Fall 1999 Volume XXIX, No. 1

Copland's Hope for American Music by Howard Pollack spectral frequencies by Martha Mockus Demythologizing the Blues by David Evans New Music Notes by Carol J. Oja Behind the Beat with Mark Tucker ISAM Matters Reviews Rethinking Race in 19th-Century Blackface Minstrelsy by Maya Gibson Amy Beach: Passionate Victorian by Laurie Blunsom ISAM Home

Behind the Beat with Mark Tucker White jazz musicians, according to Richard M. Sudhalter, have fared poorly at the hands of several generations of critics, historians, and scholars. Driven by ideology rather than fair-minded musical assessment, writers have “promulgated a distorted version of the facts,” presenting jazz history as “a dynasty of black masters, with whites either absent or, worse, vilified as thieves and exploiters.” To counter and revise this view, Sudhalter has produced the massive, ruefully titled Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945 (Oxford University Press, 1999; $35). Throughout the book, Sudhalter tenaciously pursues two main objectives: to recognize the achievements of musicians whom he believes have been undervalued or ignored, and to argue the case for jazz as a “profoundly pluralist” artistic realm in which whites and blacks have worked steadily together to create a vibrant form of American music. In the first of his goals, Sudhalter succeeds admirably. Proceeding from the first wave of New Orleans groups to the explosion of hot jazz activity in Chicago and New York in the 1920s, and carrying on through the peak years of swing in the late 1930s and 1940s, he tells the stories of prominent individuals and influential bands, weaving together biographical information with extensive discussion of stylistic features. An accomplished cornetist and veteran exponent of traditional and mainstream jazz, Sudhalter delivers insightful musical commentary, generously illustrated with transcriptions, that makes the reader eager to hear the recordings. Given the difficulty in locating some of these recordings, it’s unfortunate the book includes no guide to current CD reissues; even better would be a companion web site listing regularly updated discographical information. There is, however, a 2-CD companion set for Lost Chords issued by Retrieval and available for $25 from worldsrecords.com. Sudhalter’s enthusiasm for the music bursts through on every page. Unlike Gunther Schuller, whose assessments of some of the same figures in Early Jazz and The Swing Era can be qualified, at times severe, Sudhalter is more interested in singling out aspects to admire and savor, keeping negative remarks to a minimum. A representative example of his descriptive style is the following sentence: “‘China Boy’ opens on an ear-catching Teagarden cadenza, then moves swiftly through solos by Nichols (at his best, a well-turned summation of his view of Bix), Goodman (whirling and cascading, driven by Chicago boisterousness and sustained by his limitless technique), and two stomping Sullivan choruses backed ardently—if a tad raucously—by Krupa.” Though the analysis can get more technical, the tone of passionate advocacy remains a constant. Yet this same passion proves a liability as Sudhalter strives to develop his larger theme of jazz as a model of American multiculturalism and racial cooperation. For one thing, in trumpeting the accomplishments of white artists, Sudhalter often finds it necessary to chip away at the reputation of blacks. He asserts, for example, that it is clarinetist Leon Roppolo, not Louis Armstrong or Sidney Bechet, who deserves recognition as “the first great jazz soloist to appear on records”; that Fud Livingston, “a composer of infinitely greater range and harmonic sophistication than [Jelly Roll] Morton,” had reached by 1928 a “degree of accomplishment in scoring” unmatched by Duke Ellington and Don Redman; that Bix Beiderbecke’s art is “altogether more subtle” than that of Armstrong and Bechet, with the white cornetist’s solos displaying a complexity, heterogeneity, and “inner voice” missing from those of Armstrong, which he characterizes as “emotional monoliths.” These are not corrections of the historical record but matters of personal opinion. Though Sudhalter may believe that such statements help level the playing field, showing blacks and whites engaged side by side as creators and innovators, instead they wind up having the opposite effect, fostering a sense of lopsided competition as one group keeps scoring points at the expense of the other. More disquieting than this partisanship is Sudhalter’s contention that jazz musicians have long inhabited some sort of idealized, color-blind realm, concerned largely with aesthetic issues and insulated from the racial divisions of American society. “Very often,” Sudhalter writes, “such unity [within the jazz community] was strong enough, elastic enough, to thrive against countervailing pressures from the society at large.” This is wishful thinking. In the pre-Civil Rights era discussed by Sudhalter, every aspect of a jazz musician’s life—from performing and recording opportunities to salaries, educational options, living conditions, social status, and the mundane details of daily experience—was affected by contigencies of race. Stark differences in how black and white musicians pursued their vocations and