Lieutenant James Reese Europe didn't actually invent Jazz, though he did give it its name and he ignited Jazz Fever in France and all over the World

Bandleader, Civil Rights Leader, Union Organizer, Soldier, Lt. James Reese Europe was the Martin Luther King of his day.  He gave Jazz its name and caused Jazz Fever to spread all over the world.  He died senselessly just as the Jazz Age was starting and was immediately forgotten.  His is a fascinating, inspiring and ultimately heart-breaking story that needs to be remembered.    Listen to his version of "Memphis Blues"  here.

This is a story I did about James Reese Europe for Defense Media Network. Read the full story here.

The Road to Del Rio: First Stop - Knoxville, Tennessee

When Friend of the Devil opens, the narrator, Herbert T. Barrow, is already three days out of Knoxville, Tennessee. He'd been playing in a "society orchestra" in one of the town's posh resort hotels. Life had been pretty lush for Herbert. The pay was steady, he was living rent-free with the other orchestra members in the bunkhouses behind the hotel. But then one day he spots two men he thinks he recognizes from the prison he'd snuck out from. Suddenly Herbert was out the door, and behind the wheel of a stolen Ford with a radio that doesn't work, heading for the nearest state border. Adios Knoxville.

At the time,1933, Knoxville was the biggest city in eastern Tennessee. Unlike most of the south, Knoxville was highly industrial, and a manufacturing center since before the Civil War. With its large German and other immigrant population, Knoxville had never been a supporter of slavery or the Confederacy. Things boomed after the Civil War, but by the end of the 1920s, manufacturing was dead and Knoxville was on its way to becoming what John Gunther was to say was the "Ugliest City in America."

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Which isn't to say that Knoxville didn't have its nice side, which was where Herbert T. Barrow had been hiding out. Even with the Depression, Knoxville's posh nightspots and resort hotels never stopped drawing well-heeled vacation-goers. The Ray Covington Orchestra, which Herbert played trombone in, was just one of several "society" orchestras playing the ballrooms and nightclubs.


Below is an excerpt from  Friend of the Devil. Stay tuned, Friends and Neighbors! Our next stop will be Highway 61, Mississippi, heading north.

I take another big hit, like all the talk he’s putting down is just so much street patter, but the whole time I’m wondering to myself, how the heck does this evil cat know I was ever in Knoxville?

Stevens laughs. ”Oh, I know all kinds of things about you, my friend. Your name is Lowell George, isn’t it? You were second trombone for that lush dance orchestra that plays at the Starlight ballroom at the Van Buren Hotel. What’s its name?”

Stevens takes a big long hit. For the longest time he holds it in his lungs while keeping the burning reefer in his right hand as he flexes his wrist, like there’s a point he’s about to make as soon as he lets the smoke out of his lungs. I stare out the window at the marshmallow fog and wonder how I’m ever going to get out of this one.

“The Ray Covington Melody Makers,” I say like it was a long time ago.

I'm a Man of West Dallas

I got to admit, that guy has me steamed but good. And for the next half hour or so, the whole time I’m leadfooting it up the road, bellowing curses at heaven, hell and the whole goddamn world besides. To even suggest I fink out my own cousin! I mean the nerve of that guy!

Okay, I reckon since I’ve gotten to this point, I should explain something about myself in case you all haven’t already figured it out. Sure, I may dress and act like a big- city sophisticate, but when all is said and done, what I am, sir, is a man of West Dallas.

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West Dallas isn’t the same as Dallas proper. In fact, they’re about as different as you can get. Dallas has skyscrapers with elevators, hot and cold running water and an avenue downtown lined with air-conditioned movie houses. You want water in West Dallas, you best dig yourself a well or pay fifty cents a barrel when the city truck comes by every other week. Yes, West Dallas is its white trash underbelly at the other side of the Trinity River Aqueduct. We aren’t rich or modern or respectable, but damn it, we got our code. We don’t squeal, we don’t steal from each other, and we don’t betray our kin to the laws, no matter what.

