Confessions of a Jazz Baby
My father, Kelly, on drums
A huge part of my Mixed identity and experience come from being a Jazz Baby.
A century ago, my Jewish mother, Rosalyn, and my Black father, Kelly, grew up together in North Minneapolis where Black people and Jewish people were redlined into the ‘hood. Kelly was a talented tap dancer, even as a kid. Rosalyn had a crush on him, but she was younger and much too shy to let anyone know.
As they grew, they went their separate ways. Fate reunited them in California in the 1940s. Kelly might not have remembered Rosalyn as a child, but he was drawn to the classy beauty with the regal cheekbones, trim hourglass figure, and subtly seductive smile.
They shared a love of good jazz, dancing, and fashionable attire.
Kelly sported the dramatic zoot suits favored by Black, Latino, and Italian men and jazz musicians, who wore them as hip badges of cultural pride. Rosalyn stayed equally sharp with her sleek black pompadour hairstyle, chic fashions, and flawlessly coordinated accessories. Rosalyn turned down several devoted, wealthy white suitors because she stubbornly believed that her romantic destiny was with Kelly.
Kelly and Rosalyn at Madrona Beach in Seattle
They landed in Seattle in the late 1940s, a place for people seeking fresh starts and new horizons. Though interracial marriage was illegal in 16 states, Washington state allowed it. The tolerant atmosphere drew many who found love across the color line.
While it wasn’t as high profile as Harlem, Chicago, or other well-known jazz cities, Seattle had a vibrant jazz scene. The heartbeat of this scene was in the Central District (my home ‘hood) just east of downtown, where the polite form of housing segregation called redlining “allowed” most Black people to reside.
“In 1948, there were over two dozen nightclubs along Jackson Street where jazz and bootleg liquor flowed freely … the scene that nurtured the early careers of Quincy Jones, Ray Charles, and Ernestine Anderson,” writes legendary Seattle jazz reporter Paul DeBarros in his book, Jackson Street After Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle. It was a festive atmosphere with musicians sometimes carrying their instruments between clubs to find the hottest jam sessions.
Though these clubs were frequently mostly by Black people, all races were welcome. “The easy give-and-take between the races in Seattle’s nightlife district had a profound influence on music,” DeBarros wrote. “Barriers between Black and white traditions were never as clear-cut as they were in other western cities like Los Angeles where a ‘cool’ white school evolved in contradistinction to the ‘hard bop’ played by Blacks. In Seattle, the music of both Blacks and whites tended to merge toward an agreeable middle, resulting in a melding of traditions that later was felt worldwide In the work of Jackson Street denizens such as Quincy Jones, Ray Charles, and Bumps Blackwell.”
Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
The sizzling bohemian atmosphere was the perfect backdrop for interracial couples. Kelly had graduated from dancing to jazz drumming and when he wasn’t playing, he and Rosalyn showed out on the dance floor. Many of Seattle’s Black jazz musicians dated and married interracially. Some formed friendships and a tight community, buying homes near each other in the Central District. The men worked day jobs, then played gigs and hunted for jam sessions after hours.
My mother and her friends strategically planned their pregnancies so that their little Mixed children would have friends their age and could build a sense of identity among families that looked like theirs.
The women in these then-controversial relationships left nothing to chance. In the days before birth control and reproductive choice, my mother and her friends strategically planned their pregnancies so that their little Mixed children would have friends their age and could build a sense of identity among families that looked like theirs.
And it worked! The families regularly gathered for holidays and other occasions, and we children grew up without the stigma of being considered unusual.
These dynamics created my community of what I call Jazz Babies—born to nonconformists who had the foresight to band together and make sure their children wouldn’t be seen as outcasts.
After my parents divorced and my mother took my brother and me to visit places like Minneapolis or Los Angeles, we spent time with other Jazz Baby families, which again reaffirmed our sense of self.
If others who didn’t understand the Jazz Baby dynamic suggested that our Mixedness made us strange or that we should be outcasts, we had a solid frame of reference to refute that perspective. When outsiders accused of us being confused about our identities, we were equipped with the tools to prove them wrong.
Whether our parents stayed married, or our fathers remained involved in our lives, nothing could silence or erase the music they’d poured into us. In addition to varied racial and ethnic DNA, I was made of swing-jazz keyboards, soft drum brushstrokes, tapping feet, jitterbugging bodies, ‘round-the-clock jam sessions, blues in the night, and improvised rhythms that invented themselves as they went along.
Excerpted from my memoir, SWIRL GIRL: Coming of Race in the USA