Jazz The Golden Era [Hardcover] Review

This is a scatological romp through most of the early history of Jazz with suitable riffs here and there. It is well that it includes a CD of 20 priceless tracks for the biographic sketches, while interesting at times, are not to be mistaken for the real deal. They are mostly a glorified discography, with historical tidbits thrown in from time to time. Despite the fact that some of them make important links to modern Jazz, I am still waiting for a book that properly recognizes the two quite separate entities and their quite separate histories.

As always, the handful of heavyweights get top billing, but even in the case of Satchmo (the heaviest of them all), the full range of these musicians' talents get short shrift: And while it is true that they were all entertainers (mostly having to pander to all white audiences), they were almost without exception fluent on more than one instrument, could both compose and direct their own charts, had secondary jobs and even secondary careers, and almost to a man and woman, had interesting non-musical careers and lives.

My main complaint is that no distinction is made between the shift from "white Jazz," which was pretty much a one dimensional repetitive extension of New Orleans Dixieland, and "Modern" or "Progressive Jazz," ushered in in the early 1940s by Diz and Bird, which at least aesthetically was quite a bit more. Most writers somewhat disingenuously conflate the two always failing to make clear that even though the connections between the two are indirect, that there nevertheless was a sea change and clear disconnect between them when Bird and Diz came on the scene.

This is probably not the place to fight this battle, but the problem with conflating the two is that the "old school" invariably gets over emphasized while the "new school" (the much more important one in my humble view) gets under emphasized. I have been watching this procession most of my life and it seems that no one is prepared to make the necessary mid-course corrections to right this imbalance.

I am not arguing that the two do not have the same pedigree: quite clearly they do, but the younger child, modern Jazz, is the far richer and more expressive of the two. I just believe that it is high time that modern Jazz starts getting its proper due. And here, by beginning with Louis Armstrong and ending with Miles Davis, leaving out the likes of John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly, Sonny Rollins, etc., Modern Jazz is still being put in the back seat of the musical bus. Three stars

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Product Description:
In the 1940s, a young generation of jazz musicians forged a new style out of the swing music of the 1930s. A new breed of players like Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, and Thelonius Monk transformed the jazz scene with advanced harmonies, complex syncopation and chord substitutions. Illustrated with photographs from the William Gottlieb collection, this book and sampler CD is a perfect introduction to this important era of jazz.

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