[78-L] Lost Chords vs. Ken Burns

[Steve Thornton]

> This book counteracts the Marsalis/Crouch/Murray triumvirate 
> of jazz revisionists by presenting an alternative point of 
> view to the damaging Ken Burns "documentary," "Jazz." It 
> shows that not only did whites not universally copy blacks, 
> but that there was an equal interchange of influences. Such 
> white musicians as Leon Rappollo, Nick LaRocca, Bix 
> Beiderbecke, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Bud Freeman, Django 
> Reinhardt, and others developoed their own styles 
> independently, and from European and American Anglo sources. 

I'm sorry, I cannot let this stand. "European and American Anglo sources"?
No, that's not right.

It is absolutely true to say that there are a myriad of sources of jazz, but
to pretend that it is not at its heart, in its beginning, a black music is
ludicrous. Yes, white players heard what black players were doing, and added
their own creative ideas in their own playing. By the time you get to Bix,
for example, jazz was already spread quite far by, among other things, the
riverboat bands; but Bix didn't invent anything. He was a creative genius
and innovator to be sure but he certainly didn't develop independently. 

LaRocca's personal stories of how he came to "invent jazz" independently of
blacks is laughable. His motivation for doing so was probably equal parts
pride and racism. But, of course, LaRocca wasn't very good; and regardless
of how good he was, there is no way he came up with any kind of jazz on his
own, living in a polyglot city like New Orleans at the time he did, just a
few miles from Black Storyville.

Jazz is the sound of the already heavily intermixed multitudes of black
cultures of Congo Square running full tilt into the twentieth-century white
world. Whites PARTICIPATED in the resulting explosion, but to suggest that
they INVENTED it is simply wrong. I'm not talking about the world of Bix, or
LaRocca; I'm talking about the world of Buddy Bolden. This was a time when
racial segregation was being institutionalized in New Orleans, and the ways
in which blacks and creoles (both "white creoles" and "black creoles) and
whites formerly interacted (which was certainly not as equals, but was in
many ways richer than the Jim Crow era that followed) was replaced by a much
more rigid social structure.

The jazz picnics that Bolden played at -- and he played at both black and
white ones (until blacks were tossed out of them) were heard by all.
Everybody in New Orleans would have been aware of these sounds; it's a
cliché to say that "New Orleans was soaked in music" but it's true. The
white bands played traditional brass band stuff, and the black bands did
too, but they Africanized, or creolized, it. Somewhere in the middle is
jazz. 

I'm not defending Ken Burns. He left out 9/10 of the story. But the 9/10 he
left out isn't "well, it's really white music" or even "it's white music
too". The music is as black as it is possible to be; the ghost of sound that
came to inhabit the body of that brass band (and of course the brass band is
originally white, more specifically military) is the ghost of black men,
specifically the slaves that gathered on Congo Square, bringing in rhythms
from Cuba, from Haiti, from the plantations of the American South. From
Senegal and Congo, with some flavors of Spain and France and Portugal
brought with them.

Burns didn't even touch on this complexity, nor on the contemporary racial
situation in New Orleans, unique in the Americas. When jazz was incubating,
Creole was a separate race, neither black or white, but very nearly white in
its position and privileges. They were forced to choose, or rather had the
choice thrust upon them, when Jim Crow came in. And creoles who wanted to
play in "black" styles were often harshly punished, as were whites. But by
the time LaRocca came along, no one in the city could have been unaware of
who was who. Ironically, Italians in c.1900-1910 New Orleans weren't
considered white either; they, like the white creoles, were strivers towards
whiteness on the one hand, but ostracized into the social position of
"almost blacks" on the other.

This is all an incredibly complex business, and it's especially difficult
because New Orleans is so different from the rest of the US, where jazz had
to spread before anyone would take notice of it. Indianapolis and Chicago
and New York didn't have a creole question, or Napoleonic law, or waves of
French and Spanish slaves. One of the most interesting areas of history
nowadays is the study of where, exactly, these slaves came from; "Africa" is
a poor answer, because Africa is vast and heterogenous. Some African slaves
came from places where drums were predominant; some from places where
singing, or stringed instruments were more common. These cultures intermixed
in the Americas, not so much in the US but in Cuba and Haiti; and when
political upheavals brought these slaves to New Orleans -- but not Chicago
or New York -- more mixing occurred.

Ken Burns's program was not racist. It was vastly oversimplifying, and
relied far too much on a few voices. It's understandable that some see an
agenda there. But both Marsalis and Crouch are intelligent men, and I think
Burns did them a disservice. I think that's his modus operandi; his
"baseball" program was equally mythologizing and simple-minded, and focused
on a few voices (New York ones, like Billy Crystal) to the exclusion of vast
swathes of others (Pirates fans, for instance, will be rather unsympathetic
towards the "tragedy" of 1960). That's what he does; he tells stories. And
he's kind of a dim bulb, in my opinion.



> What Marsalis et. al., in their vehemently racist attitudes 
> don't understand (or don't want to understand) is that jazz 
> musicians were decidedly color blind when it came to playing 
> their music. Knowing that promoters, club owners, and 
> audiences would not stand for seeing whites and blacks 
> playing together, musicians did it behind closed doors. 
> 
> I like to tell this story about Burns' "Jazz" documentary, 
> which typifies the preset thinking about the show's 
> direction?even before it was edited. One glaring omission 
> from the documentary was probably the most prominent and 
> important black musician still alive when it was produced: 
> Benny Carter. Carter wasn't featured among the interviewees 
> in the show, and one evening, at a testimonial dinner for 
> Snooky Young, I got to meet Benny briefly and chat with him. 
> He was in his early 90s by then, somewhat frail, but still 
> sharp-minded and gentlemanly. I asked him if Ken Burns had 
> interviewed him for the show and he said that, yes, indeed he 
> was. When I asked him why none of his comments were used in 
> the show, Carter, ever the diplomat, said, "I guess I didn't 
> tell him what he wanted to hear."
> 
> Cary Ginell
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Pomeroy <pomeroyaudio at att.net>
> To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
> Sent: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 10:24 am
> Subject: Re: [78-L] Book Review (Lost Sounds")
> 
> 
> 
> Like the two jazz books by Gunther Schuller, Sudhalter's
> "Lost Chords" is one of the great jazz books. And, like
> Schuller's books, it will have you returning to your record
> collection to re-discover many delights.
> 
> The very idea that jazz produced by whites should be
> studied as a separate subject appears "racist" to some.
> Anticipating this, Sudhalter discusses the matter in his
> Introduction.
> 
> Doug Pomeroy
> 
> > From: "Bud Black" <banjobud at cfl.rr.com>
> > To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
> > Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2009 9:06 PM
> > Subject: Re: [78-L] Book review request
> >
> > How the hell could he claim it was "racist" if he never read it?
> >
> > Bud
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