“I don’t think jazz should be called music."

By Richard White

Copyright © 2026 All rights reserved by the author.

Cover of a 1922 edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's book Tales of the Jazz Age, painted by John Held, Jr.

“I don’t think jazz should be called music.  It has no harmony.   It’s harsh and lacks dignity and beauty… It tears a piano to pieces and is suited only to a cheap instrument.”  This was the 1927 observation, and stern opinion, of Attica’s  Philetus Sheridan Tyler, nicknamed Leet, as quoted in the Buffalo Evening News on March 16.  For over 50 years, he tuned pianos in Western New York, especially in Buffalo, and across the Great Lakes region.  But just as jazz tore a piano “to pieces,” it started to tear Leet apart as well.  The Jazz Age and its associated Roaring Twenties, with its flamboyance and excesses in the name of hedonism. Tyler was a sensitive, proud, small-town American who recently served in the military in Europe.   The end of the war brought him to Boston, where he learned the piano business and provided him time to develop his thoughts on jazz.  At some juncture, he countenanced what he regarded as cultural damage, decay, and destruction that jazz created, and would continue to destroy our cultural landscape.  Opponents of jazz wished that it would vaporize. There was a mild, low-key stance in his resistance to jazz.  

Leet never staged a rally or addressed a crowd, and he was a guest on a radio show only once.   Nothing has been found about him accosting a jazz fan, or even picketing a movie such as “The Jazz Singer," which was released in 1927.  And he definitely did not define himself as a hero.  But for the juggernaut of avant-garde jazz performers and artists, there was a cultural stockade defended by a diverse but like-minded defenders, such as Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, to foil or silence the Jazz-ers.  It would be a misjudgment to contend that Leet was weak because he operated by himself almost universally.  He stood for and exhibited hardcore, country individualism.         

On occasion, though, the Tyler family journeyed beyond Buffalo not only to find a new market for piano tuning and instrument repair, but also to hold nighttime assemblies for discussion in a rented hall, exposing neighbors and friends to the dangers of jazz.  In addition, Leet often pointed out the names of three traditional songs, the type of which were necessary to preserve our national make-up.

They were classic pre-jazz songs.  First was “Annie Laurie,” a romantic song likely written by William Douglas.  Second was “Old Kentucky Home,” whose lyrics were written by Stephen Foster with the never-to-forgotten passage, “The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home.” Leet always included “Sweet and Low,” scribed by Stephen Foster, which calls upon singers to remember “the wind of the Western Sea.” He continued using them when he tuned a piano or sold one in his later years.

In the Twenties, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writings on the Jazz Era depict a rebellion against traditional values.  Philetus Sheridan Tyler from Attica fought the rebellion.

About the author: Richard White's articles have appeared in Civil War History, The Journal of Negro History, and other publications.