OPINION
6A
Founded in 1873
How the death of a bandleader
relected upon a long-ago era
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher
SOUTHERN
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, MAY 4, 2016
EXPOSURE
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
B y
R.J.
M aRx
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago this week — 2006
When high school student Jamie Esteva arrived home from school
last Tuesday, his parents weren’t there.
And they didn’t come home later.
Employees of ishery operations at the Port of Chinook, Wash., the
14-year-old’s parents were picked up during Immigration and Cus-
toms Enforcement raids last weekend arrested for being in the country
illegally.
His mother came home late in the week after paying a few thousand
dollars, although she still faces charges. Esteva doesn’t know where his
father is.
And he’s not alone. He knows at least ive other local students
affected by last weeks’ raids.
Esteva’s situation poses a growing concern to his classmates at Asto-
ria High School. With an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 Oregon children
born in the United States to parents who didn’t come here legally, stricter
immigration enforcement could mean more destruction to families.
Students and community members gathered outside Clatsop County
Courthouse Friday to protest legislation that would make illegal immi-
gration a felony. Further demonstrations are planned nationwide today,
including in Cannon Beach.
The Clatsop County Public Works Department is enacting
a more environmentally friendly spray program for weed-con-
trol along county roads.
After a lengthy review the department is switching to chem-
ical herbicides that are less potentially harmful to streams and
wetlands and making other changes to its methods of clearing
roadsides of unwanted vegetation.
Downtown Astoria has enough parking spaces at all times of the day
and evening, the Astoria City Council heard Monday night.
That’s the conclusion of a downtown parking study that is nearing
completion.
50 years ago — 1966
Russian trawl fleet begins operations off Columbia.
John Wedin, executive secretary of the Congress of Amer-
ican Fishermen told the Oregon Otter Trawl commission Fri-
day the Russian encroachment is really nothing new, but their
type of operation is entirely different and is “something we
will have to seriously consider.”
Wedin was featured speaker at the OTCO’s semi-annual
meeting at Astoria city hall.
“We have attempted to get a man on board a Russian
trawler to photograph their operation, but have been unsuc-
cessful at this point,” Wedin told the commission.
“What we need is immediate information on net mesh sizes
and other equipment,” he continues. “All of the pertinent data
we can gather will be presented at a meeting at Washington,
D.C., May 18-19 on senate bill 2218, which proposes to extend
the territorial limit to 12 miles.”
The Russian Factory ship Churkin Friday was joined by several
trawlers on bottom ishing grounds about 12 miles west of the Colum-
bia River entrance.
Don Nichols, skipper of the 65-foot Astoria-based trawler Linda Don,
spotted the Russian vessels about dawn Friday.
Fishermen expressed fear Thursday the Russians may have depleted
bottom ishing grounds off the central Oregon coast during the past three
weeks they have operated there and are planning to set up operations off
the Columbia River.
75 years ago — 1941
More than one thousand ishing boats took to the Colum-
bia River from The Dalles to the sea today at noon as the 1941
commercial ishing season opened two days prior to the statu-
tory opening date of May 1.
Reports of heavy Chinook escapement during the past two
weeks at Bonneville dam led leets of gillnet boats to sail for
upriver drifts. It is always a gamble on the irst day, even more
than during the rest of the days of ishing, where to ind the
Royal Chinook.
Concentration of about 12,000 troops at Camp Clatsop is planned
by the army, preparatory to sending them to Alaska within the next ive
months when housing is expected to be available, according to united
Press dispatches today from Washington, D.C.
Astoria’s rapidly expanding building program, aided mate-
rially by a recent issuance of a $35,000 building permit for the
construction of 10 new homes on Niagara Avenue under the
sponsorship of Charles Miller, soared far above the 1940 ig-
ure to this date.
I
n the 1940s, Seaside was wit-
ness to a curious and disturb-
ing incident.
Despite an abundance of musi-
cal clubs and dance halls — Club
Monterey, The Lodge and the
Bungalow — race relations were
tense.
