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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