, May 11th, 1912, p. 19.
54
27
The highly charged atmosphere of race relations brought particular attention to
those African Americans who were trying to advance the cause of their race. Some
critics downplayed the event’s importance, admitting the quality of the work but
dismissing the evening’s accomplishments as a result of the Negroes’ “natural affinity for
music.” Ironically, “native ability” was a common fallback position in the popular press,
when they claimed that African Americans could not do something at all – after they had
done that thing. Walton felt that the musicians did admirably as long as they stayed
within “their native vein.” In particular, he felt the attempt at the aria from Saint-Saens’s
Samson and Delilah was “an emphatic mistake in judgment.”56 Despite these quibbles,
the evening was an overwhelming success, bringing joy to the hearts of
Developmentalists, the champions of Negro assimilation into European American
culture.
The Clef Club concert was a milestone in African American cultural
achievements, and the culmination of ten years work on Europe’s part. In bringing a
respectable production to the stage of Carnegie Hall, Jim Europe changed the way black
performers were perceived in New York City. As a more immediate result, Europe’s
personal reputation grew as a composer, conductor, and especially as an organizer of
musicians. This success, and Europe’s high-profile position in Clef Club, did not bring
him universal popularity in the black community. However, Crisis, the magazine
published by African American scholar W.E.B. DuBois, named James Reese Europe one
of its “Men of the Month” for June, and following the concert, new employment
opportunities arose for black musicians. For the next several years the Clef Club had a
virtual monopoly on booking black musicians for shows, tours, cruises, and dance parties.
As noted earlier, sometime in 1912 or 1913 the Castles and Jim Europe might
have crossed paths at one of the many high-society parties held by the Vanderbilts,
Goulds, or Garys. Irene Castle’s memoirs only speak of Jim Europe in passing, making it
difficult to pin down the beginnings of their association. Sometime in the autumn of
1913, however, the Castles found themselves dancing at a private party where the music
was provided by James Reese Europe’s Society Orchestra. “Vernon was astonished, first
56
.” . . when one singer essayed to sing an aria from Saint-Saens’s ‘Samson et Delilah,’ of which she had
not the slightest conception, and of which her accompanist knew even less, an emphatic mistake of
judgment was shown.” Ibid.
28
at Europe’s rhythms, then at the instrumental color of the band.” Vernon and Irene
secured the services of Europe and his musicians, “and thereafter demanded in all of their
contracts that Europe’s music be used solely.”57
The Castles, having danced to white and black musicians in America and France,
insisted that Europe’s musicians were best able to play the different styles required for
Ragtime dancing. Before securing Europe’s services, the Castles had worked out all of
their dances on paper, because they never knew what songs the musicians at various
parties would be able to play. Jim Europe began composing songs designed especially
for their dances, such as the Castle Walk, the Castle House Rag, and the Castle Lame
Duck Waltz, all of which were recorded on February 10th, 1914. Further compositions
followed, as Europe collaborated with his partner Ford Dabney on Castle Maxixe, Castle
Innovation Tango, and the Castle Perfect Trot in the spring of 1914. From 1913 to
Vernon’s enlistment in the Royal Air Corps in 1915, the Castles employed Europe in all
of their dancing ventures.
The driving force behind several of the Castle’s most successful business
enterprises was their agent, Elisabeth Marbury. A powerful figure in the reformation
politics of New York City at the time, Marbury was connected to the highest circles of
the East Coasts’ elite families. She convinced the Castles that there was a need for a
respectable place for the children of the well-to-do to learn the proper way to execute the
“modern dances.” At the time, the term “Modern Dancing” referred to the new partner
dances, distinguished from old-fashioned dances such as the Waltz and Two Step by
Ragtime music. Marbury lined up backers from the East Coast’s finest families to
sponsor an institution dedicated to instructing “their kind” in the proper mode of dancing,
and Castle House was born.
Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, Mrs. Herman Oelrichs, Mrs. W. Bourke Cockran, Mrs.
W.G. Rockefeller, Mrs. Oliver Harriman, Mrs. Arthur Iselin, Mrs. Anthony J. Drexel, Jr.,
Mrs. Elsie de Wolfe, Mrs. Amos Pinchot, Mrs. T.J. Oakley Rhinelander, Mrs. Norman
Hapgood, and Mrs. Elbert. H. Gary all are listed on the frontispiece of the Castle’s
treatise on proper dancing, Modern Dancing, published in April of 1914. The book was
dedicated to “those who have danced, to those who do dance, to those who may dance,
57
Douglas Gilbert, Lost Chords: The Diverting Story of American Popular Songs, p.349
29
and to The Patronesses of Castle House.”58 In the introduction to Modern Dancing,
Marbury points out the ancient roots of dancing, and appeals to the sense of nobility in
her desired patrons:
In a recent address by the poet Jean Richepin before the members of the French
Academy the evolution of modern dances was convincingly traced from the
tombs of Thebes, from the Orient to Occident, and down through ancient Rome.
M. Richepin protested against the vulgarization of these dances when performed
by inartistic and ignorant exponents, but argued that centers should promptly be
established in every capital of the world where the grace and beauty and classic
rhythm to which the modern dance so naturally lends itself should be developed
and emphasized.
With this aim in view the Castle House in New York was started, and the services
of Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle were secured by me to conduct and superintend
the dancing there. . . . Refinement is the keynote of their method; under their
direction Castle House became the model school of modern dancing, and through
its influence the spirit of beauty and of art is allied to the legitimate physical need
of healthy exercise and of honest enjoyment.59
The rhetoric Marbury uses in this introduction was common to contemporaneous
champions seeking to valorize the Modern dances. Linking the new dances with the
traditions of “the Orient and the Occident,” invoking the tombs of Thebes and ancient
Rome, proponents of Ragtime dance sought to distance the new dances from their origins
in the African American community. “Refinement” was the keynote of the Castle’s
method. The radical idea that dances originating in the darkest, most unrefined
underbellies of American society could be performed – by high society – without the
dancers being tarred by the brush of class and race was legitimized.
While there had been places where one could go to learn dancing previously,
Castle House was almost exclusively the terrain of the wealthy and upper middle classes.
This marked the Castle’s ambitions as being significantly higher than those of other
dancing teams, as they became one of the first of a new class of Americans, “Media
Celebrities.” It is not the focus of this work to draw out the manner in which the Castles
climbed the social ladder in a fashion presaging that of the Movie Star, but it is worth
noting that by catering to, and associating with, the rich and powerful, the son of a
58
59
V. Castle, Modern Dancing, Frontspiece.
Elizabeth Marbury, introduction to Modern Dancing, pp. 19-20
30
publican and the daughter of a Long Island doctor rose to move in the same level of
society as the Rockefellers.
Physically, the Castle House was a paneled and crystal-chandeliered house on
East 46th street across from the Ritz-Carlton hotel, decorated by Elsie de Wolfe, a noted
interior designer of the period. The foyer was two steps down from the street, with a
fountain surrounded by tropical plants at one end. Up a stairway that had a plush red
velvet rope for a handrail were two ballrooms; a larger main room, and a smaller room
used when there were two bands, or when the main room became overcrowded. “The
smaller room had plain walls and cloth-covered lights, with mirrors going around the
room. Both were furnished with benches and chairs covered by tie-on mats or cushions.
The rooms were the height of fashion for the then-customary New York private house.”60
In America, and perhaps particularly for the upper classes, exposure to the
African American aesthetic came almost entirely through popular entertainments, notably
minstrel shows. The time of the Lancers, Quadrilles, Waltz, and Two Step, dances
performed to white, European music was not far in the past.61 The One Step, the dance
that was replacing these forms, was created by African Americans and conjoined with the
African American musical form, Ragtime. Though America espoused many egalitarian
ideals, society was in fact strictly stratified and nowhere more so than in matters of race.
The idea that the sons and daughters of America’s wealthiest white families could
somehow remain untarred by association with the Negro while performing dances with
movements and music celebrating African American aesthetics was not one that found
easy approval. The encroachment of a black aesthetic into white society concerned many
Americans. The New York Times music critic H. E. Krehbiel wrote “in this year of our
lord 1913, the Ragtime dances are threatening to force grace, decorum, and decency out
of the ballrooms of America.”62 At almost the same time, Vernon observed in the
Castles’ 1914 dancing manual, “People can say what they like about Ragtime. The Waltz
is beautiful, the Tango is graceful, the Brazilian Maxixe is unique. One can sit quietly
and listen with pleasure to them all; but when a good orchestra plays a “rag” one has
60
“Castle House Memories,” unidentified New York newspaper, date unknown (probably April 1939) in
the Castle Clipping File, Museum of the City of New York. Quoted in Badger, p. 87
61
Erenberg, in Steppin Out, notes that 19th century set and figure dances “emphasized that individual
pleasure arose from participation in hierarchy, social interdependence, and group unity.” p. 148
62
, Sullivan, The War Begins, p. 250-51 quoted in Badger, p. 83
31
simply got to move.”63 To the right, Ragtime dancing was seen as a threat to the moral
standards of the day; to the left, Ragtime was simply a form of music so excellent that it
inspired a healthy impulse to dance. The venom in Krehbiel’s opinion speaks to
European American’s hostility to the expansion of African American culture. At the
same time, Vernon’s appreciation of the rhythmic vitality of African American music,
mirroring DuBois’ affirmation of the value of African American culture, suggests that
white America’s admiration of quality, regardless of its racial origins, would mitigate that
hostility. Would it be possible to integrate the musical quality that Vernon so admired
into European American society while appeasing the concerns of cultural arbiters who
objected to African American aesthetics? This question will be expanded and answered
in Chapters Two and Three.
Jim Europe and his musicians provided the music for dancing at Castle House,
beginning December 15th, 1913 and at another business venture, also started in 1913.
The Castles, in partnership with Jules Ensaldi, one of the headwaiters from the Café
d’Opera, opened “Sans Souci” (without worries), a small nightclub located underneath
the corner of 42nd and Broadway. A swank little cabaret, tickets for the opening night
sold for $100, and the clientele included such leading figures as Cornelius Vanderbilt and
Diamond Jim Brady.64 Irene Castle recalled that it was a “gold mine” for the six months
it was open, before the sweltering heat of the New York City summer drove business
away and the fire department closed the doors due to a lack of emergency exits.
Vernon and Jim Europe evidently became friends quickly. The two men seemed
to understand each other immediately. Vernon possessed an easygoing sense of humor
and Jim was a man “of considerable personality and wit.”65 Part of the attraction was
likely the excitement Vernon felt at listening to the music of Europe’s Society Orchestra.
The dance rhythms were infectious, the syncopations and rhythms far more sophisticated
(within the form) than the music played by white orchestras. The fact that Europe was
an established musician and composer, the leader of the “most famous of the colored
bands” as Irene recalled, surely helped to overcome the societal obstacles that stood in
63
Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle, Modern Dancing, p. 41. italics original
$100 in 1914 would be worth ~$1,500 today. Samuel H. Williamson, What is the Relative Value?
Economic History Services, April 2004, URL : http://www.eh.net/hmit/compare/
65
Douglas Gilbert, Lost Chords: The Diverting Story of American Popular Songs, p.349
64
32
the way of a social relationship between the black musician and the white dancer. That
Europe and the Castles shared a desire to “take [Ragtime] out of the saloons and make it
respectable” gave them a common goal, albeit with very different reasoning behind their
quest.66
On December 29th, 1913, Jim Europe and his orchestra began a historic series of
recordings of dance music for Victor Records. Although Victor records had already
produced a catalog of dance records using white in-house musicians, this was the first
contract to be awarded to an entirely black orchestra. Seeking to attach the Castle’s
cachet to their music, Victor Records secured their endorsement, and in a 1914
advertisement (reproduced in “My Husband”), Vernon announced “that I have given the
Victor company the exclusive services of the Castle House Orchestra for the making of
dance records.”67 At this session and another on February 10th, 1914, the Europe Society
Orchestra recorded two One Steps, a Tango, and a Maxixe, all dance forms made popular
by dance teams such as the Castles.68 Also recorded were two songs written specifically
for the Castles by Europe, and one co-authored by Europe and his partner Ford Dabney.
The spring of 1914 saw Joseph Stearns’ publishing house selling Europe and Dabney
sheet music. So many turkey-trots, One Steps, tangos, waltzes, and hesitations were
published that the two men played with the spelling of their names (Music by Eporue
Yenbad) to provide an illusion of variety.
Presenting a variety of material was very important to the Castles as well, who
quickly discovered that the public was constantly looking to them to introduce something
new. This makes for an interesting contrast with another dominant artistic form of preWWI America, Vaudeville. Many vaudevillians recounted how they would rehearse
their acts until they were perfect, and that audiences and theater managers expected
nothing less than the exact recreation of the performances for which they were hired. For
the normal run of Vaudeville performers, change was a bad thing. For the Castles, it was
their bread and butter. Perhaps it was their perceived place in the upper class that
enabled them to remain distinct from the pigeonholing of artists within Vaudeville’s
66
Irene actually said .” . . take jazz out of the saloons . . .,” but as the musical form known as jazz hadn’t
crystallized in 1913, I modified the quote for clarity. Castles in the Air, p. 92
67
I. Castle, My Husband, supplementary photograph (g)
68
One track recorded in the December 1913 session, El Irresistable, was known as “the Maurice Tango,”
after Maurice Mouvet, one of the Castle’s chief rivals.
33
categories. Or Vernon’s history in musical theater may have allowed him to participate
in Vaudeville in the manner of famous theatrical personages, who would appear in a
scene that showcased their abilities. Perhaps it was simply that they had cultivated a
reputation based on instruction and the development of good manners, and were therefore
more in the vein of societal reformers than popular entertainment.69
In the two years between their debut at the Café de Paris and Vernon’s enlistment
in Britain’s Royal Air Force, the Castles kept extremely busy. They premiered a dozen
dances, performed at parties and cabarets, and worked in several Vaudeville venues as
well as appearing on Broadway and touring the country. Irene recalled a party in January
of 1914 when they had been engaged to dance at a party of Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, and
Elizabeth Marbury had promised that they would display a new routine just for the
occasion.
“You will now do the new dance you have created for my evening,” (Mrs. Fish)
said.
