Private Enterprise, Allyship, and the Movement for Civil Rights

The circumstances of A Jazz Salute to Freedom’s creation also make this particular movement record worthy of more focused analysis. The album grew out of a partnership between CORE, Roulette Records, and Columbia Records. The production, advertising, and distribution of the record required access to resources and expertise that CORE did not possess. The civil rights organization had no recording studio, held no reserve of polyvinyl chloride or owned a record press, and had no expertise in the advertising, promotion, and distribution of commercial music. CORE’s ability to use a jazz album to raise revenue and initiate discussions on expanding access to black employment opportunities relied on partnerships with private enterprise. Morris Levy, the Chief Executive Officer of Roulette Records, offered CORE access to his label’s catalogues of past recordings to create the roster of talent heard on A Jazz Salute to Freedom. George Avakian, who led Columbia Records popular music division between 1946 and 1958, curated the material from Roulette’s catalog that appeared on the album and authored the liner notes. Leaders from two different divisions of Columbia Records, the Creative Services Division and Columbia Records Productions, provided CORE with the marketing expertise that contributed to the album’s success in generating revenue and expanding CORE’s reach.

While recording labels and civil rights organizations and leaders did work together to create the movement records released prior to A Jazz Salute to Freedom, those relationships were not partnerships. In the case of Folkways and SNCC, for example, SNCC simply provided the creative labor that went into Folkways’ 1961 The Sit-In Story: The Story of Lunchroom Sit-Ins. SNCC had a recording contract with Folkways, but Folkways owned the rights to the album that SNCC recorded. SNCC earned royalties on album sales, but if SNCC wanted to sell the album to raise money, they first had to buy it from Folkways.Footnote ⁶ Alternatively, in terms of producing A Jazz Salute to Freedom and taking the album to market, the relationship between CORE, Roulette, and Columbia was a true partnership. Each entity played a role in managing a piece of the supply chain connecting producers and consumers. Roulette provided the intellectual property and Columbia’s Creative Services Division oversaw the design process for the album, its packaging, and advertising collateral. Columbia Records Productions, who CORE contracted to fabricate the album and its packaging, went beyond its hired role and helped to enhance CORE’s sales strategy. CORE managed the album’s distribution, sales, and fulfillment. Sixty percent of the revenue generated from album sales was intended to be split between CORE’s national headquarters in New York and the organization’s chapters located across the country. The remaining forty percent of album sales were intended to cover the costs associated with manufacturing the album. Perhaps most unique about this partnership was that A Jazz Salute to Freedom was published by CORE. The civil rights organization was credited as the issuing label. CORE fully controlled the rights to A Jazz Salute to Freedom. Folkways, Dauntless, and Motown controlled the rights to the movement records they created with civil rights leaders and organizations. CORE was uniquely empowered in their collaboration with Roulette and Columbia in ways that civil rights groups and leaders involved in making earlier movement albums were not.

The fact that CORE, Roulette, and Columbia’s project was intentionally designed to help CORE engage popular music consumers about its fight for racial equality as opposed to solely accumulating profit elevates the relationship between the three entities from one of commercial partnership—an arrangement where participating entities seek to advance their economic interests through collaboration towards a shared financial reward—to one of allyship. Here, I am broadly defining “allyship” as cooperative arrangement where one or more entities offer another entity support as that entity works to accomplish specific goals. Support offered by allying entities might take the form of encouragement, the exertion of influence on any ally’s behalf, or by providing an ally with resources that can better position that ally to accomplish its objectives. In the case of A Jazz Salute to Freedom, the allyship that Roulette and Columbia offered to CORE took the form of in-kind assets and pro bono professional expertise. Roulette offered CORE access to its catalog and Columbia’s Creative Services Division and Columbia Records Productions lent their design and sales expertise. In a letter announcing the double-LP project to CORE’s supporters, Marvin Rich, CORE’s Director of Community Relations, shared that “…hundreds of people in the recording industry have donated their time and talents free of charge to make this album possible—as their contribution to the growing fight for freedom and equality for all Americans.”Footnote ⁷ By offering CORE access to assets and professional expertise, Roulette and Columbia became collaborators in the execution of a movement strategy and tactic. The two labels became allies of the struggle as opposed to simply serving as business partners in a commercial endeavor.

The collaboration between CORE, Roulette, and Columbia Records also demonstrates that allyship can have its complexities and contradictions too. While Morris Levy used his power and influence as a jazz club owner to help integrate jazz club audiences in the late 1940s and 1950s, he had a notorious reputation for economically exploiting the musicians performing in his clubs and recording on his label. Likewise, Columbia Records also had its contradictions related to its support for the movement. Concerned about the possibility of a consumer backlash, Columbia Records executives censored lyrics written by bassist Charles Mingus that were intended to be released on his 1959 Ah Um Columbia LP. Mingus’ lyrics were penned for a song titled “Fables of Faubus,” and chastised segregationist Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus for his 1957 interference with the desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High School. Columbia executives refused to release the album unless the song’s lyrics were suppressed.Footnote ⁸ Columbia’s allyship support for CORE in 1963 was also complex. Providing pro bono expertise to support A Jazz Salute to Freedom was not a directive that emanated down the corporate hierarchy from the president’s office. Rather, Columbia’s allyship for CORE grew out of a like-minded constellation of talented current and former employees across several different departments within the corporate behemoth. As a corporation, Columbia Records was the entity that pulled the constellation of talented employees together and positioned them to informally use the company’s resources to support the album and CORE. It is worth noting that, aside from a thank you message to Morris Levy printed on the inside of the album’s folded cover, there were no public-facing indications of Roulette’s or Columbia’s involvement in the project. While Roulette’s and Columbia’s involvement in the project may have been unknown to the larger pubic, both labels stood to gain reputationally within the smaller network of jazz musicians and industry professionals who would have been privy to their respective contributions.

Roulette and Columbia’s example of allyship adds nuance and complexity to our historical understanding of the Civil Rights Movement’s relationship with private enterprise. Recent scholarship on the Civil Rights Movement has reminded us of the significance of the movement’s economic dimension and the many ways that economic concerns shaped the course of black activism. Narratives of the movement share the stories of civil rights activists and organizations and their fight against small business owners, corporate managers, and the discriminatory policies used to deny African Americans equal access to both consumption and employment opportunities. Past studies of the Civil Rights Movement have tended to frame its relationship with the business world as antagonistic. Shaped by the devastating effects of the Great Depression, some of the freedom struggle’s early fights against private enterprise took form in local “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaigns. These campaigns were designed to use direct action protest tactics to compel white-owned enterprises operating within majority black communities to employ a workforce more demographically reflective of its customer base. Fueled by the 1932 passage of the Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act, which legalized the ability to picket employers during labor disputes, civil rights organizations like Washington, DC’s New Negro Alliance used the combined power of consumer boycotts and picket-lines to pressure businesses operating within the district’s black neighborhoods to integrate their workforces.Footnote ⁹ During the 1930s, “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaigns were initiated in black communities in major American cities.Footnote ¹⁰

During World War II, the conflict between the freedom struggle and private enterprise took shape in the activism of A. Philip Randolph and his March on Washington Movement (MOWM). Randolph’s MOWM united civil rights organizations including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Urban League, and his own Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in a campaign to pressure President Roosevelt to use his executive authority to mandate that all private firms receiving wartime federal contracts integrate their workforces. The MOWM used the threat of a mid-summer, nationally coordinated, mass demonstration of African Americans in the capital to coerce Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802, which officially banned racial discrimination in the defense industries, and established the Fair Employment Practices Commission to ensure that firms awarded defense contracts complied with the new regulation.Footnote ¹¹

The human resource offices of local and national companies continued to serve as sites of struggle after World War II. Alongside the effort to integrate places of public accommodation for black consumers, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference initiated campaigns in cities like Atlanta and Chicago intended to create employment opportunities for African Americans in white-owned businesses operating within black communities. The SCLC named their campaign for economic justice “Operation Breadbasket,” and between the program’s launch in 1958 and 1967, the program used the combined pressure of boycotts and protests to bring $25 million dollars of annual salary into black neighborhoods.Footnote ¹² The planning that went into the creation of A Jazz Salute to Freedom took place against the backdrop of the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the album would ultimately bring revenue into CORE while the organization, and its local chapters were in the midst of leading their own struggles against private enterprise to open work opportunities for black Americans. In the wake of the 1961 Freedom Ride campaign, many of CORE chapters in the north and west focused their attention towards fighting employment discrimination, and launched direct action campaigns against banks, retail stories, and the construction trades.Footnote ¹³ Indeed, framing the relationship between black activists and private enterprise as adversarial has been a shared theme connecting the pre- and post-World War II Black Freedom Struggle.

