Feed: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?”

Comic:  “Practice!”

When I first began to build a jazz record library back in the early 1960s, one particular album stood out.  A rare “double-album,” Benny Goodman’s Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert was more akin in appearance to the records in my parents’ classical record collection.  The back stories and analyses of the concert, the marketing of the recording 12 years later in 1950, and the subsequent canonization of the concert and recording is the story Catherine Tackley tells in her new book for the Oxford Studies in Recorded Jazz Series, Benny Goodman’s Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert (Oxford University Press, 2011)

Tackley is an extremely busy and talented woman.  An academic, musician, writer, teacher, and performer, she adores both the study of and playing jazz.  She played Goodman’s songs herself with her big band Dr. Jazz and the Cheshire cats “in a room full of the world’s leading jazz scholars.”  Now that’s academic courage!

Benny Goodman, billed the “King of Swing,” was uneasy about the longevity of the label; a perfectionist and an artful player of both jazz and classical music, he feared that he’d be typecast.  His Carnegie Hall concert was “sold” by promoters at the time as an important event in the history of the evolution of jazz in general and swing in particular.

Nonetheless, Tackley recounts how Carnegie Hall had been the site of both classical and popular music, with “crossover” antecedents to “jazz” concerts going back as far as 1912 when an integrated audience attended the Clef Club orchestra consisting of all black musicians who “played a program of traditional spirituals and compositions by black composers.”  And there were others, including Paul Whiteman’s orchestra and W.C. Handy featuring Fats Waller, all of whom played at Carnegie Hall before Goodman.

Goodman and his band were already well known to the public due to his many live, nationally broadcast radio programs.  Tackley uses a musician’s and historian’s approach in analyzing the subtle differences in the arrangements and performances on the January 16, 1938 program.  She also tells interesting anecdotes about drummer Gene Krupa, trumpeter Harry James, vibe-player Lionel Hampton, pianist Jess Stacey and many others.  Members of Duke Ellington’s  and Count Basie’s bands also participated in the jam session that night, too.  Ironically, for the musicians who played that evening, it might have been just another working night.  After the concert many of the musicians went to the Savoy Ballroom to hear a battle of two other famous bands –Count Basie and Billie Holiday dueling it out with Chick Webb and Ella Fitzgerald!

Finally, the author tells the story of the concert’s own creation myth when 12 years later, in 1950, the acetates from the concert were “found” and subsequently  marketed by Columbia Records.  Goodman, the critics, and the producers at Columbia thought the release might revive swing.  Jazz and Goodman had long moved on to other forms, but the concert on January 16, 1938 became part of jazz history nonetheless.  Tackley’s story of the concert, the individual song performances, the critical and audience responses, and the later marketing of the recording  gives the reader a fascinating glimpse at how the music that night became part of jazz’s and America’s cultural legacy.

On a personal note, my wonderful father-in-law, who passed away in February, 2013, was a WWII veteran who adored big bands and the music of Benny Goodman.  I met Farris Sadak the first time when he and his wife Gamile were listening to a jazz quartet at the Ice House in Herndon, Virginia, in 1982.  Two of his friends were members of the quartet: one, Smitty, another WWII veteran, played clarinet; the other, drummer Brooks Tegler, patterned himself after Gene Krupa.  Nothing made my father-in-law happier and more nostalgic than tapping his foot whenever he heard sounds of the swing era.  It was part of his history, his life as a young man, as it was for so many of his generation that is quickly passing from the American landscape.   I can’t listen to the music without thinking of him.  The music transcends generations; and it connects us to the people we love and loved even if we didn’t share the time and place and experiences that they did.   Little did I know when I first listened to the recording of that famous concert in my early teens what richness, insight, and joy of human connections I would get from the music of jazz.

“Around 380 BC, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote in the Republic about the idealized society as having a “united influence of music and sport” where its people “mingle music with sport in the fairest of proportions.” – from the Rhythms of the Game: The Link Between Musical and Athletic Performance (Hal Leonard Corporation, 2011)

As a youngster growing up in the Berkeley Hills in the early 60s, I loved jazz–the rhythmic jests and jolts of Louis Armstrong, the sensuous guitar of Antonio Carlos Jobim, the manic mastery of drummer Buddy Rich. I loved baseball, too, and my best friend and I imitated the kinetic rhythms of our favorite pitchers . . . the high-kicking Juan Marichal and the smoldering, snake-like delivery of Bob Gibson. And then there were the unique batting styles and varied rhythms of our favorite hitters– the whipsaw swing of Willie Mays, the languorous, looping swing of lefty Willie McCovey. And then came Muhammad Ali. Watching Ali box was pure magic – poetry. I’d always believed that Ali was a begloved body-jazz musician ever improvising new creative rhythmic repertoires in the ring.