“What new dance” (Irene) said, thoroughly startled. “Whoever told you we’d
create a dance for your particular party?”
“Why, Mrs. Marbury did,” Mrs. Fish said.
“We’ve introduced three new dances in three months,” I said. “If they’re not
good enough for the guests you have here tonight, then we’ll just go home. They
wouldn’t remember them anyway.”
“Mrs. Marbury said . . .” she started firmly.
“Mrs. Marbury said nothing to us about it,” I interrupted. “And if it’s going to
upset you that we haven’t created a new dance, we’ll just go home. Come on,
Vernon.”
69
The Castles appeared in Vaudeville several times, usually when money was a little tight. Sometimes the
expenses they incurred cost more than they earned, however, as Irene recalled in a hilarious incident in
which they performed on the same bill as a dancing bear. The owner treated it so badly – beating it with a
baseball bat -- that Irene and Vernon both decided to liberate the bear from its owner. Their generous
impulse cost $900. After buying they bear they found a zoo that could take him and treat him properly.
Being unable to transport it themselves, they ran it up the stairs of the theater and into the open door of a
waiting taxi. The bear sat between Vernon and Irene during the short drive to the zoo, and despite the fears
of the Castles and the terrified driver, the transfer took place uneventfully. (I. Castle, CITA, 104-105)
34
“Oh, well, never mind,” she said, her tone softening considerably. “Maybe he can
just lead you around into something a little different, as I’ve already announced it
to the papers.”70
Irene recounts that they danced their routines exactly as rehearsed, and the next
day the papers reported the new dance they had performed for Mrs. Fish, and Irene stated
that “(N)obody knew the difference. Absolutely nobody.” 71
One example of this period which highlights the collaboration between Europe
and the Castles is the “Castle Half and Half.” Dabney and Europe wrote a song in
alternating 2/4 and 3/4 meter, resulting in a piece that was essentially in 5/4 time.72 The
Castles received a great deal of attention for their performance, alternating waltz
measures with walking steps. This was a fairly complicated arrangement, and the dance
never really took off with the public. The musical and choreographic sophistication
required to work in time signatures such as 5/4 is significant; more than thirty years
would go by before jazz musicians began regularly experimenting with such quirky time
signatures.
Jim Europe either resigned or was ejected from the Clef Club at the beginning of
1914, stung by the accusations from some members that he was too focused on his
personal ambitions and too little concerned with the needs of the members.73 The loss of
his position with the Clef Club did not seem to trouble Europe tremendously, as two
weeks later he co-founded and became president of the Tempo Club, an organization that
served much the same purpose as the Clef Club. Europe was personally under contract to
lead a third annual concert at Carnegie Hall, as a fundraiser for the Harlem Music School
Settlement, and the same musicians who had made up the Clef Club Symphony Orchestra
would be expected to participate. Europe could simply have re-named the orchestra ‘the
Tempo Club Symphony Orchestra’, as a slap in the face to those who had spoken against
him. Instead, he decided to try to soothe matters by presenting the “National Negro
Symphony Orchestra,” a styling that avoided identification with either group.
70
I. Castle, Castles in the Air, 114-115
Ibid.
72
A popular example of 5/4 time is Dave Brubeck’s 1959 jazz standard Take Five.
73
Accounts vary. The decision to leave was probably the result of a combination of factors, including
dissent within some of the Clef Club’s leadership over his role, and Europe’s other ample opportunities.
71
35
The concert presented an evening of work by African American artists: traditional
Negro spirituals and “plantation songs,” songs based on African American folk melodies
or themes, as well as a few symphonic works on European American lines. The New
York Times review praised the concert as an “interesting concert . . . especially significant
as a demonstration of what may be expected of negro [sic] composers trained in the
modern techniques, as they are affected by their racial traits in music.”74 Interestingly, in
the two years since the first concert at Carnegie Hall, critics now seemed to expect the
African American musicians to turn their talents to “serious music.” A review in Musical
America suggested that:
If the Negro Symphony Orchestra will give its attention during the coming year to
a movement or two of a Haydn symphony and play it at its next concert and if the
composers, who this year took obvious pleasure in conducting their marches,
tangos, and waltzes, will write short movements for orchestra basing them on
classic models, next year’s concert will inaugurate a new era for the negro
musician in New York and will aid him in being appraised at his full value and in
being taken seriously. It is impossible to applaud in Carnegie Hall his imitations
of the vulgar dance music of Broadway originated by the tone poets of Tin Pan
Alley.75
Note that only two years after the first concert at Carnegie Hall, the sentiment
urging Jim Europe (as the leader of the Orchestra) away from “vulgar” popular
compositions and into legitimate, serious endeavors that would assist in the elevation of
the status of the race. This review was by Lester Walton, a prominent black journalist,
and follows the line of Booker T. Washington’s efforts to move black America closer to
the aesthetic sphere of the surrounding hegemonic community.
A few weeks after the Carnegie Hall concert, Europe was in charge of another
evening of popular music and entertainment at the Manhattan Casino in Harlem. The
Tempo Club was preparing to present “A Night in Tangoland,” a “Joyous Festival of
Music and Dance” on April 8th. This concert would have something extra, however, that
would set it apart from the concerts that had gone before. The front page of the March
19th New York Age reported that, in a benefit for the National Negro Symphony, Vernon
74
“Negroes Give a Concert” in the New York Times, March 12, 1914, 3
“Negroes Perform their own Music,” in Musical America, March 21, 1914, 37. Badger notes that the
organizers were also criticized by other sources for not being African American enough, and for including
instruments of the violin family instead of “instruments played with a plectrum,” or pick.
75
36
and Irene Castle, who “dance for high society and rarely appear in public,” would appear
at the invitation of James Reese Europe and Ford Dabney.76
The concert was a huge success, with a crowd estimated at 2,500 people,
including “more than 100 white people of fame and fashion.”77 Notable attendees
included W.E.B. DuBois, music publisher Joseph Stern, and African American actress
and dancer Aida Overton Walker. The Castles appeared in a separate section of the show
at the end of the program, and the ovations were so great that it was difficult to say
“whether or not the honors of the evening were bestowed upon James Reese Europe and
his orchestra . . . or upon the greatest dance artists of the day, Mr. and Mrs. Vernon
Castle.”78 There was a great deal of interest in the concert at the time, and the significant
media coverage surrounding the event provided Europe with a platform to express his
vision for the future of the Negro artist. Europe suggested that the African American
artists’ success was due both to native affinity for music and a willingness to undertake
rigorous training.
The success of the Castles’ appearance at the Manhattan Casino solidified plans
that had been discussed for a tour. “The Castles are coming, Hooray! Hooray!” read the
banners outside of the train stations where the tour was arriving. On April 27th, 1914, the
Castles, their secretary Gladwyn Macdougal, three student couples from the Castle
House, and Europe’s eighteen piece orchestra set out on a “Whirlwind Tour” of the
United States, thirty cities in twenty-eight days. To manage this prodigious feat, a special
train with three Pullman cars was hired; one car for dining and baggage, one for the
dancers, and one for the musicians. The trip was orchestrated by Bessie Marbury. “Our
plans,” Marbury told the Worchester Telegram,
are to spread this proper instruction in dancing broadcast through every possible
agency. That is one reason why the Castles are making this spring tour of twentyone of the principal cities of the country. Not only will they dance the latest
dances, but Mr. Castle will illustrate the mistakes usually made by the average
dancers, and will address the audience, telling them how the dances should be
danced. I do not believe that many people dance in a vulgar way except through
ignorance of the proper methods, and I believe this tour of the Castles will be a
76
Announcement in New York Age, March 19th, 1914
“Tempo Club Gives Classic Dansant Before Big Throng,” New York News, April 13th, 1914
78
Ibid.
77
37
wonderful dance crusade that will elevate the standards of dancing all over the
country.79
The format of the show was, first, a short demonstration of exhibition dancing –
“Lula Fada, Furlano, Pavanne, Polka, and Hesitation.”80 Then Vernon spoke to the
audience about the need for simplification of the dances, and three couples, student
dancers from Castle House, demonstrated commonly made errors. To finish the first half
of the show, the Castles gave demonstrations of the Modern Dances: the Tango, Maxixe,
and One Step. In between numbers, Irene quickly changed costumes, while the orchestra
played one of Europe and Dabney’s compositions, or Buddy Gilmore would take a drum
solo, often trading places with Vernon in mid-performance. The second half of the
performance was a dance contest, in which audience members went onstage to be judged
by the Castles, with the winner being awarded the “Castle Cup” and the opportunity to
dance in the grand finale at Madison Square Garden. “The winners,” recalled Irene,
“were always those who danced smoothly and with the least effort. Vernon always
begged them to leave out all fancy steps and tricks.” 81
The finale of the Castle Whirlwind Tour was the dance contest on Saturday, May
23rd at Madison Square Garden. The Garden was a poor site for a dance competition,
with the audience separated from the dancers by a great distance and poor acoustics for
the orchestra. The only positive factor was plenty of room for Vernon and Irene to see
the dance couples. The competition was fierce, and it was late in the evening before Mr.
and Mrs. Sailing Baruch, a middle aged couple from New York, defeated a brother and
79
Unidentified article in the Worcester Telegram in the Castle Scrapbooks, Billy Rose Theater Collection,
NYPL. Quoted in Badger, A Life in Ragtime, p. 101.
80
I. Castle, My Husband, p. 62. The “Lulu Fada” or “Lulu Fado” dance comes from a Portuguese dance
that gained popularity in Brazil. The SwingStreet.com Dance History Archives reports that “The Fado,
originally known as the Brazilian Fado, was a mixture of dances dance and song from Brazil in the late
1700s from a mixture of dances, namely the Spanish Fandango, Lundu (Baia) and the Fofa when this new
music reached Portugal these dances and song came to a head with the Black sailors and formed the Fado.
There were many different variations of the Brazilian Fado including the Portuguese Fado which is pretty
much the main version of today, the Lulu Fado and Lundu.
Salazar actually made the dance become much more public during his dictatorship through his demands
that it only be performed in Vaudeville houses called revistas. The steps of the Fado are said to be a hop, a
skip and a kick in 2/4 time with the soul of the dance being of despair (Coimbra - trovas being opposite).
The Fado and its variations again became popular in the early 1900's along with all the Ragtime and early
Jazz dances.” http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3fadob1.htm. The Furlano is likely of similar
derivation.
81
I. Castle, My Husband, p. 61
38
sister named Chamberlain from Brookline, Massachusetts as the first national dancing
champions.
Following this, a proposed tour of Europe was delayed, the Castles not needing
the money and Irene recovering from the Whirlwind Tour and an appendectomy. The
Castles instead decided to take a summer vacation to France, to rest and recuperate. On
the morning of June 28, 1914, while traveling in a motorcade through Sarajevo, the
capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife Sophie
were assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. This seemingly minor event in world politics
sparked the conflict that would become WWI. The Castles’ trip to France abruptly ended
when war was declared on August 1st. Though the Castles and Jim Europe pursued
separate interests in 1914 and 1915, they maintained close contact, with Jim Europe and
his partner Ford Dabney being regular guests at the Castles’ Long Island home.
Rehearsals for Watch Your Step, a new musical with music by Irving Berlin, were
to begin in September. With a few weeks at hand due to their early return from France,
the Castles undertook a brief stint in Vaudeville, where for the first time they performed
publicly their most enduring dance, the Fox Trot. The dance developed while the
Castles and Europe were involved in the Whirlwind tour, and Jim was experimenting
with a tune called “Memphis Blues” by W.C. Handy. Europe asked Vernon if he
thought the song might be danced to, a slow number to contrast with their up-tempo One
Steps.82 Vernon was dubious, but put some steps to the music, and he and Irene tried
them out at a few private parties while Irene was recuperating from surgery. To their
surprise, the dance was a hit.
The Castles originally called the dance the “Fish Walk,” but while in Europe they
learned that the name “Fox Trot” was being given to the slower tempo, and Irene said
that they “believed in letting the public name their dances.”83 The “Castle Fox Trot” was
one of three dances featured by the reserved Ladies Home Journal in a three part series
“Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle’s New Dances for the Winter” in the winter of 1914. The
Ladies Home Journal had, until that point, been a staunch opponent of the modern
82
There are other accounts of how the Fox Trot developed; the Fred Astaire Dance Studios’ training
material gives credit for the dance to Harry Fox, a vaudevillian performing at the time. Tom Fletcher gives
the credit for the music to a pianist, Hughie Woolford, who played the new, slower tempo at a restaurant in
Long Island.
83
Interview in Ladies Home Journal, October 31, 1914, p. 24-25
39
dances, and the inclusion of the “Castle Fox Trot” along with the more conservative
“Castle Polka” and “Castle Gavotte” was a major coup for the proponents of modern
dancing.84
Vernon Castle left the entertainment business in 1915, to join the military efforts
of his native England. He acquired his pilots license in Newport News, Virginia, and
upon his arrival in London was immediately commissioned into the Royal Air Force. He
flew over 150 combat missions over No Mans Land, in the slow, lightly armored
propeller planes that were pressed into service for reconnaissance. Jim Europe,
meanwhile, helped to form the 15th Infantry Regiment (Colored), of the New York
National Guard.85 The 15th Infantry was later redesignated the 369th Infantry, which the
French nicknamed "The Harlem Hellfighters" after the black soldiers showed their mettle
in combat. The unit was assigned to the 16th "Le Gallais" Division of the Fourth French
Army because white U.S. Army units refused to fight alongside them. Trained to
command a machine gun company, Europe learned to fire French machine guns and
became the first American officer and first African American to lead troops in battle
during the war.86
Vernon Castle would not live to see the armistice, and Jim Europe would not live
six months after his triumphant return from the war. In 1918, Vernon was training pilots
in the two-seat planes in use at the time near Fort Worth, Texas. Normally, instructors
flew in the rear seat of the planes, and though the planes hardly ever reached speeds fast
enough to be truly dangerous in a crash, they had no protection for the occupant of the
front seat when the engine came through the dashboard. While training pilots in Canada
one of Vernon’s students died when their plane crashed into the roof of a barn, and
thereafter Vernon insisted on sitting in the more dangerous front seat. On February 15th,
another plane took off just under his landing plane. Vernon put the plane into a roll,
successfully avoiding the other plane; however he lacked the altitude to complete the
maneuver. He was instantly killed in the ensuing crash, though his student walked away
with little more than minor scratches.
