“Ordinary Artists?” An Interview with Howard S. Becker

Abstract

M.P. & G.B. – Could you tell us about the origin of the expression “dance musicians” in Outsiders1? What did it mean at the time? H.S.B. – The reason I added the adjective “dance” to the noun “musicians” was to distinguish the people I was talking about from other kinds of musicians playing in other organized settings at the same period. Who were these others? I think I was probably quite aware of at least the following specialized groups who were in the musicians’ union but were not “my kind of people”: players in the Chicago Symphony and similar “classical” organizations; players who had steady jobs playing for the five-a-day vaudeville shows current at the time in the city centre movie houses (and the one such theatre in the black neighborhood); members of the house bands in local radio stations (each major network’s local station had such a house band that played whatever needed to be played). What distinguished these players was having jobs that were permanent in some way, jobs that required specialized skills (especially reading scores at sight, sort of like Faulkner’s studio musicians2). Musicians in a New-Orleans bar © Marc Perrenoud Was there a kind of porosity between the worlds of dance musicians and people from the Chicago Symphony or people playing in vaudeville shows? That didn’t happen much in Chicago. The symphony players and the guys who played the vaudeville houses or radio stations (which had “house bands”), those were full time jobs in a big city like Ch