I suspect right now, my Uncle Henry Barrow is back home at Eagle Ford, head bent with sorrow, because his eldest son, Buck, has been killed, and because he knows Clyde will soon also be dead. When that day comes, he’ll hold no grudge against the lawmen that killed him because he knows his boy done wrong and had to pay the price for it and that’s just the way things are. But, at the same time, Uncle Henry ain’t going to help them get Clyde. Neither will anyone else. In Eagle Ford and the rest of West Dallas, people don’t do that. They like to put us down and call us the criminal element, but fact is, most of the folks there is perfectly law-abiding. But the folks that ain’t, well, they all conduct their business somewhere else. In shantytowns like Eagle Ford, folks have a saying that all they got is each other. So no matter what anyone does, we all keep our mouths shut and don’t tell on each other the way better folks might. As a result, the cops hate us and the good folks with money and houses and nice churches to go to all look down their noses at us. But we don’t care, because we know who we are and we’re proud.

It’s funny saying all this, being as I am someone who’s spent his whole life trying like hell to get the taint of Eagle Ford and West Dallas off him. Jazz was my ticket out and soon as I could, I taught myself to speak and dress and carry myself so that folks wouldn’t see the West Dallas in me. Heck, I got so good at it, they didn’t even know I was from Texas. I was just this well-dressed, sophisticated jazzman who knew his way around Harlem and Fifth Avenue equally.

Of course, all it took was five seconds in front of Hamer and I’m back to that same mangy, old West Dallas mutt I swore I’d stopped being. And now to have that goddamn sandwich-eater showing up offering me the crumb of redemption, all I got to do for it is help bring down my cousin Clyde. And maybe if I was one of those churchafying, respectability-craving bastards, I’d have told myself, ‘well, hell, old Clyde’s as good as dead anyway, no harm using it to improve my situation a little.’

Well, thank you, but I’m still a West Dallas man and we don’t play them games, don’t sing them songs, so goddamn all of them to hell and Oklahoma for even asking!
(Excerpt from "Friend of the Devil," by Brendan McNally)

Captain Frank Hamer and The Last Standing Member of the Barrow Gang

For as long as humans have existed, God and the Devil have walked among them, endlessly searching for a virtuous man. Whenever they’d find one, which actually wasn’t that often, they’d get together and place some nasty obstacles in front of him. Then they’d make bets, sit back and watch what happened.

It’s impossible to say when exactly the two got bored with the arrangement and began to add side bets to spice it up a little. If they hadn’t, they would probably never have bothered with Herbert T. Barrow in the first place.

It’s not that Herbert wasn’t, in his own way, a virtuous man; he just wasn’t anybody’s immediate choice on the matter. He tended to do things on impulse, whether it was jazz, women, or stealing cars. Nor was he, even by his own estimation, particularly kind or generous. But then it was hard to be in 1933, when the Great Depression was in its fifth year and anyone who still had two nickels to rub together only had them because they’d run out of sympathy for anyone who didn’t. Besides, Herbert T. Barrow was an avowed atheist and whatever moral compass he possessed was strictly his own. Perhaps this was something neither deity completely grasped, or perhaps they thought they did, but were wrong. It’s always hard to tell with gods. Either way, that was their big mistake.

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The real subject of their wager was the legendary Texas Ranger, Captain Frank Hamer. If there was a single lawman in Texas whose honesty and incorruptibility was beyond reproach, it was Hamer. Renowned for his skills as a detective and a tracker with more than fifty kills to his credit, Frank Hamer was one exceedingly straight, tough hombre. His mistake was letting his pride get the best of him.

Herbert’s mistake was picking up a hitchhiker named Stevens, while running from the ‘laws’ in a stolen car. It was not the sort of thing he usually did, especially since Stevens appeared to be some kind of backwoods preacher. Herbert was fleeing back to Texas, Stevens was late for a midnight meeting with somebody at a crossroads near Tupelo, Mississippi. Getting him there almost on time put Stevens in Herbert’s debt, something Herbert wasn’t interested in collecting on, since Stevens didn’t have any money on him and all the things he was offering seemed like really bad ideas.