84
Edward Bok, editor of LHJ, was rumored to have fired fifteen young women for turkey-trotting during a
lunch break.
85
Assigned the task of forming the “best damn brass band in the United States Army,” Europe recruited the
finest musicians, and the best drum major he could find – Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.
86
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jreurope.htm
40
On May 9th, 1919, while preparing for a performance in Boston, Henry Wright,
one of Europe’s drummers, came backstage, convinced that Europe was favoring his
brother Steve. “Lieutenant Europe, you don’t treat me right,” he said. “I work hard for
you. Look at my hands, they’re all swollen where I have been drumming, trying to hold
the time, and yet, Steve, he makes all kinds of mistakes and you never say anything to
him.”87 Later that evening, Wright came backstage and screamed “I’ll kill anyone who
takes advantage of me. Jim Europe, I’ll kill you!”88 After a scuffle, Wright was pulled
off of Europe, and initially no one realized that Wright had stabbed Europe with a small
pen-knife. Noble Sissle, Europe’s business partner, came backstage to find him with his
collar off and a stream of blood spurting from the small wound on his neck. While they
waited for an ambulance, Europe told the men to go back onstage and finish the concert.
Everyone expected to see him the next morning, perhaps with a bandage around his neck.
When several of his friends arrived at the hospital later that evening, they were told
Europe’s situation was serious, and they might be asked to give blood. A few minutes
later, a chaplain came out and told them that James Reese Europe was dead.
87
88
Sissle, “Memoirs of Lieutenant ‘Jim’ Europe,” pp. 227-35, quoted in Badger, A Life in Ragtime, p. 214
Ibid., p. 214
41
CHAPTER THREE
THE MOVEMENT OF RAGTIME
The transmission of cultural information between groups is a process heavily
laden with political, social, and philosophic ramifications. Rarely do these exchanges
occur between groups that have parity; a dominant/subordinate relationship is the norm.
In such relationships, it is not uncommon for the process by which the hegemonic power
partakes of the subordinate’s culture to be called “appropriation.” However, labels such
as appropriation are insufficient when examining cultural hybridization, the process
whereby two separate cultures affect each other through the exchange of ideas over time.
Such labels provide easy, superficial explanations and prevent deep understandings of the
complex relationship between diverse cultures and the migratory agents who facilitate the
transmission of cultural elements. The dynamics that guided Vernon and Irene Castle’s
transposition of African American dances into acceptable European American versions
are related to the important role that culturally patterned movement can play in the
political, social, and aesthetic life of particular groups of people.89 To dismiss their work
in bridging European American and African American cultures as appropriation is to at
once accept a facile explication of Anglo dominance generally and to diminish the
importance of the two-way relationships between African American and European
American artists specifically.
Considerations of “right movement” and “wrong movement” in different cultures
are primary markers of the underlying beliefs and attitudes of those cultures, and
observing the shift of acceptable boundaries in Ragtime dancing provides another point
89
I use the term “Culturally patterned movement” in the sense laid out by Richard Waterman:
“Movements to which meaning has been assigned by the culture, agreed upon, movement by movement,
and thus symbolic.” Conversation: Conference members with Richard Waterman, p.51
42
of insight into the rapid changes occurring in American value systems, particularly as
regards racial relations, at the end of the Progressive Era.
[M]ovement style is an important mode of distinction between social groups. . . .
So ubiquitous, so ‘naturalized’ as to be nearly unnoticed as a symbolic system,
movement is a primary not secondary social ‘text’ – complex, polysemous,
always already meaningful, yet continuously changing. Its articulation signals
group affiliation and group differences, whether consciously performed or not. 90
Our intent is to come to a deep understanding of the roles played by James Reese
Europe and the Castles in the migration of the hybrid African American / European
American art form “Ragtime” – using the label to encompass both the music and the
dances performed to that music – from its roots among working class blacks to all classes
of whites, examining not only at the historical, social, and political context, but also the
movement itself.91 This chapter will examine the physical elements of Ragtime dance
movement, from its origins in both European American and African American culturally
patterned movement, to its genesis as an African American social dance, through its
transformation into a dance that fit within the European American aesthetic. Jane
Desmond points out the circuitous route that dance can take as it is transmitted between
groups:
In studying the transmission of a form, it is not only the pathway of the
transmission but also the form’s reinscription in a new community/social context
and resultant change in its signification that is important to analyze. An analysis
of appropriation must include not only the transmission pathway and the
meditating effects of the media, immigration patterns, and the like, but also an
analysis at the level of the body of what changes in the transmission.92
The differences between African and European aesthetics of movement
underlying the evolving patterns of Ragtime dance were clearly recorded as far back as
the first contacts between the groups during the age of exploration. Diverse European
observers such as missionaries, musicians, explorers, and merchants commented on the
movement styles of Africans, and descendants of Africans in the Caribbean Islands,
90
Jane Desmond, Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies, in Meaning in Motion, p.
31
91
Several excellent examinations have been conducted of Ragtime music and its influence on American
culture. For those further interested in this, I recommend Reid Badger’s A Life in Ragtime, his biography
of James Reese Europe, as an excellent starting point.
92
Desmond, Embodying Difference, p. 34; emphasis mine
43
noting mostly the ways in which the movement was distinctly unlike that of their
countrymen and women.
The Gambia River, 1620:
The most desirous of dancing are the women, who dance without men, and but
one alone, with crooked knees and bended bodies they foot it nimbly . . . 93
The Cape of Good Hope, 1673:
They take the greatest delight in dancing which they perform with astonishing
gesticulations . . . the males, with their bodies leaning forward, stamp on the
ground vigorously with their feet, lustily chanting in unison with rising and falling
intensity . . .94
Jamaica, 1774:
The female dancer is all languishing, and easy in her motions; the man, all action,
fire, and gesture; his whole person is variously turned and writhed every moment,
and his limbs agitated with such lively exertions, as serve to display before his
partner the vigour and elasticity of his muscles.95
Barbados, 1852:
[T]he feet did not take the most active part in the dance, as that was executed by a
prominent part of the person, commonly understood to be that peculiarly African
development on which “Honour holds her seat.” That wriggle transcends
description: none but itself could be its parallel.96
Descriptions of movement that speak to the underlying aesthetic in Europe during
this period generally agree that dancing should be cool, relaxed, and apparently effortless.
As dancing was a skill conjoined with fencing, the importance of an upright torso and
nimble footwork was heightened. The third quote most directly relates to the movement
contrasts we are exploring.
The English Gentleman, 1633:
In neither of these (dancing or fencing) would I have them imitate their masters . .
. Or in their Dancing those mimick tricks which our apish professants use; but
with a reserved grace come off bravely and sprightly, rather than with an affected
curiosity. . . . For in exercises of this kinde, (sure I am) those only deserve most
commendation, which are performed with least affectation.97
A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Dancing, 1810:
93
Robert Ferris Thompson, African Art in Motion, p. 32
Ibid., p. 32
95
Emery, Lynne Fauley. Black Dance from 1619 to Today, p.25
96
Ibid., p. 24
97
Richard Braithwaite, The English Gentleman, p. 204-5, quoted in Joseph E. Marks, America Learns to
Dance, p.26
94
44
In order to dance well, the body should be firm and steady; it should particularly
be motionless, and free from wavering, while the legs are in exertion, for when
the body follows the action of the feet, it displays as many ungraceful motions as
the legs execute different steps, the performance is then robbed of its ease,
uniformity, harmony, exactness, firmness, perpendicularity, equilibrium, in a
word, of all those beauties and graces which are so essential to make dancing give
pleasure and delight.98
Round Dancing, 1890:
We often see those who consider themselves au fait (and usually they are the only
ones who entertain that opinion) making themselves conspicuous by distorting
their bodies, stiffening their arms, and twisting their legs, until they have the
appearance of being afflicted with some terrible deformity, from which they are
suffering intense pain. They carve the air with their arms, they shuffle about with
an unheard-of combination of movements, collide with everybody and everything
within their reach and all the while labor under the delusion that they are being
observed by admiring eyes.99
Many of the social dances of 19th century Europe, and particularly the dances
popular with the upper classes, shared the same roots as ballet, and many of the same
aesthetic concerns cross between the two forms. The strain of partnered dancing that
descended from the Minuet remained largely the province of the upper-classes, just as
ballet had been the province of the nobility in the court of Louis XIV. The revolutionary
dance of the 19th century, the Waltz, though stretching the boundaries of propriety from
previous European dances, retained a held, uninflected upper body. In the 1890’s,
immediately before the advent of Ragtime, the “Two Step,” performed to march music,
was the apotheosis of this branch of social dancing. The Two Step’s lightly held frame of
the arms was directly carried over from earlier dance forms. The brisk, stately measures
of Sousa’s marches encouraged dancers to keep the upper body still as they progressed
around the room.
One of the close ties between ballet and the modern dances in the minds of certain
dance instructors can be found in the way students were taught to use the feet. In the
following quote from his 1914 dance manual Dances of To-Day, Albert Newman, a
British dance teacher living in Philadelphia, makes very clear to 21st century observers
the roots of his dance training:
98
James P. Cassidy, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Dancing, p. 54, quoted in Elizabeth Aldrich,
From the Ballroom to Hell, p. 93
99
M. B. Gilbert, Round Dancing, p. 33-34
45
It would seem rather strange and not at all scientific to write a book on Dancing
without giving the Fundamental Five Positions of the feet. Yet seemingly there
are many at present teaching the new dances who have not the remotest idea of
the positions . . . Five positions constitute the rudiments of dancing, and they bear
the same relation to the dance as the notes to music or the alphabet to language,
and a thorough knowledge of this is indispensable. . . . The principal positions
used in the Modern Dance are the Second Position, Third Position, Fourth
Position, and Fourth Rear Position.100
Newman is one of the older and more conservative of the dance teachers to
publish a manual regarding the Modern dances in 1914 – see the appendix for
photographs of Newman in breeches and tails, at least fifteen years behind contemporary
male fashion – but his point speaks to a mindset in white culture. European American
dance aesthetics, even in the newest dance forms, were conflated with ideals embodied in
ballet. The presumption was that those ideals should prevail in all dance forms.
There is a long history of disjuncture between African and European derived
movement styles. Only at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries did
African American dance movement begin to noticeably make its way into the white
lexicon. This migration first appeared in minstrel shows and other theatrical forms, and
then came into the social dances which concern this study. The deprecation of African
American movement by European American cultural arbiters, then, was in no way new at
the turn of the 20th century. The forces that placed the two movement aesthetics in
opposition were inexorably linked to the historical, cultural, and socio-economic
differences between Africa and Europe.
The Castles, by adhering to European American codes of movement, enabled the
transmission of Africanist aesthetics to white America via another medium, music. The
Castles’ performance of Ragtime dances provided validation of Ragtime music, a black
art form, to a segment of America that was actively seeking a way to connect with
African American culture.101 Ragtime music retained the vital Africanist qualities that
appealed across the cultural gap between African Americans and European Americans,
while the Castle’s interpretations of Ragtime dances minimized those Africanist qualities
that were most foreign to European American culturally patterned movement.
100
Newman, Albert R. Dances of To-Day, Philadelphia,; Penn Pub. Co., 1914, p. 40, italics original.
That the motivation for European Americans as a group in seeking out African American culture was
largely prurient or for titillation is neither in question or the point.
101
46
Embodying a mode wherein African American music was not only acceptable but
fashionable, the Castles created exposure and opportunity for African American cultural
artists. These opportunities did not come without a price, and that price was both the
extraction of many of the Africanist elements from the movements of Ragtime dance and
the conflation of African American movement styles with subhuman imagery – “animal
dances” was the colloquial term. Applied to dances such as the Turkey Trot, Bunny Hug,
and Grizzly Bear, the association of black dancers with a non-human, and therefore
rationally unequal, physicality was entrenched in dance, yet another aspect of black life
that was denied its fundamental humanity.
Ragtime dancing as practiced by the Castles kept the rhythm of the music, but the
movements of the pelvis and upper body became held, and more tightly bound. Body
rhythm is one of several characteristics identified by Marshal and Jean Stearns in their
History of Jazz Dance as a marker of African influence in American dance. They also
point out the often-crouched body, a centrifugal, outward explosion of movement from
the hips, and a focus on propulsive polyrhythms as distinctive to African dance, and
observe these elements when examining Africanist influence on American dance forms.
In African Art in Motion, Robert Ferris Thompson lays out some movement
vocabularies that are generally attributable to African and African American dance
forms; this quote touches on several typical characteristics.
Beginning, the dancer enters flexed and attentive, body inflected, usually into two
or more expressions according to the multi-metric structure of the music. Then as
he improvises, he further divides his frame. He can get down in a crouch, he can
move his head and arms to staggered patterns, he can, with inimitable hauteur,
make his muscles shine with brilliant motions set against his facial calm. The end
of the dance, sharp, dynamically precise, establishes a clear boundary between
one improvisation and the next.102
These characteristics aren’t the only hallmarks of early African American dance,
but they serve as a useful point for further insight. The upper body is a clear place where
European American and African American aesthetic choices conflict. Dances in ¾ time,
for instance – slower tempos such as the Boston Waltz, or the faster tempos of the
Valsevienne – do not encourage articulated, segmented, or rhythmic expression in the
upper body. Combined with the historical imperative in European American dancing to
102
Thompson, African Art in Motion, p. 32
47
maintain a erect and lightly held upper body, it is clear why polyrhythmic syncopation of
the torso and arms would be jarring to white cultural arbiters. Equally, the rigid position
of the arms known as “dance frame” that evolved in Waltz from the need to hold onto
your partner in the whirl of the dance is not a natural or necessary part of One Step
dances, and would not have been incorporated by black dancers, adhering to African
American movement aesthetics.
