III D. THE 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 , 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:

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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 . 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.

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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 after WW 2. After lengthy negotiations he succeeded in obtaining permission from both the Library of Congress and the 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, , Jack Teagarden, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, , 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 , 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. The ideas presented in Buerkle and Barker’s book are discussed in the first overall history of New Orleans jazz, Trumpet Around the Corner, The Story of New Orleans Jazz, 2008.

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Calloway, Cab, and Bryant Robbins, OF MINNIE THE MOOCHER & ME. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1976 (Gazell Gift) Dodd C 10147 The flamboyant Cab Calloway was as popular with white fans as with his nationwide black audiences in the swing era. His singing and unrestrained dancing were the feature of his fine swing orchestra, which included some of jazz’s finest talents, and was at the same time the incubator for young musicians like Dizzy Gillespie. Calloway also brought an insider’s view to the discussions of the period over the new “hip” language of jazz and the “hipster” (or “hepster”). The book reprints his compilation The New Cab Calloway’s Hepsters Dictionary from 1944. The illustrations in the book included stunning double-page photos of early night club reviews, and anyone interested in the social history of Harlem will find the map from 1933 by Harlem artist E. Simms Campbell that is used as endpapers to be indispensable. Calloway had a second career as an entertainer and actor, and his unforgettable interpretations of the role of “Sportin’ Life” in revivals of the opera Porgy and Bess or as “Horace Vandergelder” in Hello, Dolly! brought him before new and even larger audiences. His memoir is a major contribution to our understanding of a complex era and a complex man, and the book includes frank reminiscences by his children which emphasize his emotional responses to the successes and failures of their own lives. The title refers to his greatest hit as a recording artist, his own composition “Minnie the Moocher,” who - as anyone from the 1930s could have told you - was “a low down hoochie coocher.”

Cole, Bill, MILES DAVIS, A Musical Biography. New York: William Morrow & Co, Inc. 1974 (Gazell Gift) Dodd A 9635 This is introduced on the dust jacket as “the first comprehensive study of the work and the life of one of the true geniuses of African-American music.” Although Cole does discuss some of the personal aspects of Davis’ career, the emphasis in the text is on the development of Davis as a jazz artist. It is useful particularly for its focus on the recordings Davis made before his experiments with electronic fusion style later in the 1960s. Cole also sorts out the complications of Davis’ relationships with other musicians, among them saxophonists John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins.

Dance, Stanley, THE WORLD OF SWING, Volume 1. New York: Charles Scribner’s’ Sons, 1974 (Gazell Gift) Dodd C 10146 As the history of jazz became a lengthier area of study, and as jazz experienced a fracturing into often emotionally antagonistic stylistic camps, many writers chose to devote their energies to a single jazz era or style. English writer Stanley Dance, another of an early generation of European intellectuals who wrote extensively about jazz, became identified with the era of the great swing orchestras, and this book followed his earlier study of . Although the book‘s jacket names thirteen artists as the book‘s focus, the volume is actually a series of portraits of forty jazz artists, largely based on interviews. The artists singled out on the jacket are - to whom the book is dedicated - , Jonah Jones, Roy Eldridge, , , Sy Oliver, Claude Hopkins, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, , Lionel Hampton, and Stuff Smith. The book is lavishly illustrated.

DeVeaux, Scott, THE BIRTH OF BEBOP, A Social and Musical History. London: Picador,

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1999 (Gazell Gift) Dodd C 10160 This is a detailed, balanced, and indispensable study of the development of bebop in the 1940s, with a wide-ranging perspective and an extensive use of the work of other writers and critics to help reach its conclusions. It is a carefully researched example of what must be termed an authoritative text. This copy is the English imprint of the first edition of the book, published by the University of California Press in 1997. The copy has also been unfortunately marked on some pages by underlining and comments.

