Half-Blood Blues

A jazz musician from Baltimore, Chip has a lot in common with his best friend Sid, but subtle differences make them foils to one another. Like Sid, Chip learns to appreciate jazz from a young age, but unlike Sid, he stays in the music industry after the war. While Sid’s complexion is light enough for him to avoid some racist treatment, Chip’s darker skin makes him a target not only in the United States but also in Europe. Whereas Sid is somewhat messy by nature, Chip is neat and always well dressed: “Even with his face falling apart he still the nattiest thing in my house,” Sid observes of Chip (23). When they learn of Hiero’s survival, Chip responds with the excitement of regaining a lost friend even as Sid is consumed by fear and regret.

Chip’s character arc involves his increasing ability to open himself up to others. A frequent joker, Chip presents a confident face to others but seems to use the humor as a mask to cover deeper emotions. Trivial as it may seem, whether out of embarrassment or otherwise, Chip refuses to reveal his middle name to anyone for years until Louis Armstrong scolds him, asking, “How long you been swinging with these cats they don’t know you name?” (236). On another occasion, he emphatically denies feeling any sorrow or regret for the soldier he accidentally killed in a fight. Whatever his emotional needs at that time, he goes on to develop a heroin addiction that persists through all but the last 15 years of the 50-year gap between the events in Paris and his return to Europe in 1992. Only as he reconnects with Hiero in the novel’s closing pages does he openly express the great sorrow and loneliness he felt throughout his life, from which music provided an escape.

Though he is a central figure in the novel, Hiero remains something of a mystery. His reserved nature limits the amount of information readers can glean from his dialogue, and Sid’s occasional jealousy of Hiero leaves us to separate Hiero as Sid sees him from Hiero as he really is. Even the basic facts of his life are up for debate; the information he provides to Sid about his father does not match that presented in the documentary, for instance.

Still, a few things are clear. First, Hiero’s identity as a dark-skinned German of mixed African and European ancestry makes him a target of prejudice everywhere he goes; the French would arrest him as a German, while the Nazis look upon him as an abomination. Indeed, Sid concludes that Hiero has “been out of place his whole life” (209). Physically, his youth and slight frame lend an additional sense of fragility and isolation, as does his dependence on Sid to translate Louis and Delilah’s English into German.

Second, he is unquestionably a musician of rare genius, earning him the sobriquet of “Little Louis” from Louis Armstrong himself (258). Almost from the first moment Paul ushers him into the Hound, Hiero becomes the group’s undisputed musical leader. Yet Sid insists that Hiero’s music was, at the time, still immature (and, at just 19 years of age, Hiero is the youngest member of the group). As described by Sid, then, Hiero’s character arc follows a typical coming-of-age route, with his music only becoming fully rich and deep near the end of the chronology. But this supposed change may have more to do with Sid’s changing perception of Hiero than with actual musical development, since Ernst and Paul are clearly moved by Hiero’s music from the very start. At the very least, Hiero’s increasing confidence and quiet strength, along with his total commitment to the music, demonstrate that he has the heart of an idealist.

The elderly Hiero who greets Sid and Chip at the end of the novel shows both continuity and change from the Hiero they knew as a young man. Changes of location, profession, artistic medium, and more fade into irrelevance as core attributes of kindness and wisdom appear clearer than before.

Delilah Brown is a Canadian singer who also acts as Louis Armstrong’s representative. She serves as Sid’s love interest and as a kind of caretaker to Hiero, even describing her relationship with him in familial terms. Problems arise when Sid perceives a contradiction between those two roles—a contradiction that Delilah assures him does not exist.

Outwardly sassy, Delilah’s seeming frailties are matched by her ferocious determination and force of character. When she sees a chance to advance her career, she marches into a club and talks smack to a legendary jazz musician. When Armstrong wants to record with the Hot-Time Swingers, she goes to Berlin to get them. When Hiero needs transit papers, she determines to procure them, and when Chip wants to bolt out of Paris before Hiero’s papers are ready, she insists on staying the course.

