On New Year’s Day 1918, near the end of World War I (1914–18), the New York Fifteenth Infantry Regiment, an African-American fighting unit, marched ashore in France, and its regimental band of African-Americans and Puerto Ricans sounded La Marseillaise to an incredulous assembly of French soldiers and sailors. In August, the band, by then part of the (renamed) 369th ‘Hellfighters’ Infantry Regiment, joined the Allied Conference in Paris, prior to the Allies’ final offensive. There, conducted by bandmaster James Reese Europe (1881–1919), it provided the ceremonial music at the final event of the Congress of Allied Women War Workers, at the Théâtre du Champs Élysées. The closing music, played to 2,000 women delegates, was by surviving accounts a wild success, and consequently the band was requisitioned for an eight-week placement in Paris. It is perhaps coincidental that this took place in the same hall as the historic premiere of The Rite of Spring in 1913, but Reese Europe’s tour of duty is now recognised as an important early dissemination of what became known as ‘jazz’. A joint concert in the Tuileries Garden, alongside the bands of the British Grenadiers, the Garde Républicaine and the Royal Italian Band stimulated intense interest; whereas the Europeans played to a much more sophisticated technical level, the American band always won over the audiences.

Ragtime had already been introduced to the European continent, at the Exposition Universelle held in Paris in 1900: there John Philip Sousa presented what he idiosyncratically called ‘native American music’; Claude Debussy’s Golliwogg’s Cake Walk (sic) was published in 1908, and Erik Satie’s ‘Rag-time du Paquebot’ appears in his ballet, Parade (1916). It is plausible that the ‘Hellfighters’ band could have captivated the public because of its all-black membership, its interesting repertoire or in recognition of the United States’ participation in World War I. Reese Europe, however, firmly believed that the lure was simply how his players performed. Reports from the time, evidence on film and recordings made in New York months after the band returned from Europe elucidate a largely unknown performance practice.

Reese Europe’s version of W. C. Handy’s Memphis Blues (1912) is captivating: clarinet and cornet players use techniques of twirling the tongue in the mouth, explicitly ‘flutter tonguing’; mutes are manipulated to produce bizarre colours and effects; trombones play prominent glissandi; instinctive rhythm and syncopation is enhanced by cheeky interjections and moments of extemporisation.