Low Points and High Points of Ed's 1926 Summer of Jazz

On this day, 96 years ago, my late father-in-law (Edgar James Wood, 1903-1986) arrived in New York City aboard the S.S. Berengaria, after a summer of playing jazz piano across the Atlantic and across the European continent.

His name appears at the top of this excerpt from the passenger manifest from the Berengaria, which sailed from Cherbourg on September 11, 1926, and docked in New York City on September 17, 1926. The manifest identifies Ed as a native of Cleveland, Ohio, born on August 13, 1903--exactly matching the passport he saved for the rest of his life. Ed turned 23 years old during that summer.

Ed had been at Tufts College, not graduating because he failed the language requirement. During his college years and for a time afterward, he played piano on gigs around Boston and beyond. That's how he met Richard "Dick" Bowers (see starred name on manifest above) and was recruited for the 1926 summer of jazz. At this point in the Roaring Twenties, jazz had become a worldwide phenomenon.

Low points, high points

Dick, the band leader, billed the group as an all-American college jazz band. For several summers in succession, he secured bookings to play on trans-Atlantic ships, then at resorts around Europe, then on a return voyage back to New York. 

Ed and the other musicians received little or no pay on the ships, playing in return for their passage. Similarly, their pay at the resorts was minimal, but they were allowed to use some of the resort facilities.

Fortunately, Ed kept notes of those unforgettable adventures in 1926, which whetted his appetite for foreign travel. 

The low points: being housed in dinky, tacky "staff rooms" at the ritziest resorts and pooling money with band members to buy super-cheap food toward the end of the summer when cash was running low. 

The high point? When interviewed by the Boston Herald a few weeks after he sailed home, here's what Ed said about his 1926 summer of jazz:

One of the things I remember best was when we played at a costume ball given by Count Volki, Italian minister of finance--he was at the head of the Italian debt commission to the United States, you know--at his castle on the Grand Canal, in honor of Prince Umberto, the Crown Prince. It was attended by members of the royal family and a host of Italian dukes and counts. It was one of the things that you see only in the movies, unless you are fortunate enough to be a member of the Italian nobility or a jazz musician.

"High and low" is the theme for this week's #52Ancestors challenge by Amy Johnson Crow.