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Howling “A Hot Time”: The Paradoxical Anthem of the Progressive Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 December 2020

DEIRDRE O'CONNELL*
Affiliation:
History Department, University of Sydney. Email: deirdre.oconnell@sydney.edu.au.

Abstract

This study investigates the shifting meanings invested in the ragtime song “A Hot Time in the Old Time, Tonight” at the turn of the twentieth century. Complicating the tune's place in the canon of military, political, and national anthems was its associations with “vice,” black culture, and white supremacy. By mapping the ritual and representational uses of the song, this investigation demonstrates how “A Hot Time” served paradoxical functions that simultaneously affirmed and unsettled American exceptionalism. In doing so, this article traces the processes of obfuscation whereby black musical traditions and white supremacy defined America's distinctive national identity.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2020

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84 Daily Review, 5 March 1905, 1; Alejandro de Quesada, Roosevelt's Rough Riders (New York: Osprey Pub, 2009).

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120 “Detective S. Spaeth Finds No Evidence,” Variety, 12 April 1932, 61.

121 Afro-American, 22 Dec. 1956, 3; “Civil Courts,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 8 Aug. 1899, 14.

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126 Imani Perry, More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 131.

127 “Hot Time in Coontown Notes,” Freeman, 14 April 1906, 5; “At the Globe,” Elmira Daily Gazette, 19 Sept. 1899, 7.

128 “Music and Drama,” Wichita Daily Eagle, 31 Aug. 1899, 6; El Paso Herald, 11 Jan. 1898, 3.

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130 W. C. Handy, Father of the Blues (New York: Macmillan, 1941), 166; Lionel Feather, The Book of Jazz (New York: Horizon Press, 1957), 24; W. C. Handy, “I Would Not Play Jazz If I Could,” DownBeat 5 (Aug. 1938), 5.

131 “The Boys Are Fighters,” Nebraska State Journal, 26 Sept. 1898, 5.

132 “Hot Time as a Great National American Air,” Denver Rocky Mountain News, 15 Sept. 1899, 10; “Company D Boys in the Philippines,” Lincoln Journal Star, 30 Sept. 1898, 2; “Nebraska Boys Far Away,” Columbus Journal, 5 Oct. 1898, 1.

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136 Albert G. Robinson, The Philippines: The War and the People (New York: McClure, Philippins & Co., 1901) 175–76; Andrew J. Rotter, Empires of the Senses: Bodily Encounters in Imperial India and the Philippines (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 151–52; Adjutant E. Hannaford, History and Description of the Picturesque Philippines (Springfield: The Crowell & Kirkpatrick, 1900), 34.

137 Mrs. William Howard Taft, Recollections of Full Years (New York: Dodd Mead, 1914), 161.

138 Florence Kimball Russel, A Woman's Journey through the Philippines (Boston: L. C. Page, 1907), 56.

139 “From over the Watars” (sic), Red Cloud Chief, 3 Feb. 1899, 4.

140 “Our National in Manila,” Beatrice Daily Express, 7 Jan. 1899, 4; Omaha Daily Bee, 10 Aug. 1899, 5.

141 “A Matter of Soul,” Broad Ax, 13 Nov. 1902, 7.

142 Nebraska State Journal, 10 Oct. 1898, 8; “How They Join,” Nebraska State Journal, 15 May 1899, 5.

143 “In the Bishop's Palace,” Wichita Daily Eagle, 29 Jan. 1899, 11; “Hot Time in the Jungle,” Omaha Daily Bee, 30 March 1899, 1; “Pursuit to Continue,” Lincoln Journal Star, 31 March 1899, 1.

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146 Nebraska State Journal, 30 June 1899, 4.

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148 “News from Abroad,” Freeman, 18 Nov. 1899, 1.

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150 “Where We Stand,” Washington Bee, 28 Jan. 1899, 5; Washington Bee, 11 Feb. 1899, 4; “What Right Have We in the Philippines?”, American Citizen, 3 Nov. 1899, 2; “Why Annex the Philippines?”, Freeman, 24 Sept. 1898, 4.

151 W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Present Outlook for the Dark Races of Mankind,” in Du Bois, The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The Essential Early Essays, ed. Nahum Dimitri Chandler (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 111–38, 112, 118.

152 For example: Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the Question of Racial Equality (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008); Vince Schleitwiler, Strange Fruit of the Black Pacific: Imperialism's Racial Justice and Its Fugitives (New York: New York University Press, 2017), 46; “American Negro Academy,” Cheyenne County Rustler, 4 Jan. 1900, 2; “The Negro Academy,” Evening Times, 28 Dec. 1899, 8.

