New Logo riveting riffs magazine  Interview with Author Benjamin Franklin V

Benjamin Franklin V Photo One A

Recently, The University of South Carolina Press published a book authored by Benjamin Franklin V titled An Encyclopedia Of South Carolina Jazz & Blues Musicians and it would make a great addition as a required or recommended supplementary text book for many music courses. The use of the word musician may cause our readers to immediately jump to the conclusion that this book only concerns those who play an instrument and that is not true. The term musician is used in the broader sense here to also include singers and some who composed music.

The author also took time during a recent conversation with Riveting Riffs Magazine to talk about the music that is covered in this very well presented book, “The South Carolina contribution to Jazz and Blues has been rich. I am dazzled by many of the musicians who came out of this small state.

Benjamin Franklin V Photo TwoJazz is pretty well understood, although difficult to define, but Blues over time has expanded to include Doo Wop, Rhythm and Blues, Soul and maybe even other things, but those are the three for sure. I include them and I also say that a line has to be drawn somewhere and I drew that at Gospel music.

There will be Soul singers like Nick Ashford, of the group from the seventies Ashford & Simpson. Nick Ashford is from South Carolina and there is a really nice picture of him in there. I don’t think many people would consider them to be Blues and definitely not Jazz, but since I brought Soul into the definition of Blues somebody like Nick Ashford is in there.

There is another name you will recognize and that I Eartha Kitt who was known primarily as an actress and a Cabaret singer or something like that, but she began her career with Jazz musicians. She concluded her career performing at Jazz festivals and on that basis I include her as a Blues or Jazzy singer and not so much as a popular singer even though that is probably how most people think of her.”

Just how far back in time did Benjamin Franklin V go when researching the artists including in this book?

“I think the musician who was born the earliest was a guy named Frank Martin (played in a string band) who was born a slave (sometime between 1847 and 1860 in Spartanburg County). I deal a lot with vaudeville and medicine shows and things like that dating back into the nineteenth century. Even though these people never recorded they are part of the musical tradition that led to Jazz and Blues. There are a lot of people (in the book) that are from the nineteenth century.

I talk in detail in the introduction about a guy named Arthur Prysock who was a singer (born in 1924).

What I found, maybe beginning ten years ago is when writers, write biographically about musicians they go to the web and they check on Wikipedia and find an entry about that person and they use that birthdate and death dates as the ones in their own articles about those musicians. (However), in my research for this book I found often, not the majority of cases by any means, but often when I went back to the census; to passport applications to draft card information and all of that the preponderance of evidence indicated that these published dates were incorrect. I am most proud in this book of getting these dates, as right as is humanly possible given the documentation that exists.”

The journey to craft this encyclopedia has been a long one.

“Before teaching here at the University of South Carolina I taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  I had been a Jazz fan and to a lesser degree (a fan of) Blues.  My adolescence was in the 1950s and I cultivated that taste and I bought record after record from the cheapie bins in the record stores. As time passed I grew increasingly knowledgeable about the music and I became increasingly more interested in it.

When my family and I moved from Ann Arbor to Columbia, South Carolina one of the first questions that I asked within the musical context was what Jazz or Blues musicians do I know that are for sure from South Carolina?  I just wanted to know. My answer was one name and that was Dizzy Gillespie.

It must have been 1985 that I began to seriously ponder that question and I figured if I didn’t know very many things about these musicians then there weren’t very many other people who knew either.  I decided I would identify as many of them as possible. 

As I got up to 100 or 150 I decided well look there are enough names here that are significant that perhaps if I could get to these people and interview some of them for the record, which I did. I further thought if these things are of interest to me, surely they would be to other people. I pitched a proposal to The University of South Carolina Press to publish a bunch of these interviews in book form and they did,” he recalls.

He pauses and poses a question to this writer, “Do you know the name Jaboo Smith for example who back in the thirties and late twenties was the only real rival to Louis Armstrong? He is South Carolinian. The discovery was just amazing, a legendary figure like that that no one even knew existed, let alone having come from South Carolina.

After (the book of interviews) was published I thought wait a minute there is more to be done here. If I can find enough maybe I can turn that into an encyclopedia.”

There were many others that Benjamin Franklin V discovered for the first time. Benjamin Franklin V Photo Three

“I would say that other than Dizzy Gillespie all of them who had any reputation at all I was dazzled by, because I think of myself as relatively well informed. As I said, if I do not know about these people I can’t imagine that many people in South Carolina do.

