Drawing from contemporary journalism, reviews, program notes, memoirs, interviews, and other sources,
Keeping Time: Readings in Jazz History brings to life the controversies and critical issues that have accompanied every moment of jazz history. Highlighting the significance of jazz as a complex and consequential social practice as well as an art form, this book presents a multitude of ways in which people have understood and cared about jazz. It records a history not of style changes but of values, meanings, and sensibilities.
Featuring sixty-two thought-provoking chapters, this unique volume gives voice to a wide range of perspectives, stressing different reactions to and uses of jazz, both within and across communities. It offers contributions from well-known figures including Jelly Roll Morton, Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, Wynton Marsalis, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis; from renowned writers such as Langston Hughes, Norman Mailer, and Ralph Ellison; and from critics including Leonard Feather and Gunther Schuller. Walser has selected writings that capture the passionate reactions of people who have loved, hated, supported, and argued about jazz.
Organized chronologically, Keeping Time covers nearly 100 years of jazz history. Filled with insightful writing, it aims to increase historical awareness, to provoke critical thinking, and to encourage lively classroom discussion as students relive the tangled and conflicted story of jazz. It enables readers to see that jazz is not just about names, dates, and chords, but rather about issues and ideas, cultural activities, and experiences that have affected people deeply in a great variety of ways. Concise headnotes provide historical context for each selection and point out issues for thinking and discussion. An excellent text for a variety of jazz courses, Keeping Time can serve as supplementary reading in popular music, American Studies, African American studies, history, and sociology courses, and will also appeal to anyone interested in jazz.
Preface
Acknowledgments
First Accounts
1. Sidney Bechet's Musical Philosophy
2. "Whence Comes Jass?", Walter Kingsley
3. The Location of "Jass", New Orleans Times-Picayune
4. A "Serious" Musician Takes Jazz Seriously, Ernest Ansermet
5. "A Negro Explains 'Jazz'", James Reese Europe
6. "Jazzing Away Prejudice", Chicago Defender
7. The "Inventor of Jazz", Jelly Roll Morton
The Twenties
8. Jazzing Around the Globe, Burnet Hershey
9. "Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?", Anne Shaw Faulkner
10. Jazz and African Music, Nicholas G.J. Ballanta-Taylor
11. The Man Who Made a Lady Out of Jazz (Paul Whiteman), Hugh C. Ernst
12. "The Jazz Problem", The Etude
13. "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain", Langston Hughes
14. A Black Journalist Criticizes Jazz, Dave Peyton
15. "The Caucasian Storms Harlem", Rudolf Fisher
16. The Appeal of Jazz Explained, R.W.S. Mendl
The Thirties
17. What Is Swing?, Louis Armstrong
18. Looking Back at "The Jazz Age", Alain Locke
19. Don Redman: Portrait of a Bandleader, Roi Ottley
20. Defining "Hot Jazz", Robert Goffin
21. An Experience in Jazz History, John Hammond
22. On the Road with Count Basie, Billie Holiday
23. Jazz at Carnegie Hall, James Dugan and John Hammond
24. Duke Ellington Explains Swing
25. Jazz and Gender During the War Years, Down Beat
The Forties
26. "Red Music", Josef Skvorecky
27. "From Somewhere in France", Charles Delauney
28. Johnny Otis Remembers Lester Young
29. "A People's Music", Sidney Finkelstein
30. "Bop is Nowhere", D. Leon Wolff, Louis Armstrong
31. "The Cult of Bebop", Dizzy Gillespie
32. "The Golden Age, Time Past", Ralph Ellison
33. The Professional Dance Musician and His Audience, Howard S. Becker
The Fifties
34. Jazz in the Classroom, Marshall W. Stearns
35. A Jazz "Masterpiece", André Hodeir
36. "Sonny Rollins and the Challenge of Thematic Improvisation", Gunther Schuller
37. "Beneath the Underdog", Charles Mingus
38. Psychoanalyzing Jazz, Miles D. Miller
39. An Appeal to the Vatican
40. America's "Secret Sonic Weapon"
41. "The White Negro", Norman Mailer
42. Louis Armstrong on Music and Politics
The Sixties
43. Critical Reception of Free Jazz
44. "Jazz and the White Critic", LeRoi Jones
45. A Jazz Summit Meeting, Playboy
The Seventies
46. Oral Culture and Musical Tradition, Ben Sidran
47. Jazz as a Progressive Social Force, Leonard Feather
48. Beyond Categories, Max Roach
49. The Musician's Heroic Craft, Albert Murray
50. Creative Muisc and the AACM, Leo Smith
The Eighties
51. "America's Classical Music", Billy Taylor
52. "A Rare National Treasure", U.S. Congress
53. The Neoclassical Agenda, Wynton Marsalis
54. Soul, Craft, and the Cultural Hierarchy, Wynton Marsalis and Herbie Hancock
55. "'It Jus' Be's Dat Way Sometime': The Sexual Politics of Women's Blues", Hazel V. Carby
56. Miles Davis Speaks His Mind
57. A Music of Survival and Celebration, Christopher Small
The Nineties
58. Who Listens to Jazz?
59. Free Jazz Revisited
60. Ring Shout, Signifyin(g), and Jazz Analysis, Samuel A. Floyd, Jr.
61. Ferociously Harmonizing with Reality, Keith Jarrett
62. Constructing the Jazz Tradition, Scott DeVeaux
Editing Notes
Select Bibliography
Index