Statewide music-history collection
Jazz, Dance and Territory Music
This collection brings together substantial documented evidence while keeping unresolved questions visible.
About this history
This collection covers jazz, dance, stage, territory, touring, commercial, broadcast, and related professional ensemble activity, including overlapping African American, school, federal-relief, and popular-music histories.
Documented core records
Oklahoma City Blue Devils
- Developed in Oklahoma City after Billy King's Road Show disbanded there in 1925.
- Walter Page reorganized and renamed the group.
- Operated through 1933 from the Ritz Ballroom and toured the Southwest and Midwest.
- Made a Vocalion recording session in 1929.
- Must be treated as a professional African American territory band, not a municipal band.
Ernie Fields Orchestra / Royal Entertainers
- Ernie Fields settled in Tulsa after graduating from Tuskegee Institute in 1924.
- Led the Royal Entertainers in the 1920s and developed a prominent African American territory orchestra.
- Recorded “T-Town Blues” for Vocalion in 1939.
- Appeared at the Savoy Ballroom in 1942.
- Performed extensive military-camp and overseas-broadcast work during World War II.
- Later achieved commercial success with “In the Mood” in 1959.
Federal Music Project dance-band records
- Statewide African American dance band — existence documented; exact locality and identity unresolved.
- Ardmore FMP dance band.
- Shawnee FMP dance band.
Additional statewide research paths
- School stage bands / jazz bands, especially the 1960s–1970s era.
- Stillwater Big Band and later community/professional jazz records.
- Tulsa commercial and dance-band history beyond Ernie Fields.
- Muskogee jazz and Black institutional music.
- Ballroom, radio, hotel, theater, dance-hall, and touring-circuit history.
How records are distinguished
- Do not treat all dance bands as jazz bands unless repertoire/instrumentation supports it.
- Do not assign FMP program-wide dates as exact lifespans for individual local ensembles.
- Touring appearances do not make a visiting band an Oklahoma-based organization.
- Professional branded ensembles should not be reclassified as municipal/community ensembles without evidence.
Current coverage
Documented now
- Blue Devils.
- Ernie Fields Orchestra.
- FMP Ardmore and Shawnee dance-band existence.
- Statewide FMP African American dance-band existence with explicit identity gaps.
Still incomplete
- Full territory-band census.
- Ballroom and dance-hall network.
- School stage-band development statewide.
- Recording and radio relationships.
Sources used
- Oklahoma Band History research inventory and all-research-packets file.
- Oklahoma nonacademic bands history.
- Oklahoma and Tulsa County county histories.
- Federal Music Archive research.