| Bob Barnes, my bellhop colleague and the notoriously wild son of another Florida Methodist preacher, was also a companion in extracurricular pursuits of that summer. We had assembled a jazz combo among the work crew, found Dixie-style stock arrangements of the more painful (“Jazz Me Blues”) variety, and somehow lined up a Friday night gig at a dingy roadside tavern in the hills outside Waynesville. But that’s another story. With the ad for the Lunceford Band appearance we were thrilled with our good fortune and the unusual prospect of attending a “colored” dance in a country cotton warehouse to which the white public was invited--unimaginable!
Saturday finally arrived. Crazy with excitement, we piled into Bob’s family station wagon and eventually found our way to the magical site in the Carolina woods, arriving at nightfall on a moonless night. The monstrous structure and surroundings were lighted with flickering turpentine flares as we hastened toward the festive scene. There our little clot of honky boys was greeted by a welcoming-committee member who informed us cordially that admission would be 55 cents each, to include a half-pint of the finest regional “white lightnin’.” Then we were escorted through a side door, just high enough for a cotton bale to roll through, and led to benches at floor level.
Our segregated bleachers accommodated a few dozen whites behind chicken-coop wire but close to the “50 yard line” of the huge dance floor, where we had an unrestricted view of the cavernous hall; the bar and its milling crowd on our far left, the brightly lit bandstand construction high off on our right; the dancers foreground in our view.
In an expectant hush the rhythm section established itself on high; then the instrumental musicians, announced one by one, mounted the stage, each to thunderous applause. All the band’s greatest were on the tour:
From the first note, the band rocked, taking our breath away, raising the hairs on our necks, and swelling our happy hearts. Our spirits rose toward the rafters.
That Lunceford Band of Summer 1941 was at its pinnacle of power and originality: well-rehearsed, recently recorded, and now road-tested. Here we were in its presence, if only onlookers, in a real setting on a Saturday night concert dance for “their own,” in the rural deep South!
Sy Oliver, trumpeter and arranger of most of the band numbers, was credited with the free-swinging, rollicking Lunceford Sound--as if all were improvising in perfect unison. Rarely have scribbles on staff paper been transformed into more brilliant swirls of sound or glorious bendings of notes. Never have big ensembles been smoother and tighter, yet driving and dynamic, nor solos more soaring and innovative.
Lunceford’s was the more talented and brightly shaded orchestra of the times. The top popular bands nationally: Glenn Miller and Harry James and Jimmy Dorsey, were, in our view, but pallid pastels. And with whom else could you jive to “Wham, Rebop, Boom, Bam?!” or “ 'Tain’t Whatcha Do It’s the Way Whatcha Do It,” and “Four-Five Times,” or glide to sweet “Annie Laurie,” and “For Dancers Only,” or thrill to “Stomp Off,” and the “Lunceford Special”?!
The Lunceford band was also stunning physically: powerful brown faces and immaculate shining pates, impeccable double-breasted Palm Beach jackets, black bow ties, black pants, black and white wing-tip shoes, jewels flashing from flying fingers, polished instruments glinting in the stagelight; Lunceford himself, in brilliant white tails, directing with the blur of his ivory baton. It was as distinctive a Lunceford Sight as a Lunceford Sound!
That magical Saturday night in the Carolina hills our ecstatic little crew, sweetly tolerated by our hosts, absorbed all the melodic lines and harmonies, felt an orgy of the rhythms; we ogled the acrobatic grace of the local jitterbugs -- all enveloped in the pungent fragrances of barbeque smoke and Saturday Special eau de cologne. Such heights of improvisation and of physical joy in music and the dance were quite beyond our ken, beyond any idea we had ever held about human potential.
Vapid and vicarious as we felt on the fringes of this great Brownian emotion, we came to understand, nevertheless, our common origins with it, and to wonder how a whole race of pale faces had so departed from the rhythmic and lyrical legacy of humanity revealed to us this night. Rendered giddy before the passion of this gifted people, so flagrantly sensual and joyful in celebration of life, we were also in awe at the well-honed skills of both dancers and musicians. But mostly we were grateful to be a tiny, momentary part of this, till now, and for us, forbidden culture!
After the closing set, our little honky band, flattered by the greetings and willing autographs from the Lunceford mighty, left the scene joyous, satiate. On the way out we bade a happy goodnight to the chap who had welcomed us so warmly on arrival. With a flashing smile in the flickering torchlight, he called out sweetly: “You know, young gennelmens, you ain’t lived if you ain’t been a n*ggah on Saturday night!”
We agreed that it must be so!
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