PACIFIC STANDARD TIME: MODERNISM AND THE MAKING OF WEST COAST JAZZ BY Michael Thomas Spencer A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSPHY American Studies Program 2011 ABSTRACT By Michael Thomas Spencer An interdisciplinary study of one of the most overlooked and understudied movements in the history of jazz, this dissertation draws from the fields of New Jazz Studies, Popular Culture Studies, and Art History in order to reconstruct the cultural history of West Coast jazz. Focusing on the critical texts and institutions that allowed this movement to germinate and expand, I explore the ways in which the music was represented through various types of media: on record, on radio, on screen, in concert, and in print (i.e., record labels, radio stations, jazz periodicals, etc.). As a result, this study recontextualizes the West Coast jazz movement within the milieu of th California modernism around the middle 20 century as a way to observe the broader jazz community; one which included musicians as well as photographers, painters, architects, sculptors, filmmakers, and other modernists. Copyright by MICHAEL THOMAS SPENCER 2011 For ChetI don‟t know quite what to say. Maybe thanks. MTS iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to the contributions of a host of men and women, without whom this story would never have been told. I would like to start by thanking the Southern California-based informants who graciously offered their time and effort to support to my research: to Alan Schultz, Bob Shayne, Howard Lucraft, Charles Weisenberg, and Dick Whittington for oral accounts of their associations with the station; Ruth Price at the Jazz Bakery for the recounting the exploits of her late husband and KNOB deejay, Will Thornbury; Ken Borgers for supplying documentary materials on Sleepy Stein and various recordings of KNOB broadcasts; Dave Grudt for his research and materials related to the history of radio in Los Angeles; Jim Herrod for his article on the discography of Pacific Jazz Records; Kirk Silsbee for his article on the Jefferson High School music program; and to Ken Poston and Eric Frankhauser at the Los Angeles Jazz Institute in Long Beach, CA for access to the Sleepy Stein Collection and the Charles Weisenberg Collection and for providing me with audio recordings of various LAJI events and conferences throughout the years. Thanks are undoubtedly due to Shan Sutton, Mike Wurtz, and Trish Richards of the HoltAtherton Special Collections at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California for access to the Dave Brubeck Collection; George Moore and Frank Modica for allowing me contact with Dave and Iola Brubeck; and, of course, Dave and Iola Brubeck, from whom I received the most insightful and thoughtful responses to my interview questions. My thanks also go out to several faculty members in the American Studies Programs at University of Massachusetts, Boston and Michigan State University for their assistance seeing me through the processes of theorizing, researching and writing the dissertation: to Dr. Phillip Chassler, Dr. Rachel Rubin and Dr. Reebee Garofalo at UMB who first inspired me to develop v what was a long-held colloquial interest in the West Coast jazz movement into a scholarly one. At MSU, I would like to thank Dr. Michael Stamm for his insight into American radio history; Dr. Gary Hoppenstand for his wisdom pertaining to jazz as popular culture; Dr. Ann Larabee for providing funds from the American Studies Program towards my research trips to California; the dissertation committee, Dr. David Stowe, Dr. Stephen Rachman, Dr. Scott Michaelsen, Dr. Michael Largey and Dr. Ken Prouty, for their enthusiasm, intellectual guidance and unwavering confidence in my project; and to the American Studies Program‘s graduate students, without whose camaraderie graduate school would have been tedious rather than a joy. I would also like to thank a cadre of Bay Area music educators who came to me at my most formative developmental stage: Rick South for the high school music experience of a lifetime and our biennial post-graduation reunions; Lou De La Rosa who trusted me (somehow) with supervising his choral groups and music theory classes; Anne-Marie Katemopoulus for throwing me in the ―pit‖; Joe Demar for his creative spirit and for never giving up; and John Worley for his masterful clinics and all those Chet Baker solos. Most of all, I thank them for introducing me to the world of jazz and under whose invaluable tutelage I evolved as a musician, scholar and person. Thank you. Michael Thomas Spencer, 4/15/11 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………………..ix List of Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………………..x A Look Past the Familiar: West Coast Jazz and the New Jazz Studies…………………………..1 1.1 Jazz Historiography and West Coast Jazz: The Text Remains the Same…………….1 1.2 Out with the ―Old,‖ in with the ―New‖……………………………………………....21 1.3 Chapter Outline………………………………………………………………………35 Sunshine & Noir: Jazz Modernism in California from WWI to Mid-Century………..................44 2.1 The Sense of Neighborhood: A New Social Morphology of West Coast Jazz……...44 2.2 Out of Nowhere: Invention of the Anti-City…………………………………………45 th 2.3 Skyscrapers vs. Sprawl: East-West Art Currents in the Early 20 Century, or, All the World‘s a Fair: New York and California Exhibit Their Culture…………....50 2.4 From Europe with Love: Expats, Émigrés, Experiments……………………............53 2.5 Elephants on Parade: Synaesthesia and the Jazzing of Art Cultures………………...71 Jazz Goes to College: Academia and the Education of Jazz Modernism………………………103 3.1 Alternate Endings: Music Education and the Post-War Jazz Scene………………..109 3.2 Out in the Elements: The Rise of Concert Halls and Festivals as Jazz Venues….....122 3.3 Site Unseen: The Westlake College of Music and the Education of Jazz Modernism………………………………………………………………………….132 3.4 ―You‘re Supposed to Reflect Your Culture‖: Dave Brubeck, Hybridism, and Jazz on Tour……………………………………………………………………147 At Night We Wail: KNOB-FM and the Ideology of Jazz Radio in Los Angeles………………173 4.1 Who‘s Sleepy?: Alex ―Sleepy‖ Stein and the Origins of Jazz Radio………………174 4.2 With A Little Help from His Friends: Founding the First All-Jazz Radio Station……………………………………………………………………………...186 4.3 Art, Advertizing and Activism: The Jazz Ideology of KNOB……………………...217 4.4 Jazz and the Abstract Truth: A Historian‘s Dilemma and the Decline of a Jazz Scene………………………………………………………………………………..265 ―Local Boys Draw Comment‖: Race and Authenticity in the Criticisms of West Coast Jazz…287 5.1 ―White Man‘s Music?‖: The Eurological/Afrological Aesthetic of West Coast Jazz………………………………………………………………………………….297 5.2 ―A Species of the Genus Credibility‖: West Coast Jazz and the Trope of Authenticity…………………………………………………………………………309 5.3 The Critics‘ Coda: New Strategies in the Era of Racial (In)Tolerance…………….333 Creative Advertizing: The Album Art of West Coast Jazz……………………..………………350 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...370 vii Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………376 viii LIST OF TABLES 4.1 KNOB Program Log, late-1950s…………………………………………………………...196 th 4.2 KNOB Program Log, March 19 , 1960……………………………………………....197-198 th 4.3 KNOB Audience Survey, February 15 , 1962………………………………………..251-252 th 4.4 KNOB Audience Brand Information, February 15 , 1962…………………………...252-253 ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS) Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) Charles Weisenberg Collection, Los Angeles Jazz Institute Archive, California State University, Long Beach (CWC) California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) Dave Brubeck Collection, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific, Stockton, California (DBC) Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) Los Angeles Jazz Institute (LAJI) Monterey Jazz Festival (MJF) Panama-California Exposition (PCE) Panama-Pacific International Exhibition (PPIE) San Francisco Jazz Heritage Center (JHC) San Francisco Jazz Organization (SFJAZZ) Society of European Stage Authors and Composers (SESAC) Sleepy Stein Collection, Los Angeles Jazz Institute Archive, California State University, Long Beach (SSC) University of the Pacific (UOP) x A Look Past the Familiar: West Coast Jazz and the New Jazz Studies This study explores a displaced chapter of jazz history; one frequently overlooked or misunderstood by virtually the whole of jazz studies circles today: West Coast jazz. Such a study seems timely given several nagging questions resulting from the body of available literature on the subject: Why have so few books been devoted to West Coast jazz? Why are jazz history texts that include West Coast jazz inadequate both in terms of completeness and accuracy? Why does the surfeit of literature condemn the style so vehemently? How might West Coast jazz be placed within the current trajectory of jazz scholarship of today? The usual place for any study of jazz to begin is with a summary of methodology; where does this study fits within existing schools and from what modes of analysis will it flow? However, this is not a ―usual‖ study of jazz. To be sure, such a move would be premature given such a historical outlier such as West Coast jazz. Thus, before I place my study within the jazz canon itself, I want to begin by critiquing it. Jazz Historiography and West Coast Jazz: The Text Remains the Same While there have been numerous jazz histories to appear since the 1960s, most have devoted little ink to jazz in the West. Comprehensive studies on jazz‘s manifestations outside of major urban music factories of the East, Midwest and the South remain a small minority. To date, only a handful of works on jazz on the West Coast, Southwest and Northwest have been 1 published. Even today when histories of jazz outside the United States begin to solidify their place in the canon, within the annals of jazz history, the domestic micro-regions of Storyville in 2 New Orleans, South Side of Chicago and Harlem in New York City still hold court. This should come as no surprise, as in the early twentieth century those and other industrial cities became important sites for the study of jazz given their status as major centers of cultural/economic 1 importance, national and international hubs of commodity distribution and mass media outlets, not to mention the innovative music thriving there. Yet it is not simply that jazz scholarship has focused on these regions out of any pragmatic necessity; that there is arguably more researchable material to locate and work with (more musicians, recordings, clubs, record labels, etc.) in New York City than in Nogales or Nuremburg and, accordingly, scholars look to mine the richest areas. Rather, we must acknowledge the influence that region and authorship impart in the construction of dominant jazz narratives. New York City as a historically dominant jazz region has been inscribed ideologically, produced and regenerated through the twentieth-century and beyond in seminal jazz texts. Moreover, the inauguration of bebop to the core of these narratives over earlier, more widespread and perhaps even more important jazz styles testifies not to bebop‘s innate ―greatness‖ but to the power of resources (economic, political, cultural) at the disposal of most jazz historians over the years. It is precisely due to jazz scholarship‘s Eastward tilt that the field of jazz studies has become a site of displaced—even misplaced—history, ideology and fetishism. Part of the reason for the historically poor representations of West Coast jazz stems from more general problems surrounding the writing of jazz history and in jazz history textbooks in particular. With respect to West Coast jazz, too often do jazz history texts supplement short biographical sketches of a handful of artists for thoughtful analysis (ex., Gridley; Martin & 3 Waters). Some authors spend more time engaging the precedents to West Coast jazz, beboppers like Bird, Miles, and Pres, rather than the musicians integral to the movement (ex., Ward). Similar works rely on the specter of ―collectorship‖ or record archiving as a way of substituting 4 for historical inquiry (ex., Morgenstern). Others still rely heavily on compositional or 2 improvisational evolutions as the basis for historical work; musical paradigm shifts disconnected from social consciousness (ex., Porter 1993). 5 Books intended to help practicing musicians learn the basics or advanced theory of jazz improvisation are no better at challenging these narratives. In most of these texts, improvisation 6 is framed as an individualistic act, apart from social or cultural referents (ex, Reeves). There are a plethora of works which have interrogated and destabilized this notion in recent years, all of which reveal jazz improvisation as a collective and incredibly social phenomenon. 7 Nevertheless, though these improvisation texts like Reeves‘ refrain from doing actual historical work, they nonetheless bolster an overly simplified notion of jazz history. In any case, writing jazz history by collapsing historical and stylistic developments, in performing an analysis of scores, or by focusing on individual approaches of artists results in the exclusion (or plain avoidance) of broader social contexts and effectively closes off the historical realm as a site of cultural production. Even if we avoid these common pitfalls, there has been little room for sustained discussions of West Coast jazz in contemporary scholarship. If one were to flip through the pages of any jazz history textbook, one sees that the jazz between the end of World War II and the late Civil Rights Movement—roughly 1945 to 1965—rests in a permanent state of authority in whose historical developments in many cases loom larger than all other periods. These are usually the largest sections of any general text. Yet despite the plethora of jazz styles abound at the time, these texts give considerably more attention to bebop than any other style. Moreover, they recognize bebop as the preeminent jazz style with Diz and Duke as its high priests who established the jazz ―mainstream‖ and the ―jazz tradition.‖ Granting bebop such primacy, 3 unfortunately, has often been at the expense of other styles like West Coast jazz, which come to merely orbit bebop and are given lesser status. Compared to other jazz forms (Dixieland, swing, bebop, free jazz, etc.), West Coast jazz garners a mere footnote. A sampling of nine jazz textbooks finds that, on average, 13.4 pages are 8 devoted to West Coast jazz in relation to an average book span of about 540 pages. In some cases, as in Joachim Berendt‘s The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond (1992), Geoffrey Ward‘s Jazz: A History of America‟s Music (2000), and David Sharp‘s An Outline History of American Jazz (1998), one could count the number of pages on one hand. If we compare these numbers to those dedicated to more ―mainstream‖ forms of jazz like bebop we find an alarming lack of parity; one need only to skim the table of contents of any available textbook to see the scarcity of attention to West Coast jazz. Mark Gridley‘s Jazz Styles: History and Analysis (2003), attempts to explain away the absence of thorough discussion of West Coast jazz as the result of a concern over available space 9 for in-depth study. Yet at the same time the author sees fit to include biographies for Lennie Tristano and Lee Konitz—two artists who, it can be easily argued, had less to do with West Coast jazz then a Dave Brubeck or Gerry Mulligan—and limit his section on ―West Coast Style of the 1950s‖ to eight pages while his section on the early years of bebop alone spans twenty eight pages, features biographies of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk, Tadd Dameron and John Lewis, includes new approaches to the style on nearly eight different instruments as well as the role of big bands and singers in bebop and the genre‘s appeal to postwar audiences. Similarly, Gridley‘s section on avant-garde and free jazz of the 1960s and 1970s spans twenty two pages, includes biographies of a half dozen musicians, including the 4 Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and the World Saxophone Quartet. 10 Again, a quick flip through any jazz textbook will produce similar results. Even the latest jazz history textbook at the time of writing, the simply-titled Jazz (2009) by Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux follows suit. Though it boasts a substantial section on jazz in the 1950s, it simply exhibits page long outlines of Gerry Mulligan and Dave Brubeck, and including only Charles Mingus as the one West Coast artist in the listening guides for further study, deferring to the majority of non-West Coast artists in appearance: Monk, Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, Gill Evans and others. 11 This is in comparison to John Coltrane and Miles Davis, who have their own dedicated chapters. This is not to say, of course, that Coltrane and Davis are less or even as equally important to jazz history as Brubeck and Mulligan. Indeed, Davis had an especially profound influence upon the West Coast jazz scene during his time. It is simply to say that the writing of jazz history—any history, for that matter—is never neutral act (this study is no exception). To illustrate my point, consider further the politics of jazz history textbooks and what artists they include in and exclude from the jazz community. In very few of these jazz textbooks is jazz outside of the Unites States discussed save for the exploits of American jazz artists who choose to tour or reside there. Moreover, in very few of these texts are women artists, or any gender analysis for that matter, integrated into the guts of the historical narrative. In other words, jazz histories are like acts of interpretation, ―embedded in discursive and other social practices at specific historical moments.‖ 12 The insulation of the history of American jazz against narratives from the international jazz community and the requisite invisibility of women in the genre in 5 general point to power dynamics in play in the real world where containment of American culture operates on patriarchal and nationalistic grounds. In similar fashion, West Coast jazz histories have been enmeshed in the politics of the jazz world during the early post-World War II era, particularly in the world of criticism where ―moldy fig‖ traditionalists clash with modernists, American exceptionalists battle Black Nationalists, and where New Yorkers dismiss West Coasters, and vice versa. Jazz writing has always operated under dominant social, political and cultural conditions, and many jazz styles have been linked explicitly to grass roots movements abound at the time (swing and populism, bebop and the ―Double V‖ campaign, free jazz and Black Nationalism, etc.). 13 West Coast jazz however, has largely been excluded from the core of jazz histories in part due to its lack of ties to explicit grass roots political campaigns. But West Coast jazz also suffered from the growing emphasis on establishing a jazz ―mainstream,‖ a mid-century phenomenon whereby Whitney Balliett, Martin Williams, and other critics and began to regard jazz as a high art, worthy of intellectual consideration and academic praise. Originally used by critic Stanly Dance in 1958, the term ―jazz mainstream‖ describes ―that giant swath of jazz situated between reactionary traditionalism and radical modernity—in short, all those musicians, from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Benny Goodman and Lester Young, who played in prebop styles.‖ 14 For critics like Williams, establishing a mainstream meant questioning what exactly constituted ―real jazz‖ and which forms or artists would be left out of the critical canon. ―Mainstreaming‖ jazz therefore safeguarded the protection of a particularly elite set of popular tastes; those set against the dissemination of mass culture. This not only offered a purified and respectable way of consuming jazz, it served as ―a kind of jazz vital center that jibed with the consensual politics of 6 the era.‖ 15 Thus, criticisms of West Coast jazz could not help but import the broader geo- political world into their evaluations. Of course, by the early 1960s bebop‘s ―modernism‖ won out over swing and older jazz forms in large part due to those White, middle-class men (again, I emphasize race, class, and gender) in whose power it was as cultural agents or ―gatekeepers‖ to use their economic and political resources (in particular their status as members of the New York City-based media) to write jazz history and criticism. Grounded in the context of Cold War notions of ―containment‖ (both in terms of Communism on the geo-political stage and in terms of femininity in the public domain), anxieties over forging an overarching American identity permeated the world of jazz writing. The inclusion of bebop into the mainstream therefore was not only synonymous with the excription of other jazz styles from canon, but with the intent of insulating White power and authority against the destabilizing effects that the entrance of the history, culture and achievements of other genders, races, classes, nationalities, etc. in jazz would bring about. Thus, in the last few decades, whether in textbooks, scholarly editions, or full-length works, jazz histories, save for a few noted works, have relegated West Coast jazz to no more than a passing fad, its critics labeling it an ―opiate‖ constructed by the Hollywood ―culture industry,‖ an insulting imitation of ―authentic‖ African American culture, or an emasculated, ―childlike‖ music. Those within the movement would disagree; many of whom have extolled the music by connecting it to a larger—and relevant—post-World War II modern art world or have simply ignored claims of the proximity of New York City to ―authentic‖ jazz. In sum, however, most historians have given West Coast jazz little more than a passing glance; a rude segue between the time-honored rhetoric of the political economy of the zoot suit—Diz, Bird, and the 7 euphoric virtuosity and of bebop—and discussions of the polemic criticism of the 1960s, free jazz and Black Nationalism. Perhaps the most vexing problems in the scholarship dealing with West Coast jazz are caused by authors who commit to sniping, inflammatory language to critique the music. Take, for example, Joachim Berendt, who in his 3-page long ―analysis‖ argues that West Coast jazz was merely an ―advertising slogan‖ conjured up by Hollywood record companies and that, as a result of the musics‘ experimentation with European art music, the ―vital jazz content‖ was jettisoned. 16 Drummer Shelly Manne, according to Berendt, ―had to pay for the amazing musical refinement of his playing with some reduction in directness and vitality.‖ 17 New York City, of course, was ―where real and vital jazz was made: modern, yet rooted in the jazz tradition‖ (emphasis mine). He then argues that only racial antimonies produced the ―tension in the evolution of jazz in the fifties,‖ and that the jazz of the young lions (mostly African American) at this time ―was the purest bop.‖ 18 Similarly, critic Stanly Crouch, has issued criticism along parallel lines in his essay titled ―On the Corner: The Sellout of Miles Davis,‖ calling the recordings of Davis‘s ―Birth of the Cool‖ nonet ―little more than primers for television writing‖ and ruling it ―an insignificant trend‖ and ―a failed attempt to marry jazz to European devices.‖ 19 In succumbing to the ―temptation of Western music,‖ throwing away all personal integrity and his African American cultural citizenship in favor of White stylings, he argues, Davis experienced a sort of fall from grace, what Crouch calls ―the greatest example of self-violation in the history of art.‖ 20 In assessments such as these, the jargon of authenticity becomes the basis for ethnic essentialism. Berendt, however, also makes a serious historical error when he, like many others, argues that West Coast jazz ―was often played by musicians who made their living in the Hollywood 8 studio orchestras.‖ 21 Of course, this was more the exception than the rule. As Ted Gioia has noted in his research, it was not until after the Los Angeles jazz industry experienced a sharp decline in the late 1950s that these musicians devoted their careers to film and television. Bob Cooper, Bud Shank, Conte Candoli, Shorty Rogers, Jack Montrose and Jack Sheldon are some the most important names in West Coast jazz as well as prime examples of this phenomenon. Though most of these artists had Hollywood work to their credit—such as scoring or recording soundtracks to films or television—none of them entered those vocations full-time until the very late 1950s/early 1960s. By then, West Coast jazz had already reflected a sizeable musical history. The decline in the record buying public, new economic constraints facing jazz venues and record companies in the state, the surfeit of negative criticism directed at the music as well as competition from new strains of jazz emerging at the time were just some of the factors which compelled these artists to migrate away from their former musical lives. Nevertheless, in most cases, the vast majority of their body of work, and indeed their musical legacies, exist in recordings unrelated to Hollywood, in live performances and in original compositions. 22 Many jazz historians such as Grover Sales have lamented West Coast jazz by noting solely the faults of the larger context in which it existed, forgetting the successes of the music. In his book, Jazz: America‟s Classical Music (1984), Sales writes that ―most of the West Coast group recordings for Contemporary and Pacific Jazz today strike us as bloodless museum pieces, a soundtrack for the cold war.‖ 23 Granted, the Cold War was defined by a number of ―affective epidemics‖ (HUAC, Sputnik, McCarthy, nuclear weapons, etc.). While it remains to be seen how anxieties over the Cold War produced ―bad‖ jazz, to be sure West Coast jazz never actually expressed or aligned with any of these things. Moreover, Sales‘s history suggests that the early Cold War era was a period without opposition to these epidemics. In fact, the 1950s was full of 9 social and political criticism which is often overlooked due to jazz scholars‘ interest in the music‘s relationship to political radicalism in the 1960s. Again, we can see that attempts to document West Coast jazz seem to be plagued by scholarly attention to eras in which jazz was thought to be an instrument of liberation and not the status quo. Eddie Meadows‘s Bebop to Cool: Context, Ideology, and Musical Identity (2003) features perhaps the most problematic analysis of West Coast jazz in relation to the cool style. This is somewhat perplexing, since Meadows is known for his books on jazz pedagogy and research materials as well as for co-editing California Soul: Music of African Americans in the West (1998). The book‘s title, ―Bebop to Cool‖ foreshadows the historiographic mode to come. His Introduction sets up this ―paradigm‖: ―It is important to acknowledge that Bebop evolved on the heels of the compromising and commodification of Swing. And, in a sense, Cool evolved as a cultural and musical reaction to Bebop.‖ 24 Of course, such a view of jazz history in terms of paradigm shifts (ex. Thomas Kuhn‘s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [1962]) is exceedingly myopic and fits too comfortably into the grand narrative of European dramatic criticism; i.e., framing jazz history as a metaphor for ―organicism.‖ 25 We see from this paradigm shift approach the problem of specificity. How can we explain this ―revolution‖ purely in terms of bebop to cool? Are we to assume that there were no other avant-garde styles of jazz abound in post-war U.S.? What about the Dixieland revival? Does this not upset the organic evolution of jazz styles depicted here? What do we do, for instance, with Bob Scobey and the popularity of New Orleans style jazz in the Bay Area of California at mid-century? Furthermore, why should we narrow the field purely in terms of jazz? Would it not be just as logical to argue that rock and roll represented the latest stylistic evolution in music of the post-war era? Moreover, jazz has been long influenced by other musical styles, 10 particularly that of classical music. Can we neatly periodize genres a revolution linking classical to jazz? To construct neatly compartmentalized categories or genres of music in this way and placing them along a linear timeline of progressive styles produces highly reductive histories and belies the realities of those musics‘ creation and interaction and serves to reinforce notions of musical ―purity‖ of ―authenticity‖ as well. Meadows never quite addresses the ―context‖ which his book‘s title proposes. For instance, the cool style is never attributed to the West, where the style manifested greater than in the East. Instead, Meadows waxes on the individual genius of several artists in bringing about a new revolutionary jazz paradigm, leaving them unconnected to history and culture. Likewise, African American musicians are denied any credit in their contributions to West Coast jazz as well despite the movement‘s long history of African American participation and interracial cooperation. 26 Perhaps most confusingly, throughout the book Meadows seems to rely on the use of binaries to account for this jazz history: White vs. Black, New York City vs. Los Angeles, Cool 27 vs. Bebop, primitive vs. civilized. For instance, he participates in that long-fought territorial th war fueled by the jazz press by the middle of the 20 century: East Coast vs. West Coast, i.e., New York City vs. Los Angeles. These, he says, are ―two unrelated geographical areas‖ whose music produced a ―mirror aesthetic.‖ 28 California, he says, experienced a ―musical lag‖ before Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Milt Jackson visited the state while on tour in the mid-1940s. Yet to say that the East and West Coasts (and by association, their jazz scenes) are ―unrelated‖ harkens back to this territorial war and the age-old rhetoric of the West as a ―wilderness‖ in opposition to the ―civilized‖ East and, furthermore, that popular taste for any form of jazz other 11 than bebop is indicative of a backward culture. 29 Meadows seems unaware of recent scholarship which has largely migrated away from this approach. 30 With so many jazz histories available and so few to thoroughly investigate jazz in California, this study takes up the charge of bringing to light a jazz movement fading from the historical record and placing it within current practices of jazz scholarship. Representing the West: West Coast Jazz Among the Discourses The initial questions which this study intends to address do not beg consideration as a result of those works which have purposefully excripted West Coast jazz from serious study or those which rest on the fringes of jazz studies scholarship per se. Rather, some of the more canon-altering monographs in jazz studies pose significant problems to the study of West Coast jazz. In fact, though many historiographic shifts have altered the landscape of jazz writing over the last few decades, those shifts have had little effect on the histories of West Coast jazz both in terms of the overall critical attention to the music and in the methodology of the very few authors who have undertaken stand-alone books on the subject. Suffice it to say, jazz studies has gone forth largely without the inclusion of West Coast jazz even as it evolved in a way which has challenged its own methods and dominant jazz narratives. In my view, there are at least five texts which represent the key historiographic trends in jazz studies since the end of the West Coast jazz era (in chronological order): Frank Kofsky‘s Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music (1970); Albert Murray‘s Stompin‟ the Blues (1976); Scott DeVeaux‘s The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History (1997); Sherrie Tucker‘s Swing Shift: All-Girl Bands of the 1940s (2000); E. Taylor Atkins‘ Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (2001). Kofsky‘s book best represents the Marxist approach to the study of jazz. The new avantgarde jazz of the 1960s (called ―new thing‖ or ―free jazz‖) as played by Ornette Coleman, Sun 12 Ra, Yusef Lateef, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Archie Shepp, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and others upset the art/commerce divide which preoccupied jazz historians of the previous era as it attempted to forge a stronger link between art music and cultural production. Likewise Kofsky, in his appraisal of jazz, seeks to understand the relationship of race, music and social protest. According to Kofsky, these jazz musicians were not seeking a purely aesthetic revolution, but a 31 political one. Theirs, he says, was ―a musical representation of the ghetto‘s voice of ‗no confidence‘ in Western civilization and the American Dream.‖ 32 In essence, this new music was decidedly anti-West. According to Kofsky, the point of this new music was to ―bring jazz out of a European context and into an Asian or African setting,‖ and ―to divorce jazz from its current ambiance.‖ 33 Kofsky also attacks the white controlled music industry, which he deems an exercise in ―cockroach capitalism,‖ a substitute for plantation economics which is no less exploitative towards Black artistry and talent. 34 This history of African Americans and the jazz music industry from a ―revolutionary nationalist‖ perspective is something often seen from Black nationalists of this era. Most problematic with the Marxist approach is that one tends too often to view these musicians not as entertainers, cultural spokesmen nor even as intellectuals or activists, but as political revolutionaries in the manner of Antonio Gramsci‘s ―organic intellectual.‖ 35 Indeed, listening to bebop and wearing zoot suits held potent cultural currency. The open (visible, audible, subtle) protests of young persons of color (African American, Latino, etc.) who engaged in such modes of speech were indeed rebellious, perhaps even seditious. But it is more correct to say that these individuals represented the intelligentsia of their communities, and that their acts of everyday resistance were more understated and complex than the Marxist line would project. As Robin D.G. Kelley has noted, ―oppressed groups challenge those in power by constructing a 13 ‗hidden transcript,‘ a dissent political culture that manifests itself in daily conversations, folklore, jokes, songs, and other cultural practices. One also finds the hidden transcript emerging ‗onstage‘ in spaces controlled by the powerful, though almost always in disguised forms.‖ 36 Moreover, the ―organic intellectual‖ formulation in the minds of many Marxist scholars often stands counter to the voices of the very musicians they christen as their cultural-political leaders; Kofsky included. Throughout the book, he so strains to place these musicians within his ideological rubric (largely taken from Amiri Baraka) that he criticizes those Black musicians who choose to depart from the nationalist perspective for being ―Uncle Toms.‖ In one telling interview in 1966 with John Coltrane, Kofsky tries fervently to force the artist to issue an antiWest statement. Coltrane appears unaware of Kofsky‘s politics and bothered by his line of questioning. Through most of the interview he constantly cuts his answers short, interrupts Kofsky‘s questions before he can complete them, and placates the interviewer only with vague and polite agreements as to jazz‘s stance against poverty, the war in Vietnam, and the poor treatment of Black musicians in jazz clubs. Finally, Coltrane can take no more and erupts, ―you can‘t ram philosophies down anybody‘s throat, and the music is enough!‖ 37 While Coltrane certainly was conscious to the major social-political revolutions around him, here his interest in music merely appears to only border on the expressly political. Kofsky‘s book, however, is one of the few canon-altering texts that actually cites West Coast jazz specifically. Unsurprisingly, Kofsky calls the music ―bland,‖ ―vapid,‖ ―second-rate,‖ ―unlistenable,‖ ―sterile,‖ ―effete,‖ ―inbred‖ and ―passionless,‖ and that it represents an attempt at ―bleaching‖ Black culture. 38 Published in 1976, Murray‘s Stompin‟ the Blues in many ways signals the end of the Marxist approach. This book focuses on the blues specifically, though it was highly influential in jazz circles which held up the blues as the foundational element of jazz (though this was 14 certainly not a new idea by the 1970s). In the 1950s, Murray became close friends with Ralph Ellison from whom he derived much of his ideas regarding the centrality of music in African American life. By the late 1960s, Ellison staunchly refused to align himself with the budding Black Nationalist movement and Murray followed suit. Murray‘s non-violent, universalist predilections clashed with the sometimes violent nationalist tactics which he found embarrassing to all Black people. Thus, as in his previous work, The Omni-Americans: Black Experience and American Culture (1970), Murray avariciously denounces the nationalist politics of Marxist thinkers of the era. Throughout the book Murray attacks the pseudo-sociology of Chicago School theorists problematic assertion that African American‘s social position stems from a pathological disorder, while similarly criticizing Black Power, spreading his ideology widely along the biological/sociological continuum. However, there are similarities. In one instance, Murray may denounce Baraka‘s black nationalism and in another asserts that African Americans are the most authentic Americans and have every right to define themselves in terms of ―American-ness.‖ For Murray, this is an attempt to elevate and legitimize African Americans in the Eurocentric tradition; the jazzman being its most potent archetype. According to John Gennari, ―Murray mythologizes the black jazz musician as the model twentieth-century American, the quintessential modern, the successor to the English gentleman as a globally emulated model of cultural style.‖ 39 However, only certain jazzmen qualify here. Murray disallows ―watered-down‖ forms of jazz like fusion, free jazz, and soul into the canon. 40 The cool style found on the West Coast is just as incompatible. While crediting Charlie Parker as bebop‘s archetypal musical genius, he distinguishes the artist‘s music against the ―undanceable European concert-oriented 15 pretentiousness that has been perpetrated by self-styled disciples while using his name in vain.‖ 41 In this light, Murray is probably the first of the ―neoclassicist school‖ of jazz scholars writing under the broader social context of new conservatism of the 1970s and the later ―Jazz Renaissance‖ of the 1980s, represented also by Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch. 42 Likewise, Murray‘s formation of jazz history is a post-nationalist, universalist, and Americanexceptionalist attempt to legitimize jazz under the umbrella of an, elite, white, middle-class, concert-oriented atmosphere. 43 Crouch has similarly decried the ―mirror-licking of ethnic nationalism and condescending self-regard‖ of the new Black aesthetic put forth by Ron Karenga and others. 44 His essay, ―Blues to Be Constitutional‖ argues for the same universalist and American-exceptionalist view of jazz, linking it to the Constitution of the United States, which he calls a ―blues document.‖ 45 The rhetoric of ―authenticity‖ is evidently shared by both Kofsky and Murray, though it emanates from their divergent political positions. On one side is Kofsky‘s Marxist-centered ethnic nationalism and his authentic black revolutionary and on the other is Murray‘s colorblind post-nationalism and his authentic deracinated American. Neither, unfortunately, leaves room for recognizing the offshoots of bebop. Moreover, both authors agree and expound on the virtues of Bird, Coltrane and other bebop luminaries as spokesman for their own political efforts. It is particularly telling, then, that even so divergent political positions along the liberal-democratic continuum can agree on the invalidity and inauthenticity of West Coast jazz. Scott DeVeaux‘s The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History (1997) is considered perhaps the most important work on this particular style of jazz. Though DeVeaux is trained as an analytical musicologist, this work is split between style study and historical record. This is a 16 departure from most jazz history texts which involve little or no musical analysis. Moreover, those that do offer close scrutiny of scores skimp on detail or cumbersomely juxtapose the history and analysis sections instead of seamlessly integrating the two (Meadows‘s Bebop to Cool attempts but doesn‘t quite replicate the ―social/musical‖ method). DeVeaux‘s work succeeds in the latter. Particularly, he takes up the issue of whether bebop was a social or musical evolution as central problem of ―origins‖ in jazz historiography. According to DeVeaux, ―the question of bebop‘s origins recedes to the more delimited (and manageable) problem of transition from one phase of jazz to another—as the title of another book puts it, from ‗swing to bop.‘ Not surprisingly, this history privileges continuity over discontinuity… The process of change that links these styles is seen as a gradual, linear evolution, conserving essential qualities even as it introduces innovations, thus continually affirming the integrity of the whole.‖ 46 Thus, what DeVeaux is attacking here is the sort of Hegelianism which so permeates jazz history. His book explodes this narrative. Rather than construct a narrative of jazz as branches of a tree—styles which extend upward and outward over time—DeVeaux seeks to understand the music less in terms of stylistic evolution and more in terms of the relationship of overlapping social-scapes: ―music, political, economics, race and historiography.‖ 47 Sherrie Tucker‘s Swing Shift: All-Girl Bands of the 1940s (2000) is perhaps the most important of the five texts in that it, more than the others, works to subvert the dominant paradigms of jazz writing. According to Tucker, ―the white men who have written the major swing histories have failed to write about women instrumentalists, especially African American women instrumentalists… this is due, not to the lack of available information, but to the power of hegemony.‖ 48 In her estimation, the best jazz historians know how to include both men and women of all races, ethnicities, religious affiliations, sexualities, etc.; that their stories, 17 approaches, ideas must be heard. 49 Tucker is essentially working in the realm of oral history and ethnography—relying on ads placed in women‘s magazines and African American newspapers across the country—but she also employs theoretical work of Susan McClary, Jacque Attali and Elizabeth Wood. Of course, Tucker‘s aim is not only to reveal the hidden history of women of the swing jazz but to scrutinize women‘s silences in jazz in general as a means by which to assess and problematize contemporary jazz histories. According to Tucker, ―the dominant swing texts are not gender neutral (although they pass themselves off as such); they are histories of musical men.‖ 50 Moreover, ―jazz historiography, of which swing discourse is an especially uneasy subcategory, is problematic on many levels, not the least of which is the fact that, although jazz is historically an African American cultural formation, its histories have been penned primarily by white men. Although often fanatically well intentioned, most of these white male journalists, aficionados, and musicologists have mostly not been positioned in ways conductive to challenging origin stories, periodizations, or canons produced by white brokers of black culture.‖ 51 Indeed, many of the artists in Swing Shift were or are West Coasters; Clora Bryant, Ginger Smock, the Sepia Tones, Alma Hightower, Violet Wilson and others. Though her work is certainly paradigm-frustrating, the positive light in which Tucker casts these important figures is refreshing given current histories and should reenergize interest in rethinking West Coast jazz. 52 Lastly, E. Taylor Atkins‘ Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (2001) challenges long-standing assumptions of jazz historiography by placing jazz outside of the context of ―America.‖ It is Atkins‘ interdisciplinarity and his knowledge of a range of methods that allows 18 for a transnational assessment of jazz; the current cutting-edge of jazz history. Atkin‘s incorporates the approaches found in historical ethnomusicology, oral history, art history, cultural anthropology, and even popular culture studies. We see this given his favor to the likes of Alan Merriam, Ingrid Monson, Bruno Nettl, Cornell West, Dick Hebdige, and Eric Hobsbawm. Atkins‘ project is to trace the history of jazz in Japan through the decades, organizing it into discernible eras of musical practice, and uncovering the ways in which cultural identity, authenticity, and modernity shape national consciousness. Included in this study is close attention to race, musical aesthetics, and Western imperialism. What does ―Japanese jazz‖ mean exactly? How does this differ from ―Jazz in Japan?