Feather, Leonard, FROM SATCHMO TO MILES. London: Quartet Books, 1974. The English reprint of the American first edition of 1972 (Gazell Gift) Dodd A 9636 Feather was another of the active English writers who took American jazz as their subject, and following his move to the United States in the 1940s he became an important figure in the world of jazz promotion and criticism. For several years he edited the influential Encyclopedia of Jazz, among numerous other publications, as well as supervising recording sessions and occasionally performing as a pianist in the studio. Feather was widely known and respected throughout the jazz world, although his critical interest was largely centered on jazz of the current moment, and he had little interest in the historical jazz revival movements of the 1950s and 1960s. This book is a collection of sketches of jazz personalities, many of them familiar figures like Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, and Gillespie, but he has expanded the book’s rage to include the jazz promoter Norman Granz, founder of the phenomenally successful Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts and recordings, and the R & B. artist Ray Charles.

Freeman, Bud, “YOU DON’T LOOK LIKE A MUSICIAN” Detroit: Balamp Publishing, 1974 (Gazell Gift) Dodd C 10141 Freeman, who generally dressed as a business representative or a party guest, didn’t look like a musician, but as the dominant tenor saxophonist of the generation of Chicago musicians known as the Austin High Gang in the 1920s he has a secure place in jazz history. To other musicians he was also famous for his seemingly endless repertoire of friendly, cheerful and occasionally ribald stories about other jazz musicians. This book, lovingly produced by fans of Freeman‘s, prints many of his funniest anecdotes

Gottlieb, Robert, ed. READING JAZZ: A Gathering of Autobiography, Reportage, and Criticism from 1919 to Now New York: Vintage Books, 1996. (Gazell Gift) Dodd A 9640 At more than a thousand pages this is one of compendium volumes essential to any understanding of the development of jazz criticism and the social history of jazz itself. Gottlieb is one of New York’s most respected editors and publishers, and this book reflects the depth of his interest and the catholicity of his taste. The book is divided into three large sections, Autobiography, Reportage, and Criticism, and virtually every important figure in jazz writing is represented in essential writing about virtually every important jazz artist.

Guralnick, Peter, ed., DA CAPO BEST MUSIC WRITING 2000. New York: Da Capo Press, 2000. This copy is signed to a friend by Guralnick. (Gazell Gift) Dodd A 9633

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Guralnick is widely known for his influential history of Soul Music, and for his classic two volume biography of Elvis Presley. As editor of this Da Capo volume he has gathered a wide ranging collection of material, with strong pieces on jazz and particular to the country artists crossing into the field of R & B.

Haralambos, Michael, RIGHT ON, From Blues to Soul in Black America. London: Eddison Press Ltd., 1974 Eddison Bluesbooks 2. (Gazell Gift) Dodd C 10156 Although this is a book discussing blues and soul artists and their audiences, unlike the usual studies in this field written by record collectors and enthusiasts, Haralambos did much of the work while an anthropology student at the University of Minnesota. It is solidly grounded in factual material, but it manages, at the same time, to give a human face to the story with interviews and comments by people involved. What Haralambos has taken as a theme is the shift of the interest in the black audience from the blues of the 1940s and 1950s to the soul music that largely displaced it. He has spent considerable time with African American deejays, since he feels that they have been closest to the change. Although he has personal enthusiasm for the blues, as he points out in his introduction,

Styles of music, like other art forms, never find universal support. There is no such thing as pure art, which, by definition, would transcend the barriers of time and space, override the frontiers of cultures and subcultures, and satisfy that presumed common denominator, the human spirit. . . . The major implication is that we must study the audience as well as the music.

Hennessey, Mike, KLOOK, The Story of . London: Quartet Books, 1990 (Gazell Gift) Dodd C 10157 The creator of the bop drumming style, Clarke chose to end his career in Europe, spending many years as a busy musician and an admired and emulated cultural presence in Paris. Mike Hennessy, as contributor to the European edition of the music journal Billboard and writer on jazz for many other publications, was a close friend, and organized a group, “The Paris Reunion Band” to honor Clarke’s achievement. His book is a compendium of material about the presence of jazz and Europe, and at the same time it is a careful summation of the achievement of his friend. Remembering his long association with Clarke, Dizzy Gillespie wrote in his foreword to the book,

Kenny was a perfect example of mastering the old and combining it with the new. . . . We had lots of conversations about drums. I would show him some things and he would always listen. Anything I suggested he would try. He knew the secret of drums and he was always helpful to other musicians.

