Comments for rustbooks.com http://www.rustbooks.com/reviews Reviews from Rustbooks Publishing Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:37:48 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Comment on HERE COME THE BOYS 1925-1932, Retrieval RTR 79062 by John http://www.rustbooks.com/reviews/?p=101&cpage=1#comment-14469 John Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:37:48 +0000 http://www.rustbooks.com/reviews/?p=101#comment-14469 Your review makes this sound interesting! For a funny comment on Irving Kaufman by Michael Brooks (my favorite liner note writer, he deserved a Grammy for the notes to the Jack Purvis set)in the notes to Bix Beiderbecke Vol. 1 (Columbia): "And if you thought Segar Ellis was bad, listen to Irving Kaufman...He comes from the older school, trained to project his voice for the acoustic horn and for vaudeville,and the voice is thrown forward like a deadly projectile, every awful syllable clearly enunciated. It's like having the blindfold taken off just before the firing squad pulls the trigger." To his credit, I have heard some Kaufman reditions that are a bit more natural and enjoyable. Just found your reviews- good stuff- thank you! Your review makes this sound interesting! For a funny comment on Irving Kaufman by Michael Brooks (my favorite liner note writer, he deserved a Grammy for the notes to the Jack Purvis set)in the notes to Bix Beiderbecke Vol. 1 (Columbia): “And if you thought Segar Ellis was bad, listen to Irving Kaufman…He comes from the older school, trained to project his voice for the acoustic horn and for vaudeville,and the voice is thrown forward like a deadly projectile, every awful syllable clearly enunciated. It’s like having the blindfold taken off just before the firing squad pulls the trigger.” To his credit, I have heard some Kaufman reditions that are a bit more natural and enjoyable. Just found your reviews- good stuff- thank you!