I discovered this Jabbo Smith, who is a legendary figure and he disappeared for about fifty years after he made his flash in about 1929. Everybody thought he was dead. When I discovered not only is he a South Carolinian, but he was still alive and living in New York City I got up to New York City as quickly as I could. I was (amazed) to learn that he was alive and that he would consent to see me. He is kind of in the pantheon of mythological Jazz musicians, but he is real. He had a couple of strokes and he really couldn’t speak very well, so I needed someone with me to help me understand what he said. He was so nice and a few weeks after I was with him in New York he sent me best wishes on a cassette tape, which I thought was a beautiful gesture.

All of them who had any reputation at all dazzled me by their very existence, because I wanted to know who these people were and I found out. It was just terrific.

Another one was Tommy Benford, a drummer who played at the same time that Jabbo Smith played with Jelly Roll Morton. Tommy Benford was from Charleston. These old timers like Jabbo Smith and Tommy Benford could not have been more accommodating and could not have been nicer. They were just lovely, lovely human beings, which makes it doubly nice. I will say that about most of the people that I encountered.

There is one entry in that book and I think it is for Hezekiah Jenkins of which I make much of Maria Muldaur. He wrote a tune called “The Panic Is On,” about the great depression and Maria Muldaur discovered that and said that Ken Burns the filmmaker could do a three hour special on the great depression and could not do as thorough of a job as Jenkins did in this tune “The Panic Is On.”

One of the amazing stories that we haven’t mentioned is the Jenkins Orphanage Band. There was a Reverend Daniel Jenkins in Charleston in the 1890s and he saw on the streets these waifs, these (African American) children running around on the streets wild and their prospects in life were about zero. He and his wife Lena decided to do something to take action and they established this orphanage in Charleston in the 1890s. It came to be known as the Jenkins Orphanage. He and the staff taught the children all of these trades like printing for example and they generated money by having music as a major part of the curriculum and forming bands with not all, but with most of the children who would play on the street corners for handouts.

I tried to identify as many of these musicians as possible and in the book there are probably 150 of them. Most had nothing to do with music after performing there, but some of them did. Jabbo Smith was a ward (of the orphanage). There was a guy named Cat Anderson who was famous for playing with Duke Ellington. Tom Delaney a composer of note was out of there.

Within the musical context Daniel and Lena did a phenomenal job of taking these children out of dire straits, giving them a trade and giving them a skill with music that permitted them to go out into life and make a living, while contributing significantly to the betterment of society. That is a story that really needs to be told. A lot of people in South Carolina don’t even know of the Jenkins Orphanage.

I also met the son of a singer named Madeline Greene. I had never heard of Madeline Greene. She was a singer for Earl Hines one of the major Jazz pianists and bandleaders. Everyone knows a singer who was with Earl Hines, named Sarah Vaughan, but nobody knows Sarah Vaughan’s predecessor in the band, which was Madeline Greene from South Carolina. I was desperate for information about her and it did not exist or very little of it existed on the web. One way or the other I found my way to her son out in California and he was able to provide important information. Not only that but I reached his son, Madeline Greene’s grandson who added information to that his father had, but also offered something else, a picture of Earl Hines and Madeline Greene for me to use in the book. If you turn to that entry in the book about Madeline Greene you will see this good looking woman Madeline Greene with the great Earl Hines.”

The front and back covers of An Encylopedia Of South Carolina Jazz & Blues Musicians are very striking. The cover has a velvety feel to it and adorning the front cover is a great photo of guitarist Wes Mackey who was born in South Carolina, but spent the majority of his life and career in Canada, via stops in Hong Kong and Malaysia. On the back cover you will find high quality vintage photos of Dizzy Gillespie, Herman Bradley and Pearl Woods.

While the effort that went into this book is quite exhaustive some readers may question the omission of a few musicians from South Carolina. The explanation is simple, although perhaps frustrating. There were some that when contacted by the author simply did not want to be included in this book and there was another who demanded payment if that individual was to be included in the book.

The book is not only a treasure trove of information, but it is a “must have” for amateur and professional musicologists everywhere.

If you turn to pages 283 and 284 you will even find a reference to the Riveting Riffs Magazine interview with Maurice Williams, the singer and songwriter from South Carolina who among other things wrote and first recorded such iconic songs as, “Stay,” and “Little Darlin’.”         Return to Our Front Page

Photos:  Top photo is of Lucky Thompson, Hilda A Taylor and Al McKibbon, courtesy of The Library of Congress, the Gottlieb Collection. Cover art is the property of The University of South Carolina Press and is protected by copyright. The Bottom photo is of a young Benjamin Franklin V and Anais Nin (taken in 1973), property of Benjamin Franklin V and protected by copyright.

This interview by Joe Montague  published September 25, 2016 is protected by copyright © and is the property of Riveting Riffs Magazine All Rights Reserved.  All photos are protected protected by copyright and all rights are reserved as noted above. This interview may not be reproduced in print or on the internet or through any other means without the written permission of Riveting Riffs Magazine, All Rights Reserved