A recent cohort of historians has initiated an effort to reexamine the relationship between the freedom struggle and private enterprise that looks specifically at the struggle’s post-1965 period, when it transitioned into its Black Power phase. The freedom struggle’s shift into the Black Power phase occurred against the backdrop of a rapidly changing relationship between black socio-political organizations and private enterprise. The period between 1964 and 1969 saw the creation of a new regulatory environment that would potentially give black activists and organizations an upper hand in negotiating with the business community. The 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act, the 1964 establishment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the 1969 creation of the Office of Minority Business Enterprise provided black activists with federal laws that could be used to challenge discriminatory policies related to serving black customers and hiring black employees in court, and access to financial resources that could create new jobs through black entrepreneurship.Footnote ¹⁴

Laura Hill’s and Julia Rabig’s 2012 edited volume, The Business of Black Power: Community Development, Capitalism, and Corporate Responsibility in Postwar America, created the intellectual space where this work is taking place. Hill and Rabig, based on their own research and the research of the volume’s contributing authors, have argued for a “Business of Black Power” framework to understand the relationship between black activists and the business community. They characterize the “Business of Black Power” as an “unpresented collaboration among grassroots organizations, business owners, corporate executives, and government officials in the 1960s and 1970s.”Footnote ¹⁵ Their framework encapsulates the ways in which black activists and business leaders came together to find common ground around shared interests.

The volume’s contributing authors bring the Business of Black Power to life with compelling case study examples. Nishani Frazier’s chapter documents the origins and evolution of the partnership between the McDonald’s Corporation and the Cleveland, Ohio-based Hough Area Development Corporation to establish two black-owned McDonald’s franchises in the 1970s. Lindsey Feitz’s contribution to the volume examines the late 1960s relationship between the Avon Corporation and Jessie Jackson’s People United to Save Humanity (PUSH) that guided Avon’s efforts to racially diversify its sales force and initiate new lines of market research intended to help the company better understand the tastes and needs of black consumers. Hill’s own contribution to the volume examines the creation of the 1968 relationship between the Rochester, New York, headquartered Xerox Corporation and FIGHT, a Rochester-based black power organization focused on economic self-determination for the city’s black community. The two entities partnered to establish a new community development corporation called FIGHTON, which created manufacturing-based employment opportunities for African Americans with guaranteed sales revenue from Xerox as a buyer.

Beyond the pages of The Business of Black Power historian Jessica Levy has helped to reveal a cooperative relationship between the freedom struggle and private enterprise through the trajectory of Philadelphia-based black activist Leon Sullivan, and his evolution from local movement leader to being appointed as General Motor’s first black board member in 1971. Marcia Chatelain has expanded our understanding of the McDonald’s Corporation’s efforts to initiate black franchise ownership beginning in Chicago in 1968 with Herman Petty, McDonald’s first black franchisee.Footnote ¹⁶ Historians examining the post-1965 period have introduced us to examples of corporations who increasingly sought to partner with black activists and organizations. They have demonstrated how the relationship between black activists and private enterprise shifted from adversarial to cooperative. By examining the relationship between CORE, Roulette, and Columbia, this project intends to pull the work of these historians forward in time and into the history of the Civil Rights Movement. Future research into the archival collections of movement organizations and leaders, especially in the period prior to the 1964 passage of the CRA and formation of the EEOC, might uncover more examples of cooperation between the Civil Rights Movement and the business community.

After offering background context for CORE’s development, and the evolution of its activism into the early 1960s, this essay will detail the structure of the partnership between CORE, Roulette, and Columbia and the contributions that each entity offered as allies to A Jazz Salute to Freedom. The essay will additionally describe the marketing and distribution of the album in order to highlight the project’s success in both raising revenue and extending the reach of CORE’s political voice into the commercial market for popular music. Finally, this essay will offer an analysis of the project’s profitability. Again, A Jazz Salute to Freedom sold well and generated revenue for the civil rights organization. But CORE’s double-LP project was not financially profitable. The final section of the essay will contextualize the album’s financial performance within the early 1960s retail side of the music industry. The analysis of the partnership, marketing, and distribution of the album, and success it achieved in amplifying CORE’s reach is largely based on archival documents preserved in the Papers of the Congress of Racial Equality, 1941–1967.

The Evolution of CORE

The Congress of Racial Equality was established in 1942 in Chicago. Guided by a pacifist philosophy and a staunch belief in racial equality, the group’s interracial membership directed their energy toward using non-violent, direct action protest tactics to end de facto segregation in northern communities. The organization’s earliest protest campaigns focused on opening Chicago’s places of public accommodation to black consumers.Footnote ¹⁷ Following the 1946 Morgan v. Virginia Supreme Court decision, which ruled that segregating facilities supporting interstate travel and commerce were illegal, CORE launched its 1947 “Journey of Reconciliation” campaign. Two integrated groups rode two different bus lines to test compliance with the ruling in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. During the 1950s, CORE expanded beyond its northern roots as new chapters were created across the South. Energized by the wave of protest movements taking place during the late 1950s and early 1960s, CORE revived its effort to challenge racial segregation using non-violent, direct-action tactics. In 1961 CORE initiated the “Freedom Rides,” and renewed its effort to ensure the integration of Southern facilities supporting interstate transit. With the help of activists from SNCC, CORE’s freedom rides successfully pressured the Interstate Commerce Commission into enforcing compliance with court rulings mandating the desegregation of train and bus stations across the South. Capitalizing on their success, CORE began its “Freedom Highways” campaign in 1962. This campaign centered on integrating the Holiday Inn and Howard Johnson hotel chains and expanding lodging access for black motorists traveling across America’s highways.Footnote ¹⁸

As the plans for CORE’s first and only jazz album were being developed in the summer of 1963, the national office was turning its attention to voter registration initiatives in the South, challenging de Facto school segregation in northern cities like Chicago, and working with the other major civil rights groups to organize the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. At the same time, many of CORE’s local chapters were fighting to end discriminatory employment practices at consumer retail and service establishments in their communities. The CORE chapter located in Lexington, Kentucky, initiated a selective buying campaign against the city’s Sears Roebuck department store, where chapter members laid in the store’s isles to pressure management into hiring more African American sales clerks.Footnote ¹⁹ In Louisville, local CORE members picketed the Bell Telephone Company and Coca-Cola to open employment opportunities for blacks. CORE’s Seattle chapter targeted grocery store chains and used the combined pressure of boycotts and picket lines to force the A&P Grocery to end its discriminatory hiring practices.Footnote ²⁰ In St. Louis, CORE chapter members picketed against Kroger’s grocery store and Jefferson Bank and Trust Company to hire black clerks and bank tellers.Footnote ²¹