]]> Comment on BOOK: CUTTIN’ UP: How Early Jazz Got America’s Ear, by Court Carney. Cloth, 219pp., University of Kansas Press, Lawrence, Kansas, ISBN 978-0-7006-1675-6, $34.95. by Malcolm http://www.rustbooks.com/reviews/?p=116&cpage=1#comment-12943 Malcolm Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:41:29 +0000 http://www.rustbooks.com/reviews/?p=116#comment-12943 Hi, Court: Pointing out errors of fact in a published account is neither negative nor aggressive. The “historiographical thread” of the work is muddy, because the facts on which it is based are in error. I am not by calling a historian, nor do I play one on TV, but to me, writing history involves recounting facts and drawing theoretical but logically justifiable conclusions based on them. Modern American authors tend, as you appear to do, to take a political position, then selectively seek facts, or in your case, second-tier opinions, to support it. A popular theme of American accounts of the 40's, 50's, and 60's, largely written by social apologists, is that the USA was uniformly awful to minorities in the first half f the twentieth century, people of color in particular; and still is. Starting from that premise, and the fact that jazz became the rock and roll of its time, this must have been a major factor in the popularization of jazz. So how do we make the facts fit the narrative? The truth is far more complex than a distillate of sources from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s can achieve. Their message propounded a simplistic and touchingly romantic concept; great black art, distilled from the country blues, was born in a New Orleans red-light district out of slavery, hardship, oppression and Jim Crow. Unheard, because racist company owners would not record people of color, then bowdlerized by the white oppressor, it finally achieved its rightful due in a racist music industry, in a place somewhere “up the river,” since the white usurpers could only produce a soulless pastiche of the real thing. Thereafter, having heard the genuine article, the public lapped it up. And that's, to steal from Cronkite, the way things are. It’s lovely, but it’s a fairy story. If you consult more modern sources, such as my esteemed friend, Tim Brooks’ “Lost Sounds,” you will discern a concrete and robust pattern of black recordings, back into the latter years of the 19th century. Black artists were recording more or less continually from the inception of commercial record issues. As jazz emerged, blacks recorded that, too, and did well from it. The revolution was less in the music than in the medium of its popularization. The music industry was, as evidenced by the internecine wars to shut the upstarts down, a “fringe,” dog-eat-dog business, with a professional reputation similar to that of “being on the stage.” As a result, minorities could participate and function largely without stricture; not just people of color, but Jews and European immigrants, populations more reviled in that era than blacks as shown in the contemporary cartoons of Thomas Nast. Race was a far less defining factor there, than in other facets of “decent” teen-and-twenties society. So, Harry Gennett didn’t make the first major black jazz recording in ‘23 because he was a freethinker or a social egalitarian. He was a businessman. He recorded the KKK, too. Oliver was asked to record, did so and got paid. Making history wasn’t part of it, nor was being “syncretic” a telling factor in the music. Joe, I would guess, was glad to have the opportunity to perform and even gladder that the band did well enough to be invited back. That was and still is the music business. The first artist to record nascent jazz in my opinion, Wilbur Sweatman, from a middle-class black Missouri family, recorded for Emerson in December of 1916. Like Gennett, Emerson was one of the upstart labels Victor and Columbia wanted to squelch. “Sweat” was, as stated, not from New Orleans or from the bluesy South, but from where ragtime was made popular. "Down Home Rag" was backed, presumably willingly, by white musicians. Mamie Smith, whose recordings created the vocal blues market, had white musicians accompany her also. Lonnie Johnson (black) and Eddie Lang (white) made wonderful guitar duets in the period. Louis Armstrong, an artist whose Hot Fives you discuss at some length, made “Knockin’ A Jug” in 1929 with a sextet of three white and three black artists, none of them selected for his color, but each for being top in his respective class. With regard to the stories of other people you mention, I would refer you to "Mr. Jelly Lord," “King Oliver," “Fats In Fact" and "Trombone Man," all by Laurie Wright; "Louis" by Max Jones and John Chilton; Chilton’s "Who’s Who of Jazz;" "Bix: the Definitive Biography" by Jean Pierre Lion and "The Fabulous Fives" by Horst Lange, which includes the Memphis Five. All have a fairly dispassionate historical slant. Incidentally, Lange, in his introduction, offers the fact that there is no record of jazz being played by black bands, in New Orleans or anywhere else, until after 1920, and that until the advent of King Oliver they in turn all tried, for better or worse, to imitate the ODJB, rather than the other way round, as you state. So it’s not aggressiveness, nor negativity, on my part. It’s that there’s more to the story than just what Bill Grauer, Orrin Keepnews or even a self-serving Jelly Roll Morton had to say; much more. Hi, Court:
Pointing out errors of fact in a published account is neither negative nor aggressive. The “historiographical thread” of the work is muddy, because the facts on which it is based are in error. I am not by calling a historian, nor do I play one on TV, but to me, writing history involves recounting facts and drawing theoretical but logically justifiable conclusions based on them. Modern American authors tend, as you appear to do, to take a political position, then selectively seek facts, or in your case, second-tier opinions, to support it. A popular theme of American accounts of the 40′s, 50′s, and 60′s, largely written by social apologists, is that the USA was uniformly awful to minorities in the first half f the twentieth century, people of color in particular; and still is. Starting from that premise, and the fact that jazz became the rock and roll of its time, this must have been a major factor in the popularization of jazz. So how do we make the facts fit the narrative?
The truth is far more complex than a distillate of sources from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s can achieve. Their message propounded a simplistic and touchingly romantic concept; great black art, distilled from the country blues, was born in a New Orleans red-light district out of slavery, hardship, oppression and Jim Crow. Unheard, because racist company owners would not record people of color, then bowdlerized by the white oppressor, it finally achieved its rightful due in a racist music industry, in a place somewhere “up the river,” since the white usurpers could only produce a soulless pastiche of the real thing. Thereafter, having heard the genuine article, the public lapped it up. And that’s, to steal from Cronkite, the way things are.
It’s lovely, but it’s a fairy story. If you consult more modern sources, such as my esteemed friend, Tim Brooks’ “Lost Sounds,” you will discern a concrete and robust pattern of black recordings, back into the latter years of the 19th century. Black artists were recording more or less continually from the inception of commercial record issues. As jazz emerged, blacks recorded that, too, and did well from it. The revolution was less in the music than in the medium of its popularization.
The music industry was, as evidenced by the internecine wars to shut the upstarts down, a “fringe,” dog-eat-dog business, with a professional reputation similar to that of “being on the stage.” As a result, minorities could participate and function largely without stricture; not just people of color, but Jews and European immigrants, populations more reviled in that era than blacks as shown in the contemporary cartoons of Thomas Nast. Race was a far less defining factor there, than in other facets of “decent” teen-and-twenties society. So, Harry Gennett didn’t make the first major black jazz recording in ‘23 because he was a freethinker or a social egalitarian. He was a businessman. He recorded the KKK, too. Oliver was asked to record, did so and got paid. Making history wasn’t part of it, nor was being “syncretic” a telling factor in the music. Joe, I would guess, was glad to have the opportunity to perform and even gladder that the band did well enough to be invited back. That was and still is the music business.
The first artist to record nascent jazz in my opinion, Wilbur Sweatman, from a middle-class black Missouri family, recorded for Emerson in December of 1916. Like Gennett, Emerson was one of the upstart labels Victor and Columbia wanted to squelch. “Sweat” was, as stated, not from New Orleans or from the bluesy South, but from where ragtime was made popular. “Down Home Rag” was backed, presumably willingly, by white musicians. Mamie Smith, whose recordings created the vocal blues market, had white musicians accompany her also. Lonnie Johnson (black) and Eddie Lang (white) made wonderful guitar duets in the period. Louis Armstrong, an artist whose Hot Fives you discuss at some length, made “Knockin’ A Jug” in 1929 with a sextet of three white and three black artists, none of them selected for his color, but each for being top in his respective class.
With regard to the stories of other people you mention, I would refer you to “Mr. Jelly Lord,” “King Oliver,” “Fats In Fact” and “Trombone Man,” all by Laurie Wright; “Louis” by Max Jones and John Chilton; Chilton’s “Who’s Who of Jazz;” “Bix: the Definitive Biography” by Jean Pierre Lion and “The Fabulous Fives” by Horst Lange, which includes the Memphis Five. All have a fairly dispassionate historical slant. Incidentally, Lange, in his introduction, offers the fact that there is no record of jazz being played by black bands, in New Orleans or anywhere else, until after 1920, and that until the advent of King Oliver they in turn all tried, for better or worse, to imitate the ODJB, rather than the other way round, as you state.
So it’s not aggressiveness, nor negativity, on my part. It’s that there’s more to the story than just what Bill Grauer, Orrin Keepnews or even a self-serving Jelly Roll Morton had to say; much more.