‖ How might we understand the intricacies of jazz music in global terms? Specifically, Atkins takes up the challenge of dispelling old talk of jazz as an essentially American art form. Rather than indulging in the idea of jazz as a ―universal language,‖ a product of great racial cooperation in America or a means of international diplomacy (as would Murray, for instance), Atkins devotes himself to locating jazz among the discourses of black essentialism in Japan. However, the trope of authenticity evolves over time. Beginning roughly in the 1920s, Japanese jazz evolved from the practices of interpreting and imitating to indigenizing and nationalizing by the 1960s; symbolizing the varying ―strategies of authentication‖ throughout the years. But what happens when the jazz phenomenon as it began in America meets with indigenous musical practices of Japan? In attempting to sort out the difference between jazz in America and the ―jazz that eats rice,‖ Atkins explores the role of jazz in the formation of Japanese identity behind the shadow of the West. 53 Yet it is precisely the ―West‖ (by which here I mean the West Coast) which can benefit from such a study. From Atkins interdisciplinary approach we glean insight into not only the international influence and character of West Coast 19 jazz but the process of jazz-making outside of those major Eastern and Midwestern urban centers as well. Though these texts have expanded the boundaries of jazz studies and precipitated dramatic shifts in the way we view and write about the music, West Coast jazz has not benefitted from their respective modes of examination. If anything, these texts have bypassed the music— directly or indirectly—or, when individual West Coast artists are mentioned, they appear disconnected from the broader musical movement or context. However, there is ample room to discuss where West Coast jazz could conceivably fit among the current scholarly landscape. Consider the first books dedicated to West Coast jazz published in the midst of several of these methodological shifts, Robert Gordon‘s Jazz West Coast: The Los Angeles Jazz Scene of the 1950s (1986) and Ted Gioia‘s West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 (1992). Aside from these and one or two other minor works, the vast majority of literature on West Coast jazz is unabashedly negative. Gordon and Gioia‘s books are certainly positive and serious portrayals of West Coast jazz, offering the reader biographies of a plethora of West Coast musicians, their contributions, critical appraisals of the styles‘ major recordings and references to cultural production, economy, and aesthetics. Suffice it to say, without these books, this study would never have seen the light of day. Perhaps the one shortfall of these books is that they elude aligning themselves within any of the subsequent methodological shifts which appeared in the last several decades. Given that fact alone, the music is ripe for renewed examination under current methodology. However, it is not in the spirit of merely recapturing and celebrating a ―lost history‖ of jazz that this study proceeds. It does not propose to assert the primacy of the West Coast jazz scene over that of New York City or Chicago, and further, does not propose a rewriting of the 20 history of West Coast jazz per se. What follows is a recasting of West Coast jazz‘s function within a broader cultural context, considering the many voices, definitions, and conversations both integral to and orbiting this musical phenomenon, and to approach the subject in terms of new methodology. Only in that light does this study intend to refine, revise, and extend existing knowledge on West Coast jazz. It does however propose to reassess existing contributions, correct misconceptions and misrepresentations, locate and scrutinize new historical data, and to present a more current assessment of West Coast jazz. This study on West Coast jazz interrogates and appraises its representations, particularly with respect to the critical portrayals of the music in the last few decades, and makes the case that renewed interest should be devoted to this style/movement, both from within and outside jazz studies circles, utilizing a range of approaches cutting across disciplines. Out with the “Old,” In with the New” Thus, this study is not a ―history,‖ per se. While West Coast jazz has a history, it represents neither strictly musical nor social evolutions. Nor can it simply be defined by individual accomplishments, albums, and events as older histories have framed it. From recent developments in ―New Musicology‖ this study sees West Coast jazz in more complex ways. New Musicology approaches music through adjunct humanistic fields such as feminist studies (ex. Susan McClary‘s Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality [1991]), cultural studies and ethnomusicology (ex. Christopher Small‘s Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening [1998] or Mark Slobin‘s Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West [1993]), or postcolonial criticism (ex. Jacque Attali‘s Noise: The Political Economy of Music ([1985]). For instance, in arguing that music cultures cannot be defined solely in terms of aesthetics, Slobin‘s 21 Subcultural Sounds draws heavily anthropology, in particular Arjun Appadurai‘s ―Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy‖ (1990), to argue that several ―scapes‖ which overlap and connect to each other like a circuit are necessary to understand the intersections of music and culture (ex. the ethnoscape, the technoscape, the ideoscape, the finanscape, the mediascape). This musicological-cultural approach is particularly appealing since it allows jazz studies scholars to understand jazz less as a ―thing‖ and rather as a cluster of practices; as a process of—to draw upon Christopher Small's term ―musicking‖—―jazzing.‖ This aspect of New Musicology is in keeping with other related approaches found in ―New Jazz Studies,‖ an area of inquiry that bears most relevant to this study. Perhaps the most current school of thought related to the study of jazz today, New Jazz Studies is an interdisciplinary approach drawing from related humanistic disciplines as a means to probe the ways in which jazz has imprinted a ―jazz shape‖ to culture-building processes. The approach began to develop around the turn of the twentieth century, when several jazz texts appeared with a call to ―look past the familiar‖ and ask that we ―consider jazz in conversation with other genres of music and other art forms.‖ 54 On the surface, this may appear as a trivial request. Jazz scholars for years have noted that jazz (as a music) has imparted particular influence on dance, poetry, literature, the visual arts, etc. (though if only in orbital relationship to it). However, the charge—issued principally by Robert O‘Meally and joined by Krin Gabbard, Scott DeVeaux, John Gennari, and Eric Porter—has deeper significance given the conventional, somewhat predictable, nature of the ―jazz tradition‖ within the history of jazz scholarship. Their claim is that jazz as a ―thing,‖ a ―music‖ or ―product‖ is largely to blame for the plethora of scholarship which focuses too much on the music in terms of a succession of stylistic evolutions, individual expression, heroes and geniuses, visionaries and martyrs, freedom and 22 democracy, etc. Histories which tell the story of jazz as archived in musical distinctiveness, they argue, result in myopia and in some cases ―aesthetic blindness and academic decadence.‖ 55 Their challenges to the ―jazz as product‖ ascendancy signals a profound shift in the academic gaze in four ways: it holds that jazz is less an object and more of a ―process;‖ it forces a reevaluation of common jazz narratives; it destabilizes the study of jazz‘s dependency on recorded sound; and it forces us to reconsider the way jazz music relates to other art forms. ―Phonocentrism,‖ in particular, is one unfortunate upshot of the ―jazz as product‖ ideology. 56 Often in older jazz histories the ―history‖ reads more like a listing of records either in chronological order or in order of favorites by the author. 57 Such authors allow records form a historical narrative just as they proscribe the sonic record from acting as an author. This is complicated by the common practice of relying on recorded sound rather than the live or performative aspects of the jazz (and not all live music is ever recorded) in academic research. 58 Simply put, records are too convenient. The unlimited playback of recordings means a song can be played as many times as the format will allow without deterioration. As opposed to live performances, the recorded song remains the same upon each playback. Moreover, in relying on records one need not actually interact with jazz musicians, jazz audiences, African Americans, or people in general. This reliance tends to result in historians‘ privileging artists as ―legends‖ of sequential and evolutionary order that progress like Eurocentric narratives (German idealism in particular). This is no surprise, as in Western traditions, written language, like recorded sound, is privileged over oral or non-recorded cultures (i.e. African). 59 But what does it mean to say jazz is a ―process?‖ In his book, What Is This Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians as Artists, Critics and Activists (2002), Eric Porter reminds us that before jazz was considered a genre of music, it was originally considered a process or 23 approach: ―‗jazz‘ initially signified an approach to interpreting a musical score or playing one‘s instrument.‖ It was not until the 1910s that ―musicians and observers alike increasingly saw it as a style of syncopated, instrumental dance music in and of itself.‖ 60 Porter notes that as jazz became a part of the ―culture industry,‖ and thus open to scrutiny in relation to an economic system (the Fordist model, mass industrialization, etc.) that the ―jazz as product‖ notion came into permanence. No doubt these types of criticisms came about due to the rise of heightened anxieties surrounding the increased production and consumption of popular culture at the time. Cultural critics from Clement Greenberg to Antonio Gramsci and the profusion of highbrow/lowbrow rhetoric further fomented jazz‘s classification in terms that can be widely understood by a mass (record buying) audience. Yet a description of jazz solely in terms of a pacifying ―opiate‖ to the masses privileges the market while avoiding the culture (Gesellschaft over Gemeinschaft, as Ferdinand Tönnies would put it). 61 Thus, the genre definition of jazz is th bound up in advancements in technology and cultural criticism of the early 20 century. Porter of course is more interested in the Gemeinschaft of jazz, and he explores some early African American writing on the subject. James Reese Europe, one of the earliest African American jazz band leaders, once commented: ―The negro loves anything that is peculiar in music‖… ―and this ‗jazzing‘ appeals to him strongly.‖ 62 According to Porter, ―jazzing‖ ―involved the tonal effects produced on brass and wind instruments by using mutes and manipulating breath and embouchure. It also described a ‗Negro‘ approach to interpreting musical scores, in which musicians accentuated certain notes.‖ 63 Although Europe‘s statements conjure up the kind of racial essentialism abound at the time, more important here is that African American vernacular traditions and aesthetics destabilize or at least cut across genre boundaries. 24 Thus, from the early stages of jazz in America we see evidence that a ―jazzing‖ (much like Christopher Small‘s ―musicking‖) of culture was taking place. Ralph Ellison himself echoes Europe‘s assessment. In the Saturday Review in 1958 Ellison wrote, ―While there is now a rather extensive history of discography and recording sessions there is but the bare beginnings of historiography of jazz. We know much of jazz as entertainment, but a mere handful of clichés constitutes our knowledge of jazz as experience.‖ 64 According to Gennari, Ellison ―stressed how deeply the music penetrated the core of the [African American] community‘s identity, not just as entertainment or art as conventionally conceived, but as a ‗total way of life.‘‖ 65 For Ellison, jazz extended beyond the margins of white perception as a mere music and represented much larger institutions than whites were aware. Along with other art forms, jazz fit within a pattern of behavior; just one piece of a ―whole‖ puzzle. Yet the ―jazz as process‖ approach is not about ―seeing jazz everywhere‖ (i.e. the jazz structure of geodetic formations; the tractor as jazz improvisation, etc.). The ―jazz as process‖ approach does confine one to the limits of African American cultural expression. Nevertheless, it is possible to map out the range of jazz‘s ―processes‖ and to trace its effects inside and outside of the African American community in terms of how music, interrelates, intersects, and embeds themselves in other cultural forms. In short, the ―jazz as process‖ approach wishes to consider th jazz in a constellation of modernist practices since the early 20 century; distinct and autonomous, yet interdependent, forming a ―total way of life.‖ This is nothing new to anthropological circles which understand these art forms as evolving from, against, and in lieu of one another. 66 While definitions or genres need not collapse altogether, they can be organized under the concept of a ―jazzing‖ of American culture—i.e., jazz as social practice—and result in tremendous insight into American history and culture. 25 Specifically, this study takes cues from Robert O‘Meally‘s The Jazz Cadence of American Culture (1998) and, with Brent Hayes Edwards and Farah Jasmin Griffin, Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies (2004). According to O‘Meally, New Jazz Studies investigates the ways in which this ―jazz as process‖ analysis considers ―jazz music, with its sudden changes and zig-zag lines,‖ as providing a ―key metaphor and soundtrack‖ to American art; 67 ―in this electric process of American artistic exchange—in the intricate, shapeshifting, equation that is the twentieth-century American experiment in culture— the factor of jazz music recurs over and over and over again: jazz dance, jazz poetry, jazz painting, jazz film and more. Jazz as metaphor, jazz as model, jazz as relentlessly powerful cultural influence, jazz as cross-disciplinary beat or cadence.‖ 68 As O‘Meally has shown elsewhere, one could easily identify the boxing/dancing and signifyin(g) trope-filled poetics of Muhammad Ali as ―jazz-shaped.‖ 69 The language of ―jazz-shaped,‖ again, comes from Ellison, who expressed the omnipotence of ―jazzing‖ in African American life. O‘Meally of course is ready to add some color to employing this language as method. The anthology is ―not a history of jazz, or a close reading of the music itself, or a smorgasbord of jazz writings,‖ he says, but a way to examine and reveal the importance of the ―jazz factor as it operates in a wide variety of expressions of US life.‖ 70 In accordance with this approach, his first anthology debates the problems of defining ―jazz;‖ jazz and the nation-state; jazz and the visual arts; jazz and dance; jazz and sports; jazz and historiography; jazz and literature. In his latter anthology, O‘Meally notes, ―Uptown Conversation asserts that jazz is not only a music to define, it is a culture.‖ 26 71 Again, O‘Meally and company set their sights away from older methods. In the ―jazz as process‖ method, one is not only limited to the influences of individual musicians but is free to explore how those musicians shaped this ―jazz-shaped‖ culture: ―Not only might one study Bunk [Johnson] and [Thelonius] Monk as individual musicians in a broad stream of musicians who influenced them and by whom they in turn were influenced. One also can consider the immeasurably complex worlds through which they moved, and which they helped to shape‖ (emphasis mine). 72 Furthermore, one may consider how these musicians influenced the painters, novelists, dancers, etc. who heard them play. Jackson Pollock, Alvin Ailey, Wallace Berman, Chester Himes, Otto Fischinger: how were their works ―jazz-shaped?‖ Accordingly, his second reader provides exactly that, featuring essays on jazz in comics, improvisation, poetry, as well as jazz outside the United States. Thus, the approach requires a robust interdisciplinarity. The New Jazz Studies approach is supported by many scholars considered to be on the periphery of the jazz studies world. In her book, Painting the Musical City: Jazz and Culture in American Art, 1910-1940 (1997), Donna Cassidy explores Stuart Davis‘ city paintings in relationship to a ―jazz-shaped‖ aesthetic. According to Cassidy, ―[Davis] perceived the formal properties of the canvas and the process of making a painting as analogous to musical structure and composition‖ (again, emphasis mine). 73 Likewise, in his book of early modernist art history, Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce (2002), literary critic Alfred Appel notes that Constantin Brancusi‘s jazz-inspired sculptures followed a ―process that defies musical analysis.‖ 74 Musicians and other artists throughout the years have reiterated Ellison‘s words. The abstract painter Frederick Hammersley, who lived and worked in Los Angeles during the 1950s and 1960s, once commented that he would paint as a jazz musician would create during a jam 27 session and experience a sort of ―synesthesia,‖ wherein the senses (and in this case, the arts) bleed into one another. ―At first I would paint a shape that I would ‗see‘ there… the next shape would come from the feeling of the first plus the canvas.‖ 75 Another artist from the same period and region, designer Charles Eames, whose experimental office furniture bore the familiar marks of jazz. According to art museum curator Elizabeth Armstrong, Eames‘ work was ―like abstract expressionist painting or bebop music, about process, and not about perfection.‖ 76 In 1964, jazz critic Nat Hentoff provided the liner notes to John Coltrane album Crescent, writing that Coltrane ―is the solo-writer who focuses on reflective order, distilling his emotions into carefully shaped structures.‖ 77 According to Robert K. McMichael, Hentoff‘s critique pinpoints the process by which Coltrane creates in relation to broader cultural structures rather than relying on archaic notions of ―feeling‖ and ―emotion.‖ And Gioia, in West Coast Jazz, documents the ―jazz process‖ at work during his assessment of drummer Shelly Manne: ―Jazz, for many among this new generation of musicians on the coast, was no longer to be viewed as a mysterious art form born on ineffable moments of inspiration. It was seen rather as a body of practices, techniques, and formal knowledge that could be explained clearly and taught to those willing to listen, learn and practice.‖ 78 Here Gioia recognized the interconnectedness of the ―jazzing‖ of culture on the West Coast; jazz music being just one such practice. Even more recently, in 2007, two groundbreaking events in the arts were held in Southern California: the Orange County Museum of Art‘s exhibition titled ―Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Mid-Century‖ in October of that year and, one month later at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, a three-day event of conferences, concerts and film titled ―Côte à Côte-Coast to Coast: Art and Jazz in California and France.‖ 79 The Orange County exhibition explored a period of California history informed by the ―jazzing‖ of American culture 28 within several contexts (the Cold War, European immigration, etc.) and its expressions in a variety of idioms: architecture, interior design, graphic design, experimental film, music, photography, etc. This, while the ―Côte à Côte‖ conference featured scholars from jazz studies, European history, art history and other fields debating the interrelationship of jazz and the arts on both coasts as well as jazz‘s role in French-American relations. 80 Also included were interviews/performances by some of the most important West Coast artists from the period including photographer William Claxton, actor Dennis Hopper, poet David Meltzer, and alto saxophonist Bud Shank. These two events provided the methodological direction central to this study. Collectively, these works indicate that while the New Jazz Studies is not without precedent, there is ample room for further inquiry into West Coast jazz from this perspective. In considering the ways jazz (as a music) relates to other cultural forms, this study maps out a range of jazz ―processes,‖ tracing the evolution, magnitude, and interconnectedness of various expressions from within and outside of the African American community in order to understand Ellison‘s ―total way of life‖ as it manifested on the West Coast after World War II. Thus, such a study requires a robust interdisciplinary framework which, like these important sources, this dissertation supplies. As this is a heavily interdisciplinary and historical study of West Coast jazz, it strongly connects to the field of American Studies, which naturally is informed by theory and method from a broad range of academic disciplines, each of which compliment the ―jazz as process‖ approach of New Jazz Studies. In particular, as is typical of American Studies scholarship, this study is informed by the field of cultural studies, paying close attention in particular to popular culture. In accordance with the Russell Nye ―school‖ of popular culture theory, this study holds 29 that 1.) jazz is a form of popular culture, and that 2.) ―popular culture‖ denotes products consumed on a mass scale following the Industrial Revolution. West Coast jazz often illustrates what Nye calls the ―filter-down effect;‖ that forms of high art or fine art can influence popular culture (as in the pairing of jazz with classical music). We also see the reverse condition; popular culture influenced ―from below‖ by forms of folk art which Nye called the ―bubble-up effect‖ (as in the pairing of Latin bossa nova with jazz on the West Coast at the time). Specifically, this study includes an analysis of some of the major industries at work which sustained and distributed this music: jazz record labels like Pacific Jazz records, jazz festivals like that in Monterey, CA, nightclubs and music venues which catered to jazz like the Lighthouse or the Hollywood Bowl, museums and galleries like the Ferus Gallery or the Chouinard Art Institute, local jazz radio stations, as well as local high schools and colleges whose music education programs developed some of the most talented jazz musicians in the region. As part of the ―superstructure‖ of West Coast jazz, these ―gatekeepers‖ of popular music—part of the larger ―culture industry‖—should be considered vis a vis from branch of the ―Frankfurt School‖ of popular culture theory. In other words, if jazz as a commodity has exchange value in the capitalist system, those who control the means of production (record labels, venues, instrument makers and other entities.) define the social relations (the ―superstructure‖) which that make ―culture‖ possible. Since the state controls these relations, an analysis of the jazz industry must consider jazz in terms of social property relations. Though this study does not use the Marxist approach as its frame of reference, it is an influential (and perhaps indispensable) line of inquiry. The ―Birmingham School,‖ otherwise known as ―British cultural studies,‖ is also of value here. The Birmingham School focuses ―on the interplay of representations and ideologies of 30 class, gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality in cultural texts, including media culture…[and] on how various audiences interpreted and used media culture in varied and different ways and contexts, analyzing the factors that made audiences respond in contrasting ways to media texts.‖ In this way, ―British cultural studies overcame the limitations of the Frankfurt School notion of a passive audience in their conceptions of an active audience that creates meanings and the popular.‖ 81 Guided by the social theory of Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams and others, this study focuses on the potential of West Coast jazz to form a subculture not only resistant to hegemonic forms of capitalism but to other forms of jazz. West Coast jazz, like any cultural form, can act as a mode of social reproduction which can work towards social, cultural, political and economic transformation. Thus, popular culture theory from the outset informs and undergirds this study. Drawing from Anthropology, this study addresses the recently problematized notion of ―the field‖ in relation to ―mobile, shifting or global communities.‖ 82 Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, for instance, have interrogated ―the field‖ as a privileged site which ―[constructs] a space of possibilities while at the same time drawing lines that confine that space.‖ 83 Specifically, they destabilize the notion of a ―cultural area‖ or ―culture region‖ as it is rooted in ―locality,‖ a concept they argue has not been well thought out by contemporary scholarship. 84 Similarly, Arjun Appadurai has suggested that given recent de-colonization and human migration patterns the nature of a globalized world increasingly frustrates the ―locality‖ of fieldwork to the extent that ethnographic work becomes ―bounded‖ in time and space. 85 Though this study does not undertake ethnographic work, it does intend to destabilize the notion of the style-region from this theoretical perspective. West Coast jazz has been defined both in terms of geographic location as well as aesthetic approach. I use the term ―West Coast jazz‖ over the ubiquitous ―cool jazz,‖ for reasons 31 which broaden the field of inquiry. Historically, the terms ―West Coast jazz‖ and ―cool jazz‖ have been used interchangeably. ―Cool jazz,‖ however, does not aptly depict the regional musical movement in question here, as it simply describes a stylistic approach to jazz playing relevant to but not inextricable from the West Coast in the post-World War II era. In fact, many cool jazz innovators, Lennie Tristano or Miles Davis, for instance, were East Coast artists, and, while their influence was felt on the West Coast, had little contact with its practitioners there. What is more, if we simply designate West Coast jazz as a type of cool jazz we would be ignoring the great diversity of jazz styles abound in California at the time. We would also ignore the fact that many jazz artists of this place and time floated freely between bebop, cool, and even free jazz idioms. Moreover, there are many similar aesthetic principles of these musics that cut across individual boundaries during this era of West Coast jazz. This intermingling destabilizes any attempt to generalize or homogenize the musical movement in question. Thus, while I use the term ―West Coast jazz,‖ I do so with an awareness of its pitfalls. Problematic with the term is whether it refers to: (1) a specific style of jazz or a subgenre in and of itself, (2) any jazz that is played on the West Coast, (3) any jazz played by musicians native to the West Coast only, whether they be on the West Coast or elsewhere, or 4) a distinct subgenre or style of jazz separate from region which anyone from the globe can engage wherever they are at any particular moment. These taxonomical problems, however, do not stave off further inspection. Rather, it is necessary to consider how West Coast jazz might satisfy each definition in its own way. This study imagines West Coast jazz as bounded, but not limited to region (in this case, California), aesthetics, as well as time period (roughly 1945-1963) though one of more of these categories may at various times be of greater relevance than others given specific social, political, economic, cultural contexts, etc. 32 Moreover, given the transcontinental and international movement of people, communities and culture before and during the post-World War II era to California, current anthropology serves as way of rethinking notions of space and place in relation to jazz communities. It undergirds the idea that the West Coast can be seen as a gathering place—a point of departure for jazz—before transmission; as just one of many points of musical ―flows‖ through which culture originates both locally and from elsewhere. This explains the diversity of sounds, styles, aesthetics, and people involved in West Coast jazz. As this study shows, a considerable number of West Coast jazz artists hailed not from California, but from the Midwest and East Coast. Miles Davis, for instance, a Midwesterner who made his mark in New York City, is credited with developing the ―cool‖ aesthetic popular with West Coast jazz artists (those hailing from the West and those from east of it). Thus, from current anthropology, the notion of ―West Coast jazz‖ as demarcating a style-region or ―cultural area‖—and likewise the ―West Coast sound‖ rooted in ―locality‖—we might redresses the claims of much of jazz scholarship which Lastly, this dissertation also draws from the field of art history, particularly in its attention to the modernist context of the album art of West Coast jazz which bore the familiar marks of its musical counterpoint. As opposed to art criticism, art history focuses on objects of art in their historical and stylistic contexts. Thus, from the field of art history I address the use of painting, photography and sculpture in West Coast album art in relation to a broader West Coast art scene. Though West Coast album art was an intrinsically economic enterprise, and thus part of the culture industry, it also allowed flexibility for a range of local artists working within the jazz idiom to involve themselves more directly in the jazz-making process, to represent its musical aesthetics, lifestyle, and to experiment with new artistic techniques and to create a heightened visibility for their particular brand of art. From the art history works of Armstrong, 33 Cassidy, and Appel in particular, I demonstrate how these artists helped develop and define West Coast jazz as more than music; as a modern art movement expressive of the jazz-shaped culture of Los Angeles by mid-century. The methodology exhibited here draws from these schools to the extent that they help contour the study to focus on the key institutions of the West Coast jazz movement. Primarily, however, it views jazz as a social indicator. Thus, while it deals with the realm of music, it nevertheless refrains from including any transcription or score study. Instead, it employs techniques found in multi-media text analysis (close readings of sound recordings, film footage, oral histories, autobiographies and biographies, and journalism), oral interviews, and archival research. In the chapters to follow, I revisit the canons of jazz history and modernist art, augmenting them by placing within the context of the West Coast jazz phenomenon and drawing connections between seemingly disparate ideologies, institutions, art forms, and languages of modernism in mid-century California. I perform a close reading of jazz writing at the time, particular within Down Beat magazine, pouring over every page of the periodical from 19451965 and excavating what was an important discourse on race and authenticity among the music‘s preeminent critics. I examine a swath of materials (personal documents, memorabilia, business transactions, photographs, sheet music, video clips, sound recordings, newspaper clippings, etc.) unearthed at important jazz archives in California, transcribing rarely heard audio/visual recordings of important West Coast jazz musicians, piecing together the histories of an all-jazz radio station in Long Beach, CA and a forward-thinking music school in Westlake Village; all nearly lost to the historical record. All the while, I weave into the narrative oral interviews conducted with key participants in the West Coast jazz scene. Together these chapters 34 bring together many histories into a cohesive experience and signal the expanse and magnitude of the West Coast jazz movement. Chapter Outline Chapter 1, ―Sunshine & Noir,‖ contextualizes the history of West Coast jazz further than previous explorations, including a discussion of geographic, demographic, and economic shifts th in Los Angeles during the early 20 century which lay the groundwork for the development of a modernist art world and distinct West Coast aesthetic by mid-century. In particular, this chapter places West Coast jazz among the many but closely linked modernist practices on the West Coast after World War II as a way to observe the broader jazz community. Thus, jazz as a model for the construction of American culture may be seen operating on the West Coast at the time; within the production and sharing of its aesthetics with a wide range of art forms. This ―jazzshaped‖ community involved painters, designers, photographers, architects, writers, filmmakers, concert promoters, and even rare book dealers. Their deep interrelationship from a musical as well as cultural perspective signifies the extent to which jazz has influenced related arts and the fluidity which artists wielded in crossing those permeable borders. Chapter 2, ―Jazz Goes to College,‖ explores one of the most critical West Coast jazz institutions: jazz education. Specifically, it centers on key areas of the musical context of Los th Angeles from the early 20 century to mid-century; its educational sites, its important music educators—in particular those in the jazz idiom—and its diverse performance spaces. I argue here that jazz education in high schools and colleges across the state—along with concert halls and art galleries as alternative live jazz venues—comprised non-traditional sites for jazz which, rather than compensate for a lack of traditional venues (ex. nightclubs), formed the backbone of 35 the West Coast Jazz movement by propagating experimentation with European classical music as well as in developing many of its many of its important artists. Through two case studies focusing on the Westlake College of Music and Dave Brubeck‘s college tours, I demonstrate West Coast jazz‘s vital relationship with the academy. Chapter 3, ―At Night We Wail,‖ reveals a yet unexplored topic within West Coast jazz, let alone the whole of jazz studies: jazz radio. In particular, I tell the story of radio station KNOB, Los Angeles‘s—and indeed the world‘s—first all-jazz radio station, co-founded in 1957 by deejay, part owner and station manager, Alex ―Sleepy‖ Stein. It makes the case that in establishing an independent, anti-corporate, jazz-only station on the tiny, untested FM band, Stein helped create a new forum for invention and experimentation in jazz; one which coordinated the reception and representation of the music in Los Angeles. As the first of its kind, KNOB was not simply navigating uncharted territory as an improv-like exercise in action. It effectively constituted a free space through which Stein‘s ideology of ―art, advertizing, and activism‖ elevated jazz to a form of high art, introduced groundbreaking programming content and positioned jazz radio as a powerful commercial advertizing medium. In particular, I note the downsides to improvising jazz radio in the context of shifting musical aesthetics and the economic decline of the jazz industry by the early 1960s. Ultimately, I argue, KNOB‘s rise and fall during the rock ‗n‘ roll era demonstrates the limits of this experimentation as its ―art over commerce‖ dogma and missionary zeal collided with its ability to negotiate effectively with realities of the music business. Chapter 4, ―Local Boys Draw Comment,‖ which takes its title from perhaps the earliest music review of the Dave Brubeck Octet by noted San Francisco jazz columnist Ralph Gleason in 1948, takes aim at Ted Gioia‘s claim that ―hostile critics‖ had nothing to do with the demise of 36 86 West Coast jazz. Jazz criticism, in fact, is perhaps more responsible than any other institution for the music‘s downfall. In reassessing the critiques of the music, I excavate and interpret some of the prevailing critical theory engaging jazz during the 1950s in terms of cultural production (i.e. concepts of race and authenticity in jazz). I identify the pressures of the Civil Rights Movement upon the jazz idiom—the musical interpretations, its political economy, and the critical rhetoric surrounding it—and I note some of the broad racialized imaginations shaped (or reaffirmed) by the heightened racial awareness as a result the Cold War and postmodern era. In assessing the criticisms of West Coast jazz, I point to the political strategies of Black Nationalists, lay jazz listeners, and white social philosophers in the evaluation of AfricanAmerican art forms and social-historical experiences. In particular, I reinterpret the debates among entrenched Down Beat jazz critics and their questioning of West Coast jazz‘s authenticity as a conversation about race and cultural ―ownership.‖ The thrust of the chapter interrogates a system of white elite privilege in jazz. I argue that while West Coast jazz criticism seeks to preserve the ―blackness‖ of jazz, it simultaneously allows whites to participate in the music without addressing pleas for black cultural autonomy, or at least some black ownership of jazz. These criticisms allow whites to appropriate black culture—the ―black aesthetic‖—without actually being ―black,‖ a proposition which could limit their privileges as white Americans. Thus, this chapter reveals one of the major impediments to the national success and recognition of the West Coast sound. Lastly, in Chapter 5, ―Creative Advertizing,‖ I examine one more institutions representing West Coast jazz to proliferate in the wake of the movement but which are no less problematic than the vitriolic critiques of its contemporary Down Beat critics: records. More specifically, the album art of West Coast jazz. In fact, record labels are partially culpable for the 37 demise of the movement during the late 1950s/early1960 through producing album art which often featured frivolous and highly commercialized portrayals of its serious art and artists. By focusing more on gimmickry, such as the use of ―sex sells‖ advertizing and trite use of verbal and nonverbal punning rather than its substantive jazz tradition, the album art of West Coast jazz often produced more immediate detractors as opposed to devotees. The implications of this study extend beyond geographic regions, culture areas or aesthetic boundaries. At stake is the shape and future of the historical record; whether it will continue to marginalize a near-decade long jazz movement, sustain the ―jazz tradition‖ and pass up new perspectives, or whether it will value the smaller narratives from other far-away places. The results of this study should compel similar treatments of other, more well-known jazz styleregions like Chicago jazz or Kansas City jazz. It should also destabilize the borders between jazz music and other jazz-related arts such that further investigations on the construction of jazz communities will be launched. Lastly, given the development of jazz studies since the music‘s heyday and with popular culture studies fomenting its place in the academy today, it seems necessary to assess West Coast jazz from within current methodology and practice. On that score, this study demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of jazz and encourages further cooperation between Jazz Studies, Popular Culture Studies, Art History, Anthropology, and Ethnomusicology. 1 See Dave Oliphant, Jazz Mavericks in the Lone Star State (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2007); Steve Isoardi, The Dark Tree: Jazz and Community Arts in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Richard Kienzle, Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz (New York: Routledge, 2003); Clora Bryant, et. al., Eds. Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Jacqueline Cogdell Djedje and Eddie S. Meadows, Eds. California Soul: Music of African Americans in the West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Tom Stoddard, Jazz on the Barbary Coast (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1998); Jo Brooks Fox, The Melody Lingers On: Scenes from the Golden Years of West Coast Jazz (Santa Barbara, CA: Fithian Press, 1996); Ted 38 Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); and Robert Gordon, Jazz West Coast: The Los Angeles Jazz Scene of the 1950s (London: Quartet, 1986). 2 Compare the number of studies in jazz in the West with those exclusively on New Orleans, Chicago and New York within only the last decade or so: Bruce Raeburn, New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009); Samuel Barclay Charters, New Orleans: Playing a Jazz Chorus (New York: Marion Boyars, 2006) and A Trumpet Around the Corner: The Story of New Orleans Jazz (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2008); Charles B. Hersch, Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Charles Suhor, Jazz in New Orleans: The Postwar Years Through 1970 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001; Barry Martyn; New Orleans Jazz: The End of the Beginning (New Orleans: Jazzology Press, 1998); George Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Patrick Lawrence Burke, Come In and Hear the nd Truth: Jazz and Race on 52 Street (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Charles Hersch, John Corbett, Terri Kapsalis, and Glenn Ligon, Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun-Ra, El Saturn and Chicago‟s Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-1968 (Chicago: WhiteWalls, 2006); William Howland Kenney, Jazz on the River (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) and Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904-1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); John Lewis Howland, Ellington Uptown: Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and the Birth of Concert Jazz (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009); Alex Stewart, Making the Scene: Contemporary New York City Big Band Jazz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); David Griffiths, Hot Jazz: From Harlem to Storyville (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1998); and Scott Yanow, Jazz: A Regional Exploration (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2005); 3 Mark Gridley, Jazz Styles: History and Analysis (2003) and Henry Martin and Keith Waters, Jazz: The First Hundred Years (Belmont, CA: Thompson/Schirmer, 2006). 4 Dan Morgenstern, Living With Jazz (New York: Pantheon, 2004). 5 Lewis Porter, Jazz: From Its Origins to the Present (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993). 6 rd Scott Reeves, Creative Jazz Improvisation (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 3 ed., 2000). 7 Fischlin and Heble, for instance, have noted jazz improvisation‘s role in archiving historical practices as well as in building, memorializing, and intensifying community relations; see Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble, The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2004), 7-9, 18-21. Likewise, George Lewis has noted that European and African American approaches to improvisation are historical rather than biologically determinant entities which while following certain precepts within the idiom of jazz music (harmonic progressions, etc.), are just as informed by social strictures; see ―Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Approaches,‖ in Fischlin and Heble, The Other Side of Nowhere, 133, 147. Moreover, as Sherrie Tucker, John Panish and Eric Porter have shown, improvisation is never a solitary act invented spontaneously and rooted in the present but rather informed by historically accepted approaches and group dynamics. Improvisers, as Tucker notes, are never solitary inventors; see Tucker, ―Bordering on 39 Community: Improvising Women Improvising Women in Jazz,‖ in Fischlin and Heble, The Other Side of Nowhere, 247; John Panish, The Color of Jazz: Race and Representation in Postwar American Culture (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1997), 81, 123-124, 129; and Eric Porter, What Is This Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists, Critics and Activists (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 60-61. 8 Consider the following textbooks and the corresponding page numbers discussing West Coast jazz: Mark C. Gridley, Jazz Styles (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1978), 147-159; Mark C. Gridley, Jazz Styles: History and Analysis (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003), 167-183; Lewis Porter, et. al. Jazz: from Its Origins to the Present (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993), 234-256; Joachim Berendt, The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond (Brooklyn, NY: Lawrence Hill Books, 1992), 19-21; Alyn Shipton, A New History of Jazz (New York: Continuum, 2001), 690-716; Geoffrey Ward, Jazz: A History of America‟s Music (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 372-379; David Sharp, et. al. An Outline History of American Jazz (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1998), 67-71; Roy Carr, A Century of Jazz (New York: Da Capo Press, 1997), 223-241. 9 Gridley, Jazz Styles: History and Analysis (2003), fn184: ―The absence of discussion for the fine musicians who performed in these and other styles should not be taken as a rejection of their work, but only as an inclination that a brief text such as this cannot do justice to all jazz styles in all regions in all periods.‖ 10 Gridley, ―Contents,‖ iv. 11 Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux, Jazz (New York: N.W. Norton and Company, 2009), ―Contents,‖ x. 12 Steven Mailloux, Rhetorical Power, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 134. 13 See for instance, David Stowe, Swing Changes: Big-Band Jazz in New Deal America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994); Eric Lott, ―Double V, Double-Time: Bebop‘s Politics of Style,‖ in Robert O‘Meally, Ed. The Jazz Cadence of American Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 457-468; and Frank Kofsky, Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music, (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970). 14 Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux, Jazz (New York: N.W. Norton and Company, 2009), 514. 15 John Gennari, ―Hipsters, Bluebloods, Rebels, and Hooligans: The Cultural Politics of the Newport Jazz Festival, 1954-1960‖ in Robert O‘Meally, Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 138, 131. 16 Joachim Berendt, The Jazz Book, 21. 17 18 Berendt, 22 Berendt, 21. 19 Stanley Crouch, ―On the Corner: The Sellout of Miles Davis,‖ in Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2006), 243. 20 Crouch, ―On the Corner,‖ 240. 21 Berendt, 21. Interestingly, Gordon, in Jazz West Coast, says as much: ―many of the white musicians mentioned in this book were (and are) primarily studio musicians, who also played jazz‖ (165); a dubious assessment since Art Pepper and Andre Previn are the only artists 40 mentioned (and only to a small degree) with ties to Hollywood/studio work (178). Moreover, I object to the use of Berendt and Gordon‘s terms ―made their living in‖ or ―primarily,‖ here, respectively. Simply scanning the body of West Coast recordings, for example, will reveal an enormously lopsided surplus of recordings disconnected from Hollywood film or television work. 22 Gioia, West Coast Jazz, 205, 218, 222, 246, 295, 323. 23 Grover Sales, Jazz: America‟s Classical Music (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984), 2. 