IN A TIME OF SEGREGATION, WHEN JAZZ AND BASEBALL FLOURISHED,
A BRAVE GROUP OF MEN STRUGGLED TO ACHIEVE THEIR DREAM DESPITE THE ODDS.
AN OPERA IN A LEAGUE OF ITS OWN !

Shadowball: 1-2-3 Strikes You're OUT !!

SHADOWBALL is an inspirational and educational project run by the HMDT [Hackney Music Development Trust] in inner London that uniquely combines young students, jazz music, civil rights and baseball. Telling the story of the Negro Leagues in 1940s America, Shadowball features such legendary names as players Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson & Jackie Robinson, jazz pioneers Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway & Count Basie, major league commissioners Judge Landis & Happy Chandler, and Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey.

“Shadowball … dramatizes the parallels between jazz and baseball,
two forms of entertainment riven by racial tensions throughout the US in the 1920s and 30s,
and in baseball’s case rigidly segregated until Jackie Robinson’s barrier-busting
1947 game with the Brooklyn Dodgers.”

John Fordham in The Guardian (2010)

ESPN America was invited along to a special performance of Shadowball at the Baden Powell School in Hackney where we were lucky enough to meet and interview jazz great Julian Joseph – who wrote the music for the opera, Cleveland Watkiss – who played Satchel Paige and Adam Eisenberg – HMDT Director and visionary behind the Jazz Opera project.

Firstly, we asked Adam to explain how he came up with the idea of combining the elements of baseball, jazz and social history into one exciting and entertaining stage show.

Like almost every boy growing up in New York, I loved to play baseball. I loved, and still do, the Yankees, who won their 27th World Series Championship in 2009. The Yankees remain the leading Dynasty of the game we know back home as ‘The National Pastime.’ Major League players, and their exploits are legendary, define each generation of Americans, legends passed down from parent to child, and for every boy or girl, and for those of us who never really grow up, the players, and the memories of them and the games we saw remain with us forever.

Baseball reaches down into the very core of the American experience. Ask virtually any American who was the greatest ball player of all time, and they will inevitably respond with one of the greats – Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, or ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson. Most of those I might add – Yankees but … all white players.

When London were awarded the Olympics for 2012, it occurred to me “How can HMDT celebrate the Olympics coming to London, and more importantly, how were we going to connect music to sport in a way which best represents what it is that we do – get students and communities involved in the creation of high quality performance art?”

At the time, I didn’t realize it, but I must have been having a mid-life crisis moment – I thought to myself why not do a project on baseball? The thought I presume was natural – the sport being so ingrained in my psyche as an American, that it represented the sport of choice.

Several other options were tossed around over the planning table, but I was convinced that baseball was the way forward, so how was I going to convince everyone else? So I sat down to revisit the history of baseball once again, in the hope that an answer would reveal itself. And it did.

Against the background of the epic history of baseball, one story stuck in my mind: In 1903, Ohio Wesleyan University was scheduled to play Notre Dame at South Bend, Indiana. Branch Rickey, the 21-year-old Ohio coach – who really took up the position in an effort to help himself to pay his school bills – had a star first baseman named Charles Thomas. When the first game was over, and the team retired to their South Bend hotel, the clerk told Rickey that while he and his team were welcome, Thomas was not. Thomas offered to go back home and forget playing, but a determined Rickey convinced the management to allow Thomas to sleep in HIS room, threatening to take the team elsewhere if they would not agree. In later years, when Rickey recollected the story, he said that Thomas just sat on his cot and cried, “Black skin … black skin. If only I could make ‘em white.”

Forty-four years later, Branch Rickey, defiant of the baseball owners and against huge protestation, signed Jackie Robinson to become the first black player (since 1880) to take the field in the major leagues, as the first baseman of the Brooklyn Dodgers. So I had the epic story we needed to make a show.

