John Hammond

Upstairs, the family listened to Caruso. Hammond went down to the servants' quarters for the music he wanted, which no store near home would sell. His mother was Emily Vanderbilt Sloane, a granddaughter of William Henry Vanderbilt, and the house had five floors. He took violin lessons, got himself sent to Hotchkiss, entered Yale in 1929 and left in 1931, jaundiced and bored. Then he spent the money. He paid for a recording session by the pianist Garland Wilson that year, bought his own radio time so he could put Black musicians on the air, took the NAACP board seat he had refused at 21 as too genteel, and went south in 1933 to watch the Scottsboro trials. Two years later he talked Benny Goodman into hiring Teddy Wilson.

Then the list. Billie Holiday, heard in a Harlem club in 1933. Count Basie, off a Kansas City broadcast caught on a car radio in 1936. Charlie Christian, Big Joe Turner, Pete Seeger, Aretha Franklin at 18, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1983, when Hammond was 72. The most deliberate thing he ever did came in between: From Spirituals to Swing, two Carnegie Hall concerts in December 1938 and December 1939, financed by the Communist magazine New Masses because nobody else would pay for a Black program and a mixed audience.

He was not a benevolent listener. He told musicians what their music ought to be and printed the verdict when they disagreed — in 1935 he attacked Duke Ellington in Down Beat as vapid and without the slightest semblance of guts, and lectured him, out of a Vanderbilt inheritance, on failing to speak for his race. Ellington answered by pointing at Hammond's conflicts of interest. He produced Billie Holiday only through 1937, and later wrote that he never liked Strange Fruit and had urged Columbia to let somebody else record it, because he wanted her singing the blues. Benny Goodman, poor and a high-school dropout, tired of being managed by him years before he married Hammond's sister Alice in 1942. When bebop came, Hammond said it had halted America's dancing feet.

He retired from Columbia in 1975 and in 1986 entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with its inaugural class. He died in Manhattan on July 10, 1987, after a series of strokes, reportedly with a Billie Holiday record playing. The argument since has split cleanly. Pete Seeger said jazz was integrated 10 years before baseball largely because of Hammond. Others read the same record as a wealthy white man deciding for Black musicians what Black music was, and note that Columbia handed Dylan to Tom Wilson, who was Black. Around Columbia, after the first Dylan album sold 5,000 copies, they called Dylan Hammond's Folly. That stopped with the second.

John Hammond's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Bessie Smith's last session other
  Four Okeh sides cut on November 24, 1933, for a flat 37.50 dollars apiece and no royalty. She never recorded again. 1933
• The integrated Benny Goodman small groups other
  Hammond pushed Goodman to hire Teddy Wilson in 1935, Lionel Hampton in 1936 and Charlie Christian in 1939, putting mixed bands in front of white audiences. 1935
• From Spirituals to Swing other
  Carnegie Hall, December 23, 1938 and December 24, 1939. Sponsored by New Masses and dedicated to Bessie Smith. 1938
• King of the Delta Blues Singers album
  The Robert Johnson reissue Hammond talked Columbia into releasing, which reached the musicians who built the blues revival. 1961
• Bob Dylan album
  He produced the debut and co-produced The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan with Tom Wilson the following year. 1962
• John Hammond on Record: An Autobiography book
  Written with Irving Townsend. Its judgments of other people's music are as unbending as they were in print in 1935. 1977

• 1931 aged ~21 Leaves Yale and pays for his first recording session The pianist Garland Wilson. Hammond financed sessions nobody else would, and took no profit from them.
• November 24, 1933 aged 22 Brings Bessie Smith into a studio for the last records of her life Hammond said he had found her working as a speakeasy hostess in Philadelphia. Her biographer Chris Albertson says the dates do not fit, and treats it as one of Hammond's embellishments.
• 1933 aged ~23 Hears Billie Holiday in a Harlem club and arranges her recording debut She cut her first sides on a Benny Goodman session. Hammond was astonished to learn she was the daughter of Fletcher Henderson's guitarist.
• 1935 aged ~25 Talks Benny Goodman into hiring Teddy Wilson Lionel Hampton followed in 1936. Pete Seeger later said jazz was integrated 10 years before baseball largely because of Hammond.
• 1936 aged ~26 Catches a Count Basie broadcast from Kansas City on his car radio He drove out to the Reno Club to hear the band in person, then moved it east.
• December 23, 1938 aged 28 Stages the first From Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall Gospel, blues, boogie-woogie and swing on the most prestigious stage in the country, to a sold-out integrated house. A second concert followed on Christmas Eve 1939.
• 1961 aged ~51 Signs Bob Dylan to Columbia over the label's objections He had signed the 18-year-old Aretha Franklin the year before, and pushed through the Robert Johnson reissue the same year.
• 1972 aged ~62 Auditions Bruce Springsteen in his office Springsteen's manager Mike Appel opened by telling Hammond he wanted to see whether he had any ears. Columbia signed Springsteen that June.
• July 10, 1987 aged 76 Dies in Manhattan after a series of strokes, at 76 His last signing, Stevie Ray Vaughan, had come four years earlier, when Hammond was 72.

• Billie Holiday 1915–1959
  Jazz singer whose intensely personal phrasing and performances, including 'Strange Fruit,' transformed American vocal music. discovered
• Count Basie 1904–1984
  Kansas City bandleader whose rhythm section reset what a big band could swing like. discovered
• Bessie Smith 1892–1937
  Leading blues recording artist of the 1920s known as the Empress of the Blues. produced her final session
• Aretha Franklin 1942–2018
  Singer whose gospel-rooted artistry made her a defining voice of soul music and Black cultural pride. signed
• Bob Dylan b. 1941
  Songwriter whose poetic lyrics transformed folk, rock, and the role of popular music in public life. signed and defended
• Bruce Springsteen b. 1949
  Songwriter whose music made working-class life, aspiration, and disappointment central themes of American rock. signed