24 Eddie Meadows, Bebop to Cool: Context, Ideology, and Musical Identity (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003), xxvii-xxix. 25 This approach, which has dominated jazz writing for some time, constructs the appearance of various jazz stylings as revolutionary events in which every new manifestation upsets the former and thus chains each together successively, ordering them in a smooth, uncomplicated, linear manner: New Orleans began Chicago, Chicago began swing, swing begat bebop, etc. According to Scott DeVeaux, this ―metaphor of organicism‖ is like the branches of a tree: ―the art form matures and branches out through impulses internal to itself,‖ the various jazz styles linking together to form a ―seamless continuum‖ which, while providing narrative continuity, eschews cultural and historical context. ―The process of growth,‖ says DeVeaux, ―is ineffable, internal, and curiously static: the variegated manifestation over the course of time of a central, unchanging essence‖ See The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 5-6. 26 Dave Brubeck, Stan Kenton and Howard Rumsey are not only prime examples of White bandleaders whose West Coast groups were visibly integrated, but whose music nonetheless elicited the moniker ―white people‘s music.‖ Conversely, White West Coast musicians often played, recorded, and toured with African American bandleaders as in the cases of Chico Hamilton and Hampton Hawes. Even the more avant-garde African American musicians on the West Coast like Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman were supported by White sidemen. Los Angeles, of course, could not escape Jim Crow practices despite the lack of de jure racial discrimination. However, cultural exchange among Whites and African Americans was common and integrated bands were often seen in post-war era California. See for instance, See Robert LeRoy Hughes Jr., ―Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars: Modern Jazz in California, 19521959,‖ (Ph.D. diss., Washington University, 2002); University of the Pacific, ―Dave Brubeck‘s Commitment to Social Justice,‖ Pacific News, 2004, http://www.pacific.edu/homepage/news/releases/2004/2004-0000-brubeck.asp (accessed June th 15th, 2009); and Terry Perkins, ―Dave Brubeck: Jazz Legend,‖ All About Jazz, May 9 , 2003, th http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=359 (accessed June 15 , 2009). 27 This binary logic is most problematically featured in Meadows‘s continued reliance upon ageold stereotypes of Whites and African Americans to describe the differences in their aesthetic approaches to jazz. These stereotypes, Meadows argues, formed the basis of the cool and bebop styles. Throughout, Meadows notes that White cool artists play with an ―intellectual,‖ ―cerebral approach‖ or with ―cerebral articulations‖ represented by their classical experimentations and softened dynamics (251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256). This opposed bebop‘s ―guts-and-fire approach‖ represented by Dizzy Gillespie and others (265). Stereotypes about the inverse 41 relationship between emotional and intellectual faculties have dominated much of jazz writing in the Jazz Age; race dictates whether one has either high emotional or intellectual faculties but never both. Moreover, Meadows is keen to discuss both cool and bebop as ―White‖ and ―Black‖ music, respectively, and he ignores the long history of interracial cooperation within both musics as well as recent scholarship that has subverted notions of a purely ―White‖ or ―Black‖ music (again, purity and authenticity are at work here). See, for instance, Ronald Radano, Lying Up a Nation: Race and Black Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Radano writes, African American music ―is a form constituted within and against racial discourses,‖ cast simultaneously in blackness and whiteness, in difference and sameness, across the pantheon of Black music scholarship (4). The term ―Black Music‖ itself developed out of African American musical practices as well as White critical evaluation. Furthermore, what documentation of African American music actually exists of Black musical life in Early America is severely limited, penned mostly by White observers, existing in passing reference in diaries for instance (as opposed to academic works), involving only minimal examination, and grid within primitivist notions of African Americans of the period. Meadows has conceptualized, labeled, and ordered by certain ideological discourses in a similar fashion. In this light, Meadows binary collapses ―music‖ with ―race,‖ demarcating each by cultural difference and arranging Black music around ―a kind of cultural essentialism‖ (xii). 28 Meadows, Bebop to Cool, 256. 29 As previously noted, the early twentieth century was ripe with vitriolic Eastern criticism of the West on the comparative basis that the West was untamed and lacked ―culture;‖ a bastion of ―ancient jazz,‖ according to Charlie Parker (258). However, musical flows from New York reached California easily via the mass distribution of records, radio broadcasts, and artists tours as far back as the late 1910s; not to mention jazz played by native Californians in a variety of live venues (see George Lipsitz, ―Music, Migration, Myth: The California Connection,‖ in Stephanie Barton, Sheri Bernstein, and Ilene Susan Fort, Eds. Reading California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000, (Berkeley University of California Press, 2000), 153-169). 30 Critiques such as these are the result of the reliance on certain determinist approaches to the study of popular culture wherein certain forms become either transcendently revolutionary (bebop) while others become a part of the ―culture industry‖ (cool, West Coast, and other jazz forms); the latter acting to pacify consumers by appealing to their commodity fetishism. 31 Frank Kofsky, Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music (New York: Pathfinder, 1970), 132. 32 Kofsky, Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music, 131. 33 Kofsky, Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music, 134. Moreover, Kofsky writes: ―Taken en masse [their] aesthetic departures from the West signal the exhaustion of European musical thought as a potentially fructifying stimulus to the further evolution of jazz. But more than that, they signify the non-Western or anti-Western stance of the musicians themselves‖ (136). 34 Kofsky, Black Nationalism and the Revolution. in Music, 116. 35 Antonio Gramsci, ―The Formation of the Intellectuals,‖ in Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 5. 42 36 Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, (New York: The Free Press, 1996), 8. See also ―The Riddle of the Zoot: Malcolm Little and Black Cultural Politics During World War II‖ in Race Rebels, 161-181; and Eric Lott, ―Double-V, Double Time: Bebop‘s Politics of Style,‖ in Callaloo Vol. 11, No. 3 (1998): 597-605. 37 Frank Kofsky, ―John Coltrane: An Interview‖ was originally published in Jazz in 1967. Transcripts are also appear in Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music on pages 221-243. The actual taped interview may be found on online in two parts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43vST-auKQ4 and th http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsTbwQmQAmQ&feature=related (accessed June 15 , 2009) 38 Kofsky, Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music, 31-43. 39 John Gennari, Blowin‟ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 351. 40 Albert Murray, Stompin‟ the Blues (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), 164-165. 41 Murray, Stompin‟ the Blues, 352. 42 According to Eric Porter, in promoting the ―jazz mainstream‖ while vehemently opposing fusion and other experimental jazz forms, such as the Black Nationalist inspired jazz of Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp and others of the 1960s, Marsalis ―provided a recipe for middle-class audiences seeking the cultural capital to validate their economic status,‖ and came to ―embrace jazz as an African American art form that expresses national and universal values.‖ See What Is This Thing Called Jazz?, 320. 43 Eric Porter, What Is This Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 321. 44 Gennari, Blowin‟ Hot and Cool, 353. 45 Stanley Crouch, ―Blues to Be Constitutional: A Long Look at the Wild Wherefores of Our Democratic Lives as Symbolized in the Making of Rhythm and Tune‖ in Robert G. O‘Meally, The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 158-159. 46 Scott DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 3. 47 DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop. 31. 48 Sherrie Tucker, Swing Shift: All-Girl Bands of the 1940s (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 25. 49 Tucker, Swing Shift, 334. 50 51 Tucker, Swing Shift, 6. Tucker, Swing Shift, 14. 52 See also, Sherrie Tucker, ―West Coast Women: A Jazz Genealogy,‖ in Pacific Review of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Winter 1996/1997): 5-22. 53 E. Taylor Atkins, Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 245. 43 54 Robert O‘Meally et. al., Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 6. 55 Robert O‘Meally, The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, 8. 56 Jed Rasula, ―The Media of Memory: The Seductive Menace of Records in Jazz History,‖ in Krin Gabbard, Ed. Jazz Among the Discourses (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 135. 57 See, for instance, Morgenstern, Living With Jazz. 58 See, for instance, Barry McRae, whose opening line from his book on the advent of free jazz in the late 1950s and early 1960s reads: ―Like most European writers, I am forced to rely a great deal on recorded evidence,‖ in Jazz Cataclysm (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1967), ―Acknowledgements,‖ v. 59 Rasula, ―The Media of Memory,‖ 137. 60 Eric Porter, What Is This Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians as Artists, Critics and Activists (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 6. 61 See Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Civil Society. Ed. Jose Harris. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 62 Found in Porter, What Is This Thing Called Jazz?, 19. 63 Porter, What Is This Thing Called Jazz?, 19. 64 Quoted in Gennari, Blowin‟ Hot and Cool, 155. 65 Gennari, Blowin‟ Hot and Cool, 156. 66 See Curt Sachs, The Commonwealth of Art: Style in the Fine Arts-Music and the Dance (New York: Norton, 1946). 67 O‘Meally, The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, xi. 68 O‘Meally, The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, xi, 69 Genevieve Fabre and Robert O‘Meally, History and Memory in African American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 3-17. 70 O‘Meally, The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, xi. 71 O‘Meally et. al., Uptown Conversation, 2. 72 O‘Meally et. al., Uptown Conversation, 2. 73 Donna Cassidy, Painting the Musical City: Jazz and Cultural Identity in American Art, 19101940 (Washington, DC.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), 108. 74 Alfred Appel, Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 49. 75 Armstrong, Elizabeth, Ed. Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury (New York: Prestel Publishing, 2007), 49. 76 Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 197. 77 Robert K. McMichael, ―We Insist-Freedom Now!‖: Black Moral Authority, Jazz, and the Changeable Shape of Whiteness.” American Music Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter, 1998): 399. 44 78 Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 270. 79 In the case of the former, the exhibition resulted in a publication of the same name (see Armstrong, Birth of the Cool) while the Getty Research Center allows via interlibrary loan the video recording of most of the conference and concert proceedings. 80 For the conference program, see http://www.getty.edu/visit/events/cote_a_cote.html th (Accessed June 15 , 2009). 81 Douglas Kellner, ―Cultural Studies and Philosophy: An Intervention,‖ http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/culturalstudiesphilosophy.pdf (Accessed Apr. th 27 , 2010), page 1-2. 82 Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 3. 83 Gupta and Ferguson, 2. 84 Gupta and Ferguson, 15. 85 Arjun Appadurai, ―Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology,‖ in Richard G. Fox, Ed. Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 1991), 191-192, 196. 86 Gioia, West Coast Jazz, 368. 45 Sunshine & Noir: Jazz Modernism in California from WWI to Mid-Century The Sense of Neighborhood: A New Social Morphology of West Coast Jazz ―Space is a social morphology: it is to lived experience what form itself is to the living organism, and just as immediately bound up with function and structure.‖ - Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (1991) 1 California is, and has always been, imaginary. Since incorporation with the United States after the Mexican-American War, it has been invented (and reinvented), represented, and widely interpreted, from the sentimental booster charms of Helen Hunt Jackson‘s Ramona (1884) to the dystopic industrial wasteland depicted in Ridley Scott‘s Bladerunner (1982). If one constant emerges from these readings it is that California represents an ambiguous frontier. While in the physical sense, the city balances on the edge of the Western end of the continent, overlooking the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, it is in the imaginary sense that one grasps the region as both a virgin land of endless optimism (a tabula rasa, an oasis in the desert, or a new horizon) and the harbinger of the future peril (violence, disease, infrastructural collapse), teetering on the brink of 2 extinction. Central to the latter inceptions is the notion of ―space‖ not as a physical boundary but as a culture concept. In this formulation, space functions as what sociologist Manuel Castells calls ―a 3 materially mental construction.‖ Like Lefebvre, Castells understands there can be no geography without human proximity; the everyday life that occupies that vicinity immediately as well as remotely. The space or social morphology of a region then is defined by the ways in which people make sense of their geographies. Thus, to understand the space in question here—Los Angeles and much of the state of California—we must understand lived experience. 44 However, an understanding of the relationship between Los Angeles‘s geographical surroundings and its inhabitants is best examined in an even broader historical context. As Los th Angeles emerged as a global power in the early to mid-20 century, it is necessary to further detail California history and culture through the lens of globalization. That is, through flows of people, goods and ideas across national borders. The study of jazz in California has not yet been explored through this rubric, due partly to the fact that jazz writing has been up until recently territorial and nationalistic, and has often neglected to research the offshoots or related art forms. Nevertheless, to truly understand jazz in California one must develop a transnational perspective and recognize the global status of the people, industries and aesthetics connected to it. More specifically, one must consider the influence of artists from Europe, the Midwest and th East Coast taking root on the West Coast from the early to mid-20 century, the various modernist art practices they brought with them, and the connections between their art forms with a broader jazz culture. Thus, in identifying jazz on the West Coast of this period, I want to imagine a new inception of space; a narrative which envisions a jazz-shaped culture embedded within the broader global and modernistic contexts of the era. Out of Nowhere: Invention of the Anti-City Far from the bustling metropolis of today, Los Angeles by the turn of the century was a rural town banking on tourism to lure Midwesterners and Easters to the area with promises of sunshine and better health. Later, of course, the city flourished despite the lack of a traditional urban economic base when booms in the water, oil, film and aviation industries brought global capital as well as workers to the area. Moreover, lacking a city center, Los Angeles was, and still is, comprised of small, loosely-connected enclaves spread out across the Southern California 45 basin. To most outsiders, Los Angeles was incomparable to their own surroundings. However, it was not only that Los Angeles appeared structurally different which configured its oppositeness. It seemed to possess a history and a culture of indeterminate origin. In fact, to most Eastern and Midwesterners, to be in Los Angeles was like being stranded on a desert island. The ―West‖ itself was commonly seen as a far flung ―wilderness‖ diametrically opposed to ―civilized‖ Eastern modernism and urbanity. Reactions from New York City and other East Coast centers following California boosterism in the early twentieth century were ripe with rhetoric of California as a ―backwater‖ state; a scenic yet untamed landscape. Ironically, its wild atmosphere became part of its allure as well. While the superiority of the East and Midwest was popular in the minds of the people there, this was juxtaposed with the desire to act upon divine provenance and bring California, and the West in general, in to the fold of American designs. As art historian Howard Fox has noted, ―This Edenic aspect particularly appeals to our belief, or our desire to believe, that the earliest European settlers in North American came to establish a new Jerusalem, a new order of the ages (the novus ordo seclorum proclaimed on the great seal of the United States, which appears on every U.S. dollar bill) in a vast God-given virgin land free for the taking an untainted by the corruptions of centuries of European civilization. Europe had its Renaissance—its re-birth; American society and its values were conceived at 4 birth.‖ California artists were not immune to the lures of this Jeremiad. Muralist, Mabel Alvarez, after hearing a lecture by the synchromist painter Stanton McDonald-Wright, wrote in her diary in 1928 that European modernism had run its course and that it would be California modernists 46 who would produce the next relevant modern art, ushering in a ―new renaissance‖ or ―faith.‖ 5 Thus, Manifest Destiny and its charge to expand the American empire as far West as possible was nonetheless very much on the minds of even those who held California with disdain. It is perhaps the lack of ―history‖ and ―culture‖ as much as its distance from the cultural zeitgeist of New York City which spurred the growth of modernist practices in Los Angeles in th the early 20 century. While attitudes persisted even into the twentieth century that Los Angeles constituted an ―infertile cultural soil‖ that could not produce ―homegrown intelligentsia,‖ the impulse to remake the city was strong among modernist artists nationally and internationally. 6 According to Paul Karlstrom, one of their prime attractions to California was the ―sense of distance‖ from their own locations which consequently fueled modernists‘ ―need to reinvent 7 tradition for a new landscape and society.‖ Likewise, Natalie Shivers has noted that in the 1920s and 30s the ambiguity of Southern California‘s architectural past was both a source immense inspiration for modernist architects: ―Buildings were a mish-mash of historical styles—Romanesque, Gothic, Revival, Italianate, Spanish Colonial—suggesting Southern California‘s ambitions to achieve the stature of older established cultures. The eclecticism of its building styles at the turn of the century also signaled the region‘s indistinct cultural identity, as well as its ambivalent relationship with its own past. These characteristic, coupled with the area‘s remoteness from the ‗old world‘ and relative lack of development, seemed to offer architects the chance to invent a new architecture—one that belonged to both the industrial age and the magnificent landscape.‖ 8 47 It was the lack of ―stratified cultural institutions‖ which also attracted modernist photographers like Charles Lummis, Edward Weston, and Louis Fleckenstein to the region. For Hans Burkhardt and even American artists like Edward Biberman, according to Bram Dijkstra, the ―contradictory combination of personal isolation, wide-open spaces, and the developing cosmopolitanism of 9 Los Angeles was an enticement rather than a detraction.‖ Even Long Beach native and abstract painter Robert Irwin realized the freedom inherent to the historical-cultural vacuum that was Los Angeles: ―What I‘ve always liked about this town, still do, is that it‘s one of the least restrictive towns in the world. You can pretty much live any way you want to here. And part of that is the place has no tradition and no history in that sense. It doesn‘t have any image of itself, which is exactly its loss and its gain. Like when New Yorkers tell me what‘s wrong with L.A., everything they say is wrong—no tradition, no history, no sense of a city, no system of support, no cure, no sense of urgency—they‘re absolutely right, and that‘s why I like it. That‘s why it‘s such a great place to do art and to build your ideas about culture. In New York, it‘s like an echo chamber: its overwhelming sense of itself, of its past and its present and its mission become utterly restricting.‖ 10 Painter, Lorser Feitelson echoes Irwin‘s words about the Southern California art scene: ―For the few artists that were serious, when they came out here, they had no audience, no patronage, and if they liked it out here, they‘d better paint for their on satisfaction! So they did their best work because there was no competition. They didn‘t walk along FiftySeventh Street or the equivalent, or rue Boetie in Paris or rue de Seine, to ‗see what is going on,‘ or look in the art columns to see what is fashionable now, or who‘s getting the works, who‘s being lauded. It just didn‘t exist. You really had to love art. Therefore, you 48 did the things for your own satisfaction, you worked on the same damn thing year in and year out until you got something to your own satisfaction. And it ended there. This was the situation here.‖ 11 However, isolation was also interpreted in terms of fostering a production space apart from the marketplace. In the capitalism system, art functioned as any other commodity and, as such, forced artists to compete with each other not only in terms of economic subsistence but in terms of recognition and appreciation. For many modernists, particularly those in East Coast or Midwestern centers, this climate became unbearable and detrimental their art. A noncompetitive, ―creative community,‖ it was thought, would foster originality and bring about this renaissance. According to Richard Candida Smith, ―a corollary to these shared mythic interpretations of isolated, egalitarian, noncompetitive exchange was pride in autochthonous originality.‖ 12 It was the distance from the New York scene, for instance, that inspired Helen Lundberg‘s imagination to depart from the aesthetics and procedures of European modernism rather than ―reproduce‖ existing works. ―It was not isolation California artists wanted,‖ Candida Smith says, but ―a chance to participate equally, effected by expanding the boundaries of the art world.‖ 13 While Europe was the major influence upon them, California artists allowed themselves the freedom to experiment and depart from prevailing artistic norms. Thus, Manifest Destiny and mythology of the West, along with the geographic isolation of California in relation to Europe, held enormous sway over early modernists. The California ―frontier‖ seemed to be a place where their art could take root and flourish. It was a space in which to experiment freely, unencumbered by elite New York institutions or by the specters of history and culture. In a place where no history or culture existed, their art would remake the world. 49 th Skyscrapers vs. Sprawl: East-West Art Currents in the Early 20 Century, or, All the World‟s a Fair: New York and California Exhibit Their Culture In the same way that Manifest Destiny and American myth-making helped to simultaneously reinforce New York as the center of the art world and entice modern artists to move West, so too did the arrival of several significant fairs and exhibitions in Southern th California and New York, respectively, in the early 20 century: the International Exhibition of Modern Art (otherwise known as the New York Armory Show) from February to March of 1913; the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco from February to December of 1915; and the Panama-California Exposition held in San Diego from March of 1915 to January of 1917. Along with the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, these were perhaps the most important institutions responsible in not only drawing modernist art from Europe to the United States but in spreading its aesthetic impulses westward. According to Robert Bennett, the Armory Show alone ―exerted a powerful influence on New York culture as the city‘s artists, writers, and other cultural producers increasingly imitated European modernism‘s complex, fragmented aesthetic practices.‖ 14 In particular, the show introduced American audiences and artists to the revolutionary art work being done in Paris at the time. Organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS), the exhibition intended to replicate two modernistic and futuristic exhibitions in Paris, the Salon d‘Automne in 1905 and the Salone des Independents exhibition in 1911. In inviting primarily artists from Europe, particularly France, the point was to shock and rebel against the New York art establishment still reveling in the nostalgia and bourgeois mentality of impressionism. ―The New Spirit,‖ the motto for the exhibition, aptly described the historical context in which the 50 event was held, fitting within the larger social, cultural, and political movements of the era, particularly the Harlem Renaissance, Women‘s Suffrage, and eminent war in Europe. The exhibition, like its art, symbolized a rejection of old norms as well as the sense of urgency which accompanied the new age. Artist attendees read like a who‘s who of cutting-edge European modernists: Constantin Brancusi, Paul Gauguin, Gustave Courbet, Robert Delaunay, Edward Munch, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Childe Hassam, Henri Rousseau, Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Fernand Leger, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Francis Picabia, Wassily Kandinsky, and Pierre-August Renoir, to name a few. Though the exhibition was not limited to modernist works, the most controversial pieces were just so, including, most notably, Marcel Duchamp‘s Nude Descending a Staircase (1912), an example of the cubist avant-garde which was both adored and ridiculed in the American press. While the Armory Show was cause célèbre for the New York City artist elite to declare their city the new epicenter of the avant-garde, for industry and art centers in California, bringing such an exhibition to the state held the prospect of establishing a national and international flow of commerce while putting the state on the map culturally as New York City‘s rival. In 1915, two years after the Armory Show, San Francisco became first city on the West Coast to host a world‘s fair; the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition (PPIE). The exhibition came one year after the opening of the Panama Canal and nine years after the devastating 1906 earthquake. In this light, the exhibition was not simply a showcase for art so much as it was a testament to the city‘s resiliency and recovery and, since the opening of the Canal would bring California in closer contact with world trade, the exhibition proudly trumpeted that the state had arrived as both a cultural as well as economic powerhouse. 51 However, the art at the exhibition did not exhibit the same radicalism as the Armory Show, as this would have upset the global economic project at the forefront of the minds of its organizers. However, according to Dijkstra, ―though the art exhibited in San Francisco was considerably more conservative than that of the Armory Show, the fauvist pointillism of the Italian divisionists and the bravura brushwork of an international host of postimpressionist painters gave young California artists plenty to think about.‖ 15 The exhibition surpassed the Armory Show in terms of its impact on California modernism in several ways. First, in contained more examples of international art—over 11,000 16 pieces—with entire rooms dedicated to Munch, the Italian Futurists and Impressionists alone. Secondly, it featured far more American and, in particular, California artists. According to Victoria Dailey, ―modern American artists who exhibited at the PPIE included Bellows, Frieseke, Glackens, Henri, Gloan and numerous others. California artists were also well represented at the fair; among them were Wendt, Dixon, McComas, Braun, Hobart, and Mathews.‖ 17 Also unlike the Armory Show, this exhibition, by its own design, engaged in a discourse of California modernism. The buildings housing the exhibits were carriers of this discourse with names which evoked the state of California, its industrial ingenuity and global citizenship. Buildings like the South Gardens, the Palace of Horticulture, the Agricultural Palace, the Court of the Four Seasons, the Court of Abundance, and the Food Products Palace clearly denote California‘s fertile agricultural climate. The Fountain of Energy, the Transportation Palace, the Manufacturers Palace, the Mines and Metallurgy Palace, the Varied Industries Palace, and the Machinery Palace evoke machine-age modernism and California‘s economic technology and research specialties. The Avenue of the Nations thoroughfare was home to national and state buildings such as the Ohio Building and the Norwegian Building which situated California 52 within a national and international context. Lastly, the Palace of Fine Arts was the core of modernist art at the exhibition. San Diego‘s Panama-California Exposition (PCE), while still vital to bringing modernism to California, was less focused on technology and industry and more focused on the theme of statehood and in promoting various micro-regions of California. Again, the names of its buildings give us insight. Many building names appear in Spanish which, along with names like La Laguna de Las Flores, Calle Cristobal, and Jardins de Eucalyptus evoke both California‘s exotic Spanish history and the region‘s natural landscape. While state and national buildings appear, so do those dedicated to regions within California, like the San Joaquin Valley building. Lastly, while both the PPIE and PCE had dedicated fine arts buildings, only the PCE featured a musical instrument more art in and of itself; a giant pipe organ designed by Harrison Albright housing over 4,500 pipes. Together, these exhibitions drew national attention to art in the United States in general th and precipitated an explosion of modern art activity in the early 20 century. Most importantly, they sparked a wave of modernist migrations across the United States and across Europe to America—and, in many cases, the West Coast—such that by midcentury America had overtaken Europe, and Paris in particular, as modernism‘s new home. Thus, in 1948, the preeminent art critic, Clement Greenberg, declared in the Partisan Review that the ―main premises of Western Art… migrated to the United States,‖ and that the New York school of abstractionists represented an ―important new phase in the history of painting.‖ From Europe with Love: Expats, Émigrés, Experiments 53 18 In her edited volume, L.A.‟s Early Moderns: Art, Architecture, Photography (2003), Victoria Dailey writes, ―In the United States, the modern had always been welcome… and Americans either invented or fully developed most of the hallmarks of modernism: the telegraph, electricity, railroads, the skyscraper, jazz, the assembly line, the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, cocktails, movies, radio, television, air-conditioning, refrigeration, swimming pools, blue jeans, psychoanalysis, physical fitness—nearly everything that made life modern.‖ 19 th The broader technological and cultural landscape of early 20 century America, then, was primed to accept the concept of the ―modern‖ in art. However, while America was receptive towards European modernist art in this way, it was by somewhat alternative means that America came to be the home of many European modernists themselves. Mainly, the outbreak of war in Europe prompted many European artists residing in America to stay put until the fighting had ceased. Again, the PPIE bears relevant here, as many European artists and attendees to the exhibition chose to remain in the area until war‘s end. The prolonged exposure to their art, of course, let to their considerable influence on California art and culture. While many important texts on the subject of European exiles‘ influence on modernist art in America have placed the phenomenon in a broader cultural context, few have sought to include California in this narrative. Fewer still have undertaken the task of exploring the ways in which these modernists—American, European, and others—borrowed from each other in this context and, in particular, created hybridized styles of modernist art centering on perhaps the most important modernist impulse of the day: jazz. In attempting to map out a range of jazzshaped practices in California from the early to mid-twentieth century, it is necessary to consider 54 the ways in which jazz had left its imprint upon the modernist art milieu. To do this, I want to outline who these European modernists were, what stylistic aesthetics, advances, and creations they brought with them, and the ways in which their art meshed both with the local and national modernist communities in America and jazz culture. First, who were these émigrés whose modernist art was received so pointedly in the United States at this time and where did they hail from? There were essentially two waves of th European immigration to California in the first half of the 20 century; the first occurring in the 1910s and 20s. The vast majority during this period came from Western Europe. From Austria: the architects Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler, the composers Erich Korngold and Arnold Schoenberg, the poet/playwright Franz Werfel, etc. From Germany: the filmmaker/animator Oskar Fischinger, abstract painter Hans Hoffman, architect Walter Gropius, etc. From Swizterland: painters Paul Klee and Gottardo Piazzoni, etc. From the Netherlands: painters like Willem de Kooning, Knud Merrild as well as neoplasticist or ―De Stijl‖ movement painter like Piet Mondrian, etc. From France: composers Edgard Varese and Darius Milhaud, and painter Ferdinand Leger, etc. From Mexico: the muralists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco, etc. From Italy: sculptors Simon Rodia and Constantin Brancusi, etc. Each of these artists produced works anchored by some of the prime aesthetics of modernist art. In this early modern period, these émigrés brought with them a variety of modernist styling such as, Surrealism, Impressionism, Cubism, Dada, International Style, Bauhaus, Futurism, Russian Constructivism, and other forms. Though their styles were developed abroad, in many cases these artists situated their art within the broader discourses of California history and geography. 55 The designs of Schindler and Neutra, for instance, are perhaps most representative of modernist architecture in California at this period. Both men were greatly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright; their one-time employer, though at different times. According to Dailey, ―These men committed their lives to developing Southern California‘s new architecture, distilling Wright‘s principles into their own sensibilities and, ultimately, a local building tradition.‖ 20 Like many California modernists of their day, the local geography not only sparked their imagination but acted as a fresh canvas on which to create anew. Urging Neutra to join him in California, Schindler wrote to his colleague, ―This climate and character, together with a further true development of Space Architecture, will make Southern California the cradle of a new architectural expression.‖ 21 Designs for Schindler‘s own home reflected the architectural trend in indoor-outdoor living particular to Wright and the state of California. According to Schindler, ―I came to live and work in California. I camped under the open sky, in the redwoods, on the beach, the foothills and the desert. I tested its adobe, its granite and its sky. And out of a carefully built up conception of how the human being could grow roots in this soil—unique and delightful—I built my house. And unless I failed it should be as Californian as the Parthenon is Greek and the Forum 22 Roman.‖ Indeed, his home was a ―camp‖ of sorts, with the dimensions of its living quarters extending beyond its roof, or its translucent sliding doors both letting in natural, available light and bringing the outdoors, indoors. This strain of architecture ran parallel with the mythology of California as the ―West.‖ According to Dailey, ―the house represented the ideal that was fundamental to the region‘s modern movement: that mankind could be restored by communion 56 with nature.‖ 23 Likewise, his design for the ―Lovell Beach House‖ (1925-1926) for patrons Philip and Leah Lovell in Newport Beach, constructed an integrated sleeping chamber/outdoor porch rather than bedrooms, reflecting ―the hallmarks of the modern California house: the integration of house and landscape, the celebration of physical culture, the informal plan that eliminated rooms with specific functions in favor of free-flowing multi-use spaces.‖ 24 Surrealist painting also came to represent a distinctly California modernist aesthetic of the ―frontier‖ based on notions of the ―West,‖ the natural landscape, and the indeterminate nature of its history and culture. According to Susan Anderson, ―California surrealist expression developed outside of mainstream of modern art, in the freedom of the western frontier. The frontier lies physically and metaphorically far from artistic rules and institutional strictures, tradition, and imposed ideas. It encourages inwardness, individuality, reflection.‖ 25 However, it was paradoxically the lack of history, culture and institutions as in New York City which enticed surrealists to visit or relocate to Southern California. While indeed ―there were few long-standing social conventions, artistic traditions, or institutions to provoke rebellion,‖ surrealism thrived in this environment. Los Angeles was in many ways, by the 1930s, surreal. The movie industry, as Anderson points out, created a landscape of indeterminate identity; a place where the common man is a celebrity and where everyone is playing a role; where movie lots begin and end without notice, intruding into people‘s daily lives; and where ―magic,‖ ―imagination,‖ and ―fantasy‖ rule the day. 26 Thus, California surrealism was deeply connected to a ―California Dream.‖ 27 However, Los Angeles did not merely adopt European surrealism wholesale but rather reworked it into a kind of ―post-surrealism,‖ a new form in answer to its European counterpart which, while rooted in the European tradition, departed markedly in its association to political radicalism of the era. The Dutch ―De Stijl‖ painter, Knud Merrild, along with Americans Lorser 57 Feitelson and his wife and fellow surrealist, Helen Lundberg, developed a distinctly American surrealist art which, as opposed to Salvador Dali‘s critique of the Franco regime in Spain, ―evoked a sense of freedom, contemplation, and peacefulness that can be attributed to the geographic and climatic conditions of the Pacific Coast.‖ 28 Lundberg and Feitelson, for example, incorporated themes such as ―cosmic birth‖ and regeneration, in works such as Lundberg‘s Cosmicide (1935) and Feitelson‘s Life Begins (1936). Surrealist paintings such as these aptly characterize the myth and manifest destiny of the California frontier, and the cultural ―rebirth‖ which modernist art would accomplish in the area. Not all European modernists to California were themselves artists, however. Some, like German émigré, Galka Scheyer, were among the many art promoters and exhibitors credited with transporting experimental European art to the West Coast. Scheyer is particularly known for her work in bringing abstract expressionist painters Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Alexej Jawlensky, and Lyonel Feininger (together known as ―The Blue Four‖) to the Oakland Art Gallery in Oakland, California in 1926. She also served as a teacher of art in Berkeley, California and Mexico, and as an arranger for art galleries around the state. Though many critics and patrons of the arts remained skeptical as to the worth and importance of their abstractions, the presence of the Blue Four resonated throughout the West such that Scheyer was able to arrange for the collective to set off on a number of other gallery exhibits and lecture series across the country. With their Bauhaus aesthetic causing waves around the art world in America, Scheyer organized another exhibition three years later at the Gallery titled European Modernists, featuring almost entirely the work of modernist German artists like Feininger, Carl Hofer, Erich Heckel, and Max Pechstein. 29 58 Of course, not all modernists to impact California‘s art world at this time were European th either. California in the early 20 century was home to a range of important American modernists who had migrated to the area as early as 1906 with photographer Edward Weston. Other notables include: printmaker Paul Landacre (in 1918), photographer Will Connell (in 1918), synchromist painter Stanton Macdonald-Wright (who studied in Paris before returning to Los Angeles in 1919), rare book dealer Jake Zeitlin (around 1926), impresario Merle Armitage (around 1924), sculptor Peter Krasnow (in 1927), composer Alfred Newman (in 1930), and composer/conductor William Grant Still (in 1936). These migrant modernists meshed not only with California natives like experimental composer John Cage and pictoralist photographer Ansel Adams (who later founded the groundbreaking photography collective, f/64), but with an swath of modernists from Europe as well. Thus, by the 1930s, California had established a reputation as an important modern art center. Along with San Francisco, Los Angeles now had established art schools and galleries, artistic enclaves and collectives, as well as agents, sponsors, and clients. With European modernists finding homes in these institutions, attention was now on California as the home of invention, instruction, and exhibition of modern art. Nevertheless, California would receive another wave of European émigrés as a result of the massive social, political and economic upheavals caused by the Great Depression and the Second World War. While some of these European émigrés settled in California immediately upon arrival, like conductor Otto Klemperer and writer Aldus Huxley, most immigrated to East Coast centers: Eric Zeisl, and Alma MahlerWerful to New York City; Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg to Boston, etc. While the Great Depression was a powerful factor in attracting these artists to California, it would take the 59 transition to wartime economy to open up enough economic opportunities for these artists to make the move west. 30 California experienced an economic and population boom as a result of the shift towards a ―total war‖ and the cooptation of many of its industries by the federal government. Its aviation and oil industries and its abundance of large, natural harbors made it an ideal location to enrich military outposts there. Moreover, with the exception of Hawaii, California was the closest U.S. territory to Japan, and thus had become a security priority as well as economic machine. Particularly, the cooptation of Hollywood by government and military sectors produced a demand for artists in the film, music, screenwriting and other performance avenues of modernist art. While California may not have been an obvious first choice for European émigrés, they were not unaware of the historical precedent set by previous mass migrations to the state (the Gold Rush, Dust Bowlers, etc.), and they had no doubt at some point viewed a Hollywood film before their migrations. When word spread about its climate and the lucrative job openings in the Hollywood industry, coupled with a relaxation in immigration laws pertaining to artistically inclined refugees established in the early 1920s, California became a more desirable destination to this generation of émigrés than the previous generation. As with the previous generation of European modernists, however, émigrés escaping fascism in Europe changed California art and were also changed by it. According to Karlstrom, the isolation of the émigré experience meshed well with prevailing ideas of California‘s geographic isolation. These émigrés ―viewed art and cultural achievements through a nostalgic haze‖ and ―were led to revisit and rework and thus recapture them.‖ ―Distance and isolation,‖ Karlstrom says, were seen as the basis for ―transformative innovation rather than imitation.‖ 60 31 Yet this feeling of isolation did not confine émigrés to a solitary and fruitless existence. Quite to the contrary, despite the fragmentary nature of Los Angeles they often managed to interact at the same exhibitions, theaters, work spaces and even reside in small enclaves around the city. Most émigrés‘ homes during this period were located near or along Sunset Avenue, from Pacific Palisades to the Hollywood Bowl, many in the Beverly Hills and Santa Monica areas. 32 In many cases this group of modernists capitalized on their situation to rework their own communities into ―ad hoc networks of friends.‖ 33 Not only did these modernists enjoy informal get-togethers, they enhanced each other‘s work in ways which strengthened their fraternal and artistic bonds. These communities often tended to be dispersed geographically but not aesthetically. It is the aesthetic similarities in their art that, particularly in a city like Los Angeles, drew them together periodically over great distances to form tightly knit social relations and form collective artistic organizations. Thus, communion amongst modernists had resulted in great friendships, business contacts, and most importantly, in great similarities among artists working in different genres. Removed from their homelands and exiled in California, the once impenetrable national, cultural, religious, political borders separating these émigrés began to deteriorate. In essence, their new surroundings, along with a mutual objection to Nazism, made for a renewed internationalism. Gottfried Reinhardt, the Berlin-born filmmaker who came to New York in 1932 then to Los Angeles a year later, recalled though there did exist certain cliques with respect to profession, nationality, and other features among the émigré community during that ―unreal decade,‖ these differences often resolved into ―unexpected reconciliations.