Home-grown Talent Research Articles

The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Jazz

The question of the origins of jazz has, one might well imagine, received many answers in the seventy-five years since the music burst like a rocket over the American musical landscape. The least palatable perhaps is that offered by reactionary champions of the musical originality of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB), for example, Horst Lange. Much of his evidence is easy to dismiss, but one point at least makes us pause and think. He writes: It was always a riddle for the serious friend of jazz, why the fabulous and legendary Orleans jazz hadn't already been discovered around 1900 or 1910 in the city itself, since not only was it full of home-grown talent and musical professionals, but also received a constant stream of visitors and tourists. Shouldn't there have been someone, among all these people surely interested in music, who was struck by this novel music, which was later designated jazz? (Lange 1991, 28; my translation). In fact, there's no question that the particular instrumentation, manner of playing, and repertory of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, decisively assisted by the superb recording technique of the Victor Talking Machine Company, were copied by hundreds of young musicians, many of whom never had visited and never would visit Orleans. Someone who came close to fitting Lange's music-loving visitor to Orleans was J. Russell Robinson (1892-1963), a pianist and songwriter who had worked in that city around 1910 and was eventually to become a member of the ODJB. Many years later he recalled his reaction to these recordings: first, it was a new, interesting, and exciting sound, a bit blood-curdling; second, the musicians were recognizable as nonreaders; third, jazz was nothing but ragtime, played by ear (Robinson 1955, 13). Thus the sound, while strikingly novel and surely deserving of the acclaim of Lange, was recognized by an experienced professional as being but one species of the genus, ragtime played by ear by fakers, to use the usual term of the day. (1) Even at the time, however, Orleans colleagues and competitors of the ODJB fully acknowledged the debt all of them owed to African Americans. For example, Walter Kingsley reported the views of clarinetist Alcide Yellow Nunez: In 1916 Brown's Band from Dixieland came to Chicago direct from Orleans, and with it came Tutor Spriccio. They knew all the negro melodies with the variations taught by Spriccio.... This bunch from Orleans played by ear entirely (Kingsley 1918, 867). Then after a discussion of the Livery Stable Blues and the break routines for which Nunez claimed credit: All this, however, was derived from the Orleans blacks and John (867). These statements are offered not only to refute Lange's revisionism, but as one more illustration--Is one needed?--of the pervasive bias that constantly obscures investigation of the contributions of African Americans. Spriccio has a name, but not the old negroes or the New Orleans blacks. As is often the case, things look different from the other side of the color line. It is interesting to go back to what seems to have been the first published attempt by an African-American native of Orleans to plumb the mystery of the origin of The year was 1933, the author E. Belfield Spriggins, social editor of the Lousiana Weekly. He wrote, under the title Excavating Local Jazz: For quite some years now there has been an unusual amount of discussion concerning the popular form of music commonly called jazz. ... Many years ago jazz tunes in their original forms were heard in the Crescent City. Probably one of the earliest heard was one played by King Bolden's Band.... The rendition of this number became an over night sensation and the reputation of Bolden's band became a household word with the patrons of the Odd Fellows Hall, Lincoln and Johnson Parks, and several other popular dance halls around the city (Spriggins 1933, 6). …

The future in our hands.

The future in our hands.

Big Joe Williams and Friends Going Back to Crawford , and: Black Appalachia String Bands, Songsters and Hoedowns (review)