On the inside, however, Delilah remains vulnerable. She longs for even greater artistic success and recognition. Self-conscious of her stress-induced baldness, she constantly wears a headwrap, only removing it during an intimate moment with Sid, whom she asks on two separate occasions to say that he loves her. Her music also signifies deep emotion. As Sid recalls, “her voice was at its core a sailor’s voice, rough and mannish. Her low notes were bitter croaks, filled with muddy regret” (136).

Significantly, Sid identifies Delilah as a “half-blood” like himself, and Chip later postulates that Hiero may have named “Half-Blood Blues” for her. Whether or not that’s the case, the implication that she, like them, is an outsider struggling to find her place in the world seems perfectly apt.

As manager and clarinet player for the Hot-Time Swingers, Ernst provides a voice of reason to the band in times of turmoil and stands as an example of what could be accomplished by a concerned citizen acting to protect his friends from the Nazi regime.

Born to a wealthy German industrialist, Ernst disappoints his family when he falls in love with jazz at the house of his friend and eventual bandmate, Paul Butterstein. He devotes himself to jazz, even taking ownership of a club and managing a band. Time and time again, it is his judicious use of resources, whether it be his money, his club, his car, or his connections, that saves the rest of the band from trouble. Ernst is even willing to sacrifice his own happiness for the good of his friends, staying behind with his family to obtain the papers that Sid, Chip, and Hiero need to go to France. Once he is no longer involved in jazz, however, he apparently loses much of his interest in life and requests a position on the front lines, where he is shot and killed.

Ernst can be considered a foil character to Fritz Bayer, who, rather than sticking by his friends in hard times, abandons them to save himself.

Based on the famous trumpeter of the same name, Louis Armstrong appears in the text primarily as a mentor. His larger-than-life personality and incomparable musical genius make him an object of fascination to Sid, Chip, and Hiero, each of whom he impacts in a unique way. With Hiero, there is a sense of passing on the torch, with Armstrong even giving him his old trumpet. Chip, meanwhile, is thrilled to become a worthy addition to Armstrong’s talented crowd of associate musicians, even as he exchanges casual banter with him. Sid, on the other hand, tries to address Armstrong formally and finds himself unable to meet Armstrong’s high musical standards; Armstrong takes the rare chance to provide him with advice that goes beyond the realm of music.

The relationship between Armstrong and Delilah is more complicated. Though we rarely see them together, one thing is clear: Unlike Sid, Delilah is never cowed in Armstrong’s presence, nor does she bend to his will. Instead, they interact as close friends and equals. For all his good ideas, Armstrong never imposes them on others.

When Armstrong necessarily removes himself from France, his absence leaves an artistic gap for Hiero to step up and take full responsibility for the production of “Half-Blood Blues,” a further step in his coming of age.

Fritz Bayer plays alto sax for the Hot-Time Swingers. A large, gentle German man, he seems the least concerned about the Nazis’ rise to power and is the only one who hesitates to accept Delilah’s offer to record with Armstrong in Paris. While he certainly doesn’t condone the Nazis’ actions, he remains in denial regarding the urgency of the situation. He also makes at least one racially fraught remark when he jokingly refers to the black members of the group as “jungle monkeys” (92). He does, however, jump to Paul’s aid the night that he and Hiero are assaulted on their way home from the Hound. Shortly thereafter, he accepts a comfortable position in the Golden Seven, who are supposed to be the Nazis’ answer to jazz, much to Ernst’s disgust. As we later learn, however, he must also flee Berlin before long, and he dies alone, homeless and hungry, after the war. Fritz thus represents the segment of the German population who, despite misgivings, went along with Nazi programs and policies, realizing their mistake only too late.

Through the responses of other characters, Edugyan presents readers with a range of ways to assess Fritz and his choices: Ernst responds with cold disappointment, Chip with anger, and Delilah with pity.