The Jazz Scene

Author: Eric Hobsbawm
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571320112
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Book Description
From 1955-65 the historian Eric Hobsbawm took the pseudonym 'Francis Newton' and wrote a monthly column for the New Statesman on jazz - music he had loved ever since discovering it as a boy in 1933 ('the year Adolf Hitler took power in Germany'). Hobsbawm's column led to his writing a critical history, The Jazz Scene (1959). This enhanced edition from 1993 adds later writings by Hobsbawm in which he meditates further 'on why jazz is not only a marvellous noise but a central concern for anyone concerned with twentieth-century society and the twentieth-century arts.' 'All the greats are covered in passing (Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday), while further space is given to Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, Thelonious Monk, Mahalia Jackson, and Sidney Bechet ... Perhaps Hobsbawm's tastiest comments are about the business side and work ethics, where his historian's eye strips the jazz scene down to its commercial spine.' Kirkus Reviews

At the Jazz Band Ball

Author: Nat Hentoff
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520945883
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Book Description
Nat Hentoff, renowned jazz critic, civil liberties activist, and fearless contrarian—"I’m a Jewish atheist civil-libertarian pro-lifer"—has lived through much of jazz’s history and has known many of jazz’s most important figures, often as friend and confidant. Hentoff has been a tireless advocate for the neglected parts of jazz history, including forgotten sidemen and -women. This volume includes his best recent work—short essays, long interviews, and personal recollections. From Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong to Ornette Coleman and Quincy Jones, Hentoff brings the jazz greats to life and traces their art to gospel, blues, and many other forms of American music. At the Jazz Band Ball also includes Hentoff’s keen, cosmopolitan observations on a wide range of issues. The book shows how jazz and education are a vital partnership, how free expression is the essence of liberty, and how social justice issues like health care and strong civil rights and liberties keep all the arts—and all members of society—strong.

Sittin' In

Author: Jeff Gold
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063076764
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 835

Book Description
A visual history of America’s jazz nightclubs of the 1940s and 1950s, featuring exclusive interviews and over 200 souvenir photos. In the two decades before the Civil Rights movement, jazz nightclubs were among the first places that opened their doors to both Black and white performers and club goers in Jim Crow America. In this extraordinary collection, Grammy Award-winning record executive and music historian Jeff Gold looks back at this explosive moment in the history of Jazz and American culture, and the spaces at the center of artistic and social change. Sittin’ In is a visual history of jazz clubs during these crucial decades when some of the greatest names in in the genre—Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, and many others—were headlining acts across the country. In many of the clubs, Black and white musicians played together and more significantly, people of all races gathered together to enjoy an evening’s entertainment. House photographers roamed the floor and for a dollar, took picture of patrons that were developed on site and could be taken home in a keepsake folder with the club’s name and logo. Sittin’ In tells the story of the most popular club in these cities through striking images, first-hand anecdotes, true tales about the musicians who performed their unforgettable shows, notes on important music recorded live there, and more. All of this is supplemented by colorful club memorabilia, including posters, handbills, menus, branded matchbooks, and more. Inside you’ll also find exclusive, in-depth interviews conducted specifically for this book with the legendary Quincy Jones; jazz great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins; Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic Robin Givhan; jazz musician and creative director of the Kennedy Center, Jason Moran; and jazz critic Dan Morgenstern. Gold surveys America’s jazz scene and its intersection with racism during segregation, focusing on three crucial regions: the East Coast (New York, Atlantic City, Boston, Washington, D.C.); the Midwest (Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, Kansas City); and the West Coast (Los Angeles, San Francisco). This collection of ephemeral snapshots tells the story of an era that helped transform American life, beginning the move from traditional Dixieland jazz to bebop, from conservatism to the push for personal freedom.

Blowin' the Blues Away

Author: Travis A. Jackson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520951921
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Book Description
New York City has always been a mecca in the history of jazz, and in many ways the city’s jazz scene is more important now than ever before. Blowin’ the Blues Away examines how jazz has thrived in New York following its popular resurgence in the 1980s. Using interviews, in-person observation, and analysis of live and recorded events, ethnomusicologist Travis A. Jackson explores both the ways in which various participants in the New York City jazz scene interpret and evaluate performance, and the criteria on which those interpretations and evaluations are based. Through the notes and words of its most accomplished performers and most ardent fans, jazz appears not simply as a musical style, but as a cultural form intimately influenced by and influential upon American concepts of race, place, and spirituality.

