"Why Jazz Happened" is the first comprehensive social history of jazz. It provides an intimate and compelling look at the many forces that shaped this most American of art forms and the many influences that gave rise to jazz's post-war styles. Rich with the voices of musicians, producers, promoters, and others on the scene during the decades following World War II, this book views jazz's evolution through the prism of technological advances, social transformations, changes in the law, economic trends, and much more. In an absorbing narrative enlivened by the commentary of key personalities, Marc Myers describes the myriad of events and trends that affected the music's evolution, among them, the American Federation of Musicians strike in the early 1940s, changes in radio and concert-promotion, the introduction of the long-playing record, the suburbanization of Los Angeles, the Civil Rights movement, the "British invasion" and the rise of electronic instruments. This groundbreaking book deepens our appreciation of this music by identifying many of the developments outside of jazz itself that contributed most to its texture, complexity, and growth.

From the Preface by Ted Gioia:All of these musicians fought their way back over the next decade, and their success in re-establishing themselves as important artists was perhaps the first signal, initially unrecognized as such, that a re-evaluation of the earlier West Coast scene was under way. Less fortunate than these few were West Coasters such as Sonny Criss, Harold Land, Curtis Counce, Carl Perkins, Lennie Niehaus, Roy Porter, Teddy Edwards, Gerald Wilson, and those others whose careers languished without achieving either a later revival or even an early brief taste of fame. Certainly some West Coast jazz players have been awarded a central place in jazz history, but invariably they have been those who, like Charles Mingus or Eric Dolphy, left California for Manhattan. Those who stayed behind were, for the most part, left behind. The time has come for a critical re-evaluation of this body of work. With more than forty years of perspective--since modern jazz came to California-we can perhaps now begin to make sense of the rich array of music presented there during those glory years. But to do so, we need to start almost from scratch. We need to throw away the stereotypes of West Coast jazz, reject the simplifications, catchphrases, and pigeonholings that have only confused the issue. So many discussions of the music have begun by asking, "What was West Coast jazz?"--as if some simple definition would answer all our questions. And when no simple answer emerged--how could it when the same critics asking the question could hardly agree on a definition of jazz itself?--this failure was brandished as grounds for dismissing the whole subject. My approach is different. I start with the music itself, the musicians themselves, the geography and social situation, the clubs and the culture. I tried to learn what they have to tell us, rather than regurgitate the dubious critical consensus of the last generation. Was West Coast jazz the last regional style or merely a marketing fad? Was there really ever any such thing as West Coast jazz? If so, was it better or worse than East Coast jazz? Such questions are not without merit, but they provide a poor start for a serious historical inquiry. I ask readers hoping for quick and easy answers to approach this work with an open mind and a modicum of patience. Generalizations will emerge; broader considerations will become increasingly clear; but only as we approach the close of this complex story, after we have let the music emerge in all its richness and diversity. By starting with some theory of West Coast jazz, we run the risk of seeing only what fits into our theory. Too many accounts of the music have fallen into just this trap. Instead, we need to see things with fresh eyes, hear the music again with fresh ears.

"Among the many books on the history of jazz. . . an implicit division of labor has solidified, whereby black artists play and invent while white writers provide the commentary. . . . Eric Porter's brilliant book seeks to trace the ways in which black jazz musicians have made verbal sense of their accomplishments, demonstrating the profound self-awareness of the artists themselves as they engaged in discourse about their enterprise."--Susan McClary, author of "Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form

"With What Is This Thing Called Jazz Eric Porter has given us an original portrait of black musicians as creators, thinkers and politically conscious individuals. This well-written, thoroughly researched work is a model of a new kind of scholarship about African American musicians: one that shows them as people who are both shaped by and actively shaping their political and social context. One of the book's most important contributions is that it takes seriously what the musicians themselves say about the music and allows their voices to join that of critics and musicologists in helping to construct a critical and philosophical framework for analyzing the music. Professor Porter's work is rare in it's balanced attention to the formal qualities of the music, historical interpretation and theoretical reflection. His is a work that will certainly shape the direction of future studies. "What Is This Thing Called Jazz? is an extraordinary work."--Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of "If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday

"A major contribution to American Studies in music, Eric Porter's lucidly written book is the first to thoroughly analyze and contextualizethe critical, historical and aesthetic writings of some of today's most innovative composer-performers. Placing the vital concerns of artists at the center, this work provides academic and lay readers alike with important new insights on how African-American musicians sought to realize ambitious dreams and concrete goals through direct action--not only in sound, but through building alternative institutions that emphasized the importance of community involvement."--George E. Lewis, Professor of Music, Critical Studies/Experimental Practices Area University of California, San Diego

In the early spring of 1959, six musicians went into the 30th Street Studio in New York. Nine hours later, they had recorded one of the finest albums of the twentieth century. Kind of Blue traces Miles Davis's development into an artist capable of making such a masterpiece, and explores the careers and struggles of the musicians who shaped him and played alongside him. Using interviews and pictures, studio dialogue and outtakes, the great jazz historian Ashley Kahn follows Miles and his group into the studio, to show precisely how the greatest jazz record of all time was made, how it was introduced to the world, and how it changed music forever.

The musical output of jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock has toppled genre boundaries and influenced generations of musicians. A child prodigy who worked his way up through classical tradition, found a home for his insatiable creativity in jazz, and went on to influence musicians across numerous genres, Hancock's work continues to be a staple in mainstream music. In addition to his classical training and innovative jazz work, Hancock has explored many forms of music such as rock, funk and world music, always looking ahead rather than rehashing what has already been accomplished. In Experiencing Herbie Hancock, Eric Wendell looks beyond the successes and failures of Hancock's career in an effort to explore Hancock's musical design within the jazz community and within the popular mainstream. Wendell also explores Hancock's dramatic impact on the jazz community and how his efforts have fostered a cross-genre continuity among modern jazz practitioners. Hancock's chameleon attitude towards contemporary music styles has been met with excitement from both peers and fans alike. Experiencing Herbie Hancock is an ideal work for jazz aficionados, music, and anyone who appreciates the efforts of an artist who would rather look ahead to the great unknown then tread backwards on past endeavors.

The Jazz Republic examines jazz music and the jazz artists who shaped Germany's exposure to this African American art form from 1919 through 1933. Jonathan O. Wipplinger explores the history of jazz in Germany as well as the roles that music, race (especially Blackness), and America played in German culture and follows the debate over jazz through the fourteen years of Germany's first democracy. He explores visiting jazz musicians including the African American Sam Wooding and the white American Paul Whiteman and how their performances were received by German critics and artists. The Jazz Republic also engages with the meaning of jazz in debates over changing gender norms and jazz's status between paradigms of high and low culture. By looking at German translations of Langston Hughes's poetry, as well as Theodor W. Adorno's controversial rejection of jazz in light of racial persecution, Wipplinger examines how jazz came to be part of German cultural production more broadly in both the US and Germany, in the early 1930s. Using a wide array of sources from newspapers, modernist and popular journals, as well as items from the music press, this work intervenes in the debate over the German encounter with jazz by arguing that the music was no mere "symbol" of Weimar's modernism and modernity. Rather than reflecting intra-German and/or European debates, it suggests that jazz and its practitioners, African American, white American, Afro-European, German and otherwise, shaped Weimar culture in a central way.

A galvanizing history of how jazz and jazz musicians flourished despite rampant cultural exploitation The music we call "jazz" arose in late nineteenth century North America--most likely in New Orleans--based on the musical traditions of Africans, newly freed from slavery. Grounded in the music known as the "blues," which expressed the pain, sufferings, and hopes of Black folk then pulverized by Jim Crow, this new music entered the world via the instruments that had been abandoned by departing military bands after the Civil War. Jazz and Justice examines the economic, social, and political forces that shaped this music into a phenomenal US--and Black American--contribution to global arts and culture. Horne assembles a galvanic story depicting what may have been the era's most virulent economic--and racist--exploitation, as jazz musicians battled organized crime, the Ku Klux Klan, and other variously malignant forces dominating the nightclub scene where jazz became known. Horne pays particular attention to women artists, such as pianist Mary Lou Williams and trombonist Melba Liston, and limns the contributions of musicians with Native American roots. This is the story of a beautiful lotus, growing from the filth of the crassest form of human immiseration.