Big Joe Williams and Friends Going Back to Crawford ArhooUe, 1999 CD 9OI5, $IO.OO Black Appalachia String Bands, Songsters and Hoedowns Rounder, 1999 CD 1823, $15.00 A native of Crawford, Mississippi, Big Joe WüUams was convinced that his hometown was fuU ofblues talent that deserved attention. In 1971 he convinced ArhooUe's president, Chris Strachwitz, to record some ofCrawford's home-grown talent. Now, over twenty years later, these performances are finaUy avaüable. Though WiUiams's singing and playing clearly stand out, particularly on the first cut "Back Home Blues," his friends easüy hold dieir own. Going Back to Crawfordnicely captures the "down home" blues of average black Mississippians who never made it on record, and whose voices and stories might otherwise be forgotten. Though avid blues fans, the folkloristsJohn and Alan Lomax wanted to survey the wide range ofblack musical creativity. BlackAppalachia captures a number of pre-blues traditions, from stringband and banjo tunes to washboard bands and chüdren's singing games. Tennessee serves as the cd's geographic focus for a broadly defined Appalachia, which also includes Mississippi and Arkansas. The recordings and the accompanying booklet explore the broad confluence ofwhite and black styles. Though remastered, BlackAppalachia is not as "clean" as cd Usteners may be accustomed to, largely because these recordings were coUected in the field in the 1930s and 1940s. Yet it's an extremely important aural document that reminds us again ofthe numerous contributions, aside from the blues, that African Americans have made to southern vernacular music. Music Recordings 93 ...

UT Southwestern: From Army Shacks to Research Elites

Dallas—A mix of oil funds, state money, and private philanthropy has turned the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School into a research power. Its scientific strength rests on a combination of homegrown talent and superstars lured from other institutions with promises of ample research resources and the prospect of interdisciplinary studies.

Home Again

Southern Appalachian Archives/Berea College 7 Life is still hard in the remote, rugged hills of Elliott County, Kentucky. Unemployment is chronic, Kentucky 's highest at 25% and more; there are no industries, no significant coal deposits, little flat land for profitable farming. The sparse population, impossible terrain, financially strapped government and school systems, and politics -the sheriff who doesn't work, the tax assessor who doesn't mail out the bills-keep the county underdeveloped and in the Lexington news. A mass exodus over the past fifty years has weakened the pool of homegrown talent and leadership, and further handicapped this forgotten little pocket of Kentucky. Tobacco crops are cultivated on steep hillsides better suited to growing marijuana , probably today's number one cash crop in the county. Most who do have jobs commute. To nearby Morehead, to Ashland, to the West Virginia coal mines, even to Lexington, a hard twohour drive away. My family is from Gimlet, on Mauck Ridge in Elliott County, but few of us still live there. Most migrated out after World War II, north to the Ohio factories . We moved when I was about three years old, forty miles west to relatively flat and prosperous Fleming County. But we went home every Sunday to Elliott County, and I spent my summers there until I was too big to be spared so long from farm work. Elliott County has held a special place in my memories all these years, a special feeling for home, heritage, and family. I went back to Elliott County on a September Tuesday for a triple funeral, two young first cousins and a wife were killed while trying to blast open an old spring-fed well to get water to a mobile home. The first was killed by poison gas; the other two died in vain rescue attempts. Even in the Kentucky mountains, death is steady work. Probably the newest and nicest building in Sandy Hook, the county seat of Elliott County, is the funeral home. Modern, immaculate , brick-veneered, surrounded by a huge paved parking lot, air conditioned, the facility for leaving this world is far superior to any facility for being born. The crowd gathers early. The men come in dress cowboy boots, jeans or cheap dress pants, plaid flannel shirts or cowboy-cut uniform shirts, the raw and uncomfortable dressed-up look of loggers , truckers, and farmers. The women are too old for their years, worn by hard work, childbirth, poor medical care, and a lifestyle which leaves little room for frills. Some, the younger women, are beautiful in a classic mountain way. High cheekbones, fair skin, light hair, and clear blue eyes reflect the Cox family genes, my mother's blood, the Irish heritage which still surfaces. The older people are stiff, slowed, uncomplaining, grimly accepting of the tragedy. They accept me too, despite my jacket, tie, and uncalloused hands, once they ask and discover I'm Hack and Loval's second boy, the one who went away to college. The service is in the hands of the brothers, leaders of the family church, a dozen of them seated near the coffins, but first there's a surprising guitar-accompanied duet of a popular gospel song. Probably, we decide later, the young surviving wife insisted on this music and had her way despite the brothers ' ban on musical instruments. Then there's the undertaker's brief and formal summary of three short lives, and the brothers take over. Their music is a capella, lined out by the leader, and the hill country's version of a Gregorian chant fills the overcrowded parlor with a strangely harmonic , emotional, and primitive beauty. The first brother then takes the floor, speaking softly at first, warming up, breaking out in a sweat, building, then suddenly bursts into his hellfire and damnation Sunday sermon. For the first half hour or so there is a certain basic beauty and meaning to the rhythmic chanting, and many in the congregation 8 add their vocal support. The second and third brothers to preach, don't fare so well from an audience point of view. Women wander out to change diapers and nurse babies. Men step...