‖ ―[Screenwriter] Salka Viertel had a sort of salon and all sorts of people—politicians, the Russian ambassador, 61 directors, [Charlie] Chaplin, musicians, Thomas Mann,‖ he remembered. It was Viertel‘s house in which Thomas Mann reconciled with his estranged older brother and fellow novelist, Heinrich Mann, as well as the temporary home of fellow émigré writer, the English pacifist, Christopher Isherwood. 34 These meeting places, he noted, were designated neutral territory and well as sites of leisure: ―There was nothing unusual in having one evening with Thomas Mann and the next with Feuchtwanger and the next with Franz Werfel, or in driving downtown to the Philharmonic to hear Klemperer or having lunch and playing ping-pong with Schoenberg, having coffee and cake with Korngold, or visiting Alma Mahler, Fritzi Massary, welcoming Gregor Piatigorsky, Arthur Rubenstein, etc. Some were old acquaintances of mine, other I befriended here. The circle was overwhelming and, when I think back, it wasn‘t quite real—but the amazing thing was; it was real.‖ 35 While not a paradise exactly, these enclaves comprised cordial support groups, fostered a new émigré identity, and ultimately influenced the cross-pollination of their various forms of modernist art. Los Angeles, Reinhardt said, ―became a place where Hugo Strelitzer could dream of, plan, and execute a new American approach to opera training; it was a place where Otto Klemperer, always the frustrated composer, could study composition with Schoenberg; where Schoenberg would return periodically to tonality in his desire to have his music more widely appreciated; where Stravinsky would transcend his antipathy toward Sergey Rachmaninoff and become so influenced by Schoenberg that Ingolf Dahl would find the Stravinskys‘ living room fill with the sounds of Schoenberg‘s Verklarte Nacht. It became a place where 62 Stravinsky could hear Leadbelly (the folk and blues musician Huddie Ledbetter); where the youthful John Cage‘s enthusiasm could stimulate Toch‘s composition of a new work; where novels by Thomas Mann and Lion Feuchtwanger would inspire compositions by Toch and Zador; where Franz Waxman‘s film and television income would enable him to found and lead for twenty years a music festival to be established in Santa Barbara. Down on the coast, Ernst Krenek would establish a revolutionary faculty of composers at the new University of California, San Diego.‖ 36 Thus, the ―exiles in paradise‖ aphorism is an ironic or, at least, imaginary one. In fact, the congregating and intermingling of these modernists was not in any paradisal wilderness of historical, cultural or biblical lore, but in the most ordinary modern domestic spaces. Save for a substantial drive time between homes (as is customary in the city of Los Angeles), the different mediums of their particular art, and the occasional institutional resistance to abstraction, these émigrés were not so ―isolated.‖ Earlier modernists in California exhibited this same tendency towards bohemian community and inclusion of the arts. According to Dailey, it was Henrietta Shore, whose paintings of seashells influenced her companion, photographer Edward Weston, to photograph the same, while it was Weston who suggested Shore visit Mexico after his fruitful artistic years in that country; it was Merle Armitage, husband to actress/ artist Elise, in his role as impresario arranged work for Franz Geritz to make woodcuts of visiting opera stars; it was rare book dealer Alice Millard, who commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design her Pasadena home, and who hired book designer Ward Ritchie as a catalogue printer; it was Ritchie who organized the first exhibitions of Paul Landacre and Edward Weston; and it was Frank Lloyd Wright who designed Zeitlin‘s bookshop. 37 63 th Zeitlin‘s bookshop on West 6 Street was one of the most important modernist meeting places. Influenced heavily by the Weyhe bookshop in New York which exhibited local artists‘ work, Zeitlin used this space to feature the work of Landacre, Geritz, Shore, Connell, Weston, and Orozco. More than just an exhibition space, Zeitlin‘s bookshop became a ―clubhouse of modernism.‖ According to Zeitlin himself, ―After a while the bookshop became more than the expression of myself; it became the expression of the wishes and the dreams of a great many other people.‖ 38 Likewise, aside from his own bookshop, the home of Ward Ritchie, affectionately known as ―the Ritchie Roadhouse,‖ was the meeting place of The Rounce & Coffin Club, an organization dedicated to fine printing and established by Zeitlin. At these meetings one could spot printmakers, music composers, animators, architects, writers, directors and even lawyers. 39 Homes, in fact, were often at the center of both American and European modernists‘ social and artistic lives. Zeitlin and Armitage were regulars at Gershwin‘s home in Beverly Hills, for instance. 40 The Freeman House, designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1924-1925 for Harriet Freeman and her husband, Sam, became another modernist meeting place. ―Located in a community of artists, actors, musicians, and art cubs,‖ says Shivers, ―the house became the center of a group of creative free-thinkers‖ including Weston, Scheyer, Schindler, director Jean Negulesco, dancer Wyn Evans, bandleader Xavier Cugat, and actor Albert Van Dekker. 41 Likewise, the Schindler‘s house in West Hollywood was abuzz with artist activity, featuring ―poets, playwrights, dancers, photographers, musicians, socialists, reformers, intellectuals, of all sorts‖ like Weston, Cage and Theodore Dreiser. In particular, their home served as a 64 performance space featuring dance and chamber music recitals. Many of these visitors, like Galka Scheyer, became tenants or temporary residents at the house. 42 This interconnectedness among artists and the arts continued through the post-WWII era but under a different set of social, cultural and political conditions related primarily to the further development of modernist aesthetics, the institutionalization of modernism through the reform of state power, and the context of the Cold War. A key factor in the growth of this new art was the G.I. Bill of Rights in 1944, which provided federal assistance to military veterans in earning an education, thereby turning once-quiet college campuses into giant, bustling knowledge factories. In jostling for position with the Soviet Union, the United States required an educated workforce to develop certain areas of the military-industrial complex. Though the bill was not intended solely to produce artists, those discharged from the military interested in personal betterment or developing their creative faculties were able to enroll in art courses at many colleges and universities across the country. According to Candida Smith, the bill ―proved to be one of the most important pieces of legislation ever affecting the arts.‖ It not only offered subsidized student education, it ―brought new art, drama, dance, and writing schools into existence, and revivified old, waning schools,‖ many of which employed modern artists as teachers which, ―unlike work for the depression-era programs, left them free to pursue their personal vision of art.‖ 43 Thus, by 1947, college enrollment nationwide had increased 75% over the prewar numbers. 44 California in particular benefitted greatly from the G.I. Bill, as many returning soldiers enrolled in art programs across the state. A study conducted in 1949 found that more G.I. Bill veterans attending UCLA in 1946 chose to study the humanities over the sciences than non-veterans. Furthermore, the more important art schools in California—the California School of Fine Arts, the California School of 65 Arts and Crafts, the Chouinard Art Institute, and the Otis Art Institute—saw 40 to 69% veteran enrollment from between 1946 and 1952. 45 In effect, these colleges and universities served as training centers for many of the next wave of modernists. However, the early Cold War era is not defined by a period of increased spending on education, but as a period of ―affluence and anxiety;‖ an era defined by renewed economic growth and political power, but one in the midst of many affective epidemics such as anticommunist fervor, the threat of nuclear annihilation, high-ranking ―traitors‖ in the State Department and other social pressures related to maintaining a consensus culture. 46 However, as Erica Doss points out, these anxieties can also be attributed to ―growing doubts that affluence and abundance were really what defined the American experience, the American character.‖ As Warren Sussman explained, Doss says, ―for many postwar Americans the world of leisure became a source of fear. A culture seemingly fulfilled was, ironically, often unhappy. The manifestations of its despair were evidenced in a variety of postwar media, from intellectual tomes and noir movies to abstract expressionist paintings.‖ 47 The new avant-garde modernism of this era redefined the concept of the ―abstract‖—vis a vis hard-edge painting, assemblage art, and the ―L.A. Look‖ in particular—by responding to this environment; reflecting, sometimes challenging these anxieties. Isolation, said art critic Clement Greenberg in the Partisan Review in 1948, lay at the root of this post-war modernist art: ―Isolation, or rather the alienation that is its cause, is the truth—isolation, alienation, naked and revealed unto itself, is the condition under which the true reality of our age is experienced. And the experience of this true reality is indispensable to any ambitious art.‖ 48 Thus, it comes as no surprise that Jackson Pollock‘s War (1947) represents the fragility of human life under the threat 66 of nuclear warfare or that George Tooker‘s The Subway (1950) expresses the nakedness and vulnerability of the ―McCarthyite paranoia‖ of the era. 49 Isolation was not simply expressed through the depictions of the paranoid style or through a rejection of realism, natural figures or landscapes, etc. Rather, isolation was experienced by post-WWII modernists themselves through organizing into bohemian communities. Some, like the Ferus Gallery collective, organized more formally through their association with an art institution. Others convened more socially around living spaces. For instance, while modernist communities appeared in the Santa Monica, Topanga Canyon and Beverly Glen areas well before the Cold War they became all the more important after World War II. It was Venice, CA in particular that became the focal point of the new post-war bohemian modernism largely as a result of Lawrence Lipton‘s The Holy Barbarians (1959), a book that elevated (if not romanticized) Beat culture and its relation to jazz music (among other things like marijuana and pacifism) to national prominence. Of course, the book detailed a movement already in full swing in Northern California, precipitated by a literary Renaissance in San Francisco headlined by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Rexroth, Bob Kaufman, Phillip Whalen and others. Pollock, perhaps more than any other artist of the era, has been at the center of the discussions of abstract expressionism and postwar anxiety. Born in Cody, Wyoming in 1912, Pollock made a name for himself in New York City, but not before being raised in Chico, Orland and Riverside, California. Later he attended, for a short time, Los Angeles‘s Manual Arts High School and Chouinard Art Institute in the late 1920s, familiarizing himself with the works of everyone from Orozco to Merrild. 50 Initially, Pollock painted in the regionalist vein along with is mentor, Thomas Hart Benton. However, it was, in all probably, in Los Angeles where Pollock 67 collected the modernist sensibilities which would define him by the late 1940s. His trademark ―drip technique,‖ was used to create ―action paintings‖ composed of cacophonous, spaghetti-like strands of color layered on top of one another. This was accomplished by placing a wet canvas on the floor and splattering, flinging or dripping paint from his fingers onto it from every angle, sometimes stepping onto the canvas itself; stepping in to the painting as he worked. His style was not completely unique however as his drip technique was most likely an appropriation of Knud Merrild‘s ―flux‖ paintings the early 1940s. The impressionist Charles Reiffel, who moved from New York City to San Diego in 1925, also created ―drip-trail‖ paintings around this time which could have been seen by Pollock during his tenure on the West Coast. 51 Nevertheless, Pollock‘s ―action paintings,‖ like Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) in 1950, evoke the rhythmic, improvisational and experimental elements of the jazz aesthetic and mid-century modernism. 52 More important is Pollock‘s relationship to the larger historical context. According to Doss, Pollock‘s art not only attempted to alleviate the pressures of isolation and anxiety upon American culture but to provide an alternative model of lived experience. ―Feeling himself caught in a trap where the American majority supposedly shared such contradictory assumptions as a sense of domestic complacency and a paranoid fear of communism,‖ says Doss, Pollock responded with an abstract expressionist stylings which comprised ―attempts to liberate himself from both traditional modes of artmaking and ties to consensus culture‖ 53 Also among the more prominent West Coast avant-garde abstractionists of the era were hard-edge painters like John McLaughlin, Karl Benjamin, and Frederick Hammersley, whose compositions were distinguished by smooth, minimal, geometric forms representing ―a total rejection of figure/ground relationships.‖ 54 According to art critic Jules Langsner, who organized the famous Four Abstract Classicists exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum in 68 1959, hard-edge painting ―forms are finite, flat, rimmed by a hard, clean edge…these clean-edge forms are presented in uniform flat colors running border to border.‖ 55 This school of painting, art historian Peter Plagens says, revealed the ―current of sensibility in the esthetic climate of Los Angeles… [its] desert air, youthful cleanliness, spatial expanse,‖ and the ―architectural tradition‖ related closely to Schindler, Neutra and others. 56 Benjamin‘s Totem Group IV (1957), Hammersley‘s Come (1962) and McLaughlin‘s Untitled Geometric Composition (1956) are prime examples. Sustaining this postwar art was a swath of important art galleries of which perhaps the Ferus Gallery is most significant in that it produced more radical strains of abstraction and more prominent modern artists than any other. Founded in 1957 by Walter Hopps and Edward Kienholz, the gallery featured many of the ―assemblage‖ artists such as Kienholz, Wallace Berman, and Bruce Connor. Assemblage is a process whereby one creates three-dimensional art compositions made of ―found objects.‖ In many cases, assemblage artists in Los Angeles would rummage through trash heaps and dumpsters, scavenge for discarded objects, and incorporate what they found in ways which formed a collage of colors, shapes, textures, etc. Plagens calls assemblage ―the first home-grown California modern art:‖ ―Its materials are the cast-off, broken, charred, weathered, water-damaged, lost, forgotten, fragmentary remains of everyday life; old furniture, snapshots, newspaper headlines, dolls, dishes, glassware, beads, clothing, books, tin cans, license plates, feathers, tar, electric cord, bellows, cameras, lace, playing cards, knobs, nails, and string—adhering not shiny and whole, but piecemeal and tarnished, as melancholic memorabilia, or Draculalike social comment.‖ 69 57 San Francisco in particular, says Plagens, appeared to be its ―natural home,‖ ―a wedding-cake fantasy land of tightly-packed, conglomerate esthetics: ocean, hills, mansions, row houses, neoclassic granite, trolley tracks, folkisms, ethnic communities, and imported ‗culture.‘ Its randomness is the inspiration and its gentility the target.‖ However, he also notes that it was George Herms, part of the Ferus collective, who called Hermosa Beach, CA an ―assemblageenvironment.‖ 58 More generally, says Rebecca Solnit, assemblage ―dealt with abandonment, redefinition, juxtaposition, fragmentation, and ideas of order‖ which addressed the unique experience of post-war California life. In line with Pollock‘s art, assemblage was therefore not merely identifying Cold War pressures but attempting to awaken consciousness: ―It acknowledged the brave new world of manufacturing and accumulating, consuming and discarding, and it challenged the hierarchies of value in American culture.‖ 59 Kienholz‘s George Washington is a Drag (1957) and (Its takes Two to Integrate) Cha, Cha, Cha (1961) are perhaps the most explicit in its attempt to awaken this consciousness whereas Kienholz‘s The State Hospital (1966), Connor‘s The Bride (1960) and The Bedroom (1959) indicts the gentility and ignorance of ―average Americans.‖ 60 The Ferus Gallery was also instrumental in developing the ―L.A. Look,‖ a ―cool, semitechnoligical, industrially pretty art made in and around Los Angeles in the sixties‖ by many in its collective such as Craig Kauffman, Billy Al Bengston, and Robert Irwin. According to Plagens, ―The patented ‗look‘ was elegance and simplicity, and the mythical material was plastic, including polyester resin, which has several attractions: permanence (indoors), an aura of difficulty and technical expertise, and a preciousness (when polished) rivaling bronze or 70 marble. It has, in short, the aroma of Los Angeles in the sixties—newness, postcard sunset color, and intimations of aerospace profundity.‖ 61 Robert Irwin‘s aluminum discs, Larry Bell‘s glass installations, and Kauffman‘s pill-like plastic wall reliefs mimic the ―look‖ of Los Angeles, as its ―physical demography‖ or ―urban landscape‖ of the postwar years ―consist[ed] of functional (or dreary) economical (or cheap) stucco boxes, and big-building architectural ornament of stainless steel, neon, and plastic (instead of granite, marble or bronze). 62 The people, environments, aesthetics, and movements accounted for to this point are responsible for laying the modernist groundwork necessary in forging a distinct jazz modernism th in 20 century California and, ultimately, the phenomenon known as West Coast jazz. While these works are not examples of jazz-shaped art per se, there is a plethora of examples in which the adjuncts of modern art strongly connect to a jazz ―impulse‖ in that time and place. We see this impulse evidenced in a variety of artistic forms such as painting, design, architecture, photography, sculpture, film, literature, and above all, music. It is in surveying the canvas of modern art, even to a small degree, that we see the depth and breadth of jazz culture extends far beyond previous inquiries. Furthermore, I want to position these art forms in greater relation to each other by showing the deep interconnectedness of those forms and of those who created them. In identifying and tracking the jazz inflections of the California art world we not only distinguish the many tributaries of modernism more clearly, we can observe the most important attributes of jazz modernism as well. Elephants on Parade: Synaesthesia and the Jazzing of Art Cultures 71 The jazz-shaped art in California often experimented with hybridism or cross-breeding genres under similar aesthetic principles. Throughout the history of jazz, as a music, we see many of its influenced offshoots: jazz dance, jazz poetry, and the like. But these are not at the crux of my interest here. My aim is less explore these categories as autonomous bodies in and of themselves or the ways in which they borrow from jazz, somehow implying that they merely orbit the music. Rather, I consider these forms as interrelated, mutually dependant on one another, informed by one another, forming a network or circuit in which ideas flow within and without. In this formulation, jazz dance, for instance, becomes an athletic, physically expressive manifestation of the jazz impulse—one materialization of jazz modernity—which appropriates and powers jazz painting, jazz photography and so on. Though this type of connectivity is not exclusive to the West Coast by mid-century, there is ample to room to distinguish the particularities of California‘s brand of jazz modernism. As early as 1926, as Robert Crunden argues, a ―language of modernism‖ began to emerge in America as various modernist dialects began to communicate and understand each other better. 63 In their various works, Donna Cassidy, Alfred Appel, Erica Doss, Richard Candida Smith, Victoria Dailey, and others have shown the synaesthetic possibilities of these mergers in the early modern era, particularly in the relationship between jazz and the visual arts: Henri Matisse and his collection titled Jazz (1948); the jazz nationalism of Arthur Dove, whose Rhapsody in Blue, Part I (1927) employs ―an abstract visual language‖ to illustrate George Gershwin‘s tune by the same name; Stuart Davis, who painted while listening to jazz; and Francis Picabia‘s homages to Harlem. Modernist painters in particular went beyond appropriating jazz as a theme in their work and instead conceived it as a ―process‖ that is ―analogous to musical structure and composition.‖ 72 64 We see this in John Marin‘s ―visual music,‖ Kandinsky‘s ―color music,‖ McDonald-Wright‘s ―color harmony,‖ and many others. By midcentury, modernist dialects were not only communicating and understanding each other, they were actively cross-pollinating and fusing together in ways which demonstrated the reach of artistic expression. If we remain attentive to painting, sculpture, assemblage, and film in particular, we can observe this synaesthesia between jazz and the visual arts continuing in more radical and experimental ways. For instance, hard-edge painting, according to Elizabeth Armstrong, bore many of the familiar marks of ―cool jazz,‖ a style popular on the West Coast which ―launched a reaction to the predominant bebop form,‖ contrasting its ―more restrained‖ and ―more classically modernist tone‖ with the ―fervency‖ of bebop and East Coast abstractions. 65 The work of the Four Abstract Classicists (Feitelson, Hammersley, Benjamin and McLaughlin) speaks within the jazz idiom with a ―syncopated,‖ and ―distinctive vocabulary of rhythmic, flat forms, and pulsating, pure hues.‖ 66 Benjamin‘s compositions in particular were identified by Langsner as ―a series of percussive notes that would bring joy to the heart of [jazz drummer] Gene Krupa.‖ 67 McLaughlin was even more explicit in his Untitled Composition (1952), a composition of 4 geometric shapes representing a record turntable: the large circle in habiting the center of the painting representing the revolving platform; the longitudinal rectangle representing the arm mechanism, the small horizontal rectangle representing the speed modulator, etc. Pollock too created works analogous to jazz aesthetics. As Doss points out, ―Dropping obvious narrative references to the America folk and to cultural nationalism, Pollock pioneered an improvisational painting style characterized by its thick, gestural application of paint, its ambivalent spatial relations, and its emphasis on aesthetic experimentation.‖ 68 Pollock‘s interest in jazz went beyond the utilitarian, however. His wife, Lee Krasner, has written about Pollock‘s 73 deep obsession with the music as he ―would get into grooves of listening to his jazz records not just for days day and night, day and night for three days running, until you thought you would climb the roof!...He thought [jazz] was the only other really creative thing that was happening in this country.‖ 69 But Pollock was not singular in his love and in his use of jazz. The Ferus Gallery collective were among the most prominent appropriators of jazz music aesthetics. Before he cofounded the gallery, Walter Hopps was organizing jazz shows with Jim Newman (who later directed the Dilexi Gallery) and Craig Kauffman under the name Concert Hall Workshop in the early 1950s. One memorable exhibition organized by the Workshop in 1954 titled Action featured the abstract or ―action paintings‖ of local West Coast artists and was held inside a merry-go-round building in Santa Monica where recorded jazz was broadcast to mix freely with the visual arts. According to the flyer for the event, the mix of audio and visual elements was intended to imply an ―aesthetic compatibility‖ between the two genres. 70 While many of its members were jazz aficionados and produced jazz-shaped art, it was assemblage artist Wallace Berman whose relationship with jazz dwarfed the others. Born in Staten Island, NY in 1926, Berman settled in Los Angeles in 1930. By the 1940s he had failed to see through to the end his stints in the Navy, Fairfax high school (which expelled him for 71 gambling), Chouinard and Jepson. Berman‘s art, like his persona, was brooding, haunting and private, and his formulations of jazz and jazz culture were at once praiseful and cynical. Though he was a white man and primarily a visual artist, Berman was part of a larger jazz community. He often wore a zoot suit, dated jazz dancer, Loree Fox, listened to Charlie Parker, and was wellknown and well-respected in African American circles, particularly among African American jazzmen. According to Joan Simon, he had ―immerse[ed] himself in the thriving Los Angeles 74 jazz scene. He was always drawing… he had written rhythm and blues tunes with Jimmy Witherspoon, one of his drawings had been used on a bebop album cover for the new Dial label…‖ 72 Moreover, like his early modernist predecessors, Berman‘s Beverly Glen home was a hub or meeting place for a variety of artistic modernists. In the words of one friend, ―There would be a jazz saxophonist, a drug dealer, a tap dancer, a poet, a painter, the grocery guy down the street—sort of an underground salon.‖ 73 Berman‘s self-published journal known as Semina (1958-1964), not only features the work of his artist friends but structures his relationship with the larger avant-garde community of jazz modernists. One of those friends was tenor saxophonist Wardell Gray, with whom Berman was close enough to include in a collage poster in Semina #8 (1963) several years after Gray was found dead in a desert outside Las Vegas. Gray rocketed to fame in the mid-1940s after his recording of ―The Chase‖ with fellow tenor-man Dexter Gordon. Considered one of the finest tenor ―battles‖ of its time, ―The Chase‖ pit Gray and Gordon against each other in a test of musical skill and ingenuity during late night jam sessions, but it was producer Ross Russell, another friend of Berman‘s, who captured Gray and Gordon‘s battle in the recording studio. The album art to The Chase (1946) in which Gordon is seen literally ―chasing‖ Gray, is featured within a collage on the cover of Semina VI (1960). 74 Among the first professional jobs Berman did was for a series of album covers for Dial Records (owned by Russell). His first was for his 75 idol, Charlie Parker. Berman also included the artist twice in Semina #7 in 1961. The first, featured photos of Parker, a lion and the Hebraic letter ―A‖ with the words, ―Bird 1920-1955‖ underneath in eulogistic fashion. To Berman, the world of jazz easily translated to his assemblages and collages. According to Ken Allan, assemblage functioned as a catalyst for Berman‘s avant-garde aesthetic. 75 Semina, in particular, structured artists‘ relationship to jazz. The publication was a collection of loose cards, indexed in no particular order, allowing the reader to choose his or her path through. The unbounded format of Semina thus fostered an improvisational space within which visual artists could connect to its sonic equivalent: jazz. In other words, African American jazz artists represented this California modernist avant-garde but from another angle. Allan calls the jazzlike nature of Semina a ―performative response‖ to ―unite a group of individuals through their common interest in an alternative history of the arts‖ and bridge the broad expanse of artists in Los Angeles. In this way, ―The Chase,‖ with its back and forth exchange of ideas between Gray and Gordon, illustrates Berman‘s aesthetic interest in ―forming a creative dialogue across the arts‖ and to open lines of reciprocity between what poet Bob Alexander called ―brothers in a world of creativity.‖ Like Pollock, Berman‘s improvisational art supplied the basis for an imagined community. Semina, then, provided the venue where musicians and visual artists exchanged cultural ideas. 76 Architecture did not remain immune from synaesthesic interpretations. In fact, California assemblage artists reflected the jazz impulse within their designs. Perhaps the best known—as well as the largest—assemblage piece in the West is the Watts Towers, designed and built by Italian immigrant Sabato (Simon) Rodia from 1921 until 1955, when Rodia mysteriously left the deed to the property to a neighbor and silently moved away from Los Angeles. The Towers are composed of 17 structures built using steel pipes, rods, and wire mesh as a frame which included porcelain, tile and glass, the tallest of which stands over 99 feet high. Embedded throughout are ―found objects‖ like bed frames, sea shells, and 7UP bottles. As a sign of cultural unity in the Watts area, Rodia named his Towers Nuestro Pueblo, or, ―our town.‖ In fact, the local Watts 76 community had a hand in its construction, as local schoolchildren would often contribute bits and pieces of scrap to Rodia in the hopes it would be added to the structure. Of course the Watts area by the mid-1950s was teeming with this type of community involvement in the arts. In particular, Watts was home to many noted jazz musicians like Buddy Collette, Charles Mingus and Big Jay McNeely. It was Mingus who, in his autobiography, reported on the Towers‘ significance within the broader modernist community, writing ―Tig Johnson and Cecil J. McNeely used to gather sacks full of pretty rocks and broken bottles to take to Mr. Rodia, and my boy hung around with them watching him work…‖ 77 According to Steven Isoardi, what connected Mingus and other jazz musicians to the Towers was Rodia‘s ―restless 78 experimentalism.‖ Rodia‘s process of creation, Mingus believed, paralleled jazz creativity: ―He was always changing his ideas while he worked and tearing down what he wasn‘t satisfied with and starting over again, so pinnacles tall as a two-story building would rise up and disappear and rise again. What was there yesterday mightn‘t there next time you looked, but then another lacy-looking tower would spring up in its place.‖ 79 Moreover, Rodia‘s departure from accepted artistic norms led often to rejections of his work. The Towers were received quizzically, even threateningly, by locals who were at a loss as to the purpose or message of the structure. Partly as a result, the Towers succumbed to numerous vandalisms, even at the hands of locals. This rejection, as Mingus points out, was something all too familiar for Rodia‘s musical avantgarde equivalents like Angeleno jazz artists. The Towers‘ were also deeply connected to a small collective of African American visual artists like John Outterbridge and Noah Purifoy as well as musical artists like Judson Powell. Outterbridge was born in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1933 where his father, whose occupation as a recycler, no doubt imparted great influence onto his son‘s assemblage 77 sensibilities. In the 1950s, Outterbridge employed his skills in the military, making camouflage while serving in Germany during the Korean War before moving to Los Angeles in 1963. 80 ―One thing that I was influenced by when I came to California was almost an assembled kind of culture,‖ he said: ―It was innovative. It was daring at times. It was damn near backward at times. But it was uniquely progressive… I began to think maybe assemblage was a discipline that had as much to do with the way one assembles one‘s life and vision as with the material that you use. It seems that we all assemble notions, directives, disciplines, disappointments. We put all these things together as we see a new mode of expression as a way to live. California taught me that.‖ 81 The Towers were perhaps the most influential assemblage piece for Outterbridge. Upon moving to Los Angeles, he and his wife drove through Watts and were shocked by the Towers: rd ―We drove down 103 Street and there was a shopping center, theater, and then I spotted out of the corner of my eyes, to my left, some strange structure that I didn‘t know anything about. That was the Watts Towers. I said, ‗Wow! What is that?‘ ...I couldn‘t take my eyes off the structure. I said, ‗Man, that is a magic thing!‖ And I met at that time two artists who were part of what was then the Watts Towers Arts Center, like a little row house. The people that I met that Sunday afternoon were Noah Purifoy and Judson 82 Powell.‖ The Art Center, made possible by the work of the Committee for Simon Rodia‘s Towers in Watts founded in 1959 and a grant from a federal program linked to President Johnson‘s ―War on Poverty‖ initiative in 1964, was co-founded by Purifoy, a ―junk‖ or assemblage artist whose compositions drew in part from early modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi, and Powell, a Los 78 Angeles-based musician, as a forum dedicated to education in creative processes and developing young African Americans artists. 83 Since 1963, the Towers have been declared an L.A. Historical-Cultural Monument, a California National Landmark and a U.S. National Historical Landmark, with Outterbridge serving as its director of the Art Center from 1975 until 1992. The Towers‘ connection to jazz has become more apparent in the wake of the urban uprising in Watts in 1965, turning an urban landmark into a symbol of cultural pride and nationalism. In the following year Thomas Pynchon, author of such jazz-drenched novels like Entropy (1960) and V (1963), published an article titled ―A Journey into the Mind of Watts,‖ in the New York Times Magazine which described the Towers as ―a fantasy of fountains, boats, tall openwork spires encrusted with a dazzling mosaic of Watts debris‖ as both a description of the cultural life of the region as well as a commentary of the tumult of the riots themselves. 84 Today, the Art Center has an even stronger link with jazz, hosting and organizing the Simon Rodia Watts Towers Jazz Festival since 1976. In recent years, such as in 2008, the Art Center has placed great emphasis on their ―Son of Watts,‖ Charles Mingus, including a year-long musical and historical tribute to Mingus and the celebrating the opening of the Charles Mingus Youth Arts Center. 85 Another example of the reach of the jazz-impulse is in architectural aesthetics of the home of one of the most well-known California jazz musicians, pianist Dave Brubeck. In 1958, Brubeck hired architect David Thorne to build a new home for him and his family in Oakland, CA. With input from the Brubecks, Thorne built an ultra modern home affectionately known as the ―Tree House‖ or ―Hilltop House.‖ The building reflected a well-established trend in architecture, somewhat in the Lloyd Wright/Schindler/Neutra vein. Rather than clear away the rugged natural environment to make room for the home, it was designed and engineered to be 79 integrated into the landscape, situated against a hill with a steep incline, engulfed by pine and eucalyptus trees. A three-level cantilever style house, certain levels of the home protrude outward engaging in a balancing act thanks to a rock outcropping which serves as an anchor point to stabilize the entire structure. According to Brubeck, ―The Tree House was one of Dave Thorne‘s first designs. When we first talked with him about building a home on a steep lot that we had purchased, Thorne was still a student at University of California. It took us about 5 years to save enough money to think about building. So, by the time we were ready to build, Thorne had established a practice and was getting a good reputation locally. He stuck with his original concept of a cantilevered construction. I believe it was the first in the Oakland hills. Hardly anyone can believe that the original house only cost $27,000, but it was built on modules and standard specifications to keep the cost down.‖ 86 Like Schindler and Neutra before him, Thorne‘s Hilltop House played on blurring the boundaries between domesticity and wilderness. For instance, the surfeit of glass encasing much of the house lets available natural light flood the interior while its elevated location effectively constructs an ―eagle‘s nest‖ from which to glimpse picturesque views of the Bay Area. These aspects, as with the indoor-outdoor rock garden, literally bring the outdoors indoors. Brubeck, commenting in 1960 said, ―It‘s a wonderful feeling to wake up in the morning and see nothing but trees.‖ 87 Communing with nature in this way factored into Brubeck‘s creative processes: ―From 6630 Heartwood Drive [the location of the Hilltop House] you could look out through the Golden Gate and on a clear day see all the way to the Farralone Islands. From our windows we could see all the bridges in the Bay Area from the San Mateo Bridge in the south to the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate straight out the window and to 80 the north, the Richmond Bridge. We looked across the Bay to Mt. Tamalpais and down the hill to Lake Merritt. We were high enough elevation that often the fog rolling in through the Golden Gate rose to a point just below us, forming a white carpet that 88 obscured the rest of the world. Who wouldn‘t be inspired?‖ The home was also a musical venue, as indicated by the $10,000 Ampex recording/ practice studio located in one corner of the house. In a letter to Brubeck, Thorne wrote that the house should be acoustically pleasing as well as beautiful; specifically, on solving ―acoustic problems‖ but also ―creating a great piece of architecture.‖ 89 Interestingly, both Brubeck and Thorne indicated the musical significance of the home‘s architecture itself. In another letter to Brubeck, Thorne notes his interest in careful consideration of the room‘s design in order to create a ―superior‖ studio. ―Your creative drives,‖ he said to Brubeck, ―are similar to mine.‖ 90 ―The whole Time Out album was conceived and rehearsed in that room,‖ Brubeck said. ―My first solo recording was also made in that room with me being my own engineer. That album, Brubeck Plays Brubeck, is still being sold today.‖ 91 In an ad for Bethlehem Steel from 1958 which featured the Hilltop House, Brubeck was quoted as saying, ―The way we look at it, this house expresses much of my wife‘s personality and my own. As a musician, I feel that if inspiration can come from good surroundings, I‘ll find it here.‖ 92 Of central importance, however, was Brubeck‘s conception of his home as modern art. ―It is inconceivable to Iola and me to build a th th th th new home in the 20 century that looks like something from the 17 , 18 , or 19 centuries,‖ he said. 93 This architectural style of Thorne, Joseph Eichler, Pierre Koenig and others which descended from the Lloyd Wright/Schindler/Neutra era represented a ―cool‖ modernist lifestyle 81 concept by mid-century according to Elizabeth A.T. Smith. On a mass scale, this coolness, exhibited a ―relaxed but self-conscious confidence brought about by technologically based economic prosperity alongside the growing presence and popularity of the film and television 94 industries.‖ With the help of these mass media outlets the cool concept permeated almost every sphere of California modernism. From photography to fashion, from design to music, ―cool‖ came to represent a distinct form of modern urbanity in the region. On a personal level, cool often manifested in a ―cerebral mix of seeming detachment and effortlessness,‖ or an ―emotional distance or purity‖ as seen in its modern archetypes; musicians like Miles Davis and Chet Baker, or in actors James Dean and Marlon Brando. 95 ―Cool jazz,‖ a neo-bop style of jazz, was the musical embodiment of this aesthetic. The cool style was of particular prominence in the West Coast jazz movement though Davis, a Midwesterner living on the East Coast, is credited with its development. His Birth of the Cool (1949) with its lush, classically-infused compositional style is considered to be the figurative ―birth‖ of the aesthetic, while Baker‘s relaxed swinging, mid-register improvisations and breathy tone—each signs of cool restraint—were distinguished from the frenetic pace, heavy vibrato and virtuosic improvisational calisthenics of bebop. However, it was Eichler and Koenig, whose affordable, mass-produced homes made of experimental drafting and materials, who brought modernism into the domestic interior of California. As in the designs of Schindler and Neutra, both Koenig and Eichler composed indoor/outdoor domestic settings in order to integrate the California landscape. However, implicit in this cool modernism as it relates to architecture and design is an expression of postwar masculinity. Koenig‘s Case Study House #21, or ―CSH #21‖ (1958) in the Hollywood Hills stands as a prime example. The binary between ―indoors‖ and ―outdoors‖ is expressed equally in 82 terms of ―masculine‖ and ―feminine;‖ the outdoors representing the rugged, masculine frontiersman or explorer and the indoors representing the feminine ―cult of domesticity.‖ The famous photograph of CSH #21 by Jules Shulman reinforces the gendered power relations intrinsic to these homes. In the photograph Koenig himself stands at a turntable located in the immediate interior of the house while a fashionably-dressed woman sits on the couch in the foreground, her eyes looking forlorn into the distance. The scene here, according to Smith, ―understates and domesticates the consummate coolness, rigor, and rationality of modern architecture.‖ 96 Likewise, Oriel Lucero has observed that Schulman ―represents the ideal household by way of the gender relationships‖ as ―the woman sits on the couch as a testament to her domesticity, while the man operates the stereo as proof of his familiarity with the modern and mechanical,‖ thus exemplifying ―the hopes of the post war utopia.‖ 97 This connection between architecture, design, and media with masculinity are further observed in the pages of Hugh Hefner‘s Playboy Magazine and in his short-lived television show, Playboy‟s Penthouse (1959). Hefner, who came to represent the height of coolness, was himself a staunch lover and supporter of jazz. Playboy became the mouthpiece of Hefner‘s jazz enthusiasm when it established its annual jazz poll in 1957, later founding and sponsoring the first Playboy Jazz Festival in Chicago in 1959. The festival did not resume again until in 1979 after it resurfaced in Los Angeles, continuing there annually ever since. Also in 1959—and only in 1959—Playboy‟s Penthouse attempted to capitalize on other jazz television shows of the late 1950s like Stars of Jazz and The Subject is Jazz. In similar fashion, Playboy‟s Penthouse featured not only performances by noted jazz artists as well as discussion forums on contemporary jazz issues. A range of celebrities like jazz singers Anita O‘Day, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald 83 along with comedian Lennie Bruce and actor Bob Newhart, would carouse, laugh and drink while Hefner, the host, loosely directed the conversation. Where the show most departed from Stars of Jazz and The Subject is Jazz is in its set which made to look like the interior of a modern Koenig-esque home: the living room of a modern bachelor pad. Replacing serious analysis of jazz, the show was more a blueprint for how to express middle-class masculinity by entertaining guests in one‘s home. Likewise, in the April 1959 issue of Playboy, Hefner included designs for what was called ―Playboy‘s Weekend Hideaway,‖ a house resembling, almost to perfection, one of Koenig‘s Case Study Homes, featuring glass walls, indoor-outdoor living, cantilevered construction and of course, a backyard pool. 98 Thus, the ―bachelor pad‖ theme, as with Koenig at the turntable in Shulman‘s photo, depicts power and gender in another way: through identifying ―jazz connoisseurship with upscale masculinity.‖ 99 Artist and designer Charles Eames brings many strains of art, from furniture to film to music, within even closer proximity to each other than previous California modernists. The son of St. Louis architect, William Eames, Charles Eames was trained at Washington University in St. Louis and the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI. Upon marrying his second wife, a former Cranbrook colleague, Ray Kaiser, he relocated to Los Angeles in 1941 where he began to build a national reputation as a designer of mass-produced industrial office furniture fashioned from experimental materials and using high technology effectively merging the corporate and domestic worlds. With Ray as his collaborator, Eames‘s DCW (Dining Chair Wood) (1945) made from molded plywood, his Eiffel Plastic Armchair (1950) and Aluminum Group furniture (1958), for instance, were inspired from aerospace technology yet made 84 practical, affordable, and most of all, comfortable. ―What works is better than what looks good,‖ said Ray. ―The looks can change, but what works, works.‖ 100 According to Armstrong, the Eames‘ functional designs ―reflect[ed] the ideal and informal domesticity‖ we find in the works of Koenig, Shulman and Hefner. 101 But these were not limited to furniture. Rather, they extended into architecture, photography, film, and audioacoustics. For instance, the Eames‘ designed and built the Case Study Home #8 as their own home in Pacific Palisades, CA in 1949. Observing the exterior of the house, David Dunster has noted, ―Eames‘ house uses existing industrially made components in a straightforward and workmanlike way. But he uses the paneling necessary for an industrial grid in an inventive way. The exterior of his house consists of transparent panels, clear or wired glass; translucent panels which are glass fibre and opaque ones which are wood, grey asbestos, aluminum and coloured blue, red, earth colour, black, or, on occasion, covered with plaster covered with gold leaf.‖ 102 In this way, the Eames‘ home bears a striking resemblance to Mondrian‘s synchromist paintings of the early modern era. Nevertheless, as Frank Harris and Weston Bonenberger argue, the house ―was designed as an attempt toward a living pattern and not as a fixed architectural pattern.