struggled to survive in a competitive marketplace and racist society are missing from Sudhalter’s account. In its place is a utopian vision of “cooperation, mutual admiration, [and] cross-fertilization” that Sudhalter claims has prevailed in the jazz world until only recently, when “cultural and racial politics” have introduced “fractiousness and fracture, rivalry and mutual suspicion.” Certainly a balanced, integrated account of jazz history is long overdue. Sudhalter’s discussion of musical topics in Lost Chords will make it easier for someone to write it one day. Meanwhile, I’m afraid this volume will do little to help promote racial understanding or unify a fragmented jazz community. Its brash and defensive tone, far from making converts to the cause of white jazz musicians, may instead help reinforce the very color line it ostensibly wants to erase. Musical Alliances. A more complicated reading of black and white musical relationships appears in Jeffrey Melnick’s A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song (Harvard University Press, 1999; $27.95). In this study, focusing on song, ragtime, and (to a lesser extent) jazz in the first three decades of the 1900s, Melnick considers how Jewish musicians used African American styles to articulate an “American” identity for themselves, and how this strategy helped them become dominant figures in the entertainment industry. Melnick goes far beyond earlier, simplistic accounts of white appropriation of black sources. He offers original, provocative interpretations of such figures as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, and Al Jolson, devoting an entire chapter to James Weldon Johnson’s views of ethnicity, race, and American popular culture. There are problems in Melnick’s methodology: he fails to account for non-Jewish white songwriters and musicians whose careers and styles closely resemble those of his Jewish subjects, and at times his musical analysis can bog down under the weight of theorizing (e.g., the labored interpretation of Gershwin’s “Summertime”). But overall, Melnick demonstrates sophisticated handling of a difficult, politically charged topic. A Right to Sing the Blues is both an impressive contribution to the literature of Black-Jewish relations and a study that will prove richly rewarding for teachers and historians of American popular music. Medium Cool. From 1959 to the late 1960s, the critic Ralph J. Gleason produced a series of half-hour programs devoted to jazz for the National Educational Television network. Calling the show Jazz Casual, Gleason invited well-known musicians into the studio and let them play whatever they pleased, seeking to provide home viewers with the relaxed ambience and intimate communication they might experience in a night club. Of the thirty-one “Jazz Casual” episodes originally aired, twenty-eight survive; Gleason’s son Toby has begun digitalizing and repackaging them on video, with more than a half-dozen titles issued so far (available from The Jazz Store, 800-558-9513, or www.thejazzstore.com; $14.95 for single videos, $39.95 for a three-pack). The three “Jazz Casual” programs I’ve seen contain stretches of memorable music-making broken up by stilted verbal exchanges between the host and guests. Though Gleason aims to put the musicians at ease, chatting them up as though they had just dropped by for a visit, the strain of “acting naturally” for lights and camera shows through in segments featuring Carmen McRae and Count Basie. Perched on a stool in front of her quartet, McRae gives dramatically riveting performances of such tunes as “’Round Midnight” and “Love for Sale”; seated next to Gleason in a canvas deck chair for the interview segment, she visibly tightens upon hearing his first question (“What is a jazz singer?”), and the conversation never settles into a comfortable rhythm. Similarly, Basie plays marvelously in a quartet setting, but when Gleason tries to prod him to reminisce about the “old days,” the pianist responds dutifully with a few terse sentences, then begins noodling at the keyboard, as if to say, “Cut the talk—let’s play!” The most radical and arguably successful solution to the problem of integrating performance and interview segments comes in a 1963 episode with John Coltrane and his quartet. Coltrane apparently told Gleason that he only wanted to play—so there’s no talk at all. The results are impassioned, extended performances of “Afro-Blue,” “Impressions,” and “Alabama” (interesting to compare this version with the one on The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz). During the performance, it becomes clear that neither the Coltrane quartet nor its music fits comfortably within the imaginary space of a “jazz casual” encounter. The contrast between the players’ intense inward focus and Gleason’s avuncular persona as the hip connoisseur—slouching in his cardigan sweater and puffing thoughtfully on his pipe—effectively explodes the artifice of the format. Freed from having to answer questions or verbalize about their art, Coltrane and his musicians devote full attention to the sounds they are producing, reducing the host’s role to that of a bystander. Gleason gets the message: after the group’s first number he leaves his place seated next to pianist McCoy Tyner and disappears from the screen.