Keeping Time. Readings In Jazz History

Drawing from contemporary journalism, reviews, program notes, memoirs, interviews, and other sources, Keeping Time lets you experience, first hand, the controversies and critical issues that have accompanied jazz from its very birth.
Edited by Robert Walser, these sixty-two thought provoking pieces offer a wealth of insight into jazz. Some of the giants of jazz speak to us here, including Jelly Roll Morton, Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus and Wynton Marsalis. And there are pieces by writers such as Langston Hughes, Norman Mailer, and Ralph Ellison, and by critics such as Leonard Feather and Gunther Schuller. Readers will find Louis Armstrong on what makes swing, Dizzy Gillespie on bebop, and Miles Davis on jazz-rock fusion. Equally important, Walser has selected writings that capture the passionate reactions of people who have loved, hated, supported, and argued about jazz. One can read, for instance, a dismissive article written in 1918 that relegates jazz to the "servant's hall of music" along with "the clatter of the clogs, the click of Slavic heels." Or a debate between Wynton Marsalis and Herbie Hancock over the merits of free jazz and electric instruments. Or Duke Ellington's claim that jazz is neither highbrow nor lowbrow, but "goes back to something just about as old--and as natural--as the circulation of the blood."
In the end, the focus here remains on how the music works and why people have cared about it. Filled with passionately felt, insightful writing, Keeping Time will increase one's historical awareness of jazz even as it provokes lively discussion among jazz aficionados, whether in clubs, concert halls or classrooms.

CONTENIDO:

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