Americans in the Arts, 1890-1920 by James Gibbons Huneker

Reviews277 in the recurrent observations about Shakespeare's feminism and the Elizabethan ideal of marriage, in spite of Professor Bryant's initial disclaimer. By choosing to organize by plays, Professor Bryant is restricted to concentrate in each chapter on the individual play rather than on the full development of his ideas about the uses of comedy. He comments, for example, that "The ideal of marriage that does emerge from these plays is best thought of as a process rather than as a status to be achieved with any finality . . ." (p. 208); but, since the two plays that are the subject of the chapter determine the chapter's organization, he can only cite earlier plays without developing the idea as it perhaps might have been fully examined for a scholarly audience. The organization also tends to make plot summary more important than it should be for an audience already familiar with the plays. The central section of each chapter is devoted largely to general statements about plots and characters. The conclusions of the chapters, then, become sometimes rather vague opinions about Shakespeare's meaning. For example, The Merry Wives of Windsor "makes us once more sense the mysterious terms by which frail humanity continues to survive, and it encourages us to accept those terms—even though we do not fully understand them—and to concede that the game shall go on" (p. 124). In short, Professor Bryant has produced a work that lacks the development of a precise thesis that would be interesting for scholars, but which also is too detailed to serve as an introduction for students who frequently find that Anne Barton's Riverside introductions give them more than they want. A glance at the footnotes indicates that with only several exceptions the works cited were published before 1975. C. L. Barber and H. B. Charlton are still excellent introductions for interested undergraduates, but more recent investigations into the uses of comedy might have sharpened the focus of this book. WILLIAM M. JONES University of Missouri—Columbia James Gibbons Huneker. Americans in the Arts, 1890-1920, ed. Arnold T. Schwab. New York: AMS Press, 1985. Pp. lxix + 673. $57.50. At the turn of this century, American artists—playwrights especially— received relatively little critical attention. European culture prevailed, casting its shadow across home-grown talent. But luckily there existed a few exceptions. In his time James Gibbons Huneker (1856-1921), whose commentaries are reprinted in Americans in the Arts, 1890-1920, was one of America's most versatile and influential critics. Huneker wrote many books, but because he left behind no school of aesthetic thought or hotly debated theory, he is now largely forgotten. In his 1963 biography of Huneker, Arnold Schwab laments this state of affairs and insists that "No critic has done so much in so many arts to catch the interest and refine the taste of his countrymen." In the Introduction to Americans in the Arts Schwab advances a similar thesis: Huneker, he says, has never been properly 278Comparative Drama credited for his influence on the arts in America because he rarely reprinted his essays on Americans in his book-length collections. To set matters right, Schwab now reprints several hundred of Huneker's uncollected reviews and commentaries on more than two hundred and fifty American composers, performers, playwrights, actors, novelists, poets, painters, engravers, sculptors, photographers, and critics. Given the fact that many of these commentaries are short and clearly ephemeral, it seems overkill to reprint masses of them just to prove Huneker's "Americanism." Fortunately, a different and better rationale for this book emerges. Because Huneker was such a versatile critic, his commentaries collectively present a substantial picture of American high culture at the turn of the century and beyond. Schwab greatly enhances his effect by clever organization and scholarly editing. He divides Huneker's commentaries into four large subjects—music, drama, literature, and art—which he then subdivides chiefly into categories of artists or critics. Drama, for example, is subdivided into playwrights, performers, critics, and a miscellaneous category entitled "Topics." The other major subjects have analogous divisions. Individuals are listed alphabetically in each subdivision, and beneath each name are printed Huneker's reviews or...