Oregon’s Democratic Sen. Wayne
Morse, a champion of civil and labor
rights, joined progressive politicians
in calling for equal rights for all races
with the passage of a national Civil
Rights Act.
Many Oregonians — including
the editor of the Seaside Signal in
a 1948 editorial — feared Morse’s
stance would create a backlash and
lead to “even more terrible persecu-
tion in America.”
In the ’40s, Sandy Winnett worked
as a waitress at the ice cream shop
adjacent to the Bungalow. Today she
is a volunteer at the Seaside Museum
and Historical Society.
Winnett remembers an “open-
minded attitude” among most Sea-
side residents, a time when people of
all backgrounds “came to dance” in
Seaside.
“Dancing in those days was a
much bigger social event than it is
today,” added longtime Seaside resi-
dent and author Gloria Stiger Linkey.
“We danced every Friday night at the
high school. After the basketball and
football games, we had a dance. We
danced all the time.”
Linkey remembered a time when
teens would drive their cars — or
their parents’ cars — to Seaside’s
Cove, turn their radios on and dance
through the night by the beach.
A mysterious death
It was into this environment that
bandleader and alto saxophonist Jim-
mie Lunceford arrived in July 1947 to
play the Bungalow, the city’s pre-em-
inent dance hall.
It wasn’t just white bands like
Glenn Miller and Tex Beneke that
headlined Seaside’s top club, but
groups like Lionel Hampton, Cab
Calloway and Fats Waller.
“To the local teenagers, the Bun-
galow was heaven,” Lunceford’s
biographer Eddy Determeyer wrote.
Lunceford was considered to be
on an equal with Count Basie and
Duke Ellington, Linkey said. “He had
a master’s degree in music. He was a
very educated man.”
But Lunceford’s arrival was said
to be anything but civil. Lunce-
ford and his band were an all-black
ensemble, although Lunceford had in
the past led integrated bands.
Rumors have circulated through-
out the years that a racist restaurant
owner poisoned Lunceford.
According to accounts presented
in his biography of Lunceford, 2009’s
Music is Our Business, Lunceford’s
musicians learned the Bungalow
dance was to be played for a segre-
gated crowd — whites only.
Management asked Lunceford’s
black valet to stand out front and dis-
courage black couples who came to
purchase tickets from buying: “They
don’t want to sell to people like us.”
Lunceford band bass player Truck
Parham remembered that band mem-
bers walked into a restaurant on
Downing, not far from the Bungalow.
On scanning the group, the wait-
ress is said to have told the musicians:
“Can’t serve you. We don’t have no
food.”
Determeyer writes that Lunce-
ford, normally even-tempered, even
restrained, pounded the table with his
ists.
“What the hell do you mean,
you can’t serve us?!” Lunceford
demanded. “Call the manager!”
The waitress panicked and hurried
back to the kitchen.
After a minute or two, Determeyer
wrote, she came back and said the
men could order after all.
The guys ordered hamburgers.
“No, I’m sorry,” the waitress said.
“We don’t have nothing but beef
sandwiches, hot beef sandwiches.”
The grumbling musicians ordered
the sandwiches, with the exception of
bassist Truck Parham.
“The rest of the band ate it,” Par-
ham said. “Lunceford had it.”
Parham left without eating.
Jimmie Lunceford
wrote, “the myth surrounding Lunce-
ford’s death was in full swing.”
The Clatsop County Coroner
declared Lunceford died of “coro-
nary occlusion, due to thrombosis of
anterior coronary artery due to arte-
riosclerosis” — in other words a heart
attack caused by a blockage.
Determeyer’s telling casts doubt
on the coroner’s report.
“Simple, plain racism is really
the key word here,” Determeyer
said via email last week.
Controversy lingers
The Daily Astorian/File Photo
The Seaside Signal reports Jim-
mie Lunceford’s death in a July
1947 edition.
Rumors
circulated
throughout
the years
that a racist
restaurant
owner
poisoned
Lunceford.
According to Determeyer’s
account, after the meal, the band
members returned to the Bunga-
low, except for Lunceford, who com-
plained he was tired and wasn’t feel-
ing well.
