Some Hustling This! Taking Jazz to the World, 1914-1929 (review)

Abstract

Some Hustling This! Taking Jazz to World, 1914-1929. By Mark Miller. Toronto: Mercury Press, 2005. [207 p. ISBN 1-55128-119-8. $19.95] Bibliography, index, photographs. This is latest in an impressive series of books by Mark Miller, jazz critic for Toronto Globe and Mail. His earlier monographs include Miller Companion to Jazz in Canada and Canadians in Jazz (Toronto: Mercury Press, 2001), Such Melodious Racket: Lost History of Jazz in Canada, 1914-1949 (Toronto: Mercury Press, 1997), and Cool Blues: Charlie Parker in Canada, 1953 (London, ON: Nightwood Editions, 1989), among others. Miller has also written for Down Beat, Coda, New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, and other publications. Four years of research and writing went into this project, which Miller describes as the product of a much longer interest in lost, forgotten and overlooked in jazz history (p. 9). As he explains, theoretical implications [of] early exposure to, and contact with, American jazz musicians [abroad] have become a popular subject for critical analysis, bringing together . . . interrelated cultural and sociological themes of modernism, primitivism, exoticism, racism, identity and otherness. . . . Missing from this body of writing, however, is a basic account of who went where, when, and did what. (p. 11) Beginning with first trip of singer-drummer Louis Mitchell to Europe in 1914 with Southern Symphony Quintette (a ragtime ensemble), and closing with precipitous demise of a night club Mitchell opened in Paris in 1929 and his subsequent return to United States, Miller covers intervening fifteen years, later known as Jazz Age, during which many American musicians followed Mitchell abroad, bringing their talents and nascent jazz genre to far corners of globe. This is an account of sojourns by those musicians, only some of whose names are still widely recognized, including Sidney Bechet, Freddie Keppard, Jelly Roll Morton, and Willie The Lion Smith. Meticulous research, incisive writing, and clear layout are hallmarks of all of Miller's books. For this project, in addition to checking normal historical, biographical, and autobiographical print sources, Miller viewed microfilms of many newspapers from around world, some long defunct. One wonders about state of his eyes after four years of such research, but these sources proved invaluable. For example, many letters from musicians them-selves were published in Chicago Defender and other stateside newspapers, giving first-hand accounts and impressions of their experiences abroad. These provide a significant counterpoint to reviews published in contemporary newspapers and periodicals. Puzzled, even hostile, reactions to jazz were a common journalistic theme from early years. book's chapter headings cite numerous examples, such as Fearsome means of discord (p. 22), Hellish disharmony (p. 87), Noisy antics (p. 40), Half a dozen cacophonists (p. 105), and Squirmy cerulean harmony (p. 118). Another theme book explores was marketing of, and reporting about, artists (p. 166), i.e., black musicians. book's title derives from a laudatory 1917 review of Louis Mitchell's drumming with second band he led in London, Seven Spades. As Miller points out, racial inference [of band's name] was direct, unlike subtler geographic allusion, for example, of 'Southern Symphony Quintette.' . . . [F]ew black jazz bands working in Europe even in 1920s announced their ethnicity so explicitly. At this early date, though, 'Seven Spades' may well have been chosen to celebrate group's race as one of its defining attractions, (pp. 34-35) Coverage of, for instance, opening of Five Jazzing Devils in Kristiana (later Oslo) in 1921, and of Thompson's Jazz Band in Copenhagen in 1923, was typical of that found in many foreign newspapers in its pointedly racist rhetoric, including simplistic allusions to . …