[Dixielandjazz] New books on jazz

[Anton Crouch]

Hello all

WARNING: Longish post, which may not be of interest to some listmates.

Apologies to Fred Spencer for perhaps stealing his thunder, but I want to
comment on some new books that I've received. What follows is not intended
to be reviews but, rather, overviews which I hope will cause people to at
least have a look at the books. All three are somewhat "specialised" but
all contain a lot of material on early jazz and all are good reads (to use
a literary cliché).

First up is the long awaited book by Lawrence Gushee on the (Original)
Creole Band - "Pioneers of jazz, the story of the Creole Band", Oxford
University Press, 2005. The book has been about 20 years in the making and
those who know of Larry Gushee's work as a jazz historian will know what to
expect. To put it simply, there is not (and may not yet have been) anyone
like him when it comes to scrupulous jazz research. Mike Meddings and other
Morton-o-philes (including me) treasure Gushee for clearing up the matters
of Jelly Roll Morton's actual birth date and name, after 40 years of myth
and mischief.

In this book Gushee gives us the history of a band which can now be seen as
the earliest ambassador of New Orleans jazz. The critical point is that the
band began widespread touring on the west coast, in middle America, and as
far north as Canada long before the "closing of Storyville/jazz went up the
river" simplification of jazz history. Some of the band's members are now
part of the iconography of jazz, eg Freddie Keppard, Jimmy Noone and Bill
Johnson.

Next is Tim Brooks' "Lost sounds, blacks and the birth of the recording
industry, 1890-1919", University of Illinois Press, 2004. This is a large
tome, worthy of the description "encyclopaedic". Brooks is a discographer
as well as social historian and is well known to the handful of
discographically-inclined people on this list, because of his "Columbia
Master Book". You can run, but you can't hide, Steve  :-)

As Brooks puts it, the story of early recording is as much about how
African-Americans overcame the barriers to recording as the barriers
themselves and I was surprised to learn that almost 800 recordings were
made by African-Americans in the period under consideration. At least half
still exist and more than 100 are available as re-issues, including some by
George W. Johnson, the first successful black recording artist.

The book also includes an appendix on Caribbean and South American
recordings (by Dick Spottswood).

Finally, we have William Howland Kenney's "Jazz on the river", University
of Chicago Press, 2005. The "river" is, of course, the Mississippi and
those that know Kenney's earlier book "Chicago jazz: a cultural history,
1904-1930", Oxford University Press, 1993 won't need any prompting to read
this one.

All the great names are here and I need do no more than quote part of the
back cover - "We are treated here to a heady mix of local history,
riverboat mythology, trends in the making of jazz, and even biographies of
its leading luminaries".

All the best
Anton