The piano: from the Barrelhouses to the White House

There is a scene in a very good and little-known film, The Honeydripper, in which one of the protagonists, who, like almost all the characters in the film, is Black, asks himself a question that has historical weight and at the same time an air of poetry. In a marvelous monologue where he lets his imagination take wing, he says: Who must have been the first one? Back in slavery days. Piano was just sitting there in the white folk’s big room all polished up. I figure this first one he must have passed by it 15, 20 times a day, … and one day the master’s away and he alone in that room with that piano and he goes over and he sits down on the bench and he spreads his fingers over it and he thinks lord help me I could do some damage with this thing. The fact is, apart from some Creole African Americans from more or less affluent families who were able to study music, the rest of the African Americans, slaves or descendants of slaves at the poorest strata of society, went about learning however they could to express themselves with this fantastic instrument with black and white keys which they did not even know the name of. They were often self-taught and discovered its different sounds by pure trial and error. The first among them who had studied music were the ones who played and composed Ragtime and had a certain fame and repute. The rest, learning to play as they could in their spare time, were the pianists who enlivened those dirty, poor and disreputable establishments where blues and boogie woogie were played and the patrons drank, danced, and socialized, etc. These establishments were called Barrelhouses and Honky Tonks. These pianists were also in great demand in the neighborhoods of big cities where House Rent Parties were organized (parties that the residents of apartment buildings organized to collect money and pay the rent). Later, in jazz orchestras, the piano became an essential instrument and notable soloists began to emerge who already had a solid knowledge of music, though it did not save them from having to earn some additional money at House Rent Parties. At the end of the thirties when jazz began to achieve a certain prestige, these jazz pianists, with their orchestras and also as soloists, stepped onto distinguished stages, such as Carnegie Hall in New York. They recorded albums with major labels and some toured the world achieving general recognition.

In 1969, on the occasion of his 70th birthday, Duke Ellington was invited by President Richard Nixon to a party in his honor at the White House where he was presented with the Medal of Freedom. Among the guests at the party were great jazz pianists who offered a jubilant jam session: apart from Duke Ellington, Earl Hines, Willie The Lion Smith, Billy Taylor, and Dave Brubeck were there, among others. The jazz piano, after a journey of more than a hundred years, had reached the White House.