Jazz: a History of America's Music.

By Geoffrey C. Ward, with a preface by Ken Burns. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, c. 2000. Pp. xii, 489. $65.00, ISBN 0-679-44551-X.)

By the time this review is read most readers will have seen Ken Burns's ten-part documentary on the history of jazz, and many will have become part of that host of consumers who have added jazz recordings to their collection as a result. A companion piece for the PBS television series, this handsome book will provide a compact visual and intellectual reminder of the excellence of the documentary. The photographs are stunning, and the historical commentary is incisive and balanced.

Most informed readers will enjoy Geoffrey Ward's overview, although some might quarrel with his interpretations and emphases. No one, however, will find much that is surprising. The history of jazz presented here is a familiar one that begins in New Orleans among African Americans who welded the remarkably diverse elements of their musical culture into a vibrant, improvisatory phenomenon that virtually compelled listeners to dance. New Orleans's musicians took their styles to the West Coast, to Texas, up the Mississippi River, along the Gulf Coast, and to Chicago long before 1917 when the first recordings were made. These peripatetic piano players, string musicians, and brass bands generally described their music as "ragtime," because that was the musical rage in pre-World War I America, but their performances "swung" like no music had ever done.

African Americans may have created jazz, but they were not the only people who could play it, and they certainly have never monopolized its audience. By the end of the twenties jazz had swept the country and had been exported to Europe. The music in fact seemed to define the ebullient spirit and sense of innovation of that decade, and jazz became a vehicle through which young white people could express a sense of rebellion and the urge to break the constraints of adult society. White listeners and musicians have ever since sought the pleasures and challenge of jazz to fulfill the widest range of emotional and artistic expectations. Consequently, such white musicians as Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw figure prominently in the music's evolution and in this book's narrative.

Ward presents a perceptive and comprehensive overview of the economic and cultural context in which jazz evolved, noting the music's remarkable ability not only to survive and adapt during prosperity, hard times, and war, but also to mirror the alterations in material conditions and attitudes that accompanied social change. Ward's history is complemented with interviews with Albert Murray and Wynton Marsalis (whose input recurs repeatedly in the book), and with essays by Dan Morgenstern (who reminisces about his youthful discovery of jazz in his native Europe and post-World War II America), Gary Giddins (who surveys the role of avant-gardism in jazz), Stanley Crouch (who talks about the revitalization of jazz in the 1980s), and Gerald Early (who explores the thorny question of whether white people can really play "true" jazz; he concludes that they can't "swing" or feel the blues like their black counterparts). The story of jazz that emerges is simultaneously a celebration of American freedom, a reminder of the inequities and indignities that nevertheless blighted the American Dream, and a chronicle of the ways in which African Americans overcame those adversities and created one of our greatest art forms.

While Ward's historical narrative presents the most relevant details of jazz's evolution, his biographical vignettes do the most to bring his subject alive. All of the principal actors are here, with all their human strengths and frailties, including Buddy Bolden, who may have been the first jazz musician but who nevertheless died unrewarded in a Louisiana mental hospital; Jelly Roll Morton, whose claim to have "invented jazz" can be discounted but whose piano stylings and compositions have stood the test of time; Sidney Bechet, the mellow soprano sax player who took the music to France; Duke Ellington, the pianist and bandleader who gave jazz its greatest body of song compositions; Charlie Parker, the brilliant saxophonist who could not conquer his personal demons but who became one of the crucial architects of the Bebop revolution; Benny Goodman, the clarinetist who made the nation conscious of "swing" during the 1940s; and hosts of other luminaries great and small. All of these musicians made vital contributions to the creation and popularization of jazz, but none stood as tall as Louis Armstrong, who took his trumpet out of the slums of New Orleans to become the music's first great soloist and star. With his down-home simplicity, unrivaled sense of showmanship, and sophisticated mastery of both his voice and instrument, Armstrong was, as Wynton Marsalis describes him, "the embodiment of jazz" (p. 117) and the music's finest ambassador to the world.

Although this book meets the tests of clarity, scholarship, and readability, some of its judgments may inspire further questions. Some people will wonder why the current scene receives only brief coverage. If jazz is "America's music," then how should we define the blues, which has insinuated itself into the fabric of every American musical style and which, we are told, is an indispensable ingredient of all good jazz? For that matter, if we accept jazz as our most defining American musical art form, then why shouldn't we find in this book an exploration of the ways in which jazz has penetrated and permanently shaped other genres? Scholars with expertise different from mine might want to talk about the effects of jazz on rhythm-and-blues, Cajun, Tejano and other "Latin" forms, or even classical music. My emphasis instead would be on western swing, bluegrass, or other styles of roots-oriented acoustic music where the influence of jazz is strongly marked. But, then, Ken Bums may be working on a sequel to this celebratory project; if so, the accompanying book would certainly cover the widely ranging styles that make up the extended history of America's music.

BILL C. MALONE
Madison, Wisconsin