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Rating: 
Summary: My First 5-Star Review
Review: This book, writes its author, is for "historians of American culture, jazz lovers, scholars of African-American life, [and] literary critics." As a jazz lover, I fall within the target audience, but confess to feeling educationally disadvantaged. Professor Saul's wide-ranging, in-depth study challenges a nonacademic. Jazz fans ought to be forewarned that "Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't" ain't an easy read.Saul focuses on the predominately African-American musical styles of hard bop, soul jazz, and free jazz between the mid-1950s and mid-'60s to observe how "values and practices associated with jazz percolated through American culture at large." Those values are "freedom, spontaneity, social and aesthetic experimentation, and the rediscovery of one's roots." He begins by rediscovering the roots of hipsterism in such colorful swing-era hepcats as Cab Calloway and would-be Negro Mezz Mezzrow, prized more as a purveyor of first-rate reefers than for his clarinet playing. Proceeding to the bebop era, Saul commits rare lapses in detail, misnaming jive vocalist Harry the Hipster Gibson and gender bending Dizzy Gillespie's "He Beeped When He Should Have Bopped." The tour concludes with two late '40s landmarks, Miles Davis's "Birth of the Cool" and Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," neither of which would gain recognition until 1957. Saul takes that as his cue to jump half a decade ahead, avoiding the apparent Dark Age of the early '50s like the plague. By 1957, "the hipster's cultural stance suddenly had political appeal for a wider swath of intellectuals," including writers Norman Mailer and James Baldwin. In 1960, "reaching for a more militant political statement," lyricist Oscar Brown Jr., drummer Max Roach, and singer Abbey Lincoln collaborated on "We Insist! The Freedom Now Suite," which Saul considers "one of the most indelible musical projects of the period." In particular, Lincoln's screaming ("maybe the most hair-raising 90 seconds of jazz in existence") "gave full vent to the anger of the moment and discarded the cool mask in its entirety." Jazz had now come full circle, from bebop's overheated virtuosity to the studied detachment of cool to the anguish and aggression of social protest. In the process, writes Saul, "jazz culture was the crucial source of the hip aesthetic," fostering a new intellectual vernacular and presaging a revolution in youth lifestyle. Which leads to a watershed in Saul's narrative, the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival. During the seventh annual music fest held amidst the genteel environs of Rhode Island's fading but still upper-crust summer resort, "white teenagers rioted for the sake of black music." An overflow crowd of 12,000 aspiring gatecrashers battled with police, overturned cars, and vandalized property, in what the New York Herald Tribune editorially condemned as "hedonism gone wild" and what Saul, in what may be an unintended pun, calls "one of the most striking expressions of jazz's greater youth audience in the postwar period." At the same time and place, Saul reports, musicians Charles Mingus and Max Roach staged a counterfestival, run by themselves instead of by white promoters, and featuring a virtually all-black roster. Saul portrays this event as a small but significant civil-rights protest along the lines of "the understandably more famous student-led sit-ins" of the period, and subtitles his account "Jazz Leaves the Plantation." Saul next devotes a sixth of his book to Mingus ("The Sound of Struggle") and another sixth to John Coltrane ("Freedom's Saint"). Although Miles Davis dominated the era, Saul accords him perfunctory treatment. Indeed, Saul seems to have a blind spot, misdating Miles's 1956 Prestige quintet sessions, offhandedly dismissing the trumpeter's orchestral albums with Gil Evans as "lush bachelor-pad collaborations," and crediting Mingus with pioneering the so-called Spanish scale that Miles "rode to critical acclaim." Perhaps unbeknownst to Saul, Gil Evans utilized that scale in his haunting "La Paloma" arrangement for Claude Thornhill in 1946, when Mingus was still an obscure bassist thumping away in Dixieland bands. Which is not to deny that Mingus, a protean figure, created "some of the most compelling and spectacularly conflicted music of the 20th century." It's just that, after attributing the allure of '50s jazz to both its sense of cool and an aura of rebellion, Saul's shows far more interest in rebellion than in cool. Thus the focus on Mingus. Whereas Miles was cool, Mingus was fiery. Miles was quietly rebellious, Mingus openly combative, even to the point of punching teeth out of a loyal sideman. Miles rudely turned his back on audiences, but Mingus harangued them and threw tantrums onstage. The sainted Coltrane, by contrast, was tumultuous only in his music. Like the eye of a hurricane, Trane remained calm amidst violently swirling critical controversies, maintaining a serenity that made his accusers and defenders alike seem petty and irrelevant. Infusing his music with "a militant spirituality," Coltrane "pursued freedom not for the hell of it, but for the heaven of it." Saul considers it "a sign of the times" that Coltrane's gut-wrenching instrumental scream was "seized upon as a vehicle of hope: a new world, a world without ghettos, seemed impossible to imagine without a disfiguring act like that scream." Saul is big on screams. Constrained by Amazon's 1000-word limit and my own shortcomings, I must merely allude to the author's detailed analyses of poetry, painting, photography, essays, film, fiction, and theater. The scope of his expertise is, to a layman, staggering. Yet even in a book of such breadth and depth, much is left out. In concentrating on a single, monochromatic strand, Saul overlooks the full, multihued tapestry of jazz in the '50s and '60s. The thread of increasingly separatist black musicians alienating both existing and prospective listeners is essential, but Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz attracting large numbers of non-jazz fans into the tent, for however brief a visit, are also part of the fabric. Saul's depiction of blacks-only jazz influencing American popular culture is a quilt missing prominent swatches. It's politically correct, but historically incomplete. "Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't" is a brilliant, insightful, demanding tour de force that leaves one wishing for more.