Leonard Bernstein's gifts for drama and connecting with popular audiences made him a central figure in twentieth century American music. Though a Bernstein work might reference anything from modernism to cartoon ditties, jazz permeated every part of his musical identity as a performer, educator, and intellectual. Katherine Baber investigates how jazz in its many styles served Bernstein as a flexible, indeed protean, musical idea. As she shows, Bernstein used jazz to signify American identity with all its tensions and contradictions and to articulate community and conflict, irony and parody, and timely issues of race and gender. Baber provides a thoughtful look at how Bernstein's use of jazz grew out of his belief in the primacy of tonality, music's value as a unique form of human communication, and the formation of national identity in music. She also offers in-depth analyses of On the Town, West Side Story, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and other works to explore fascinating links between Bernstein's art and issues like eclecticism, music's relationship to social engagement, black-Jewish relations, and his own musical identity.

"Revelatory . . . one of the most briskly revealing pieces of jazz biography that I've read." -Richard Brody, The New Yorker When Billie Holiday first stepped into a recording studio in November 1933, it marked the beginning of what is arguably the most remarkable and influential career in twentieth-century popular music. Her voice weathered countless shifts in popular taste, and today new reincarnations of her continue to arrive, most recently in the form of singers like Amy Winehouse and Adele. Most of the writing on Holiday has focused on the tragic details of her life-her prostitution at the age of fourteen, her heroin addiction and alcoholism, her series of abusive relationships-or tried to correct the many fabrications of her autobiography. But Billie Holiday strips away the myths and puts her music front and center, staying close to her artistry, her performance style, and the self she created and put on record and onstage. Drawing on a vast amount of new material that has surfaced in the last decade, critically acclaimed jazz writer and musician John Szwed presents not just a biography, but a meditation on Billie Holiday's art and its relation to her life. Along the way, he illuminates her influences, her uncanny voice and rhythmic genius, her signature songs-including Strange Fruit and God Bless the Child-and her enduring legacy as the greatest jazz singer of all time.

Miles Davis's Bitches Brew is one of the most iconic albums in American music, the preeminent landmark and fertile seedbed of jazz-fusion. Fans have been fortunate in the past few years to gain access to Davis's live recordings from this time, when he was working with an ensemble that has come to be known as the Lost Quintet. In this book, jazz historian and musician Bob Gluck explores the performances of this revolutionary group-Davis's first electric band-to illuminate the thinking of one of our rarest geniuses and, by extension, the extraordinary transition in American music that he and his fellow players ushered in. Gluck listens deeply to the uneasy tension between this group's driving rhythmic groove and the sonic and structural openness, surprise, and experimentation they were always pushing toward. There he hears-and outlines-a fascinating web of musical interconnection that brings Davis's funk-inflected sensibilities into conversation with the avant-garde worlds that players like Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane were developing. Going on to analyze the little-known experimental groups Circle and the Revolutionary Ensemble, Gluck traces deep resonances across a commercial gap between the celebrity Miles Davis and his less famous but profoundly innovative peers. The result is a deeply attuned look at a pivotal moment when once-disparate worlds of American music came together in explosively creative combinations.

In the 1950s and '60s, co-operative jazz clubs opened their doors in Canada in response to new forms of jazz expression emerging after the war and the lack of performance spaces outside major urban centres. Operated by the musicians themselves, these hip new clubs created spaces where jazz musicians practised their art. Live at the Cellar looks at this unique period in the development of jazz in Canada. Centered on Vancouver's legendary Cellar club, it explores the ways in which these clubs functioned as sites for the performance and exploration of jazz as well as for countercultural expression. Jago combines original research with archival evidence, interviews, and photographs to shine a light on a period of astonishing musical activity that paved the way for Canada's vibrant jazz scene today.

The drum kit has provided the pulse of popular music from before the dawn of jazz up to the present day pop charts. Kick It, a provocative social history of the instrument, looks closely at key innovators in the development of the drum kit: inventors and manufacturers like the Ludwig and Zildjian dynasties, jazz icons like Gene Krupa and Max Roach, rock stars from Ringo Starr to Keith Moon, and popular artists who haven't always got their dues as drummers, such as Karen Carpenter and J Dilla. Tackling the history of race relations, global migration, and the changing tension between high and low culture, author Matt Brennan makes the case for the drum kit's role as one of the most transformative musical inventions of the modern era. Kick It shows how the drum kit and drummers helped change modern music-and society as a whole-from the bottom up.