Hentoff, Nat and Albert J. McCarthy eds. JAZZ. London: The Jazz Book Club, 1962. A reprint of the first American edition of 1959 (Gazell Gift) Dodd C 10158 As the subtitle of the books makes clear, this is something of an all-star jazz writing jam session. The contributors to this fresh collection include Ernest Bourneman, Charles Edward Smith, Martin Williams, Nax Harrison, John Steiner, Hsio Wen Shih, Franklin S. Driggs, Gunther Schuller, Max Harrison, and Hentoff and McCarthy. Each of the writers

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contributes a piece relating to their own jazz interest, and each of the articles was commissioned specifically as part of the statement the editors were making with the book. It is a useful summary of critical attitudes toward jazz at this point in its history.

Jewell, Derek DUKE, A Portrait of Duke Ellington. London: Elm Tree Books, 1977 (Gazell Gift) Dodd C 10136 Since his first appearances with his celebrated orchestra in London in the early 1930s, Ellington has continued to fascinate English writers on jazz and popular culture. Jewell‘s biography is a useful introduction to the achievement and the enigma of Ellington, and is enhanced by Jewell’s personal memories of their friendship in the last decades of Ellington‘s career.

Panassie, Hughes, LOUIS ARMSTRONG. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971 (Gazell Gift) Dodd A 9638 Panassie was one of the first French critics to write about jazz, with his study Hot Jazz in 1934. (See the original French edition in the Archive). This is a short, affectionate introduction to Armstrong’s life and music written by a long-time friend who had championed Armstrong at every phase of his long career. The book appeared within months of Armstrong’s death in July, 1971.

Priestley, Brian, MINGUS, A Critical Biography. London: Paladin Books, 1992 (Gazell Gift) Dodd A 9637 As a working jazz pianist himself, as well as a busy journalist on the jazz scene, Priestly had written with insight and sympathy of Mingus’s artistic and personal struggles. The book includes many illustrations, an appendix of musical examples, illustrations of Mingus’s highly individual approach to harmonic structure, and a detailed discography of the recordings up to 1962. It is a detailed, solidly written discussion of the musical scene of the time and Mingus’s place in it.

Ruppli, Michel THE PRESTIGE LABEL, A Discography London: Greenwood Press, 1980 (Gazell Gift) Dodd C 10159 This is the third in Greenwood Press’s series of label discographies. The previous publications were the listings of the releases by Atlantic Records and Savoy Records. Each of the books in the series is what its title describes, a discography, simply listing each recording session with the personnel and the titles, but without description or comment. Although Prestige also was active in other musical areas, such as folk music and blues, these releases are simply listed, without details.

Simon, George T. THE BIG BANDS. New York: Collier Books, 1974. (Gazell Gift) Dodd C 10153 This is a “Revised Enlarged Edition” of Simons’ classic study of the swing era orchestras, first published in 1967. The book is a compendium of the bands active during this period, and unlike many other critics Simon is free of dogma or agenda as he turns from one group to another, presenting the main outline of their career and their important recordings. Many of the names are familiar - like Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman - but he is as sympathetic in his discussion of lesser known figures like Boyd Raeburn and

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Bobby Byrne. His knowledge of the music of the period is encyclopedic and his obvious familiarity with the music hasn’t dulled his enthusiasm. An essential place to begin for anyone who wants to know more about this colorful era in jazz history

Stagg, Tom and Charlie Crump, “NEW ORLEANS: THE REVIVAL.” Dublin: A Bashhall Eaves Production, 1973 (Gazell Gift) Dodd C 10155 The subtitle of this exhaustive listing is “A Tape and Discography of Negro Traditional Jazz Recorded in New Orleans or by New Orleans Bands 1937-1972.” Stagg and Crump, both of whom are English New Orleans jazz fans, acknowledge in their introductory notes that the recording activity in the city hadn’t stopped at the time of their writing, and although this compilation of session listings is more than 300 pages long, there would probably be as many pages of additional listings if the volume were to be brought up the present. If there should be a companion volume listing the recordings by white musicians the total weight of the pages would probably be equal to the Manhattan telephone directory. For anyone with a serious interest in the revival recordings this is n important glimpse into an era of discovery and documentation.

