image source: San Francisco Chronicle October 5, 1954
The Modern Jazz Quartet first appeared in San Francisco on October 4, 1954 at the Blackhawk nightclub, 200 Hyde Street. Esteemed San Francisco Chronicle jazz critic, Ralph Gleason, wrote about their appearance:
The Modern Jazz Quartet ... represents the new approach to jazz. Schooled musicians, jazz men, too, they have brought forethought, planning and discipline to their music as well as the extemporaneous fire of jazz improvisations... The members of the group--John Lewis, piano; Percy Heath, bass; Milt Jackson, vibes, and Kenny Clark, drums--are among the most serious of the modern jazz men, and yet the charm of their music is that they are not so serious that they do not have fun.
The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz characterizes the music of the Modern Jazz Quartet as "cool jazz" in a "conservative bebop style." They were all, in fact, seasoned bebop musicians who performed in Dizzy Gillespie's band.
The Modern Jazz Quartet is notable for merging jazz, original a genre of dance music or entertainment, with elements of classical music. In that regard, they along with Duke Ellington and others brought jazz from the dance hall to the concert hall. This genre was sometimes called Third Stream Music.
advertisement from the San Francisco Ballet program
After a stint in the army during World War II, pianist John Lewis studied at the Manhattan School of Music. He soon joined Gillespie's group and later also worked and recorded with Illinois Jacquet, Lester Young and Charlie Parker. He also worked with Miles Davis as a pianist and arranger on the Birth of The Cool sessions in the late 1950s.
Program cover for the San Francisco Ballet's performance of Original Sin
Locally, Lewis collaborated with choreographer Lew Christensen and poet Kenneth Rexroth in the creation of Original Sin, a ballet in two scenes, written for the San Francisco Ballet that premiered on April 14, 1961.
An advertisement in the program details the miniature scores published by MJQ Music Inc., Lewis's imprint.
Qwest TV Collection features full-length clips produced for Qwest TV, a network formed by jazz legend Quincy Jones. It is an eclectic collection of video performances from many genres.
L.A. Theatre Works is a nonprofit whose work is distributed to public radio through PRX (Public Radio Exchange). Audio Drama: The L.A. Theatre Works Collections is a collection of plays that they have presented over the years.
Broadway On Demand Collection includes hundreds of musicals, plays, and dance performances as well as documentaries, and masterclasses.
The National Theatre Collection and Royal Shakespeare Company Collection are similar databases offering performances of full-length plays by the finest British actors and actresses. These video recordings are accompanied by a transcript (the script) for convenience.
Theatre in Video is the largest of the databases and includes a mix of performances and documentaries. Much, but not all, of the programming comes from public television. To get the most out of the database use the funnel to "filter your results.
You can find these and similar databases at the following links:
The Last Holiday of Gil Scott-Heron's posthumous memoir is the Martin Luther holiday. The impetus behind several of the chapters of this book is an appreciation of Stevie Wonder who was a leading force in creating this holiday. This appreciation includes a personal account of Scott-Heron's participation in Wonder's Hotter Than July tour of 1980 and 1981 that included his Rally for Peace on the National Mall in Washington, DC on Dr. King's birthday, January 15, 1981.
The Last Holiday was evidently compiled from a number of uncollected writings in addition that included his experiences with Stevie Wonder. The first half of the book devoted to his youth up through days at Lincoln College when he crossed the threshold into professional success as a writer. His musical and performing career takes up much of the remainder of the book.
Of course, Gil Scott-Heron has a way with words making this memoir a pleasure to read. His experiences in the Jim Crow South and of his participation in its integration are fascinating and of great historical value. He was born in Chicago while his mother working there. His father was Gil Heron, a footballer of Jamaican origin who Scott-Heron described as "young, exotic and worldly," and played almost no role in his life. I was always fascinated by the the singer's unusual name, but his actual proper name was Gilbert Scott Heron, un-hyphenated. His middle name Scott was his mother's family name and a name of some stature in Jackson, Tennessee where he grew up.
