Hal Singer, From the Tulsa Massacre to ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’ to the Left Bank. Whew.
Hal Singer survived the Tulsa massacre and went on to help create rock ’n’ roll. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
Singer, a tenor saxophone master who played with everyone from Duke Ellington to Charlie Watts, died Aug. 18 in France. He was a few weeks short of his 101st birthday, which isn’t bad for a kid who almost didn’t make to his second.
In the interest of full disclosure, it should be added that Singer had little to do with escaping the Tulsa massacre and made no conscious effort to help create rock ’n’ roll.
But there he was, and that’s what he did.
Hal Singer was born in 1919 in Greenwood, the black section of Tulsa, Okla., some 21 months before it was obliterated by a mob of whites. He would eventually become the massacre’s last male survivor. Coming from this troubling juncture didn’t define his life — that honor goes to the tenor sax — but it provides an insightful starting point for a century that reflects much of America’s own.
1. Race is complicated.
Young Hal Singer’s mother cooked for a white woman in Tulsa. When it became clear in late May 1921 that the white folks were going to attack the black community, the white woman bought Mrs. Singer two tickets to Kansas City, so she could take herself and toddler Hal out of harm’s way.
When the smoke cleared, several hundred Greenwood residents were dead and more than a thousand buildings incinerated. But it was home for the Singers, and when they had a place to live again, they returned. When Hal grew up, he stayed.
Then in 1965, after a tour of Europe, he decided to stay in France, where he would spend his last 55 years.
One reason was pragmatic. By the mid-‘60s Europe was friendlier than America for his music.
The other reason was more subjective. Arlette Verdickt Singer, whom he met and married in Paris, told the New York Times that Hal had wearied of navigating race in America. “He was sad,” she said. In France he felt more relaxed and respected.
2. You meet some of the coolest people when you play music.
After starting in the territory bands of the 1930s, Singer moved up to play with Midwestern jazz artists like Jay McShann. Moving to New York, he played with the likes of Roy Eldridge and Hot Lips Page before he landed his dream gig with Duke Ellington’s band.
Eventually he would play with Coleman Hawkins, Fatha Hines, Gatortail Jackson, Wynonie Harris, Little Willie John, T-Bone Walker, Little Esther, Buck Clayton and the list goes on.
3. Popular music underwent a seismic shift after World War II.
A new, younger audience was less interested in the big bands, like Ellington or Benny Goodman or Jimmy Lunceford, than smaller combos. These ensembles felt flashier, sharper, more energetic, more urgent. They were also more nimble. Musicians didn’t need a bus or a ballroom. They could take a couple of cars and hit clubs, which proliferated after the war.
After Hal Singer left Ellington, he formed groups like the Hal Singer Sextette, which cut its own records and did extensive session work.
4. A hit record can have more than two sides.
In 1948, Singer and his Sextette recorded one of his instrumental compositions, called “Corn Bread” for lack of a title that made any sense. In October 1948 it became the number-one R&B record in America. It remained so for four weeks.
“Corn Bread” was pure dance music, a lively tune that could get a room jumping. It started hot and got more insistent with each chorus.
It was also, Singer would later say, one of the least interesting things he recorded. Its hook was repeated, and repeated, which was great for dancers, but not that challenging for a musician who had studied at Juilliard.
The success of “Corn Bread” obligated Singer to play it at every gig for the next 10 years. It also gave him the nickname “Corn Bread,” which was useful for branding, but which he never liked.
5. And along came rock ’n’ roll.
“Corn Bread” wasn’t the first rock ’n’ roll record. There really wasn’t one, because it took a village. But in “Corn Bread” you hear the music heading there. You hear it even more in Singer’s electric saxophone break on Wynonie Harris’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight.”
One of the great strengths of early rock ’n’ roll was that many of its instrumentalists were alumni of those departed big bands or members of these new-fangled combos. Many rolled their eyes at songs that were so much less sophisticated than a big band arrangement, but a gig was a gig, and it gave rock ’n’ roll a strong musical foundation that too often went unacknowledged.
6. The saxophone was a great rock ’n’ roll instrument.
It eventually fell out of favor, replaced by keyboards and guitars. But in the hands of artists like Hal Singer, or Jimmy Wright and Buddy Lucas and Lee Allen and King Curtis and Sam the Man Taylor and Red Prysock, the sax was a core element in the rhythm and blues part of rock ’n’ roll.
7. As long as you can play music, why not?
Arlette Singer told the Times that Hal kept playing until he was about 95. After that, when friends would come over and play, he would move his fingers in time with the music.
It’s a reminder that music is indelible, just as Hal Singer’s life story is a reminder that from the ashes of the most terrible things human beings can do, good things can rise.
It’s a complicated world.
