New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History

By Bruce Boyd Raeburn

University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, 2009; 342 pp.; $26.95 paperback

Review by Charles Suhor

What we today call "jazz journalism, "jazz criticism" and "jazz history" began, like jazz itself, as the work of passionate amateurs. Bruce Raeburn, curator of the Tulane University Jazz Archive, traces the growth of the profession from the foundational writings of zealous record collectors to the mainstream of historical and critical studies. His brilliantly researched book is essential reading for jazz journalists.

Focusing on writings about the New Orleans style, Raeburn explores issues that have been disputed and recast over the years in magazines like Down Beat, Esquire, HRS Society Rag, Jazz Information, Jazz Record, Metronome and Record Changer. He notes that the early discourse evolved willy-nilly, with designations like ragtime, folk art, sweet versus hot jazz, corn and race music. Jazz was variously described as primitive, robotic, bourgeois, mechanistic, spontaneous, freewheeling, popular, artistic and what have you.

Jazz criticism involved a potpourri of insights and attitudes. A cadre of Marxist writers defined the music in terms of class struggle and racial oppression. Purists argued for the superiority of traditional New Orleans jazz, first over the emerging swing of the 1930s, then more ferociously over bebop in the mid-1940s. Other writers claimed that jazz progressed from simple to superior, more sophisticated forms. The dispute raged until "the combatants had completely exhausted their vocabulary of insults." Ideas about jazz were also shaped, often distorted, by the demands of record companies for salable products and the predilections of A&R men and influential writers.

Pulling all of this into a coherent narrative is a formidable task, but Raeburn handles it well. He sees the writings of Charles Edward Smith, William (Bill) Russell and Frederick Ramsey, Jr., authors of the 1939 volume Jazzmen, as seminal. They "had given to the jazz world a firm foundation on which to build. Basing their work on historical research and devising theories accordingly, they produced a series of books and articles that are still useful as examples of jazz scholarship."

The writers who participated in the unfolding discussion are too numerous to list here, but a few noteworthy figures are George Avakian, Rudi Blesh, Nesuhi Ertegun, Charles Delaunay, Leonard Feather, Ralph J. Gleason, John Hammond, S. I. Hayakawa, Wilder Hobson, Andre Hodeir, George Hoefer, Alan Lomax, Hugues Panassie, Winthrop Sargeant, Marshall Stearns, Edmond Souchon, Virgil Thomson and Eugene Williams. The only photo in the book is a hilarious cover picture of Smith, Russell and Ramsey. I would have gladly paid a few dollars more for a photo gallery of the major principals.

Many JJA members will be familiar with these writers, but Raeburn laces the story of their contributions with rich detail, firm context and thoughtful commentary. He argues persuasively that New Orleans was the central origin site of jazz, dissecting Leonard Feather’s famous argument to the contrary in The Book of Jazz. He acknowledges the primacy of African-Americans in shaping the new music but sees the city’s unique environment as a network of cross-cultural influences. Above all, he rejects critical dogmas—those of traditional jazz purists as well as progressive/evolutionary critics. He praises writers and promoters like Avakian, Ertegun, Hammond and Smith, who expanded their tastes beyond rigid categories.

This admirable catholicity has a downside. Raeburn doesn’t provide a sharp image of his own view of the New Orleans style. He cites the musicological and sociological analyses of many writers and appears to accept the perspectives of early figures—especially Smith and Russell—on fundamentals such as group polyphony, basic instrumentation and African-American influence. But he waxes romantic and impressionistic when speaking in his own voice: "In the final analysis, New Orleans style was a way of living that manifested itself musically in the ‘City that Care Forgot’.... Liberty, equality, fraternity, and fun are the hallmarks of the New Orleans style."

Raeburn’s endnotes provide excellent documentation and further details that illuminate the text. But I have a concern about his bibliography that wouldn’t matter in a different kind of book. Raeburn gives only a brief, topically selected list of recommended materials, pointing out that the endnotes contain complete citations. But the information there, of course, is scattered among hundreds of notes spanning 60 pages. Since the essence of this study is a survey of writers, books and magazines that together portray the evolution of writing about jazz, a complete bibliography would provide a broad overview of the nature, amount and timing of the various contributions.

But Raeburn’s groundbreaking work hints provocatively at further avenues of research. He touches sporadically on the neglect and outright denigration of jazz in the New Orleans daily papers. A more fine-grained study might pick up the scent and track the roles of periodicals like Figaro, New Orleans, Second Line and Vieux Carre Courier in modeling a wider cultural vision and creating a niche for local jazz journalism.

An update of Raeburn’s work would also be useful. His account of critiques of the New Orleans style essentially ends after the traditional jazz versus swing and bebop wars. Intensive coverage of early styles slowed to a trickle in large circulation magazines, revived in part by the influence of Preservation Hall in the 1960s. But reviews of recordings and performances and commentaries and feature stories on a wide range of traditional jazz continued in specialized publications (American Rag, JazzBeat, The Mississippi Rag, IAJRC Journal and Second Line); bulletins of traditional jazz societies; foreign "trad" magazines; and recently with online sources like the few-holds-barred Dixieland Jazz Mailing List (islandnet.com/djml). The dynamic of the concurrent decline of interest and diffusion of coverage in jazz journalism is a story worth telling.

But Raeburn’s book will be an abiding reference point on my bookshelf. While the author set out to do an academic study (a reworking of his doctoral thesis at Tulane), he displays a gift for rendering scholarly research in well-crafted prose. The result is serious and enjoyable reading, an in-depth account of the early history of jazz journalism.

Charles Suhor is author of Jazz in New Orleans: The Postwar Years Through 1970. His collection of correspondences and writings for Down Beat, Vieux Carre Courier, New Os and others in the 1960s is housed at the Tulane Jazz Archive. This book review courtesy of the author and JazzNotes, Autumn 2009 (Jazz Journalist Association www.jazzhouse.org).