But it wasn’t until I read Rhythms of the Game: The Link Between Musical and Athletic Performance (Hal Leonard Corporation, 2011) and spoke with co-author Dave Gluck in this wonderful interview that it all made sense. Gluck, a peripatetic percussionist professor of studio composition at Purchase College, State University of New York, had the extraordinary experience of having New York Yankee All-Star centerfielder Bernie Williams walk into his office one day in 2007 to inquire about music classes. Williams, in addition to being one of the finest baseball players of his era and one of the greatest post-season players in baseball history, was in the process of making a transition into a second career as a professional musician. A classically trained student at a performing arts high school in his native Puerto Rico, Williams had always been as devoted to music as he was to sports ever since he was captivated by the sounds of flamenco guitar as a young boy. Williams’ illustrious baseball career included taking his guitar with him wherever he went and going so far as to assess the acoustics in major league ballparks (the tunnel in Anaheim Stadium was his favorite). Enter the third collaborator, music colleague Bob Thompson. Thompson is a two-time Grammy nominated composer, conductor, producer and performer, co-founder (along with Gluck) of the Rhythm and Brass eclectic jazz/classical group, as well as the Baseball Music Project. Gluck, Williams, and Thompson’s conversations became the impetus for a unique book, Rhythms of the Game: The Link Between Musical and Athletic Performance. This is a thought-provoking, fact-rich but also highly anecdotal, reader-friendly and entertaining product of three different men who love music…and sports… and the rhythms in life.

Although the book isn’t specifically about jazz, it nonetheless is somehow all about jazz, and if you appreciated how Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett explored and pushed musical and performance boundaries, or how the transcendent talent of a Coltrane was as much the product of hours and hours of practice and study and not just a “gift,” and if you ever sought to understand the mysteries that musicians and athletes experience of “being in the zone,” you’ll love this book. With so many fascinating strands, Rhythms of the Game: The Link Between Musical and Athletic Performance will appeal to everyone – not just musicians, not just athletes, but to anyone, young or old. But perhaps the greatest value in this book is what it says to young people about creativity in music, sports, in life. Rhythm, timbre, dynamics, tone, tempo and timing is in your DNA, it’s there in everything you do . . . so practice, practice, practice . . . focus . . . and then improvise . . . risk…trust that your own unique rhythms are there inside you, inside all of us – everywhere.

Ben Cawthra’s Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz (University of Chicago, 2011) discusses the way images of jazz and the musicians who played it both reflected and influenced our racial perceptions during the period between the 1930s and 1960s.  Cawthra reveals the complex interactions between socially conscious photographers, magazine editors, record producers, jazz critics and the musicians themselves.   From swing to bebop to cool, to West Coast Jazz to hard bop, Cawthra’s book gives the reader fascinating photographic and biographical portraits of Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, and John Coltrane among others.  The photographers, too, including Charles Peterson, Gijon Mili, Francis Wolff, William Claxton, Herman Leonard, William Gottlieb, and Roy DeCarava had nuanced and unique photographic styles.  Cawtha also gives insight as to how African-American jazz musicians such as Gillespie, Davis, and Rollins attempted to control their own economic and image destinies within the ever-changing political economy of the record industry.  Cawthra also explains how Life Magazine, the development of the Long Playing Record (LP), and the concurrent milestones in civil rights all influenced the photographic culture of jazz – and there is a fascinating section on the very conscious marketing of “West Coast Jazz” to emerging white suburban markets in the 50s and 60s.   The complex confluences of such a wide depth and breadth of social history is bound to stimulate much thinking and raise many additional questions.  Rich, thought-provoking, and with images and insights that stay with you: read it, look at the photos and think long and hard…there’s no end to the combination and permutations of analyses….like jazz itself.

Texas poet/author/historian Dave Oliphant’s KD: A Jazz Biography (Wings Press, 2012) is a poetic tribute to the life of Jazz trumpeter and one of the original Jazz Messengers, Kenny Dorham.   Dorham, who played with some of the jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Art Blakey, Monk and many, many others, is less well known than many of his contemporaries, but Oliphant’s highly allusive and alliterative rhythms and rhymes open one’s ears, eyes and heart to the Texas-born and raised trumpet player. Oliphant describes Dorham’s small town roots:

Ken’s prodigious ear at five years old
Could pick out keyboard boogies cold
& from Sis’s 78s he could already tell
Louie on trumpet an equal of Gabriel

Oliphant also describes touches on Dorham’s gigs and experiences in New York City, the West Coast, Paris, South America, Scandinavia, and his untimely death from kidney disease at the age of 48 in 1972.

a brain filled with unseen notes heard
within his inner ears then out of tubes
& a gold or silver bell the valve lubes
had speeded along Messengers’ word

a prophetic phrase blues or bossa beat
a chase or a smoky-toned running line
to blend with any instrument compete
with none but under the brothers’ sign

KD: A Jazz Biography is also a trove of takes on Dorham’s performances. Readers will find themselves downloading songs and comparing Oliphant’s insights with their own. There are also comparisons to Dorham’s trumpet player peers, in particular, Clifford Brown. For those who take pride in the diversity of their jazz libraries, this is a book that is as unique, original and dignified as Dorham himself. Oliphant weaves his own extended literary, historical, biologic, poetic, and popular culture knowledge into this extended poem about one of jazz’s lesser-known but nonetheless highly talented and original players.

