Cats of Any Color: Jazz, Black and White

Rating:
Summary: An intelligent and thoughtful book, marvelously written.
Review: Gene Lees has steadily built a reputation as one of the finest of all writers on jazz. This intelligent, thoughtful, and insightful look at current attitudes on the part of jazz musicians towards race and racial bias is firmly grounded in historical research without being pedantic. Part of the success of this book comes from its organization -- many of the chapters are profiles of musicians and musical scholars which are incidentally used to illustrate the issues under consideration.Whether or not one finally agrees with Lees' premise -- that we have reentered a period of "reverse racism" in jazz -- the quality of the interviews and interviewees makes this an important book, and a wonderful read in the process.

Rating:
Summary: Some unflinching truths about the world of jazz...
Review: Gene Lees strikes me as one of the more level-headed individuals in jazz. Like it or not, the hard-core jazz word is these days filled with elitists, racists (mostly reverse these days), and people protecting their "territory." When I see the doings and hear the rantings of the likes of Stanley Crouch and other pretentious writers and "social critics," I am reminded of the character of Max Mercy from Bernard Malamud's novel (and the movie) The Natural...Mercy isn't interested in baseball and has never played a game, but stirring up controversy using baseball as his medium keeps him in the spotlight and makes him rich. Crouch is much the same way--would any of us have heard of him, would he have a tenth of his current income and notoriety were he not clutching 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 headed individual. A must read for anyone not in any "camp" or defending 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...


Rating:
Summary: Some unflinching truths about the world of jazz...
Review: Gene Lees strikes me as one of the more level-headed individuals in jazz. This alone should make him an outsider. Like it or not, the hard-core jazz word is these days filled with elitists, racists (mostly reverse these days), and people protecting their territory. When I see the doings and hear the rantings of the likes of Stanley Crouch and other pretentious jazz writers and "social critics," I am reminded of the character of Max Mercy from Bernard Malamud's novel (and the movie) The Natural...Mercy isn't interested in baseball and has never played a game, but stirring up controversy using baseball as his medium keeps him in the spotlight and makes him rich. Crouch is much the same way--would any of us have heard of him, would he have a tenth of his current income and notoriety were he not clutching 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. But don't get the impression this is a kiss-and-tell book or something scandalous...Mr. Lees is actually a rather level headed individual. A must read for anyone not in any "camp" or defending any "turf" but who just loves music and musicians. And yet I see it's already out of print. I guess people like whitewashed histories better... Pity.

Rating:
Summary: Meditation of Jazz and Race
Review: Gene Lees' bok had its genesis as a series of articles nominally written around a common theme, that of race and jazz. The're no real narrative structure here; some of the pieces are narratives, some more essays and some are just rememberances that sort of meander here and there.

They're very readable, although I do get a little annoyed at times by Lees' short, punchy newspaper style, with two and three word sentances and one-sentance paragraphs. It's a technique that is best used very sparingly. Lees does do a superb job of recreating conversations, showing that he has a marvelous ear for the rhythms and conventions of spoken English.

The unifying theme through all these pieces is Gene Lees' concern with the role race played in jazz, whether the early racism that kept Black jazz musicians out of the limelight, or the contemporary racism of people like Stanley Crouch who proclaim jazz to be Black music. What puts Lees' essays a cut above others who have written on this topic is that he goes beyond the simple enumerating of players and their opinions; he has a real musicologist's interest in the history of jazz and popular music.

One piece, an extended profile and interview Dominique d Lerma is devoted to breaking the stereotypes of the earliest jazz music. If you watched Ken Burns' history of jazz you could be forgiven for thinking that jazz came from ill-educated, poor Southern blacks. de Lerma emphasizes, for example, the role of conservatory-trained Black musicians who integrated the harmonies of the European composers they studied into the popular music of the times, and the role of the great Black music publisher W. C. Handy in popularizing this music.

The last essay is specifically devoted to Wynton Marsalis, a man with marvelous technique and shallow opinions, who refuses to admit that any white musician has contributed anything to jazz, thus bringing the debate full circle. Marsalis is a trumpter with a brilliant classical technique who unfortunately has been elevated in recent years to the position of being the modern savior of jazz by the efforts of Burns and Stanley Crouch despite his not having much of anything original since his early days as an up-and-comer with Art Blakey's band. Unfortunately he has come to be viewed as a major figure and authority in jazz by outsiders, despite being generally ignired as disparaged by most jazzers.

The real pity of attitudes like Marsalis' is that they lose sight of the fact that while Jazz certainly had its origins in Black musicians, it has always been as much an American music form as a Black form, and that today it is an international form that transcends boundries of either race or color. The greatest musicians have always ignored artificial boundries, and many of the great bands of the post WW-II always included musicians of all races. It takes nothing away from Ray Brown to say he was influenced by Scott LaFaro, or that Miles Davis was strongly influenced by his close association with Gil Evans. (Miles, responding to a comment by Marsalis that Miles was never Marsalis' idol, reportedly told him "without me, you'd be all 'Flight of the Bumblebee'")

For that matter, in the end it becomes ridiculous to talk about race. Horace Silver, as Lees notes in one interview, Black, Native American, and Portuguese ancestors; his father spoke Portuguese. Does that make him a white musician? A Black one? A European? Charles Mingus had a similarly mixed ancestry. Does the fact the he was perhaps a quarter African make him less Black in the eyes of Marsalis, and thus less of a musician?

There's a lot in this book to think about long after you put it down. As you might be able to tell from reading the above, I'm still thinking about it.