By 1965 CORE had grown into an organization with 80,000 members and 124 chapters. It had also significantly expanded its use of non-violent direct action protest tactics. CORE’s financial need grew in tandem with its size and increased scope of activism. CORE’s membership growth did increase the dues revenue the national office received from its chapters, but that growth also increased its expenses. In 1959 CORE only had seven paid staff members. By 1965 the civil rights organization had 137 staffers on its payroll.Footnote ²² The civil rights campaigns organized by CORE’s national office also came at a hefty cost. A July 1961 memo addressed to CORE chapters and friends shared that their membership dues and donations were helping to cover the cost of a projected $286,500 dollar expense stemming from the Freedom Rides campaign. CORE’s treasury was paying for the legal, transportation, bail, hospital, and communication fees associated with 267 arrests of freedom riders.Footnote ²³ The fees identified in this memo represented approximately 88% of the $323,296 dollars of revenue that CORE generated during its 1961 fiscal yearFootnote ²⁴. In addition to funding its protest campaigns, CORE still had to cover its general operating costs and the salaries of its staffers. Finding ways to develop new lines of revenue beyond membership dues and donations was key to CORE’s continued success.

A Jazz Salute to Freedom created a unique opportunity for CORE to diversify its revenue stream. The idea of producing and selling a jazz album as a way to raise funds made sense. CORE, along with the other major civil rights organizations, had already been beneficiaries of a half dozen jazz fundraising concerts between 1961 and 1963. Louis Armstrong, Gerry Mulligan, and Cannonball Adderley, for example, headlined a June 1961 benefit concert for CORE held in New York City. Concert tickets ranged from two to five dollars, with the proceeds going to CORE.Footnote ²⁵ Jazz music and culture also reflected CORE’s ideological beliefs. The music was an aural example of the racial integration and cooperation that the multi-racial civil rights organization worked to achieve. For CORE’s National Director James Farmer Jr., jazz was an example of black America’s ability to simultaneously express both a racial and national identity. While discussing CORE’s goals of promoting black creative expression, Farmer once suggested, “And we will make the American music, the Negro music, which is jazz, as Americans, as Negroes. We will be for ourselves, but not only for ourselves, for America, for mankind. And all of this is possible because we are making ourselves free.”Footnote ²⁶ The music was evidence of black American’s ability to contribute to the nation, in this case through the arts, without having to abandon or compromise their cultural heritage. For Farmer, jazz had successfully collapsed the contradiction between being black and American within the sphere of the arts. Farmer hoped that CORE could accomplish the same in the nation’s social, political, and economic arenas.

Amplifying Activism through Allyship

Marvin Rich and Val Coleman spearheaded this entrepreneurial endeavor for CORE. Rich was the Director of CORE’s relatively new Community Relations department, and Coleman was the department’s Assistant Director. The department had been created in 1959 in an effort to make CORE’s community outreach initiates operate in a more efficient style, especially with respect to fundraising and communications. Before the establishment of the Community Relations department fundraising had been a decentralized activity. Local chapters were charged with the responsibility of soliciting contributions to funnel up to the New York headquarters office. A Jazz Salute to Freedom was the product of new organizational changes within CORE’s operating structure that were designed to streamline its revenue-generating activities.Footnote ²⁷

Jazz producer George Avakian, who in 1963 was a producer for RCA, was the catalyst for this collaborative endeavor.Footnote ²⁸ In July 1963 James Farmer wrote Avakian to thank him for his leading role in the project. Farmer shared that, “I have learned, to my great pleasure, that you have generously volunteered your services in connection with CORE’s forthcoming album A JAZZ SALUTE TO FREEDOM.” Farmer also noted that he was, “delighted with the content of the album and with your excellent liner notes.”Footnote ²⁹ Avakian used his expertise to select the titles from Roulette’s catalogue that A Jazz Salute to Freedom included, and then framed their significance with the power of his pen in the accompanying liner notes. That Avakian played a lead role in a project based on re-releasing music previously recorded is not surprising given the nature of his industry experience. Avakian began his career in the recording industry in 1940 when he was hired by Edward Wallerstein, President of the American Recording Company, which became Columbia Records in 1947, to research the catalogues of record labels that the American Recording Company had acquired to identify jazz material that could be re-released. Avakian not only had expertise in producing re-issued material, but he also had the industry relationships needed to put the album together. As a producer and a division head for the popular music arm of Columbia Records between 1946 and 1958, Avakian would have had strong working relationships with the personnel within Columbia’s Creative Services Division, and with his counterparts at other recording labels like Morris Levy at Roulette Records. Avakian was the magnet that could pull the industry expertise and resources together to support a project like A Jazz Salute to Freedom.Footnote ³⁰

Avakian’s allyship and interest in supporting civil rights activism were likely rooted in the personal relationships he built with some of the jazz world’s leading artists during his tenure at Columbia. Avakian produced albums with musicians and vocalists including Errol Garner, Mahalia Jackson, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Mathis, Miles Davis, and Charles Mingus.Footnote ³¹ Many of the artists that Avakian worked with at Columbia were becoming outspoken about the racial discrimination that the growing Civil Rights Movement worked to remedy. Louis Armstrong publicly chastised the Eisenhower administration in a press interview for its failure to protect the Little Rock Nine as they attempted to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957. In 1959, Dave Brubeck canceled fifteen performances at Southern colleges and universities in protest after being asked to replace Eugene Wright, the quartet’s African American bassist, with a white musician for performances on their campuses. Other musicians that Avakian produced including Mahalia Jackson, Johnny Mathis, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, and Dave Brubeck were becoming active in the movement by performing at benefit concerts supporting civil rights organizations, including CORE. In November 1963 Avakian participated in a CORE benefit concert raising money for the four girls slain in the September bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church (Figure 1).Footnote ³²

Figure 1.

George Avakian and James Farmer at a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) benefit, 1963. Source: Courtesy of the George Avakian and Anahid Ajemian papers, Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Box 106, Folder 6.

Avakian’s desire to support the movement may have also stemmed from his personal exposure to anti-black racial discrimination. Avakian had his first jazz world encounter with anti-black racism during his sophomore year at Yale University. Avakian’s classmate invited Duke Ellington, and his legendary sidemen, Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, and Cootie Williams, to join them for dinner in one of Yale’s dining halls when the Ellington Orchestra was performing in New Haven. As the integrated party entered the dining hall a notable silence descended upon the room. As they took their seats at a table, another student stood up and hurled racial epithets at Ellington and his band members. The prejudiced student walked out in protest of having to dine with African Americans and took several others with him. Avakian was embarrassed and appalled by the behavior of his fellow students.Footnote ³³ Avakian had a similar experience with Mahalia Jackson in California not long after his 1958 departure from Columbia Records. Avakian and his colleague, Irving Townsend, attempted to take Jackson to dinner at a fine dining establishment. When Avakian, Jackson, and Townsend checked-in with the maître d’ they were informed that the restaurant was fully booked. Yet, other than the staff, the restaurant was completely empty. Avakian attempted to protest against their treatment, but Townsend and Jackson persuaded Avakian to leave and make other dining arrangements. According to Avakian, upon exiting the restaurant Jackson shared, “I go through this all the time. It doesn’t bother me. But I can see you’re upset. Don’t worry about it at all. These people will never change, but that’s the way it is.”Footnote ³⁴ For Avakian, Jim Crow represented a glaring contradiction. How could the musicians that he idolized be somehow unworthy to dine with? Lending his professional expertise to support an organization working to combat Jim Crow offered Avakian a way to resolve that contradiction and redress the racial injustices that musicians like Ellington and Jackson experienced over the course of their celebrated careers.

