Frankie Newton

By Ken Waxman

Prominent during and just after the Swing Era, trumpeter Frankie Newton, whose 120^th birthday would have been January 4, but who lived less than half those years, is mostly a footnote in Jazz history. Yet in his day his muted mellow and thoughtful style was ranked highly  alongside such better known contemporary trumpeters as Charlie Shavers, Buck Clayton and Roy Eldridge. He played and recorded with leaders as diverse as Art Tatum and James P. Johnson, Mezz Mezzrow and John Kirby. He was part of  Bessie Smith’s final session,  plus the original recordings of Maxine Sullivan’s “Loch Lomond” and Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”.

So what was responsible for Newton’s obscurity? For a start, while warm and generous personally, he had a strong sense of social justice and would express it publicly, something Black musicians of that era were not supposed to do. As George Wein, who acknowledged Newton as his musical mentor and often booked him when he ran Boston clubs, once stated “Newton would burn bridges while he was still crossing them.” This strong sense of social justice was part and parcel of Newton’s identity as an active Communist. Now while party membership was not illegal at that time and others such as Teddy Wilson, Hazel Scott, Stewart and Holiday were acknowledged fellow travellers, it was Newton, who was prominently featured in Communist Party affiliated events from 1939-1948 including a 1942 concert for Russian War Relief and benefits for the Communist magazine New Times, and even the “Jiant  (sic) Jazz Jamboree” in Boston. Maybe the concert’s sponsorship appealed to him – the Massachusetts chapter of the Progressive Citizens of America. He also found that progressive politics helped intensify his feeling as an exploited musician during his professional career. A believer in coop bands, he often complained about musicians’ poor working conditions and frustration that musicians did not share in profits made by their recordings

In fact by the end of the life Newton seems to be as interested in painting, working as a counselor at ‘Camp Unity an integrated summer camp and writing regularly for the Communist Daily Worker newspaper as his music. “Musicians generally admired Newton and spoke of him with reverence, although later in their lives Teddy Wilson and Rex Stewart denounced Communism and denied any affiliation,” states Matthew Rivera, host of WKCR-FM’s Hot Club of New York program who is presently writing a Newton biography. “Newton’s behavior didn’t ‘handicap’ him, he adds. “He was exploited, hurt, misunderstood, muted, ignored, and didn’t get the breaks he deserved.”

This feeling may have started soon after he was born in poverty as William Frank Newton in 1906 in the rural community of Blacksburg, Virginia. Orphaned at an early age, somehow he learned to play the trumpet and after working in territory bands moved to New York as part of Lloyd Scott’s group. For the next few years moved among various bands led by Chick Webb, Teddy Hill, and even Charlie Barnet’s short-lived integrated band. His big break should have happened shortly afterwards when he was part of what eventually became bassist John Kirby commercially successful sextet. Unfortunately “Newton soon left after a stormy fallout with Kirby,” notes Rivera. At that time the trumpeter still led regular groups at Café Society, one of the few integrated nightclubs in New York at the time where he became friendly with figures such as Henry Miller, Canada Lee, and Paul Robeson, another Communist. He quit that too in the 1940s, chafing even under its working conditions.

While as Rivera says “He was extremely sociable and just as warm and generous. He constantly hosted people at his apartment, gave children free music lessons, bought rounds of drinks for everyone at any bar he walked into, he was vocal against injustice.”

There are stories of him confronting noisy patrons and he never compromised when it came to race relations. Nat Hentoff recalled an incident in Boston when after paying back a debt to a photographer, the fellow said “‘That’s mighty white of you.’. Frankie pulled him up by his collar and said, ‘No. That’s mighty black of me.’” Newton was often in Boston during that time since his girl friend, later wife and fellow Communist lived in the city. He had plenty of  club and concert gigs and at one point even live at a Harvard University undergraduate residence.

How did he avoid discrimination there? He related he wore Harris tweeds and walked across the yard with a tennis racket and horn under each arm – and a copy of Das Kapital in his pocket. It was during the 1930s and 1940 he made most of the more than 100 records on which he was featured. Some were under his name, some featured contemporary singers others were led by Buster Bailey or Peter Johnson and the famous Port of Harlem Jazzmen sessions with Sidney Bechet, Big Sid Catlett, Albert Ammons and others. Later a few musicians such as Ruby Braff cited him as an influence.

By the late 1940s, his musical gigs became more sporadic – his last known recording was in 1951 – and back in New York physical aliments such as recurring back problem and an earlier botched tonsillectomy added to his problems. Finally in 1948 a fire destroyed his apartment, his clothes and instruments. Benefits organized in his name eventually allowed him to buy another trumpet, but by that time he was an alcoholic. He died of He died of acute gastritis at the age of 48 in 1954.

Interestingly enough as a progressive person why didn’t Newton try to play progressive jazz such as Bop? “In the 1940s jazz compartmentalized into Be Bop, Traditional and Rhythm and Blues”, notes Rivera. “Frankie Newton created a concept and worked to perfect it.”