[Dixielandjazz] "DownBeat: The Great Jazz Interviews" reviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

"DownBeat: The Great Jazz Interviews" reviewed

DownBeat Magazine's 75-Year History Is One for the Books
by Howard Reich
Chicago Tribune, December 29, 2009

Seventy-five years ago, a new Chicago publication began chronicling a fast-growing
music: the big bands.
And though the touring ensembles started to fade by the late-1940s, DownBeat emerged
as one of the most revered names in jazz -- more famous, in fact, than most of the
artists it covered.

If you doubt the stature and value of DownBeat, which years ago moved to suburban
Elmhurst but remains central to jazz journalism, check out a plush new book, "DownBeat:
The Great Jazz Interviews -- A 75th Anniversary Anthology" (Hal Leonard). In its
copiously illustrated pages (340 of them), you'll see the perpetual transformation
of an art form invented in America and forever rooted here.

Laid out less like a book and more like a magazine, the anthology's pages feel contemporary
rather than retrospective. Headlines announcing a new tour by Louis Armstrong, an
in-depth interview with Duke Ellington or a feud between musicians capture the urgency
of music journalism as highbrow tomes rarely do.

Here's a magazine and a book, in other words, that match the freely improvised nature
of jazz itself, which may explain why DownBeat still commands attention in the 21st
century. (Disclosure: I occasionally write for the magazine but did not contribute
to this volume.)

Amid all the news, reviews and trend pieces, the most precious words belong to the
artists, either quoted by journalists or penned in first-person essays.

Just listen to Armstrong bemoaning a grueling period of touring, in the early 1930s:
"My chops was beat when I got back from Europe," he says in a 1935 DownBeat interview.
"My manager worked me too hard, and I was so tired when I got back that I didn't
even want to see the points of my horn."

Or Ellington on how he composes:
"I like to work alone," he explains in a 1936 interview, before he found an alter
ego in another jazz genius, Billy Strayhorn. "I don't like to trifle with another
man's idea, unless I can finish it in the same manner," continues Ellington.
"I stop writing when I stop feeling, because if you continue after that, you become
an observer rather than the participator."

Elsewhere in the book, jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton -- down and out in New York
in 1938 -- rails that he's not being given credit for his innovations and complains
about corruption in the music business. It took decades after Morton's death, in
1941, for him to be vindicated, but DownBeat was one of the few publications to give
him a platform.

The shock of Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry's music in the late '50s initially inspired
condemnation from many musicians, including the great composer-arranger Bob Brookmeyer,
who nobly recanted in DownBeat's pages: "Since they have been in New York... I have
been going over to hear them at the Five Spot, and I've learned a lesson in tolerance,"
says Brookmeyer in an interview. "I'm sure my rejection of this music was based simply
on intolerance of (something) that I was not familiar with."

DownBeat has made generations of readers familiar with unfamiliar music well worth
knowing. Long may it do so.

"DownBeat: The Great Jazz Interviews -- A 75th Anniversary Anthology," $24.99, is
available at downbeat.com and amazon.com.


--Bob Ringwald K6YBV
rsr at ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
916/806-9551

Check out our latest recording at www.ringwald.com/recordings.htm

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"frvtuyfihohnjbgygnklm;jibu"
       - Helen Keller 


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