While Avakian may have been the catalyst for the collaborative project, the catalogues of Roulette Records served as the project’s foundation. James Farmer acknowledged the support of Roulette Records, and its President, Morris Levy, in a letter printed on the inside cover of the album itself. Farmer’s letter, addressed to the record’s purchasers, shared a brief history of CORE’s efforts to break down the barriers of racial segregation and explained how the proceeds from the album’s sale would carry that effort into the future. Before ending the page-long note, Farmer offered Levy a very public acknowledgment of gratitude for Roulette’s contribution to the record. Farmer wrote, “We are grateful to all of the artists on this album for their tangible support and more particularly thankful to Mr. Morris Levy, President of Roulette Records for his help and contribution that made this limited edition album possible.”Footnote ³⁵ Indeed, as Farmer suggested, A Jazz Salute to Freedom would not have been possible without Levy’s support. The twenty-four songs on the album all came from the rich repository of recordings Levy owned. The songs on the album had all been originally recorded between the late 1940s and early 1960s by Roulette and Roost Records, which Levy acquired in 1958. Music critic Russ Wilson’s review of A Jazz Salute to Freedom in the Oakland Tribune explained that Levy donated the songs on the album.Footnote ³⁶

Levy appears to have made two stipulations in allowing CORE to pull music from its catalogues. First, Levy asked that CORE not allow the album to be sold in record stores, which would have created opportunities for retailers to turn profits on an asset that Levy was providing for free. Second, it appears that Levy passed the costs of the royalty payments owed to the musicians performing on the record to CORE. In explaining the nature of CORE’s arrangement with Levy to Pam Hudson, the community relations chair of the Mid-Peninsular Chapter of CORE in East Palo Alto, CA, Marvin Rich shared that the musicians performing on A Jazz Salute to Freedom do not break their contracts with Roulette; contracts that would have required royalty payments stemming from the publication of their music. Records indicate that CORE made twenty-two payments for a total of $16,172.45 to Roulette Records between June and December of 1964.Footnote ³⁷

The thirty-one musicians featured on the album would not have necessarily had a choice in the decision to include their music on the record. Levy and Roulette had full rights to re-issue their music as long as they satisfied the contractual obligation to pay each artist royalties. Many of the musicians featured on A Jazz Salute to Freedom were active in the Civil Rights Movement. Sixteen of the thirty-one musicians contributed their time and talent to the movement by performing at benefit concerts for civil rights organizations, CORE included. Others, like Max Roach, took their support for the movement farther by recording and releasing politically outspoken albums. At the same time that Marvin Rich and Val Coleman were busy managing A Jazz Salute to Freedom’s sales campaign, Dizzy Gillespie was campaigning for the American Presidency as a way to keep voters’ attention on civil rights issues. While the musicians contributing to the album may not have needed to grant permission to have their music included, their participation in the movement is a good indication that A Jazz Salute to Freedom had their support. Wilson’s Oakland Tribune review reported that the musicians on the album were donating their royalties back to CORE.Footnote ³⁸

Morris Levy was a paradoxical ally for CORE. Over the course of his career Levy used his power as a club operator, producer, and label owner to help integrate the jazz world. At the same time, Levy also had a notorious reputation for economically exploiting the musicians that he worked with. Before establishing Roulette Records in 1957, Levy owned and operated Birdland jazz club in midtown Manhattan, which served as a key venue in the rise of modern jazz. Not only did Birdland provide a stage for a new jazz style, but the club also chipped away at the de facto racial segregation plaguing live music venues within the jazz world. When Levy opened the venue in 1949, he mandated that the club have an integrated admissions policy for its audiences. Most jazz clubs outside black communities still barred admissions to black listeners. When Levy expanded his club’s brand into the South, opening a second Birdland in Miami Beach in 1953, he carried the non-discriminatory admissions policy with him. Two years later, when Levy organized a series of tours that carried jazz bands across the country, he mandated that venues hosting his tours sell to all jazz fans regardless of their race. Levy additionally hosted NAACP fundraising concerts at Birdland.Footnote ³⁹ Partnering with CORE to help create A Jazz Salute to Freedom seemed like a natural fit for Levy, who had been working to fully desegregate the jazz world.

By the early 1960s, however, Levy had also developed a reputation for financially exploiting the musicians he recorded on Roulette’s label. In his history on the political economy of jazz, historian Gerald Horne described Levy as “a man of questionable ethics,” who was known to pressure musicians recording on the Roulette label to sign over their publishing rights to their original compositions. Levy’s alleged ties to the mafia and his threats to ban musicians from performing at Birdland, often produced enough pressure to sign over publishing rights.Footnote ⁴⁰ Levy and his business practices were under investigation by state and federal authorities between the late 1950s and mid-1960s, beginning with Roulette’s alleged involvement with the Payola scandal, where recording labels bribed disc jockey’s to play their records.Footnote ⁴¹

While Morris Levy and Roulette Records provided the music for A Jazz Salute to Freedom, Robert Cato, Morris Baumstein, and Les Wunderman, staff members of Columbia Record’s Creative Services Division, offered CORE the professional expertise needed to design the album, its packaging, and advertising collateral. The Creative Services Division was an internal division within the corporation that oversaw the advertising, art, literary (liner notes), and publicity for the albums that Columbia released. Again, their involvement in the project was likely an outgrowth of the relationships they formed with Avakian during his tenure at Columbia. Avakian would have worked closely with the Creative Services team to design, package, and market the jazz albums that he produced. Their expertise helped to transform the concept into a salable product. Robert Cato was the head of the art department within the division. As the art director, Cato oversaw the creation of album covers and the advertising of the records.Footnote ⁴² In a July 10, 1963, thank you letter to Cato, James Farmer wrote, “I am extremely pleased to hear that you have generously offered your services in connection with CORE’s forthcoming album, A JAZZ SALUTE TO FREEDOM. I must tell you how very grateful we all are for your help.”Footnote ⁴³ In many ways the album’s success as a fundraising venture rested upon the skill and talent that Cato’s art department could offer in spreading awareness of the album’s release within the larger universe of jazz fans. Farmer knew that access to Columbia’s expertise was invaluable. Farmer closed his letter to Cato sharing that, “It is a troubled, but important summer for this country as we move, inexorably, towards complete freedom and enfranchisement for all. Again, may I thank you for your invaluable help.”Footnote ⁴⁴ Farmer’s closing comments reminded Cato of the importance of his and Columbia’s allyship to the Civil Rights Movement and its goals. By framing the contributions of Cato’s time, energy, and expertise within the context of the tumultuous spring and summer of 1963, which witnessed an explosion of mass protest campaigns, President Kennedy’s call for a civil rights bill, and the upcoming March on Washington, Farmer created an opportunity for Cato to view his allyship as a part of the progressive march towards freedom.

Cato likely played a hand in selecting graphic designer Jerry Smokler to create A Jazz Salute to Freedom’s album cover design. Smokler’s design for the record’s cover fit its title. The front cover conjured the image of the American flag. The upper right corner featured a blue rectangular box, with a repeating pattern of white and red rectangular boxes falling below the blue box on the right side. The names of the thirty-one musicians on the album were listed in alphabetical order along the right side of the front cover, inside the cascading blue, white, and red boxes, from top to bottom. The remainder of the front cover was black and displayed the album’s title printed vertically, with each of the title’s five words printed on its own line. The design layout of the album’s title evoked the image of the American flag’s stripes.

