One O'Clock Jump: The Unforgettable History of the Oklahoma City Blue Devils

One O'Clock Jump: The Unforgettable History of the Oklahoma City Blue Devils. By Douglas Henry Daniels. (Boston: Beacon, 2006. 274 pp. $27.95, ISBN 0-8070-7136-6.)

The Oklahoma City Blue Devils, an African American jazz band, was formed in 1923. The tubist and leader, Walter Page, the clarinetist Buster Smith, the vocalist Jimmy Rushing, and later additions such as the trumpeter Oran "Hot Lips" Page (unrelated to Walter) and the player-arrangers Eddie Durham and William "Count" Basie, made the group one of the most celebrated in the "Southwest" jazz territory. An essay by the Oklahoma City native Ralph Ellison, published in Shadow and Act (1964), celebrated the Blue Devils as an institution in the black community as well as a respected group in jazz circles for its collective virtuosity and hard-driving blues improvisations. Douglas Henry Daniels's exhaustively...