He headed across the street to Cal-
lahan’s Radio and Record Shop at
411 Broadway, next to the Broadway
Café, to autograph albums for fans.
There Lunceford collapsed and
died. He was 46 years old.
End of an era
According to the news story in
the July 1947 Signal, Lunceford
was about to autograph Callahan’s
record store wall, reserved for musi-
cal celebrities who came to Seaside,
when owners Edward and Walter Hill
noticed the bandleader looking weak
and ill.
A moment later Lunceford col-
lapsed and was seized by severe con-
vulsions, according to the newspa-
per’s report.
The owners called the police and
an ambulance, but Lunceford died
before reaching Seaside hospital.
The show, despite Lunceford’s
death, went on that night, Determeyer
wrote, but one musician after the
other left the bandstand and headed to
the restroom.
“I’m the only one that didn’t get
sick,” Parham said. “Botulism, you
know.”
Lunceford, a teetotaler, was “a
perfectly healthy man who had
boxed, run track and played softball,”
according to trumpeter Joe Wilder.
“It was one of the saddest days of my
life.”
At the request of his wife, Crystal,
Lunceford’s body was lown to New
York City for the funeral service.
The leader was buried in Mem-
phis, his hometown.
A memorial service with remain-
ing band members took place that
week at Rockaway Beach, the last
concert before the Lunceford Orches-
tra permanently disbanded.
But before long, Determeyer
But Seaside residents and even a
jazz musicologist, disagree.
Seaside’s Linkey thinks it’s not
plausible Lunceford and his band-
mates were sickened or worse, or
even turned away.
“Oh, he was served,” Linkey said.
“There was no animosity. No racism
at all. At least growing up in Seaside,
I didn’t feel it.”
As a tourist town, the goal was
to sell as many tickets as possi-
ble, she said. “Because if you can
serve tourists, you can serve an
African-American.”
Linkey added the biographer
“takes giant leaps” in suggesting a
racial incident was a factor in Lunc-
eford’s death.
Linkey said while there “weren’t
many blacks in the area,” there were
no segregated dances. “We did have
African-Americans in the summer
from Portland. There was an inlux
during World War II. They worked in
the shipyards.”
Seaside’s Mary Cornell, who
attended dances since she was in eighth
grade in the war years, said people of all
ages were welcome at the Bungalow.
She said she never saw anyone turned
away. African-Americans also came to
Gearhart and Seaside as domestics for
wealthy families, Cornell said.
Sandy Winnett said Determeyer’s
account was “extremely unlikely.”
Even a jazz musicologist, Lewis
Porter, pianist, Rutgers University
professor and author of Jazz: From
Its Origins to the Present, doubts the
poisoning rumor.
“It was probably not a good idea
for Determeyer to throw in at the
very last sentence of the chapter that
Jimmie may have been poisoned for
being black,” Porter said via email.
Botulism is not a poison and cannot
be “manufactured” or “planted,” Por-
ter said. “It’s simply a severe form of
food poisoning that can occur in, for
example, rotten meal. But he (Lunce-
ford) died from a heart attack — noth-
ing to do with the food! He’s not the
irst guy to die suddenly at a relatively
young age from unsuspected heart
trouble, especially in those days.”
Poisoning is not the only rumor
to survive surrounding the cause of
Lunceford’s death, which range from
“Lunceford ate a double portion of
chili con carne while on tour and died
almost immediately” to a theory he
was shot by a gangster while signing
records at Callahan’s.
Lunceford band member Truck
Parham died in 2002. Trumpeter Joe
Wilder died in 2014. With them go
their eyewitness accounts.
Are the still lingering suspicions
about the Lunceford death akin to the
mistrust so many black Americans
still feel about the police and other
authorities?
Maybe the best way to relect upon
this incident is by stressing the goal of
diversity that Lunceford, progressive
politicians like Sen. Wayne Morse
and Seaside’s young music lovers of
the 1940s — in love with the bands,
the swing and the dance — were so
desperately attempting to foster.
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astori-
an’s South County reporter and edi-
tor of the Seaside Signal and Cannon
Beach Gazette.