In With the In Crowd: Popular Jazz in 1960s Black America

[ghost of miles]

Interesting recent publication—book is arriving today, hoping to read it sometime in the coming weeks:

In With the In Crowd: Popular Jazz in 1960s Black America

Edited Wednesday at 03:56 PM by ghost of miles

[JSngry]

But ..jazz began losing its Black audience in the 1950s!!!!!

[Rooster_Ties]

While I probably won’t rabidly devour this book, but I imagine it’ll be a good read — maybe a darn good one at that.

If the reviews are positive , or if someone here reports back it’s good — I’m in.

[Dan Gould]

Looks like a good companion to 

Jazz With a Beat: Small Group Swing, 1940 – 1960

by member @ListeningToPrestige (Tad Richards) as well as the Soul Jazz book.

I think I am in ... definitely.

[Big Beat Steve]

16 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

Looks like a good companion to 

Jazz With a Beat: Small Group Swing, 1940 – 1960

by member @ListeningToPrestige (Tad Richards) as well as the Soul Jazz book.

I think I am in ... definitely.

A side note:

Thanks for mentioning that "Jazz With A Beat" book!
I had been totally unaware of this. (Cannot recall its release has been discussed here - or did I miss something?) Ordered it at once as it is right up my alley. Glad to see (according to the sales blurb on Amazon) that the author acknolwedges the small-group R&B/Jump Blues acts as part of how Swing evolved after 1945. Good to see the days seem to be over at last when the entire R&B field was dismissed as being unworthy of serious consideration as "jazz" (of the post-WWII variety).

The "In With The In Crowd" book looks interesting too (like you said - as a follow-up to the "Soul Jazz" book, maybe ...). But for now I'll sit and wait to hear from others who have read it - just to get a few more impressions.

BTW, one aspect I wonder whether it will be covered in the "In Crowd" book (or in "Jazz With a Beat"?) are those "Mainstream" jazzmen who did retain a following well into the 60s at least on a local/regional level, such as Buddy Tate and his Celebrity Club orchestra who according to various period sources had a long-running club residency. Style-wise (considering the usual stylistic categories that jazz scribes tended to think in) I'd guess he fell into the "No man's land of jazz" between R&B and Soul Jazz.

Edited Thursday at 09:25 AM by Big Beat Steve

[Rabshakeh]

What is the Soul Jazz book to which people are referring? Is that recommended.

I'd also love a book on the Mainstream Swing side of things. 

Who is the author of this new one? Has he written anything else?

[Niko]

the Soul Jazz book must be Bob Porter's book of the same name... (which I started reading but somehow never finished... so I'll wait with this new book until then)

[Dan Gould]

Soul Jazz by Bob Porter (could not summon his name that is why I wasn't specific) is definitely recommended.  

 

[Rabshakeh]

Oh. I think I have read that one. A useful book although I think I sold it on after reading. 

[medjuck]

8 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

What is the Soul Jazz book to which people are referring? Is that recommended.

I'd also love a book on the Mainstream Swing side of things. 

Who is the author of this new one? Has he written anything else?

When I first started listening to jazz in the early '60s I asked a friend what "mainstream jazz" was.  He thought for a second and replied "People who used to be in the Basie band."

[HutchFan]

I don't know anything about the author, and I haven't ever seen this book.  But I LOVE the idea of it.  There are many rooms in the Jazz House.  It seems like this author is willing to explore some rooms that have been overlooked -- by critics, at least, if not by listeners.

I'd like to see a table contents to have a bit more insight into which artists the author discusses.  

 

EDIT
Here's a review from The Syncopated Times that covers some of the musicians that the author explores in the book: https://syncopatedtimes.com/in-with-the-in-crowd-popular-jazz-in-1960s-black-america/

 

Edited Thursday at 06:15 PM by HutchFan

[Dan Gould]

13 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

 

I'd like to see a table contents to have a bit more insight into which artists the author discusses.  

 

 

 

27 minutes ago, medjuck said:

When I first started listening to jazz in the early '60s I asked a friend what "mainstream jazz" was.  He thought for a second and replied "People who used to be in the Basie band."

Pretty darn close at least at that time. You could generalize to big band sidemen going off on their own / leading record dates.

[HutchFan]

Thanks, @Dan Gould! 

 

[Rabshakeh]

41 minutes ago, medjuck said:

When I first started listening to jazz in the early '60s I asked a friend what "mainstream jazz" was.  He thought for a second and replied "People who used to be in the Basie band."

I mean, add people who used to be in the Ellington band and you basically have it.

[gmonahan]

1 hour ago, Dan Gould said:

 

Pretty darn close at least at that time. You could generalize to big band sidemen going off on their own / leading record dates.

The chapter titles do pique my interest. Might be worth a look!

 

[Big Beat Steve]

14 hours ago, HutchFan said:

I don't know anything about the author, and I haven't ever seen this book.  But I LOVE the idea of it.  There are many rooms in the Jazz House.  It seems like this author is willing to explore some rooms that have been overlooked -- by critics, at least, if not by listeners.

EDIT
Here's a review from The Syncopated Times that covers some of the musicians that the author explores in the book: https://syncopatedtimes.com/in-with-the-in-crowd-popular-jazz-in-1960s-black-america/

 

Thanks for linking this interesting review.
This does give a better idea of what the book is all about.

As for the following statement ...

