[Dixielandjazz] San Kenton

[Stephen Barbone]

I'm loving the discussion on Kenton, just as I loved the one on Miles
Davis. Basically because all sorts of misconceptions arise about both.
No surprising because I guess these misconceptions arise about all jazz
musicians.

Kenton used "KKK" on his stationary? Nah, never happened. It was his fan
club that used it. It meant "Keep Kenton Kicking". Was it racist? Maybe,
but it was not Kenton doing it. Sure most of his fans were white. And
why not, the music didn't swing, was not danceable and more like a band
firing an intelligence test at a seated audience.

Kenton had a white band. True, but he also hired the following blacks:
Ernie Royal, Karl George, Jimmy Price, Jimmy Crawford, Curtis Counce,
Kevin Jordan, Jean Turner, Julius Watkins and Don Byas. However, black
musos did not become a force in his band. It did not swing, so many,
black or white would not want to stay in that kind of a band. Was it
jazz?  Well you could argue either way.

And Leonard Feather tarred him with a racist brush in the 1950s well
before the current writers did

Same with Marsalis' Lincoln Center Band. Not many whites agree with his
style of music either and so they don't want to play in it either. Yet
many bemoan the  make-up of his band.

Or we hear than Miles Davis hated all whites. Pure nonsense. When he
went to France in 1949, he had a very brief but deep romance with
Juliette Greco. To quote Miles himself, he said: "Paris changed the way
I looked at things forever. It was where I understood that all white
people weren't the same"  and about his affair with Greco: "She taught
me what it was to love someone. I had never felt like that in my life.
It was the freedom . . of being treated like a human being, like someone
important."

And while there he sought out and met Sartre, Camus and Picasso. etc.,
etc., etc. Miles' persona all of his life, was that of a guy with a very
strong inferiority complex. So some turn that into racism? BS.

Bottom line, the jazz critics, writers and other shallow thinkers are
constantly stirring up trouble, Black v. White, Bebop v Trad, and most
of it is all nonsense. Jazz Musicians? We are among the most tolerant
people on earth as has been proven time and again since jazz began.

Cheers,
Steve