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Re: Lester Young on clarinet

Author: MarlboroughMan
Date: 2014-05-23 23:29

Agreed on the sociological aspect. I liked his 'oral historical' approach to the whole thing too--no footnotes or index. In the end, I think he even clarified that as a conscious effort--this book is to be taken, like the music, as an act of memory and tradition--not 'scientific historic method.'

Having said this, the insights gained by reading it are invaluable--even in the points he wasn't necessarily trying to make. I'm not sure, for instance, how deliberate the picture of a 'Preservation Hall Industry' he was trying to paint--but it is nevertheless strikingly there. The amateur vs professional musician dichotomy between "the mens" of the Hall and Bourbon Street also jumps off the page. It's too facile to write, as he does at one point, that the 'white' music was "fast and soulless"--and thankfully he doesn't dwell on this untenable prejudice long. (One could say the same of bop, though without the racial designation, and one would be equally wrong).

The book inspires a deeper look at the full implications of the 'serious amateur' status of many die hard traditionalists--and what that might mean about the historiography of 'traditionalism' itself. A couple of years back, I mentioned to someone my opinion that Jimmie Noone's wasn't preserved as a 'traditional' clarinet style most likely because amateurs can't imitate him like they can George Lewis or Johnny Dodds. Since that time, I've deepened my appreciation for Lewis and Dodds, but Sancton's book tends to reinforce that opinion in me rather than quell it. Amateurs of an oral tradition can only preserve what they can imitate--placing Noone and many others outside their sphere. To then present the oral history they CAN imitate as the 'real' canon is somewhat less than ideal.

But these are matters he probably didn't intend to bring up. Most moving to me was the dramatic family story he weaves of what jazz meant to his father, and then to him. One wonders who it meant more to--the man who saw a symbol of himself in "the mens", or the boy grew into it, fusing his own voice with the music. Deeply powerful, deeply moving, and a book anyone wanting to know about jazz would benefit from profoundly--because he describes, beautifully, a jazz life--and living a jazz life is really the only way to be a jazz musician (it is not something to be dabbled in, or played as a 'style').

Eric

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The Jazz Clarinet
http://thejazzclarinet.blogspot.com/

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2014-05-07 10:47