After becoming Art Director, Cato hired Morris Baumstein to assist with the administration of the art department and the advertising. Before joining Columbia Records, Baumstein worked as the general manager of Irving Serwer Advertising, which specialized in high-end fashion. Baumstein was likely responsible for bringing Les Wunderman into the partnership with CORE. According to Columbia Records biographer Gary Marmorstein, Baumstein often worked with Wunderman and his advertising agency, Wunderman, Ricotta, and Kline, to coordinate media buying for Columbia’s print advertisements. Wunderman and his firm additionally had expertise in drafting advertising copy and organizing advertising campaigns for mail-order products. Like Cato, James Farmer sent letters of thanks to Baumstein and Wunderman during the summer of 1963 as A Jazz Salute to Freedom was being planned. In his note to Wunderman, Farmer wrote that, “It is wonderful to learn of the many people in your profession who have rallied to our side in these troubled times.”Footnote ⁴⁵ Writing to Baumstein, Farmer shared that, “It is my hope that the prison of segregation will be open very soon. Your kind assistance will bring that moment closer.”Footnote ⁴⁶ As with the letters to Cato and Avakian, Farmer drew Wunderman and Baumstein’s attention to the value their allyship offered CORE and the movement. Farmer linked their respective professional skills and experience to the struggle to bring Jim Crow to an end.

Given the nature of Baumstein and Wunderman’s expertise, they were probably the driving forces behind the creation of A Jazz Salute to Freedom’s nationally focused advertising campaign. The album’s national advertising strategy included using advertisements placed in print media, which were designed to generate sales through mail-order fulfillment. The print ads contained a card for readers to tear off and fill out. Purchasers were instructed to mail the card and a check or money order to CORE at 38 Park Row, New York 38, N.Y. The ads placed in nationally circulating print media helped to grow the album’s market exposure beyond the direct sales approach used by CORE’s chapters. Print ads and direct mail fulfillment helped to increase A Jazz Salute to Freedom’s revenue-generating potential.

The nationally circulating print ads proved vital in creating new opportunities for CORE to amplify its message regarding racial equality among potential consumers within the marketplace for recorded music. In addition to displaying pictures of fifteen of the musicians featured on the album and a tag line reading “An All-Star 2-Record Album for only $5.00,” one print ad also contained a letter from Marvin Rich addressed to the “Friends of CORE.” In the letter Rich highlighted the record’s political value and explained to potential buyers how their funds would be used. Rich wrote, “And yet most of your $5 goes directly into the CORE treasury for such solely needed purposes as bailing out jailed demonstrators…conducting workshops in non-violent resistance to segregation…organizing Negro voter registration drives,” reminding readers of print media that civil rights demonstrators were actively being jailed in the name of racial equality and freedom. Rich closed his letter with a subtle threat to those viewing the ad. Rich warned, “But hurry—this offer is good for a ‘limited time only.’ Not because we’re running out of albums—but because America is desperately short of time in which to find peaceful solutions to the problem of racial discrimination!,” implying that a “solution” would be found, non-violent or otherwise.Footnote ⁴⁷ Rich’s closing comments highlighted the growing sense of urgency propelling the movement during the mid-1960s.

In August 1963, the month before A Jazz Salute to Freedom’s national and local sales campaigns began, SNCC Chairman John Lewis conveyed a similar message to the two hundred and fifty thousand people amassed at the March on Washington in the nation’s capital. In a speech that subtly criticized President Kennedy’s proposed civil rights bill for its inability to effectively address voter disenfranchisement and economic exploitation, Lewis announced that “The next time we march, we won’t march on Washington, but we will march through the South, through the Heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We will make the action of the past few months look petty. And I say to you, Wake up America!”Footnote ⁴⁸ Lewis’ reference to Sherman, who burned his way from northwest Georgia to the state’s Atlantic coastline, as a way to characterize marches to come, highlighted a movement growing wary of waiting for policy makers to gradually introduce laws that would alleviate racial discrimination. Lewis, in his speech at the 1963 March on Washington, and Rich, in a nationally circulating advertisement for A Jazz Salute to Freedom described the nation’s reckoning with the goals of the Civil Rights Movement as a choice of alternatives. The nation could help fulfill the goals of a movement relying upon non-violent direct-action tactics today, or face an increasingly aggressive movement tomorrow.

A Jazz Salute to Freedom’s print media advertising campaign allowed Rich and the movement to carry that message of urgency to places where people might not have expected to hear it. People choosing to attend the March on Washington, or choosing to watch or listen to news coverage of the event, for example, opted-in to hearing civil rights leaders discuss the philosophies and goals of the movement. Readers of entertainment and industry magazines were exposed to Rich’s message in places where they may have been simply and solely looking for a leisurely experience. The ad campaign created an opportunity for the movement to engage an international community of music listeners with the philosophies and goals of the movement in new spaces.

The print advertisements placed in industry trade magazines like Billboard also included a call to action for industry professionals to support the album and CORE’s fight for racial equality. A full-page advertisement appeared in the September 21, 1963, issue of Billboard displaying the tagline “CORE needs the help of the record Industry to continue its fight for freedom and equality.”Footnote ⁴⁹ The advertisement shared that sales proceeds would go to CORE and highlighted the fact that the album, offering thirty-one musicians on two discs for five dollars, was a value. The advertisement also included targeted messages to industry professionals. In large bold letters the ad called out to disc jockeys and asked them to buy and play the album on air. The ad also called out to radio station managers and owners to buy albums and influence their disc jockeys to broadcast the record. In an all-encompassing call to the “Friends of CORE” the advertisement asked that they “join this dramatic fight” by buying an album and telling their friends. Reminiscent of the World War II-era posters produced by the United States Food Administration and the United States Treasury Department, which equated planting vegetables and buying war bonds to weapons in the fight against fascism, the advertisement for A Jazz Salute to Freedom suggested that buying a record would strike a blow against Jim Crow. Like the other print advertisements created for the marketing campaign, the ad in Billboard included the tear-out mail order card allowing readers to purchase the album.

CORE contracted with Columbia Records Productions to fabricate A Jazz Salute to Freedom. Columbia Records Productions was the division of Columbia Records that manufactured its albums. The division also manufactured albums for external clients, including religion and civil organizations and other independent recording labels. Columbia Records Productions must have seemed like a natural fit for this part of the project. The division already had a working relationship with Roulette Records. Roulette hired Columbia Records Productions to fabricate albums for its “Birdland Jazz” and “Golden Goodies Hits” series in 1963.Footnote ⁵⁰ Also, it would likely have been easy to shift the design work of the Creative Services Division to another entity within Columbia Records, taking advantage of a pre-exiting workflow from art and design to manufacturing.

Early shipping records indicate that Columbia Records Productions billed CORE $1.25 for each two-record set pressed, packaged, and shipped.Footnote ⁵¹ In line with industry practices, Columbia Records Productions likely provided copies of A Jazz Salute to Freedom to CORE on credit, which would have allowed CORE to settle their account with Columbia Records Productions after earning revenue from album sales. Between October 1964 and December 1964 CORE appears to have made a series of six payments to Columbia Records Productions for a total of $12,400 dollars.Footnote ⁵² Based on the $12,400 fee paid to Columbia Records Productions at a rate of $1.25 per unit, Columbia Records Productions would have manufactured 9,920 copies of the album. Priced at five dollars per unit, a 9,920-unit production run would have enabled CORE to generate $49,600 in sales revenue. The first wave of album shipments from Columbia Records Productions to CORE’s New York office began at the end of August 1963.