You may be asking yourself, why baseball? Why not stick with what we know here in London and do a project based on soccer, or cricket, or dare I say it – rounders? And the answer is this … as I delved deeper into the story of black baseball and the history of the Negro Leagues, an amazing part of the history, not only of baseball, but of my country’s heritage began to unfold. The link to baseball completely unique amongst sports – is Jazz. Louis Armstrong owned a baseball team, Cab Calloway played on one and ‘Bojangles’ Robinson used to tap dance on the dugout roofs to excite the crowds of fans, These jazz legends themselves combating racism and discrimination as they battled to create a new art form.

Satchel Paige watches Cab Calloway play the saxophone bat

Jazz and baseball shared a common history. Together, these two institutions, recognized today as what is unique about America’s contribution to the world, were for a time, completely intertwined. The Negro Leagues was a vast business, the largest black owned business in America for decades, and even during the turbulent years of the Great Depression, when white teams in the major leagues were suffering their greatest downturn, the Negro Leagues were thriving, bringing baseball AND jazz to audiences all over the country. It was more than music, and more than just a game – it had become for many, not only black, but white as well, a way of life.

The title of our project – Shadowball - refers to a common pre-game feature in which players in the Negro Leagues staged mock games with an imaginary ball. So believable were these performances that people sometimes thought they were actually playing. Though unintended, this pre-game pantomime was an apt metaphor for the exclusion of blacks from major league play at the time.

“It says something about London’s artistic confidence that the first jazz opera about US baseball and its long years of racial segregation should have been conceived not in New York or Los Angeles … but in London.”

Jack Massarik in The London Evening Standard (2010)

Our project is designed to inspire young people to achieve despite the odds. Through the project, students not only helped to create a new Jazz Opera and experienced the thrill of performance, had a great time together in the fun of what some might call glorified rounders, and shared the experience with their friends and families. But – most importantly – they learned about an extraordinary group of men like Satchel Paige (probably the greatest pitcher who ever lived), Josh Gibson (who people used to call “the black Babe Ruth” – though some used to say Babe Ruth was “the white Josh Gibson”), Rube Foster (the old-time trick pitcher from Texas who created the Negro Leagues), James ‘Cool Papa’ Bell, Pop Lloyd, and many, many others – the list is long!

Satchel Paige shows rookie Charlie Collins how to pitch

Today, we take it for granted that everyone in music and in sport has an equal chance – but we need to be reminded from time to time that this was not always so. Music and sport are amazing things. They can unite people regardless of their differences. Baseball Magazine, from an issue at the turn of the 20th century reads, “Thomas Jefferson, when he wrote the Declaration of Independence made proper provision for baseball when he declared that all men are, and of right ought to be, free and equal. That’s what they are at the ballgame …”

For me this is a personal journey. It’s an opportunity for me to share with my adopting country something dear and close to me. And what better way for HMDT to make its contribution to the 2012 games than with this courageous story about musicians and athletes – both through their art and the game they loved to play.

Satchel Paige calls out rookie Charlie Collins

Virtuoso pianist, bandleader, composer, arranger and broadcaster, Julian Joseph has been a leading figure on the international jazz scene for over two decades. We caught up with Julian after the show and it was obvious that his joy and fondness for this educational prooject ranks up there with his many other award-winning compositions. Here he explains the strong bond beween jazz music and baseball …

When first approached about writing an opera involving baseball and the Negro Leagues it struck me as a story that had jazz at its very heart and foundation. The fact that the music was so inextricably linked and was such a perfect marriage of art, sports and history presented the ultimate opportunity to use jazz from the period to tell the story and thus use certain themes made famous by Count Basie, Cab Calloway, the blues, the harmonic progression from Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm (a staple in jazz) to trigger and inspire my approach to composition in Shadowball.

Once I had structures in place informed by history, I further attempted to utilize swing and bebop melodically interspersing the flavor of an improvisational use of melody in the vocal. Although improvisation is expected in jazz my journey was to include something akin to the ad libs found in gospel and R&B singing.