Stearns, Marshall W., THE STORY OF JAZZ. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956, this copy a paperback reprint from 1973 (Gazell Gift) Dodd A 9639 For many years this was as close to a definitive history of jazz that had been written. It was widely reprinted and was used for university courses throughout the United States. Stearns was a Professor of English Literature at Hunter College in New York, and the book was the result of more than thirty years immersion in every aspect of jazz to that point. Although the new directions that jazz has taken have altered many of our perceptions of Stearns’ achievement, Duke Ellington’s comment summed up what many people in the jazz world felt about the book at its first appearance. Ellington wrote, “Here is the basic history of jazz we have all been waiting for . . . as an introduction to the subject for the intelligent reader it is unsurpassed.”

Taylor, Arthur, NOTES AND TONES, Musician-to Musician Interviews. New York: Perigee Books, 1977; foreword copyright 1982 by Arthur Taylor. (Gazell Gift) Dodd A 4474 and Dodd A 9632 This is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the story of jazz and its artists. Taylor was one of the creative giants in jazz drumming in the 1940s, but he was never able to lose his consciousness of himself as a black artist in an uncomfortable world. He finally chose to move to Paris, unable to accept the racism that he faced in the United States. In his years of exile he continued to meet and play with many of the musicians he’d known in the United States and he began to interview them. Unlike virtually all of the writing on jazz done by white enthusiasts, this is the open, hard truth of the jazz life as it was lived by the black musicians who struggled to make a living playing their music. Although many of them had been interviewed hundreds of times, with Taylor they felt free to say things they had never expressed publicly to anyone. Taylor first published the book himself in Europe in 1977, when his manuscript had failed to find someone willing to publish it. For once the description of a book on the back cover is a real description of what the book is about.

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The smooth veneer presented as fact by white critics and journalists is stripped away here, revealing what the musicians really think about the role of black artists in a white society, the use of drugs by jazz musicians, (and) the nature of the creative process….

AN HISTORIC BIO-DISCOGRAPHY A Study of the Recordings of King Joe Oliver

Allen, Walter C. and Brian A.L. Rust. King Joe Oliver. Jazz Monographs no. 1, October 1955. Copy no. 47. 162 pages printed on mimeograph paper and published in Belleville, New Jersey. Dodd C 10578

Although for non-jazz specialists the term “discography” is relatively unfamiliar, it has been the essential key to today’s knowledge of the historical roots of jazz and the music’s development. What the term means simply is the study of recorded discs, and it has grown into a complex and essential body of knowledge that has been compiled, organized, published and argued over by a group of passionate record collections since the first “discographies” appeared in France in the late 1920s and 1930s. The basic discographies today are published in multi- volume editions, which because of the small number of serious researchers are expensive to buy and they are continually passed from collector to collector. Much of the focus of the studies has been on the pre-LP era releases on 78rpm singles. The early record industry was much more casual about its product than it became in later years. The records were generally released without personnel listings, sometimes with ficticious names for the musical group, and often there were variant versions released - the “alternate” takes. This study of cornetist Joe Oliver, who led one of the earliest African American jazz groups to be extensively recorded, was the first to use all of the tools of discography, plus a biographical sketch of Oliver’s life, an extensive discussion of his musical style and his influences on other musicians, as well as detailed listings of the compositions performed with the composers credited. There are also a number of Indexes, one of them an itinerary of the tours by Oliver’s Orchestra in 1934 and 1935, and another a guide for collectors listing the relative rarity of the original recordings made by the various groups led by Oliver. The interest in Oliver’s earliest recordings has always centered on the presence of Louis Armstrong, who as second cornetist in the band was making his first appearance on records, as were all of the others in Oliver’s pioneering Creole Jazz Band. Both Walter Allen and Brian Rust were highly regarded in the discographical field, and it was Allen who printed their study on his home mimeograph machine in Belleville, New Jersey, across the river from New York City. He worked during the day as a research chemist. Rust, who today is considered the dean of current discographers, was from England and did much of his research through a vast correspondence. Allen’s death from cancer in the 1960s was mourned by fellow collectors throughout the world. The monograph was printed on cheap mimeograph paper, with several pages of rare illustrations of Oliver’s bands included. and bound in a blue paper folder. The pages were stapled and it sold for $2.00. The number of copies known to have survived is small. Allen’s Jazz Monograph No. 2, published in 1958, was Jazz: New Orleans, 1885-1957, by Samuel B. Charters.

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