]]> Comment on BOOK: CUTTIN’ UP: How Early Jazz Got America’s Ear, by Court Carney. Cloth, 219pp., University of Kansas Press, Lawrence, Kansas, ISBN 978-0-7006-1675-6, $34.95. by Court http://www.rustbooks.com/reviews/?p=116&cpage=1#comment-12913 Court Sun, 15 May 2011 21:05:17 +0000 http://www.rustbooks.com/reviews/?p=116#comment-12913 Hi Malcolm, Thanks, all things considered, for the review. As you can imagine, I would disagree with the general thrust of the piece and I do think that your negativity was a bit aggressive in tone—but we can certainly get that way when we care so deeply about particular subjects. Yes, this was my dissertation and yes, this was my first book. All mistakes, of course, I take full responsibility for (and there is an egregious typo that bothers me each time I see it) and I appreciate your close reading of the text as well as your encyclopedic knowledge of the period. And yes, I do ground much of my work in the secondary literature, but one of my stated points was to serve as a synthesis of earlier works and a subtle, perhaps too subtle, historiographical thread goes through large parts of the book. Still, I argue that the conceptual thrust of the study does cover angles underrepresented in the jazz story. I was interested in the larger racial and cultural contours of the story and I hope some of that was made clear in various parts of the book. I’m a cultural historian by training and I set out to construct a book centered on the story of diffusion and the process by which jazz became popular. As such, I was necessarily selective in terms of the music used in the book (among other things). Obviously, King Oliver did more than “Snake Rag” and Louis Armstrong did more than “West End Blues” (and to counter your presumption I have listened to complete libraries of their music), but I strove to include pieces and performances that underscored the larger themes of the racial and cultural narrative instead of aiming at any sort of comprehensive cataloging of the music. Anyway, all reviews can hopefully bring about something positive in my future work. And yes, thankfully we can both agree on one point: the Press did a great job with the cover. Cheers, Court Hi Malcolm,