Rating:
Summary: Winner, 25th Annual American Book Award, nonfiction category
Review: This book, writes its author, is for "historians of American culture, jazz lovers, scholars of African-American life, [and] literary critics." As a jazz lover, I fall within the target audience, but confess to feeling educationally disadvantaged. Professor Saul's wide-ranging, in-depth study challenges a nonacademic. Jazz fans ought to be forewarned that "Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't" ain't an easy read.
Saul focuses on the predominately African-American musical styles of hard bop, soul jazz, and free jazz between the mid-1950s and mid-'60s to observe how "values and practices associated with jazz percolated through American culture at large." Those values are "freedom, spontaneity, social and aesthetic experimentation, and the rediscovery of one's roots."
He begins by rediscovering the roots of hipsterism in such colorful swing-era hepcats as Cab Calloway and would-be Negro Mezz Mezzrow, prized more as a purveyor of first-rate reefers than for his clarinet playing. Proceeding to the bebop era, Saul commits rare lapses in detail, misnaming jive vocalist Harry the Hipster Gibson and gender bending Dizzy Gillespie's "He Beeped When He Should Have Bopped." The tour concludes with two late '40s landmarks, Miles Davis's "Birth of the Cool" and Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," neither of which would gain recognition until 1957.
Saul takes that as his cue to jump half a decade ahead, avoiding the apparent Dark Age of the early '50s like the plague. By 1957, "the hipster's cultural stance suddenly had political appeal for a wider swath of intellectuals," including writers Norman Mailer and James Baldwin. In 1960, "reaching for a more militant political statement," lyricist Oscar Brown Jr., drummer Max Roach, and singer Abbey Lincoln collaborated on "We Insist! The Freedom Now Suite," which Saul considers "one of the most indelible musical projects of the period." In particular, Lincoln's screaming ("maybe the most hair-raising 90 seconds of jazz in existence") "gave full vent to the anger of the moment and discarded the cool mask in its entirety." Jazz had now come full circle, from bebop's overheated virtuosity to the studied detachment of cool to the anguish and aggression of social protest. In the process, writes Saul, "jazz culture was the crucial source of the hip aesthetic," fostering a new intellectual vernacular and presaging a revolution in youth lifestyle.
Which leads to a watershed in Saul's narrative, the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival. During the seventh annual music fest held amidst the genteel environs of Rhode Island's fading but still upper-crust summer resort, "white teenagers rioted for the sake of black music." An overflow crowd of 12,000 aspiring gatecrashers battled with police, overturned cars, and vandalized property, in what the New York Herald Tribune editorially condemned as "hedonism gone wild" and what Saul, in what may be an unintended pun, calls "one of the most striking expressions of jazz's greater youth audience in the postwar period."
At the same time and place, Saul reports, musicians Charles Mingus and Max Roach staged a counterfestival, run by themselves instead of by white promoters, and featuring a virtually all-black roster. Saul portrays this event as a small but significant civil-rights protest along the lines of "the understandably more famous student-led sit-ins" of the period, and subtitles his account "Jazz Leaves the Plantation."
Saul next devotes a sixth of his book to Mingus ("The Sound of Struggle") and another sixth to John Coltrane ("Freedom's Saint"). Although Miles Davis dominated the era, Saul accords him perfunctory treatment. Indeed, Saul seems to have a blind spot, misdating Miles's 1956 Prestige quintet sessions, offhandedly dismissing the trumpeter's orchestral albums with Gil Evans as "lush bachelor-pad collaborations," and crediting Mingus with pioneering the so-called Spanish scale that Miles "rode to critical acclaim." Perhaps unbeknownst to Saul, Gil Evans utilized that scale in his haunting "La Paloma" arrangement for Claude Thornhill in 1946, when Mingus was still an obscure bassist thumping away in Dixieland bands.
Which is not to deny that Mingus, a protean figure, created "some of the most compelling and spectacularly conflicted music of the 20th century." It's just that, after attributing the allure of '50s jazz to both its sense of cool and an aura of rebellion, Saul's shows far more interest in rebellion than in cool. Thus the focus on Mingus. Whereas Miles was cool, Mingus was fiery. Miles was quietly rebellious, Mingus openly combative, even to the point of punching teeth out of a loyal sideman. Miles rudely turned his back on audiences, but Mingus harangued them and threw tantrums onstage.
The sainted Coltrane, by contrast, was tumultuous only in his music. Like the eye of a hurricane, St. John remained calm amidst violently swirling critical controversies, maintaining a serenity that made his accusers and defenders alike seem petty and irrelevant. Infusing his music with "a militant spirituality," Coltrane "pursued freedom not for the hell of it, but for the heaven of it." Saul considers it "a sign of the times" that Coltrane's gut-wrenching instrumental scream was "seized upon as a vehicle of hope: a new world, a world without ghettos, seemed impossible to imagine without a disfiguring act like that scream." Saul is big on screams.
Constrained by Amazon's 1000-word limit and my own shortcomings, I must merely allude to the author's detailed analyses of poetry, painting, photography, essays, film, fiction, and theater. The scope of his expertise is, to a layman, staggering.
Yet even in a book of such breadth and depth, much is left out. In concentrating on a single, monochromatic strand, Saul overlooks the full, multihued tapestry of jazz in the '50s and '60s. The thread of increasingly separatist black musicians alienating both existing and prospective listeners is essential, but Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz attracting large numbers of non-jazz fans into the tent, for however brief a visit, are also part of the fabric. Saul's depiction of blacks-only jazz influencing American popular culture is a quilt missing prominent swatches. It's politically correct, but historically incomplete.
"Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't" is a brilliant, insightful, demanding tour de force that leaves one wishing for more.
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