Cats of Any Color: Jazz, Black and White [Paperback] Review

Gene Lees strikes me as one of the more level-headed individuals in jazz. Like it or not, the hard-core jazzword is these days filled with elitists, racists (mostly reverse thesedays), and people protecting their "territory."When I see the doings andhear the rantings of the likes of Stanley Crouch and other pretentious writers and "social critics," I am reminded of the character ofMax Mercy from Bernard Malamud's novel (and the movie) The Natural...Mercyisn't interested in baseball and has never played a game, but stirring upcontroversy using baseball as his medium keeps him in the spotlight andmakes him rich.Crouch is much the same way--would any of us have heard ofhim, would he have a tenth of his current income and notoriety were he notclutching the coattails of a currently well-known jazz musician?Lees'discussion of Crouch, of other figures in jazz history, and his inside stories about the jazz world and the psyches within it are like a bucket of cold water to most of what passes for jazz scholarship today.But don't get the impression this is a kiss-and-tell book, or something scandalous.Mr. Lees is actually a rather level headedindividual.A must read for anyone not in any "camp" ordefending any "turf" but who just loves music and musicians and realizes that jazz, like any art, is a mixture and mixing that quickly becomes so intricate it's impossible for any one group to claim they "own" it.Too bad there are only two other reviews of this book on Amazon's page as of this writing.I can see people would rather believe the hypola histories instead.Too bad...

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