‖ 103 The Eames‘s themselves shot the interior of their home in a film titled House: After Five Years Living (1955) in which the auters synchronize shots of the home, inside and out, to composer Elmer Bernstein‘s music. Indeed, in surveying the interior of the home, it is undeniably livable and lived in. Bric-a-brac almost infests the home, signaling a considerable length of time has been spent in it. There are baubles abound, like wall-mounted Asian art. The coffee table is practically unusable given almost every inch of it is taken up by small conversation pieces. This, 85 along with various types of furniture bearing an obvious Eames stamp makes the home a heavily domesticated sphere that is at once a repository for masculine quarry (ex. animal busts) as well as feminine home life. Eames‘s film, American Look (1958), sponsored by Chevrolet, draws similar connections between postwar domestic life and design, including scenes of a nuclear family barbequing in the backyard of a Case Study Home, emphasizing the ―utility, convenience and beauty‖ of such brica-brac and thus reinforcing notions of femininity within the domestic sphere. 104 One of these pieces within the home of this nuclear family is Eames‘s Quadreflex stereo loudspeaker designed for Stephens Tru-Sonic in 1956. The Quadreflex references mid-century modernism in its construction as well as the ―modern and mechanical‖ masculinity seen in Hefner‘s jazz connoisseurship. The speaker appears recycled out of one of Eames‘ chairs; made of plywood with a swiveling base made of metal; simple and utilitarian. The speaker cabinet, according to Willard Spiegelman, is reminiscent of the hard-edge paintings of John McLaughlin, in particular his Untitled Composition (1952): it ―is itself—a circle within a box, within another box—a kind of painterly abstraction.‖ 105 Moreover, according to Hine, its controls were ―small and uniform; they were for people in the know, not for the neophyte.‖ As such, these commodities stood ―relatively cool and uncommunicative about how they worked or even what their purpose was.‖ Like the new mid-century modernist icon, the mainframe computer, Eames‘s speaker was impenetrably cool, ―it knew everything but expressed nothing.‖ 106 Eames consciously incorporated jazz music into his films. In some cases, the music offered a complementary element to the film‘s visual components; i.e. Chet Baker and the Herbie Mann Sextet as a soundtrack to images of visitors to the 1958 Brussels World‘s Fair. While these offer more banal uses of jazz, the more significant examples are in his experimental films which 86 won international acclaim in the 1950s. The first, called Tops (1957), was produced for the Stars of Jazz television program shot in Los Angeles. Like his architectural and interior designs, Tops is a ―case study‖ or an ―object film‖ which spotlights a variety of spinning tops (as well as dreidel and gyroscope) shot against a jazz soundtrack, evoking synaesthetic possibilities by forcing viewers to wax on the parallels between the motion of the tops and music accompanying them. Eames‘ best known film, however, is Kaleidoscope Jazz Chair (1960), another object film focusing on abstract forms—in this case dozens of Eames‘ plastic stackable chair—using a jazz soundtrack provided by pianist Dick Marx. The multi-mirrored lens provides a visual experience comparable to the orchestration of his chairs of multiple colors configured in taut, geometric formations (not unlike those of California hard-edge paintings), set in motion in queue with the soundtrack in a pattern which prefigures the psychedelic films of the late 1960s. According to Eames, his were ―not experimental films; they‘re just attempts to get across an idea.‖ 107 The objective it seems is to draw connections between various sensory experiences. The tops in Tops, as Spiegelman has noted, are ―pictured spinning or dancing like Wordsworth's daffodils,‖ combining ―balance and drunkenness;‖ it‘s as if the Eameses had taken a Giorgio Morandi still life and made his bottles start to turn.‖ 108 Likewise, the colors, multi-refractory cinematics, and fragmented choreography of Kaleidoscope Jazz Chair aptly signify the expanse of Eames‘ jazzshaped impulses. These disjointed, distorted, yet whimsically collage-like object films were, ―like abstract expressionist painting or bebop music, about process, and not about perfection.‖ 109 Eames was not the only musical-visual experimenter in California, nor was he the first. Among the firsts was Dudley Murphy. A graduate of M.I.T. and former World War I fighter pilot, Murphy headed West after the war and was undoubtedly inspired by his new surroundings, making films which combined visual art, music as well as dance and filmed in iconic California 87 settings: The Soul of the Cypress (1921) at Point Lobos, Anywhere Out of the World (1920) outside Palm Springs, and Aphrodite (1920) throughout the Southland. While no copy of the latter films exists, Susan Delson reads Murphy‘s photographs as a kind of ―storyboard‖ which updates the Greek tragedy in modernist California terms: ―Aphrodite came ashore at Laguna, dances across a field in Santa Monica, walked through a glade in L.A.‘s Elysian Park, and contemplated a small ornamental pond on the Pasadena property of Gaylord and Mary 110 Wilshire.‖ After spending time in Paris in the early 1920s, Murphy returned to California and produced several ―visual symphonies‖ using jazz and starring jazz figures: St. Louis Blues (1929) with Bessie Smith, Black and Tan Fantasy (1929) with the Duke Ellington Orchestra and Eugene O‘Neill‘s Emperor Jones (1933), starring Paul Robeson. Though these were professionally produced Hollywood pictures, they were ―experimental‖ not only in their use of ―modernist touches in montage and dance sequences,‖ but also in departing from the more typical jazz narratives seen in movies like The Jazz Singer (1927) in its more realistic and accurate portrayal of African American culture. 111 One of the most influential audio-visual experimenters was German émigré, Oskar Fischinger. It is in large part to his animations and designs that California became a hotbed of experiments in the field of ―visual music.‖ 112 In the mid-1920s, Fischinger held ―light shows‖ in Berlin where he synchronized recorded music to abstract objects projected on the walls of his studio. Upon coming to Los Angeles in 1936, Fischinger landed a job at the motion picture company Paramount, only to leave soon after due to the company‘s restrictions on total artistic license. Fischinger continued to pursue this avant-garde form of filmmaking, winning international acclaim with his visual music films An Optical Poem (1937). Motion Painting No. 1 (1947) and Radio Dynamics (1942) and later inventing the Lumigraph, a ―color organ,‖ built to 88 visually represent sound by pressing ones hand onto a backlight rubberized screen. His most popular work however came while working at MGM, where he designed the famous animated sequences in Walt Disney‘s Fantasia (1940) to Bach‘s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, though it went uncredited as the Disney company altered his original work. 113 According to Bruce Jenkins, however, ―while a diffused form of his aesthetic was visible in the Disney feature, Fischinger would begin to have a more direct impact on a younger generation of West Coast artists, who encountered him through exhibitions of his paintings and screenings of his early 114 films.‖ One of those filmmakers, John Whitney, served as a cameraman on one of Charles Eames‘ animated film projects for IBM, The Information Machine (1957), a history of computing and information systems. Hailing from Pasadena, CA, Whitney, along with his brother James, was highly influenced by Fischinger‘s work at the San Francisco Museum of Art‘s ―Art in Cinema‖ series in 1946. While both had been making films at a young age, they were highly schooled in a range of artistic genres. John, for instance, studied twelve-tone composition with Rene Leibowitz in Paris, himself a disciple of Ravel and Schoenberg, in the late 1930s. James, who studied painting in England before the war, was also influenced by Schoenberg‘s compositions techniques. Soon after John‘s apprenticeship, he and brother James incorporated Schoenberg‘s serialist ideas into their first collaborative films, Twenty-Four Variations on an Original Theme (c. 1940). According to William Morritz, the piece ―was visually constructed by analogy to Schoenberg‘s serial principles, with a given optical ―tonerow‖ (a ―P‖ shaped configuration formed by an overlapping circle and rectangle) submitted to various inversions, clustering, retrogressions, counterpoints, etc.‖ 115 Of course, the Whitneys, having been exposed to the latest trends in a variety of artistic genres, were aware of the use of 89 serial composition in painting, as evidenced by their 1944 article in Arts and Architecture magazine titled, ―Audio-Visual Music,‖ in which they quote Mondrian and Duchamp in explaining their theoretical approach. More than cameramen, like Fischinger and Eames before them, the Whitneys were inventors and innovators. In the early 1940s, John ―invented a system of pendulums that could be calibrated to draw directly on the soundtrack area of the film precise oscillations that would play back as pure tones.‖ 116 In essence, the contraption ―allowed them to ―write out‖ sound directly without playing or hearing it, following purely mathematical principles—new sounds with electronic timbres, capable of smooth glissandos and intermittency uncharacteristic of traditional 117 musical instruments.‖ With this system, the Whitneys composed a series of their own ―case study‖ films titled Five Film Exercises (1943-44) which David James called a ―cosmic ballet of substantiated light and unearthly sound, and absolute audiovisual composition.‖ 118 It is John Whitney‘s Catalog (1961), however, in which his visual music meets the jazz idiom. This film was made possible by a new invention, the ―analog cam machine,‖ a computerized animation camera featuring a patented ―motion control‖ system, allowing him to superimpose images creating similar kaleidoscopic effects seen in the films of Eames with the music of Ornette Coleman‘s soundtrack. If the Whitney‘s possessed more of an oblique relationship to jazz, their connection is perhaps better seen in their influence on the works of San Francisco ―Beat‖ filmmakers of Harry Smith, Jordan Belson and Hy Hirsh. In addition to the Whitney‘s, Smith, Belson and Hirsh had been influenced by the Fischinger‘s ―motion paintings,‖ yet were more representative of the jazzshaped climate of California. Hirsh is perhaps the most important, yet most unrecognized figure in this movement. In the 1930s, Hirsh worked as a photographer for the Works Progress 90 Administration and as a cinematographer for Columbia Pictures. In the late 1930s, he entered the world of experimental film, working with Harry Hay on the film Even As You or I (1937) and later with surrealist Stanley Peterson. Like other experimental filmmakers, Hirsh was an innovator; one of the first to employ a magnetic tape in soundtrack recording, oscilloscope patterns as a visual medium, and even built his own instruments, like an optical printer, to accomplish his cinematic feats. The jazz soundtracks to his films were more than background music, they were integral to his film‘s language of abstraction. After moving to Europe in 1955—where he spent time in Amsterdam and Paris before his death in Paris in 1961—Hirsh completed a succession of jazz-shaped films like Autumn Spectrum (1957), a film shot in Amsterdam and set to a jazz score; Defense d‟Afficher (1958), in which Hirsh‘s own cinematic inventions set the stage for this object study, a kinetic tour of the densely postered walls and colorful shop windows of a Paris neighborhood ―synchronized with hot, frenetic experimental jazz‖ emerging in the late 1950s; and Chasse de Touches (1959), which carried the subtitle of ―une etude jazz-graphique‖ presents a ―painterly response‖ to the soundtrack courtesy Thelonius Monk‘s ―Evidence.‖ 119 Two of his last films, Scratch Pad (1961) and La Couleur de la Forme (1961), also pairs surrealist images, the former via Hirsh‘s own ―scratched‖ etchings of abstract forms, with jazz. Hirsh left an indelible mark on two of his contemporaries, Harry Smith and Jordan Belson. Smith was born in Portland, Oregon and attended University of Washington to study anthropology. Afterward, he enrolled at University of California, Berkeley, but found himself assimilating into the bohemian community of Bay Area artists rather than academic intellectuals. The music of these bohemian communities was, of course, jazz. Thus, it comes as no surprise that, in his artistic debut in 1950 at the San Francisco Museum of Art‘s ―Art in Cinema‖ series, 91 Smith presented some of his earliest abstract films along with an accompanying jazz band. Moreover, most of Smith‘s first films, A Strange Dream (c. 1946-1948), Message From the Sun (c. 1946-1948), and Interwoven (c. 1947-1949), were not only experimental abstractions set to jazz but were omages to Smith‘s jazz idol, Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie‘s ―Guarachi Guero‖ can be heard in Interwoven, and his ―Manteca‖ can be both heard in A Strange Dream and seen in Fast Track (1949), the latter as a painting depicting the song‘s recording. Monk‘s ―Misterioso‖ also makes an appearance as the soundtrack to Mirror Abstractions (1957). ―From the late 1940s,‖ according to the Harry Smith Archives, he ―was a passionate jazz enthusiast, going so far as to create paintings that are note-by-note transcriptions of particular tunes. He spent much of the fifties in the company of jazz pioneers like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious 120 Monk.‖ According to Thomas Hine, it was Smith‘s intent to explore more existential and spiritual themes that lead him to incorporate jazz in his films as a cinematic motif. Particularly in the Bay Area, Beat culture understood the use of illicit drugs as means to open perceptual doors closed off by the unconscious mind. Moreover, the history drug usage among jazz musicians is as long as its use among artists of other genres. Smith‘s filmic abstractions, like those of his contemporaries, attempt to reproduce drug-induced states brought about by the use of illicit drugs. Jazz as soundtracks seemed a natural, if not relevant, artistic choice given that context. In an interview with P. Adams Sitney, Smith described his perceptions of jazz as one would a drug ―trip.‖ He recalled seeing ―little colored balls appeared whenever we played Bessie Smith,‖ and of seeing Dizzy Gillespie: ―I literally saw all kinds of colored flashes.‖ 121 These ―flashes‖ are evident in Smith‘s design for what is arguably one of the most important jazz paintings in California: the murals on the walls of the famous San Francisco jazz club, Bop City, in 1952. 92 Stretching from wall to wall, the mural is a collection of large circles resembling lunar bodies that themselves are inhabited by various circles and half-moons. All about these circles are dozens of bright sparks appearing like solar starbursts or photographers‘ flashbulbs flaring to life at once. While Smith‘s mural became a permanent fixture at Bop City, the club itself at times doubled as a performance space for Smith. According to Moritz, ―Jazz clubs like Bop City featured live music until late at night, and Harry Smith sometimes projected his abstractions (hand-painted directly onto the filmstrip) on the wall while the band played, as a kind of ‗light show.‘ Using Hirsh‘s multi-speed projector, Smith could modulate the images to fit the jazz 122 improvisations.‖ Born in Chicago, Jordan Belson came to study at the California School for Fine Arts, later at University of California, Berkeley where he met Harry Smith. A painter at the time, Belson switched to experimental film after viewing the various films on display at the ―Art in Cinema‖ series. Like Smith, his first films were steeped in the jazz aesthetic practiced by the San Francisco Beat community; he lived in the North Beach area of San Francisco (the epicenter of Beat artists), studied Zen Buddhism, and even designed and painted the façade of Lawrence Ferlinghetti‘s City Lights Bookstore, the Beat‘s unofficial clubhouse. His films Mambo (1951) and Caravan (1952) were composed of long ―scrolls‖ on which he painted animated sequences somewhat resembling a filmstrip that ―embodied the ‗on the road‘ spirit of the beats evoked by its lively imagery and energetic jazz score.‖ 123 This, while Bop Scotch (1952), also a film set to a jazz soundtrack, combines Eames ―object study‖ with the ―funk‖ or assemblage art popular in San Francisco in that decade in its attention found objects (ex. manhole covers). Belson even lent his technical help to fellow visual music experimenter, Patricia Marx, whose Things to Come (1953) ―cleverly syncs close-ups from Marx‘s paintings to Dizzy Gillespie‘s jazz.‖ 93 124 Other important visual music experimenters like John Hubley carried on this film tradition into the 1960s. Hubley was vice-president of United Productions of America, a small, independent production company, and was among the many Hollywood artists blacklisted during the 1950s. Moving to New York in 1956, he joined his wife at Storyboard, another independent, where he began making ―more personal films, which maintained the older liberal sensibility of 125 the studio.‖ Among these were Adventures of an * (1956), which exhibits Hubley‘s ―highly abstract, painterly style‖ in a story about ―creativity and individual expression within contemporary society‖ set to the music of vibraphonist Lionel Hampton. However, as Bruce Jenkins explains, ―jazz became integral to Hubley‘s work in the early 1960s as he moved beyond mere musical accompaniment to the use of improvised dialogue by the celebrated jazz performer [Dizzy] Gillespie in films such as The Hole (1962) and The Hat (1963).‖ 126 In The Hole, for instance, two construction workers, played by Gillespie and George Matthews, riff on the topic of nuclear disarmament, bickering back forth as the world (and effectively their conversation) is ended by a the explosion of a nuclear bomb aboveground. The seriousness of Hubley‘s The Hole is augmented by an element of humor and whimsy which contrasts to his other work like A Date with Dizzy (1956), in which Dizzy and his quintet are asked to create the music to a television commercial pitching the latest in fire escape devices, the ―instant rope latter.‖ Another jazz-shaped branch of the California modern art world, jazz poetry, is best exemplified by the San Francisco Beat movement. While much has been written on the Beats and their jazz-inspired work, most of these explorations evolve from a purely literary interest. From a more musical perspective, we see their use of jazz not as a literary device per se but as an integral foundation to their experimental art. While there have been many Beat poets who combined jazz and poetry in significant and successful ways, it is Kenneth Patchen and Kenneth 94 Rexroth who best represent the synaesthetic impulse toward the fusion of visual, sonic and literary art. Born in 1911 near the steel production center of Youngstown, OH, Patchen began his literary career on the East Coast centers of Boston and New York City‘s Greenwich Village before moving to California, whereby the late 1940s he was at the very center of the San Francisco Renaissance. Patchen was a luminary among other jazz poetry giants like Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He was present at Ginsberg‘s infamous first reading of ―Howl‖ at the Six Gallery in 1955, and, as a conscientious objector during World War II, was often featured on radio station KPFA in Berkeley, reading poetry, issuing music reviews and engaging in political debate. Though Patchen produced a number of poetry collections and novels, his attempts to integrate the mediums of music, literature and the visual arts are his most significant. In the 1940s and 1950s, Patchen produced a number of works combining prose with his own paintings. In their earliest manifestations, Patchen experimented with typography to heighten the visual experience of reading his prose, but soon these evolved into ―concrete poems‖ or ―painted poems.‖ Eventually, his own paintings would adorn the covers to the many volumes of his poetry like Red Wine and Yellow Hair (1949) and Hurrah for Anything (1957). His first work in audio format came in 1942, in which Patchen collaborated with composer John Cage to produce a radio piece for WBBM in Chicago titled The City Wears a Slouch Hat, a surrealistic short story about a man known only as ―The Voice‖ who wanders about an unnamed city. By the 1950s, however, jazz was firmly within Patchen‘s repertoire. In 1950, he collaborated with bassist Charles Mingus at the Living Theater, wherein Mingus‘s group, including tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin, provided the musical accompaniment to Patchen‘s prose. He even produced a jazz play in 95 1957, Don‟t Look Now for the for the Outside the Inside Theater in Palo Alto, CA in which a live jazz band interacts musically with the actors‘ dialogue on stage. It was the late 1950s and early 1960s that were Patchen‘s most ambitious years. He toured extensively, giving readings alongside jazz groups in clubs like the Cellar and the Blackhawk in the San Francisco and the Los Angeles Concert Hall in Los Angeles. In 1957, he released Kenneth Patchen Reads with the Chamber Jazz Sextet, an album of Patchen‘s poetry set to pianist Allyn Ferguson‘s original scores. On the jacket of the album, Ferguson describes his and Patchen‘s approach to jazz-poetry: ―When first discussing the possibility of setting poetry to jazz, Kenneth and I agreed that the usual procedure of setting text to music would have to be abolished. The final product, we felt, should be conceived in terms of the poet‘s interpretation of the text. It seemed evident, however, that the music would be quite unnecessary were there no attempt to bring about a meaningful union between the two mediums. We decided, therefore, to tape record the readings and underscore them. This procedure would have the double value of retaining the spontaneity of original readings while still allowing freedom for the creation of a significant musical entity. The music, then, was composed to the poet‘s readings—and designed to fortify the emotional content of the poetry.‖ 127 On the album, Patchen‘s repeated lines and phrases and his varying timbres and attacks, like his ―The Murder of Two Men by a Young Kid Wearing Lemon-Colored Gloves,‖ are underscored by the groups‘ improvisational backing. In 1959 came his most acclaimed album, Kenneth Patchen Reads Jazz in Canada, recorded with the Alan Neil Quartet during the February 18 date of his jazz-poetry tour in Vancouver. Here Patchen most evidently inflects a jazz instrumentalists‘ approach, reading his prose in a ―swing‖ fashion to fast-paced bebop 96 th compositions. Neil says of the album on the jacket that reading jazz-poetry ―must be met by the guys with the same type of honest paralleling in their own speech, in the idiom of jazz.‖ 128 Kenneth Rexroth also released several acclaimed jazz-poetry albums including Poetry Readings in the Cellar (with the Cellar Jazz Quintet): Kenneth Rexroth and Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1957 and Rexroth: Poetry and Jazz at the Blackhawk in 1958. Like Patchen, Rexroth worked the club scene, reading poetry around the Bay Area (for example, at the Blackhawk where he opened for local West Coast musicians like Dave Brubeck), as well as collaborating with jazz musicians like Shorty Rogers, whose group he accompanied for extended engagements in Los Angeles. He was also known to have worked with pianist Marty Paitch and bassist Ralph Pena, of whom Rexroth notes had ―an extraordinary feeling for the rhythms and feeling of poetry.‖ 129 Though born in South Bend, Indiana in 1905, Rexroth came to epitomize the revolutionary jazz-poet activist of the San Francisco Beat movement of the postWorld War II era despite his best efforts to distance himself from that moniker, often railing against faddists or those trying to capitalize on the popularity of the phenomenon in order to make a quick buck. His commentary about the jazz-poetry phenomenon is what separates him from Patchen. More than Patchen, it was Rexroth who spent considerable time theorizing on the nature of the relationship between jazz and poetry, writing several articles in New World Writing, The Nation, Esquire, and Village Voice in the late 1950s. After witnessing a few of the New York elite turn up their noses to Pepper Adams‘s poetry and jazz performance at the Five Spot, Rexroth retorted in New World Writing, that ―melody, rhythm, dynamics, ornamentation, tone color, sonority [in jazz] all owe a great deal to imitation of the human voice.‖ 130 Moreover, as he explained in The Nation, jazz-poetry has a long tradition, not to be associated with self-promoting ―beatninks:‖ 97 ―I believe Langston Hughes recited poems to jazz many years ago. I tried it myself in the twenties in Chicago. In the late forties Kenneth Patchen recited poems to records. Jack Spicer, a San Francisco poet, tried it with a trio led by Ron Crotty on bass. The result, more like the Russian tone color music of the first years of the century, was impressive, if not precisely jazz. Lawrence Lipton has been working with some of the best musicians in Los Angeles for almost two years. William Walton‘s Facade, Stravinsky‘s Persephone, compositions of Auric, Honneger, Milhaud, are well-known examples of speaking, rather than singing, to orchestra in contemporary classical music. Charles Mingus and Fred Katz, two of the most serious musicians in jazz –to narrow that invidious distinction between jazz and serious music—have been experimenting with the medium for some 131 time.‖ Jazz-poetry, he says, is nothing particularly complicated but can nonetheless be interpreted poorly. The worst examples, he says, are ―background music,‖ whereas in the best examples, ―the voice is integrally wedded to the music and, although it does not sing notes, is treated as another instrument, with its own solos and ensemble passages, and with solo and ensemble work by the band alone. It comes and goes, following the logic of the presentation, just like a saxophone or piano.‖ 132 The jazz group and the poet must function as one synaesthetic unit: ―We want poet and band to ‗go together,‘‖ says Rexroth. 133 The 1950s, far more than the interwar years, were California‘s ―Jazz Age.‖ The wideranging ―language of modernism‖ of the decade was the result of the immense cultural importance of jazz, and its effects are traceable throughout almost every avenue of modern art. These instances, though briefly discussed, nevertheless remind us of jazz‘s omnipotence within the California art world as well as its national and international connections. While the West 98 Coast jazz phenomenon is of primary concern here, no history of jazz in California can be discussed outside of this important modernist context. Neither can it be understood without an analysis of the critical institutions which directed its production and consumption. In the next chapter, I want to explore some of the important intellectual institutions which had profound influence on the jazz community in California and ultimately the music of West Coast jazz. 1 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991), 94. 2 In contemporary scholarship the trend is toward the latter view, from texts that demythologize the American West like Henry Nash Smith‘s Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950) to those which expound upon urban ecological disaster and in Mike Davis‘s Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998), Dead Cities, and Other Tales (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002), and Planet of Slums (New York: Verso, 2006). 3 Manuel Castells and Martin Ince, Conversations with Manuel Castells (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), 56. 4 Howard N. Fox, ―SoCal Content: The Big Picture,‖ in Catherine Grenier, Editor. Catalogue LA: Birth of an Art Capital, 1955-1985 (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2007), 32. 5 Mabel Alvarez, diary entry from January 1928 in ―My Journal, 1918-1928,‖ Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 6 Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (Brooklyn: Verso, 2006), 17. 7 Paul J. Karlstrom, ―Introduction,‖ in Paul J. Karlstrom, Ed. On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art, 1900-1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 4. 8 Natalie Shivers, ―A Creative New Medium,‖ in Victoria Dailey, Natalie Shiver, and Michael Dawson, LA‟s Early Moderns: Art, Architecture, Photography (Los Angeles: Balcony Press, 2003), 124. 9 Bram Dijkstra, ―Early Modernism in California: Provincialism or Eccentricity?‖ in On the Edge of America, 159. 10 Robert Irwin, quoted in Lawrence Weschler, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 50-51. 11 Lorser Feitelson, interviewed by Fidel Danieli, Los Angeles Art Community, Group Portrait, Center for Oral History Research, UCLA Library, University of California, Los Angeles, 1982, 12. Quoted in Karlstrom, On the Edge of America, 159. 12 Richard Candida Smith, Utopia and Dissent: Art, Poetry and Politics in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 5. 99 13 Candida Smith, Utopia and Dissent, 9. 14 Robert Bennett, Deconstructing Post-WWII New York City: The Literature, Art, Jazz, and Architecture of an Emerging Global Capital (New York: Routledge, 2003), 12. 15 Dijkstra, ―Early Modernism in California‖ in On the Edge of America, 161. 16 Dailey, ―Naturally Modern,‖ LA‟s Early Moderns, 30. 17 Dailey, ―Naturally Modern,‖ LA‟s Early Moderns, 30 18 Clement Greenberg, with John O‘Brian, Ed. Collected Essays and Criticism: Arrogant Purpose, 1945-1949 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 215, 223. 19 Dailey, ―Naturally Modern,‖ LA‟s Early Moderns, 35. 20 Dailey, ―Naturally Modern,‖ LA‟s Early Moderns, 145. 21 Rudolph Schindler, Lecture at the University of Southern California School of Architecture, October 10, 1949, Rudolph Schindler Papers. 22 Rudolph Schindler. Document, February 18, 1952, Esther McCoy Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 23 Dailey, ―Naturally Modern,‖ LA‟s Early Moderns, 145. 24 Dailey, ―Naturally Modern,‖ LA‟s Early Moderns, 148. 25 Susan M. Anderson, ―Journey into the Sun: California Arts and Surrealism,‖ in Paul J. Karlstrom, Ed. On the Edge of America, 201. 26 Anderson, ―Journey into the Sun,‖ in On the Edge of America, 200. 27 Anderson, ―Journey into the Sun,‖ in On the Edge of America, 181. 28 Anderson, ―Journey into the Sun,‖ in On the Edge of America, 201. 29 Peter Selz, ―The Impact from Abroad: Foreign Guests and Visitors,‖ in Paul J. Karlstrom, Ed. On the Edge of America, 102. 30 Dorothy Lamb Crawford, A Windfall of Musicians: Hitler‟s Émigrés and Expats in Southern California (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 23-24. 31 Paul J. Karlstrom, ―Introduction,‖ in On the Edge of America, 10. 32 Carol Merrill-Mirsky, Exiles in Paradise (Los Angeles: The Hollywood Bowl Museum, 1991), insert showing location of artists‘ homes circa 1939-1949. 33 Candida Smith, Utopia and Dissent, xviii. 34 Gottfried Reinhardt, ―It was No Paradise,‖ lecture at the Hollywood Bowl Museum, April 22, 1991, transcribed in Merrill-Mirsky, Exiles in Paradise, 78-79, 60. 35 Gottfried Reinhardt, ―It was No Paradise,‖ 74-75. 36 37 Crawford, A Windfall of Musicians, 33. Dailey, ―Naturally Modern,‖ LA‟s Early Moderns, 40-41, 44. 38 Jake Zeitlin, interviewed in 1978 and 1979 by Joel Gardner in Books and the Imagination: Fifty Years of Rare Books, Oral History Program, University of California, Los Angeles, c1980. 100 39 Dailey, ―Naturally Modern,‖ LA‟s Early Moderns, 52. 40 Dailey, ―Naturally Modern,‖ LA‟s Early Moderns, 53. 41 Shivers, ―A Creative New Medium,‖ in LA‟s Early Moderns, 144-145. 42 Shivers, ―A Creative New Medium,‖ in LA‟s Early Moderns, 147. 43 Candida Smith, Utopia and Dissent, 79. 44 Keith W. Olsen, The GI Bill, the Veterans, and Colleges (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1974), 44. 45 Quoted in Candida Smith, Utopia and Dissent, 80-82. 46 See for instance, Max Kozloff, Eva Cockford, and David and Cecil Shapiro in Pollock and After: The Critical Debate, ed. Francis Frascina (New York: Harper and Row, 1985). 47 Erica Doss, Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) 333-334. 48 Clement Greenberg, ―The Situation at the Moment,‖ Partisan Review (Vol. XV, No. 1, 1948), 82. 49 Francis Frascina, ―The Politics of Representation,‖ in Paul Wood, Francis Frascina, Jonathan Harris, and Charles Harrison, Modernism in Dispute: Art since the Forties (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 145. 50 Doss, Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism, 313, 348; Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse: Art on the West Coast, 1945-1970 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 21. 51 Dailey, ―Naturally Modern,‖ LA‟s Early Moderns, 69-70; Karlstrom, On the Edge of America, 164. 52 Doss, Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism, 3, 332. 53 54 Doss, Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism, 346-347. Frances Colpitt, ―Hard-Edge Cool,‖ in Armstrong, ed. Birth of the Cool, 94. 55 Jules Langsner, Four Abstract Classicists (Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum, 1959), 10. 56 Plagens, Sunshine Muse, 119. 57 58 Plagens, Sunshine Muse, 74. Plagens, Sunshine Muse, 75, 85. 59 Rebecca Solnit, Secret Exhibition: Six California Artists of the Cold War Era (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1990), ix-x. 60 Solnit, Secret Exhibition, 84. 61 62 Plagens, Sunshine Muse, 120. Plagens, Sunshine Muse, 127. 63 Robert M. Crunden, Body & Soul: The Making of American Modernism (New York: Basic Books, 2000), x, xv. 64 Cassidy, Painting the Musical City, 107-108. 101 65 66 67 68 Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 39. Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 39. Jules Langsner, ―Art News from Los Angeles,‖ Art News Vol. 55 (May 1956): 60. Doss, Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism, 3. 69 Chad Mandeles, ―Jackson Pollock and Jazz: Structural Parallels,‖ Arts Magazine 56 No. 2 (Oct. 1981): 141. 70 Quoted in Ken Allan, ―Reflections on Walter Hopps in Los Angeles,‖ X-TRA: Contemporary Art Quarterly Vol. 8 No. 1 (Fall 2005) http://www.x-traonline.org/past_articles.php?articleID=1 rd 45#footnotes (accessed Feb. 3 , 2010). 71 72 73 74 75 Solnit, Secret Exhibition, 6-7. Solnit, Secret Exhibition, 7. Solnit, Secret Exhibition, 9. Wallace Berman, Semina VI (1960), cover. Wallace Berman, ―Untitled,‖ Semina #7 (1961). 76 Ken Allan, ―Local Avant-Gardes: Wallace Berman, Jazz, and Semina in Postwar Los Angeles,‖ paper presentation at ―Côte à Côte—Coast to Coast: Art and Jazz in France and California‖ conference, Nov. 13-15, 2007 at The Getty Center, Los Angeles, CA; Alexander quoted in Allen, ―Local Avant-Gardes.‖ 77 Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog, ed. Nel King (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, reprint 1980), 30. 78 Steven Isoardi, The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 67. 79 Mingus, Beneath the Underdog, 30. 80 Candida Smith, Utopia and Dissent, 85. 81 Barbara Isenberg, State of the Arts: California Artists Talk About Their Work (New York: William Morrow, 2000), 122. 82 John Outterbridge, quoted in Isoardi, The Dark Tree, 69. 83 Sarah Schrank, ―Picturing the Watts Towers: The Art and Politics of an Urban Landmark,‖ in Stephanie Barron, Sheri Bernstein and Ilene Susan Fort, eds., Reading California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 380. 84 th Thomas Pynchon, ―A Journey into the Mind of Watts,‖ New York Times Magazine (June 12 , 1966), 78. 85 nd Ricky Ricardo, ―32 Annual Simon Rodia Watts Towers Jazz Festival,‖ BrooWaha: Your th Citizen Newspaper (Sept. 30 , 2008) < http://www.broowaha.com/articles/4132/32nd-annualth simon-rodia-watts-towers-jazz-festival>, (accessed Feb. 9 , 2010). 86 th Dave Brubeck, email interview with the author, January 12 , 2010. 102 87 Kay Murphy O‘Flynn, ―Bringing the Outdoors Indoors,‖ San Francisco News-Call Bulletin th (Jan. 14 , 1960): pages unknown. Located in the Dave Brubeck Collection (henceforth: ―DBC‖), Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA. 88 th Dave Brubeck, email interview with the author, January 12 , 2010. 89 90 91 David Thorne, letter to Iola and Dave Brubeck, 1956. Located in DBC. st David Thorne, letter to Dave Brubeck, Nov. 1 , 1957. Located in DBC. th Dave Brubeck, email interview with the author, January 12 , 2010. 92 th ―Dave Brubeck and his ‗Tree House‘‖ ad, Business Week (May 24 , 1958). unknown page. Found in DBC. 93 th Dave Brubeck, email interview with the author, January 12 , 2010. 94 Elizabeth A.T. Smith, ―Domestic Cool: Modern Architecture and Its Image in Southern California,‖ in Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 66. 95 Elizabeth Armstrong, ―The Square and the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture and Midcentury,‖ in Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 54, 60. 96 Smith, ―Domestic Cool,‖ Birth of the Cool, 64. 97 Oriel L. Lucero, ―Selling Los Angeles: The Use of Models in Julius Shulman‘s Architectural Photography,‖ in Giselle Arteaga-Johnson, L.A. Obscura: The Architectural Photography of Julius Shulman (Los Angeles: Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, 1998), 38-40. 98 ―Playboy‘s Weekend Hideaway,‖ Playboy (April, 1959), 49-51. 99 Thomas Hine, ―Cold War Cool,‖ in Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 205. 100 Ray Eames, quoted in ―The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention,‖ Library of Congress, , (Accessed on Feb. th 10 , 2010). 101 Armstrong, ―The Square and the Cool,‖ Birth of the Cool, 33. 102 David Dunster. Key Buildings of the Twentieth Century, Volume 2: Houses, 1945-1989. (Boston: Butterworth Architecture, 1990), 16-17. 103 Frank Harris and Weston Bonenberger, Eds., A Guide to Contemporary Architecture in Southern California (Los Angeles: Watling, 1951), 34. 104 Charles Eames, American Look (1958). 105 Willard Spiegelman, ―What Postwar California Gave to Art, Design and Culture,‖ The Wall th Street Journal (March 4 , 2009), D7. 106 Thomas Hine, ―Cold War Cool,‖ in Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 207. 107 Charles Eames, quoted in Paul Schrader, ―Poetry of Ideas: The Films of Charles Eames,‖ Film Quarterly Vol. 23, No. 3 (Spring 1970), 2. 108 Spiegelman, ―What Postwar California Gave to Art, Design and Culture,‖ D7. 109 Thomas Hine, ―Cold War Cool,‖ in Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 207. 103 110 Susan Delson, Dudley Murphy: Hollywood Wild Card (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 20. 111 William Morritz, ―Virtual Music and Film-An-An-Art Before1950,‖ in Karlstrom, On the Edge of America,‖ 212; see also Delson, Dudley Murphy, 144. 112 In attempting to define ―visual music,‖ William Moritz has noted it ―developed at the same t time as live-action experimental film. Indeed, visual music has a history that parallels that of cinema itself.‖ ―Virtual Music and Film-An-An-Art Before1950,‖ in Karlstrom, On the Edge of America,‖ 223-224. See also William Moritz, ―Toward an Aesthetics of Visual Music,‖ Asifa Canada Bulletin. Montreal: ASIFA Canada, Vol. 14: 3, (December 1986). th (Accessed Feb 12 , 2010). 113 Morritz, ―Virtual Music and Film-As-An-Art Before1950,‖ in Karlstrom, On the Edge of America,‖ 224-225. 114 Bruce Jenkins, ―Making the Scene: West Coast Modernism and the Movies,‖ in Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 116. 115 William Moritz, ―Retrospective James Whitney,‖ Exhibition Catalog. Toronto International Animation Festival program, 1984. (Accessed Feb. 12th, 2010). 116 Moritz, ―Virtual Music and Film-An-An-Art Before1950,‖ in Karlstrom, On the Edge of America,‖ 228. 117 William Moritz, ―You Can‘t Get Then From Now,‖ Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art Journal n. 29 (Summer 1981): 26-40, 70-72. th (Accessed Feb, 12 , 2010). 118 David E. James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 263. 119 William Moritz, ―Hy Hirsh and the Fifties: Jazz and Abstraction in Beat Era Film,‖ KINETICA 3 Catalog, Los Angeles, The iotaCenter, 2001, 5-6, ; Jenkins, ―Making the Scene,‖ in Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 120. 120 th ―Curriculum Vitae,‖ (Accessed Feb 13 , 2010). 121 P. Adams Sitney, ―Harry Smith Interview,‖ Film Culture No. 237 (Summer 1965), 9-10. 122 Moritz, ―Hy Hirsh and the Fifties,‖ 6. 123 Moritz, ―Hy Hirsh and the Fifties,‖ 6. 124 Moritz, ―Hy Hirsh and the Fifties,‖ 6. 125 Jenkins, ―Making the Scene,‖ in Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 126. 126 Jenkins, ―Making the Scene,‖ in Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 126. 127 Kenneth Patchen, Kenneth Patchen Reads His Poetry with the Chamber Jazz Sextet. Cadence CLP 3004, 1957. 104 128 Kenneth Patchen, Kenneth Patchen Reads with Jazz in Canada. Folkways, FL 9718, 1959. 129 Kenneth Rexroth, World Outside the Window: The Selected Essays of Kenneth Rexroth, Bradford Morrow, Ed. (New York: New Directions Books, 1987), 71. 130 Quoted in Barry Wallenstein, ―Poetry and Jazz: A Twentieth-Century Wedding,‖ Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 25, No. 3, Literature of Jazz Issue (Autumn, 1991): 608-609. 131 Quoted in Rexroth, World Outside the Window, 68-69. 132 133 Quoted in Rexroth, World Outside the Window, 69. Kenneth Rexroth, Rexroth: Poetry and Jazz at the Blackhawk. Fantasy 7008, 1958. 105 Jazz Goes to College: Academia and the Education of Jazz Modernism ―Formal and informal educational networks helped to instill in musicians a seriousminded approach to their craft and an artistic orientation that linked creativity, originality, respectability, and an willingness to go beyond musical boundaries. With roots earlier in the century and consolidation in the 1930s, these shared networks imparted a theoretical grounding, an expansive vision, and a collective purpose that allowed musicians to take pleasure in artistic accomplishment and to break new ground in the music world. The musical ethos and artistic agenda they developed would be instrumental in the transformation of music and artistic identities in the 1940s, as they tapped into the critical ecumenicalism of the moment.‖ - 1 Eric Porter, What Is This Thing Called Jazz? (2002) Where jazz is performed and consumed is integral to the construction and maintenance of any distinct jazz culture or genre. As an improvisational art, jazz thrives in live performance th settings. So it was for many years until the first jazz recordings in the early 20 century. Recorded jazz, however, tends to alter and condense its live practices in order to prepare it for a consumer market. Additionally, there are as many limitations to the production of jazz in a recording studio as there are in consuming jazz in recorded form. Prior to the LP, for instance, artists were commonly relegated to just a few minutes per song, often restricting ample solo time to build one‘s musical ideas. Even high fidelity recordings could not equal the ―liveness‖ one received witnessing jazz in a live concert setting. Moreover, clashes between artists and engineers over artistic license have been commonplace in jazz throughout the years, particularly among some of the more major studios. Thus, while records conveniently brought jazz into the th California domestic sphere during the mid-20 century, live jazz remained a different, yet 103 equally important materialization. It is these venues which require a closer look if any discussion of the intuitional structure of West Coast jazz can proceed. Indeed, California featured a number of live jazz venues to satisfy consumers, employ artists, and to sustain a movement of such magnitude like West Coast jazz. While there were few th venues dedicated to jazz in the early 20 century, by the post-WWII era California‘s jazz club 2 scene was as active and vibrant as New York City. In his seminal work, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 (1992), Ted Gioia provides a unique social demography of jazz culture in Los Angeles through a richly-detailed study of its nightclubs. In an interview subsequent to his book, Gioia described his meticulous approach: ―I conducted a minute geographical analysis that resulted in a forty-page treatise documenting every California venue in 1960 that promoted jazz. I found out who played there, its address, hours, what the club looked like. If I was going to talk about the Tiffany Club, and Chet Baker‘s famous audition there for Charlie Parker, I wanted to describe what the wallpaper looked like, how the lighting shone, the brand of piano, everything.‖ 3 Gioia then read from a portion of this treatise: ―Honey Murphy‘s, Central Avenue after-hours club, early 1940s and possibly later. Located at 102 nd and Central in Los Angeles in a sparsely populated neighborhood. Zoot Sims recalled the typical Honey Murphy‘s session lasted until six 4 a.m. Dexter Gordon and Buddy Collette also played there.‖ He went on in the interview: ―I‘ve collected material like that for venue after venue. I got to the point of actually mapping out major streets in different jazz districts, finding what else was on the corner, what was two doors down and across the street? Who was the bartender? Who hung out 104 there? The idea was to show the scene‘s complete tapestry. By the time I started scouting LA‘s Central Avenue block by block, I had drawn up maps, delved into old phone books to get the addresses and years of operation Then I started prowling around with an old camera and notebook. The scene was only thirty or forty years ago but it was exciting doing this kind of historical groundwork.