The Africanist elements of polyrhythm, angularly bent joints, and particularly the
articulation of the pelvis were all victims of the Castles bleaching of Ragtime movement
for acceptance in white society. An examination of film clips of the Castles performing
reveals them gliding rather than hopping, maintaining a fluid sweep of movement around
the room, with little upper body involvement. Their torsos remain upright, their hips held
in a neutral, uninflected placement. The propulsive rhythm of the music is mostly
expressed in a sharp, marcato placement of the feet and syncopated patterning. The
focus of their performance is the effortless execution of coordinated walking. The
influence of the 19th century’s Waltz aesthetic is clear, and observing their dance, there is
little that any Victorian moralist would find objectionable.103 Even when the Castles
perform a theatrical movement, such as Vernon lifting Irene while she does a hitch kick,
there is an ease and simplicity of performance that belies the difficulty of the movement.
European-derived aesthetics of movement valued simple lines, held torsos, and
placed the emphasis on the dance in the footwork. Examination of Romantic ballets
provides insight into the qualities sufficiently esteemed in the 19th century to be elevated
to the level of performance, whether on the stage or in social dancing. Long, straight
limbs, erect torsos, and sweeping arcs of movement punctuated by sharp, quick footwork
mark the movement styles of dances derived from European sources, from ballet, to
round and square dances, to partnered dance. In African-derived aesthetics a more
angular movement style was valued, with segmented articulation of the torso, pelvis, and
limbs common. African American movement elements were elevated to the level of
performance for very different reasons than their counterparts in Europe, with
improvisation as a fundamental aspect of dance creations. As a result, mocking and
103
There were, of course, moralists who objected to dancing qua dancing, regardless of how chastely it was
performed.
48
denigrating movement was as likely a motivation for performance as the promotion of
positive cultural elements. These Africanist elements can be seen in early minstrel
shows, tap and jig dance, and the cakewalks of the 1890’s, forms where the nascent
fusion of African and European movement aesthetics first developed. Additionally, there
is a disdain within European social dancing, a sense that one should not take dancing too
seriously, for fear of mistaking the frivolous for the serious. Joseph Marks notes, in his
America Learns to Dance, that “like the gentleman, the lady was warned that if one goes
beyond the point of just learning to be graceful, she would be ‘excelling in a mistake,
which is no Commendation.’ Rather, she should dance ‘Carelessly, like a diversion,
rather than with solemnity as in a business.’”104 In African dances, generally, there is a
quality of pride in youthful exuberance, called “Ephebism” by Thompson; young and old
alike make mastery of social dance a serious part of their lives.
Clearly, the qualities valued in African-American dance are vitally different from
those of parallel European-American forms. In taking the concept of dancing face-toface around a room from European American dances and infusing African American
rhythms and movements, Ragtime dancing became, like the Cakewalk before it, a dance
form that captivated European Americans by holding up a mirror that was slightly
skewed; like and yet unlike. There was enough that was different from the movement
“norm” to make the dance intriguing, yet there was enough that was familiar to make it
accessible. The combination of music and movement in Ragtime were regularly referred
to as infectious – a near-irresistible fusion of a European-American dance form with
African-American music and style, which spread in a fashion that was almost
uncontrollable.
Susan Cook, in her monograph Passionless Dancing and Passionate Reform:
Respectability, Modernism, and the Social Dancing of Irene and Vernon Castle,
illuminated the conflicts embodied in Ragtime dancing.
The new music, movement, and social informality represented not the enticement
of freedom but a threat to social order. . . . the public discourse surrounding the
Castles’ career and the dances they promoted relied on a set of historically-
104
Joseph E. Marks III, America Learns to Dance, p. 26. The inset quote is Lord Marquess of Halifax, The
Lady’s New Year’s Gift, or Advice to a Daughter, p. 83, c. 1700
49
specific dichotomies of primitivism and modernism, passion and control, that
reflected contemporaneous concerns about racial appropriations (and) class . . .105
This summation raises many questions that deserve detailed explication, and I
wish to examine the movements that were a “threat to social order.” What were the
actual physical actions performed by the dancers who came before the Castles, what
changes did the Castles make in the dances, and why? How did these changes help to
chart a path for a crossover between African American and European American cultures?
And should these changes be regarded by scholars and historians who are concerned with
the transmission of values across cultures as positive, negative, or something more
complex?
In looking for records of Ragtime dances, we largely rely upon reports from the
day. Many authors who wrote for magazines, newspapers, and journals about Ragtime
assumed either that their readers had first hand experience with the dances, or in the case
of authors sowing moral disapprobation, that delineating such activities in print would
inflame curiosity and prurient interest. The print record describing modern dancing in the
Progressive Era is valuable, but is not adequately explicit to describe the movements that
were a danger to the social order. An additional method for reconstructing movements as
they existed before the Castles and others sanitized them lies in an examination of the
movements that they forbade. By analyzing the movements that students were instructed
to avoid, a clearer picture can be gained of the characteristics decried as objectionable in
Ragtime dancing. Additionally, there exist some very short clips of upper class white,
lower class white, and black dancers performing a One Step, produced by the Castles as a
part of their 1915 autobiographical film The Whirl of Life.106 These scenes of Ragtime
dancing can be examined with an eye to the differences between what the Castles
suggested as proper and the actual footage they recorded of social dancers performing.
Movements deemed unsuitable by the day’s cultural arbiters broadly fell into two
categories: movements that were unsuited to the social dance environment, and
105
Susan C. Cook, Passionless Dancing and Passionate Reform: Respectability, Modernism, and the
Social Dancing of Irene and Vernon Castle, p.133 in The Passion of Music and Dance: Body, Gender,
Sexuality, William Washabaugh editor. (1998)
106
Inasmuch as it is possible to read markers of class distinction as regards blacks in this period, these
dancers would appear to be middle-class. As all blacks were automatically assumed to be of a lower social
class than whites, such a label would be misleading when placed alongside similar descriptions of whites.
Accordingly, I will refrain from labeling the black dancers’ class in this discussion.
50
movements that were inappropriate because of class/race associations. Two places where
forbidden dance movements were embodied were stylized performances upon the
theatrical stage – vaudeville, roof gardens, and Broadway musical shows – and in the
movements of African American dancers.
Falling into the first category, movement that disturbs other dancers, audiences
saw in theatrical dancing fantastic performances of movement that would be ill-advised
on the social dance floor. Albert Newman’s manual advised the beginning student, “Do
not try to be conspicuous on the dance floor by trying to dance a step that is appropriate
for an exhibition.”107 Marbury, in her introduction to Modern Dancing, observed some
objectionable dancing being performed on the theatrical stage.
It is not difficult to find the explanation of some of the undesirable dancing. A
working man and girl go to a musical comedy. From their stuffy seats high up
under the roof they look down upon the dancers on the stage. These are—so the
program tells them—doing modern ball-room dancing. The man on the stage
flings his partner about with Apache wildness; she clutches him around the neck
and is swung off her feet. They spin swiftly or undulate slowly across the stage’
and the program calls it a “Tango.” The man and girl go away and talk of those
“ball-room dances.” They try the steps’ they are novel and often difficult; they
have aroused their interest. The result is that we find scores of young people
dancing under the name of “One Step” or “Tango” the eccentric dances thus
exaggerated and elaborated to excite the jaded audiences of a roof-garden or a
music-hall.108
The difference between performances meant to entertain and proper social
dancing form has always been a problematical one for enthusiasts to parse. Finding a
parallel to this phenomenon is not difficult. Ten years ago, in the early 1990s, “Swing
Dancing” had a renaissance of popularity, and serious injuries were inflicted as young
dancers who, having seen tricks and lifts in movies, were inspired to throw each other
through the air with no regard for the safety of their partners or innocent bystanders. This
caused much dismay among “serious” swing dancers, who felt that tricks and lifts should
be reserved for performance and competition, claiming that partnership, style, and
musicality were the hallmarks of proper social dancing.
107
108
Albert R. Newman, Dances of To-Day, p. 26
Elizabeth Marbury, Modern Dancing, p. 26
51
Dance movements proscribed because of racial and class connotations were never
explicitly referred to as being black, but it seems likely that these movements were
largely being danced by African Americans. As the musical forms for the One Step
dances were African American in origin, and the One Step first appeared in the African
American community, concluding that there was a racial aspect to the objectionable
movements seems reasonable.109 In J.S. Hopkins’ 1914 dance manual, he notes that the
modern dances have been banned by several cities, and to explain why, observes that:
“The reason for their debarment is the position taken by the dancers, so it can be readily
seen that it is not the fault of the dance, but of the dancer.”110 This is not a direct
reference to race; but what positions are being taken by the dancers, and why are they
objectionable? Dancing with body contact had become commonplace since the Waltz
gained ascendancy over fifty years previously. Likely Hopkins is making an oblique
reference to race. Speaking of Ragtime dances in her 1914 dance manual, Caroline
Walker does not spell out that African American dancing is objected to, but she does
suggest the superior/inferior dichotomy that accompanied racial preconceptions of the
time.
Taken up at once by all sorts and conditions of people, they (Ragtime dances)
were danced in public by plenty of well-meaning persons with no thought of
impropriety, but without sufficient knowledge and experience to direct them into
the proper positions or correct steps. The greatest criticism has been caused,
however, by the fact that the new dances were performed very generally by those
whose performance of any dances would be improper and in many cases even
suggestive. 111
“Those whose performance of any dances would be improper and in many cases
even suggestive” could be a reference to lower class persons of any race; however, the
context seems to imply that some people have “no thought of impropriety,” while others
cannot help but be improper and even suggestive, no matter what they do. Given the
racial bias at the time and the context of European Americans performing African
American movements, this idea of an inherent inability to be proper speaks to a racial,
109
The case for One-steps and Ragtime in general being African American in origin is commonly accepted
in musical circles. I lay out the basic case in Chapter 3.
110
Hopkins, op.cit., p. 15
111
Caroline Walker, Dances of Today, p. 7
52
rather than class-oriented, bias. Few tracts against dancing from this period deal with
racial issues explicitly. One must infer the racial bias from context, as above.
This list, taken from the Castle’s 1914 dance manual, Modern Dancing, offers six
“Do Nots,” one “Avoid,” and only one positive instruction – “Glide.”
Do not wiggle the shoulders
Do not shake the hips
Do not twist the body
Do not flounce the elbows
Do not pump the arms
Do not hop – glide instead
Avoid low, fantastic, and acrobatic dips.112
There were at least seven dance manuals published in the United States in 1914;
each refers to things that the proper dancer is to avoid, and each reflects to a greater or
lesser extent the Castle’s “Do Not” list. Proscribed movements include contortions of the
body, shuffles, and twists, hideous gyrations of the limbs, abnormal twistings, vicious
angles, wriggles, and jumps. In her introduction to Modern Dancing, Marbury notes that,
The One Step taught at Castle House eliminates all hoppings, all contortions of
the body, all flouncing of the elbows, all twisting of the arms, and above
everything else, all fantastic dips. This One Step bears no relation or resemblance
to the once popular Turkey Trot, Bunny Hug, or Grizzly Bear. . . . The muchmisunderstood Tango becomes an evolution of the eighteenth-century Minuet.113
Note the dismissal of animal dances and the conflation of the Tango with the
Minuet – both signals to an upper class reader that Ragtime dances are now suitable for
their consumption.
Examining three short clips from the Castle’s 1915 semi-autobiographical film
The Whirl of Life, three very different groups of people are performing the same dance –
a One Step – in three different situations.114 In the first clip, white dancers in fashionable
evening wear stiffly glide around a small café. A second clip shows working class white
dancers dancing in a very crowded barroom, while the third scene shows black dancers
One Stepping. There are several differences between the performances in all three clips,
falling generally in a continuum with the black dancers at one end, the lower class whites
112
V. & I. Castle, Modern Dancing, p, 177
E. Marbury, Modern Dancing, p. 20
114
These clips have recently been made available on the DVD America Dances! 1897-1948, assembled by
Carol Teten
113
53
in the middle, and the upper class whites on the other end. In the clips, one can observe
the kinds of movements proscribed by the Castles, and the result of the changes
prescribed to “fix” Ragtime dances.
The clip showing the black dancers focuses mainly on one couple, who gets up
from a table and begins dancing when the musicians, on a raised platform in the
background, begin to play. The couple, walking One Step to the beat, travels
counterclockwise around the space, moving side-to-side more than front-to-back. Their
carriage is weighted, knees bending, each step emphasized, and although the film is
silent, the dancers convey a sense of the syncopated rhythm of Ragtime music. There is a
great deal of flow in the dancing, in both the movement of the extremities and the core
torso and pelvis. Each partner is comfortably in the others kinesphere, bodies touching
each other at several points from the knees to the ribcage. The dancers regularly make
eye contact with each other, interacting with each other while they progress around the
room. The arms are held close to the body in a truncated version of classical European
ballroom dance position, but the arms move in a sympathetic, bobbing fashion with each
step. The energy of the dancers is generally placed in and around the hips. The dancers
regularly move in the sagittal plane, swinging their hips forward and backward. In other
moments, the dancers bend their knees and rotate their hips in the horizontal plane. As
previously observed, such movements – articulation of the limbs, dips, and pelvic circling
– were a common part of the African American movement lexicon.
The film clip showing lower class whites dancing Ragtime has a number of
notable changes from the black dancers. There is less movement from side to side,
though this is not absent, particularly in moments where the dancers have to navigate
around each other in the very close space. Dancers retain a flowing quality to their
movement, but there is minimal action in the torso, and none in the pelvis. The stepping
action is less weighted, and the dancer’s energy is much higher in their bodies. The arms,
still held close to the body – perhaps due to the tight quarters – retain a great deal of
sympathetic up and down movement with the body. Sagittal movement is likewise
present but minimized, with bending of the knees for dips being the commonest
expression. Movement in the horizontal plane is nearly absent, with none of the circling
of the hips performed by the black dancers. Partners are closely within each others
54
kinesphere, with nearly full contact from the knees to the ribs; eye contact, however, is
minimal, with the partners commonly either looking to the gentleman’s left (promenade
position) or over each other’s right shoulder.
