Softly with Feeling: Joe Wilder and the Breaking of Barriers in American Music

Abstract

Softly With Feeling: Joe Wilder and the Breaking of Barriers in American Music. By Edward Berger. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014. 378pp, numerous b & w photographs, discography/solography, index, ISBN 978-1-4399-1127-3, $25.37. Softly, With Feeling is first and foremost a very well researched and clearly written biography of a jazz trumpet icon who also distinguished himself in the classical idiom. It is also a book about race in America in the 1930s and the decades that followed, and offers insight into the music business, especially pertaining to the role of African Americans. Edward Berger, whose previous works include biographies of Benny Carter, Teddy Reig, and George Duvivier, does his usual thorough job of penetrating his subjects through interviews and extensive archival research to produce another excellent work on an important figure in American music. In Softly, With Feeling, Mr. Berger relates Wilder's story starting with his upbringing in a working class, interracial neighborhood in Philadelphia. As has historically been the case, children have always been more racially tolerant of their peers than adults. For instance, Wilder talked about getting along with his white playmates as a child even befriending a white girl, Helen Gibbons. Even in that world, racism would occasionally surface and it would be something that Wilder would have to deal with throughout his life. The book is filled with numerous incidents detailing how cruel some white people were to Wilder and his fellow African Americans. That the trumpeter emerged without bitterness, and refused to characterize all white people as racists speaks volumes about his character. As he noted, for every prejudiced individual he encountered there were always whites who treated him with the respect he deserved. His musical training began with trumpet lessons from a family friend then progressed when he started studying with a local cornet legend, Frederick D. Griffin. Griffin was not a jazz player so Wilder was exposed early to classical music, which became a life-long passion even though it would be decades before he was accepted in a white symphony orchestra. Like so many other talented black musicians with classical aspirations he turned to jazz as a way of making a living. The book details his tenures with some of the big bands of the day, including the orchestras of Les Hite, Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, and Count Basie. Because of his classical training he often found himself playing lead in these bands with limited opportunity to solo, but he eventually developed into a very lyrical, technically adept improviser with a beautiful tone reminiscent of the great Bix Beiderbecke. …