Alamo Images: Changing Perceptions of a Texas Experience by Susan Prendergast Schoelwer

364 Western American Literature Graham discusses how specific geographic areas of Texas have been treated by more than fifty writers, each section followed then by excerpts from their works, punctuated by pictures from Nell Blakely's 223-county trek across the state. Along the way, Graham demonstrates that Texas-good, bad, ugly, and always impressive-has been an irresistible topic for literature as long as writers have visited there. The authors and their treatments of Texas are as various as the state's topography, and their reactions run the whole range of possibilities from awe to disgust. Unfortunately, Graham includes only a handful of native Texas writers in his study and only speaks of a few of their books, concentrating instead on outsiders' views of the state: and he assumes his readers are already familiar with homegrown talent, whom he staunchly if elliptically defends. The portrait is, thus, naggingly incomplete, a flaw that is underscored by his closing argument that those who live in and write about Texas shouldn't feel inferior about it. One tends to wonder in this study where such names as Winston Estes are; but then, Graham ignores almost all of Texas north of 1"20 and east of the Caprock, except Archer City (Mdvfurtry's hometown), and he says little about the Hill Country writers. Instead of the excerpts, I would have preferred to read more of Graham's informed evaluations of Texas' Qwn authors. In addition, Graham could have omitted Blakely's b&w snapshots; most tourists can do better with Instamatics. But portraits are personal things, not intended to reveal all. Even though there is still a need for a comprehensive study of native Texas writers, Graham's book offers an enjoyable and informative picture of Texas in literature , and it argues effectively for the quality of the topic, regardless of who, Texan or "foreigner," produces it. Graham is an intelligent, informed scholar, a graceful and personable writer whose prose is refreshing and pithy; and, like Texas itself, the book's merits so far outweigh its flaws, that it is a distinguished addition to the gallery of western American literature. R. C. REYNOLDS Lamar University Alamo Images: Changing Perceptions of a Texas Experience. By Susan dergast Schoelwer. (Dallas: DeGolyer Library and Southern Methodist Uni. versity Press, 1985. 223 pages, $22.95.) According to the popular myth, 183 Anglo-Texans decided to defend Alamo. They would buy some time for Sam Houston to organize an army large enough to meet the forces of Santa Anna. Vlilliam B. Travis drew a in the dust. Those who wanted to fight would step across the line. Those wanted to leave were free to do so. Everyone chose to stay. For thirteen U'"'"''',,'", Reviews 365 the Texans withstood incessant shelling and defeated numerous charges, slaughtering Mexicans by the hundreds. Finally, just as Davy Crockett threw a torch to blow up the powder magazine, they were overwhelmed; but no one surrendered, 183 men fought to the death to save Texas. According to the best historical evidence, the Alamo did not need to be defended, and Houston's army was decreased in size by the defeat. Many Texans, learning of Santa Anna's victory at the Alamo, left Houston's army, taking their families east to safety. Several of the defenders at the Alamo were Tejanos, Mexicans fighting for Texas. Travis did not draw his famous line, and one--Louis Rose-went over the wall rather than stay and fight. Travis may have made a stirring speech, but the one we have was written primarily by the author of a textbook. Davy Crockett and about five others did surrender and were tortured and then executed. A man named Robert Evans tried to blow up the powder room but failed. What has been called the "Second Battle of the Alamo" was a struggle between factions with different theories of what the memorial should be. One group wanted to forget what actually happened at the Alamo and create a better story, one that would glorify Anglo Texans. The other group wanted to pay attention to facts. The victory for the revisionists was so complete that a poster of John Wayne's film about the...