James Reese Europe
| James Reese Europe | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Background information | |
| Also known as | Lieut. Jim Europe |
| Born |
February 22, 1880 Mobile, Alabama |
| Died | May 9, 1919 (aged 39) Boston, Massachusetts |
| Genres | ragtime, jazz, military band |
| Occupation(s) | band leader, arranger and composer |
| Instruments | violin, piano |
| Associated acts |
Clef Club 369th Regiment Marching Band |
James Reese Europe (22 February 1880 – 9 May 1919) was an American ragtime and early jazz bandleader, arranger, and composer. He was the leading figure on the African-American music scene of New York City in the 1910s. Eubie Blake called him the "Martin Luther King of music".
James "Jim" Reese Europe was born in Mobile, Alabama to Henry and Laura Europe. His family, which included his older sisters Minnie and Ida, and older brother John, moved to Washington, D.C. in 1890, when he was 10 years old. He moved to New York in 1904.
In 1910 Europe organized the Clef Club, a society for African Americans in the music industry. In 1912 the club made history when it played a concert at Carnegie Hall for the benefit of the Colored Music Settlement School. The Clef Club Orchestra, while not a jazz band, was the first band to play proto-jazz at Carnegie Hall. It is difficult to overstate the importance of that event in the history of jazz in the United States — it was 12 years before the Paul Whiteman and George Gershwin concert at Aeolian Hall, and 26 years before Benny Goodman's famed concert at Carnegie Hall. The Clef Club's performances played music written solely by black composers, including Harry T. Burleigh and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Europe's orchestra also included Will Marion Cook, who had not been in Carnegie Hall since his own performance as solo violinist in 1896. Cook was the first black composer to launch full musical productions, fully scored with a cast and story every bit as classical as any Victor Herbert operetta. In the words of Gunther Schuller, Europe "... had stormed the bastion of the white establishment and made many members of New York's cultural elite aware of Negro music for the first time". The New York Times remarked, "These composers are beginning to form an art of their own"; yet by their third performance, a review in Musical America said Europe's Clef Club should "give its attention during the coming year to a movement or two of a Haydn Symphony".
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