" ... the kind of jazz that was commercially viable in the black community in the 1960s has been overlooked in jazz history writing. Author Mike Smith says that the attention that might have been given to popular performers like singer Nancy Wilson, pianists Ramsey Lewis and others has instead been focused on the avant-garde, aka “The New Thing,” as personified by Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler and a few others.
... Smith’s thesis is that the need to “elevate” jazz from a popular musical form to one “equal” to European and other Western forms of music is the key factor. Early attacks on jazz he says, “led to a defensiveness and a need to seek legitimacy that continued into the 21st century.” This idea goes back to the 1920s, Paul Whiteman’s efforts to “make a lady out of jazz” perhaps being the most well-known. Smith believes this comes largely from the white community although historically, critiques of jazz have come from both races.
Smith says that since media loves conflict, jazz writers’ attention has been more likely to be drawn to the drama surrounding people like Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. He writes that this music reflects a more non-conflictual perspective on black life; people just wanting to enjoy themselves, in communities that were more than just “ghettoes”; that there was not just struggle and trauma in people’s lives, but beauty as well. "

... I for one feel that the importance of this and the need to rebalance the scales accordingly in the way the history and evolution of jazz are presented and appreciated cannot be stressed enough.
Trying to force jazz (in the larger sense) into a "classical music of the USA" pigeonhole (and limiting oneself to perceiving the music in this classically-trained "art music" sense) does not do the music justice at all. 
Just my 2c ...

[Dan Gould]

I received my copy last night and can report one thing:

Get out your strong reading glasses, or have a magnifying glass handy.  It may be 220 pages but this is the smallest type I've seen since Buck Clayton's autobiography.

[Big Beat Steve]

Good to know. 😄

But at least the reader seems to be getting his money's worth per page. Contrary to the typeface used in certain other books. 

[felser]

20 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

I mean, add people who used to be in the Ellington band and you basically have it.

And subtract the great Frank Foster, who often went far afield of mainstream.

[HutchFan]

7 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

... I for one feel that the importance of this and the need to rebalance the scales accordingly in the way the history and evolution of jazz are presented and appreciated cannot be stressed enough.
Trying to force jazz (in the larger sense) into a "classical music of the USA" pigeonhole (and limiting oneself to perceiving the music in this classically-trained "art music" sense) does not do the music justice at all. 
Just my 2c ...

Agreed! 

 

[JSngry]

I wonder about the last chapter - how/why "we" forgot...is this going to be some dogmatic axe grinding?

Not sure who "we" is...it certainly isn't the people I knew, except the White Folks who were "sophisticated"...otherwise, a few decades of Acid Jazz, Rare Grooves, and crate-digging argue otherwise.

Nancy Wilson and Jeanne Lee are not the same thing, but they weren't supposed to be and they don't need to be. Not for me, and not for some other people I know.

Yin & Yang, there is always both. Promote one at the expense of the other at your peril.

[JSngry]

 

[Rabshakeh]

5 hours ago, JSngry said:

I wonder about the last chapter - how/why "we" forgot...is this going to be some dogmatic axe grinding?

Not sure who "we" is...it certainly isn't the people I knew, except the White Folks who were "sophisticated"...otherwise, a few decades of Acid Jazz, Rare Grooves, and crate-digging argue otherwise.

Nancy Wilson and Jeanne Lee are not the same thing, but they weren't supposed to be and they don't need to be. Not for me, and not for some other people I know.

Yin & Yang, there is always both. Promote one at the expense of the other at your peril.

I sort of agree. The truth is that the process of forgetting and remembering isn’t natural. But it is rarely the outcome of a single factor, as these books often make out. 
 

UnIike you, I am a nineties kid. I did not experience anything firsthand. I grew into jazz during the great age of CD reissues. Questions of who was remembered and who was forgotten dictated who I liked for the first fifteen years of being a fan of this music. It took me over a decade to even hear the names of the A listers who ended up on the wrong side of the culture industry. Names like Ramsey Lewis, Lee Konitz, Gene Ammons, Eddie Harris and Roscoe Mitchell. 
 

But it is not some great conspiracy. Just changing tastes and, more than anything, the luck of being on the label that retrospectively promotes its legacy artists, rather than the ones that don’t. 
 

Jazz in the current era is a minority pursuit. Unlike rock or hip hop there isn’t a mass of older fans and friendly uncles to ensure that awareness of major artists survives their period of fame. So questions of retrospective visibility are important.

[JSngry]

I see that the author is an African-American University Jazz Educator. So maybe his "we" is different than mine, maybe it's lonely where he lives.

[JSngry]

Pretty sure this record got ***** in Down Beat. Know for a fact that the (overnight) jazz show on one of the Black R&B stations played it (and many other things)

Ok, I was a white kid and at first I was a bit snobby about "commercial" jazz. But as I got out into life and got in and around the people and places from whence the music issued, the snobbishness dissolved.

What's funny about the "history" angle is that as a rule I found far more snobbishness amongst the older hard bop players. But - they played that music when that was the gig (and in the community, it very often was) and they played it quite well.

Some -on any given day, lots - of the "commercial" stuff was just that. Product. But somebody like Eddie Harris...today it's fashionable to talk about "coding". Well hell, Eddie Harris was coded like a motherfucker. He reached people not because of what he did or did not play, he reached people because they could FEEL him.

Same thing about Coltrane, btw