Jazz West Coast

Author: Robert Gordon (M.A.)
Publisher: Quartet Books (UK)
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description

Harlem of the West

Author: Elizabeth Pepin
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 9780811845489
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
Harlem of the West reveals a forgotten slice of San Francisco history and the African-American experience on the West Coast: the thriving jazz scene of the Fillmore in the 1940s and 1950s. With archival photographs and oral accounts from the residents and musicians who experienced it, this vividly illustrated tour will delight jazz fans and history aficionados.

Central Avenue Sounds

Author: Clora Bryant
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520220980
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 502

Book Description
Here too are recollections of Hollywood's effects on local culture, the precedent-setting merger of the black and white musicians' unions, and the repercussions from the racism in the Los Angeles Police Department in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Jazz

Author: Samuel B. Charters
Publisher: Da Capo Press, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Book Description
"This unique history of jazz in New York examines its many scenes, stages, styles, and sponsors. With one of the most sophisticated black populations anywhere, a vibrant bohemian subculture, a class of entertainment entrepreneurs, and a 24-hour nightlife, New York has long been home for jazz and jazz musicians. Samuel Charters and Leonard Kunstadt have delved through archives of newspapers and stagebills to provide a wider view of New York's jazz scene than ordinarily reported. Record sales, attendance figures, media trends are included along with assessments of musical importance. Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Chick Webb, the Savoy Ballroom, the Apollo Theatre, the Cotton Club all get extended treatment, as do less heralded figures and nightspots. Every jazz musician of note eventually plays in New York and will be found in this book, which chronicles not only their lives but the growth of New York as the world's jazz capital." --

Loft Jazz

Author: Michael C. Heller
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520285417
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Book Description
The New York loft jazz scene of the 1970s was a pivotal period for uncompromising, artist-produced work. Faced with a flagging jazz economy, a group of young avant-garde improvisers chose to eschew the commercial sphere and develop alternative venues in the abandoned factories and warehouses of Lower Manhattan. Loft Jazz provides the first book-length study of this period, tracing its history amid a series of overlapping discourses surrounding collectivism, urban renewal, experimentalist aesthetics, underground archives, and the radical politics of self-determination.

Jazz from Detroit

Author: Mark Stryker
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472074261
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 359

Book Description
Jazz from Detroit explores the city’s pivotal role in shaping the course of modern and contemporary jazz. With more than two dozen in-depth profiles of remarkable Detroit-bred musicians, complemented by a generous selection of photographs, Mark Stryker makes Detroit jazz come alive as he draws out significant connections between the players, eras, styles, and Detroit’s distinctive history. Stryker’s story starts in the 1940s and ’50s, when the auto industry created a thriving black working and middle class in Detroit that supported a vibrant nightlife, and exceptional public school music programs and mentors in the community like pianist Barry Harris transformed the city into a jazz juggernaut. This golden age nurtured many legendary musicians—Hank, Thad, and Elvin Jones, Gerald Wilson, Milt Jackson, Yusef Lateef, Donald Byrd, Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Burrell, Ron Carter, Joe Henderson, and others. As the city’s fortunes change, Stryker turns his spotlight toward often overlooked but prescient musician-run cooperatives and self-determination groups of the 1960s and ’70s, such as the Strata Corporation and Tribe. In more recent decades, the city’s culture of mentorship, embodied by trumpeter and teacher Marcus Belgrave, ensured that Detroit continued to incubate world-class talent; Belgrave protégés like Geri Allen, Kenny Garrett, Robert Hurst, Regina Carter, Gerald Cleaver, and Karriem Riggins helped define contemporary jazz. The resilience of Detroit’s jazz tradition provides a powerful symbol of the city’s lasting cultural influence. Stryker’s 21 years as an arts reporter and critic at the Detroit Free Press are evident in his vivid storytelling and insightful criticism. Jazz from Detroit will appeal to jazz aficionados, casual fans, and anyone interested in the vibrant and complex history of cultural life in Detroit.