I wasn’t aware of the link between jazz and baseball although it seems obvious to me now especially when there are references to that link littered all the way through the music in titles like: Two Bass Hit, Double Play, Caught Stealing, all directly named after moves on the baseball diamond. Count Basie’s Jumpin’ at the Woodside was a reference to an out of hours party or ‘hang’ held at the hotel where the band and baseball team would be staying. The players from both disciplines were constantly on the road, touring and faced similar things good and bad! The rigors of the road, (the tour bus or lack thereof), prejudice in their right to use restaurants, public facilities, hotels, or enter through the front doors of venues, meant when they had their chance to let their hair down they would go for it!

The Overture Theme is the leitmotif I use to demarcate the playing between Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, a most significant meeting within the drama and the game. With the Jazz Luminaries I’ve tried to intersperse famous themes associated with them – a piano riff with the Count, I’m beginning to see the light for the Duke, a portion of God Bless the Child with Lady Day and characteristics of their familiar style with Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway. I’ve also tried to juxtapose certain musical associations so that in celebration it’s not only fast and loud but considered. In Happy Chandler’s scene, (despite the name Happy) I’ve used a gospel feeling to radiate hope and only a medium tempo to show thoughtful consideration in the character, although the occasion is a happy one.

“Shadowball is a story of triumph in the face of adversity. It demonstrates the greatness of a people denied their civil liberties. How do you thrive in an unjust system? Baseball and jazz. Reflect on it and it makes a mockery of that system and did so at the time. The truth is that we must learn these lessons and all of us embrace and own this history in its glory and its horror.”

Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson react to news of Jackie Robinson signing with the Dodgers

Librettist and broadcaster Mike Phillips who wrote the book and lyrics for Shadowball was inspired by an early visit to a famous old baseball stadium …

I first encountered baseball on my first visit to the USA during the early 1970s. I didn’t know anything about the game, but my Aunt Muriel, who was then pushing 70 years old, insisted that I accompany her to see her favorite team – the Mets. Aunt Muriel had emigrated to New York in 1923, and become a figure in Harlem. She was a prominent member of Daddy Grace’s church, and a lifelong baseball fan.

I couldn’t understand her passion for the sport, and maybe I wouldn’t have gone at all, except that Auntie M had a way of embracing me and slipping a few dollars into my pocket at the same time, which I just couldn’t resist.

So, there I was in Shea Stadium wearing the Mets’ orange and blue, and screaming, “Let’s go Mets!” at all the right times. I was entranced at being part of the crowd. We squirted mustard over our hotdogs, we jumped up & down and yelled during the seventh inning stretch, and I remember it as a precious time, not just because of the excitement of the game, but also because I got the feeling from Aunt Muriel about the history and the engagement and the sheer poetry of the game. In those days, attendance at the games seemed like part of the burgeoning renaissance going on in Harlem, and there was jazz all over the Village, like a soundtrack to the thrills of every day and night.

Walking home through Queens at five in the morning everything seemed to be moving, black and beautiful, and my cousin Rossy warned me not to whistle as I walked down the street in case someone grabbed me and gave me a grant to pursue my music – and in all this mad creativity, baseball was a key – when an afternoon of heroes could take the sport and turn it into a metaphor for our aspirations and desires.

Some time round about then, Aunt Muriel told me about being a supporter of the Negro Leagues and travelling up and down the country, with all the dangers that involved. Later on, when I began to write Shadowball, all the intensity of that time came back to me, and I could see my old auntie in my mind’s eye, waving her arms and screaming from stands, full of love and passion and joy. That’s how I know that Shadowball isn’t just a bunch of words in a book, or moving pictures on TV, or an opera on stage – the people who played and watched it were real. Their memories have shaped communities and the lives of individuals, and will continue to do so as long as people play ball.

“This game is life. This game is cruel.
One day you’re a hero; the next day you’re a fool.
One day they love you; the next day you’re a dope.
Either you win or you got no hope.”

Major League Baseball is proud to support HMDT’s Shadowball program and its aim to get children actively involved in playing baseball while educating them on the history of the sport through music. The sport of baseball has a rich history of breaking down racial barriers, and MLB believes HMDT’s creative approach in both combating racism and stimulating interest in baseball will be an effective and fun way for the community to become involved in the sport.