The third, short segment – none of these clips is longer than 30 seconds, and all
are in the slightly jerky, stilted mode common to film in 1915 – shows upper class whites
dancing in an upscale café. The couples are again pressed close to each other, but now
the arms are held still, with the gentleman’s left and ladies right arm held stiffly out to the
side. There is practically no movement from the hips up, and the dancers are clearly
making an effort to restrict motion to a gliding step, proceeding smoothly around the
floor. Even more than in the lower class white scene, dancers refrain from eye contact,
creating a disconnect in their kinespheres; though tightly against each other physically,
through disregard of their partner each dancer creates a sense that the two bodies merely
happen to be next to each other, absent any connotations that might be associated with
bodies pressed together. In the gliding of the walk, this group of dancers exhibits some
of the free flow found in the dancing of the black couples, but the flow is more rarefied,
confined to the limbs, especially the legs, rather than the entire body. This group of
dancers’ energy is very high in the torso, and they appear to be very nearly suspended
from the ceiling on wires rather than down in the ground.
With the aid of these visual images, the objections of Victorian moralists become
clear – there are articulations of the pelvis in the dancing of the African Americans that
could be indicative of sexual activity. In looking at the lower class white dancers, one
can see the imitation of black dancers, without several of the more radical pelvic motions.
Perhaps that segment was “cleaned up” for film, as accounts of the day do speak of white
dancers aping black movement – or were the minimal departures from culturally
patterned movement sufficient to create such outrage?115 In the upper class white
segment, the corrections and suggestions of the Castles are made plain, and indeed, the
two groups appear to be doing two very different dances. The prevailing modes of the
European American aesthetic are plainly visible in the upper class white dancers, while
Africanist aesthetics are embodied by the African American dancers. In the middle
115
This raises the question, “was the movement of the black dancers likewise cleaned up?” If not, this
would speak to the different moral standards applied to the two groups. If so, what did it look like before it
was cleaned up?
55
group, the lower class whites, we are given some insight into the battleground where
moralists fought to prevent the encroachment of African American movement values into
white America.
Recall that a major point of the Castles corrections was “Do not shake the hips.”
This rings as a direct indictment of the Africanist aesthetic, and it is here that the fears of
the European American moral guardians found a vulnerable target. Movement of the
hips represented sexual activity to Victorian moralists, and while they may have
considered such movement a natural, unconscious (and therefore forgivable) activity of
the “less-civilized” African American, to see this movement transported to white dancing
bodies could be read as an unforgivable step backwards down the ladder of evolution.
Understandably, then, the presence of culturally patterned movement that European
Americans read as sexualized created a great deal of tension between groups who felt that
dancing was simply a healthy activity and those who saw it as one of the first steps down
the slippery slope to perdition. The overriding idea among both African American and
European American leaders was that the African American should take on the qualities of
the more socially advanced European-American culture; movement in the other direction
was of extremely questionable value. This was the message of Booker T. Washington,
foremost among African American accomodationists, and after the publication of
Washington’s Up From Slavery the Scottish-American millionaire Dale Carnegie
donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Washington’s Tuskegee institute. Writing of
Washington, Carnegie spoke the thoughts of many whites who hoped that through
acculturation, black America could be enfolded into the dominant culture.
To me he seems one of the foremost of living men because his work is unique.
The modern Moses, who leads his race and lifts it through education to even
better and higher things than a land overflowing with milk and honey. History is
to know two Washingtons, one white, the other black, both Fathers of their
People. I am satisfied that the serious race question of the South is to be solved
wisely, only by following Booker T. Washington’s policy which he seems to have
been specially born—a slave among slaves—to establish, and even in his own
day, greatly advance.116
116
Carnegie to William Baldwin, April 17th, 1903. Quoted in Louis R. Harlan, Up From Slavery as History
and Biography, p.27
56
The progress of the Castles from their first performance at the Café de Paris to the
Castle House is likewise detailed in the film The Whirl of Life. In the scene where the
Castles recreate their breakthrough performance in Paris, they articulate their upper torso,
swaying precariously to the right and the left while walking. This action mirrors the side
to side movement found in the African American dancers, though this movement is
moved up from the hips to the torso. Very occasionally they will move their hips from a
neutral pelvis, but only in a sideways fashion, they never break into the sagittal plane
with their hips. The walking in this scene is weighted, and while certainly not hopping, it
is far removed from a seamless glide. Very occasionally the Castles drop into a dipping
motion of the knees, and near the end of the routine Vernon lifts Irene, allowing her to
flick a leg backwards in a small attitude, acknowledging the swooping shapes regularly
seen in the black dancing.
In scenes depicting dancing later in their career, the Castles demonstrate the
changes that they made from their younger, “rougher” performances. The walk has
transformed from the horizontal plane to the sagittal, and where previously their steps had
a weighted quality, the Castles now move in the same light, suspended fashion seen in the
scene featuring upper class whites dancing. There is very little tipping of the upper body,
and the held quality, high placement of energy in the body, and disconnect between
partners common to the European American movement aesthetic are all dominant. Irene
now has transferred the round, or circular, quality found in the hip movements of the
African American dancers to her legs, incorporating both low sweeping rondes and
higher arabesques and attitudes. The Castles expand their kinesphere, likely for
performative reasons. Appearing alone on a significantly larger dance floor, they
incorporated sequential pivots into their performance. While virtuosic in an unrestricted
performance space, the pivots are clearly a movement drawn from a waltz aesthetic rather
than anything previously seen in Ragtime dances. Their transformation from innocent
youths recreating a remembered black dance form to exemplars of European American
aesthetics is complete. Encapsulated in this transformation is the entire philosophy that
Marbury and other advocates of “proper” dancing promoted. The Castles, in their youth
and naiveté, performed the rough and tumble dances in a raw form, but instinctively
“knew better” than to go the route of vulgar dancing. As they rose in social standing,
57
their dancing accordingly became more refined and sophisticated, until they came to
embody the virtues prized in upper class America, even while dancing. So too, the
advocates claimed, would anyone who practiced correct form be able to enjoy the new
dances, without risking their propriety.
Half of the Castle’s six “Do Nots” deal with the arms and shoulders. In One Step
dances, the leader walks the follower through space, one change of weight for every beat
of music, moving the couple counterclockwise around the floor. As anyone who has
taught walking dances such as Peabody, Quickstep, or social Fox-trot will affirm, novice
dancers unfamiliar with what is considered proper form often allow their elbows to
bounce in time with the movement, a natural, sympathetic reaction to the action of the
legs and the music. Absent the constraints of “proper” — read European-American based
— movement aesthetics, and given what we know of the African movement aesthetic
generally, it is not hard to envision how the Turkey Trot got its name. This loose,
articulated arm movement was reviled by those whose partner dance aesthetic came from
the more stately walking dances performed to European music, where rigid control of the
upper body was largely the object of the exercise.
In removing the sympathetic syncopation of the upper body and re-integrating the
dance frame from the Waltz and Two Step into Ragtime dances, white dance reformers
such as the Castles found a powerful way to visually modify Ragtime dancing. Changing
the lines of the upper body without essentially altering the relationship of the foot
movements to the music gave Ragtime dances a more visually acceptable silhouette to
white audiences, while retaining the pleasurable action of taking One Step for every beat
of music.117
Did the loss of the Africanist action of the upper body and pelvis significantly
change the One Step as its originators danced it? Absolutely. For some, this makes for a
simple open and shut case to label the Castles as appropriators of African American
movement for commodification. Yet consider that Ragtime dancing was originally a
fusion of African and European aesthetics, where the African American originators
117
Interestingly, this insistence upon a rigidly controlled upper body extended to the adaptations of ethnic
dance forms throughout the 20th century, and spread across race lines in American dance culture – the
upper body of the lindy-hop, for example, is comparatively restrained even as danced by African
Americans in film clips from the Savoy ballroom, further evidence of the idea that cultural transmission is
never a one-way street.
58
grafted their movement styles on the base of the walking, partnered dancing common in
Europe and her colonial children but not part of any African lexicon. In a sense, then, the
white dancers who concerned themselves with restoring the dance to “respectability”
were re-claiming a dance form that African Americans had adapted from initially
European sources. Looked at through this lens, Ragtime dancing is a textbook example
of the cyclical nature of cultural hybridization; both African American and European
American artists were drawing on the others’ forms. African Americans for the structure
of partnered dancing, into which they injected their movement aesthetic, and European
Americans for Ragtime, a syncopation which heretofore had been unused in dance music.
The result was a broad spectrum of movement quality; from bars in Harlem to the Castle
House, everyone was dancing to the same music – in very different ways. The Castles,
instead of simply being appropriators of African American movement for European
American consumption, are discovered to be participants in a complex cycle of
appropriation and re-appropriation referred to by Jane Desmond. While the two
conjoined cultures negotiated for power, musicians and dancers acted as migratory agents
in the transmission of culture between the groups.
This combination of European American and African American forms aroused
very different reactions from different segments of society. Many white Americans were
excited to see black Americans moving towards European American aesthetics. A
parallel can be found in the processes of converting “heathens” to Christianity, where
some idolatry would be accepted as a step in the direction of true belief. Other
Americans, heavily invested in the doctrines of white supremacy, were disturbed to see
blacks putting on white forms, and far, far worse, appalled to see whites aping black
styles in return. The doctrine of separate but equal was created to keep the African
American in his place, a second or third class citizen. The critics who faulted Ragtime
dancing because of its racial origins and implications recognized (quite rightly) that
seemingly harmless entertainment would be the first wedge driven into the door keeping
African Americans from full enfranchisement. The discussion of the politics of racial
integration at the turn of the century, and its intersections with the Castles and James
Reese Europe, is continued in Chapter Three.
59
The Castles played a crucial role in negotiating these tensions. Like their fellow
dance pioneers Isadora Duncan and Loie Fuller, there was nothing intentionally sensual
about their dancing. A respectable, white, married couple, they were able to transform
the Africanist aesthetic of Ragtime dance in such a way as to distance it from the
objections of European American cultural arbiters. They maintained upright posture,
divorced their arms from sympathetic movements, and they maintained a neutral pelvis
while dancing. Embodying the culturally patterned movements of the European
American aesthetic while dancing to the new, cool, hip music of the day, the Castles were
in constant demand as performers and instructors from both the critics and the proponents
of modern dancing.
If, however, the Castles were able to finesse the tensions that arose as white
dancers took on black dance forms, they had little power to diffuse the underlying
tensions between the two aesthetics. If anything, in taking the art of a marginalized
people and finding a way to bring it to market in a way that benefited the hegemonic
community far more than the community from which the dance arose, the Castles set an
example that would persist for the greater part of the 20th century. At the beginning of
the 21st century, it is possible to see the beginnings of acceptance and crossover of
African American movement aesthetics into the broader community, through mediums
such as music videos and club dancing – a trip to any nightclub in any city where college
students are socializing will reveal youth of all races performing movements that fit
neatly into Thompson’s descriptors of African movement. At the beginning of the 20th
century such acceptance was simply not possible, and today tension still remains between
racially polarized communities as well as older generations and the youth who are
dancing in a way unacceptable forty years ago.
However tempting it may be to judge the actions of historical figures such as the
Castles and Jim Europe in the light of current mindsets, I feel strongly that a true
understanding cannot be achieved without examining the circumstances in which they
made their choices. To more fully understand both the nature of the conflict presented by
Ragtime dancing’s racial embodiment of movement and Jim Europe and the Castles’
roles as migratory agents in the transmission of African American culture to European
America’s consciousness, a greater explication of the background conditions in which the
60
white dancers and black musicians operated is necessary. Examining the prevailing state
of race relations and philosophies of racial uplift at the turn of the 20th century brings the
actions of the Castles and Europe into a truer focus, and only by contextualizing their
behavior within their environment can we come to a deep understanding of the complex
role that these remarkable individuals played at the end of the Progressive Era.
61
CHAPTER FOUR
RACE RELATIONS AND RAGTIME
Figure 1: Booker T. Washington dining at the White House with Theodore Roosevelt118
In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, invited
Booker T. Washington, the African American director of the well-known Tuskegee
Institute, to the White House for dinner. This simple meeting across the dinner table
enraged whites in the south and the north. Ben Tillman, a Congressman from South
Carolina, said: “The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will
necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place
again.”119 The editor of the Memphis Scimitar called the dinner “the most damnable
outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States of America,”
and claimed it taught a frightening lesson: “Any Nigger who happens to have a little
more than the average amount of intelligence granted by the Creator of his race, and cash
enough to pay the tailor and the barber, and the perfumer for scents enough to take away
118
Photograph, http://www.creativeprocess.net/moreposters/individuals/men/washingtonbt.html, no source
cited.
119
Ben Tillman, Senator from South Carolina, quoted in Another Look at the Age of Booker T. Washington,
Robert J. Norrell, p. 66
62
the nigger smell, has a perfect right to be received by the daughter of the white man
among the guests in the parlor of his home.”120
Scarcely more than a decade later, Jim Europe, Ford Dabney, and Buddy Gilmore
– African American musicians – were regular guests at the Vernon and Irene Castles’
Long Island home. Considering that Washington died in 1915, it is possible to imagine
the musicians and the dancers discussing racial politics, perhaps across a piano, between
rehearsals of a new dance number. The discourse between Washington and DuBois
received extensive coverage in the black press and was very likely a topic of discussion
among Jim Europe and the musicians in his employ in New York City. While the
arguments would have been of less immediate importance to Vernon and Irene Castle, the
questions of race and race relations were certainly in the air, and the Castles had far more
intimate contact with African American artists than most white performers. It seems
reasonable to think that they would have been aware of the racial discussions of the time.
From the biographical material presented earlier, it should be clear that the Castles
interacted with the black artists in a progressive manner, exceptional for the times. Why
was this? How did the Castles interaction with Europe and his musicians fit into the
bigger picture of race relations before WWI? What did their collaboration mean to their
communities at the time, and how should that relationship be assessed today?
Vernon, being British, avoided being indoctrinated into the racial conflict in
which every American was steeped from birth. Great Briton’s social and political climate
did not possess the same racial elements present in the United States at the turn of the
century. The easy friendship between Vernon and Jim Europe, his willingness to take
drum lessons from Buddy Gilmore, and having Europe and Dabney over to their Long
Island home in a social situation are all examples of Vernon’s disconnect from the daily
realities of American race relations at that time. Perhaps his liberal interactions with the
African American community can be explained as easily as this – he likely had no first
hand experience with racism until he came to the United States. Certainly this goes a
long way towards explaining his willingness to break unwritten social codes regarding
race relations. It is important to note, however, that it would have been very easy for any
120
Dewey Grantham Jr., “Dinner at the White House: Theodore Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington, and the
South,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 18, (June 1958), pp. 116-18, 125, quoted in Norrell, p. 66
63
white performer to simply go along with the racist attitudes and actions of his peers,
particularly as Vernon’s community expanded to include members of America’s upper
classes. Numerous comments made by Irene Castle over the years suggest that she was
less concerned with racial politics than Vernon, yet her actions both during their marriage
and after his death suggest that she possessed and retained a respect for the people with
whom she worked, regardless of their race.