The Sales Campaign

CORE launched the sales campaign for A Jazz Salute to Freedom in early September 1963. Val Coleman outlined the sales campaign in a three-page memo sent to CORE’s chapter leaders across the country. Coleman introduced the campaign with an air of optimism, exclaiming that, “This is it! For the first time in our long history, we have a chance to make some real money from a brilliant jazz album which has, on its two records virtually every important jazz artist for the last 25 years.”Footnote ⁵³ Coleman then explained the cost structure of the fundraiser. The two-disc album would sell for five dollars. According to Coleman, two dollars of the sales revenue would be used to cover expenses related to the albums’ production and distribution. CORE would capture the remaining three dollars as profit.Footnote ⁵⁴ CORE relied upon mail-order distribution to fulfill orders originating through the marketing channels the sales campaign established.

Coleman’s sales campaign was based on a two-pronged marketing strategy. First, chapter members would directly market the album within their local communities. Coleman suggested that local chapter members host parties where they could introduce the album to friends. Coleman provided each chapter with mail-order leaflets that members could distribute at local community events and friendly retail establishments. Coleman also suggested that chapter members go door-to-door in residential neighborhoods and stuff the leaflet under front doors. Coleman proposed a profit-sharing model between the national office and the local chapters to incentive the participation of chapter members across the country. Local chapters could buy the album from the national office for four dollars, then sell it locally for five dollars, and earn one dollar for their local chapter’s treasury for each album sold. Coleman suggested that chapter members might be successful in selling consigned copies of A Jazz Salute to Freedom at jazz clubs.Footnote ⁵⁵ Every CORE chapter received two copies of the album on consignment, with the hope that chapter members would sell the two consigned copies to local disc jockeys, who would play the album on air. Approximately 375 copies were consigned to chapters in the New York City area, including the Brooklyn, Bronx, Long Island, Downtown, and New York CORE chapters. The Chicago chapter consigned 105 copies, and 100 albums were consigned to the Cleveland chapter. Ten copies of the album were consigned to the Boston chapter, and the Detroit chapter received 815 copies of the album to sell within their community. The direct sales campaign led by the chapters appeared to be the strongest in the Midwest and Northeast; 199 copies of the album were consigned to Morris Levy’s Birdland jazz club, and eighty-eight copies were consigned to Levy directly. In addition to providing the music for the album Levy assisted with the sales campaign.Footnote ⁵⁶

The second strategy of Coleman’s sales and marketing campaign relied upon using local radio disc jockeys to advertise the album over the airwaves. As historian Brian Ward has suggested, black radio stations and programs played a crucial role in providing the Civil Rights Movement with a mass communication infrastructure.Footnote ⁵⁷ Coleman’s campaign intended to tap into this vital resource. Radio stations and programs provided an ideal way to quickly introduce mass audiences to the new album. Again, each CORE chapter was consigned two copies of A Jazz Salute to Freedom to sell to local disc jockeys. Coleman also shared a scripted spot announcement that DJs could use to promote the album along with the two copies of the record that were sent to local chapters. The spot announcement instructed DJs to tell their audiences that “The greatest names in jazz…Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughn, Harry Belafonte, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and many others, …have joined together to present ‘A Jazz Salute to Freedom,’ two 12-inch Long Playing records for only $5.00. All of the profits go directly to CORE to help in the fight for racial justice.”Footnote ⁵⁸ The spot announcement guided DJs to explain to their listeners that they could purchase the album by mailing five dollars directly to CORE’s headquarters at 38 Park Row, New York 38, NY, or call a “jazz line” that CORE established to take orders over the telephone.Footnote ⁵⁹ CORE gained the assistance and support of several radio stations and DJs in promoting the album. Val Coleman sent thank you notes to WPAT and WABC in New York City, and RD1 in Princeton, New Jersey. Coleman ended each note thanking station officials for their cooperation. Valena Williams, the Public Service Director for Cleveland’s Tiger Radio 1540, for example, wrote to Marvin Rich and requested promotional advertising materials after hearing about the Cleveland CORE chapter’s plans to sell A Jazz Salute to Freedom in the community. Williams wrote, “We would welcome the opportunity to help promote the sales locally.” Giving CORE free advertising support offered Tiger Radio an opportunity to enhance their community service involvement.Footnote ⁶⁰

Coleman’s sales campaign and the print advertising campaign developed by Columbia’s Creative Services Division were also successful in raising national and international awareness of A Jazz Salute to Freedom, and by consequence, CORE’s struggle for racial equality. In mid-October CORE received a mail order request from Vernon Elfbrandt of Tucson, Arizona, who, in addition to buying a copy of the record, asked CORE to send him twenty-five to fifty leaflets so that he could help advertise the album within his community. Likewise, Donald Tucker of Cambridge, Massachusetts, wrote CORE and asked for two or three thousand copies of the leaflet so that he could circulate them in dormitories at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Boston University. Susan Schnapf, a student at Chatham College in Pittsburgh, wrote CORE and requested a copy of the album and accompanying promotional materials to help generate sales in the Pittsburgh area. CORE received letters from record stores requesting copies of the album to sell in their establishments. Washington DC’s Circle Music, Inc. wrote CORE with such a request. Similarly, Musik Thomsen, a record store in Copenhagen, Denmark, wrote CORE with a request to sell the album in their store, and for information on the export price that CORE might charge.Footnote ⁶¹

After seeing the advertisement for A Jazz Salute to Freedom in Billboard magazine, Hans Richter, President of Studio 9, a media company in Stockholm, wrote CORE with an offer to help promote and sell the record in Sweden. For Richter, supporting the album created a way to contribute to the fight to end discrimination against black people across the diaspora. Hans wrote, “You see, we here in Sweden are, strangely enough taking a very active part in the ‘racial problems’ not only in the USA, but mainly in some African countries where the problem might appear even worse.”Footnote ⁶² More than just a jazz album, A Jazz Salute to Freedom became a vehicle for the expression of international solidarity in a global struggle for the rights of people of African descent. The record opened new pathways for allies of the black freedom struggle to become involved. Richter explained that, “I have seen your advertisement in Billboard and regret not having written earlier. This is mainly due to the fact that I didn’t know how to help you.”Footnote ⁶³ A Jazz Salute to Freedom offered Richter the opportunity that he had been waiting for. The album created a way for Richter to use the resources at his disposal to support CORE’s efforts. Specifically, Richter shared his intention to publish an article on the record in the inaugural issue of TAPE magazine, which his company would begin to publish in January 1964. Additionally, Richter offered to coordinate mail-order requests from TAPE’s readership and have them air shipped to CORE for free.Footnote ⁶⁴

CORE’s Community Relations Department’s ability to manage the logistics of mail order fulfillment was not without its challenges. The department received letters from customers complaining that their checks had been cashed and had not received a copy of the album. M.H. Baker of Minneapolis, Minnesota, wrote CORE in mid-November 1963 to explain that while he had received a sales receipt for his purchase of the album in the mail, he had yet to receive his copy of A Jazz Salute to Freedom. Customers also mailed letters to CORE complaining that their records arrived in damaged condition. The complaint letters offer a glimpse into the geographic scope of the sales campaign’s reach. CORE received complaint letters from thirteen states spread across the South, Midwest, West Coast, Mid-Atlantic, and New England regions of the country. The geographic spread of the complaint letters demonstrates that the sales campaign was effective in reaching every region of the continental United States, and as a result, the album served as an effective means for CORE to engage the universe of jazz fans within that geography in a dialog surrounding its vision and goals for the freedom struggle.Footnote ⁶⁵

