I began really listening to jazz in my early 20s. I have never seen it mentioned on these boards although discussions of other forms of music are often bandied. if you think of Jazz as purely black music, think again.
Richard M. Sudhalter was a critic and biographer who sadly died in 2008. He was also a first-rate trumpet and cornet player who specialized in early jazz styles. He led groups in the United States and Europe and recorded widely. As a writer he made a great contrabution to the history of the art with his 1974 biography of white jazz star Bix Beiderbecke,Bix: Man & Legend. The book, co-written with Philip R. Evans and William Dean-Myatt, was hailed as a "landmark of jazz scholarship" and the "first jazz biography written to the standards" of a serious study of a classical composer or other major historical figures. The book also helped revive interest in Beiderbecke. In 2002, Sudhalter published a biography of Hoagy Carmichael, which critics called "meticulous, admiring, perceptive and informative."
But in 1999 Sudhalter shook things up with his with the 890-page book, Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945, an exhaustively researched history, which challenged the prevailing notion that jazz was exclusively a black art form. Needless to say it provoked heaps of scorn from the jazz world and beyond who labeled him "the Pat Buchanan of jazz" (which I would regard as a compliment). Critic Gerald Early wrote in the Chicago Tribune, "I fear that the length of the book may be a sign of the author's desperation(!)" At public forums, where he gamely tried to defend his work, Mr. Sudhalter was sometimes mocked and jeered.
Moral of the story: only the primitive blame the seismograph for an earthquake.
Richard M. Sudhalter was a critic and biographer who sadly died in 2008. He was also a first-rate trumpet and cornet player who specialized in early jazz styles. He led groups in the United States and Europe and recorded widely. As a writer he made a great contrabution to the history of the art with his 1974 biography of white jazz star Bix Beiderbecke,Bix: Man & Legend. The book, co-written with Philip R. Evans and William Dean-Myatt, was hailed as a "landmark of jazz scholarship" and the "first jazz biography written to the standards" of a serious study of a classical composer or other major historical figures. The book also helped revive interest in Beiderbecke. In 2002, Sudhalter published a biography of Hoagy Carmichael, which critics called "meticulous, admiring, perceptive and informative."
But in 1999 Sudhalter shook things up with his with the 890-page book, Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945, an exhaustively researched history, which challenged the prevailing notion that jazz was exclusively a black art form. Needless to say it provoked heaps of scorn from the jazz world and beyond who labeled him "the Pat Buchanan of jazz" (which I would regard as a compliment). Critic Gerald Early wrote in the Chicago Tribune, "I fear that the length of the book may be a sign of the author's desperation(!)" At public forums, where he gamely tried to defend his work, Mr. Sudhalter was sometimes mocked and jeered.
Moral of the story: only the primitive blame the seismograph for an earthquake.
