Ford Dabney

That same neighborhood, one block south — 52nd Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues — contained, from the late 1930s until the early 1960s, a remarkable concentration of jazz night clubs.

After the start of World War I, Vernon Castle – Dabney and Europe's employer – was determined to fight for England. He joined the Royal Flying Corps, trained as a pilot, but was killed in 1917 during flight training crash at Camp Taliaferro, near Fort Worth, Texas.

Uncle: Wendell Phillips Dabney Dabney's uncle, Wendell Phillips Dabney (1965–1952), who is chronicled as having been one of his music teachers, became founding president of Cincinnati chapter of the NAACP, author, and newspaper editor and publisher of the Ohio Enterprise, later named The Union, both late of Cincinnati. During the early 1890s, Prof. Wendell Phillips Dabney was of the most notable musicians in Richmond, Virginia. He had studied attended music in 1883 at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Part of his influence on Ford Dabney, as his student, may be found in the 1914 composition, "Castle Valse Classique," humoreske, an adaptation by Dabney of Antonin Dvořák's Humoresque, Op. 101, No. 7 (of 8), Poco lento e grazioso in G♭ major. Prof. Dabney, in 1895, contacted Dvořák, who was director the National Conservatory of Music of America, an institution in New York that, like Oberlin, accepted African Americans. At Dvořák's home, Prof. Dabney, among other things, introduced one of his own compositions, a plantation melody, "Uncle Remus."

Dabney died June 6, 1958, in Manhattan, at the Sydenham Hospital – 2 months and 9 days after the death of W.C. Handy.

Grammophon (F)K-7790, Matrix OLA1293-1, recorded October 15, 1936, Paris (audio via YouTube)

Dabney's stepmother, Gertrude, in 1929, held the distinction of serving on the first all-women jury in Washington, D.C. She was the only non-white.

As a side note, when Wright was released on March 30, 1927, he, with his wife Lillie, went on to live in Roxbury, Boston, at 23 Haskins Street, working as an elevator operator, a danceband drummer, and a private drum teacher. Wright was the first music teacher for one particular 8-year-old Roy Haynes, who lived across the street at 30 Haskins.

After Europe's death, Dabney continued leading his own ensembles, including Dabney's Band and Ford Dabney's Syncopated Orchestra, the latter of which recorded for Belvedere and Puritan Records. However, these endeavors were less successful, and in 1921 he lost his theater position on Broadway.

Dabney and his instrumentalists were black and Fields was white. According to historian Tim Brooks, that recording was "an early, and unusual example of a white vocalist recording with a black orchestra. Though not the first example of interracial recording, it was progressive for its time." Dabney, from 1919 through 1922, as pianist and leader, recorded 28 songs with Vocalion and Paramount.

In 1917, Ford Dabney's Syncopated Orchestra began recording jazz. In August 1917, during their first session, they recorded 5 songs for Aeolian Vocalion, including "At the Darkdown Strutter's Ball," which featured vocalist Arthur Fields.

He was owner-operator of his own film and vaudeville theatre in Washington, and in 1913 he organized the Tempo Club (A Negro talent bureau) in New York. He created original dance numbers for Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle, and conducted the Ziegfeld Midnight Frolics orchestra for eight years. He wrote the Broadway stage score for "Rang Tang".

Wife Dabney married – on March 14, 1912, in Washington – Martha D. Gans, widow of boxer Joe Gans who had owned the Goldfield Hotel in Baltimore at the corner of East Lexington and Colvin Streets, just east of downtown, in the Pleasant View Gardens neighborhood. Joe Gans – according to boxing historian and Ring Magazine founder Nat Fleischer – was the greatest lightweight boxer of all-time.

In October 1911, the New York Age published an announcement that Dabney had purchased the Chelsea Theatre at 1913 M Street, N.W. (between 19th and 20th Streets, N.W.). Louis Mitchell and J. West were the house managers. One year earlier, around August 1910, S.L. Jones and L. Kohler Chambers (né Luddington Kohler Chambers; 1874–1913) acquired the Chelsea, which had been "formerly owned and managed by white people."

From around October 1910 through 1911, Dabney owned and operated a theater bearing his name, "Ford Dabney's Theater." It was located at the eastern edge of the Cardozo neighborhood, Washington, D.C., on the northeast corner of 9th and U Streets, N.W. (2001 9th Street, N.W.), around the corner from the current African American Civil War Memorial Museum. George W. Hamilton (1871–1910) was general manager. The theater's tagline in newspaper ads read, "Refined vaudeville and motion pictures."

In 1909, Dabney began composing and publishing songs, namely "Oh! You Devil" (©1909), "That Minor Strain" (©1910), "Haytian Rag" (©1911), and "Shine" (©1910). Dabney began working with James Reese Europe at the Clef Club in the 1910s, and together collaborated with Florenz Ziegfeld on his shows in New York City (including at the New Amsterdam Theater from 1913 to 1921). Europe and Dabney's collaborations included eight pieces to accompany the dancing of Vernon and Irene Castle.

March 1906 Location of J.W. Dabney's barber shop at Welcker's Hotel – second building on the right, looking north from New York Avenue 721 15th St, N.W.

Songwriter ("Shine"), composer, conductor and pianist, educated at Armstrong Manual Training School. He studied music with his father and also with Charles Donch, William Waldecker, and Samuel Fabian. In 1904, he was the official court musician for the president of Haiti, and returned to the USA in 1907 to lead his own quartet.

