Iii D. the Jazz Component: the Written Word

III D. THE JAZZ COMPONENT: THE WRITTEN WORD TWO PIONEERING JAZZ CHRONICLERS One of the truisms of jazz history is that from its beginnings the European response to this quintessentially American music has been more enthusiastic and intellectually vital than the more commercially oriented interest of the American music market. Today in Europe jazz is considered another serious musical idiom, and it is presented with much of the respect shown to classical music. The first book generally considered to be a serious study of jazz, On the Frontiers of Jazz, was published in 1932 by Robert Goffin, a lawyer and poet who was part of Brussels’ avant-garde. The most comprehensive discography of jazz recordings has for many years been produced by Brian Rust, a researcher in England, and much of the serious reissue of historical jazz recordings today is produced by small, idealistic English companies. These two French writers, Hughes Panassie and Charles Delaunay, whose work began appearing in the 1930s, were part of a generation whose pioneering work gave a new direction and focus to the growing interest in jazz as a new art. Delaunay, Charles. Hot Discography: 1938 Edition. Paris: Editions Jazz Hot, 1938. This copy is one of 30 specially bound copies. Dodd A 9631 and Dodd B 5586 Charles Delaunay was typical of the many French intellectuals who were instinctively drawn to jazz. As the son of the artists Robert and Sonia Delaunay, the music was already part of his childhood. In the same year as this volume he also published his personal story about his involvement with jazz, About Life and Jazz. He edited the first edition of his ground-breaking discography in 1936, but as a professor of the Music Academy of Bucharest stated in his introductory note, comparing the first edition with this revised volume, “What was a mere attempt, has become as complete a success as is humanly possible.” The listings of musicians and recordings is extensive and balanced, though the attempt to sort the recordings by jazz styles occasionally leads to some confusion. The recordings of the New Orleans jazz pioneer King Oliver, for example, are divided between two categories, an early listing in “The Originators of Hot Style,” while his later recordings appear hundreds of pages later in a category titled “Miscellaneous.” Despite its shortcomings, however, Delaunay’s volume has the enthusiasm and the perception of someone for whom jazz is more than simply a popular music expression. It’s no surprise that the epigraph for the volume is a verse of a poem by Stephane Mallarme. Panassie, Hughes, with an introduction by Louis Armstrong. Le Jazz Hot. Paris: Editions R.-A. Correa, 1934. This copy is one of 60 specially bound copies. Clipping “Le Jazz Hot” separated. See III.D. Dodd C 10154 In its many English translations this was one of the most widely read of the early jazz studies. Panassie went on to a busy career writing about and promoting jazz and its artists, and with this book he took a decisive step toward crediting many of the most important innovations in jazz styles to its African American performers. Louis Armstrong’s colorful comment in the introduction to the book conveys some of the feeling the jazz world had for Panassie and his enthusiastic response to the music. Armstrong wrote in part: 654 I am quite sure you will enjoy reading this book because Mr. Panassie never misses when it comes to judging a hot record or its player. And knows them all. I have been asked hundreds of times if I thought “Hot Music” would die out. I said NO INDEED. I should say: “Hot Music” will last for ever. A SWEDISH GIFT In the spring of 2007 Dag Haeggqvist of Gazell Music, Stockholm, presented the Archive with a number of jazz titles. His career in the record industry had begun when he set up his own company to import Miles Davis albums into Sweden when he was only fifteen, and the cartons that arrived at the door of his parents‘ apartment had to be stored under his bed. Although he continues to have a strong interest in jazz, these were second copies in his own extensive library of books relating to jazz and African American musical culture. He had recently acquired the collection of a noted Swedish jazz writer and found that there were duplications in the two collections. The titles given to the Archive by Mr. Haeggvist are identified with the words “Gazell Gift.” Albertson, Chris, BESSIE, A Biography. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1972 (Gazell Gift) Dodd C 10138 and Dodd C 10558 Albertson’s book is a lavishly illustrated, carefully researched biography of Bessie Smith, the “Empress of the Blues” that reads with the color and emotion of a novel. It hides nothing about her tempestuous life while emphasizing the greatness of her musical artistry. It also lays to rest the accusations that at the time of her fatal accident in Mississippi in 1937 she was denied admission to the Clarksdale white hospital. Witnesses and the ambulance attendant confirm that she was driven immediately to the “colored” hospital which was only a short distance from the town’s other hospital. Basie, William “Count”, As told to Albert Murray, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF COUNT BASIE. London: Paladin Books, 1987 (Gazell Gift) Dodd A 9634 Basie’s memories are clear, colorful, and authoritative, and Albert Murray has shaped them into a vivid story that presents a rich portrait of the early years when Basie was a beginning pianist in Harlem and his mentors were James P. Johnson and Fates Waller. His account of his years in Kansas City as first band pianist and then leader with the fine Benny Moten Orchestra are an indispensable picture of the development of the Kansas City jazz style in the Depression years. Bethel, Tom, GEORGE LEWIS, A Jazzman from New Orleans. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1977 (Gazell Gift) Dodd C 10149 Bethel’s book benefits from his life in New Orleans and his close friendship with the most widely known and influential of the musicians associated with the New Orleans Jazz Revival in the 1950s and 1960s, clarinetist George Lewis. It is as close to “authoritative” as a biography can come and is particularly illuminating in its discussions of the complicated relations between the city’s Creole musicians and musicians like Lewis who were classed as black in the city’s social hierarchy. 655 Blesh, Rudi, COMBO: USA, Eight Lives in Jazz. Philadelphia: Chilton Book Company, 1971 (Gazell Gift) Dodd C 10148 In this book Blesh develops themes he first presented in his popular Shining Trumpets, a jazz history that centered the story of jazz in its African roots and its African American musicians. Blesh was a passionate, committed writer, whose interests also spread from film history to the modern art technique of collage and a study of the artist William DeKooning. These books were done in collaboration with his companion Harriet Janis, and they also researched and wrote the first study of ragtime, the influential They All Played Ragtime. Blesh was indefatigable in the promotion of jazz, presenting a series of concerts and radio broadcasts in his native San Francisco in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and then starting his own small jazz record company, Circle Records, in New York City after WW 2. After lengthy negotiations he succeeded in obtaining permission from both the Library of Congress and the Jelly Roll Morton Estate for the release of Morton’s historic Library of Congress recordings, which Janis edited for release by Circle in a series of fascinating albums first presented in a limited edition of 12” 78rpm discs. Combo: USA is a collection of eight highly impressionistic sketches of Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Jack Teagarden, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Gene Krupa, Charlie Christian, and Eubie Blake. To create his portraits of these very different musical artists Blesh combed the journals and newspapers for interviews and quotes which gave his text some of the feeling of sitting around in a very lively conversation with a group of close friends. The book is invaluable for its glimpse into the critical attitudes and the popular response to artists in the golden years of classic jazz. Buerkle, Jack V. and Danny Barker, BOURBON STREET BLACK: The New Orleans Black Jazzman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973 (Gazell Gift) Dodd C 10150 The book is an important collaboration between Buerkle, who was a Professor of Sociology at Temple University, and Danny Barker, who grew up playing the banjo with the best of the black New Orleans bands in New Orleans in the 1920s, then went on to a long and successful New York career as guitarist with the swing orchestra led by Cab Calloway. He returned to New Orleans in the 1950s, once again becoming part of the city’s musical life. In the 1980s he was instrumental in revitalizing the traditions of the city’s street jazz through the group he founded for a suburban church, The Fairview Brass Band. The book is a useful corrective to the romanticized descriptions of the New Orleans jazz revival often presented by the young white - many of them European - musicians who flocked to the city during these years. The book is often angry and although some of its conclusions now seem to be overly emphatic, the points it raises have to be considered in any discussion of the New Orleans revival in particular and revival jazz in general. One problem for contemporary scholarship is that some of the most important voices quoted in the book are not identified anywhere in the text, making if difficult to assess their statements, particularly since these comments are often especially illuminating.

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