The only family photograph in the book presents his grandfather, the family patriarch and local legend, his grandmother, who was the strong early influence in his life, and their children, his mother, aunts and uncle who were all strong presences in his life. He wrote movingly of his grandmother in the two part song "On Coming From A Broken Home" on his final album I'm New Here. He related that: "Womenfolk raised me, and I was full-grown before knew I came from a broken home." He lived with his grandmother in Tennessee while his mother was still earning a living in Chicago. After his grandmother's death when he was 12, he moved to the Bronx to live with his mother. He described the process of coming to know, love and respect the mother he had barely known up until then.
A teacher persuaded him to apply to the prestigious and exclusive Fieldston School. His description of the process and his time at the school is very poignant. Our Ancestry.com database offers a clue to his experience. We can see in a 1965 class picture that his fellow students are relaxed and informal; some of the boys have shaggy hair. Scott-Heron is positioned in the far-left corner of the photograph and is the only student in a coat and tie. He has a very serious, clean-cut demeanor. He did not recall his time there with fondness. Far from experiencing blatant racial discrimination, he mostly describes feeling like an outsider - "preferring to hang out with each other instead of some guy who just got there."
Ancestry.com has another surprise. The database shows that Scott-Heron lived (or was at least headquartered) in Oakland, California resident in 1994 and in San Francisco in 1995. He was a frequent performer at Kimball's East in Emeryville during that time.
The last half of the book gets into his musical career -- some of the people he crossed paths with, some of his memorable performances. He described the attraction and challenge of working in the song medium - "You have to tell stories in a limited number of words, a few lines." He also emphasized that he "always liked to give a very personal and constructive viewpoint to whatever I was writing about."
Gil Scott-Heron always defied categories. He was a musician, songwriter, poet and novelist. His music was also hard to pin down to a single genre. His recordings were spoken word, jazz, rock, rhythm and blues and soul. He expressed dismay at finding his records filed under "Miscellaneous" in a record store. When asked "What do you call your music?" he replied "Mine."
He never had a top 40 song or even a top 200 song. Eight of his singles made the Top 100 R&B charts and some of his albums sold well. But his contribution has definitely been acknowledged. He won a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement award in 2012 and was inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame in 2021. He has been been given entries in all the important music biographical encyclopedias. Our Black History Bulletin, Ethnic Diversity Source and Biography in Context databases will lead the curious to a large number of articles and entries about Scott-Heron.
Ben Black with his banjo (image source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection)
Ben Black was a San Francisco musician who achieved national fame during the early twentieth century. Black made his mark as a bandleader, banjo player, pianist and as a songwriter. He was born Bernard Black on December 11, 1889 in Dudley, in the Western Midlands of England. His family were Polish Jews who later emigrated to Johannesburg, South Africa before arriving in San Francisco. His mother's obituary noted that she and her children had crossed "from Capetown to Johannesburg in a prairie schooner" in the 1890s.
According to his 1918 petition for naturalization, he first arrived in the United States in 1907 aboard a vessel named the Carmonia. His first appearance in the Crocker-Langley San Francisco Directory in 1917 lists him as a musician under his birth name, Bernard. It's not clear how Black learned to become a musician, but from around this time he was working as a banjoist and dancer for the Orpheum and Pantages circuits in a "brother act" with his brother "Zizz" (Isadore Black).
In 1918 they were providing entertainment at dance parties in the City's Richmond district. The San Francisco Chronicle's society pages mentioned "formal dansant" at 5527 California Street in May featured the brothers, noting that “Ben Black and “Ziss” Black entertained the dancers with some of their original sketches and songs.” His 1918 draft card stated that he then worked as a musician at Tait's Restaurant, and that he sought a deferment because he needed to help his sister and her five children. (He also back-dated his birth date one year to 1888). Ben Black's Band continued to play at Tait's Dancing Palace above Tait's Coffee Shop on the 100 block of O'Farrell Street on and off throughout the 1920s.
Some time in 1919, Ben Black took a job as the banjo player in Art Hickman's Jazz Orchestra at the Saint Francis Hotel's Rose Room. He was part of the ensemble that departed in August to record for Columbia Records and perform at New York's Biltmore Hotel. From September 15 to 26 they recorded 28 compositions, 22 of which were released by Columbia Records. Five of these recordings went to the "top of the charts," at least those compiled in Joel Whitburn's Pop Memories 1890-1954.
Art Hickman and Ben Black were co-songwriters on three of these tracks - "You and I," "Come Back to Georgia," and "Hold Me." According to Joel Whitburn's book the latter charted on June 19, 1920 and was America's number 1 song for three weeks. That song brought him a $42,000 in royalties in one year (that's equivalent to around $1,000,000 today).
Sherman, Clay & Co. advertisement of "Hold Me" on a player piano roll in the San Francisco Chronicle December 14, 1919
Throughout his career he collaborated (often as the lyricist) with
well-known songwriters like Art Hickman, Neil Moret, Harry Owens and Joe
Meyer. Around the same time, Black was also the manager of Sherman, Clay & Company, who published a dozen of his songs that he either wrote or co-wrote between 1918 and 1922. He later was vice-president and professional manager of the Neil Moret music publishing company who published more than a dozen songs he co-wrote between 1919 and 1927.
His best-known work was "Moonlight and Roses (Bring Mem'ries of You)," which he and Neil Moret adapted from Edwin H. Lemare's classical organ work, Andantino in D flat, opus 83, no. 2 originally composed in 1888. This song was first made popular by Irish tenor John McCormack as well as by Frank Wright and Frank Bessinger singing with Ray Miller's orchestra in 1925. The Three Suns made a recording of it in 1954 which rose to 24 on the record charts. "Moonlight and Roses" has been performed by well-known singers and orchestras like the Ames Brothers, Eddie Arnold, Bert Kaempfert, Guy Lombardo, Dean Martin, Vaughan Monroe, Sons of Pioneers, Jim Reeves, Lawrence Welk and the Mills Brothers. It was also famously sung by Betty Grable in the 1940 film Tin Pan Alley and by Gloria Jean in the 1943 film Mister Big.
San Francisco Chronicle (December 9, 1922)
During the silent movie era it, many larger movie theaters hired orchestras to entertain between screenings of films. From December 1922 Ben Black led the band at the California Theater at 787 Market Street. The band made an immediate sensation with its "joyous melodies" that were "irresistible." Their music must have been very lively and jazz-tinged. An unhappy reviewer in the San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser hoped for a calm, refined sort of music and remarked that "Ben Black's band has a lexicon which contains no such restraint." Another unappreciative member of the audience had to acknowledge the band's popularity:
Ben Black's alliterative orchestra continues to be a popular feature of the California's entertainment, having now reached the stage of excessive popularity where everything they do is greeted with shouts of delight. This will last for a certain length of time and then it will fade away away, and those of us who are not so hilariously enthusiastic about this harmless form of amusement, will do well to sit and polite [sic] bide our time.
During this time Ben Black's Band of "fourteen jazz wizards" was also engaged at Graumann's Metropolitan Theater in Los Angeles. A Los Angeles Times article showed him to already be a master of ceremonies, noting that Black "[had] the distinction of being the first man to speak to an audience across the orchestra pit there."
In November 1923, he was hired to lead the band that inaugurated the Alexandria Theater at 5400 Geary Boulevard. He even wrote a piece entitled "Alexandria" for the occasion. The ensemble made an immediate sensation with an article in the Chronicle describing the band as "very popular with Park-Presidio people." Jazz trombonist Herb Taylor early in his career performed with this group. On November 8, 1924 his band moved to another theater also owned by George A. Oppenheimer and Alex E. Levin -- the 2400 seat Coliseum Theater, also in the Richmond District at the corner of Clement Street and 9th Avenue.
Ben Black is first mentioned in connection with radio when he appeared on the election night program in 1924 where he played his composition "Nancy" on the banjo on KPO (which changed its call letters to KNBR in the 1960s). In radio's earliest days all programming had to be performed live. His band appeared on a program on November 24, 1925 that was sponsored by the Villa Moret music publishing company. Many of the works performed were Villa Moret releases.