Like all good fugitives, Herbert was heading for the border, to a small city on the Rio Grande called Del Rio. While nearly everyone else was hungry and broke, Del Rio was rolling in dough, thanks to a quack doctor named J.R. Brinkley, who had set up a goat gland clinic, where his phony sexual rejuvenation cure brought in dozens of well-heeled suckers each day. To reach them, Brinkley built the world’s most powerful radio station across the river in Mexico, just outside the FCC’s reach. Beside him gather a freebooting assortment of preachers, clairvoyants, hillbilly quartets and snake-oil salesmen, all eager to catch some of the easy money that’s suddenly floating around. Herbert drives to Del Rio, hoping to join their ranks as a singing cowboy and even shill for products of questionable purpose.

But after letting Stevens off, things get strange. Herbert learns that he is being linked to the notorious Texas outlaws Bonnie and Clyde. According to the newspapers and radio news bulletins, he has joined them as a ‘criminal mastermind.’ This puts him into the path, first of Frank Hamer, who is hunting them down, and then of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, who turns out to be his much younger cousin.

Without wanting to, Herbert travels with the Barrow Gang and though he does ultimately break free from them and escape to Del Rio, Hamer remains on his trail even after killing the others. Eventually he shows up there and a final bloody reckoning ensues, and always with God and the Devil nearby, arguing endlessly over perceived violations and interferences of their bets. Herbert, having no use for either, vows to stick it to them both, and bad. Luckily for him, he finds an unlikely ally in Rose Dawn, a pregnant, unhappily married radio prophetess.

FRIEND OF THE DEVIL is a darkly comic, historical thriller with touches of the paranormal, following in the tradition of my debut novel, GERMANIA, published in 2009 by Simon and Schuster.

Friend of the Devil. A Friend of Mine?

It’s 1934 and Herbert T. Barrow is a jazz musician on the run from the laws, but he’s a man with a plan. He’s heading down to Del Rio, Texas to get a job shilling products and singing cowboy songs on XER, the “Border Blaster” radio station located just across the river in Mexico. XER is the most powerful station in the world, owned by J.R. Brinkley, Del Rio’s celebrated “goat gland” surgeon, who uses the airwaves to talk up his miracle sex cure. But when he’s not, the air time is up for grabs to a colorful assortment of preachers, pitchmen, clairvoyants and yodelers, each working his own con. Herbert hopes to join their ranks, hiding in plain view and living the high life as a singing radio cowboy. Only it doesn’t quite work out that way.

While driving through Mississippi, Herbert makes the mistake of giving a ride to a hairy-faced country preacher named Stevens, who tells Herbert he’s ten hours late for a midnight meeting at a crossroads. Being a musician, Herbert knows the story of the Devil at the Crossroad and assumes it’s all a joke. But Stevens is serious. He’s got an important debt to collect and though he’s penniless, promises something extremely valuable to Herbert if he gets him there on time. For reasons not even Herbert understands, he decides to do as Stevens asks. Driving down the road at breakneck speed, they push the morning back into the night before, arriving at the Crossroads just an hour after midnight, where some grisly business is exacted.

Had Herbert been any other man, he might have figured out that Stevens was actually the Devil himself. He might even have figured out that the young man he picks up soon afterwards, who seems to be carrying the world’s sorrows on his shoulders, was, well, the Other Guy; Stevens’ opposite number. Herbert might even have put two and two together and realized the two had been compulsively running wagers since the very dawn of humanity. But Herbert T. Barrow is an atheist, and his refusal to believe is far stauncher, more unbending, and more abstruse than anyone either deity has ever encountered.

The road to is set with traps. There is Clyde, his trigger-happy young cousin and his crazed, alley-cat girlfriend, Bonnie Parker. They both know they’re doomed, but hope bringing Herbert into their gang might at least get them back in the public eye and allow them to go out in a blaze of glory. Then there’s Hamer; Captain Frank Hamer of the Texas Rangers, the toughest, meanest, and possibly only honest lawman in the entire state of Texas. He’s determined to put Bonnie and Clyde in their graves any way he can, including bushwhacking them. Killing them is just business, but somehow, his quest to nail Herbert becomes deeply personal, even after Herbert saves his life.

Having been made pawns in a contest between the gods, Herbert now finds himself battling Hamer to the death on the streets of Del Rio. But just as things couldn’t be more grim, Herbert finds an unlikely ally; a pregnant, underage radio clairvoyant named Rose Dawn, whose sneezing fits can level a building.

Friend of the Devil by Brendan McNally buy it on Kindle