Thanks, all things considered, for the review. As you can imagine, I would disagree with the general thrust of the piece and I do think that your negativity was a bit aggressive in tone—but we can certainly get that way when we care so deeply about particular subjects. Yes, this was my dissertation and yes, this was my first book. All mistakes, of course, I take full responsibility for (and there is an egregious typo that bothers me each time I see it) and I appreciate your close reading of the text as well as your encyclopedic knowledge of the period. And yes, I do ground much of my work in the secondary literature, but one of my stated points was to serve as a synthesis of earlier works and a subtle, perhaps too subtle, historiographical thread goes through large parts of the book. Still, I argue that the conceptual thrust of the study does cover angles underrepresented in the jazz story. I was interested in the larger racial and cultural contours of the story and I hope some of that was made clear in various parts of the book. I’m a cultural historian by training and I set out to construct a book centered on the story of diffusion and the process by which jazz became popular. As such, I was necessarily selective in terms of the music used in the book (among other things). Obviously, King Oliver did more than “Snake Rag” and Louis Armstrong did more than “West End Blues” (and to counter your presumption I have listened to complete libraries of their music), but I strove to include pieces and performances that underscored the larger themes of the racial and cultural narrative instead of aiming at any sort of comprehensive cataloging of the music. Anyway, all reviews can hopefully bring about something positive in my future work. And yes, thankfully we can both agree on one point: the Press did a great job with the cover.

Cheers,

Court

]]> Comment on DANNY POLO & HIS SWING STARS, PLUS THE EMBASSY RHYTHM EIGHT. Retrieval RTR 79051 by Charles Justice http://www.rustbooks.com/reviews/?p=79&cpage=1#comment-12760 Charles Justice Wed, 19 Jan 2011 21:14:31 +0000 http://www.rustbooks.com/reviews/?p=79#comment-12760 Hello: Once back in the early to mid 1940s, in the town of Terre Haute, Indiana at an east side club named, appropriately, Eastwood, my mother played an impromptu number with Danny Polo. The regular group was on break. Some of Mom's friends knew how good she was on piano, although she didn't play professionally. She went to the piano and played some numbers. I don't know the names of them. I was at home, being a small boy then, and she only told me years later. Suddenly she was aware that a clarinet was playing along with her. It was Mr. Polo who had come back to the stage in preparation to continue his session. Apparently the crowd, probably just a hundred people or less because it was a small club, gave them a tremendous ovation. That's all I can tell you but thought you might like to know. Mom's long-time piano technician in Terre Haute, Mr. Roy Williams, knew and played with Danny Polo -- I believe when they were with Claude Thornhill who was also from Terre Haute. Sincerely, Chuck Justice Bloomington, Indiana Hello:

Once back in the early to mid 1940s, in the town of Terre Haute, Indiana at an east side club named, appropriately, Eastwood, my mother played an impromptu number with Danny Polo.

The regular group was on break. Some of Mom’s friends knew how good she was on piano, although she didn’t play professionally.

She went to the piano and played some numbers. I don’t know the names of them. I was at home, being a small boy then, and she only told me years later.

Suddenly she was aware that a clarinet was playing along with her. It was Mr. Polo who had come back to the stage in preparation to continue his session.

Apparently the crowd, probably just a hundred people or less because it was a small club, gave them a tremendous ovation.

That’s all I can tell you but thought you might like to know.

Mom’s long-time piano technician in Terre Haute, Mr. Roy Williams, knew and played with Danny Polo — I believe when they were with Claude Thornhill who was also from Terre Haute.

Sincerely,
Chuck Justice
Bloomington, Indiana

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