Beyond the Bandstand: Paul Whiteman in American Musical Culture

Paul Whiteman was a formidable figure in jazz/popular music history. The facts of Whiteman’s career have been well covered by The Syncopated Times. His place in jazz history is complex. Whiteman was classically trained but liked jazz, associating it closely with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and other white purveyors of the music. He hired jazz musicians for his orchestras and arrangers who infused jazz elements into much of his music. But he complicated his legacy by saying he wanted “make a lady of jazz,” and accepting the title “King of Jazz.” This is why, to many jazz historians, he became a lightning rod for “appropriation” and even racism. There are eight essays and an Afterword in Beyond the Bandstand that attempt to place Whiteman in a broader mid-20th century socio-cultural context. Some stretch a point too thin, but some present useful, interesting facts and ideas. The first essay, Black Music, White Bodies, Paul Whiteman’s Body, is the most speculative, discussing how Whiteman’s large girth mapped onto race in the 1920s-’30s. Author Stephanie Doktor talks about the fad for dieting and the importance of Eugenics. She says that sex was mapped onto race and Whiteman’s weight worked to de-sexualize him when mixing of the races was dangerous. In comparison, Doktor writes, Ma Rainey’s large body was hypersexualized. Doktor seems to want it both ways