Kathy Sloane’s Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club (Indiana UP, 2011) captures a time and place in San Francisco in the 70s and early 80s that we may never see again. Owner/impresario/musician Todd Barkan ran the club on a frayed financial shoestring, but the club’s unique ambience in San Francisco’s North Beach beckoned the greatest jazz players, where jazz aficionados and neophytes alike could appreciate America’s great cultural art form.

Sloane’s fabulous black and white photographs of jazz players such as Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Betty Carter, Elvin Jones, Mary Lou Williams, Bobby Hutcherson, McCoy Tyner, and countless others range from the contemplative to the kinetic – and they all tell a story.  Sloan arranges chapters thematically with titles familiar to jazz lovers like Bright Moments, Bobby and Bags and Teach Me Tonight.  In each chapter, the Keystone family of employees, patrons and the players tell stories and reminisce as to what made the club special. And there was something special about the club, from the cramped confines to the smells of Ora Harris’s home cooking to the down-home good feeling – and it was next to the police precinct in North Beach to boot!  Sloane includes a discography compiled by Stuart Kremsky and a CD of some of the great live performances at the Korner with liner notes by Sascha Feinstein.

Like the Keystone Korner itself, Sloane’s book is a labor of love and a testament to a memorable time and place.  If you were lucky enough to have been there, you can relive it; if you missed it, you can go back in time and live in the heart, art and soul of a San Francisco institution that epitomized the music and feeling of jazz.

Kevin Whitehead’s highly readable, informative and entertaining Why Jazz? A Concise Guide (Oxford University Press, 2011) is bookshelf “must have” for anyone who loves jazz – and he does it in a question/answer call and response style that is the perfect format for today’s point and click text and twitter world. It’s a primer for those who want to know more about the fascinating personalities in jazz from Louis Armstrong to Mary Lou Williams to Anthony Braxton (and Miles, Mingus, Monk and Coltrane); it’s a history lesson from New Orleans Dixieland to otherworldly free-jazz.  Best of all, Kevin gives the reader a rich trove of musical examples and a wide-ranging discography certain to open new vistas for those who are just digging jazz for the first time as well as aficionados who have been listening for years. Almost a half century ago, historian Will Durant condensed his 11 volumes of a lifetime of research into a small, thin work acknowledging the folly of trying to encompass the complexity of the impossible task before him. Kevin Whitehead has worked a similar miracle in his slim volume Why Jazz? This is a gem of a book that’s got passion and insight and beckons those who dig jazz and don’t know why as well as those who think they “get it” and want to know more.

[Crossposted from New Books in History] You’ve probably heard of hipsters. Heck, you may even be a hipster. If you don’t know what a hipster is, you might spend some time on this sometimes entertaining website. Where do hipsters come from? Lets work backwards. Before hipsters (1990s), there were slackers (1980s): middle-class, college-going, white kids into Alternative rock. They were hipsters in all but name. Before slackers, there were punks and pseudo-mods (1970s): middle-class, college-going, white kids into Punk and New Wave rock respectively. Neither of them was really “hip” because they liked to take speed and be “intense.” Before punks and pseudo-mods, there were hippies (1960s): middle-class, college-going, white kids into rock and folk. They weren’t “hip” because they smoked a lot of dope and were embarrassingly earnest. Before hippies, there were beats (1950s): middle class, college-going, white kids into outré poetry and literature. They weren’t “hip” because they took narcotics and liked to be “cool.” Before beats, there were proto-hipsters (1940s): middle-class, college-going, white kids who liked hot jazz and black people. They were more like modern wiggers than hipsters. (If you don’t know what a wigger is, here you go.) And before proto-hipsters, there was the mother of all middle-class, college-going, white American subcultures—the bohemians. They were a lot like hipsters.

These hipsters-before-hipsters are the subject of Joanna Levin‘s fascinating new book  Bohemia in America, 1858-1920 (Stanford UP, 2010). In it, she deftly traces the mid-nineteenth-century migration of bohemianism from the Parisian Latin Quarter to American shores and its spread to middle class, white culture thereafter. Bohemianism offered Americans who, as Tocqueville noted, were all about equality (read: conformity) a chance to be different in a safe way. The bohemians practiced a kind of satire-of-the-deed: they used themselves–the way they dressed, talked, loved, worked–to poke fun at everything “bourgeois.” They were performance artists, and they wanted attention. Just like hipsters.