[Dixielandjazz] Review of new "New Orleans Jazz" photo collection

[Charles Suhor]

The December IAJRC JOURNAL is out, close on the heels of the September issue. It contains feature articles on Bubber Miley, Lester Young, and Teo Marcero. It also includes, in the Jazzy Reads column, my review of Edward Branley’s “New Orleans Jazz” photo collection, part of the Arcadia Company’s Images of America Series. There’s also a brief review of Thomas Jacobsen’s  excellent “New Orleans Jazz Scene, 1970-2000” in the Bob Porter on Books column.                                                                      My review, pasted below, is pretty ill-tempered. Maybe I should face the fact that companies specializing in dozens of photo series are don’t give a crap about general historical accuracy, let alone detailed fact-checking. But as I state at the end, popular mythologies are built on such materials, and they should be held accountable to accuracy.

Charlie 

Images of America: New Orleans Jazz
By Edward J. Branley
Arcadia (2014) 127 pp., $16.72
Reviewed by Charles Suhor
   Edward J. Branley’s compilation of photographs about New Orleans jazz from its roots to the present is a new entry in Arcadia Publishing Company’s “Images of America” series. The series aspires to “preserve history on a local level.” Dozens of titles are listed for Louisiana alone, including not only cities but also universities and topics like K&B Drugstores and baseball in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
   I must confess that a red flag is raised when I see photo collections that are part of a wide-ranging series. The quality of each book must be judged on its own merits, but I have a hunch that the “series” concept is a magnet both for serious students of the subjects (who might or might not be credentialed scholars) and zealous enthusiasts who lack investigative rigor and endurance. Of course, culling through a huge corpus of graphics and deciding on selection and sequencing is a major project, no matter who undertakes it. The problem is that the choices should be guided by the best available historical knowledge, not dilettante wisdom or impressions gleaned from popular lore.              
   This is the second such collection I’ve seen in recent years. I reviewed Thomas Morgan’s book of photos, New Orleans Jazz, in the March 2011 IAJRC Journal. It was part of Turner Publishing Company’s “Historic Photos” series, which includes numerous books about cities and also topics like Broadway shows, Chicago crime, and Colorado mining.
   Both Branley and Morgan show predictable strengths. They present many classic photos of first generation players that are familiar to jazz aficionados. Also, both make some fresh contributions. Branley makes use of wider and richer resources, uncovering relatively rare photos and graphics from the New Orleans Public Library collection. He also includes Carlos May’s contemporary photos of significant remaining sites of old jazz venues and early musicians’ homes. In contrast, Morgan’s main source—60% of the graphics--was the Louisiana State Museum. But Morgan gave attention to the neglected popular local jazz revival of the post-WWII years, sparked largely by Sharkey Bonano, Papa Celestin, and the then-new New Orleans Jazz Club, a movement ill-understood by Branley.
   Unfortunately, both Branley and Morgan provide inadequate prose frameworks, show odd judgment calls about inclusion and exclusion of materials, and make occasional errors outright in the captions. I won’t recount Morgan’s’ problems here, nor will I attempt a detailed list of Branley’s misfires. A sampler, focused solely on Pete Fountain: Pete’s “first band” wasn’t  the Basin Street Six. He began with the Junior Dixieland Band, which became the Dukes; went with Phil Zito’s International City Dixielanders, which broke away as a unit to become the Six, a cooperative band. His main early influence wasn’t Goodman, but Irving Fazola, earning him the nickname “Little Faz.” 
   Branely’s two-page introduction cuts a swath so wide that the center of the narrative is elusive, presaging the vagueness and lack of precision in the introductions to the chapters (“Buddy Bolden’s New Orleans,” “Creole Jazz,” “Dixieland Goes Nationwide,” “Dixieland Decline,” “Brass Bands and Traditional Jazz,” and “Modern Jazz”). In his broad-brush account, Bolden was virtually the inventor of jazz, and a treatment of early black musicians suffices as the story of early jazz. Papa Jack Laine is not pictured, and his influence receives no mention. The first white musicians show up on page 49, and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band is ho-hummed into the array four pages later. Bill Russell, who played a huge part in the local and nationwide revival, is nowhere to be found.
   Make no mistake, I am comfortable in asserting that jazz is African American music and that its most distinctive characteristics have African roots. But Branley seems unable to relax with the idea that young white players, though deriving much from the first generation of black musicians, were an integral part of the complex evolution of the music.
   “Creole Jazz” is the title of chapter 2. The term is employed as if it were a distinct subgenre of jazz but is never defined, musicologically, ethnically, or sociologically. The single-paragraph introduction to the “Dixieland Decline” chapter gives a standard description of the rise of big bands, but it bears little relation to the potpourri of photos in the chapter. Branley mentions revivalism but conflates the popular postwar revival in New Orleans with the efforts to record early musicians carried out by fig enthusiasts. The photos in the chapter range from spot-on (George Lewis, Bonano, Bunk) to bizarre (a 1930 radio band at WSMB, an unnamed music teacher directing children during th e depression).
   In the “Modern Jazz” chapter, Branley, like Morgan, shows no awareness of the formidable underground network of local modernists in the postwar years. He attributes the growth of modern jazz to “classically trained musicians” who “came back wanting to create” the new jazz. Ellis Marsalis is deservedly cited and pictured, but he was only among dozens of brilliant young innovators in the city. Most of the chapter is devoted to Ellis’ sons and other worthy second-generation artists such as Terence Blanchard, Harry Connick, Jr., Jeremy Davenport, and Donald Harrison. LSUNO is cited as an educational force, but no mention is made of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA), the hugely influential public high school where Ellis taught.
   Branley perpetuates the myth that the Jazz and Heritage Festival began in 1970, led by George Wein (his picture is captioned “Founder”) and Quint Davis (captioned “First Daddy”). The huge, varied, multi-site Jazzfest began two years prior to their management of the event. Willis Conover was emcee, and Danny Barker, Al Belletto, and Doug Ramsey (then a newsman at WDSU-TV) were among its advisors. Dan Morgenstern opened Down Beat to extensive coverage. 
   It would be unreasonable to expect in-depth history in pictorial collections, and some errors will be found in most historical works (including my own, despite meticulous research). But within an array of 180 (Branley) and 200 (Morgan) graphics with captions, and space for prose overviews, basically adequate representations were possible.   
   Of course, publishers bear much of the blame for books that appear authoritative but are grossly under-researched. Lacking the standards of refereed academic presses, they churn out slick photo collections by the dozens. Probably, most purchasers are nostalgia buffs with more interest in gazing at quaint photos than becoming solidly informed. But cultural mythologies are often built on popular sources, and there is no acceptable reason for inaccuracy in putatively “historical” collections.