Dabney attended the business education division of Colored High School (aka M Street High School) in Washington, D.C., grades nine through eleven. Robert Heberton Terrell was the Principal. On June 22, 1901, Dabney was promoted from 1st year (grade 9) to 2nd (grade 10) for the fall of 1901. This was the same school that James Reese Europe graduated from in 1902. Dabney then attended Armstrong Manual Training School in Washington. He sang in the church choir of St. Mary's Protestant Episcopal Chapel – a mission of St. John's Parish – 23rd Street, between G and H Streets, N.W. – the current campus of George Washington University.

In an effort to place Dabney as a ragtime pianist among peers, Elliott Shapiro (1895–1956), son of one of Dabney's publishers, Maurice Shapiro, in a 1951 article, offered a list of standout ragtime pianists — in two categories, (i) pioneers and (ii) later ragtimers. Shapiro included Dabney in the latter group.

J.W. Dabney's barber shop, in the latter 1880s, was at the Hamilton House Hotel, 14th and K Streets, N.W. (same site as the Hamilton Hotel erected in 1922 at the northwest corner of Franklin Square). On November 15, 1888, J.W. Dabney opened a barber shop at Welckers Hotel (see photo below), 721 15th Street, N.W., between New York Avenue and H Street, N.W.

Ford Thompson Dabney (15 March 1883 – 21 June 1958) was an American ragtime pianist, composer, songwriter, and acclaimed director of bands and orchestras for Broadway musical theater, revues, vaudeville, and early recordings. Additionally, for two years in Washington, from 1910 to 1912, he was proprietor of a theater that featured vaudeville, musical revues, and silent film. Dabney is best known as composer and lyricist of the 1910 song "That's Why They Call Me Shine," which for eleven point one decades, through 2020, has endured as a jazz standard. As of 2020, in the jazz genre, "Shine" has been recorded 646 times Dabney and one of his chief collaborators, James Reese Europe (1880–1919), were transitional figures in the prehistory of jazz that evolved from ragtime (which loosely includes some syncopated music) and blues — and grew into stride, boogie-woogie, and other next levels in jazz. Their 1914 composition, "Castle Walk" – recorded February 10, 1914, by Europe's Society Orchestra with Dabney at the piano (Victor 17553-A, Matrix: B-14434) – is one of the earliest recordings of jazz.

Parents Ford Thompson Dabney was born to John Wesley (J.W.) Dabney (1851–1924) and Rebecca C. Ford (maiden; 1854–1896). J.W. and Rebecca had married November 13, 1879, in Alexandria, Virginia. J.W. was a musician and celebrated barber, who, according to the Washington Times in 1903, had cut hair for President McKinley and President Theodore Roosevelt. Beginning around 1889, J.W. Dabney was often referred to as Capt. J.W. Dabney, reflecting his rank in a Washington, D.C.-based milita, exclusively African-American, known as the Washington Cadet Corps, founded June 12, 1880 – which in 1887, was the first unit to become a permanent part of the then newly established District of Columbia National Guard, Fifth Battalion. Capt. Dabney, nonetheless, as a professional, was chronicled as an innovative and successful tonsorial artist. Ford's step-mother, Capt. Dabney's second wife (married December 21, 1898) – Gertrude V. Dabney (née Gertrude V. Adams; 1876–1961) – sold J.W. Dabney's tonic products.

Uncle and step-aunt: James H. and Ruby H. Dabney Gertrude's sister (Ford Dabney's step-aunt), Ruby H. Dabney (née Ruby Adams; 1872–1901) (see photo below), was the second of three wives of one of Ford's uncles, James H. Dabney (1846–1923), a prominent and affluent Washington, D.C.-based undertaker and philanthropist. Ruby, in 1898, earned a professional degree from the Massachusetts College of Embalming, Boston – notable for being the first African American woman in the history of Washington, D.C., to earn a college diploma.

One of John Marshall Dabney's sons (Dabney's 1st cousin, once removed) John Milton Dabney (né Milton Williamson Dabney; 1867–1967) was a player in the Black baseball leagues. Alexander "Buck" Spottswood, as manager, and J. Milton Dabney as team captain, reorganized, in 1895, the Manhattan Baseball Club of Richmond, Virginia. J.M. Dabney also played for the Original Cuban Giants of St. Augustine, Florida, and Trenton, New Jersey – the first professional African-American baseball team.

Dabney studied music privately first with his father, John Wendell Dabney, then with his uncle, Wendell Phillips Dabney (1865-1952), then Charles Donch (né Charles Bernard Donch; 1858–1948), William Waldecker (1857–1931), an organist for several churches in Washington, and Samuel Fabian (né Samuel Monroe Fabian; 1859–1921), a concert pianist.

Great uncle: John Marshall Dabney One of Dabney's great uncles, John Marshall Dabney (1824–1900), was honored in November 2015 in Richmond, Virginia, at the Quirk Hotel, as a caterer and bartender – known as the world's greatest mint julep maker. The event was attended by notable community members and one of his great-great granddaughters, Jennifer Hardy (née Jennifer Dehaven Jackson). Jennifer's mother (great-granddaughter-in-law of John Marshall Dabney), Mary Hinkson (1925–2014), was an internationally celebrated modern dancer. His legacy was the subject of the a 23-minute documentary released in 2017, The Hail-Storm: John Dabney in Virginia, by Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren.