Jazz Mavericks of the Lone Star State

Portada
University of Texas Press, 2009 M12 3 - 256 páginas

Jazz is one of America's greatest gifts to the arts, and native Texas musicians have played a major role in the development of jazz from its birth in ragtime, blues, and boogie-woogie to its most contemporary manifestation in free jazz. Dave Oliphant began the fascinating story of Texans and jazz in his acclaimed book Texan Jazz, published in 1996. Continuing his riff on this intriguing musical theme, Oliphant uncovers in this new volume more of the prolific connections between Texas musicians and jazz.

Jazz Mavericks of the Lone Star State presents sixteen published and previously unpublished essays on Texans and jazz. Oliphant celebrates the contributions of such vital figures as Eddie Durham, Kenny Dorham, Leo Wright, and Ornette Coleman. He also takes a fuller look at Western Swing through Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies and a review of Duncan McLean's Lone Star Swing. In addition, he traces the relationship between British jazz criticism and Texas jazz and defends the reputation of Texas folklorist Alan Lomax as the first biographer of legendary jazz pianist-composer Jelly Roll Morton. In other essays, Oliphant examines the links between jazz and literature, including fiction and poetry by Texas writers, and reveals the seemingly unlikely connection between Texas and Wisconsin in jazz annals. All the essays in this book underscore the important parts played by Texas musicians in jazz history and the significance of Texas to jazz, as also demonstrated by Oliphant's reviews of the Ken Burns PBS series on jazz and Alfred Appel Jr.'s Jazz Modernism.

Dentro del libro

Páginas seleccionadas

Contenido

1 JAZZ MAVERICKS OF THE LONE STAR STATE
1
2 THE ROOTS OF TEXAN JAZZ
9
The Texas Jazz Connections
33
Kenny Dorham and Leo Wright
45
5 BRITISH ACOLYTES OF JAZZ AND ITS TEXAS CONTINGENT
61
6 THE WISCONSINTEXAS JAZZ NEXUS
81
7 JAZZ IN LITERATURE
99
8 THE ALCHEMY OF JAZZ
113
11 A TEXAS TAKE ON KEN BURNSS JAZZ
135
12 SWINGING THROUGH TEXAS ON A SCOTTISH AIR
143
13 THE BIRTH OF WESTERN SWING
149
Untangling the Legacy of Jelly Roll Morton and Alan Lomax
159
15 DISCOGRAPHIES AND TEXAN JAZZ
171
16 SAN MARCOS IN JAZZ HISTORY
181
NOTES
187
BIBLIOGRAPHY
223

9 ORNETTE COLEMANS HARMOLODIC LIFE
121
10 A JAZZ MASTERS DIAMOND JUBILEE
129

Otras ediciones - Ver todas

Términos y frases comunes

Pasajes populares

Página 103 - ... boundary of the trumpets, Hello and good-bye, and they are all down the first note like a waterfall. This note marks the end of any known discipline. Powerhouse seems to abandon them all— he himself seems lost— down in the song, yelling up like somebody in a whirlpool— not guiding them— hailing them only. But he knows, really. He cries out, but he must know exactly. "Mercy! . . . What I say! . . . Yeah!
Página 73 - ... artist or discriminate as a critic are needed feeling and intellect and — most distressing of all — study. However, unless I mistake, the effort will be made. The age of easy acceptance of the first thing that comes is closing. Thought rather than spirits is required, quality rather than colour, knowledge rather than irreticence, intellect rather than singularity, wit rather than romps, precision rather than surprise, dignity rather than impudence, and lucidity above all things: plus de Jazz."...
Página 108 - ... the shining black brow. Bird Was thinking and singing. His only thought Was a song. He saw the truth. And shout the Truth Where Indiana was more than the dim streets of Gary A hothouse of allegedly fruitful plain America Some will never forgive the brother for that. Bird Was a junkie According to my records, there was something More. There was space. Seeking. And mind Bringing African control on the corny times Of the tunes he would play. There was Space And the Sun and the Stars he saw in his...
Página 144 - Staley, director of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas...
Página 165 - In fact, if you can't manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz.
Página 73 - He has crystalized the popular music of our time and set up a standard by which we may judge not only other jazz composers, but also those high-brow composers, whether American or European, who indulge in what is roughly known as 'Symphonic jazz,' " so wrote the English composer, Constant Lambert.
Página 104 - Eldridge, vigorous and virile, blasting the horn for everything it had in waves of power and logic and subtlety — leaning to it with glittering eyes and a lovely smile and sending it out broadcast to rock the jazz world. Then had come Charlie Parker, a kid in his mother's woodshed in Kansas City, blowing his taped-up alto among the logs...
Página 102 - Then a light slides under his eyelids, and he says, "92!" .or some combination of figures— never a name. Before a number the band is all frantic, misbehaving, pushing, like children in a schoolroom, and he is the teacher getting silence. His hands over the keys, he says sternly, "You-all ready? You-all ready to do some serious walking?"— waits— then, STAMP.
Página 202 - I know nothing in Ravel so dextrous in treatment as the varied solos in the middle of the ebullient Hot and Bothered, and nothing in Stravinsky more dynamic than the final section.
Página 101 - The Negro With the trumpet at his lips Whose jacket Has a fine one-button roll. Does not know Upon what riff the music slips Its hypodermic needle To his soul— But softly As the tune comes from his throat Trouble Mellows to a golden note.

Acerca del autor (2009)

Dave Oliphant has been an enthusiastic student of jazz for fifty years. He has published two previous books, Texan Jazz and The Early Swing Era, 1930 to 1941, and numerous articles on jazz. Oliphant lives in Austin, where he has taught a course on jazz and literature at the University of Texas at Austin.

Información bibliográfica