Europe interacted closely with the Castles on both professional and social levels.
As a respected leader of the African American artistic community, he must have had an
opinion of the Castles’ endeavor to remove Africanist movement characteristics from
Ragtime dancing. It could be argued that Europe simply aided the Castles in their
transformation of Ragtime dances out of a desire for personal power and profit,
disregarding any consequential damage to African American culture. Certainly historical
literature seems to give Europe less credit than he deserves in terms of his contributions
to the development of black music – other early jazz musicians such as Noble Sissle,
Ford Dabney, and Eubie Blake have been accorded greater prominence in the historical
record. True, these artists lived longer lives, and had commensurately richer careers. Yet
it seems that many historians of African American culture have regarded Europe’s
promotion of a positive African American agenda as suspect, perhaps because Europe
often voiced opinions which echoed Booker T. Washington’s call for accommodation, as
well as his close interaction with the Castles.
However, given what we know about Europe’s activities to advance African
American interests in other arenas, such as the his efforts to promote African American
concert music, his role in the creation of the Harlem Settlement Music Association, and
the founding of the Tempo and Clef Clubs, simple personal gain as a motivator for his
collaboration with the Castles seems unlikely. Europe probably considered himself as
one of DuBois’ Talented Tenth, and, as his biography attests, he consciously strove to
improve race relations by embodying the principles that both Washington and DuBois
had called for in African American leaders.
Looked at in the light of today’s society, the bleaching of African American dance
for acceptance in white society may seem a corrupt or morally questionable action; at the
turn of the century, such action was perceived as advancing the Negro cause by removing
64
the taint of the primitive, the uncivilized. This was the age of separate but equal, and
many thought that through advancing the distinct and innate qualities of the race, the
black community would advance. Regarding the perceived affinity for music in the
African American community, Jim Europe was interviewed by the Evening Post after the
1914 Carnegie Hall concert. Note the way in which the reporter comments on Europe’s
performance of both “high” and “low” art:
James Reese Europe is one of the most remarkable men, not only of his race, but
in the music world of this country. A composer of some note – some of his
serious efforts were played the other night, and his dance music in known
wherever the Tango or Turkey Trot are danced – he is head of an organization
which practically controls the furnishing of music for the new dances, and at the
same time, he is able to expend considerable energy upon the development of the
Negro Symphony Orchestra. Unaided, he has been able to accomplish what white
musicians said was impossible: the adaptation of Negro music and musicians to
symphonic purposes.121
In the interview, Europe expressed his opinion on the reasons for the separation of
skills between the white and black musician. While doing so, he reiterates a racial
assumption of the times – there are significant, fundamental differences between blacks
and whites.
The reason the African-American has achieved a monopoly in this line of work
and is in such demand by the wealthiest and most fashionable classes of white
society is simply because he has an inimitable ear for time in dancing, is well
trained, and is an instinctively good musician. The Negro plays Ragtime as if it
was a second nature to him – as it is.
Our symphony orchestra never tries to play white folks music. We should be
foolish to attempt such a thing. We are no more fitted for that than a white
orchestra is fitted to play our music. . . . We have developed a kind of symphony
music that, no matter what else you may think, is different and distinctive, and
that lends itself to the playing of the peculiar compositions of our race.122
Europe seems to straddle several of the concepts of race at the time. His
musicians are “instinctively good musicians,” yet also “well trained.” Black musicians
are unfit to play white music, but radically, whites are just as unfit to play black music. In
valorizing African American musicians and their “peculiar compositions,” Europe
mirrored DuBois conception, relatively new at the time, of the inherent value of elements
121
122
James Europe, interview published in the March 13th, 1914 Evening Post.
Ibid.
65
of black culture. The idea of black popular music being a valid art form was greatly
contested among African American intellectuals although Antonin Dvorak’s assertion
that Ragtime was the only authentic American musical form had been made as early as
the turn of the century. The concept that there are musical forms peculiar to blacks, that
Ragtime is “second nature” to black musicians, and that they have an “inimitable ear for
time in dancing” all speak to the concept, prevalent at the time, of inherent, racial
differences between blacks and whites. In the Progressive Era “nature,” in the sense of
genetic heritage, was assumed to be the driving force behind racial differences – the
concept of “nurture,” or environmental influences, while not unknown, was not nearly as
popular.
The underlying philosophy manifested in these concepts was that, due to inherent
differences between the races, the line of propriety could and should be drawn in a
different place for African-and-European Americans. This is important in understanding
that movement vocabularies considered unfit for white performance were not condemned
in black communities. A double standard existed; due to African Americans’ supposedly
lesser progress up the “ladder of civilization,” activities acceptable in black society were
unacceptable in white society. At the May 1913 NAACP conference one of the members
commented, “I want to refer to Mayor Blankenburg’s truism that a colored man who
behaves himself is the equal of a white man. The twin truism is that a white man who
does not behave himself is not the equal of the colored man who does.”123 Clearly the
“twin truism,” wherein a “good” black man could be considered the superior of a “bad”
white man, was not self evident in American society at the time.
One side effect of this paternalistic attitude was a convenient rationale for
dismissing African American efforts to integrate into European American society. The
further extension of this double standard meant that in order for black society to be
considered acceptable, it would have to conform to the “higher” standards of white
society. Accomodationists like Booker T. Washington sought to elevate African
American society into European American society in exactly this fashion, eliminating the
“blackness” of the black community in order to become integrated into the hegemonic
power structure. Cultural arbiters such as Elizabeth Marbury sought to demonstrate how
123
Henry W. Wilbur, reported in the June 1913 Crisis, edited by W.E.B. DuBois, p. 62
66
the primal, instinctive artistry of African American artists could be refined and performed
without taint by those already operating at a higher level of morality. Though this mode
of thinking is now bankrupt, at the times it carried great weight, and made the manner in
which the Castles interacted with Europe and his musicians all the more striking.
The Castles 1914 performance at the Casino in Harlem offers many examples of
the complex contradictions that surrounded their interactions with the African American
community. The Castles appeared as guest artists in a separate section of the show, and
their performance was a major part of promotions advertising the concert. Audiences
were wildly enthusiastic regarding the Castles’ performance, and a great deal of media
attention in the black community focused on the idea that celebrities of white society
were coming to Harlem to perform. On the one hand, the Castles were bringing attention
and revenue to black artists from the hegemonic community and presumably this
attention helped to drive forward the agenda of African American artistic viability. On
the other there was some irony in a white couple coming to Harlem to perform black
dances, particularly as the Castles were becoming the champions of the “right way of
dancing” – a way that meant stripping Ragtime dances of many African American
movement elements. The Castles were simultaneously promoting certain aspects of
African American culture and denying the viability of others. Seen through the lens of
accommodation, this denial of Africanist culture was far less controversial than hindsight
might otherwise suggest. Having been denied any validation of their culture for so long,
African Americans were likely so enthused to have attention given to their music and
composers that they would have forgiven far greater crimes than the removal of body
syncopation and the calming of the pelvis. Though there were doubtless people in the
black community who dismissed the Castles efforts at social uplift, many observers
probably saw in the Castles performances a template to which they themselves should
aspire.
The social agenda promoted by the Castles’ manager Elizabeth Marbury – that
the dances themselves need be in no way vulgar or ill-mannered – was also served by
such a performance. While the moral standards of African Americans were not held to
the same levels of scrutiny as those of European Americans, African American dancers
were certainly the source of many of the objections white Americans had to the
67
movement vocabulary of Ragtime dancing. To the minds of many Americans, still
entrenched in Victorian morality, the movement of African American dancing was
synonymous with vulgar morality. For Marbury and her progressive agenda, aimed at a
white community that exemplified a Victorian mindset, no better location to preview the
message of reformed dancing that the Castles would be taking around the country could
be imagined than before the people whose music and movement had inspired the crusade
in the first place.
Looked at from one point of view, the Castles were enemies of African American
culture, denying the viability of the culturally patterned movements that were integral to
African American identity. However, the Castles were outspoken advocates of African
American musicians; recall that they broke down the color line in Vaudeville theaters by
insisting that African American musicians be allowed to accompany their performances.
The power of the Castles advocacy certainly helped the Tempo club achieve its virtual
lock on performance opportunities for African American musicians throughout the
remainder of the decade. The Castles interactions with the African American community
can be broadly characterized as resonating within the framework erected by Booker T.
Washington and other accomodationists. By bringing white cultural movement to black
communities, the opportunity was presented for black audiences to mainstream their
behavior to European American standards. If the goal for African Americans, as
suggested by Washington and others, was to normalize their relations with whites by
becoming a part of white culture, then surely the Castles were bringing an immediately
recognizable change, visible and embodied, to the black community. DuBois suggestion
that there were valuable and integral portions of black culture that needed to be cherished
and developed can be seen in the Castles’ promotion of Ragtime music, the syncopated
pulsing of the musical beat being far less threatening to white society than syncopated
pulsing of the pelvis.
The Castles true contribution to the hybridization of African American and
European American cultures came in their promotion of Ragtime music, a secondary
focus of their performance but the one having the longest lasting impact on white
America. It is true that Ragtime music was available and not unpopular in the decade
before the Castles and Europe began promoting it. However, in mainstreaming the music
68
as an essential part of social activity, and conflating it with upper-class society, the
Castles and Europe brought to Ragtime a national popularity that extended beyond the
sheet music that had heretofore been its major messenger. Ragtime contains the seeds of
Jazz, a form where black and white Americans have met and collaborated for nearly a
century, and if Ragtime’s syncopations had simply been a passing fad, fading too quickly
from the American imagination, Jazz’s mixture of black and white in American culture
might have died stillborn. An example of how the Castles versions of Ragtime dance
advanced the acceptance of black music by white Americans is the dance which the
Castles first referred to as the “Fish Walk.”124
As mentioned earlier, the dance which the Castles initially called the Fish Walk
became known as the Fox Trot. As both a dance and as a musical form, Fox Trot has had
a long lasting impact on American culture; perhaps most notably it was the first instance
where the African American musical form “Blues” came into European American
culture. This insertion into European American awareness came through dance – the first
blues song would not be recorded for six years.125 Further, Foxtrot was clearly and
unambiguously labeled as African American. Vernon explained to the New York Herald
that the Fox Trot “had been danced by Negroes, to his personal knowledge, for fifteen
years.”126
Jim Europe went further in an interview given to the New York Tribune in
November of 1914, calling the One Step the “national dance of the Negro”:
There is much interest in the growth of the modern dances in the fact that they
were all danced and played by us negroes long before the whites took them up.
One of my own musicians, William Tyres, wrote the first tango in America as far
back as the Spanish-American war. . . . They were the essentially negro dances,
played and danced by negroes alone. The same may be said of the fox-trot, this
season the most popular of dances. Mr. Castle has generously given me credit for
the fox-trot, yet the credit, as I have said, really belongs to Mr. Handy. You see,
then, that both the tango and the fox-trot are negro dances, as is the One Step.
124
Perhaps a nod towards Mrs. Stuyvesant-Fish?
There are a number of musical forms that could be called “Blues.” Here I am referring to the musical
form described by Thorton Hagert as, “an emphasis on 4/4 rhythm at about forty bars a minute [a little less
than half his estimate of the tempo of the One Step], peculiar structures of twelve or twenty bars in place of
the customary sixteen, and some really crazy breaks in the rhythm, right in the middle of the tune.” From
Come and trip it – Instrumental Dance Music from 1780 – 1920. Quoted in Badger, p. 115
126
See “Castles dance Fox Trot, Call It Negro Step,” in the New York Herald, no date, fall 1914, clipping in
the Castle Scrapbooks, BRTC, NYPL. Quoted in Badger, p. 116
125
69
The One Step is the national dance of the negro, the negro always walking in his
dances. 127
Susan Cook has argued that the Castles gave Europe and his musician’s short
shrift. Her point seems to be that the Castles were unable to acknowledge their debt to
African Americans due to racial pride.
The relationship between the Castles and Europe was clearly a complex one,
playing out the racism of American Society. The Castles true indebtedness to
Europe might have been more than they, as white Americans maintaining class
and race respectability, could admit, let alone write about. Thus their silence on
music also speaks to the central importance of this racialized dance music and
how it was changing notions about popular music and culture, and with it modern
social behavior and relationships.128
The failure of The Vernon and Irene Castle Story, the feature film biography of
the Castles, to portray Jim Europe or indeed any African American also lends some
credence to this argument, though Cook doesn’t refer to this. Irene Castle was a
consultant on the film, so the omission of Europe, Walter Ash, or any black characters
could be read as a denial of the Castles’ reliance upon African Americans in their career.
Cook also cites the relative inattention given to music in Modern Dancing, three pages as
compared to sixteen for matters of fashion. Noting that Irene barely mentions Europe in
Castles in the Air, Cook builds an apparently respectable case for the Castles being, at
best, appropriators of black culture, and at worst, “trading on Ragtime’s embodiment of
non-white masculinity, its racial primitivism, vitality and passion through the very visible
presence of James Reese Europe and his band.”129
Upon closer examination, and in light of current research, several of these claims
ring false. It should be remembered that Jim Europe appeared on film with the Castles
several times in their 1915 film The Whirl of Life, when the demands of southern film
distributors had little control over casting and scripting.130 That Walter Ash’s character is
portrayed so sympathetically could be read as a sign that Irene wished to convey her
127
“Negro Composer on Race’s Music,” in the New York Tribune, November 22, 1914
Susan Cook, Passionless Dancing and Passionate Reform: Respectability, Modernism, and the Social
Dancing of Irene and Vernon Castle, p. 146
129
ibid., p. 145
130
It is generally acknowledged that black characters were cut from The Vernon and Irene Castle Story due
to fears that southern film distributors would not screen the movie if the movie portrayed African American
characters.
