In 1933, Louis Armstrong met Herb Jeffries in a Detroit club and told him to hit the road. “Hey boy,” Satchmo said to the 22-year-old singer, “you’re wasting your time here,” and handed him a note to give to his friend Erskine Tate in Chicago. Jeffries took him up on the suggestion and hopped on a bus; when he found Tate, the bandleader promptly gave him a job.
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In Chicago, Jeffries also hooked up with Earl Hines and performed on the south side at the Savoy and the Regal. But he was soon sidetracked by another project. While touring the south with Hines’s band, Jeffries often saw cowboy pictures featuring Gene Autry and other white stars in segregated theaters. Knowing that black cowboys had helped tame the west, he started thinking about making all-black westerns. After encountering a boy in Cincinnati who was crying after his white friends had told him he couldn’t play Tom Mix because he was black, he says, “I was determined to make something happen.”
He traveled to California and met with Buell, who, after finding a willing distributor, agreed to back the project.
Harlem Rides the Range will be shown on Sunday, February 17, along with Moon Over Harlem, a 1939 musical starring jazz great Sidney Bechet, as part of the Doc Films series “Race Movies: Black Cinema Before 1950.” The screening is at 7 in the Max Palevsky Cinema at the University of Chicago’s Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 E. 59th. Tickets are $4; for more information call 773-702-8575.