‖ 5 In his exhaustive search, Gioia lightly implies several jazz ―districts‖ in Los Angeles; areas with a high concentration of notable nightclubs: The Last Word, the Memo, Lovejoy‘s, and the Ritz around Central Avenue; Shepp‘s Playhouse, the Cobra Room, Rendezvous, and Club Finale in Little Tokyo; Trouville, the Swing Club, the 5-4 Ballroom, the Cotton Club, the Cricket Club, and the Hollywood Empire spread across the valley; and beachfront clubs like the Lighthouse and the Rendezvous Ballroom. Filling in these categories are a seemingly endless number of nightclubs: the Downbeat, the Oasis, the Streets of Paris, Billy Berg‘s, the Hula Hut, Royal Roost, the Haig, the Tiffany Club, Surf Club, the Interlude, Hi De Ho Club, the Tradewinds, Earl Carroll‘s, the Seville, the Brown Derby, Cocoanut Grove, the Drift Inn, Pontrelli‘s Ballroom, John T‘s It Club, the California Club, the Peacock, Main St., the Jazz Cellar, and the Hillcrest Club. Likewise, Gioia excavates many of the important San Francisco nightclubs like the Blackhawk, Zardi‘s, the Macumba, Jazz Showcase, Sweet‘s Ballroom, the Trident Club, the Geary Cellar, Bandbox, and the Burma Lounge. Interestingly, in his investigation, Gioia found that jazz-making took often place at nontraditional sites like hotels, after-hours clubs, restaurants and breakfast clubs. In Los Angeles, for instance, the Dunbar Hotel, located next to Club Alabam—perhaps the most important nightclub in the Central Avenue neighborhood—was a hub of African American life. Not only was it the preferred choice of accommodations for African American jazz musicians like Duke Ellington, 105 Louis Armstrong and Jimmy Lunceford when they rolled into town, it featured live music in the piano bar and attracted a range of African American actors, writers, sports figures and other luminaries within the African American community. It even served as ―a de facto recruitment center for Hollywood studios in need of black extras.‖ 6 By the late 1940s, eateries like Jack‘s Basket and Ivie‘s Chicken Shack were commonly known as live jazz venues. Known also as Bird in the Basket and owned by champion boxer Jack Johnson, Jack‘s Basket was so named after its house specialty; chicken, served in a basket with 7 shoestring potatoes. Located at 32 nd St. and South Central near many traditional nightclubs, the restaurant became a local haunt for many jazz musicians and, perhaps inevitably, began to feature impromptu jam sessions featuring the likes of tenor saxophonists Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray and Teddy Edwards. Perhaps the most important were those involving Gordon and Gray which stretched into the wee hours of the morning. Their game of musical one-upmanship evolved into that watershed recorded tenor battle known as ―The Chase.‖ These non-traditional venues often exhibited a confluence of class identities represented by their interiors, clientele and even the music played. Though musical contests raged at Jack‘s Basket, for instance, the restaurant was in fact a democratic space featuring a mishmash of cultural signifiers. According to Ted Gioia, ―The working-class patrons maintained a healthy interest in the modern music being played on the stand, and the layout of the room gave the proceedings a concert hall aura. In fact, the restaurant must have served at one time as a cabaret 8 or meeting hall.‖ Ivie‘s Chicken Shack, another eatery to feature live jazz, was owned by former Duke Ellington vocalist, Ivie Anderson. Located at Vernon Avenue and Central Avenue, the Chicken Shack was less of a shack and more of a supper club. R.J. Smith has noted that ―Elegance and artifice prevailed there, with a red-and-blue color scheme and stenciled ivy 106 9 climbing the walls.‖ However, while jazz was permitted, the blues was not. Its manager once forbade pianist Charles Brown from playing the blues. When he was away, however, Brown would slip it into his set in a way which appeased the Chicken Shack‘s mixed audience of men and women from various race and class backgrounds. His blues, according to Brown, wasn‘t the ―porch-sitting, cotton picking‖ kind. Audiences responded to Brown‘s presentation of the blues, what Smith calls his ―nocturnes of insinuation and artifice;‖ a sanitized, urbane version of the country blues. Eventually, Brown ―crossed over‖ to work nightclubs on the Sunset Strip where white audiences shelled out top dollar for this music. 10 Brown was a regular feature at another non-traditional venue, Brother‘s Rendezvous, a gay club with a Middle-Eastern theme set just off Central Avenue and owned by Henry ―Brother‖ Williams. ―Cosmopolitan to the nth degree, your lawyer, doctor, grocer or banker may be seen relaxing there almost any morning,‖ proclaimed one columnist for the African American newspaper, The Sentinel. 11 Despite the club‘s low lighting, its décor, ambience, and clientele were of the democratic variety. Brother‘s was a place where culture, savior fare, and flamboyance thrived, to be sure, but one where equality and confidentiality were as privileged as the jazz it featured. These alternative spaces for live jazz have received little consideration in jazz histories. Not the fault of studies devoted to jazz in California per se, jazz histories in general tend to privilege traditional performance spaces where, for instance, masculinity is inculcated in ways that make it appear an essential trait to the music. That heterosexual-oriented establishments— most jazz venues in general—are considered the natural environment for jazz testifies to the hegemonic nature of jazz writing; heterosexual, working-class, and African American performance practices have been considered acceptable and legitimate while others not so. 107 Nevertheless, a plethora of these alternative spaces existed in California, and they played important roles in the formation and distribution of jazz. Non-traditional venues were integral to a space and place like Los Angeles in particular; a city which lacked a clear center; where fragmentation, segregation and widely-dispersed resources allowed for the heightened role of such venues. At the same time, traditional venues for jazz in California struggled to properly take root and maintain operations in the post-WWII era. The decline of the Central Avenue neighborhood in the late 1940s—and its virtual erasure from the Los Angeles jazz scene altogether by the end of the 1950s—is due in part to these nightclubs‘ lack of infrastructural sustainability. Thus, almost silently, non-traditional spaces began to operate as the new critical institutions for jazz in California. Of these spaces, it is undeniably the concert halls, art galleries, and colleges and universities which have been most important to the development of jazz in California. These sites served not only as performance spaces but as educational centers as well. Though previously reserved for elite (read: white, Western European) culture, by the post-WWII era jazz had worked its way into high art institutions throughout the state. The result of installing jazz within academia in particular resulted in a profusion of experimentation among its students and the evolution of hybrid musical forms, as in those combining jazz and classical music. This confluence of extremes—high and low; black and white; American and European; the music of academia and the music of popular culture—left an indelible mark on the music of West Coast jazz. While there are far too many non-traditional venues to include here, I want to offer an overview of the role of several of these entities in the state and offer two case studies which examine the most important institution for jazz education—the Westlake College of Music—and 108 most representative jazz-classical artist as well as the person most responsible for fashioning California colleges and universities into performance spaces for jazz, pianist Dave Brubeck. As I will show, concert halls, art galleries, and colleges and universities in California did not simply orbit traditional spaces for jazz, nor were they second-class spaces in and of themselves. Moreover, they cannot be seen as leveling out the diffuse distribution of local resources or as the upshot of any decline in traditional spaces. To a large degree, they evolved alongside traditional spaces. In fact, taken together they symbolize the prevalence of jazz in California, and the music‘s central role in the formation of the cultural practices of mid-century modernism. Alternate Endings: Music Education and the Post-War Jazz Scene California may seem like a relatively strange place for the collision of jazz and classical music. Today, the area is known for neither since the domination of the pop music industry there th since the 1960s. Nevertheless, California in the late 19 century began laying the groundwork necessary for such a union through an Americanization project which capitalized on the diversity and decentralization of the area. In his book, Musical Metropolis: Los Angeles and the Creation of the Music Culture, 1880-1940 (2004), Kenneth Marcus details the efforts of early modernists who, in their quest to remake the landscape of the state as an experimental canvas for new cultural production (and in so doing refine society at large) erected a network of elite institutions oriented around Western European forms of art—symphony halls, opera houses, etc.—beginning in the boom years around 1880. Rather than limiting participation to elite social circles or in acting as strict hegemonic entities, these institutions instead fostered a more democratic space compared to those seen in 109 other cities in the United States. According to Marcus, in Los Angeles ―people across ethnic, class, and gender lines had access to forms of high culture since the late-nineteenth century, in indoor and outdoor theaters, in schools, in pageantry and plays, and from the media of recording, radio, and film.‖ 12 One of Los Angeles‘s early impresarios, Lynden Behymer, for instance, th noted in the early 1930s that by the late 19 century the open access to these institutions brought high art to fresh audiences newly arriving in the city. The ―[m]ajority of home seekers here,‖ he said, ―are from Middle West communities, who have not had the privileges of opera, drama, symphony, concerts [thus] taking slowly to advanced concert offerings.‖ 13 The ease of access to these institutions gave rise to a parallel development, what Marcus calls a ―desacralization of culture;‖ one which allowed for a fusion of ―highbrow‖ and ―lowbrow.‖ ―There was substantial interaction between musicians and artists who worked in the fields of high and low art,‖ notes Marcus, ―and they sought to transcend these categories in order to reach a wider public.‖ ―This desacralization of culture,‖ he says, ―was critical to the production, performance, and teaching of music in Los Angeles.‖ 14 In the formation of such a democratic space, lower and middle class audiences could witness a variety of cultural forms, from symphonies, to operettas, to burlesques. Musicians of course were also instrumental in this process, often performing within not one but across many forms genre of music from ―serious‖ symphonies to ―popular‖ vaudeville. Thus, these musical institutions were not lines of demarcation but arenas of cultural exchange and learning. Though ―lowbrow‖ art was accepted, albeit to some degree, European art was nevertheless considered superior in music education; the most important arm of Los Angeles‘s th socialization/Americanization project by the early 20 century. Though the progressive and near 110 zealous attitudes of many music educators in the city allowed for some education and performance of Native American, Mexican American and other musics, the primary music of instruction was in European art music. Nevertheless, by the 1920s, the city‘s progressive spirit helped to bolster funding, appreciation and instruction in music seen in the plethora of music schools from kindergarten to college-level institutions. Public schools in particular were seen as the torch bearers of this project; ―junior conservatories‖ charged with bringing art music into areas where ―culture‖ was needed most. 15 Not surprisingly, many music schools were located in neighborhoods with high populations of people of color or recent immigrants/migrants to the city. The Neighborhood Music Settlement, for instance, was founded in 1914 in the Lincoln Heights area of East Los Angeles and whose primary residence were Irish, German and Italian immigrants. Later, the school moved to nearby Boyle Heights where Japanese, Jews, Russians, and Mexican Americans dominated the ethnic landscape. The school‘s goal, in accordance with the city‘s reformist charge, was to serve a public good in bringing music to the local community regardless of race, class, gender or age. th Likewise, the Wilkins School of Music located on Central Ave. and 14 Street catered especially to the local African American community. Its founder, William Wilkins, often held music recitals in his home, at local churches, and held talent shows and annual concerts all in the th same area. The Gray Conservatory of Music, founded in 1931 on North 39 Street near Central Ave. by John Gray, was also a hub of community involvement. Gray himself formed the Musicians‘ Association of Los Angeles, a labor union which later merged with the National Association of Negro Musicians, as a means to better musicians working conditions and fostering a community identity. 16 111 Also bringing Western European art music to the African American community in Los Angeles was radio. Second to public schools, it was radio which bore tremendous weight on the region‘s music culture. Radio has the advantage of easily penetrating segregated or far-flung neighborhoods and entering those household‘s who could afford the modest price of a receiver. There was no single classical music station in pre-WWII Los Angeles; single format stations at the time in America were rare. However, the common practice among radio stations was to program a variety of music. Programming classical music made practical and economic sense for station managers. Not only did the music fill time in the schedule—symphonic works are by no means as short as most popular tunes—the royalty costs accompanying the broadcasting of records were in most cases nonexistent. As Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine explain, ―Copyright was unknown in the world of music until around the end of the eighteenth century. As a result, a large proportion of classical music, which still today accounts for about 3 percent of all music sales but obviously for a much larger portion of music production until late in the nineteenth century, was produced without the benefit of copyright protection.‖ 17 The result of such cost-cutting measures meant that European art music was omnipresent in Los Angeles and easily accessible to almost anyone; even the most ardent jazz musician in Los Angeles could not escape the classical music presence. Moreover, many of the classical-oriented radio programs in Los Angeles at this time were simply educational programs transposed from the classroom onto a different medium as a public service. Stations like KHJ, owned by Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, was billed as an outlet for ―musical entertainment and the dissemination of educational matter,‖ and featured shows like ―Standard Hour,‖ a show sponsored by Standard Oil, which attempted to popularize European classical music in Los Angeles. 18 Moreover, Marcus‘s research shows that listening to 112 classical music on the radio was popular among a majority of Americans by the late 1920s. Considering Los Angeles‘s use of radio in its attempt to refine society at large, it is not out of the question to assume that classical music was appreciated by a good number of African Americans in the region. This may explain why so many African American jazz musicians in Los Angeles by midcentury—Chico Hamilton, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, etc.—express such obvious debts to the practices of classical music. Theirs may be the result of radio forging a ―virtual community,‖ fusing together sensibilities; high and low, African and European, jazz and classical. The commonality of music appreciation bridged the wide schisms separating race, class and gender in the fragmented metropolis such that an overarching American identity could bloom despite the variety of musical genres abound. With music supported on a statewide and citywide level as a ―great equalizer,‖ in the hands of a swath of capable music teachers, Los Angeles would prepare the next important wave of teachers and musicians who by midcentury were experimenting heavily with both jazz and classical music. 19 Of the many music teachers in Los Angeles, undoubtedly the most influential were Samuel Browne and Lloyd Reese. While both Browne and Reese received classical training, they nevertheless left their mark on the Los Angeles jazz world. Browne, a former student at the Wilkins School of Music, earned degrees in music and education from University of Southern California, and headed the music department at Thomas Jefferson High School on East 41 St. in the heart of the Central Avenue district. Under his direction, Jefferson High practically developed a sound of its own, becoming a ―who‘s who‖ breeding ground for some of the most important jazz musicians in the history of jazz: Dexter Gordon, Horace Tapscott, Sonny Criss, 113 Frank Morgan, Ginger Smock, Big Jay McNeely, Ernie Royal, Vi Redd, Marshall Royal, Jack Kelso, Art Farmer, Don Cherry, Chico Hamilton, and Melba Liston. Before Browne arrived at Jefferson High, the school had already amassed a reputation as a ―junior conservatory‖ thanks to the city‘s promotion of music education. According to Marshall Royal, the school‘s music course offerings seemed endless. ―At Jefferson they had started a keyboard class. Then it was harmony one, two, three, and four. It was four semesters. And during that time you had to learn how to write scores, compose.‖ 20 At the time, Royal concentrated on the violin, leading the orchestra as concertmaster, but received no formal jazz education there. With Browne at the helm, the school continued its devotion to classical music training yet added instruction in jazz. As Dexter Gordon remembered, ―We had a school marching band, an orchestra that used to play light classics, plus a swing band that played stock arrangements of Benny Goodman and Basie hits.‖ 21 Browne‘s integrated approach ultimately defined music education at Jefferson High and the music of his students. Pianist Horace Tapscott recalled the moment when Browne‘s tutelage inspired him to experiment with European art music: ―I wrote a song, the first song I ever wrote, called ‗Bongo Bill.‘ I remember doing it with Samuel Browne listening to it and critiquing it. Mr. Browne used to come over from Jefferson High School. My thought pattern started stretching out. I wanted to play different music. I remember the Peer Gynt suite that I used to play a lot, those kinds of things that had to do with composers. I started listening to other composers, cats that were looked upon as the revolutionaries or the outcast cats. And all their music was great, even the Beethoven and Haydn cats. I started listening to the other side of the coin.‖ 114 22 According to journalist Kirk Silsbee, ―In part, Jefferson bred so many young lions because it was so close to Central Avenue—the social, cultural, economic and spiritual hub of black Los Angeles. Central was the most renowned jazz street of the entire West Coast and Local 767, the black arm of the musician‘s union, was there as well. Dedicated teachers who challenged their students to be the best they could be, was the other part of the Jeff equation.‖ 23 Indeed, Browne carried the reputation of being a demanding instructor. In particular, he was known to begin his students‘ education outside of the classroom during the summers and keeping students after school in practice sessions playing scales so they would be remain in top form throughout the school year. ―In the entire school system, no one compared with Sam Browne at Jefferson,‖ said Dexter Gordon. ―There was no other teacher who had that dedication…only Lloyd Reese on the outside compared with Sam Browne.‖ 24 Reese was educated in music at Whittier College and ran a conservatory of music from his own home on McKinley Avenue. Unlike Browne, Reese was a private teacher and practicing musician, known widely as a member of Les Hite‘s big band and as a studio musician in the Hollywood system. As such, his instruction tended to be skewed more towards the practical end of the music spectrum. Particularly, Reese was known for his approach to improvisation. According to Gioia, ―Reese taught harmony through a system in which chord progressions were represented by a series of roman numerals. This not only facilitated transposition but also inculcated an understanding of the general harmonic rules underlying any set of chords.‖ 25 Thus, it is no surprise that Reese‘s students like Buddy Collette, Dexter Gordon, Eric Dolphy, Hampton Hawes, Charles Mingus, and Bob Cooper exhibited such an aptitude for playing the changes. 115 Most importantly, according to Collette, Reese taught his students the finer points of professional musicianship: ―The ones who went to Lloyd Reese all did very well, because they could go anywhere. It wasn‘t just that they could play the instrument well. They had to be able to meet with people, conduct themselves properly. They knew how to make time. They were concerned about the whole orchestra. It wasn‘t just ‗Well, I played mine‘ but ‗Yeah, guys, could we all get an A? Could we all tune up again? Could we all maybe play a little easier?‘ That was a Lloyd Reese-type student. Everybody had to play piano. Most of us could write, most could conduct. You were getting all that other knowledge. He was opening our minds…This guy was preparing you to be a giant‖ 26 Other private music teachers like Sam Saxe also proved to be an invaluable resource for local musicians. Saxe was not only another prominent jazz/classical educator—who students included Claude Williamson, Lorraine Geller and even Hampton Hawes—but a powerful mediator between artists‘ pedagogical research and live performance. According to pianist and long-time jazz radio deejay, Dick Whittington, ―Sam‘s goal was to get you playing gigs as soon as possible, and he used to run a referral service and would send you on gigs when he thought you were ready…He would train you for jazz or studio music, and he would have these things he would give you on, say, ten rules for being a studio musician. They would include things like: learn to be able to read everything; cultivate connections; live close by to the studios—a lot of these things would have nothing to do with the music. But he would teach you anything, and he had a lot of successful students.‖ 27 116 With these educators, Los Angeles high schools were able to develop perhaps the most necessary of institutions to West Coast jazz: the musicians. Even in their mid-teen years, its more prominent members were more full-time artists than secondary school students as their talents and training put them in demand for live and recording dates. Though Jefferson High was the preeminent jazz factory, other local high schools produced a great output of talented artists: Mingus and Collette from Jordan High in Watts; Dolphy and Herb Geller from Dorsey High; Russ Freeman and Larry Bunker from Manual Arts High; Melba Liston and Hawes from Polytechnic High. 28 Higher up on the academic totem pole were the state‘s many colleges and universities which shared an equally important role in producing countless numbers of important West Coast jazz artists. The focus of the educational training, however, was not in jazz per se but in classical music. This, despite a growing sensibility that jazz was an art music which necessitated serious, formalized study beginning well before World War II; the early writings of John Hammond, Leonard Feather and Hugo Pannasie are prime examples. As America emerged from the war, jazz came to represent a distinctly American cultural product, which it was argued, buttressed American cultural superiority; an art form which should be analyzed, qualified and disseminated worldwide. While jazz history courses had only recently been offered at elite institutions like the New School of Social Research in New York City in 1941, it was the early postwar period which saw an explosion of accredited university jazz programs starting with the Berklee College of Music in 1945. However, while there were many jazzmen like Erskine Hawkins and Jimmy Lunceford who directed jazz groups at the university level even before the war, neither they nor the vast majority of professional jazz artists in America received any formal training in the music. As 117 former Down Beat magazine editor, Charles Suber, has noted, ―Recordings were the first jazz 29 textbooks.‖ Thus, that a jazz artist would think it beneficial to take formal music study at an elite institution seemed nonsensical, even antithetical. Nevertheless, with the help of the G.I. Bill, many aspiring California jazz artists took to formal study in music at these schools. There were many options for music students in Southern California in particular who wished to study jazz. Soon after Berklee established its program in 1945, three academic institutions in Los Angeles offered jazz for credit towards a diploma or degree in music were established: the Westlake College of Music in 1945, Los Angeles City College in 1946, and California State Polytechnic in 1948. 30 In particular, Los Angeles City College—not coincidently the one-time home of Austrian composer Ernst Krenek—has produced a long list of West Coast jazz notables including Eric Dolphy, Bob Florence, Herb Geller, Les McCann, Charles Mingus, Lennie Niehaus, Jack Sheldon, and Horace Tapscott. Most students of music who went on to notoriety in the jazz world however came from more traditional colleges and universities; those not known for their jazz programs but for their faculty in the classical music arena. UCLA by the late 1950s may not have been the Jefferson High equivalent in terms of the number of musically talented students, but in terms of notable faculty, UCLA might have been the most prestigious music school in Los Angeles. Arnold Schoenberg, perhaps the most prominent music faculty member who taught at UCLA until the early 1950s is now immortalized in the Schoenberg music building on campus. His successor, Lukas Foss, in the late 1950s directed the Improvisational Chamber Ensemble, an ―experiment with improvisation outside the jazz framework‖ consisting of Foss at piano, Richard Duffalo on clarinet, Charles Delancy on percussion, Howard Colf on cello and David Duke on French 31 horn. According to critic Peter Yates, the group displayed ―a type of improvisation not 118 resembling, but somewhat after the manner of, what is called progressive jazz.‖ 32 Roger Sessions, an American composer who studied with Ernst Bloch at Yale University, served at one time as faculty there and whose most notable student was clarinetist William O. Smith (aka Bill Smith) of the early Dave Brubeck Octet. Radio and Hollywood film scorer Leith Stevens taught composition to jazz musician, deejay and impresario, Howard Lucraft, in the late 1950s. Even Neshui Ertegun, the Turkish Ambassador to the United States and Contemporary Records employee, taught UCLA‘s first jazz history course. At UCLA Extension, Dr. Watson Dickerman taught a course called ―Jazz Theory and Appreciation,‖ later to be taken over by radio deejay and jazz critic, Charles Weisenberg. The Northern California equivalents of UCLA were undoubtedly Mills College and San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University). San Francisco State College produced the likes of Paul Desmond, Vince Guaraldi, Cal Tjader, Pete Rugolo, John Handy, and Ron Crotty. Rugolo, along with Dave Brubeck and several members of his famous Octet—Bill Smith, Dave van Kriedt, Jack Weeks and Dick Collins—attended Mills College where they studied with French émigré, Darius Milhaud. In addition, an almost countless number of West Coast jazz artists received formal music educations, like Chet Baker at El Camino College and Chico Hamilton at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, for example. Indeed many jazz artists at the time came to Los Angeles with formal training from elsewhere: Claude Williamson from the New England Conservatory of Music, Curtis Amy from Kentucky State College, Jimmy Giuffre from North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas), Percy Heath from the Granoff School of Music in Philadelphia, and Bud Shank from University of North Carolina. 119 As previously discussed, classical music educators inhabited academia at almost every level of higher education—at community colleges and at prestigious universities in every region of the state—but were also seen as private instructors. Author, composer and philosopher Dr. Wesley LaViolette, instructed privately such jazz luminaries as Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre, Red Norvo and John Graas. The Italian émigré and Hollywood film scorer, Mario CastelnuovoTedesco was private tutor to Bob Cooper and Marty Paich. Herman Reinshagen, former bassist for the New York Philharmonic and head of the bass department at University of Southern California, gave lessons to bassists Red Callender and Charles Mingus. Other colleges and universities in California served to reinforce the jazz community though in more oblique ways. Art schools in particular were integrating jazz into their curriculum and producing artists deeply connected to the jazz world even without formal instruction in music. For instance, John Altoon, a major member of the Ferus Gallery collective, was also an instructor at the Art Center School in Los Angeles where he often integrated live jazz in his classrooms. In one now famous photo from 1958, Altoon is seen in the midst of instruction while two young jazz musicians, a drummer and bassist, perform in the background. In the foreground, his students paint the musicians using the music as a guide. 33 Likewise, at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco (now the San Francisco Art Institute) became a hub of jazz-making in the 1950s when a few teachers and students formed the Studio 13 Jass (or Jazz) Band in the 1940s. The group‘s name was taken from the room on campus where the band members practiced and, as the name also suggests, the group was dedicated to New Orleans and Dixieland jazz. Its founding members, pianist David Park and trumpeter Elmer Bischoff, were prominent members of the Bay Area figurative movement and the school‘s legendary director, Douglas MacAgy served on drums. They were joined by two 120 students, Conrad Janis on trombone and Charlie Clark on trumpet. Later, the group would include Big Brother and the Holding Company drummer Dave Getz, who not only received an M.F.A. from the school but served on its faculty as an instructor of painting in the mid-1960s, as well as Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, who attended CSFA as part of an outreach program for high school students with artistic promise. 34 One of CSFA‘s more prominent students, Wally Hedrick, the prominent Bay Area abstractionist, owner of the famous Six Gallery and later one of its faculty, joined on banjo in 1952, playing with the group well into the 1990s. As Hedrick describes it, the band was motivation enough to enroll at CSFA. In 1946, he and some friends decided to drive from Pasadena to San Francisco to tour the school. As Hedrick tell is, ―The first day I walked in, they were out there on the patio and they had a complete band. I don‘t know how many people know it, but MacAgy was a passable drummer.‖ he recalled. 36 35 ―It seemed like heaven, full of these crazy artists,‖ Unfortunately, Hedrick neither had any musical training nor the money to pay for tuition so instead returned to Pasadena and studied the banjo. According to Rebecca Solnit, ―he was determined to return—he wanted to be in the Studio 13 Jass Band.‖ 37 After returning to San Francisco, while in the band, Hedrick‘s Fillmore Street studio served as the site of many of their performances, though the group was more commonly known to play art exhibition openings. According to Hedrick, ―Our job was to create cacophony as background for parties and social functions.‖ 38 Art galleries also informed the jazz world as well as were informed by it. The Ferus Gallery, as Mike Davis argues, was ―the art counterpoint to the jazz underground,‖ a statement made more pronounced by the fact that many of its artists had close ties with the jazz community as in the case of Robert Irwin, for instance, who was a classmate of multi-reed man Eric Dolphy 121 at Dorsey High. 39 Davis‘s sentiments are echoed by Pop artist and Ferus member, Ed Ruscha: ―It was almost like a jazz catalogue, where there are a lot of difference voices under the same record label. All of them had very distinct voices, each in his own way. They all seemed to be friends with one another, yet they weren‘t necessarily influenced by each other‘s work.‖ 40 The Dilexi Gallery in San Francisco has a similar relationship to the jazz world. According to Solnit, the Dilexi was ―a link between the underground and the mainstream for many artists, and it was crucial in establishing a thriving art community.‖ 41 Its founder, Jim Newman, went beyond the role of curator. He was a musician—a saxophonist educated in music at Oberlin College—and a concert promoter, organizing concerts by local jazz artists like Chet Baker, Terry Gibbs, Charles Mingus, and Dave Brubeck. Along with Walter Hopps and Bob Kauffman, he formed the Concert Hall Workshop, producing various art-and-jazz exhibitions. The first location of the Workshop was, not coincidently, set in a building on Broadway just below the Dilexi Gallery. In accordance with the hours that jazz artists there tended to keep, the gallery stayed open late into the night. 42 While jazz musicians did not usually look upon art galleries, exhibitions and educational centers as their primary or preferred performance venues, artists of varying aesthetic and instructional backgrounds studied, experimented and produced in these spaces with jazz as a th common presence during the mid-20 century; further evidence that the language of modernism served as a critical framework to produce jazz-shaped art. Out In the Elements: The Rise of Concert Halls and Festivals as Jazz Venues 122 Jazz musicians often crossed over at other non-traditional venues for live jazz. While the nightclub scene offered a conventional live jazz experience, California‘s legacy of supporting high art institutions coupled with growing sentiments that jazz was a form of high art gave rise to jazz performances in concert halls like the Palladium, the Shrine Auditorium, the Hollywood Bowl, and the Philharmonic Auditorium; the latter being the site of Norman Granz‘s first ―Jazz at the Philharmonic‖ concert series in 1944. 43 While jazz in the concert hall setting was nothing new by midcentury—Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington both played Carnegie Hall in1938 and 1943, respectively—jazz at these venues carried a different significance in California, representing the aesthetic relationship between highbrow and lowbrow art forms found in jazz in California. Perhaps the most iconic concert hall in Los Angeles was not a ―hall‖ at all. The Hollywood Bowl, built in 1919, is an outdoor amphitheater built into a dell near Cahuenga Pass known for its natural acoustic qualities. As an outdoor venue near the Hollywood area, one located within walking distance or via public transportation, the site could be easily accessed by a multitude of Los Angeles residents. Indeed, early concertgoers to the Hollywood Bowl came from a variety of racial, ethnic, religious, gender and age groups, which testifies as much to site‘s (and its founder‘s) attitude towards democratization as to its convenient location. This inclusivity is also seen in the artistic vision of one of its major benefactors, Christine Wetherill Stevenson, who sought to mold the Hollywood Bowl as a site of performance as well as learning. At her behest, the Hollywood Bowl featured a multiplicity of art forms including painting, acting, literature, dancing, sculpture and architecture. 44 Additionally, the Hollywood Bowl engaged in a reciprocity program in establishing links with local schools and invited local schoolchildren to perform. These children then returned the favor by organizing fundraising drives on behalf of the 123 venue. Thus, the Hollywood Bowl early on functioned as a hub of community activism in the arts in Los Angeles; a democratic and philanthropic space in which everyday Angelinos could share and benefit not only from music, but from various forms of high art. 45 th Jazz came to Hollywood Bowl as early as July 12 , 1937, the day after George Gershwin‘s death, wherein a memorial concert with orchestra and several soloists paid tribute to the Tin Pan Alley composer. The classical music elite, such as impresario Merle Armitage, Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Otto Klemperer and Gershwin‘s tennis partner, Arnold Schönberg, gave eulogies. The following fall, a second ―memorial‖ was planned, thereby establishing the ―Gershwin Nights‖ tradition which lasted until 1962. In the meantime, the Hollywood Bowl attracted prominent artists in the world of jazz like Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong. Their appearances, according to Marcus, fostered a reciprocal relationship with classical music programming at the Hollywood Bowl, allowing the latter to continue with the financial support gleaned from sales of jazz and popular music concerts. By the 1950s, jazz concerts were regularly seen at the Hollywood Bowl and in 1959 it became the site of the Los Angeles Jazz Festival (later to be titled The Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival). That year, the festival featured Count Basie, George Shearing, Sarah Vaughn and Nina Simone. 46 In 1960, the event grew considerably, featuring jazz luminaries such as Duke Ellington, Ben Webster, Horace Silver, Art Blakey and others. 47 For the 1960 festival, event organizers approached Howard Lucraft with the idea to assemble and conduct his own group featuring some original material in order to highlight the wealth of local talent. According to Lucraft, ―they said, ‗There‘s so many great single soloists in Los Angeles and Hollywood, we‘d 124 like to have something to feature them…‘ So they said, ‗could you write something?‘‖ 48 The group, consisting of West Coasters Art Pepper, Teddy Edwards, Frank Rosolino, Bill Perkins, Pete Jolly, Red Mitchell, and Stan Levy, were known as the Howard Lucraft Hollywood AllStars but billed as the Hollywood Jazz Greats. Especially for the event, Lucraft wrote a 12-bar blues called ―Los Angeles Jazz Suite‖ which purposefully suited the improvisational strengths of its local talent. The main theme, called ―Civic Centre,‖ consists of six short vignettes linked together by counterpoint allowing each artist (except for Levy) to be featured individually. wrote it just to give them a basic feature,‖ said Lucraft. 49 ―I 50 By the end of the decade the Hollywood Bowl had amassed a reputation as a site where the cream of jazz musicians came to play. Even while its directors continued to represent the venue as a high art establishment and classical music as the mainstay of its programming, ―jazz and pop music henceforward became a critical part of the Bowl concert schedule, which has continued up to the present day.‖ 51 Another important non-traditional site for jazz in California was the Monterey Jazz Festival (MJF). Like the Hollywood Bowl, the MJF was not a concert hall per se, but one that indeed mimicked the concert hall experience. Founded in 1958 by radio deejay and jazz impresario, Jimmy Lyons, the MJF was formed as an answer to the famous Newport Jazz Festival (founded a few years prior in Newport, Rhode Island) with the intent on bringing jazz greats from around the nation to perform, while catering especially to the local community. In that vein, from its inception the MJF represented California‘s distinct music culture; its boosterish charm, its commitment to music education and its desacralizing fusion of high and low cultures spread across artistic genres. 125 In the first place, the MJF was a ―non-profit, educational corporation,‖ not only in terms of its tax exempt status, but in terms of its musical mission as well. 52 The festival commonly held informative presentations to educate as well as entertain its public such as Dizzy Gillespie‘s ―Relatives of Jazz‖ at the 1962 festival which celebrated the diversity of foreign influence upon jazz, and Jon Hendricks‘s ―Evolution of the Blues Song‖ at the 1960 festival, a piece commissioned by the MJF and composed as a response to those histories which originated the music in brothels or other places of ill repute. According to William Minor, ―For ‗Evolution,‘ Hendricks, who was a preacher‘s son, sat in a child‘s chair facing a group of children whose backs were turned to the audience. He told them the history of the blues, saying that ‗the spirituals are the mother of the blues and the blues are the mother of jazz.‖ 53 Children, according to Hendricks, are ―much closer to where we came from,‖ and ―they would understand.‖ 54 From the outset, the MJF also had a special relationship with high art, including classical music. Among the performances at the 1958 festival, several were classical pieces inducing Howard Brubeck‘s ―Dialogue for Quartet and Orchestra,‖ Pete Phillips‘s ―Toccata for Jazz Percussions and Orchestra‖ featuring drummer Max Roach, and several pieces by classical composers Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith and Darius Milhaud performed by the Monterey Jazz Festival Symphony and conducted by Gregory Millar. 55 Even the program to the festival in that year brought classical music to a jazz setting in including an article examining ―the 56 relationship of classical music to jazz.‖ Likewise, for the 1959 festival, Gunther Schuller presented a ―Third Stream‖ piece which, conducted alongside John Lewis, was performed by an ensemble consisting of members of the San Francisco Symphony and Woody Herman‘s big 57 band. 126 The MJF also had popular art connections, often illustrating the intimate connections that jazz shared with its geographic location as well as other artists. ―As if attempting to rival Steinbeck‘s effusive prose,‖ says Minor, the 1958 program ―characterized the Monterey Bay Peninsula as the grand lady of California, lively, wearing her past ‗with grace‘ but ‗consorting‘ with the arts and artists of the day and ‗having a ball doing it.‘‖ 58 Not coincidentally, the 1960 festival featured Duke Ellington‘s ―Suite Thursday,‖ a commissioned piece which followed the exploits of Doc Ricketts and Suzy, characters from Steinbeck‘s Cannery Row (1945). Contributing to the festival‘s carnival-like atmosphere in the early years was ―everything from juggling acts to Jazzercise demonstrations to ‗street performers‘‖ who substituted for the lack of continuous music being played at the festival. 59 Given its proximity to the San Francisco-based literati, the MJF was—along its midway areas, at least—not only a musical venue but a venue for jazz-poetry and other jazz-influenced art in full swing by the late 1950s. These non-traditional sites did not go un-criticized at the time by some of the jazz elite in Los Angeles. Drummer Shelly Manne and jazz critic Charles Weisenberg were two figures who expressed grave concerns over these venues. By the early 1960s, Weisenberg was one of the most vocal critics of jazz venues in the Los Angeles area. In several published articles and in many of his ―Jazz Commentary‖ shows on radio station KNOB around the early 1960s, Weisenberg examined recent trends in jazz concerts in the post-WWII era and criticized jazz performances in concert halls. In one ―Jazz Commentary‖ show, Weisenberg reviewed several concert hall jazz performances in the area and noted, ―Jazz concerts have really developed as a commercial enterprise in the last 10 or 15 years. Before that time, this music was not considered fit for the concert stage by many enlightened people controlling the concert business. Jazz was for bars and dance halls.‖ 60 Thankfully, for Weisenberg, jazz came to the concert halls as the 127 music gained popularity among music promoters. However, while live jazz could now be accessed in considerably more locations throughout the Southland, the quality of the music suffered as a result of its transplantation to an unsuitable arena. Two of Weisenberg‘s targets were the Shrine Auditorium and the Philharmonic Auditorium, which he called ―barns.‖ 61 ―Ever see professional football teams play on a basketball court?,‖ he asked in Frontier magazine in 1960. ―Well, musically this is what happens every time a jazz concert is given in the Shrine Auditorium or any other large concert hall in Southern California. Existing concert halls simply are not suited for quality jazz presentations.‖ 62 At the crux of Weisenberg‘s criticism is that the physical dimensions, acoustics and audience arrangements within the concert hall are skewed towards the needs of classical music. Placing jazz in this setting dramatically alters the dynamics of jazz performance: ―Jazz is basically an intimate art form requiring a feeling of unity between performer and audience while classical music is grandiose in character. The jazz orchestra seldom has more than 25 musicians while the symphony has more than 100. It becomes obvious that the large stage needed for the symphony is unnecessary for jazz. Another important contrast is the jazz audience‘s desire to get close to the source of music while the classical audience must sit at a greater distance to assimilate the sound of 100 or so 63 instruments.‖ Concert halls in Southern California, said Weisenberg, ―cannot do justice to any of the first rate jazz groups.‖ 64 The solution, however, was simple: ―We need a concert hall built and designed specifically for this music.‖ 65 128 Weisenberg also had similar opinions of jazz festivals. In several ―Jazz Commentary‖ shows, he critiqued the Monterey Jazz Festival in its early years. The 3 rd annual MJF in 1960 produced mixed feelings. Its positives were in the hiring of its musical director, John Lewis and in limiting seating to only 6,000 seats. The latter made the event more manageable and curbed the zoo-like atmosphere common at other jazz festivals around the country which attempted to appeal to as many spectators as possible. Among the negative were, somewhat like his criticisms of the concert hall, that jazz performed outdoors is disasterous acoustically, aesthetically and even environmentally. Audiences were made to suffer through day-long performance scheduling; braving the hot sun in the afternoon and the bitter cold in the evening. 66 Similarly, in 1958, Weisenberg noted ―certainly one of the most unusual aspects of the festival was the location of the bandstand directly beneath the flight path of an adjacent airport. Lovers of jazz AND airplane engines had a ball.