In 1905, the Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor published his Twenty-Four Negro Melodies, a set of character pieces that includes arrangements of sixteen African American spirituals for piano solo. Despite this music's lasting popularity, scholars have done little to contextualize Coleridge-Taylor's statement that he wished to create a Black parallel to Brahms's Hungarian Dances or Dvořák's Slavonic Dances; most see the pieces as reflecting the influence of Dvořák. Yet these character pieces diverge from both Dvořák's and Brahms's precedent by including source citations with both melodies and lyrics. Coleridge-Taylor's compositional approach and his use of citations is much closer to Grieg and Stanford—two other role models whom scholars have regularly overlooked. The citations also rebalance the interpretative framework of the character piece as a genre, and, like W. E. B. Du Bois's use of spirituals in The Souls of Black Folk, can support several explanations. On one hand, they provide hidden texts for these instrumental pieces and provide a first line of defense against intentional (and bigoted) misunderstandings of the music. On the other hand, they also act as reference points for readers who want to learn more about the African American spiritual. Coleridge-Taylor's concern with cultural authenticity undoubtedly resulted from his close interactions with American spiritual singers, such as Frederick J. Loudin and Harry T. Burleigh. In this sense, the Negro Melodies served as Coleridge-Taylor's intervention in ongoing debates among Black Americans about the value and legacy of the spiritual.

Leonard Feather (1914−1994) was one of the first (and only) prominent jazz critics to recognize gender discrimination within jazz and attempt to redress the issue. But even by the 1950s, Feather grew frustrated with his inability to effect meaningful change for women musicians. He could not understand why women like Beryl Booker, Melba Liston, Vi Redd, and others did not receive more attention, even after he arranged tours and produced record dates for them (Feather 1987). The privileged position he held within the music industry—a position he had cultivated and leveraged in support of other musicians he felt had been unfairly discriminated against—ultimately seemed to do little for many of the women he championed. Women jazz masters remain few and far between.

What does it mean to be a jazz master, and who determines modes of mastery? In this article, I examine some of the musicians for whom he advocated and how he advocated for them, including columns he authored, albums he produced, and Blindfold Tests he administered. To conclude, I follow Feather into the 1990s to examine how he dealt with who was to blame for jazz’s gender discrimination. In doing so, I reveal how jazz patriarchy maintained dominance over one of jazz’s most prominent decision-makers. I demonstrate how, despite his intentions, Feather’s embeddedness and investment in jazz patriarchy (in its ideological and commercial systems) resulted in a gender ignorant failure to critique the systems of mastery at the root of his connoisseurship.

Almost 100 years ago, Fats Waller recorded some of the most unique songs of his career: stride tunes on pipe organ. Operating out of Victor’s state-of-the-art Camden, New Jersey Studio—a former Baptist church—Waller recorded both solo and group recordings on the instrument, all of which were published in the company’s mainstream “popular” series. Such a designation was rare for Black musicians, who, in this era, were traditionally relegated to making “race records.” However, despite Waller’s inclusion in its popular series, Victor still intentionally limited his musical output, maintaining similar stylistic restrictions to those they placed on other Black performers within the race record designation.

Even though Waller had a well-known love of classical music, he was expressly not allowed to record these works. Instead, he was given the difficult task of adapting the quick-striking sound of stride to the pipe organ, an adjustment that posed multiple technical and logistical challenges. Building on the work of Paul S. Machlin, Brian Ward, and Allan Sutton, I argue that Waller’s pipe organ recordings not only provide further insight into the racial logic of the early recording industry, but that they also demonstrate how that logic restricted Black musicians’ ability to sonically and instrumentally experiment within the jazz idiom. Ultimately, Waller’s story encapsulates many of the larger discriminatory practices that Black musicians faced during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, while, at the same time, these records highlight a side of Black music making that is often overlooked in accounts of the era.