This notice very helpfully lists the names of several band members - Black, himself, on banjo, Saul Seiff on piano, Clyde Baker and Harry Gulman on saxophone, Bob McQuesten on violin, George Douglas on cornet, Chin Moore on trombone and Roy Bancroft on drums. From the summer of 1925 his dance orchestra from Tait's Dancing Palace had a 10 PM to 1 AM program on KGO radio.
In 1926 his band came to the Granada Theater where he worked with producer and stage manager Jack (John Allan) Partington. Partington was a pioneer of stagecraft having having invented the moving pit band. In 1919 he also introduced the "prologue" -- stage acts that precede the screening of the film -- when he was the manager of the Imperial Theater at 1077 Market Street.
Paramount Theatre advertisement, New York Times (August 7, 1927)
In April 1927, Black appeared as guest conductor of the Paramount Stage Band at New York City's Paramount Theatre, and was advertised to audiences as "California's King of Rhythm." The Paramount Theatre located in Times Square the flagship of the Paramount-Publix cinema chain. He shared the bill with "the poet of the organ," the renowned Victor recording artist Jesse Crawford.
In September he was given a six month contract to be the guest conductor at the theater. Jack Partington later joined Black at the Paramount. Among Partington's papers at the New York Public Library is a manuscript written by Black entitled "The Art or Business of Personality Leadership and Master of Ceremonies." It's easy to imagine his exotic British or South African accent would be part of his charm.
Ben Black and his Orchestra also recorded for Victor records from 1925 to 1927. Victor 20690 features them performing "Moonlit Waters" backed with "Sailin' On" (with a melody copied from Dvorak's New World Symphony).
Their recording of "Here Comes Emmaline" made at Victor's studios in Oakland April 28, 1926 gives a very clear idea of the band's appeal. The very lively and danceable music is propelled along by some pretty fancy banjo work by Mr. Black himself.
The year 1928 found Black working as a master of ceremonies for the New Ideas Publix Revue on the vaudeville curcuit, presenting variety acts before movie screenings for the Paramount-Publix chain of theaters. He delighted audiences at the New Saenger Theatre in New Orleans in the spring of 1928 A reviewer for the Exhibitors Herald-World wrote in February 1929
Speaking of Ben Black, as a personality leader, the advertising department has struck a happy chord when they term him "Everybody's Buddy," a title which he lives up to.
Famous jazz clarinetist Tony Parenti who played in the band at the Saenger Theatre described getting a big break from Black:
I left New Orleans in the latter part of 1928 accompanied by Ben Black, chief master of ceremonies of the Paramount-Publix Theatres, which whom I had just finished working at the Saenger Theatre. Ben felt that I could do very well in New York and said that he would help me make the right connections.
Ben Black's star shone very brightly throughout the 1920s. The Great Depression starting with the Stock Market crash in 1929 brought hard times to Black along with everyone else. Quoted years later, he described his bad fortune: "Just a few weeks before I bought a ton of Paramount Pictures stock." The blow to the economy and sound in moving pictures brought an end to the era of theater bands and floor shows, drying up Black's main livelihood.
He continued to organize the occasional vaudeville road show for Fanchon and Marco, Inc. and even worked for the Great American Circus. During World War II he organized U.S.O. theatrical production. When he passed away on December 26, 1950, his in the entertainment world was high enough to have obituaries in Variety, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the local papers. His funeral services were held at Sinai Memorial Chapel. He is buried in Salem Memorial Park and Garden in Colma.
Bibliography:
"Alexandria Opens Doors Tonight With 'Go Up'," San Francisco Chronicle (November 26, 1923).
Baily, Thomas W., "Motion Picture Heads Take Interest in Programming Staged at San Francisco Staged at San Francisco Photoplay Houses," San Francisco Chronicle (January 5, 1920).
"Ben Black's Band Back At The Coliseum," San Francisco Chronicle (August 28, 1926).
“Ben Black’s Mother Dead of Paralysis,” San Francisco Chronicle (Jan. 1, 1929)
As one comes to know and appreciate jazz, it becomes apparent that jazz musicians create their own compositions, avail themselves of other jazz compositions, or utilize familiar songs that have become known as "standards." Standards are often songs from the Broadway stage, but can be any popular tune from the recorded era. The standard provides a form (verse, chorus, sometimes bridge), a chord progression and a melody that is played at the beginning and end.
With his guide, The Jazz Standards, Ted Gioia provides a great service to anyone interested in exploring jazz by discussing more than 200 of the best known melodies employed in the jazz repertoire. His entries first give some background on a melody's pre-jazz origins. He also shares his personal response to each standard often highlighting some of his favorite renditions. The end of each entry includes a short discography of his preferred recordings.
Despite disliking the melody and chord changes of "All The Things You Are" by Jerome Kern, the author claims it as a favorite standard of his. He appreciates it for its "exciting set of possibilities as a springboard for jazz improvisation." The song first appeared in the 1939 musical flop Very Warm For May , but it soon grabbed the attention of jazz musicians. By the end of the year Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra introduced it and took it to the top of the charts. The author spoke to saxophonist Bud Shank near the end of his 60 year career "who never felt he had exhausted the possibilities of this specific song."
Writing about "I'm In The Mood For Love," by the standard-making songwriting team of Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Field, Gioia noted that it had the misfortune to be prominently sung by the character of Alfalfa in a Little Rascals short. However, that was already a year after the song had been introduced by Frances Langford in the film Every Night At 8, released in August 5, 1935. The review in Variety magazine noted that "she reprises 'I'm in the Mood for Love' several times" but predicted other songs from the movie would get more attention from the jazz orchestras. Variety was proven wrong when Louis Armstrong powered it to number 3 on the charts a few months later, assuring its status as a standard.
While he sort of disparages one of my favorites, Vincent Youmans' and Irving Ceasar's "Tea For Two, ("the melody is monotonous and akin to a second-rate nursery song"), Gioia illuminates the song nonetheless. He repeats the apocryphal tale about how Harry Frazee, the backer of the song's show No, No Nanette, sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees to finance his show. I enjoyed reading about Dmitri Shostakovich's scoring of the song for orchestra (see volume 10 of the composer's collection works - Sobranie sochineniĭ v soroka dvukh tomakh). Gioia is at is best when he tells of how New York's finest jazz pianists seemed to try one-up each other with more brilliant renditions of this tune.
Many of these songs are well established within the Great American Songbook making the contents of this book elide well with our Dorothy Starr Collection of sheet music. The cover illustrations above all come from the collection. You will not find yourself always agreeing with Gioia's assessments, but he takes us on an entertaining and informative journey through this repertoire and will certainly entice you to listen to more jazz.
Come to the Art, Music and Recreation Center on the 4th floor of the
Main Library to see the vibrant and powerful artwork of Ronnie Goodman.
The exhibit "Ronnie Goodman - Soul Journey" will be on display through
October 22nd, 2015.
"I am a 54-year-old self-taught
homeless artist and distance runner living in San Francisco. I am
inspired by the beauty of this city and its diversity, balanced with the
struggles of human despair. With my brush, I try to capture these raw emotions
in painted images"
Ronnie Goodman is an artist, a long-distance
marathon runner and an advocate for the homeless.With the exhibit “Soul Journey” Ronnie
Goodman shares his prints and his paintings which express his feelings about
his life as a homeless resident of San Francisco and as an artist.Ronnie Goodman has worked closely with the
Hospitality House and the Coalition on Homelessness Street Sheet Newspaper to raise awareness of the homeless issues facing San
Francisco and the Country.Ronnie's art is timely and poetic and illustrates his personal struggle while also addressing the political climate of today. SFGATE
named Ronnie one of “28 people who made the Bay Area interesting in 2014” and
he illustrated the cover for the bookHouseKeys Not Handcuffs: Homeless Organizing, Art and Politics in San Francisco and Beyond by Paul Boden.
Breaking the Chains
We
met Ronnie at the Art, Music and Recreation Center's reference desk a
few years ago when he would ask us to help him find books about art and
artists that inspired his own work. A year ago we asked Ronnie if he
would be interested in displaying his work at the library. Being a large urban library located in the Civic Center of San Francisco, we serve a lot of patrons who are in a state of homelessness and we believe strongly in the library's mission statement, which is "The San Francisco Public Library system is dedicated to free and equal
access to information, knowledge, independent learning and the joys of
reading for our diverse community". We are proud to share with all of our library patrons the art created by San Francisco resident, Ronnie Goodman. Below are a few more examples of the work on display.
Black Lives Matter
Homeless State Prison
Man at Work
The Old Metal Door
The Three Apostles of Jazz
More information about Ronnie Goodman can be found at www.ronniegoodman.com
Today these words shock. They were probably even shocking to some who read them at the time in 1929. But they were written by one of America's most esteemed music critics, Paul Rosenfeld, who wrote at various times for prestigious publications like The New Republic, Vanity Fair, and The Nation. That he was a recognized figure in America's cultural life is attested to by his being the subject of the portrait above by famed photographer Alfred Stieglitz.
The Library owns six books of Rosenfeld's writings about music. The notorious quote above comes from An Hour With American Music. This book was part of publisher J.B. Lippincott's "The One Hour Series" which commissioned introductions to a variety of topics "by an expert in the field." For instance, Ford Madox Ford wrote "The One Hour" title for the English novel, Samuel Eliot Morison wrote the title for American history, and Gilbert Seldes wrote An Hour with the Movies and the Talkies (the Library still has a reference copy of the latter, but has not owned the former two books for a long time - but you can request them using Link+).
A closer look at the entirety of of An Hour With American Music will show that Rosenfeld set up this polemic not so much to run down jazz as to introduce and advocate for other contemporaneous American music. The composers he discusses and extols read like a roster of what our San Francisco Symphony's music director Michael Tilson Thomas would call "American Mavericks." He devotes parts of chapters to composers like Leo Ornstein, Dane Rudhyar, Carl Ruggles, Aaron Copland, and Edgard Varèse.
What we get with this book (after a not fully comprehending, but nevertheless interesting and opinionated put-down of jazz) is an informed look at some of the most daring classical composers of the roaring twenties. In the the twentieth first century both kinds of American music can be found together in our concert halls, but it's informative to know one critic's reaction to them when they were current.
Dave Brubeck on the cover of Time, November 1954 (source: Time)
We were saddened today to learn of the death of famed composer, pianist and jazz musician Dave Brubeck. He was an innovative and influential musician who had very strong connections to the San Francisco Bay Area.
He was born in Concord where he grew up on a 45,000 acre cattle ranch. He attended college at the College of the Pacific in Stockton where he performed in jazz groups. Later joined the army infantry and went to Europe as a part of Patton's Third Army. There his musical talent was discovered and he formed a racially integrated band that entertained the troops, often not very far from the fighting.
After the war, he returned to the Bay Area and performed in a jazz combos at venues like the Geary Cellar (beneath the Geary Theatre), the Bandbox in Palo Alto and Burma Lounge in Oakland. He soon attended Mills College on the GI Bill where his composition teacher was Darius Milhaud. Milhaud, an innovative French composer who had long incorporated jazz and ragtime in his own compositions, encouraged Brubeck and some of his classmates to form an jazz ensemble - an octet they called "the eight." Milhaud encouraged them to perform at an assembly at Mills. It was such a success that they were invited to many other campuses and achieved an early reputation among the college crowd.
From this time he became a famous exemplar of "West Coast Jazz," a genre thought to be more cool and cerebral than mainstream jazz. Nevertheless, Brubeck felt a deep connection to traditional jazz and its roots. While his biographers emphasize his accomplishments in nightclubs and concert halls, Brubeck in a 1992 interview wanted to remind people that he had also played at so-called "bad joints," what he called "Dime-a-Dance halls in Oakland" and "strip joints in San Francisco."
In this interview he went on to speak to his attraction to this music:
That's the great thing about the freedom of jazz. It can come from a
tune with no chord progressions here, or just from the piano and
suddenly the vibrations are coming from maybe the piano, or the bass, or
from the drums, or even a cymbal, and that'll make everybody click in.
You can't predict anything about jazz from night to night.
While he is best known for his combo work, Brubeck also used his training to compose works for classical music forces. In response to a 1950 survey used by the Northern California Chapter of the Music Library Association for a never published biographical dictionary of composers, Brubeck wrote of his musical viewpoint:
Since I am first a jazz musician, it is especially challenging to me to attempt to capture the vitality, rhythic drive, and free spirit of an Afro-European improvised music, to write it down as sound composition without losing the spontaneity of improvisation.
The following is brief reading list, plus a listing of Brubeck scores in our collection.
"Dave Brubeck, Short Talk taken and transcribed by Bill Leikam," Cadence vol. 18, no. 9 (September 1992), pp. 4-5. From the Art, Music and Recreation Center Newspaper Clipping Files.
Jazz in Print is not, as its title might suggest, a bibliography of writings about jazz. It is instead a collection of full text articles from newspapers and magazines (both popular and scholarly) that demonstrate the reception and understanding of African-American vernacular music in American society through the year 1929.
Jazz is a genre that came of age during the early years of sound recording. The history we best know is the history we can hear. Jazz in Print helps to document the prehistory of jazz by reprinting writings about the work and recreation music of American slaves, and about musical forms like minstrelsy, blues, and spirituals.
Beginning with ragtime at the turn of the 20th century ragtime and later jazz becomes a subject of dispute among musicians and critics. While the writings here demonstrate a "culture war" between classical music and jazz, the majority of the articles show a strong appreciation for jazz in American musical life.
Some entries are sensational ("Musician is driven to suicide by jazz" (177) or "Shady dance steps barred by police" (214)). Several were written by noted composers or critics like Leopold Godowsky (194), Darius Milhaud (234; 358), Virgil Thomson (342), Serge Koussevitzky (365). In a 1924 symposium among a number of America's musical leaders asks "Where is Jazz leading America?," the The Étude reminds us that their magazine "does not endorse jazz, by discussing it." There is also a exchange of viewpoints in Forum magazine between George Antheil ("Jazz is Music" July 1928) and Sigmund Spaeth ("Jazz is Not Music" August 1928).
Jazz in Print provides an illuminating timeline that shows both the evolving influence of African-American music upon American popular culture and reaction of the cultural mainstream to this influence.
The book concludes with an index of the names mentioned in the text.
“I love all the musicians – they’re like family. Looking back I realize I was there at the beginning of something special, I’m like a historian. There’s an honesty about this work that I’m proud of. It feels good to think, my God, I really captured something amazing.”
- Jim Marshall
Miles Davis
The Art, Music and Recreation department is pleased to present “Jim Marshall 1936-2010”, a wall-case display highlighting some of the iconic images photographed by Jim Marshall of local and national musicians. The display includes his photographs of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles at their last concert, Miles Davis, Shel Silversteen, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, and Stevie Wonder.
Jimi Hendrix
Jim Marshall was born in Chicago in 1936 but his family moved to San Francisco when he was only 2. He played with a Brownie camera as a child and bought his first Leica in high school. When he came back from the serving in the Air Force Marshall met John Coltrane. Once, while he was photographing backstage at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco in 1960, a musician asked him for directions to Berkeley. The musician was John Coltrane. "He asked me for directions to a club," Marshall said later. "I told him I'd pick him up and take him there if he'd let me take his picture." Jim Marshall went on to photograph and forge lasting friendships with many of the greats of jazz and rock n’ roll. He died earlier this year on March 24th, 2010.
Janis Joplin
His images can be seen in the following books, available at the San Francisco Public Library:
Jim Marshall: Jazz by Jim Marshall; introduction by Philip Elwood (Chronicle Books, 2005).
Match Prints by Jim Marshall and Timothy White; introduction by Anthony DeCurtis (Collins Design, 2010).
An Associated Press news story published today reminds us of the splendidness that is Peggy Lee. The article, "Peggy Lee takes another turn on the pop charts" by Michael Cidoni, reports that eight years after passing away and in time for her 90th birthday Peggy Lee has returned to the record charts of the United States and Europe.
Peggy Lee was born Norma Jean Egstrom in 1920 in Jamestown, North Dakota. She published her autobiography Miss Peggy Lee in 1989 where she writes about her difficult childhood, her discovery by Benny Goodman and the experiences of her life and career. Peter Richmond has written the only other full-length biography of the singer to date with his 2006 book, Fever: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee. Richmond's book both aims to establish her importance and originality as a singer and interpreter and looks deeply into the complexities of her life and personality.
