[78-L] Another new history of jazz

[Taylor Bowie]

Lucky for me....Godot finally showed up!

Taylor



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Lennick" <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 22, 2009 6:02 PM
Subject: Re: [78-L] Another new history of jazz


I'm still waiting for Parts 3 & 4 of Stan Freberg's United States of 
America.

And another issue of 78 Quarterly.

And the Electrician or someone like him.

dl

fnarf at comcast.net wrote:
> Is Giddins ever going to finish the second volume of his Bing Crosby bio?
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Cary Ginell" <soundthink at live.com>
> To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
> Sent: Sunday, November 22, 2009 1:07:34 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
> Subject: [78-L] Another new history of jazz
>
>
> A new take on a standard
>
> This history of jazz is more a primer on how to listen to it
>
> By Steve Greenlee, Globe Staff  |  November 22, 2009
>
> Do we need another gargantuan book that purports to retell the history of 
> jazz? The aficionado’s bookcase is crammed with such texts, which come 
> and quickly go. But the latest one, by the highly respected and talented 
> jazz scribes Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux, arrives with a twist.
>
> Simply and audaciously titled “Jazz’’ this 704-page monster is 
> really more of a beginner’s guide. The well-informed won’t glean much 
> from these pages. But the listener who has only dipped his toes in and 
> would like to take a few swimming lessons - well, then, this is his book.
>
> At its heart, “Jazz’’ is a history lesson. Giddins and DeVeaux start 
> with post-Civil War African-American folk culture and wind up in 2008, 
> when the Grammy for best album went to Herbie Hancock for “River: The 
> Joni Letters,’’ his tribute to Joni Mitchell. But this book also 
> serves as a covert primer on how to hear jazz - what to listen for, and 
> how to understand what is going on. Such a conceit might seem 
> pretentious - indeed, it might seem arrogant, suggesting that the listener 
> needs to know something before she can appreciate the music and determine 
> whether she likes it - but it is not.
>
> If anything, the authors analyze individual performances to the extreme, 
> in their attempt to impart wisdom. Here is what distinguishes 
> “Jazz’’ from those that have come before: It contains copious 
> dissections of 78 tracks. A recording of Jelly Roll Morton’s “Dead Man 
> Blues’’ or Sarah Vaughan’s “Baby, Won’t You Please Come 
> Home?’’ is scrutinized and annotated, with authors’ notes explaining 
> what happens as the tune begins, eight seconds into it, and on and on.
>
> In just about every case, it’s an overly academic exercise that becomes 
> a buzzkill. By nature, a jazz fan wants to be surprised, energized, even 
> jolted by music. Forget all that. A two-and-half-minute recording of 
> “Weather Bird’’ by Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines consumes two pages 
> of examination: “0:00: Armstrong plays the opening melody on trumpet, 
> discreetly backed by Hines’s piano. 0:04 Armstrong displays his command 
> of dynamics. Some notes are played at full volume.’’ Et cetera, et 
> cetera.
>
> In many instances the intense analysis comes at the expense of history. 
> Billie Holiday was perhaps jazz’s most important singer, yet the 
> authors’ dissection of “A Sailboat in the Moonlight,’’ one of her 
> lesser known pieces, gets as much ink as does her entire career. More 
> problematic is that the passages mean nothing to the reader unless the 
> reader is multitasking: reading and listening to a recording at the same 
> time. Yet who among us possesses all of the recordings mentioned herein?
>
> Ah, problem solved. And here’s the twist: It’s not just a book; it’s 
> a CD box set. W.W. Norton & Co. is simultaneously releasing a four-CD 
> package containing all 78 tracks. This is ingenious marketing: $40 book + 
> $60 CD set = $100 sale. But, again, this book (and CD collection) is for 
> the novice, and it would be hard to improve upon “Recordings: For 
> Jazz’’ as an audio introduction. The selections do a fine job of 
> representing the genre’s many stages, and the audio fidelity is supreme.
>
> Get beyond all that, though, and there’s not much to distinguish the 
> actual book, which is largely an aggregation of what has come before. 
> Complex life stories - Django Reinhardt’s, Thelonious Monk’s, Ella 
> Fitzgerald’s - are condensed in a few paragraphs. Landmark recordings 
> are dispensed with no sooner than they are introduced. Yes, the authors 
> are trying to distill 100 years of history but still: We’ve heard all 
> this before. The lack of footnoting is particularly troubling. The 
> so-called end notes are insufficient; they fail to attribute even the most 
> basic sourcing. Then there are the liberties taken by Giddins and DeVeaux. 
> They write that free-jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler “died, a suicide, at 
> thirty-four.’’ Really? Ayler’s death has been a constant source of 
> speculation and argument. His body was found floating in New York’s East 
> River in 1970, and the cause of death was never determined.
>
> Quibbles aside, one could do much worse for an introduction to jazz. 
> It’s all here (albeit abbreviated), from Bessie Smith to Buddy Bolden to 
> Louis Armstrong to Coleman Hawkins to Charlie Parker to John Coltrane to 
> Jason Moran. The basic configurations of the jazz ensemble are examined 
> and explained for the uninitiated. Frank Sinatra, for once, gets respect 
> in a jazz history, and fusion - the real thing, as done by Miles Davis and 
> his compatriots - gets more due than Ken Burns and his ilk would ever 
> afford. George Russell’s complicated theories about chords’ relation 
> to one another are explained in a way almost anyone can comprehend, and 
> the contributions of contemporaries as disparate as Wynton Marsalis and 
> Vijay Iyer are presented in their proper contexts. Massachusetts finally 
> gets its props as the center of jazz education, and Boston-bred George 
> Wein, the impresario behind the Newport Jazz Festival, gets more than the 
> requisite passing mention.
>
> All of which is well and good. Just be prepared to buy the CDs if you want 
> to appreciate “Jazz’’ to its fullest.
>
> Steve Greenlee can be reached at greenlee at globe.com.
> _________________________________________________________
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