128
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affection for Ash to those who knew the truth of his race in a fashion that would not be
censored by Hollywood’s’ racism. Perhaps a more reasonable interpretation of the lack of
attention in Modern Dancing on Ragtime music would be that Ragtime music permeated
the society of the day, and giving instruction on the proper use of such music would have
been as moot as suggesting proper musical accompaniment for the line dance “The
Electric Slide.” Irene and other dance instructors’ comments on appropriate music
support this idea, as in this quote from Modern Dancing:
I might, of course, give you a long list of music of to-day which I consider best
for dancing, but in a month or two the list would be passé. There is always in
every shop a man to play selections for you. You can instantly tell whether the
time is right and clearly marked, or whether it loses beats, now and then requiring
the holding of notes over two beats—all of which is apt to put the amateur dancer
out of step.131
And in this quote from Faulkner’s Tango and Other Up To Date Dances:
The first dance to be taken up will be a One Step. The dance is very simple and
easy, and will do much towards giving one the proper swing for the more difficult
dances to come. The music used is Too Much Mustard, or any of the popular
song hits, played slightly faster than a good quick Two Step.132
As for Irene’s attention to the musicians themselves, there is little question that
Irene’s attitude towards race was both more conservative than Vernon’s, and further,
ossified over the forty years between the publication of her memoirs My Husband and
Castles in the Air. Nevertheless, Irene remained in correspondence with Ford Dabney
and several of the other musicians from Europe’s Society Orchestra long after Vernon’s
death. Cook herself notes that Irene demanded that Dabney, Buddy Gilmore, and other
musicians be allowed to attend Vernon’s funeral, actions that speak to a relationship that
went beyond that of business or a stylized master/servant white/black stereotype of the
age. As Vernon’s interview with the New York Herald attests, the Castles were not shy
about giving credit to African American artists for their work. This somewhat undercuts
Cook’s argument that “The Castles true indebtedness to Europe might have been more
131
Castles, Modern Dancing, p. 162-3
Hopkins, J.S. The tango and other up-to-date dances; a practical guide to all the latest dances, tango,
one step, innovation, hesitation, etc., described step by step by J. S. Hopkins; illustrated with photographs
posed by Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle, Joseph C. Smith ... and many other famous dancers. p. 20 Chicago,
The Saalfield Publishing Co. [c1914]
132
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than they, as white Americans maintaining class and race respectability, could admit let
alone write about.”
If the music was the place where the Castles collaboration with Jim Europe had its
greatest effect, what of the effects of their partnership in the context of their
communities? The manner in which the Castles, Jim Europe, and other African
American artists of the time interacted with each other provides insight into the intentions
and motivations of the various groups. What did it mean to the European American
community to have African American forms brought to a level of respectability, and how
did that respectability impact the African American community? Did the stripping of
Africanist elements from Ragtime dancing perpetrated by the Castles, as mentioned
earlier, inflict real and lasting damage upon the African American community?
How did Jim Europe and the African American community regard the Castles?
Certainly at the time they were hailed as being friends of the black artist. Immediately
following the Whirlwind tour, Irene went into the hospital to have her appendix removed,
and the Tempo Club’s feelings towards the Castles are eloquently revealed in the caption
of a photograph of the Castles which was published while Irene was recovering.133
They are the best friends of the colored professional, and while they are known
for being artistic and exceptionally original in the terpsichorean art, they are also
noted for their benevolence and congeniality. Race, color, creed nor religion
mark their lives. Mrs. Castle, after a severe illness, is now convalescent and it is
the hope of white and colored alike that she will be fully restored to good health.
They are outspoken for the Tempo Club at all times, and the Tempo Club wishes
them success.134
It seems clear from anecdotal evidence that the Castles and Jim Europe interacted
more at the level of friends than employer/employee. Highlighting this, the origin of the
“Castle Half and Half” and several other dances was recalled by Irene in an interview
given in 1930 to the African American magazine Opportunity. In early 1914 the Castles
purchased an estate in Manhasset, Long Island, where they would go on weekends.
Europe and Dabney, she said, “often came down to our Manhasset home on Sunday and
played duets at the piano for hours at a time. We often had several weekend guests with
133
This was the occasion when Irene bobbed her hair, causing much stir in society circles.
Unidentified Photograph and caption, Castles Scrapbooks, Billy Rose Theater collection, NYPL, quoted
in Badger, p. 111
134
72
us and no matter how full a program we had planned for Sunday—all bets were off when
Europe and Dabney hove in sight and we would huddle around the piano, enchanted by
some new dance number they were in the act of composing for us.”135 Vernon was also
developing a passion for drumming, and regularly took lessons from Buddy Gilmore, the
drummer who regularly played with Europe’s Society Orchestra. That the Castles
regularly had African American musicians to their house as friends and fellow
professionals, rather than hired musicians, was unusual to say the least. A decade later
such collaboration and intermixing would be seen in the artists of the Harlem
Renaissance, but before WWI, relationships between artists of different races were
largely divided.
Another indication of the Castles progressive attitudes towards race is clearly
shown through Irene’s recollections of events during the Whirlwind tour, when the
Castles and three white couples from Castle House toured the nation with Jim Europe and
some two dozen black musicians by train. As noted, Europe, Dabney, Buddy Gilmore,
and the Castles were previously personally acquainted, and the entire group of dancers
and musicians would often gather socially between stops. One of the routines that the
group used to maintain a sense of fun and discipline was for the entire company to meet
for a mock trial.
One night we found great merriment going on in (the musicians) car. We learned
that one of the musicians was sentenced for wearing brown shoes with his
evening clothes in the orchestra pit. These trials were conducted in dead
seriousness and offenders were served with a summons some time during the day
to appear in court at night. . . . As we became nightly attendants, charges were
brought up against us for missteps, etc., and our fines were consequently
heavier.136
The charges ranged from drinking before the show, missing a musical cue, to
wearing mismatched shoes or socks in the pit. No one was exempt – Vernon and Irene
both went on trial for missed steps. As the trials developed, Vernon would appoint a
jury, orchestra member William Elkins served as the judge, Jim Europe was the
prosecuting attorney, and Gladwyn Macdougal presented the defense for whatever “poor
135
136
Irene Castle McLaughlin, “Jim Europe—A Reminiscence,” Opportunity, March, 1930, 91
I. Castle, My Husband, pp. 61,62
73
wretch” came on trial, who’s “one innocent miscircumstance [sic] could lead to the
ruination of this young and innocent life!” 137
This practice, common to the musicians before the Castles stumbled upon it,
served to bring the musicians and dancers closer together, holding everyone accountable
for the high standards of the show. Penalties ranged from buying the beer for the next
evening to a noisy but harmless spanking. Not only was no one above the law, but
Vernon demanded respect for every member of his company, as William Elkins recalled
over thirty years later in an interview:
[O]ne of the white dancers, talking to a local stage hand, was overheard by one of
the members of our troupe to use the word Nigger. The case was reported for
trial. Well, that was the first of such an instance and I thought it best to speak
with Mr. and Mrs. Castle before taking such a touchy subject up, for fear of how
the offender might take it and knowing what could develop. But Mr. Castle spoke
up, right away, and told me to bring him up in court and fine him fifty dollars.
The case was called and the prisoner pleaded guilty. Instead of fining him fifty
dollars cash, the fine was champagne, sandwiches, and refreshments for the whole
troupe that cost him at least fifty dollars. The victim objected, but Mr. Castle,
who was standing in the door looking on, warned the offender that if he did not
pay that the jury composed of the musicians might be a little rough. Needless to
say, he bought the refreshments and on our special train that night, Mr. and Mrs.
Castle, the offender, and the whole company had a wonderful party and after that
there were never any other insulting remarks.138
That the Castles accorded great respect to the entire troupe speaks to the
dedication that they had to upholding the dignity of their friends and employees. Elkin’s
uncertainty in bringing the matter to trial without checking with Vernon first speaks
eloquently to the fragile nature of race relations at the time – even in a circumstance
where the performers, black and white, had formed such close bonds, Elkins feared that
Vernon would stand by his white companion. That Vernon chose not do this is strong
evidence that he conducted other affairs in his life with equal regard for human dignity,
regardless of race.
As pointed out in Susan Cook’s article, an argument often leveled against artists
from hegemonic cultures who partake of material from subordinate cultures is that they
fail to give credit where credit is due. Accepting that the possibilities for financial
137
I. Castle, Castles in the Air, p. 119
Interview with Noble Sissle, “Show Business,” the New York Age, September 28, 1948, 8. Quoted in
Badger, p. 110
138
74
remuneration were unequal at the time means absolving individual artists of culpability
on the score of finances, but what of history’s record? That record demonstrates that the
Castles acknowledged their debt to the African American community for the art form that
they were promoting. Consider that Ragtime was plainly and continually marketed as a
black artistic form. Despite, or perhaps as a direct result of the racial bias which
pervaded America, there was no question that the dancing which came from Ragtime
would also be credited to African Americans.
When the Castles got their first break in Paris, they were performing a version of
a Texas Tommy, a dance they had seen performed (as a solo) by Blossom Seeley, a black
performer from San Francisco. Irene presented two different versions in her two
memoirs of that event – first, the 1918 version:
In the last act of the Revue we sang “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” We followed
this with a sort of grizzly-bear dance. It was very rough, more so than any dance
we ever did over here. In later years we tried to get away as much as possible
from the acrobatic style of dancing, but at just this period it was the most popular.
I wore a little short pierrot costume and carried a big white teddy bear. It was a
sort of Texas Tommy dance. As this was entirely from memory of what we had
seen Blossom Seeley do in “The Hen-Pecks” it was quite unusual. Then too,
Blossom Seeley had danced alone, and were trying, both of us, to imitate her
Frisco style.139
Contrast that to the report given in 1958, in Castles in the Air:
My mother had been sending us clippings describing the new dance rage which
was sweeping across America, a syncopated Ragtime rough and tumble called the
“Grizzly Bear” or Texas Tommy. We decided, as a finale for the show, to
introduce French audiences to the latest American dance furor. Unfortunately, we
had not seen the latest American dances and had only the vague newspaper
descriptions to go by.
Vernon decided, however, that if we hadn’t seen the Grizzly Bear, the French
hadn’t either, so they wouldn’t know whether we were doing it right or not.
Reading between the lines of the newspaper stories, he evolved a close
approximation of the Grizzly Bear and the Texas Tommy to the tune of
“Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”
If the American version was rough, ours was even rougher, full of so many
acrobatic variations that I was in the air much more often than I was on the
139
Irene Castle, My Husband, p. 35, These quotes are repeated here verbatim from Chapter One for the
convenience of the reader.
75
ground. The French audience was enthusiastic . . . They stood up at the end of
the number and cried out “greezly bahr” until we appeared again.”140
Irene’s willingness to credit an African American with the inspiration for their
successful number seems to have waned in the forty years between tellings. Perhaps it
was simply the passing of time which dimmed her memory of the details, or possibly she
had simply changed as a person, and was no longer as progressive in her attitudes as she
had been in her youth. Irene did offer contradictory accounts, and it seems clear that her
1918 account reflects more closely the truth of the origins of the dance which initiated the
Castle’s rise to fame.141 So on the matter of giving credit for the origins of their success,
Irene must be viewed in a mixed light – while she originally gave credit to an African
American, later in her life that was a piece of information she failed to mention.
The 1918 report is another piece of evidence indicating that the Castles owed a
debt to an African American, in this instance Blossom Seeley. The Castles had some
interaction with Seeley, appearing as they did on the same bill in The Henpecks. They
clearly observed her performance closely enough be able to draw on their memory of it in
order to re-create something for their own performance. This kind of stealing of steps
and movement styles in theater and dance is so widespread as to be common practice, and
probably had a lot more to do with what was hot than any attempt to steal another
person’s success. Importantly, early in their career the Castles had another reason to
consider an African American in a positive light. Recall that without the resourcefulness
of Walter Ash, the Castle’s black retainer, the Castles would have been forced to leave
Paris before getting the opportunity to audition for the Café de Paris. Without their
memories of Blossom Seeley and her Texas Tommy dance, the Castles would not have
gotten the job at the Café de Paris. At the very beginning of their careers in dance,
events conspired to predispose the Castles to regard African Americans in a more liberal,
positive light than their American peers.
Evidence suggests that, in promoting Ragtime dancing, the Castles were aware of
the implications for black artists. In retaining James Reese Europe’s Society Orchestra to
140
Irene Castle, Castles in the Air, pp.54,55
Irene’s second memoir, Castles in the Air, contains other less flattering depictions of race. Of Walter
Ash, the family servant, she says “His mother had been a slave so he was used to being a family retainer.”
p. 50.
141
76
provide the music for the Castle House and all their other business ventures, in
demanding that black musicians perform with them in Vaudeville houses where
previously black musicians were barred, in attaching their name to sheet music sold by
Europe and his partner Ford Dabney, and in bringing a full orchestra of African
American musicians on a national tour and featuring them as a legitimate orchestra rather
than as minstrels, the Castles demonstrated a resolve to send some of the fruits of their
success to the black artistic community.
Also worthy of consideration are the effects of the Whirlwind tour. Nationwide
exposure of African American music and dancing must have had some effect on the
country. The interracial makeup of the tour was problematic for audiences, particularly
audiences removed from urban centers where African American artists were accorded
some relative measure of respect. The time between the turn of the century and WWI
was a time of financial prosperity in America, with most of the turmoil of Reconstruction
a generation in the past. With the institution of the Jim Crow laws disenfranchising
almost all non-white Americans, race relations were precariously balanced. With
political power firmly in white hands, racial tensions appeared to be at a stable point – in
separation there was a fictional equality, a veneer of civilization that would be maintained
as long as the Negro “kept in his place.” For many white Americans, distanced from and
unschooled in the practical realities of those who were denied their rights as citizens, this
must have seemed like movement in the right direction – thinking that the veneer of
civilization would become a real respect with the passage of time and the assimilation of
blacks into white culture. The Castles’ presentation of black musicians as respectable
artists, far removed from stereotyped images of Zip Coon and Jim Crow, must have been
jarring to many audiences.
