The Bamboo Bar at the famous Oriental Hotel was set up in 1953 during a period when the hotel had several owners, including pioneering photographer and social activist Germaine Krull, and the art collector and silk king Jim Thompson. It quickly became one of the Bangkok's top nightclubs, known for its live jazz sessions.
One of the first musicians to enjoy a long residency at the club was the American jazz and boogie woogie pianist Maurice Rocco, who was billed during his heyday in the US during the 1940s and early 1950s as "Maurice Rocco and His Rockin' Rhythm". Although he made tours to Europe and Southeast Asia in the 1950s, he permanently left the US in the late 1950s, eventually finding his way to Bangkok where he remained until his murder in 1976.
Benjamin Tausig, an associate professor of music at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the author of Bangkok Is Ringing: Sound, Protest, And Constraint traces Rocco's enigmatic story in his fascinating new book Maurice Rocco, Transnational Nightlife, And The Making Of Cold War Intimacies (Duke University Press).
Rocco is one of the early pioneers of rock'n'roll who does not appear in most histories of the genre's origins. Until relatively recently, other key pioneers like Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Professor Longhair were not known, but at least now we know what they did and how. Rocco, a gay black musician, was a top Hollywood pianist who made several Soundies -- short films that were supposed to showcase jazz performances, rather like early music videos. The films were shown in consoles in speakeasies and bars. He entertained troops during World War II and released several records (up to 1946). One I'm keen to hear is Rumboogie from 1940 (the Spanish tinge as Jelly Roll Morton called the inclusion of Latin rhythms into rhythm and blues).
While Rocco was known as a gifted technical pianist, he did not have the swing of some other boogie woogie (and earlier stride) pianists, but he did have an action-packed performing style. He stood at the piano and really attacked the instrument and in the process probably inspired rock'n'rollers like Little Richard and later Jerry Lee Lewis. But the emergence of rock'n'roll in the 1950s led to a downturn in the jazz and rhythm and blues markets. As a result, Rocco went on overseas tours and after 1959, never returned to play in the US. But Tausig's book is not a musical biography -- there are historical and archival gaps in Rocco's story, so it would have to be incomplete. What the author has done instead is to open up the narrative to consider the history of the "transnational encounters between Thais and Americans" between 1959-1976 that saw the escalation of conflict in Vietnam, the establishment of many US military bases in Thailand and the eventual withdrawal of US military forces in 1976. Rocco was present in Thailand during the entire period of the war as an active and privileged Westerner.
Tausig outlines the rapid development of Thailand's entertainment industry that came as the result of military bases, especially in the Northeast, and the development that followed in the form of road building and related projects. He looks at how the entertainment industry developed in Bangkok and places like Korat, which hosted not just military engineers but also places like Camp Friendship, which hosted thousands of military personnel.
The effects of the US presence in Thailand influenced employment, popular culture and entertainment, food and media, and personal and intimate transnational relations between the Americans and Thais. Services and facilities to cater to US servicemen were quickly developed. Several of my Thai musician friends -- the older ones -- have regaled me with tales of learning how to play soul and rock music on US bases (and how to dodge chairs when fights started!).
Tausig uses the example of Petch Phin Thong Band, a key driver of the modern molam sound, and the well-known Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band, to show how these processes work and how they persist to the present.
The author argues the relationship between the US and Thailand is a neo-colonial one that developed during the Cold War and was accelerated during the Vietnam War. By looking at how nightlife developed during the period of Maurice Rocco's life in Thailand, Tausig reveals the neo-colonial roots of Thailand's huge entertainment industry and how they persist to the present day.
Maurice Rocco's ashes were sent back to his hometown in 1976, so that he could be buried next to his parents, but his grave was left unmarked. It would remain that way until an Ohio Historical Marker to Maurice Rocco was added to his plot in Woodside Cemetery, Oxford. He finally got his due.
John Clewley can be contacted at clewley.john@gmail.com.