153 “Voices from the Philippines,” Richmond Planet, 30 Dec. 1899, 1.

154 Ibid.

155 Letter to parents, 17 Jan. 1899, cited in Thomas D. Thiessen, “The Fighting First Nebraska: Nebraska's Imperial Adventure in the Philippines, 1898–1899,” Nebraska History, 70 (1989), 234.

156 Theodore Roosevelt, Address of President Roosevelt at Arlington, Memorial Day, May 30, 1902 (Washington, DC, 1902); Kramer, “Race-Making and Colonial Violence,” 169–210; Stuart Creighton Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982); Angel Velasco Shaw and Luis H. Francia, eds., Vestiges of War: The Philippine–American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899–1999 (New York: New York University Press, 2002); Frederick J. Schenker, “Empire of Syncopation: Music, Race, and Labor in Colonial Asia's Jazz Age,” PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin, 2016.

157 “War Was Inevitable,” Washington Times, 25 March 1899, 1.

158 Wilcox, Harpers History of a War in the Philippines, 56–57. James F. Rusling, “Interview with President McKinley,” Christian Advocate, 22 Jan. 1903, 137–38.

159 Nebraska State Journal, 20 Feb. 1899, 5.

160 John White, Bullets and Bolos: Fifteen Years in the Philippine Islands (New York: Century Co., 1928), 121.

161 “Under Blankets,” Topeka State Journal, 28 Jan. 1906, 8.

162 John Bancroft Devins, An Observer in the Philippines: Or Life in Our New Possessions (New York: American Tract Society, 1905), 136.

163 Mary H. Fee, A Woman's Impressions of the Philippines (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1910), 264; Illinois Record, 18 Feb. 1899, 3.

164 Topeka State Journal, 28 Jan. 1906, 8.

165 Wilcox, 56–57; Hamilton M. Wright, A Handbook of the Philippines (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1907), 56; Topeka State Journal, 28 Jan. 1906, 8.

166 Fee, 264; Charles C. Pierce, “The Races of the Philippines: The Tagals”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 18 (1901), 21–39, 37; William B. Freer, The Philippine Experiences of an American Teacher (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906), 94.

167 Illinois Record, 18 Feb. 1899, 3.

168 Mojares, Resil B., “The Formation of Filipino Nationality under U.S. Colonial Rule,” Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, 34, 1 (March 2006), 1132Google Scholar, 14.

169 Finis Farr, Black Champion: The Life and Times of Jack Johnson (New York: Fawcett Publications, 1969), 99; Randy Roberts, Jack Dempsey: The Manassa Mauler (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 23.

170 Birmingham News, 10 June 1931, 2.

171 Supreme Court Grants New Trials”, San Pedro News-Pilot, 7 Nov. 1932, 1.

172 For example, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Citizen Kane (1941), Gore Vidal's Empire (1987).

173 Spaeth, A History of Popular Music, 287; Daily Review, 5 March 1905, 1.

174 Afro-American, 22 Dec. 1956, 3; Music Trades, 25 Jan. 1908, cited in Sullivan, Encyclopedia, 514.

175 Houston Post, 10 April 1910, 33; “Tune Adopted by Filipino,” Boston Daily Globe, 23 May 1915, 97; “How It Started,” Fayette County Leader, 27 Feb. 1930, 7; “Man about Manhattan,” Spring Daily Herald, 8 July 1936, 7; Variety, 12 April 1932, 61.

176 Spaeth, Sigmund, Read ’Em and Weep: The Songs You Forgot to Remember (New York: Doubleday Page, 1926), 164Google Scholar; Johns, Time of Our Lives, 97.

177 “No Popular Songs Produced in War Time”, The Pantograph, 21 April 1944, 16; Spaeth, A History of Popular Music, 232, 258, 287; Edward B. Marks, They All Sang: From Tony Pastor to Rudy Vallée (New York: The Viking Press, 1935), 101–5.

178 Wright, Discovering African American St. Louis, 10. Also see Locke, Alain, The Negro and His Music (Washington, DC: Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1936), 6263Google Scholar.

179 Marcuse, Tin Pan Alley in Gaslight, 192.

180 Columbia Records 14219 D, “There'll Be a Hot Time in Old Town, Tonight,” 3 Feb. 1927.

181 Sullivan, 513.