As the 1960s ended, Herbie Hancock embarked on a grand creative experiment. Having just been dismissed from the celebrated Miles Davis Quintet, he set out on the road, playing with his first touring group as a leader until he eventually formed what would become a revolutionary band. Taking the Swahili name "Mwandishi," the group would go on to play some of the most innovative music of the 1970s, fusing an assortment of musical genres, American and African cultures, and acoustic and electronic sounds into groundbreaking experiments that helped shape the American popular music that followed. In "You'll Know When You Get There," Bob Gluck offers the first comprehensive study of this seminal group, mapping the musical, technological, political, and cultural changes that they not only lived in but also effected. Beginning with Hancock's formative years as a sideman in bebop and hard bop ensembles, his work with Miles Davis, and the early recordings under his own name, Gluck uncovers the many ingredients that would come to form the Mwandishi sound. He offers an extensive series of interviews with Hancock and other band members, the producer and engineer who worked with them, and a catalog of well-known musicians who were profoundly influenced by the group. Paying close attention to the Mwandishi band's repertoire, he analyzes a wide array of recordings--many little known--and examines the group's instrumentation, their pioneering use of electronics, and their transformation of the studio into a compositional tool. From protofunk rhythms to synthesizers to the reclamation of African identities, Gluck tells the story of a highly peculiar and thrillingly unpredictable band that became a hallmark of American genius.

With twenty-three Grammy wins, Chick Corea is a legendary jazz figure and one of the most prolific and influential contemporary pianists of our time. He has produced hundreds of releases in multiple genres over five decades, and he is one of the hardest-working musicians in the industry, with a yearly tour schedule of over 250 international concerts. He has authored multiple books and instructional works, and many regard him today as easily one of the most influential musicians of his generation. Experiencing Chick Corea looks at the full span of Corea's career, decade by decade, touching on the vast array of musical styles he engaged, from his initial work with Herbie Mann to his free explorations with Circle. It touches on his arguably most influential album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, his involvement with Miles Davis' Bitches Brew and subsequent efforts as pioneer in the fusion scene with Return to Forever, his duo collaborations, classical outings, and his acoustic and trio work in the 1990s and beyond. Learning how to listen to Corea is itself a bit of a magic carpet ride, given the range of material he has created and the breadth and depth of that work. Experiencing Chick Corea introduces this American Icon to audiences beyond the domain of jazz fans already familiar with this work. Monika Herzig places Corea's creations in their historical and social contexts so any music lover can gain a fuller understanding of the incredible range of his work.

'You the funkiest man alive.' Miles Davis' accolade was the perfect expression of John Lee Hooker's apotheosis as blues superstar: recording with the likes of Van Morrison, Keith Richards and Carlos Santana; making TV commercials (Lee Jeans); appearing in films (The Blues Brothers); and even starring in Pete Townshend's musical adaptation of Ted Hughes' story The Iron Man. His was an extraordinary life. Born in the American deep south, he moved to Detroit and then, in a career spanning over fifty years, recorded hypnotic blues classics such as 'Boogie Chillen', rhythm-and-blues anthems such as 'Dimples' and 'Boom Boom' and, in his final, glorious renaissance, the Grammy-winning album The Healer. Charles Shaar Murray's authoritative biography vividly, and often in John Lee Hooker's own words, does magnificent justice to the man and his music.

Few American artists in any medium have enjoyed the international and lasting cultural impact of Duke Ellington. From jazz standards such as "Mood Indigo" and "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," to his longer, more orchestral suites, to his leadership of the stellar big band he toured and performed with for decades after most big bands folded, Ellington represented a singular, pathbreaking force in music over the course of a half-century. At the same time, as one of the most prominent black public figures in history, Ellington demonstrated leadership on questions of civil rights, equality, and America's role in the world.
With "Duke Ellington's America," Harvey G. Cohen paints a vivid picture of Ellington's life and times, taking him from his youth in the black middle class enclave of Washington, D.C., to the heights of worldwide acclaim. Mining extensive archives, many never before available, plus new interviews with Ellington's friends, family, band members, and business associates, Cohen illuminates his constantly evolving approach to composition, performance, and the music business--as well as issues of race, equality and religion. Ellington's own voice, meanwhile, animates the book throughout, giving "Duke Ellington's America" an intimacy and immediacy unmatched by any previous account.
By far the most thorough and nuanced portrait yet of this towering figure, "Duke Ellington's America" highlights Ellington's importance as a figure in American history as well as in American music.

