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Chapter 11: Mass Appeal: Taking Note of Jazz in Popular Culture
today, fashion designers looked to the emerging arts around them for inspiration.
In New York City, it was black ballroom dancing culture, featuring jazz
music and new women’s fashions that exposed arms, legs, and necks.
Female jazz singers made their own fashion statements, which became part
of their marketing through press photos and album covers. As front women
for big bands, singers such as Helen Forrest, Anita O’Day, Maxine Sullivan,
Sarah Vaughan, and Ethel Waters all wore gorgeous dresses, each with personal
flair. (See Chapter 5 for more about these early women of jazz.)
Zipping up zoot suits
Long before zoot suits became the stuff of Broadway musicals, they made a
bold statement of identity for the hip black men who wore them to jazz concerts
in 1930s Harlem. With their baggy, high-waisted, suspendered pants and
broad-shouldered tapering coats, they were a rebellion against the bland,
buttoned-down styles of the day. Malcolm X was a young hustler known as
Detroit Red who had his political consciousness raised when he participated
in the racially charged “zoot suit riots” in Detroit in the 1943, before he
became an early hero of African-American civil rights. In Los Angeles, young
Mexican-Americans also made a rebellious statement with their zoot suits.
The zoot suit is an extension of jazz’s early identity as dangerous, evil music —
music of nightclubs, dance halls, and bars — and especially African-American
music, which was at odds with the comfortable status quo.
As happened with the music, however, zoot suits eventually became accepted
as a fashion statement, and today are often viewed more as ultrahip outfits
than a statement of identity. Today, Andre 3000 of the hip-hop band Outkast
wears zoot suits as high fashion.
Dressing for respect
Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, and other white swing era stars
made stylish suits and ties fashionable for young white Americans. In the ’40s
and ’50s and beyond, many black jazz musicians made a point of being perfectly
dressed in suits and ties. Through the decades, many jazz musicians
dressed formally because they wanted their music to earn the same respect
accorded to classical music. Gradually, jazz was invited into prestigious
venues like Carnegie Hall, and jazz fans came in appropriate attire. I cover
the fashion influence of a few musicians in the following sections.
Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie, with his hip glasses, goatee, and stylish suits presented the
notion that jazz should be accepted as a serious art form but also as music
with its own distinctive identity. Suits and ties were a sign of respectability.
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