James Reese Europe

James Reese Europe was born in Mobile, AL, on February 22, 1880. Hoping to find opportunities not available to southern blacks, Jim Europe's father moved the family to Washington, D.C. In the nation's capitol, the children of the Europe family pursued education in a number of pursuits, including music. Jim Europe revealed an early penchant for leadership as well as music, studying violin with an assistant conductor of the United States Marine Band. This situation was to end unexpectedly with the death of the father in 1899. Jim Europe's older brother John relocated to New York City to work as a pianist in that city's burgeoning black musical life. Jim Europe followed in early 1904, continuing his musical studies and eventually becoming a conductor for the orchestra and chorus of a short-lived musical farce, A Trip to Africa. Real success came in 1905 when Europe became a member of Ernest Hogan's Memphis Students, a theatrical production combining both vocal and instrumental musical entertainment. In 1905, Jim Europe was recruited by Bob Cole (aka James Weldon Johnson) and J. Rosamond Johnson (who toured as "Cole & Johnson") as orchestral conductor for the landmark all-black musical comedy, The Shoo-Fly Regiment. This led Jim Europe to engagements as conductor and composer for influential black-theater shows, such as The Black Politician (1906) and The Red Moon (1908). By this time, Europe had reached the pinnacle of his career as a composer for the musical stage. Europe's successes in this venue was to be interrupted by a series of tragic events, notably the deaths of Ernest Hogan and Bert Williams' partner George Walker. By 1910, black musicals were conspicuously absent from New York's midtown theaters, and the genre was not to reappear until the early '20s. Jim Europe...