Following Val Coleman’s launch of A Jazz Salute to Freedom’s chapter-based sales campaign, Floyd Glinert, the National Sales Manager for Columbia Records Productions, organized a meeting with Marvin Rich and Val Coleman to review the advertising and sales campaign for the album. In advance of the meeting Glinert sent Rich and Colman a four-page letter outlining ten sales and advertising strategies for the album. Many of the strategies that Glinert outlined, like radio publicity, direct sales by chapters, and door-to-door sales, were already featured in the sales campaign Colman introduced to CORE chapter leaders. Glinert’s letter also identified several new advertising strategies that CORE might pursue. One of Glinert’s new strategies, promoting the album to large corporations as a gift option for their clients, customers, and employees, generated a novel opportunity for CORE to amplify the activism of its chapters, especially those in the northern and western regions of the United States who were engaged in direct action protest campaigns to end employment discrimination.Footnote ⁶⁶

While Glinert’s corporate gift strategy was devised to generate revenue through bulk sales, the strategy also created a pretext for CORE to elicit the corporations that it contacted to consider their role in black America’s struggle for economic equality. Dozens of the nation’s largest employers received letters from James Farmer describing the opportunity to purchase copies of A Jazz Salute to Freedom as a Christmas gift.Footnote ⁶⁷ Farmer’s letter highlighted the record’s features, two discs containing every key jazz artist of the last 25 years for the low price of five dollars. More importantly, Farmer’s letter asked the corporate leaders reading it to consider their involvement and investment in CORE’s work. Farmer opened the letter with language that made an emotional connection between himself, the freedom struggle, and the reader. Farmer wrote, “I am sure you are as deeply troubled and moved as I by the recent brutalities in the south.”Footnote ⁶⁸ Farmer invited his corporate audience to share his concern for the discrimination in access to public accommodation and the franchise that African Americans faced in the South, as well as the way in which non-violent direct action protest campaigns challenging racial discrimination served as a source of inspiration. Farmer also compelled his corporate audience to consider the role they might play as partners in the fight for equality. Farmer wrote, “If a number of large corporations will do this---we can make a major stride towards freedom.”Footnote ⁶⁹ More than offering the chance to buy a one-of-a-kind Christmas gift for clients and customers, Farmer offered corporations a way to participate in the freedom struggle. Purchasing the album was a line of activism and a statement of allyship.

Corporate leaders from over two-dozen companies including Proctor & Gamble, General Motors, Bristol-Myers, American Home Products, Colgate Palmolive, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, General Foods, Ford Motor Company, Warner Brothers Pictures, United Artists Corporation, S.C. Johnson & Sons, Philip Morris, Warner Lambert Pharmaceutical, Gillette, Campbell Soup Co., Lever Brothers Co., General Mills, and the General Time Corporation responded to Farmer’s sales pitch.Footnote ⁷⁰ The vast majority of response letters came from public relations managers, who acknowledged Farmer’s letter but declined the opportunity to purchase the record. Many companies explained that their policies forbid giving gifts to clients. Humphrey Sullivan, Public Relations Director for the Lever Brothers Company, a manufacturer of consumer soap and detergent products, for example, declined to buy the album on behalf of the company. Sullivan, however, said, “I know in my own case, as an old Chicago jazz fan, I intend to fill out the order form and get an album for my own collection.”Footnote ⁷¹ Corporate policies barring gift giving—and consequently, eliminating the need for the album—did not stop some companies from expressing support for CORE’s work. Dan Rogers of American Home Products, a corporate conglomerate managing a broad portfolio of consumer drug, cleaning, and food brands, responded to Farmer’s letter with a decline to purchase A Jazz Salute to Freedom, but shared that, “we hope the album will prove a successful fund raiser for your work and so hasten the inevitable resolution of a problem that concerns all of us.”Footnote ⁷²

Several companies that Farmer contacted did answer CORE’s call for corporate allyship. The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based General Mills, Inc., a leading manufacturer of consumer food products, committed to purchasing ten copies of A Jazz Salute to Freedom. Similarly, the Athens, Georgia-headquartered General Time Corporation also expressed their support for CORE’s activism and agreed to purchase ten copies of the album. The Cudahy, Wisconsin-based Patrick Cudahy, Inc., a manufacturer of consumer meat products, demonstrated their solidarity with the freedom struggle by purchasing forty copies of the record. For other companies, Farmer’s letter prompted deeper reflection regarding race and equality related to their own business practices. S.A. Shaddix, Associate Director of Public Relations for Procter & Gamble, the Cincinnati, Ohio-based manufacturer of consumer home and body care products, responded to Farmer’s letter by sharing the company’s recent efforts to diversify their workforce by hiring more African American employees. Shaddix also described Procter & Gamble’s recent efforts to increase the number of African Americans appearing in televised advertisements for the company’s many products.Footnote ⁷³ Similarly, James Farmer received a response from the Cudahy Packing Company, of Omaha, Nebraska, describing Mr. Edward Cudahy’s, the company’s President, involvement in local efforts to erode racial discrimination in Omaha.Footnote ⁷⁴

By fall 1964 requests for A Jazz Salute to Freedom slowed. In the opening months of the sales campaign interest in the record was strong. Early in the campaign demand for the record outpaced the available supply, and CORE had the challenge of maintaining an inventory large enough to fulfill requests for the album coming from its chapters. CORE chapters in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Baltimore, and Chicago were told that requested shipments would be delayed.Footnote ⁷⁵ The national office continued to receive requests for inventory from chapters in spring 1964. Douglas Jones, Chairman of the Oakland CORE chapter, wrote the national office in late March 1964 requesting an update on a request for 100 copies of A Jazz Salute to Freedom on consignment that was initially submitted in September 1963. Mary Hernandez, a staff member in the Community Relations Department apologetically responded to Jones’ inquiry and explained that they were out of records, and that she would fulfill their request as more copies became available.Footnote ⁷⁶ By fall 1964, however, demand for the record was in decline. In September 1964 Chet Duncan, CORE’s Western Regional Field Secretary, wrote the national office to submit a report on the western region’s recent fundraising activities. Describing summer and early fall sales efforts for A Jazz Salute to Freedom, Duncan wrote, “SHIT!…nobody…but NOBODY was buying this year. We sold a total of 20…check (cashier’s) in the amount of $100.00 enclosed…Last year we would have sold OUT but GOOD…Our only hope now is to get rid of them during the Xmas Season.”Footnote ⁷⁷ Duncan requested to keep the remaining copies he had on consignment in hopes that Western chapters could sell them.

Financial Performance

In total, A Jazz Salute to Freedom generated $48,317.84 dollars in revenue over the course of the 1964 fiscal year.Footnote ⁷⁸ But launching a record label, even with the assistance of industry-leading experts, proved to be a costly endeavor. Apfel and Englander, an independent Certified Public Accounting firm enumerated the expenses associated with the project at $52, 176.80 dollars. According to Apfel and Englander, CORE spent $5,473.28 dollars on fees and services, $3,112.50 dollars on mimeograph and mailing, $3,801.10 dollars on promotion and publicity, $923.85 dollars on telephone and telegraph expenses, and $28.85 dollars on travel. According to the accounting firm the “cost of merchandise” totaled $33,100 dollars. The firm also included salary and payroll tax costs, $5,427.13 dollars and $310.00 dollars, respectively, in their total expense calculation. The salary and payroll expenses were likely connected to Marvin Rich, Val Coleman, and the other staffers within CORE’s Community Relations Department. According to Apfel and Englander’s analysis, A Jazz Salute to Freedom resulted in a $3,858.96 financial loss for CORE.