The story of the African American contributions to the symphonic jazz vogue of the 1920s through the 1940s.

During the early decades of the twentieth century symphonic jazz involved an expansive family of music that emulated, paralleled, and intersected the jazz tradition. Though now largely forgotten, symphonic jazz was both a popular music---arranging tradition and a repertory of hybrid concert works, both of which reveled in the mildly irreverent interbreeding of white and black and high and low music. While the roots of symphonic jazz can be traced to certain black ragtime orchestras of the teens, the idiom came to maturation in the music of 1920s white dance bands.

Through a close examination of the music of Duke Ellington and James P. Johnson, "Ellington Uptown" uncovers compositions that have usually fallen in the cracks between concert music, jazz, and popular music. It also places the concert works of these two iconic figures in context through an investigation both of related compositions by black and white peers and of symphonic jazz---style arrangements from a diverse number of early sound films, Broadway musicals, Harlem nightclub floor shows, and select interwar radio programs.

Both Ellington and Johnson were part of a close-knit community of several generations of Harlem musicians. Older figures like Will Marion Cook, Will Vodery, W. C. Handy, and James Reese Europe were the generation of black musicians that initially broke New York entertainment's racial barriers in the first two decades of the century. By the 1920s, Cook, Vodery, and Handy had become mentors to Harlem's younger musicians. This generational connection is a key for understanding Johnson's and Ellington's ambitions to use the success of Harlem's white-oriented entertainment trade as a springboard for establishing a black concert music tradition based on Harlem jazz and popular music.

John Howland is Assistant Professor of Music at Rutgers University and the cofounder and current editor-in-chief of the journal "Jazz Perspectives." This work has been supported through several prestigious awards, including the Lloyd Hibberd Publication Endowment Fund of the American Musicological Society.

Charles Mingus is among jazz's greatest composers and perhaps its most talented bass player. He was blunt and outspoken about the place of jazz in music history and American culture, about which performers were the real thing (or not), and much more. These in-depth interviews, conducted several years before Mingus died, capture the composer's spirit and voice, revealing how he saw himself as composer and performer, how he viewed his peers and predecessors, how he created his extraordinary music, and how he looked at race. Augmented with interviews and commentary by ten close associates--including Mingus's wife Sue, Teo Macero, George Wein, and Sy Johnson--"Mingus Speaks" provides a wealth of new perspectives on the musician's life and career.
As a writer for "Playboy, " John F. Goodman reviewed Mingus's comeback concert in 1972 and went on to achieve an intimacy with the composer that brings a relaxed and candid tone to the ensuing interviews. Much of what Mingus shares shows him in a new light: his personality, his passions and sense of humor, and his thoughts on music. The conversations are wide-ranging, shedding fresh light on important milestones in Mingus's life such as the publication of his memoir, "Beneath the Underdog," the famous Tijuana episodes, his relationships, and the jazz business.

New York City has always been a mecca in the history of jazz, and in many ways the cityOCOs jazz scene is more important now than ever before. "BlowinOCO the Blues Away" examines how jazz has thrived in New York following its popular resurgence in the 1980s. Using interviews, in-person observation, and analysis of live and recorded events, ethnomusicologist Travis A. Jackson explores both the ways in which various participants in the New York City jazz scene interpret and evaluate performance, and the criteria on which those interpretations and evaluations are based. Through the notes and words of its most accomplished performers and most ardent fans, jazz appears not simply as a musical style, but as a cultural form intimately influenced by and influential upon American concepts of race, place, and spirituality.

What is jazz? What is gained - and what is lost - when various communities close ranks around a particular definition of this quintessentially American music? "Jazz/Not Jazz" explores some of the musicians, concepts, places, and practices which, while deeply connected to established jazz institutions and aesthetics, have rarely appeared in traditional histories of the form. David Ake, Charles Hiroshi Garrett, and Daniel Goldmark have assembled a stellar group of writers to look beyond the canon of acknowledged jazz greats and address some of the big questions facing jazz today. More than just a history of jazz and its performers, this collections seeks out those people and pieces missing from the established narratives to explore what they can tell us about the way jazz has been defined and its history has been told.