‖ 67 Weisenberg‘s most poignant criticism of these non-traditional venues were those which placed the locus of blame for the decline of the nightclub scene on several important factors social, economic and aesthetic factors. In particular, he noted the rise of the concert hall had an inverse relationship with the decline of the nightclub. In particular, the increase in local support for jazz in the concert hall often forced economically-minded jazz musicians to migrate away from the nightclubs. Many jazz musicians, he said, were abandoning the nightclubs and ―turning to the classical concert auditorium, a giant hall designed for 100-piece symphony orchestras and opera companies.‖ 68 However, there was an obvious tradeoff. ―A concert, unlike a nightclub appearance, gives the musicians a chance to play their best music. There are no tinkling glasses, drunks at the bar, noisy waitresses and the like to distract from the music.‖ 129 69 However, in relocating to the concert hall, musicians benefit by evading the nightclub‘s ―clanging cash register, whirling malt machines, and clinking glasses,‖ but fall prey to its unsuitable acoustics. ―If one is noisy and filled with distractions,‖ he says, ―the other fails to establish the intimacy between musicians and audience that is necessary for good jazz.‖ 70 Until a concert hall can be designed with jazz musicians and audiences in mind, he concluded, ―jazz enthusiasts will have to seek out the enlightened club owners and concert promoters for their ration of live music.‖ 71 While the rise of the concert halls as jazz venues drew audiences and musicians away from the nightclubs, none can assume sole responsibility. When nightclubs weren‘t victims of their own designs, they struggled under the weight of larger social and economic forces. As Weisenberg observed in one airing of his ―Jazz Commentary‖ radio show, the vast and fragmented composition of Los Angeles greatly impeded the success and longevity of the nightclub scene: ―Although we have a great number of good jazzmen living in the Southern California area we have had a very strange history of jazz clubs. There have never been great numbers of jazz clubs and their success have been relatively limited (everyone looks for explanations). I think perhaps the biggest obstacle is the fact that our community in the West is sprawled out over great distances. And people are hesitant to buck the traffic. Lack of a good mass transportation system here has hurt a lot of people including the downtown businessmen, theater in general and jazz clubs in specific. You‘ll not find many folks over in Whittier anxious to fight their way in to Hollywood of from Woodland Hills into East L.A. for an evening‘s entertainment. After fighting the traffic most of us would be pretty beat. The jazz audience is spread all over the southland and like everyone else is stranded without a good mass transportation system. And I 130 personally am convinced that this is one of the biggest reasons jazz clubs have failed to prosper in our community despite the great interest and available talent.‖ 72 There were other problem areas as well: ―There is the problem of hard liquor and [the] teenager; the problem of meeting salary demands from musicians and waitresses and the general problems of taking in enough money to make the place go.‖ 73 Audiences and nightclubs owners also shared in the blame, as their shortcomings greatly affected the jazz scene at large. ―In Southern California,‖ Weisenberg wrote, jazz clubs have had a very difficult time making a profit, even a small profit,‖ noting ―It has been the inability of the area to support a substantial number of first rate jazz clubs that had kept it from becoming the undisputed jazz capitol of the world. Too frequently a jazz club is opened by a good bartending businessman who views jazz as just another operating expense. The result has been bad business and poor music.‖ 74 Interestingly, perhaps the only nightclub of any magnitude or quality to be established after the 1950s was Shelly‘s Manne-Hole in 1960. The Manne-Hole was formed as an answer to the rise of the concert hall as a jazz venue. Manne told Charles Weisenberg in Frontier in April of 1960, ―I‘ve always felt the real home of jazz is right here in the clubs where everybody can sit down, relax and enjoy themselves. There is a warmer atmosphere if a club and if you‘ve got something to say you can communicate it to the audience. The concert hall is too big and too cold. You walk out there in front of 5,000 people with no warm-up and you‘re expected to produce great music.‖ 75 Thus, for Manne, as with Weisenberg, the concert hall disintegrated the bond between musician and audience such that good jazz could not be produced. He went on to emphasize the kind of enthusiasm for jazz that nightclubs elicited as opposed to the concert hall: 131 ―A couple years ago I began thinking I would like to open a place, a club where I could play and give other guys a chance to come in and work. I‘m comfortable in a good club, I like to work close with the people and maybe kid around and talk with them. Great things don‘t happen all the time, but it‘s a ball and I find that people do a lot of listening in the 76 clubs.‖ Manne also ranked himself among a faction of the jazz elite in another way, according to Weisenberg, in insisting ―he is not primarily concerned with profits but rather the presentation of jazz seven nights a week… As long as the Manne Hole brings in ‗some‘ profits it will be kept as ‗a jazz club owned by a jazz musician for jazz and friends of jazz.‘‖ 77 True to his word, Manne managed to keep the Manne-Hole afloat for over a decade. Around the time the Manne-Hole closed its doors in 1973, live jazz in Los Angeles left behind only traces of its former glory. Manne was not alone, however. By that time, the most important jazz musicians/nightclub owners in Los Angeles had abandoned their namesakes; Stan Kenton was financially unable to operate the Rendezvous, and Howard Rumsey‘s Lighthouse revamped its jazz policy, booking only out of town acts to draw sufficient crowds. 78 The loss of jazz at these sites was of course compounded by larger political, economic and cultural factors involved in the decline in jazz in general. Youth interest waned due to the advent of rock and roll, for one. Another factor was the local musicians union‘s new eight-man quota on performances at nightclubs regardless of group or audience size. The latter specifically impacted the Crescendo in Los Angeles, owned by Gene Norman. Under the new union guidelines, if a quartet was scheduled to play, the club would require the quartet to expand to an octet for that performance. 79 This requirement proved unprofitable for Norman, who sold the club in 1963. 132 Often, however, it was the sheer economic burden which made the sustainability of nightclubs ever more difficult with jazz performances migrating out of its traditional sites. Nightclubs were extremely important to the economic success of the music and, vice versa, the popularity of the music kept the nightclubs in business. While their demise provided opportunities for jazz in alternative venues, it also led in large part to the depreciation of an entire jazz scene in California. Yet even at the beginning of its descent, no other region in the United States could boast institutions the likes of California in terms of musical training, appreciation and exhibition by midcentury. Site Unseen: The Westlake College of Music and the Education of Jazz Modernism ―It was perceived by us as kind of a holy place really because we were very serious students there, and we were very intense. So everything I know I did in there was just geared towards that place. Every day that I went there. In other words, it was like going to school where you wanted to go to school. Just walking down the hall and hearing guys practice. I‘d hear a great horn sound; I‘d open the door and it was Bill Trujillo, the tenor player. And I‘d hear another great sound; it was Dave Madden, who played like Lester Young in those days…It really was kind of a holy experience for us.‖ - Bill Perkins (2003) 80 The history of jazz education is a seriously under-represented topic in jazz histories. While there exists a plethora of literature dedicated to jazz pedagogy, these do not satisfy the interest of the jazz historian. Likewise, while snippets of individual artists‘ instruction in jazz are found in countless biographical, autobiographical and historical works, few offer sustained 133 critiques of these institutions in relation to entire jazz movements. 81 In contrast to these works, I want to explore the most important educational center for the study of jazz in California in the post-WWII era: The Westlake College of Music. Westlake was the first academic institution in the country, after Berklee School of Music in Boston, to offer a college diploma that included curriculum in jazz. It became the prototype for jazz education at other jazz programs in the area like Los Angeles City College and grew to rival Berklee as the most important jazz education center in the country. Westlake was, more than Jefferson High School, UCLA or any other institution, the predominant jazz factory in the region. Its alumni perhaps surpass any college or university in the country in terms of talent, prestige or musical contribution. Indeed, many Westlake students went on to considerable commercial success with name bandleaders: saxophonists Bill Holman, Bill Perkins, Bob Cooper, Bob Gordon and Bob Graettinger, inhabited the upper echelons of the West Coast jazz movement and served with Stan Kenton; Terry Rosen, Larry McGuire and Sam Firmature went on to join Harry James‘s band; and Britt Woodman to Duke Ellington. Holman, Perkins and Graettinger in particular were long-time writers and arrangers for Kenton either while attending or after graduating from Westlake. 82 These are only a small representation of the Westlake‘s notables, however, as there were countless soloists to come out of the school like Les McCann, Charlie Haden, Milt Bernhart, Dave Bryant, and John Graas; all of whom were just as immersed in the West Coast jazz movement. Other Westlake students include Conrad Gozo, Bill Douglas, Harry Betts, Eddie Shew, Jasper Hornjak, George Jacobs, and Gene Russell. In addition to jazz instrumentalists, Westlake was also the alma mater to vocalists as well as popular music artists like Bob Morse of 134 the vocal group the Hi-Los, folk artist Gordon Lightfoot, and Spencer Dryden, drummer for the rock group, Jefferson Airplane. To date, the story of the Westlake School has gone largely untold save for brief biographical moments in larger jazz histories. 83 While alumni pedigree alone should necessitate further inquiry, providing a deeper understanding of the Westlake School in terms of its mission, its aura, its reputation and its representation in the jazz world of Southern California can position the Westlake School as vital institution in the history of West Coast jazz. Its founder, Alvin Learned, established the school in 1945, taking its name from its first location near Westlake Park in the Westlake district near downtown of Los Angeles. Learned‘s background lent much to the school‘s educational mission. He was not so much a musician as he was a teacher. His training was in education and he held a teaching credential, but had not received much musical training. Yet, in establishing the Westlake School, Learned modeled its curriculum after those established music schools on the East Coast like the Schillinger House, later becoming the Berklee School of Music. In fact, according to Bob Morgan, Westlake shared with its East Coast counterpart 3 similarities: ―1. The general goal of establishing a true jazz conservatory, 2. Benefiting from the fact of the then-new G.I. Bill, and 3. An emphasis on teaching the Schillinger System as a compositional technique.‖ 84 While he may have lacked the performance skills of most jazz educators at the time, Learned exhibited a deep pedagogical interest in the music and was intent on broadening jazz education. For instance, in his article published in Down Beat in December of 1957, Learned addresses the lack of appropriate music literature used by high school dance bands. Addressed to ―Music Educators,‖ with the subject ―Jazz in High School Bands,‖ Learned noted some of the problems in using stock arrangements, arguing that high school band directors must develop 135 arrangers from within their student ranks. Also in the column, Learned demonstrated various methods employed at Westlake to direct students to name scale degrees; methods which he also demonstrated in clinics at high schools and jazz festivals nationwide. 85 In putting education first in this way, Learned emphasized practicality over abstraction. Bill Holman remembered Learned as an educator who understood the difficult economic situation which professional musicians faced, often recommending his students develop transportable skills: ―He said probably the best career move a musician could make is to learn rd how to sing the 3 part in a vocal group. He was very commercially-minded. He also recommended everybody learn to play bass.‖ This commercial sensibility combined with his instructional interests led Learned to devise a curriculum based on utility, thus serving as central to the school‘s mission. In that vein, Learned hired faculty who were not either merely musicians or instructors, but who actively worked in both academia and the music industry, bringing their real-world experience to the classroom. Two such instructors with music industry connections were David Baskerville and Buddy Bregman. Baskerville was a staff composer and conductor for NBC who later went on to head the jazz program at the University of Colorado, Denver. 86 According to Baskerville, ―In 1948, Westlake‘s founder, Alvin Learned, hired me to assist in the formulation of a curriculum that would serve the needs of musicians seeking careers in the Hollywood studios.‖ 87 Likewise, Bregman, a producer and director for Warner Brothers and CBS television, was known to recruit his students at Westlake into his studio groups. 88 Like Bregman, Paul Villepigue, a jazz composer, arranger and educator who served on the faculty from 1947 to 1950, often recruited his students into Ike Carpenter‘s big band, for whom he was principle arranger. In addition to his job as an instructor, Villepigue was a sought 136 after composer/arranger nationwide by the likes of Charlie Barnet, Boyd Raeburn, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich and Stan Kenton. After leaving Westlake, and for the few years before his death in 1953, Villepigue joined the American Operatic Laboratory where he came in contact with, and then became a student to, Dr. Wesley La Violette. According to trombonist and Westlake student, Milt Bernhart, La Violette‘s ideas had a considerable impact on Villepigue: ―A marvelous arranger named Paul Villepigue referred to his teacher, La V., and gave me a book of his, The Creative Light. I know I still have it, and it had a lot to do with my rising interest in metaphysics for a number of years. . . . The book pursues its title subject with a passion—to be genuinely creative, the artist must exist on a level—both conscious and subconscious—that can only be achieved through serious meditation. The way to meditate is suggested by La Violette in thought patterns which over a period of time would become virtually automatic. And in this way, the artist‘s inner vision would expand dramatically. In the case of [Jimmy] Giuffre and Shorty Rogers this did happen. If it sounds easy, it isn‘t.‖ 89 Perhaps Westlake‘s most renowned faculty however, was one Hollywood‘s most prominent writer/arrangers. Hailing from Oakland, CA, Russ Garcia attended San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University) to study music though he left after only short time, feeling the education wasn‘t what he required. After touring with several bands, he made his way to Los Angeles. ―I came to Hollywood and decided to study with the finest composers and conductors and teachers that I could find, which I did,‖ he said. 90 Among them were Ernst Toch and Manuel Castelnuovo-Tedesco; classical music composers whom other jazz notables in Los Angeles had studied under. Eventually, Garcia landed a job as staff composer and arranger at NBC. While the draft and a stint in the U.S. infantry in World War II bought about a hiatus for 137 three years, after his discharge, he was able to resume work at NBC as mandated by federal law at the time. As Garcia tells it, within two weeks of his reemployment, NBC‘s musical director and conductor at the time, agitated at the surfeit of ―directives‖ issued upon the music department from upper management, stormed into the executive offices above the studio to lodge a complaint. Their response was to fire not only the musical director, but the copyists, and the entire orchestra as well. In the meantime, Garcia was asked to give a lecture at Westlake. Perhaps realizing his potential as an instructor, Learned asked Garcia to join the faculty full91 time. Westlake was not only home to jazz and popular music-oriented faculty. In fact, among its most respected and most notable faculty were conservatory-trained classical composers. Among them was Alfred Sendrey who, according to Holman, was ―the soul of the school.‖ The Hungarian-born composer and once-conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Sendrey, like many European émigrés, came to the United States from Paris during World War II. He was also a popular instructor among many Westlake students for his forward-thinking instruction and remarkable musical skills. Bill Perkins remembers Sendrey as a ―wonderful gentleman‖ who ―was as modern as tomorrow.‖ ―You could take your whole hand and jam it down on the piano,‖ he said, ―and he would name every note off to you. And…he said with a twinkle in his eye, ‗My favorite was the waltz in Vienna.‘‖ Sendrey‘s connections to other European émigré artists brought the classical music world of Los Angeles to his students in a similar manner to the more jazz or popular music-oriented faculty. On one such occasion, Sendrey called upon fellow émigré Ernst Krenek to lecture in the same class in which Perkins was a student. ―What an education I was getting!,‖ recalled Perkins. 92 138 Of course, the real-world education at Westlake did not simply involve doubling wellknown composers as gurus or mentors to its students. Rather, it was firmly built in to the school‘s curriculum. While there were course offerings more typical of a school of music—ear training, solfeggio, harmony, conducting, and of course, writing and arranging—Westlake‘s commitment to practical professional training manifested in courses rarely seen elsewhere. Learned obliged instructor and jazz violinist, Paul Nero, to teach a course on how to mark and edit your sheet music in a rehearsal or recording setting. ―They made whole classes around stuff like that!,‖ said Holman, adding, ―I think he was embarrassed teaching it and we were befuddled taking the course.‖ There were many bands to play in—a large concert band, a swing band (headed by Kenny Ferrar), and the Westlake College Quintet featuring the school‘s more advanced students—yet even these carried the stigma of Westlake‘s brand of practicality. For instance, the studio band was, according to Perkins, like a course in and of itself. In class, ―queues were written every week and then the band would perform them at a local recording studio.‖ These kinds of courses, he said, were ―like the kind of thing you really certainly couldn‘t get in a college in those days because it was geared towards playing jazz or being a jazz musician, really.‖ Likewise, a typical day in Garcia‘s 3-hour arranging class was just as atypical: discussion for the first hour, 8 or 16 bar compositions for big band in the second hour, and performance of the charts in the third hour. Perhaps even more irregular were Westlake‘s required IQ and ear training tests as entry exams for prospective students. To Westlake students like Holman, however, these did not seem out of the ordinary; they well understood the school‘s purpose: 139 ―One of the things that came to mind when I went there was the fact that there was they weren‘t trying to turn out well-rounded human beings, they were turning out musicians. So you didn‘t study history or politics or civics or anything like that, and that appealed to me at the time, but here now I kind of wish I was more well-rounded. But at the time everybody was there to play or write or whatever their interests was [sic]. And I think there were no distractions about having to bone up for a history test or something like that.‖ Indeed, it was also the surplus of talented student musicians that supported the real-world environment of Westlake. As Perkins remembered, ―It was obviously the only place where you could get the kind of training you needed for playing in bands like Woody‘s and Stan‘s and so forth…In my case, I was essentially a beginning musician so I had people like Maynard Ferguson and Britt Woodman and I believe the trombone player for Kenton‘s band was there too, you know the lead trombone player, Milt Bernhart. And to be able to sit next to these guys in bands alone was an education. And so I‘ve often said or thought that I got my training ‗on the road.‘ Like they say, the only real way to get training is on the road with bands and there‘s not too many around today. But the fact is I forgot that I got my training at Westlake and it was a one of a kind place at that time. And so obviously I learned a lot just from sitting next to these players.‖ Not only was it an education in and of itself to perform alongside these student musicians, they, like their faculty counterparts, served as professional connections. ―The personal contacts there with the other people not only made it a great place to learn but you also got commercial contacts for work there,‖ said Holman. ―I didn‘t know a musician when I moved 140 [to Los Angeles from Santa Ana, CA] so it helped me in a couple of ways and I‘m glad it was there.‖ After graduating, Holman noted, these connections resulted in his big break: ―I got out of there around the summer of ‘51. And I was just around town here. I was working with the Ike Carpenter band and writing for different rehearsal bands and playing with different bands and kind of doing what everybody else was doing and then the start of ‘51 I went with Charlie Barnet‘s band. We did a short tour and got to play the Apollo Theater and the Howard Theater in Washington. It was really a lot of fun. That was my first trip to New York. And then in early ‘52, Gene Roland got me together with Stan Kenton because he heard an acetate, a recording, of a piece I had done while I was at Westlake and it was a 12-tone blues. I guess every student has to write a 12-tone blues at some point. And so Roland had been talking to Stan and Stan at the time was contemplating a more contrapuntal approach to the band instead of the vertical masses of sound that he had. And Roland played this record for him and he was really interested and so Roland set up an appointment and I talked to Stan and eventually I joined the band as a player. Then I was a professional.‖ While students tended to perform in the local jazz scene while studying at Westlake, they rarely considered themselves professionals as school obligations left little means for work during the week. According to Holman, ―At that stage, we probably weren‘t good enough to be working every night. Most of our gigs were on the weekend and I don‘t think it interfered [with our schoolwork]. The hours were pretty much like any other school; early morning till the middle of the afternoon. But we were weekend warriors.‖ There were some opportunities for Westlake students to participate in the professional jazz world, however. In 1955, Westlake students got the chance to record with Stan Kenton‘s band. That summer, Kenton, Westlake College and BMI 141 (Broadcast Music, Inc.) joined together to produce a series of albums marketed and sold exclusively to high school and college music departments titled ―The Stan Kenton-Westlake College Dance Band Album‖ which included Kenton, Pete Rugolo, Bill Holman, Shorty Rogers and other Los Angeles jazz artists as arrangers. 93 A year later the Westlake College Quintet signed with Decca to record the album ―College Goes to Jazz‖ featuring its members Sam Firmature, Fred Taggard, Dick Grove, Luther McDonald, and Dick Fritz; their only standalone album. In most cases, however, these were starving students whose love of music outweighed the meager existences they carved out for themselves. Perkins, for instance, was living off the G.I. Bill and forgoing professional work altogether. ―I don‘t think I worked at all,‖ he said. ―I just got my $75 a week which was plenty of money and practiced and that was it. I don‘t remember working. I went to free jam sessions. Of course, all jam sessions are free. So that was about it for me…I had no money and I didn‘t need any money. That‘s what‘s so amazing. Me and my first wife at the time lived in a shack above a shack in Beverly Glen. So it‘s like, talk about 150 steps, single wall shack. And the bathroom was the shower and the bathroom…But that didn‘t bother me at all. It might have bothered her though, I don‘t know. But that‘s it. Going to that school every day was it. And then we ate and the Entre cafeteria which was on Vine Street across [from the school].‖ In essence, Westlake students fit the school‘s unorthodox curriculum model because they themselves were unorthodox. ―They came there every day not because they had to go to school because their parents sent them,‖ said Garcia, ―They were there to learn.‖ At its height, recalls Perkins, Westlake‘s reputation ―was highly regarded by musicians.‖ Moreover, the revenue it generated was enough to advertize the school in major periodicals of 142 the day like The Billboard and Down Beat and even in the pages of William Claxton‘s collection of jazz photography, Jazz West Coast (1955), in which the school took out a half-page advertisement touting its many famous alumni and featuring testimonials from the likes of Duke Ellington, Woody Herman and Stan Kenton. It was these ads which drew artists like Charlie Haden, Gordon Lightfoot and Howard Roberts—a Westlake student-turned-instructor—to the school. However, the student‘s hard times were eventually shared by the school itself only a few short years later. There were several factors which led to the early demise in the school in 1961. While the larger social, political and economic conditions pressuring jazz in California were a contributor, the predominant factors came from within school itself. From the outset, Westlake existed as an organized academic institution only superficially. While it offered the basics—classrooms, instructors, even a school newspaper—its administrative management, its curriculum and its student life were far from the established model. Its faculty, students and administrators were organized more as a loose collection of like-minded artists who met to exchange ideas. In that regard, Westlake functioned as a bohemian club in which young musicians could network with industry-connected instructors while honing their musical skills. Students were there to learn to be sure, but education, and not the degree, was more often their goal. In light of the easy professional connections to be made and the short time to degree (2 years for a diploma), student turnaround prevented any cohesive college identity from coalescing. On top of this, there was the general feeling among its students that Westlake wasn‘t a ―real‖ college at all. The case of Jimmy Cheatham, the Westlake student who later went on to head the jazz program at University of California, San Diego, is exemplar in that regard. Hailing from Buffalo, NY, Cheatham came from a poor African American family. His mother, beaming 143 with pride upon learning her son would graduate from college, imagined the typical graduation ceremonies held at the more established universities. Of course, Westlake had no such ceremony. Cheatham, however, not wanting to disappoint his mother, asked Holman for help. As Holman remembers, ―We rented him a cap and gown and we rolled up a piece of paper and I handed [it to him] and we took a picture and he sent that back to his mother and she was so proud [that] her boy graduated from college.‖ Holman himself also epitomizes the students‘ relaxed attitude towards academia given that, as of 2003, he was unsure he even graduated. Even Learned was conscious of Westlake‘s pseudo-collegiate atmosphere. Occasionally he attempted compensate by bringing order to the school, though these attempts were usually unsuccessful. One occasion illustrates the widespread disregard for Learned‘s policies. As Garcia tells it, ―[Learned] was an educator, he wasn‘t really a musician. And one day he had me come into the office. He said, ‗Russ, I hear some of the students are coming in late and I want you to tell them…‘—now these are Kenton‘s brass section; all these high powered musicians—he says, ‗I want you to tell them if they‘re on time each day they‘ll get a silver star.‘ He said, ‗If they‘re on time the whole week, they‘ll get a gold star.‘ So I went into class and I told the class what he had suggested and we got laughing so loud, we were just roaring and Alvin Learned came in and said, ‗What‘s happening? What‘s so funny?‘ And I couldn‘t tell him what was happening.‖ In essence, what students took seriously was their music, not the collegiate life. According to one former student, Howard Roberts, Westlake also existed on shaky ground, financially and physically: 144 ―Apparently Westlake struggled from a business standpoint from day one. A former student there told me that the school had eight different locations during its existence, most of them in Hollywood, including one period when it was in the abandoned Screen Cartoonists office building. It moved from Hollywood to Laguna Beach in the summer of 1960, continuing to operate for about one more year, but drastically reduced in size and scope. There apparently was no fanfare when it ceased to be, probably around the summer of 1961. This same person related that the last he knew of Alvin Learned years ago, he was running a piano studio somewhere up the Pacific Coast Highway called ‗Al Learned Piano by Ear,‘ a rather sad fate for this man who was reportedly much admired for his valiant efforts at Westlake.‖ 94 The most important economic factor affecting the school was the decline of the G.I. Bill. By the early 1950s, the bill had funded the bulk of its World War II veteran recipients through to the end of their tenures at American colleges and universities. Peacetime meant an end to the wave of new collegians and fewer recipients and thus Westlake encountered found itself in increasing financial difficulty. The G.I. Bill was likely the school‘s primary source of revenue. Without the bill to fund students‘ education, the student body shrank drastically. According to Holman, ―I think the tuition was very stiff and only somebody on the G.I. Bill could afford to go there and I think it chewed up the allotment pretty fast. I think that may have contributed to the end of it; when the G.I. Bill was running out I don‘t think anybody could afford it anymore.‖ In this context, paying instructors became increasingly difficult and Learned was forced to devise ways to curb spending. ―It was a wonderful school until he got in an efficiency expert,‖ said Garcia: 145 ―I had several private students and most of the teachers there had private students…and we got paid through the G.I. Bill thing. So this efficiency expert said ‗Tell these teachers you‘re going to put them on a salary—a certain salary a week—and you must collect all this money and just pay them out their salary, which would cut us way down…‘ So he lost all his good teachers. And what is the school? The building doesn‘t count; it‘s the teachers.‖ To compensate for this loss while maintaining the school‘s policy of hiring industryconnected instructors, Learned looked again to Hollywood. However, without the capital necessary to pay for more experienced professionals, he instead hired actors with only a modicum of musical skills. Among them were the actors Gloria de Havin, who starred opposite leading men like Frank Sinatra; Jeff Chandler, the actor turned recording artist; and Scatman Crothers, an actor-singer-dancer in the vaudevillian tradition perhaps most remembered as a voiceover artists for the cartoons Hong Kong Phooey and Transformers. While Learned did manage to convince Stan Kenton and Jeri Southern—both of whom had experience as professional musicians and educators—the faculty did not live up to its former glory. The spiritual heir to Westlake was established by the Westlake College Quintet‘s former pianist, Dick Grove. After his graduation from Westlake, Grove joined its faculty in 1958 and taught there until its demise in 1961. Afterward, Grove becoming a well-known music educator, writer, clinician and professional musician. In 1973, he established the Dick Grove School of Music in Los Angeles based on his musical ideas and educational style. According to Holman, ―The main thrust of the school was pretty much like Westlake. It dealt entirely with music. And Dick being a good musician himself, I think, improved on the curriculum and 146 the whole idea of the school and he turned out a lot of good people that became professionals.‖ The school also was similar to Westlake in that it produced notable students (Michael Jackson, Barry Manilow, and Linda Ronstadt) and faculty (Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin and Bill Conti). Perhaps not surprisingly, the Dick Grove School of Music met the same fate as Westlake. According to Garcia, ―They moved into a big building in Van Nuys which was very expensive. They had to do a lot of remodeling and spent a lot of money and went way into debt. And then the recession, I think of 1990 or something, hit and nobody had the tuition so he got a double whammy there and I think that‘s what did it.‖ Like most institutions associated with the West Coast jazz movement, the Westlake School of Music was a grand experiment that ended too soon. To date, little documentation exists on the school save for the memories of its remaining former students. It is unclear as to whether any repository in the country houses the school‘s records or contains any artifacts; academic, financial or otherwise. Without that data, the full history of Westlake may never be written. Nevertheless, what is clear is Westlake‘s significance in the history of West Coast jazz. In producing countless numbers of talented jazz artists, the school stood as one of its most important institutions. “You‟re Supposed to Reflect Your Culture”: Dave Brubeck, Hybridism, and Jazz on Tour Born in Concord and raised in Ione, California, Dave Brubeck went from cattle country to symphony hall in a manner most people would deem storybook. One of the most recognized, lauded, and prolific of California jazz artists of the era, Brubeck also stands as one of the most important American jazzmen. Though a surprising dearth of scholarship exists on Brubeck, his 147 story is commonly known throughout the jazz world and, in particular, the world of jazz studies: his iconoclasm exhibited at an early age; his entry in the Army in World War II; his conservatory training; his staunchly anti-racist stance against playing for segregated audiences; his staunchly pro-American musical tours for the State Department. Moreover, Brubeck‘s obvious classical music aesthetics have been at the forefront of Brubeckian scholarship for years; his use of counterpoint, polytonality, time signatures, and block chords; his college themed albums (Jazz At Oberlin [1953], Jazz at the College of the Pacific [1953], Jazz Goes to College [1954], Jazz Goes to Junior College [1957]; his ballets (ex. Points on Jazz [1961]); his cantatas (ex. The Light in the Wilderness [1968] and Lenten Triptych Easter Trilogy [1988]); his collaborations with Leonard Bernstein on Howard Brubeck‘s ―Dialogues to Jazz Combo and Orchestra‖ [1962]; and his experiments with non-European musics (ex. Jazz Impressions of Eurasia [1959], Jazz Impressions of Japan [1967]). This, to say nothing of the mammoth commercial success and cultural importance of the album that is considered by many to be Brubeck‘s pièce de résistance, Time Out (1959). These exploits are known widely in the world of jazz literature and lore. Thus, any thorough account of Brubeck‘s contributions to the idioms of jazz as well as classical music through anything less than a monographic study would not begin to scratch the surface of their minutiae and significance. Here, however, I want to explore a facet of Brubeck‘s musical life which has largely gone unappreciated in jazz literature but which is nonetheless crucial to our understanding of West Coast jazz. In this case study on Brubeck‘s experiments in musical hybridism and his involvement as a student, teacher and performer at colleges and universities in California and beyond, I want to further demonstrate the critical role which music education played in the West Coast jazz movement. 148 Brubeck‘s introduction to music began at an early age. His mother, Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck, had studied piano privately with Tobias Mattey and Myra Hess and earned a Master‘s degree in music education. She also worked professionally as a private instructor and choirmaster while in Ione. As a child, Dave and his siblings found the Brubeck household to be one full of music as well as music instruction. 95 Elizabeth often played Beethoven, Bach and Chopin as a way to introduce her children to music. Though Ione was not a musical city, jazz did permeate its borders in the form of radio broadcasts from San Francisco featuring the likes of Benny Goodman or via records of pianists Fats Waller, Meade ―Lux‖ Lewis and Art Tatum; each of whom had a profound effect on young Dave. However, Brubeck was inattentive to his mother‘s lessons and often ―improvised‖ his way through them. ―I wouldn‘t conform to the very basic piano instruction,‖ Brubeck recalled. ―I didn‘t play classical music. I couldn‘t read, but boy could I fake reading! I knew all the keyboard exercises, hearing my mother‘s other students practice them. Finally my mother caught on and gave up on me. So, at eleven, I didn‘t have to practice anymore.‖ 96 This was not purely out of disinterest, but rather also the result of a distinctly crossed-eye from birth as well as suffering from dyslexia. Nevertheless, he managed to ―fake it‖ for many years to come. Without the ability to sight read, as a high school student Dave navigated his way blindly through many a weekend performance with Bill Amick‘s group. ―I faked it good enough so they didn‘t know, and I didn‘t tell them,‖ he said. 97 Later as a college student at College of the Pacific (now the University of the Pacific [UOP]) in Stockton, CA, Brubeck managed to evade detection from the entire music faculty until his senior year, at which time Dave was required to demonstrate proficiency on the piano. According to Brubeck, his piano teacher found him out and reported his deficiency to the Dean of the college who then threatened to prevent him from graduating. Brubeck‘s saving 149 graces were twofold: a group of supportive faculty who came to his aid and his considerable talents in musical areas other than sight reading, such as his advanced ear for sound and especially his grasp of counterpoint. The compromise was that Brubeck could graduate so long as he promised never to teach; a pledge he would break almost immediately. Ironically, it was th this institution which ultimately granted Brubeck an Honorary Doctorate in Music on June 11 , 98 1961. 1942 was a watermark year for Brubeck. In that year, he graduated from UOP but was not relieved entirely of bigger obligations. Graduating in wartime meant he was eligible for the draft, which quickly located and inducted him into the Army where he served for 4 years (the first two statewide and the latter two in Europe). While in Europe, Brubeck was assigned to a racially integrated 28-piece band known as the Wolf Pack; an assignment which largely excluded him from participating in the Battle of the Bulge. While this was a fortuitous and musically liberating event, it was at Camp Haan in Riverside, CA, where Brubeck‘s musical identity was cast more permanently. There, he made connections with two key musical figures in the area; Stan Kenton and Arnold Schönberg. Neither meeting proved fruitful for Brubeck. For the former, Brubeck composed a piece titled ―Prayer for the Conquered‖ which the bandleader never incorporated into his repertoire. While the latter figure offered Brubeck a lesson, upon encountering their musical differences both agreed the need for a second was pointless. During this now-infamous lesson, Schönberg proved to be Brubeck‘s opposite; he was ―pedantic and uncompromising‖ whereas Brubeck was ―searching, experimental and visceral.‖ 99 As Brubeck tells it, Schönberg reviewed his composition and replied, ―That is alright, but why did you write this note and why did you write that note?‖ Brubeck replied, why not? ―You have to have a reason for every note you write.‖ Schönberg said. ―Because it sounds good. That‘s my 150 reason,‖ he said. ―No, that‘s not a good reason. There must be other reasons too.‖ Schönberg then went to his studio and pointed to his collection of Beethoven symphonies. ―You can ask me any piece of music and I can tell you every note of it…I know more about music than any man alive. Therefore I can tell you why you should write the way I want you to write.‖ 100 Though their meeting ended in a shouting match, the experience related to Brubeck exactly in what direction his music was headed. According to Kevin Starr, ―these lessons indicated Brubeck‘s desire to connect with High Modernism in theory and practice;‖ one which would inevitably lead Brubeck to reinvent jazz as a form of high art and in the creation of jazz-classical hybrid forms of music. 101 It was not until his discharge in 1946, that Brubeck would seriously endeavor to receive instruction in classical music. Benefitting from the G.I. Bill, Brubeck enrolled at Mills College, in Oakland, CA to study with a man he had met before his encounter with Schönberg: the French Jewish émigré and modernist composer, Darius Milhaud. Brubeck had been introduced to Milhaud in the early 1940s through his brother, Howard, who worked as Milhaud‘s assistant. Milhaud rose to prominence in the early 1920s as a member of ―Les Six,‖ a term devised by Henri Collet to describe the cadre of six Parisian avant-garde composers including Arthur Honegger, Francis Poulenc, Georges Auric, Germaine Taileferre, and Louis Durey who had connections to Paris‘s modernist elite like Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau. Two decades later, Milhaud was forced to flee the city to escape Nazi occupation, arriving at Mills College in 1940. In fact, Milhaud had come to the United States much earlier. In 1922, while touring Harlem, New York, Milhaud was introduced to jazz, the music which would change his life and inevitably draw Brubeck towards him as teacher. ―The music I heard,‖ he recalled in his autobiography, Notes Without Music (1952), ―was absolutely different from anything I had ever 151 heard before and was a revelation to me. Against the beat of the drums the melodic lines crisscrossed in a breathless pattern of broken and twisted rhythms. This authentic music had its roots in the darkest corners of the Negro soul. More than ever I was determined to use jazz for chamber work.‖ 102 The following year came the piece that elevated Milhaud as one of Les Six‘s standout artists, La Creation Du Monde, a jazz-inspired ballet featuring fugue-style counterpoint and improvisational melodies and written a full year before George Gershwin‘s ―Rhapsody in Blue.‖ ―The Creation of the World gave me at last the opportunity of using the jazz idiom that I had studied so much,‖ said Milhaud. ―After the premiere, the indignant critics wrote that such music was not serious enough for the theater and would better suit a dance hall or a restaurant…Ten years later, these same critics would learnedly comment on the historical importance of jazz and demonstrate that the Creation was my best composition…‖ 103 It was Milhaud‘s interest in jazz and his inviting nature that drew Brubeck to him. ―I had one or two teachers at the College of the Pacific who were very encouraging,‖ Brubeck said, ―but Milhaud was by far the most encouraging. Most other teachers were not interested in jazz, as I was. I was also interested in composition and counterpoint. I never played classical piano. Most everything I learned was through osmosis—whether it was through Milhaud or my mother.‖ 104 While Milhaud was not a jazz educator and had no formal training or performance in the music he nonetheless sought to incorporate jazz into his instruction insofar as it was relevant to the student‘s musical interest. ―My student relationship with Milhaud was invaluable to my future,‖ said Brubeck. ―For example, ―he told me to never give up jazz. At that time I was focusing on studying to be a composer and was thinking of not playing jazz. Milhaud advised me, ‗Don‘t give up something you do so well. Bring jazz into your compositions.‘ In a humorous 152 way, he said, ‗You are free. You can survive in the world any place there is a piano. I have to go to all of these terrible boring faculty meetings. You can escape that.‘‖ 105 It was also Milhaud‘s self-avowed lack of ―esthetic rules, philosophies or theories,‖ and his student-centered pedagogy which drew Brubeck to him. 106 He once told the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle, ―If a student tries to imitate my style I throw him out. Above all a composer must have his own personality.‖ 107 Brubeck recalled, ―He was fantastic, because he took each one of us as we were and tried to help us to do whatever was in us, what we wanted to do. He did not try to make us be like him.‖ 108 While with Milhaud, Brubeck studied Bach chorals, read books on harmony by Andre Gedalge and analysis by Walter Piston, his relationship with Milhaud went far beyond booklearning. Brubeck‘s lessons with Milhaud, seen through his composition books from the periods of 1941 and from 1946-1947, illustrate Milhaud‘s understanding that Brubeck necessitated instruction in both classical technique as well as those which were required of jazz musicians. While these composition books contain lessons on the approaches of important classical composers (Mozart, Stravinsky, Mendelssohn and Chopin), intervals and inversions, and counterpoint, they also reveal Milhaud as an instructor attentive to Brubeck‘s incessant improvising. In at least two of these lessons, he explicitly urges Brubeck to experiment, noting on the pages, ―experiment‖ or ―experiment with ending.