A Jazz Salute to Freedom’s financial performance needs to be contextualized within the context of the larger record industry. The album’s failure to turn a profit for CORE was not rooted in a lack of demand among music consumers. Again, according to Apfel and Englander, the double-LP generated $48,317.84 dollars in revenue, which is 97% of the estimated total potential revenue that A Jazz Salute to Freedom could have generated from an estimated 9,920 units priced at five dollars each. Apfel and Englander also noted that there was no remaining inventory to be counted in their audit of the album’s financial performance. Ultimately, the album sold well, just not for a high enough price.

The collaborative project’s poor financial performance was driven by its retail price of five dollars per unit. In selling A Jazz Salute to Freedom, CORE, in effect, became a retailer in an industry where retailers’ profits were driven by sales volume. The retail side of the record industry was a volume business where retailers attempted to profit by selling lots of records at low profit margins. It was common practice for record shops to deeply discount—at or below wholesale costs—the sale price of records to attract customers. Some record stores were willing to lose money on the sale of one or two titles in hopes that a customer would take advantage of the savings and buy additional titles—ones that had higher profit margins for the stores—in a sales transaction. Bill Gallagher, Columbia Records Vice-President of Marketing, drew attention to the challenges with retail pricing during Columbia’s annual 1963 convention. Sam Chase, a journalist with Billboard magazine covering the event, reported on Gallagher’s address to the convention, noting that “while he recognized ‘low margin’ selling as an accepted part of the American retail scene he decried the fact that ‘the entire industry seems to be on a loss-leader basis now.’”Footnote ⁷⁹ In selling A Jazz Salute to Freedom, CORE entered a competitive, loss-leader, retail environment where per-unit profit margins were slim.

CORE’s pricing challenge for A Jazz Salute to Freedom becomes clear when compared to similar products being sold in the early 1960s. In the early 1960s Columbia Records released several popular music double-LP products including Dave Brubeck at Carnegie Hall and Tony Bennett at Carnegie Hall. Columbia’s 1962 release of the double-LP Songs for a Summer Night is perhaps the product most comparable to A Jazz Salute to Freedom. Similar to A Jazz Salute to Freedom, Songs for a Summer Night was a compilation set that contained performances of multiple acts. Specifically, the double-LP offered twenty-five songs by twenty-four musicians and vocalists. Multiple newspaper advertisements for Songs for a Summer Night highlighted a manufactures’ suggested retail list price of $9.98 for the stereo version of the record set.Footnote ⁸⁰ Similarly, double-LPs in Columbia Record’s Masterworks series, within the classical genre where multi-LP albums were more common, also had $9.98 list prices, including Columbia’s 1903 Grand Opera Series and Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 in E Major: Bruno Walter conducting the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. Columbia released both albums in 1963.Footnote ⁸¹ By extension, A Jazz Salute to Freedom, as a similar product with similar costs—from royalties to album jackets—also had a suggested retail value of $9.98. Marvin Rich, in a memo to CORE supporters highlighting the value of A Jazz Salute to Freedom’s five-dollar sale price, explained that a two-album LP “would ordinarily be priced at $10.”Footnote ⁸²

Advertisements for Songs for a Summer Night and Tony Bennett at Carnegie Hall also reveal that retailers deeply discounted their sale price for the album sets, which reflected the low-margin, loss-leader strategy described by Gallagher. Ryan-Evans Drug Store in Phoenix, Arizona, advertised a discounted sale price of $3.49 for Songs for a Summer Night. Park Central Shopping City in Phoenix, Arizona, advertised the album set for $3.98. Vine Records in Louisville, Kentucky, advertised the double-LP for $3.47, and L.S. Ayers & Company in Indianapolis, Indiana, advertised the album for $3.98. Discount Records in Detroit, Michigan advertised a sales price for Columbia’s 1962 double-LP Tony Bennett at Carnegie Hall of $6.64, and Mays Records in Nassau County, New York, advertised Bennett’s two-album set for $3.58. $4.98 was the standard list price for a single album recorded in stereo.Footnote ⁸³

At five dollars per unit, A Jazz Salute to Freedom was priced competitively compared to similar products at retail. That pricing, however, was shaped by a sales environment where retailers followed low-margin, loss-leader profit strategies. CORE could not afford to price A Jazz Salute to Freedom in line with the industry’s pricing trends. Because CORE mirrored a loss-leader pricing strategy in attempting to sell only one title, it’s not surprising that their collaborative project was not profitable. With an estimated production run of 9,920 and a total expense of $52,176.80, CORE’s cost per unit was $5.26. Priced at $5.00, CORE lost an estimated $0.26 cents for every unit sold.

In setting a market-competitive five-dollar sale price, CORE may have mistakenly forecasted profitability based solely on the $33,100.00 expense of the cost of goods sold. By that calculation, CORE would have earned a profit of $1.66 per unit, which is still lower than the $3.00 per unit profit that CORE described in the 60%/40% split between itself, Roulette, and Columbia. The album’s pricing error is understandable given that most of the expertise that CORE gained through allyship was concentrated on the production side of the supply chain. Avakian’s, Levy’s, and the staff of Columbia’s Creative Services Division’s experience and expertise were concentrated on the cost of goods sold. They may not have fully understood or appreciated the expenses associated with retail fulfillment.

Floyd Glinert, the National Sales Manager for Columbia Records Productions, was perhaps the one ally who did have insight into the retail side of the supply chain. Glinert raised concerns that Rich and Coleman had not fully considered the costs involved with advertising and selling the album. Writing to Coleman at the end of October, Glinert shared that, “I have expressed my reservations about the success of the record fund raising project based on the current marketing set-up,” and that “How to successfully finance such a drive on a less-than-shoe-string budget is a problem that I think we can jointly overcome.”Footnote ⁸⁴ Glinert’s concern was a driving factor behind his desire to join the project as an ally and go beyond the role of simply overseeing Columbia Records Productions’ fabrication of the double-LP on a contract basis. His concern led him to design and share ten sales and advertising strategies with Coleman—discussed earlier in this essay—that were cost-effective. The five-dollar price for A Jazz Salute to Freedom had already been introduced to the public when Glinert intervened as an ally. Raising the album’s price once the campaign had launched would have been challenging. He likely recognized that the project’s potential success as a fundraiser for CORE would now rest on maximizing sales. If CORE had priced A Jazz Salute to Freedom at the album’s list price of $9.98, the civil rights organization would have earned $99,002 dollars in revenue and $46,825 in profit, which would have allowed CORE to easily cover all the expenses associated with the project, assuming sales demand remained the same.

Perhaps the one minor financial benefit that A Jazz Salute to Freedom offered CORE was related to the organization’s cash flow. While CORE raised increasingly larger amounts of money during the fiscal years following CORE’s 1961 Freedom Ride campaign, their expenses increased in tandem. CORE appeared to spend money as soon as it came in. According to historians August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, Marvin Rich was “…constantly juggling to bring in a few extra dollars to meet bills as they came due.”Footnote ⁸⁵ Maintaining a positive cash flow was critical to CORE’s financial stability, especially given that the pace of expenditures matched the pace of income. A Jazz Salute to Freedom, over the course of its sales campaign, contributed to CORE’s ability to maintain a positive cash flow. For the period between June 1, 1963, and October 31, 1963, for example, CORE raised $392,218.80 dollars in revenue and spent $382,690.75, which resulted in a $8,528.05 surplus. During that same period A Jazz Salute to Freedom generated $25,128.65 in sales revenue. Without the income derived from the album CORE would have operated at a $15,600.60 loss. Album sales likewise helped CORE maintain a positive cash flow in November and December 1963 and January 1964.Footnote ⁸⁶