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

[Big Beat Steve]

You are right with the aspects that you highlight ...
And yet ...

1 hour ago, Rabshakeh said:

I think there is something to be said for the need the CHALLENGE the NARRATIVE. ...

... But please don’t underestimate how difficult it is to access this stuff if you were not there at the time. For someone getting into jazz retrospectively there are very strong barriers up, that serve to kettle listeners into listening to a tiny portion of what is out there, which is placed under a spotlight. And the likes of Eddie Harris, Gene Ammons and Ramsey Lewis are certainly not in that tiny illuminated portion. They are out there in the darkness. People who were not there at the time do not have access to these records. They don’t show up in jazz histories and they don’t get posted on instagram.

... I understand what you are saying but at the same time I am puzzled. Is it really THAT difficult to think BEYOND the "accepted wisdom" (i.e. the usual categories) of the canon of the (canonized) scribes on jazz?
Your post has made me wonder about how I found out about all this. Soul Jazz (and similar 60s jazz) came fairly late for me and still is not my #1 style of jazz that makes me most easily take chances when buying records. But I have come to like it a lot, and after all this problem of what was (and is) considered worthy of "unconditional" JAZZ status did exist earlier too, i.e. with post-1945 (or post-Petrillo ban) horn-led "race music", Rhythm & Blues, Jump Blues (whatever ...).
As highlighted in the "Soul Jazz" book by Bob Porter (which gives fairly broad coverage to 1945-55 R&B - as a path leading up to Soul Jazz - as well) and more recently in "Jazz With A Beat" by Tad Richards.
Trying to think of how I explored that music way back, it may have helped that in addition to Swing and Bebop I had always been just as much interested in (real) Rock'n'Roll (not the way this is being defined in the U.S., mind you 😄) as well as the meatier styles of Blues (which invariably leads you towards R&B and Jump Blues). So anything that struck a chord (style-wise) in more than one way - as a sort of "cross-over" - caught my fancy.  And almost from Day One I was curious enough to search out almost anything in that vein that I was able to get my hands on (and afford finance-wise ) in those late 70s, figuring there must be "more discoveries" out there.
I remember that in the beginning I was a bit uneasy about where to file the very first records I bought by Louis Jordan - his Mercury stuff - and Buddy Johnson (I think I still was in high school then), but this was soon overcome and I gradually worked my way further in.
What did I use for guidance or source material? Honestly, I don't remember ... A couple of books by Arnold Shaw helped. And I also remember I always tried to find PERIOD printed matter (books/mags) that talked about the music at the time it was current and did not want to rely exclusively on sources that were published much later (and were of course colored by whatever narrative hads come to dictate the way the story of jazz was "supposed" to be seen then). But access to such primary source material for reference was TOUGH in those pre-internet days.  In many cases I did not manage to catch up until much later.

I cannot even tell you what triggered me not to take the usual documentary sources as the "gospel" of what to appreciate as a "true" jazz fan. But I remember i always felt the urge to discover more in order to "flesh out" the bare-bones skeleton of the BIG names in jazz of any period and styles and look BEYOND that towards those who (at least to my tastes) were much more than "also-rans". Which, for example, is why I much prefer the "Jazz Masters of the 40s" book by Ira Gitler (who looks beyond the biggest names of the "usual suspects" and mentions tons of others for any given instrument), as opposed to the "Jazz Masters of the 50s" book that tries to cover 50s jazz by focusing on only a dozen (or so) of real big names but stops (and fails) there. 

In short, this exploratory route happened with me for jazz of the 1940-45 to 1955 period much in the same way it can happen with others for the late 50s to late 60s period covered by the book discussed here.

At any rate, the music IS out there, and no doubt it today is much, much easier to access than it was back in the 70s or early 80s. It just takes a good dose of curiosity and an attitude of taking the long-established narratives with a grain of salt, particularly if they reek of trying over and over again to "make a lady out of jazz" (even decades after Paul Whiteman) because they stuff jazz into a strict "art music" or "the classical music of the USA" corner. And ABOVE ALL not to forget that one purpose of jazz at ALL times was to entertain (including as a music for dancing).

[JSngry]

There's not a lot about Gene Ammons in this book, which seems odd to me.

And although there's mention made and photos of the Black Is Beautiful direction in female album cover models, there's no mention made of Grandassa (which is hardly a well-known thing, although a book has recently come out).

The more I read into this book, the more I feel an ineffectual irony in making an academic argument about a populist concern. Maybe further up the road we can get a Questlove Netflix series about this music that takes it directly (back) to the people. That would be slammin'!

 

[AllenLowe]

does he talk about predecessors? Louis Jordan? Pete Brown? Horsecollar Williams?

I somehow doubt it, but those three - at the least - should be in a book like this.

[Big Beat Steve]

38 minutes ago, AllenLowe said:

does he talk about predecessors? Louis Jordan? Pete Brown? Horsecollar Williams?

I somehow doubt it, but those three - at the least - should be in a book like this.

FWIW, as for two books with a similar approach about rebalancing the narrative of jazz history but (also) covering an earlier period, Louis Jordan is discussed in detail both in "Soul Jazz" by Bob Porter and "Jazz With a Beat" by Tad Richards. But Pete Brown is only briefly mentioned in passing in "Soul Jazz" and not at all in "Jazz With a Beat". And Floyd Horsecollar Williams (almost predictably?) is not mentioned in either of the two.
So the problem may be a more wide-ranging one.

[JSngry]

Louis Jordan was a huge crossover success. The other two, not so much.

[AllenLowe]

6 hours ago, JSngry said:

Louis Jordan was a huge crossover success. The other two, not so much.

I  agree but they really both helped create the style. As did Earl Bostic.

[JSngry]

Bostic was a badass.That's not exactly a secret, but it's not exactly common knowledge either.

Tab Smith, there's another one. Not as much a badass as Bostic, but no lightweight either.

I'm still not sure if this book is intended as a social history or a musical one.

The "forgetting" (hell, erasure) of popular, R&B- adjacent jazz (and/or vice-versa) isn't limited to the 1960s. I don't know that it's any mystery why...

 

[medjuck]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Bostic was a badass.That's not exactly a secret, but it's not exactly common knowledge either.

 

 

I once heard an interview with Benny Golson where he said Earl Bostic was the greatest alto player he ever heard. (Or something like that -- it was 40 years ago. ) The only radio station in my home town (which never played jazz) did play Bostic's version of Harlem Nocturne. 

[JSngry]