[Dixielandjazz] Press Coverage of Early Jazz

[Steve barbone]

Charles Suhor <csuhor at zebra.net> wrote about the negative press coverage of
early jazz. (snipped for brevity)

Great fun to read, Charlie, thanks for posting it. Should remind all of us
that jazz, then rock, then rap, then hip hop all got similar coverage.

Whore house music played by nefarious drunks, low lifes and druggies. Mercy
mercy, and now we clean it up and call it Art. Here's my favorite press
coverage on Jazz By Maxim Gorky, printed in Pravda. Espousing the latest
Communist party position (after Stalin took power) that Jazz was capitalist
poison being deliberately spread among black Americans to keep them from
dwelling on their status as slaves of the System.


THE MUSIC OF THE GROSS - Maxim Gorky - PRAVDA - 1928

"There are rumblings, wails and howls like the smarting of a metal pig, the
shriek of a donkey, or the amorous croaking of a monstrous frog. The
insulting chaos of insanity pulses to a throbbing rhythm. Listening, for a
few minutes to these wails, one involuntarily imagines an orchestra of
sexually driven madmen conducted by a man-stallion brandishing a huge
genital member, The monstrous bass belches out English words; a wild horn
wails piercingly calling to mind the cries of a wounded camel; a drum pounds
monotonously; a nasty little pipe tears at one's ears; a saxophone emits its
quacking nasal sound. Fleshy hips sway, and thousands of heavy feet tread
and shuffle. The music of the degenerate ends finally with a deafening thud,
as though a case of pottery had been flung down to earth from the skies."


Wouldn't that make a great CD review? No wonder jazz, then Rock, Rap and Hip
Hop got popular. How could they not, with world wide press coverage of kids
cavorting to degenerate music, sex and drugs? Even the very word "jazz"
connoted a sexual act (according to Armstrong and a bunch of early musos).
As did "Rock & Roll" if you are at all hip to that music's sexual history.

Hey, maybe that's why OKOM, as most of us know it, is dying. NO SEX, NO
DRUGS (except Lipitor, etc) NO KIDS, and an attempt to make a vapid elitist
art form out of exciting degenerate music :-) VBG.

Maybe we need some "man-stallion" band leader, or some chick singers showing
their "fleshy hips". ;-) VBG

Cheers,
Steve Barbone