Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-03-21
.IAZZ BAND CREATED
BIG STIR IN FRANCE
Paris Music Louers Ignored
! Worlds Masters ITO Hear
Plantation Melodies u
And NoU Lieutenant Jim
Europe Brings Them Here
and Scores Encore

Lieutenant Jim Europe is in town
with his colored jazz band. The story
of that band and its adventures over
seas is an American epic. Here are just
few sidellghts.
One day last summer there was
great band concert held in the Tuileries
Gardens in Paris for the benefit of the
families wounded by Big Bertha. Thirty
thousand people paid IS admission. The
elite Of the worlds military musicians
were there--the band of the French
Republican Guard, with more than 100
members; the British Grenadiers, with
nearly as many; the Royal Italian Band
with ninety. And with these famous
organizations was one other-a band of
American colored boys. gathered to-
gether only a year before at Camp Dix.
And as Lieutenant Jim Europe says,
with that broad delightful drollery that
shines in his beaming brown face:
why people left those wonderful bands
and came over to listen to us, 1 don't
know ! I was scared to death. II
thought, well, at last they got me
they're goin to knock me off my perch.
| said to my boys. now listen: You
can't make as much noise as those
bands, so for heavens sake don't try.
JUS be lii sweet soft lullaby band
Jim Europe chuckled y
Jazz Made EN- wild
We opened up with plantation
Echoes" he said. THAT ends with
Dixie You ought to have seen that
crowd. They threw up their hats and
carried on like crazy people We looked
over at those other bands. All you
could see over there was instruments.
The crowd was all wild to hear that
jazz stuff of ours. No. 1 don't see why
anybody should leave those lovely bands
to listen to u.s."
IF you've ever heard Jim Europe's
hell fighters play, or have seen Jim
Europe smile and sway on his Timber
pegs as he rides that tumultuous intoXi-
cation of roaring, sparkling melody,
you'll know why the air in the Tuilleries
was black with flying hats. From that
day the band of the 369th United States
Infantry became the most famous band
In the world.
, The story of Jim Europes jazz band,
told in his own words, ripples with the
high spirits and mellow humor of the
colored race. Everybody knew Jim was
marked for glory when he was born
down in old Mobile on Washington's
Birthday in '81. Before the war he
: led Vernon Castles orchestra at Castle
House in New York, and wrote music
for some of the big Broadway shows.
He enlisted as private in a machine
gun company and was sent to Camp
. Dix. He was commissioned a first lieu
tenant. They soon got him to work
organizing the regimental band.
Get $4,000 Donation
II costs money to build up a first class
Band, and Dan Reid, the tinplate king,
came across with $4,000 to help make
a band that would nut the fear of King
Jazz in Teuton hearts. Jim travelled all
over the country gathering his talent
He got his reed section from Porto Rico.
picked up his brass from Hampton Tus-
kegee, Observation-Disclosures he could
I find it, The band of the 369th mighty
soon became the talk of Camp Dix.
When they left for overseas the life OF
the cantonment was gone.
Jim Europe is not only a boss musi-
clan but a first-class fighting man, and
the army for some time couldn't make
up its mind which way to use him. On the
way over, in December, 1917, he was
transferred back to his machine-gun COM
pany. Things looked bad for the band.
But by a lucky chance f. II. Sothern
and Winthrop Ames passed through San
Nazaire and heard the band play.
Doing stevedore Work
II was doing stevedore work." says
Jim Regular Simon Legree stuff.
Everybody was just then. Sothern and
Ames heard us and said we ought to
go to the new rest center at AiX-les-
Bains. l was retransfered to the band.
We played there for several weeks.
When our regiment was sent to the
trenches the soldiers and citizens of
AK sent petition to General Pershing
asking him to keep the band there"
That's the chief trouble Jim's band has