Many jazz critics have weighed in on Peggy Lee's musicianship:
According to Gene Lees: "No singer in American music has shown the ability to play so many different 'characters' in song form as Peggy Lee."
Whitney Balliett writes that "She is a stripped-down singer. She keeps her vibrato spare and her volume low... Peggy Lee sends her feelings down the quiet center of her notes."
According to Henry Pleasants: "No other singer in my experience has asked less of a voice while using it so much. No other has done more with what the voice has given her... And yet, within a precariously narrow range, both of vocal compass and of vocal amplitude, she has mined a wealth and variety of color, inflection, eloquent lyricism and even grandeur hardly matched by any other singer..."
The March 1963 issue of Current Biography states: "[A] perfectionist approach to her programs is typical of Miss Lee. She polishes and perfects aspect of her performances-her special coiffures, her costly wardrobe, her lighting, her entrances and exits, and her musical arrangements... Rejecting the improvisatory approach of most jazz singers, Peggy Lee plans every detail of her delivery in advance, including even the movement of her hands."
In a more recent appraisal, Roy Hemming and David Hajdu write: "Once she's pulled you in, Peggy Lee is able to communicate much more intimately and subtly than singer who belt out tunes the big, broad theatrical style. There she is, nose-to-nose with you... All Peggy Lee needs to do is pause a half-beat on a lyric or bend a note a quarter-tone and she has you intrigued. One of the most hypnotic of all pop singers, she know the power of suggestion."
Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington’s long-time arranger and collaborator, lived in the shadow of the bandleader, but contributed many compositions that became signature songs for Ellington. Billy Strayhorn grew up in a hardscrabble section of Pittsburgh. At a very early age, he showed an affinity for music – though not able to read yet, he learned the tunes to all the records a neighbor owned and could find any song when someone requested it. Using money from working at a newsstand and doing deliveries for a pharmacy, Strayhorn purchased a piano and started taking music lessons. Before he graduated from high school Strayhorn had composed pieces that his music teachers mistakenly thought had been written by classical composers.
After high school he began playing with musicians at clubs and at parties expanding his repertoire to include jazz numbers. Strayhorn played for Ellington when the bandleader came to Pittsburgh in 1938. Ellington was so impressed that he offered Strayhorn a position: “I would like to have you in my organization.” Their artistic collaboration started soon after that. In 1939 Strayhorn moved to New York to work for Ellington. The song that he composed as a gift for the bandleader and their inaugural collaboration used the directions for getting to Ellington’s apartment as the lyrics. Strayhorn had so completely replicated the Ellington style that many in the orchestra thought that Ellington wrote it and “Take the A Train” became the signature song for the bandleader.
In New York, Strayhorn found a cosmopolitan world that suited his wide-ranging interest in music , and the other arts. Before the end of the first year Strayhorn moved in with Aaron Bridgers, a fellow musician, living out of the closet during a homophobic time. As a minority within another minority he later forged a friendship with Martin Luther King, Jr. whom he’d met through his circle of friends. Though his contributions to Ellington’s catalog, and to other projects with the bandleader cannot be overstated, compensation and credit did not always follow.
The Art, Music and Recreation Center will present the display “A Tribute to Billy Strayhorn” through June 19, 2009 on the 4th floor of the Main Library.
This display has been mounted in conjunction with “The Billy Strayhorn Session, In Tribute to Musical Genius and Political Change" a lecture and performance held on Saturday, May 16, 2009 in the Koret Auditorium. This program is both a concert performed by the 19-piece Junius Courtney Big Band and a staged dramatic reading featuring Denise Perrier. “The Billy Strayhorn Session,” presented by the James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center and the African American Center of the San Francisco Public Library, is presented in a partnership with The Museum of the African Diaspora who are also are hosting the exhibit "Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African-American Portraits” through June 14.
All events at the San Francisco Public Library are free. “The Billy Strayhorn Session” is supported by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.
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