No one can tell us more about jazz than the musicians themselves.
Unfortunately, most oral histories have limited scope--focusing on a
particular era or style--and fail to capture the full, rich story of
jazz. Now, in this vivid oral history, W. Royal Stokes presents nearly a
century of jazz--its people, places, periods, and styles--as it was
seen by the artists who created America's most distinctive music.
Here, along with the author's enlightening commentary, are the words of
musicians famous and little-known, veterans of the early years and
pathbreakers of the present, telling us about their origins and
adventures, about the places and performers they have known. We read of
young artists learning their skills surrounded by poverty, going on to
win fame around the world. We feel the excitement of jazz before the war
("The music was all over the place," recalled Wild Bill Davison. "It's
just unbelievable how many bands there were in Chicago. You could go anywhere
and there'd be a band."). And we glimpse the gritty, hard life hidden
beneath the beauty of the notes they played: "I remember not eating
practically a month several times," said Mary Lou Williams. "During the
depression we played engagements and we knew we weren't going to get any
money because Andy would scatch his face when he was walking toward the
band and the trumpet player would pull out his horn and play the
'Weary
Blues.' And we'd laugh about it. We hadn't eaten in a couple of days
and nothing was said, because the music was our survival."
Stokes
not only uncovers the history of jazz in the major cities and
regions--New Orleans, for instance, Chicago in the '20s and '30s, Kansas
City, and California from the '50s to the present--but he goes on to
bring us the story of the big bands, post-bebop developments, vocalists,
jazz around the globe, and the contemporary scene ("I was about eleven
and my brother Mike started to bring home a lot of Miles Davis records
from school and that did
it for me," remembers Pat Metheny. "First time I heard Miles playing
'My Funny Valentine,' that whole record just destroyed me."). And he
takes a close look at the rising place of women as instrumentalists in
the last decade.
Jazz is America's most original contribution to
music, and--as the late Dexter Gordon lamented--America is the one
country where it is little known. But W. Royal Stokes uncovers a scene
that is as alive as ever, with this fascinating look at how it has been
made and remade from the first decades of the century to today.
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