Due to the fast-paced nature of the Whirlwind tour, the program remained largely
the same at every stop, and therefore a general, regional impression of the public reaction
can be gathered from the reportage. In some places, the racial makeup of the show was
nothing remarkable, and was commented on in a straightforward fashion. The Cincinnati
Tribune reported “Europe, the leader of this special Castle congregation of players, has so
thoroughly mastered the terpsichorean idea, and the Castle purpose in particular, that it
77
seemed impossible not to dance while his baton was swinging.”142 In St. Joseph,
Missouri, where the Castles were late for the show, the paper reported that the audience
spent the first minutes “commenting on the varying shades of the chocolate hue in
Europe’s eighteen piece orchestra and watched the maneuvers of the drummer. . . (the)
music really was excellent and the drummer was even better, his versatility being unusual
and his ability remarkable.”143
In other cities, little respect was assigned to the black entertainers, and several of
the newspaper accounts of the tour reflect this. The articles would focus on the comic
effect of Buddy Gilmore’s drum solos, or the stylings of the band’s vocal quartet that
sang between numbers. A Syracuse paper described the singers as being “of the palmetto
tree and the watermelon patch, with faint suggestions of the persimmons and the
voodoo.”144 Particularly odious is the account of the evening in the Minneapolis
Journal, whose “culture critic” was an ex prize-fighter called Butch Johnson. He didn’t
like the dancers – “too skinny, all legs” – and couldn’t understand Vernon’s accent. This
perhaps was in good fun, reflecting the culture critic’s lack of culture. When his attention
turned to the orchestra, however, it was less good-natured.
Chocolate Joe is onstage playing a base drum, snare drum, cymbal, a whistle and
one or two other instruments all at once, and no kid [sic], that’s right. He plays
with his feet, knees, and teeth. A lot of darky musicians sit in the regular music
makers’ places, and if it was a traveling medicine show I could sense it out, but
what those society people are putting good coin to see it for is what gets me.145
While the tour was successful at spreading the message of proper dance form, the
racially mixed group of performers presented challenges to the audiences who came to
see the dancing. The troupe of performers, while not truly integrated – there were no
white musicians or black dancers – played to packed houses on the eastern seaboard, and
smaller audiences in smaller venues in the Midwest.146 Many audiences, particularly of
the Midwest, were somewhat perplexed by the mixture of white and black performers on
142
“The Vernon Castles,” in the Cincinnati Tribune, May 13th, 1914. The original sources for this and the
following three footnotes are on file in the Robinson Locke Scrapbooks, Billy Rose Theater Collection,
New York Public Library.
143
Untitled clipping, St. Joseph Gazette, May 7, 1914.
144
“The Castles,” the Syracuse Post Standard, May 21, 1914.
145
“’Butch’ Dempsey Fails to Enthuse Over Castles,” Minneapolis Journal, unknown day, May 1914.
146
Contrary to the picture painted in the popular Astaire/Rodgers film “The Vernon and Irene Castle
Story,” the trip only went as far west as Omaha, Nebraska.
78
the same bill. Particularly vexing was the drummer Buddy Gilmore, prominently placed
on the stage with the dancers. Vernon would often trade places with him between dances
while Irene changed costumes.147 Many of these audiences had only seen black
performers in minstrel shows, and Europe’s highly disciplined musicians in formal black
tuxedos, responding instantly to his shifts of tempo and meter must have seemed to come
from a different, foreign world. Irene recalled the need for the band’s prowess in the
dance competitions:
The best dancers were generally good enough to make the final decision a
difficult one, so we had to depend on Jim Europe’s ability to change the tempo of
the piece he was playing without apparent pause. Without changing the tune he
would jump from one step to waltz time and in this way we were able to weed out
the couple or couples who did not at once perceive the change and swing easily
into the new time.148
In the dance competitions, then, Vernon and Irene would judge white couples’
ability to dance to the music of a black conductor and orchestra. The power with which
this invested Europe and his musicians could be read as subversive; in effect the power
dynamic of the room would be reversed for the short time the music was playing, as the
white dancers tried to keep up with the black musician’s changes. Europe, as one of
DuBois’ Talented Tenth, led the largely uneducated musicians in his orchestra by
example, so that in every performance the black musicians, elegant in tuxedoes and dress
shoes – embodying Washington’s virtue of impeccable appearance – challenged white
America’s desire to perceive African Americans as lazy, shiftless, and undisciplined. In
working with the Castles, Europe and his orchestra demonstrated Washington’s claim
that the black man was happy to work alongside and in support of his fellow whites.
Both Washington and DuBois’ desire for positive examples from the black community
were embodied in James Reese Europe and his musicians.
This is not to say that the black musicians received equal or fair treatment in the
society they operated in. The malevolent racism of the age operated at almost every level
of daily life, and while as privileged members of a performing class Europe and his
musicians might have been shielded from some of the worst aspects, humiliation and
147
Vernon was an avid drummer, studying with Buddy Gilmore and others, insisting that he be allowed to
drum in the musical Watch Your Step. He took drums with him to France when he went to war!
148
Irene Castle, Jim Europe, A Reminiscence, p. 90, quoted in Badger, A Life in Ragtime, pp, 107-108
79
denigration was an inevitable part of their world. Europe did not believe in giving in to
these slights, however, as is illustrated in an anecdote told by Eubie Blake, then a young
musician in Europe’s Society Orchestra. One night after playing for the Wanamakers,
and all the guests had finished eating, Europe asked the Wanamaker’s butler, who was
black, to see about finding some food for the orchestra.
Now, the butler, he thinks he ain’t like other Negroes. He don’t like it when Jim
complains. But anyway, in a little while they tell us to sit down at a table in the
big room, and a waiter brings in this big china thing they use for soup, and he
serves us all. . . . As soon as I tasted this stuff, I had to spit it out. And I see
everyone else is doing the same thing. This stuff, I’m still sure, is the water they
washed the dishes in—soap, everything. And its because the butler is mad, see.
He don’t like no colored people to complain. But Europe—I see Europe is eating
the stuff just like its soup, he don’t pay it no mind, just keeps eating! . . . I realize
Jim Europe didn’t get where he is with white folks by complainin’. At home or in
the White House, it was all the same to him. You couldn’t make him mad.149
Several interpretations of Jim Europe’s behavior are available. However
hyperbolic the incident of eating dishwater soup may be, personal dignity and setting a
positive example of behavior were more important to Jim Europe than momentary slights
– he was looking to the future.150 Booker T. Washington’s “Victorian virtues” – hard
work, thrift, self discipline – were all embodied in James Reese Europe. Acknowledging
that prejudice was part of life, and moving forward regardless was a hallmark of Europe’s
success. Regarding inequities in the music publishing business, Europe said, “A white
man would receive from six to twelve times the royalty” than a black man could expect
from his published and recorded compositions, even when his music was more popular.
In an interview with the New York Tribune, Europe said:
I have done my best to put an end to this discrimination, but I have found that it
was no use. The music world is controlled by a trust, and the negro must submit
to its demands or fail to have his compositions produced. I am not bitter about it,
it is, after all, but a slight portion of the price my race must pay in its at times
almost hopeless fight for a place in the sun. Some day it will be different and
justice will prevail.151
149
Rose, Eubie Blake, p. 58-59. Quoted in Badger, p. 136
He might also simply have had no sense of taste. History is silent on this subject.
151
“Negro Composer on Race’s Music: James Rees (sic) Europe Credits Men of His Blood with
Introducing Modern Dances,” in the New York Tribune, November 22, 1914
150
80
The Castles took whatever occasion arose to present Europe or his musicians in a
favorable light, showcasing them at their clubs, shows, and studios. Europe’s society
musicians were the only musicians who would play for Castle affairs, and through this
association black musicians gained the foothold in the cabaret scene that would allow the
jazz talents even then circulating through New Orleans, Kansas City, and Chicago to
have the working environment to develop their art.
Giving only cursory attention to the evidence, it would not be unreasonable to
conclude that the Castles simply appropriated African-American dance forms and
repackaged and reworked them for profit and fame. From their first improvisation on a
“Texas Tommy” as remembered from a black “coon shouter” that catapulted them to
fame to their last innovation, the Fox Trot, the Castles built nearly their entire repertoire
on African-American musical forms or dances. The Castles were rewarded on a scale
that far exceeded that of James Reese Europe, received the name recognition and acclaim
that accompanies top billing, and the scale of their financial remuneration was far greater
than that of Europe and his musicians.
Yet, upon closer examination, it becomes clear that the situation was far more
complex than simple commodification and exploitation. At the very least, the
relationship between the Castles and the African American community of the day was
one of genuine friendship and respect. Beyond questions of dominant/subordinate
cultures, their relationship brought real and lasting rewards to both parties. The Castles
regularly headlined performances in Harlem that raised money for the Music School
Settlement for Colored Children in Harlem, probably donating their time. The Castles
broke down the color line in vaudeville houses by insisting that black musicians
accompany them. By prominently featuring Europe and his Society Orchestra in their
schools and performances, real financial rewards were returned to the musicians who
supported their dancing. While the scale of pay given to black musicians was far below
that of whites, Europe and Dabney sold hundreds of thousands of copies of their sheet
music through their partnership with the Castles. At no point did the Castles undertake
to deny credit to African American culture and artists, going so far as to go on record as
to the origins of the Fox Trot in newsprint. Opportunities for work and artistic acceptance
opened to African Americans that simply did not exist before, and crucial groundwork
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was laid for the further integration of black and white cultures in the decades to come.
The partnership between Europe and the Castles offered both parties substantial rewards,
and, considering the relative opportunities of the times, not unequal ones – the Castles
dancing and Jim Europe’s music both advanced their position in society; arguably neither
would have gone as far without their collaboration.
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CONCLUSIONS
I began this study hoping to add to the small but growing body of work
concerning American social dance, reasoning that a sensible place to begin would be with
Ragtime, the juncture where partnered social dance first became popularized for the
masses. In doing so I had few expectations regarding the Castles as cultural agents,
imagining them to be in this regard simply the first of many white artists who
appropriated black dance, taking what they found useful and discarding as worthless the
rest. Instead I learned that, while they were hardly civil rights activists, the Castles
respected the value in African American culture. To maintain the highest possible
standards in their own art, the Castles promoted Jim Europe and his musicians, resulting
in tangible gains for the black artistic community. From admission into workplaces
heretofore off-limits, to the promotion of a new image, far improved from the offensive
stereotypes of the minstrel players, Jim Europe, the musicians in his employ, and by
extension black musicians across the country reaped real benefits from the Castles efforts
on their behalf. When I learned of the integrity with which they handled their personal
relations, going so far as to fine one of the upper-class white dancers traveling with them
on the Whirlwind Tour a sum worth over $750 (in 2003 dollars) for referring to one of
the musicians as a nigger, I decided that their status in history must be redressed. Surely
the Castles cannot simply be relegated by history to the status of cultural appropriators.
I discovered that the issues of race and class complicated my study of the Castle’s
work, and these issues were so deeply rooted in all aspects of America’s socio-political,
cultural, and political life, as to make it essential to step back from the specificity of the
Castles and Europe and examine them in the context of their times. Just as the Castles
moved between the worlds of black dance and white society, and Europe moved between
the insularity of the black community and his limited access to the white society, I found
myself as a scholar moving between several different perspectives and approaches. From
racist audiences in the Midwest to black audiences in Harlem, from accomodationists
such as Booker T. Washington to revisionist historians who disparage white
appropriators, there are multiple ways of perceiving Europe and the Castles.
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Even knowing that they were progressive in their personal interactions with black
artists, the fact remains that the Castles re-packaged black art for public consumption to
their own benefit. The stripping of Africanist elements from the movement of Ragtime
dance was the first example in a long chain of white dancers taking material from
cultures of the African diaspora and packaging them to white America for consumption.
From the Lindy Hop to the Mambo to Disco, the 20th century is rife with examples of
dances and music brought from the underclasses to the masses, cleaned up and neatly
bleached so as not to offend. Within this continuing phenomenon, the Castles, in the
establishment of their schools and manuals, can be seen as the first to create standards for
marketing social partner dance in 20th century America.
The Castles and Jim Europe brought America Ragtime dancing, a form combining
the energy and passion of the African aesthetic with the poise and élan of the European
aesthetic. This collaboration served the advancement of what can truly be called
civilization, helping disparate elements of society to appreciate the qualities of their
fellow citizens, aiding America’s conjoined cultures in peacefully living side by side.
Had they lived longer, perhaps these artists would have faded, as Irene Castle did, into
obscurity, passed over by younger generations. Or perhaps, had they lived, the artists
who came after them would have been inspired to handle the negotiation between African
American and European American cultural elements with more of the respect and dignity
demonstrated by the Castles and Europe. They could have served as role models for the
integration and collaboration of black and white elements in American society, helping
through their example to soften the crushing social blows that would accompany the
breakdown of the paradigm of “separate but equal”. I believe that the Castles and Jim
Europe would have continued to work together, striving with their art to help Americans
respect each other’s diversity, working for a day when justice would prevail, and black
America would find its place in the sun.
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Broderick, Francis L., W.E.B. DuBois, Negro Leader in a Time of Crisis. Stanford,
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100 years later, Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 2003
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1912
Castle, Irene, My Husband, New York, Da Capo Press, 1919
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Castle, Mr. & Mrs. Vernon. Modern Dancing. Harper and Brothers, 1914
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1990
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City, N.Y., Doubleday, Doran and Co., Inc., 1942
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Hogan, J. Michael, ed. Rhetoric and Reform in the Progressive Era, East Lansing,
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dances, tango, one step, innovation, hesitation, etc., described step by step by J. S.
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Smith ... and many other famous dancers Chicago, The Saalfield Publishing Co. 1914
Locke, LeRoy Alain. Race Contacts and Interacial Relations. Howard University Press,
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interview, unknown provenance, unknown date
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Christopher Martin, a native of Lincoln, Nebraska, began studying partner dance
in 1988, and that study has shaped every aspect of his career since. After receiving a
B.A. in Music from the Catholic University of America in 1993, where he competed for
the schools’ DanceSport team, Chris founded the ballroom dance program at the
University of Maryland at College Park. In 1995 he relocated to New York City to
pursue Musical Theater performance opportunities. While living in New York City Chris
continued performing, teaching, coaching, and judging partner dance nationally. In 2003
Chris enrolled in the Master of Arts program in American Dance Studies at Florida State
University. He will receive his degree in Spring 2005.
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