What Did I Do To Be So Black And Blue

The most innovative and creative music that brought a voice of expression in America, which helped hasten the Civil Rights Movement before it existed. Jazz music brought together Black and white musicians alike, as well as, promoters, and performers. Many of these jazz musicians advanced the civil rights movement by their compositions and influences to decimate racial barriers and inequalities. Louis Armstrong recorded, “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue" in 1929, and Benny Goodman bought arrangements from Fletcher Henderson and integrated black musicians into an all-white jazz band when it was illegal in many states. Duke Ellington wrote “Jump for Joy" in 1941,and Billie Holiday wrote "Strange Fruit” in 1939. Max Roach composed, "we Insist! Freedom Now Suit, and Charles Mingus wrote, “Fables of Faubus". Jazz musicians have used Jazz to express the relevant factors of civil rights and its oppressive ideas. In 1929 Louis Armstrong Recorded “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue", a song written by Thomas “Fats” Waller in A minor, with lyrics by Andy Razaf and Harry Brooks. Originally written for a 1929 Broadway Musical about a darker complexion woman losing her man to a lighter skinned women. However, Louis Armstrong made it into a jazz standard and used it as a bridge of enlightenment of suppression and
Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Norman Granz, a leading promoter who loved Jazz after hearing Coleman Hawkins’ in 1939, and never wavered fighting for racial equality regardless of his financial loss. Granz hired musicians for their talent rather than not for their racial background or color of their skin. Because of his great admiration for Jazz, he promoted Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and many others.

Jacob Teichroew, Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement: How Musicians Spoke Out for Racial Equality.