‖ 109 This suggests that invention and improvisation was firmly within Milhaud‘s vocabulary and pedagogical interest. Another lesson on building chords on a series of 4ths reveals Milhaud‘s instruction to ―write down all combinations that have [an] interesting sound. We shall discuss why they are interesting and 110 [the] possibility of using [them].‖ In this way, Milhaud was the very antithesis of Schönberg. 153 Why would Milhaud insist that Brubeck and his other Mills College students play jazz? Music instruction at Mills did not involve a jazz curriculum and would not satisfy any core requirements toward the degree. Nevertheless, for Milhaud the essential concern was to play organically or from within the set of cultural practices that informed one‘s musical sensibilities. The quintessential American cultural product, in Milhaud‘s eyes, was jazz. ―He felt that playing jazz was an expression of American culture,‖ said Brubeck. ―He felt that a musician born in America should be influenced by jazz. At the beginning of every compositions class the first thing he would ask was ‗Are there any jazz musicians here?‘‖ 111 This sense of ―naturalness‖ underlay Milhaud‘s insistence that his American students expound on the cultural form. ―Dave,‖ 112 Milhaud once told Brubeck, ―you must do what is in you… you‘re natural in jazz.‖ Brubeck absorbed Milhaud‘s lessons on culture, transposing them into an argument for an American musical renaissance as evidenced in several published articles and interviews. Throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s Brubeck commented frequently on the importance of jazz in American culture. In particular, he stressed the expression of culture or ―roots‖ as a ―natural‖ and necessary element for American composers. In a 1955 interview with Willis Conover, the host of the radio show ―Voice of America,‖ Brubeck described jazz and classical music as two separate but converging idioms as a result of shifting cultural contexts. Given that jazz and classical music abounded in America at the time, he argued, musicians are sociologically as well as morally obligated to ―reflect their culture:‖ ―It‘s my belief that your mind never forgets anything and you‘re conditioned…we know that we are the sum of our past. Each person reflects everything he‘s studied or heard and the musicians that I play with have listened and written and used the classical idiom a lot more than other jazz musicians.‖ 154 113 ―It was natural that musicians in my generation, who had heard both jazz and European music, should incorporate some of the compositional techniques of classical music and adapt it to our uses,‖ reflected Brubeck in 2010. 114 Yet even in the 1950s and 1960s, it was jazz, not classical music, which was the essential form of expression in this cultural convergence. ―Any American that doesn‘t utilize his background in jazz,‖ he told Conover, ―will never express the American culture.‖ 115 For Brubeck, jazz‘s status as a folk music evolving from ―Negro‖ spirituals along with its improvisational qualities necessitated American composers‘ attention. In a 1962 interview for WLOF-TV, Brubeck argued for folk elements as a vital component in the link between jazz and classical music. ―Stravinsky‘s themes from Firebird and Protrusky are all out of Russian folk music,‖ said Brubeck.‖ ―Bartok was, I think, the greatest composer we had until he died recently, compiled the largest collection of Hungarian folk music and his classical music is based on these themes. And when we as jazz musicians base our compositions on American jazz themes we are doing exactly what European jazz musicians have always done. You‘re supposed to reflect your culture.‖ 116 However, Brubeck often expressed concern over the fact that while Europeans freely capitalized on their own folk music, Americans problematically tended to look to Europe and avoiding their own. In his 1950 article to Down Beat titled ―Jazz‘ Evolvement as an Art Form,‖ Brubeck called jazz ―a complete expression of our culture we have yet originated in any of the arts‖ and noted, ―Many European composers have turned to the jazz idiom as a fresh spring to replenish their own creativity. Yet, the American jazz musician who most naturally belongs in this idiom is too often decried as ‗illegitimate‘ by the American conservatories. No European composer can ever reach to the heart of jazz like an American who has been exposed to it 155 from the moment the radio was first switched on in the hospital nursery a few hours after 117 his birth.‖ ―For American composers, our roots should be in jazz,‖ he told the magazine four years later. Six years after that, in 1960, he repeated his statement verbatim in the Australian newspaper, The 118 Sun. Brubeck also stated on many occasions the importance of improvisation as another key element in the link between jazz and classical music. He often referenced the hidden history of improvisational experiments among classical composers during interviews, arguing that Bach‘s figured bass and Mozart‘s improvised piano parts have almost been erased from musical memory. ―Improvisation in jazz,‖ he said, ―is the reason for [jazz‘s] co-existence with classical music. Jazz has revived the almost lost art of improvisation and has acted as a revitalizing force in classical music because of its spontaneity and closeness to basic human emotions.‖ 119 Responding to Conover, Brubeck said in 1955, ―Classical music has almost forgotten about improvisation except for a few artists in France now that are tremendous improvisers. It‘s almost a lost art…Jazz is about the only music I know that‘s really keeping the art of improvisation alive now.‖ 120 Brubeck did not merely recycle Milhaud‘s ideas of cultural hybridism, nor did he relegate them to interviews and articles. Rather, he put them into practice almost immediately, first in performing and recording with a jazz octet from 1946-1949. Under Milhaud‘s direction, Brubeck, along with Milhaud‘s students Bill Smith (clarinet), Dave van Kreidt (tenor saxophone) and Jack Weeks (drums) as well as local musicians Paul Desmond (alto saxophone) Cal Tjader (drums), Dick Collins, (trumpet), and Bob Collins (trombone) formed an experimental group called The Jazz Workshop Ensemble, also known as ―The Eight,‖ whose name intentionally 156 mimicked ―Les Six.‖ Among their 18 compositions including both jazz standards and experimental jazz-classical works, Brubeck‘s ―Fugue on Bop Themes‖ (1950), a tune selected by composer Aaron Copland to be performed during a Harvard University lecture series in 1952, is further evidence of Milhaud‘s influential lessons in counterpoint. 121 ―When the members of the Octet wrote counterpoint for our band, it was within the more strict classical rules, but with a jazz feeling and beat,‖ said Brubeck. ―The next step was to improvise melodic contrapuntal lines, something that Paul Desmond and I loved to do in the old Quartet.‖ As in his recent groups, the Octet ―learned from studying Bach and other classical composers, but applying it to our own 122 improvised music.‖ While the Octet is credited as one of the earliest major experimenters of jazz and classical music, it is less known for its role in facilitating a new era in jazz in California. The groups‘ first live college campus performance came in 1947 at Mills College in support of a scholarship fundraiser, the World Student Service Fund. Narrating the event was jazz impresario and radio deejay, Jimmy Lyons, the man who is often credited with discovering the group at the Burma Lounge in San Francisco. The idea for the group to perform at the benefit was Milhaud‘s, who incidentally offered the group some of his earlier compositions which he felt adaptable to their particular style of music. Also in accord with Milhaud‘s tutelage, the group presented a mixture of jazz standards like ―I‘m in the Mood for Love‖ and ―Body and Soul‖ and original compositions like Weeks‘ ―Counterpoint Variation on Jazz‖ (1947), and ending with a jam session. This set list progression and jazz-classical formulae defined the group‘s set list virtually throughout its short tenure whether they performed in nightclubs or on college campuses. 123 The performance, in fact, marks the beginning of what was to be a dramatic increase in jazz concerts on college campuses in the state and nationwide. After the enthusiastic response of 157 the Mills College concert, Brubeck capitalized on the potential success which touring college campuses had to offer. There were several factors that led to the Brubeck‘s decision to perform at colleges and universities. According to Brubeck, ―[My wife] Iola reasoned that students who were eager to hear the new music were often unable to go to a major city to attend a nightclub show. It was too expensive and many were under age. Therefore, it made sense to bring the music they were interested in directly to them.‖ 124 Indeed, the college and university concert landscape seemed fertile enough to precipitate Brubeck‘s missionary work for jazz. Thus, Brubeck and Iola decided they would ―make it a policy to perform in schools wherever it was possible:‖ ―Our music was having a difficult time being accepted in traditional venues, but students seemed eager and excited to hear new ideas. I arranged an Octet performance at the College of the Pacific in Stockton, sponsored by the music fraternity, Phi Mu Alpha. Hearing of our success at Mills, we were invited to play for an assembly at U.C. Berkeley, not far from the Mills campus. Iola decided to write to every college within driving distance of San Francisco, offering the Octet or smaller groups from within the Octet, for a nominal fee and a split of profits. This encouraged student groups to work hard promoting the concerts and playing our recordings on the campus radio station.‖ 125 Brubeck‘s first concert outside of the Bay Area was with his trio—which featured Ron Crotty on bass and Cal Tjader on drums and lasting from 1949-1951—at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Though his Mills days were behind him, his college days were not. Brubeck routinely played colleges around the state and even served on the faculty of the University of California, teaching jazz history courses at the extension campuses in San Francisco and Berkeley. 126 158 At the end of the trio‘s run in 1951, Brubeck formed a quartet featuring a revolving door to several drummers and bassists before settling on its most notable lineup in 1956, featuring Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Eugene Wright on bass and Joe Morello on drums. The quartet would survive until 1967 and would become one of the most recognized jazz groups in history. Not surprisingly, at the time of its formation and into the 1960s, at the beginning of the apex of Brubeck‘s—and the group‘s—popularity, the quartet was one of the most ubiquitous jazz groups on college campus in America with Brubeck himself as the poster-boy for the college jazz renaissance in the Bay Area. 127 As with the octet and the trio, the decision to perform at colleges and universities was undergirded by a more personal ambition for Brubeck, who commented in 2010 that bringing jazz into an aura of respectability and seriousness among the historically conservative ―longhair‖ music programs across the country was a prevailing impulse: ―We wanted jazz to be taken as seriously as an art form as any chamber group. That dream has become a reality. An example is Oberlin College in Ohio. The music Conservatory at Oberlin was regarded as one of the best in the country, but jazz was not taught or even allowed to be played. When my Quartet appeared at Oberlin in 1953, we were sponsored by an ad hoc student committee that evolved into a jazz society. Jazz had never been performed in Finney Chapel, their concert hall, and the powers that be were so afraid of what might happen to their best concert grand they locked piano so that I could not use it. I was provided a battered old piano, probably from one of the practice rooms. The hall was sold out, so the campus radio asked for permission to tape the concert for broadcast. I consented, providing they give me the tape after one airing. This was done, and that tape was the source of my LP on Fantasy ―Jazz at Oberlin‖. It was a 159 breakthrough album for the Quartet. Fifty years later, my present Quartet was invited back to Oberlin to play a golden anniversary concert. Oberlin now is proud of its jazz department and offers a degree in jazz studies. What‘s more, this time, I got to play the best concert grand and was awarded an honorary doctorate in music.‖ 128 It was, however, in part to a growing new jazz audience that allowed this jazz renaissance to germinate and flourish. Many in this audience shared Brubeck‘s understanding of jazz as an art music and thought it should be expelled from nightclubs and other places of ill-repute and included among the ranks in high art institutions like colleges and universities. One student audience member after the Octet‘s 1950 performance at Mills College, for instance, was quoted as saying, ―It‘s wonderful to hear Brubeck without having to go to a den of iniquity.‖ 129 Likewise, in 1958 jazz impresario Ed Sarkisian boasted, ―It was 1953 that jazz took hold and got out of the cellars. And it was Dave who started it.‖ 130 Even as early as 1947, the Oakland Tribune associated Brubeck‘s ―A Study in Jazz‖ benefit concert at Mills with the dramatic shift in the jazz audience: ―Jazz is going to college in a big way these days. It used to be that jazz-mad collegiennes cut study hours surreptitiously to spend evening in the questionable dives where the jazz musicians let loose on the reeds and the winds. But the model of modern jazz artists has changed considerably over the years. Today‘s young man with a horn has turned intellectual. He‘s about as respectable as anyone can get no matter how you look at it. The boys are moving out of their fabled dens and into the hallowed halls of cloistered institutions of learning. What‘s more their liking it.‖ 131 Similarly, in reviewing Brubeck‘s ―Jazz at Cal‖ performance in 1954, one columnist wrote, ―A new and exciting trend is developing between popular music circles and college campuses. The 160 jazz concert has recently been stepping out of the Carnegie Hall and opera house strata and into an enthusiastic and creative kind of revivalism,‖ noting also that ―more college musicians are being attracted to the jazz scene of creativity than ever, especially on the West Coast.‖ 132 By the mid-1950s, the jazz press began associating colleges with Brubeck‘s success and, vice versa, the growth of jazz in colleges—both in terms of instruction and in performances— with Brubeck himself. ―The Nation‘s colleges have been one of [the] key factors in Brubeck‘s 133 rise to fame,‖ wrote one columnist. ―The present quartet, formed in 1951, did not catch popular attention until a series of performances on college campuses,‖ said another in 1958. 134 ―Dave‘s greatest triumphs have always been at colleges. He single-handedly made jazz popular on campuses and, for a time, had a monopoly on the field,‖ wrote yet another. 135 Even nightclubs were now inundated with this new audience. In 1958, San Francisco Examiner columnist C.H. ―Brick‖ Garrigues attributed the rise of college jazz concerts at the time to both shifting demographics of jazz consumers as well as Brubeck‘s music: ―As you travel from the Blackhawk on Turk (where you will Brubeck himself holding forth), down Market to the Showcase, then make the loop and end up in North Beach, you will see that [there] is a new kind of jazz audience. Here is no audience of tired business men making whoopee to the accompaniment of loud and brassy noise, masquerading as music. Here are few tourists, seeing the ‗bright spots‘ of town. Here are, instead, audiences (and musicians) of an average age of between 25 and 30; the musicians playing seriously, the audience listening attentively; here are, for the most part, college men and women—undergraduates or recent graduates—lately come of age, men and women who learned about jazz at college concerts which, before Brubeck, were 136 almost unknown.‖ 161 For Garrigues, Brubeck was the driving force behind the growth of this new audience: ―Now it is true, of course, that Brubeck was not the first man to take jazz into the colleges but he was the first man to take it there and make it stick. Because he played the kind of jazz that swung without swinging too hard, that was novel but never for novelty‘s sake, that was cool without being abstract, he caught the attention of a whole generation of college men and women. It is these men and women who are providing the audiences of today, packing the clubs with serious listeners, filling the halls at college concerts, providing a great reserve force from which the audiences—and musicians—of tomorrow will be drawn. And, in a sense, it all started with Brubeck.‖ 137 By the mid-1950s, Brubeck was commonly playing around 50 to 60 one-night engagements around the country in one stretch. Though these did include nightclub dates, a great number of performances—on the off-nights in particular—were devoted to college concerts. These tours were at times grueling. In 1955, Brubeck played 60 colleges in 60 days in order to satisfy the demand from college audiences. Nevertheless, Brubeck was steadfast in his mission, telling Playboy magazine, ―I think courses in jazz should be taught at all colleges.‖ ―The movement has started,‖ he went on. ―Our quartet with Paul Desmond on alto sax, [Bob] Bates on bass, Joe Dodge on drums, and myself on piano, has just completed a series of sixty concerts at colleges all across the country. The reception was wonderful. These kids are becoming musically aware: they understand what it is we‘re trying to do.‖ 138 Brubeck exhibited the same mentality in a 1958 interview with the Detroit Times, in which he explained how his early professional experience in the 1940s performing for young people in high schools was such a driving force behind playing at colleges and universities that, even as an older working professional he never lost sight of young audiences. ―I told my agent to 162 take jobs at college everywhere,‖ said Brubeck. ―I didn‘t care where and I didn‘t care how far the hops in between were.‖ 139 Thus, by the mid-1950s, Brubeck was not simply touring colleges and universities in California alone, but rather nationwide. ―Just to give you an idea,‖ he told The Detroit Times in 1958, ―in the last week we played in Dallas, New Orleans, Florida State College, at Montana State College, at Los Angeles and San Francisco.‖ 140 These concerts were not limited to major institutions but also included colleges of music and art (ex. the Academy of Music in Philadelphia; the Philadelphia Museum School of Art; the Lenox School of Jazz in Lenox, MA; the National Institute of the Arts, Mexico, etc.), teacher‘s colleges (ex. State Teachers College in New Paltz, NY; State Teachers College in Oshkosh, WI; Eastern Washington College of Education in Cheney, WA; and Patterson State Teachers College in Wayne, NJ), technical colleges (ex. University of California, Davis‘s College of Architecture and Pomology in Davis, CA; Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, PA; M.I.T. in Cambridge, MA; and the Missouri School of Mining in Rolla, MO), as well as various junior colleges and high schools (ex. Cupertino School District, Cupertino, CA). 141 Brubeck‘s interest in including college and university campuses as tour venues was met with a considerable amount of demand. Though personal requests for Brubeck to perform at these campuses were common, more often they were made by university concert organizers; some representing administrative departments, some student groups and societies. In any case, Brubeck‘s college albums worked as keen advertising instruments. Buzz Vanderschoot of the Associated Student Body of Napa Community College in Napa, CA, for instance, wrote to Brubeck personally in 1957 to request his attendance at the school: 163 ―Having read the flyleaf notes to your latest Columbia release ‗Jazz Goes to Junior College,‘ I noticed that you enjoy playing for junior college audiences and have even played for some high schools and grade schools…I know that not only the student members of Napa County but also the adults would jump at the chance of having the Quartet give a concert in our auditorium.‖ 142 Invitations such as these not only included requests for Brubeck to perform, but to deliver lectures, attend panel discussions and verbally interact with the audience as well. In many instances, Brubeck‘s appearance was associated to larger campus productions. For instance, in 1958 at Oklahoma Memorial Union, Brubeck attended a ―What is Jazz?‖ discussion after his concert. 143 That same year he performed at the University of Illinois‘s ―Religion and Jazz‖ program in which Brubeck‘s music was interspersed with lectures from Reverend A.L. Kershaw of Peterborough, New Hampshire‘s All Saints Parish. 144 In 1960, Brubeck performed and served as panelist at University of Minnesota‘s ―Jazz and the Classics‖ symposia along with other university faculty. In 1962, Colorado College asked Brubeck to attend its week-long ―Art in Mid-Twentieth Century America‖ symposia, citing ―jazz is close to the student population,‖ and ―the experience and discussion of a jazz concert would lead us into interesting and valuable channels of considering other aspects of modern art as well.‖ 145 In 1963, Brubeck himself suggested to Brown University that it adjoin his concert with the ―American Arts‖ lecture series. According to Brown‘s Class of 1964 President, Robert F. Bergeron, Jr., ―A running commentary during the concert, touching on history, mood, themes, etc. of American jazz is very appealing to us as being perhaps an ideal means of presenting the background of American jazz while maintaining a concert atmosphere.‖ 146 164 Some college and university dates were a not-for-profit affair as in the case of benefit concerts, which had been in Brubeck‘s repertoire since his days at Mills College. In 1963, for instance, he performed a benefit concert at Dartmouth College to raise funds for its Summer Music Program. 147 Brubeck on some occasions donated materials to colleges—usually personal items related to his musical work—to be auctioned off in support of fund raising events. 148 His benevolence and his acquiescence to performance requests were often reciprocated by the organizers of his college concerts in several ways. The most common was to invite Brubeck and the group to informal get-togethers before or after the show on university grounds or at private homes; dinners with students and faculty at University of the Pacific, Harvard University, University of Michigan, Ripon College and St. Lawrence University; and coffee hours at Morehead College and Kansas State University. 149 Some requests were especially idiosyncratic, such as in 1964 when the Fine Arts Chairman of North Texas State University, James L. Rogers, inquired if Brubeck would mind pausing during intermission to introduce the ―10 University Beauties of 1964,‖ or in 1956 when the Carnegie Institute of Technology asked him to preside as a judge for the Thistle Queen beauty contest. 150 Brubeck‘s concert tours were extremely successful as evidenced by the personal responses of its organizers and attendees. Reams of mail poured into Brubeck‘s home, booking agency office, and publishing company, indicating the ―enthusiasm‖ of the college audience or the ―terrific‖ performance of the group. 151 Even newspapers used similar language as in New Orleans‘s Times-Picayune which reported Brubeck‘s Tulane University concert left students ―enthused and enthralled.‖ 152 In some cases, the responses were all the more ecstatic, given Brubeck‘s appearance marked the first jazz concert held to be held on their campus, as in the 165 cases of Concordia Teacher‘s College in River Forest, IL and St. Michael‘s College in Toronto, Canada or in the case of Sierra College in Auburn, CA who opened an auditorium upon merely the possibility that Brubeck would perform there. 153 Among the more interesting demographics of ―enthused‖ audiences were the incarcerated. In a 1954 letter to Brubeck, photographer Richard Schaefer commented, ―It will amaze you to know that you are not only the ‗campus fave‘ as reported in [Down th Beat].‖ (October 20 issue), but are also the prison favorite. You are leading Stan Kenton by the score of 2 to 0. Ohio State Penitentiary and the New Jersey State Prison farm have voted in your favor. I still don‘t know where the hell the prisoners got your records or heard you in person. But anyway, the cats behind the walls dig the quartet.‖ 154 Thus, Brubeck‘s mission to include college and university campuses as performance sites capitalized on jazz‘s relatively newfound status as an art music and a growing college-educated audience with the leisure time, record/concert ticket buying power, and aesthetic desire to consume his special brand of serious, classically-influenced jazz within the serene and insulated confines of the academy dramatically changed the California jazz world. While his college tours were of critical importance to his and the music‘s success, they did not define his tours overall at any point in his history. ―It is important to remember,‖ Brubeck said in 2010, ―that at the same time we were playing college concerts, we would have been appearing at the Apollo Theater in Harlem or Birdland or The blue note in Chicago or Storyville in Boston, and various night clubs and dance halls across the country. It is a mistake to conclude, as some do, that our audience was comprised solely of college kids.‖ College jazz concerts were nothing new in California by the late 1940s. Stan Kenton‘s group, for instance, often played campuses across Southern California years before Brubeck‘s 166 Octet was formed. However, by the end of the 1950s, the trend for jazzmen of any region of the United States to perform at college campuses can be directly attributed to Brubeck‘s mission of jazz modernism. Thus, while we should heed Brubeck‘s warning, we can nevertheless assess his post-WWII college tours today as a landmark chapter in jazz history which propelled West Coast jazz towards national acclaim. Thanks to a postwar boom, an aesthetic shift in the treatment of jazz, and the heightened role of academic institutions in the state, California jazz migrated out of the so-called ―dens of iniquity‖ and established itself among a variety of outlets devoted to serious study and performance. However, while these developments played important roles in installing the music as a form of high art within the pantheon of California modernism, they do not satisfy questions pertaining to the role that technology and mass media played in that project: How did the music operate commercially?; What kinds of institutions managed the production side of the music? How did it enter people‘s daily lives, and how did audiences access the music beyond live performances? As West Coast jazz‘s popularity exploded into the 1950s, appealing to audiences on a mass scale, it required an equal if not greater contribution from several other ―scapes;‖ namely, the finanscape, mediascape, and technoscape. Though independent record labels like Pacific Jazz, Contemporary and Fantasy were its largest commercial entities, playing a critical role in recording and distributing the music of local jazz artists, it is radio which best illustrates the relationship between the West Coast jazz industry and the music‘s modernist impulse. Not only did it play a managerial role the organizational structure of the various offshoots of the industry, as opposed to any other medium of the time, it was radio which at once functioned as the financial engine and as the voice of the West Coast jazz movement. 167 1 Eric Porter, What Is This Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 63. 2 Ted Gioia has called Los Angeles‘s Central Avenue ―an elongated Harlem set down by the Pacific,‖ consisting of ―a panoply of businesses, residences, social clubs, eateries, and nightclubs.‖ Among the most popular nightclubs, Club Alabam was seen by jazz writers as a ―West Coast Birdland or Village Vanguard.‖ See his West Coast Jazz, 4-5. See also RJ Smith, The Great Black Way: L.A. in the 1940s and the Lost African-American Renaissance (New York: PublicAffairs, 2006) for a more detailed description of the interconnectedness of AfricanAmerican life along Central Avenue. 3 Ted Gioia, in Fred Setterberg, ―A Different Drummer: Exploring the Bay Area‘s Jazz Legacy,‖ th Express: The East Bay‟s Free Weekly Vol. 15, No. 22. (March 12 , 1993), 17. 4 Setterberg, ―A Different Drummer,‖ 17. 5 Setterberg, ―A Different Drummer,‖ 17. 6 7 8 9 Gioia, West Coast Jazz, 5; Smith, The Great Black Way, 10-11. Gioia, West Coast Jazz, 27. Gioia, West Coast Jazz, 27. Smith, The Great Black Way, 214. 10 11 Smith, The Great Black Way, 214-215. Quoted in Smith, The Great Black Way, 220-221. 12 Kenneth Marcus, Musical Metropolis: Los Angeles and the Creation of a Music Culture, 1880-1940 (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2004): 9. 13 Marcus, Musical Metropolis, 34. 14 15 16 Marcus, Musical Metropolis, 9. Marcus, Musical Metropolis, 41. Marcus, Musical Metropolis, 50-55. 17 Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, Against Intellectual Monopoly (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 187. For a more detailed account of the impact of copyright on classical music, see F. M. Scherer, Quarter Notes and Bank Notes: The Economics of Music Composition in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 18 Marcus, Musical Metropolis, 145. 19 Marcus, Musical Metropolis, 63. 20 Marshal Royal in Clora Bryant, Buddy Collette, Williams Green, Steven Isoardi, Eds. et. al., Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 29. 21 Dexter Gordon, quoted in Gioia, West Coast Jazz, 41. 22 Horace Tapscott, in Central Avenue Sounds, 291. 168 23 Kirk Silsbee, ―Jazz High: West Coast Jazz Owes Much to LA‘s Jefferson High,‖ LA City Beat th (Sept. 12 2008), electronic copy provided by the author. 24 25 26 27 28 Dexter Gordon, quoted in Gioia, West Coast Jazz, 41. Gioia, West Coast Jazz, 40. Buddy Collette, quote in Central Avenue Sounds, 142-143. Quoted in Gioia, West Coast Jazz, 214. Silsbee, ―Jazz High.‖ 29 David Baker, David Baker‟s Jazz Pedagogy: A Comparative Method of Jazz Education for Teacher and Student (Van Nuys, CA: Alfred Publishing, 1989): iii. 30 It bears mentioning that the topic of ―who came first‖ in terms of nation‘s first jazz program is hotly contested among college/university music programs as well as jazz studies. In particular, both the Berklee School of Music and the University of North Texas claim to have the ―first‖ jazz program though on separate grounds; Berklee in terms of the year it began (1945) and UNT in terms of the establishment of the degree (which, the program states, was originally a degree in ―dance band‖). Westlake too stakes a claim in this debate. However, more importantly is why this matters; a question which strikes at the heart of the jazz canon itself. It suggests that the canonizing goes beyond mere discussions of the history of jazz and encompasses the history of jazz education. For a more on this topic, see Kenneth E. Prouty, ―The History of Jazz Education: A Critical Reassessment,‖ Journal of Historical Research in Music Education XXVI: 2, (April 2005): 144-161. 31 Alfred Frankenstein, ―Studies in Improvisation—At the Very Least, a Succes Fou,‖ High Fidelity (Jan 1962), 63-64. 32 Peter Yates, ―The Demi-Wasteland,‖ High Fidelity (Jan. 1962), 110. 33 See Grenier, Ed. Catalog L.A, 80. 34 www.davegetz.com/bio.html (accessed, March 9th, 2010); Blair Jackson, Garcia: An American Life (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 22. 35 Solnit, Secret Exhibition, 30. 36 37 38 Solnit, Secret Exhibition, 45. Solnit, Secret Exhibition, 45. Quoted in Jesse Hamlin, ―Painters Make Music in Studio 13/Amateur Jazz Band Ties to S.F. th Institute to Play at School‘s 125 Anniversary Celebration,‖ San Francisco Chronicle (January th 13 , 1996) (accessed on March 9 , 2010). 39 40 41 42 Davis, City of Quartz, 64, 65. Isenberg, State of the Arts, 197. Solnit, Secret Exhibition, 73. Solnit, Secret Exhibition, 73. 169 43 Robert Gordon, Jazz West Coast: The Los Angeles Jazz Scene of the 1950s (London: Quartet Books, 1986), 8. 44 Indeed, it may come to no surprise that the Hollywood Bowl‘s architecture came from Frank Lloyd Wright, who also designed sets for Hollywood Bowl productions of Julius Caesar and Robin Hood in the late 1920s. 45 Marcus, Musical Metropolis, 66-69, 72, 76, 85. 46 Los Angeles Philharmonic, ―100 Most Noteworthy, Interesting, and Remarkable Hollywood Bowl Moments,‖ (accessed Sept. 3rd, 2009). 47 nd 2 Annual Los Angeles Jazz Festival program, found in SSC. 48 st Interview with the author, July 1 , 2009. 49 ―Howard Lucraft,‖ Crescendo (unknown date), quoted from (accessed September 9, 2009). 50 st Interview with the author, July 1 , 2009. 51 Marcus, Musical Metropolis, 83. 52 William Minor, Monterey Jazz Festival: Forty Legendary Years (Santa Monica, CA: Angel City Press, 1997), 32. 53 Minor, Monterey Jazz Festival, 41. 54 55 56 57 58 59 Minor, Monterey Jazz Festival, 44. Minor, Monterey Jazz Festival, 23, 25. Minor, Monterey Jazz Festival, 23. Minor, Monterey Jazz Festival, 38. Quoted in Minor, Monterey Jazz Festival, 32. Minor, Monterey Jazz Festival, 13. 60 Charles Weisenberg, ―Concerts,‖ c. early 1960s, page 1. (Document located in the Charles Weisenberg Collection, known as ―CWC‖ hereafter, at the Los Angeles Jazz Institute Archives, California State University, Long Beach in Long Beach, CA). 61 Weisenberg, ―Concerts,‖ c. early 1960s, page 8 62 Charles Weisenberg, ―…And All That Jazz,‖ FM & Fine Arts Guide (March 1960), 6. 63 Weisenberg, ―…And All That Jazz,‖ 6. 64 Weisenberg, ―…And All That Jazz,‖ 6. 65 Weisenberg, ―Concerts,‖ c. early 1960s, page 8. 66 Charles Weisenberg, ―Festivals,‖ c. 1960, page 5. Found in CWC. 67 th Charles Weisenberg, ―Script #1,‖ broadcast on KNOB on June 7 , 1959, page 6.. Found in CWC. 68 Charles Weisenberg, ―Thoughts on Jazz,‖ Frontier (April 1960): unknown page. 170 69 Weisenberg, ―Concerts,‖ c. early 1960s, page 5. Found in CWC. 70 Shelly Manne, quoted in Weisenberg, ―Thoughts on Jazz,‖ Frontier (April 1960): unknown page. 71 Shelly Manne, quoted in Weisenberg, ―Thoughts on Jazz,‖ Frontier (April 1960): unknown page. 72 Charles Weisenberg, ―Metropole,‖ c. 1961, pages 3-4 Found in CWC. 73 Weisenberg, ―Metropole,‖ c. 1961, page 4. Found in CWC. 74 Charles Weisenberg, ―Thoughts on Jazz,‖ Frontier (April 1960): unknown page. 75 Shelly Manne, quoted in Weisenberg, ―Thoughts on Jazz,‖ Frontier (April 1960): unknown page. 76 Shelly Manne, quoted in Weisenberg, ―Thoughts on Jazz,‖ Frontier (April 1960): unknown page. 77 Shelly Manne, quoted in Weisenberg, ―Thoughts on Jazz,‖ Frontier (April 1960): unknown page. 78 Howard Lucraft, ―Knights at the Turntable: West Coast Jazz on the Air,‖ Jazz West Coast II: A Musical Celebration of West Coast Jazz, Hyatt Newporter Resort, Newport Beach, California, (Panel 2: Ken Borgers, moderator, with Sleepy Stein, Gene Norman, Chuck Niles, and Howard th Lucraft, May 28 , 1999). Material located at the Los Angeles Jazz Institute archive at California State University, Long Beach; henceforth, LAJI.; Gioia, West Coast Jazz, 224. 79 Gene Norman, ―Knights at the Turntable: West Coast Jazz on the Air.‖ Found in LAJI. 80 Bill Perkins, quoted in 2003 while he, Bill Holman and Russ Garcia served as panelists for ―College Goes to Jazz: The Westlake School of Music‖ at ―Contemporary Concepts: A 4-Day Festival Celebrating the West Coast Big Band Sound,‖ May 22-25th, 2003, Four Points Sheraton, Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, CA. Unless otherwise noted, quotes from Holman, Perkins and Garcia are taken from the recording of this panel provided to the author by Ken Poston, director of the LAJI archive. 81 See for instance, Jeremy Yudkin, The Lenox School of Jazz: A Vital Chapter in the History of American Music and Race Relations (South Egremont, MA: Farshaw Pub., 2006). 82 While Graettinger was not primarily known as an instrumentalist, his ―City of Glass‖ remains today as one of West Coast jazz‘s most important compositions. For more on Graettinger, see Robert Badgett Morgan, ―The Life and Music of Robert Graettinger with Cantata for Chorus and Big Band,‖ (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1974). 83 For instance, Ted Gioia‘s West Coast Jazz provides passing mentions to the Westlake College of Music in his biographical sketches of Bill Holman, Bob Graettinger, Bob Gordon and Charlie Haden (153, 159-160, 311, 357). 84 The second point is of particular importance as a great many Westlake students were G.I. Bill recipients and since Westlake was one of the only music schools in the region approved to offer st training to military veterans. Bob Morgan, ―The Sankofa Tradition: A Reminder for the 21 171 th Century‖ (Accessed March 19 , 2010). 85 th Alvin L. Learned, ―Memo,‖ Down Beat (Dec. 12 , 1957), 20. 86 Robertson was certainly a favorite among Westlake students. Perkins has referred to him as ―a guru for his time,‖ while Holman recalled Robertson‘s advanced grasp of music theory: ―[Robertson] was really a brilliant guy, and [I] studied a little bit with him but what he was saying was going way over my head and I was too embarrassed to tell him. But he would toss out these tremendously complicated things and expect everybody knew what he was talking about which wasn‘t always the case.‖ 87 David Baskerville, ―Career Programs in Higher Education,‖ Careers and Music, Malcolm E. Bessom and John T. Aquino, Eds. (Reston, Virginia: Music Educators National Conference, 1977), 17. 88 ―Bregman Takes Westlake Student to Work with Him at Warner Bros.,‖ Westlake ad in The Jazz Review (Vol. 3, #3 Mar-Apr, 1960), 35. 89 Milt Bernhart, post on the Jazz West Coast mailing list, December 15, 1995. Located at th (Accessed March 19 , 2010). 90 Randall D. Larson, ―Past, Present and Future: The Film Music of Russell Garcia,‖ unpublished interviews from June 1984 and May 1984. Found at (Accessed on st March 21 , 2010). 91 Garcia later went on to write one of the most influential educational books in jazz, The Professional Arranger/Composer (Hollywood, CA: Criterion Music, 1954). 92 Among the other many Westlake instructors were Dave Holguin, Roger Segure, and Jack Stern. 93 th ―Educational Music Disk Set Mapped,‖ The Billboard (June 11 , 1955), 22. The recording date comes one year after Westlake‘s student newspaper, Swing News, voted Kenton ―Man of the Year.‖ See Steven D. Harris, The Kenton Kronicles: A Biography of Modern America‟s Man of Music (Pasadena, CA: Dynaflow, 2000), 113. 94 Moreover, the fact that the school‘s first location was, as described by Holman, in an ―old, th decrepit house‖ on Alvarado near 6 Street, testifies to the school as more a bohemian hangout than formal academic setting. 95 Dave‘s two older brothers, Henry and Howard, had also received lessons from their mother and had both subsequently left for college to study music before Dave was a teenager. With his brothers gone, young Dave received more focused instruction from his mother. 96 Dave Brubeck, quoted in Fred M. Hall, It‟s About Time: The Dave Brubeck Story,‖ (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1996), 8. 97 Brubeck, quoted in Hall, It‟s About Time, 12. 98 th ―448 Diplomas Awarded at Pacific,‖ The Record (Stockton, CA), June 12 , 1961), 24; Harold Rogers, ―Doctor Brubeck, I Presume?‖ Christian Science Monitor (no date, June 1961), page 172 unknown; letter to Brubeck from Robert E. Burns requesting his attendance at Commencement th Day to receive Honorary Doctorate, April 13 , 1961, document found in the Dave Brubeck Collection (Business Correspondence), Holt-Atherton Special Collections at the University of Pacific, Stockton CA (henceforth all documents referenced will be cited as ―DBC‖); and letter to Brubeck from Robert E. Burns describing schedule of events for Commencement Day, in DBC. 99 Hall, It‟s About Time, 23. 100 Brubeck, quoted in Ilse Storb, and Klaus-G. Fischer, Dave Brubeck Improvisations and Compositions: The Idea of Cultural Exchange (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1994), 4. 101 Kevin Starr, Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 394. 102 Darius Milhaud, Notes Without Music (New York: DaCapo, 1952), quoted in ―La Creation Du Monde—Ballet Negre (1923),‖ page 2, from Vivian Perlis‘ interview with Milhaud, Aix-enth Provence, July 25 , 1970, document located in DBC (Memorabilia). 103 th Quoted in ―To Celebrate the Life of Darius Milhaud,‖ Sept. 30 , 1974, concert program located in DBC (Memorabilia). 104 Hall, It‟s About Time, 33. 105 106 th Dave Brubeck, email interview with the author, January 12 , 2010. Martin Bernheimer, ―Composer Milhaud Practices Life as He Preached It,‖ The Denver Post th July 28 , 1974), unknown page. Located in DBC. 107 st Alexander Fried, ―At 78, Time to Compose His 441 ,‖ San Francisco Sunday Examiner & th Chronicle (April 18 , 1971), 8. 108 Brubeck, Quoted in Storb, Dave Brubeck Improvisations and Compositions, 6. 109 See Dave Brubeck‘s ―Reminiscences of the Cattle Country,‖ 1946-1947 and Composition Exercises c. 1946. Located in DBC (Music Scores). 110 See Composition Exercises c. 1946. Located in DBC (Music Scores). 111 2-page document beginning with ―During one of Dave Brubeck‘s visit to Boston…,‖ author and date unknown. Located in DBC. 112 Howard Brubeck, quoted in Storb, Dave Brubeck Improvisations and Compositions, 5. 113 th Dave Brubeck, interview with Willis Conover, ―Voice of America,‖ Nov. 11 , 1955. Interview recording located at DBC (Audio Interviews). See also, Ralph J. Gleason, ―Dave th Brubeck and His Busy Summer Season,‖ San Francisco Chronicle (June 11 , 1959), page unknown, located in DBC (Reviews). 114 th Dave Brubeck, email interview with the author, January 12 , 2010. 115 Brubeck, interview with Willis Conover, ―Voice of America.‖ 116 th ―Orbit Interview—Brubeck & Whiteman,‖ Jan. 26 , 1962. Located in DBC (Audio Interviews). See also Brubeck‘s interview with Conover; ―Jazzman On His Art,‖ The Advertiser th (Australia) (Mar. 30 , 1960), unknown page and author, found in DBC (Biographical 173 Materials); and Conrad Christiano, ―Jazz ‗Longhair‘ Disapproves of Music School‘s Attitude,‖ c. 1952, unknown newspaper and page number, found in DBC (Reviews). 117 th Dave Brubeck, ―Jazz‘ Evolvement as an Art Form,‖ Down Beat (Feb.10 , 1950), 18. 118 Nat, Hentoff, ―Jazz Fills Role of Classical Composition, Brubeck Learns,‖ Down Beat (June nd 2 , 1954), page unknown. Found in DBC (Reviews); ―Brubeck Will Bring Us Jazz with Bite th and Bach,‖ The Sun (Feb. 27 , 1960), 33. 119 ―Dave Brubeck,‖ BMI promotional pamphlet, 1961, page 6-7. Located in DBC (Biographical Materials). 120 Brubeck, interview with Willis Conover, ―Voice of America.‖ 121 Rod Nordell, ―Educated Jazz—Played from the Heart,‖ The Christian Science Monitor th (Friday, Nov. 7 , 1952), unknown page. 122 123 th Dave Brubeck, email interview with the author, January 12 , 2010. ―Jazz Does Campus Comeback but in New Guise: It‘s a ‗Combo,‘ Oakland Tribune (Mar. th 24 , 1947), 8D. For other Octet concerts from 1947-1949 and with slightly different lineup in 1950, see also Clifford Gessler, ―Snap, Skill Mark U.C. Concert,‖ unknown newspaper (Apr. 1949), unknown page, found in DBC (Reviews); Don Roessner, ―Jazz Meets J.S. Bach in the th Bay Region,‖ San Francisco Chronicle (Feb. 13 , 1949), page unknown, found in DBC (Reviews); and Charlotte Lockner, ―Jive Group ‗Promoted‘ to Concert Hall,‖ unknown newspaper, page 12, found in DBC (Reviews). 124 th Dave Brubeck, email interview with the author, January 12 , 2010. 125 th Dave Brubeck, email interview with the author, January 12 , 2010. 126 th Lifelong Learning Fall 1949 program, Vol. xix, No. 6, Berkeley, Aug. 8 , 1949. Located in DBC (Biographical Materials). 127 Alfred Frankenstein, ―Jazz vs. ‗Classical‘ A Matter of Study,‖ San Francisco Chronicle th (June 10 , 1959), 42. 128 129 th Dave Brubeck, email interview with the author, January 12 , 2010. Lockner, ―Jive Group ‗Promoted‘ to Concert Hall,‖ unknown newspaper, page 12. 130 th Arnold Hirsch, ―He‘s Jazz Evangelist,‖ The Detroit Times (Aug. 19 , 1958), unknown page. Found in DBC (Reviews). 131 ―Jazz Does Campus Comeback but in New Guise It‘s a ‗Combo,‘ Oakland Tribune (Mar. th 24 , 1947), 8D. 132 Albert Johnson, ―Brubeck Brings a New Approach,‖ unknown source and page, 1954. Found in DBC (Reviews). 133 ―Brubeck & Co. No. 1 In Country,‖ unknown source, date and page. Found in DBC (General Clippings). 134 th ―What‘s Going On,‖ The Visitor [Minneapolis] (Nov. 8 , 1958), 3. 135 rd Jack Cahalan, ―Jazz Comes to Notre Dame,‖ The Scholastic (Jan. 23 , 1959), 12. 174 136 C.H. Garrigues, ―Brubeck‘s Fans Learned About Jazz In College,‖ unknown source and page number. Found in DBC (General Clippings). 137 Garrigues, ―Brubeck‘s Fans Learned About Jazz In College.‖ 138 Playboy (Aug. 1955, Vol. 2 No. 8), 9, 14. 139 Hirsch, ―He‘s Jazz Evangelist.‖ 140 Hirsch, ―He‘s Jazz Evangelist.‖ 141 See the DBC (Business Correspondence and Business Papers) for Brubeck‘s contracts with these and many other colleges and universities through the Associated Booking Corporation. 142 th Buzz Vanderschoot, letter to Brubeck, Sept. 4 , 1957. Found in DBC (Business Correspondence-Colleges and Schools). All references to Brubeck‘s participation in campus concerts hereafter, unless otherwise noted, are available in the aforementioned archive holdings. 143 th Charleen Caldwell, letter to Brubeck‘s agent, Mort Lewis, Jan. 13 , 1958. 144 th Alan C. Herman, letter to Paul Bannister of Associated Booking Corporation, Aug. 15 , 1958. 145 rd Fred A. Sondermann, letter to Brubeck, Oct. 3 , 1962. 146 147 th Robert F. Bergeron, Jr., letter to Brubeck, July 13 , 1963. th Warner Bentley, letter to Brubeck, Mar. 27 , 1963. 148 For instance, Brubeck‘s donated materials from his ―The Real Ambassadors‖ to the Future Teachers of America. See Virginia Tarnowski, letter to Associated Booking Corporation, Dec. th 12 , 1963. 149 th See Donald G. Smiley, letter to Brubeck, Jan. 18 , 1960; E.K.H. Griffith, letter to Brubeck, th th Jan. 30 , 1963; Tom Kruggel, letter to Associated Booking Corporation, Mar. 15 , 1963; David st Mirisch, letter to Brubeck, Dec. 1 1958; Susan Nalton, letter to Associated Booking nd Corporation, Sept. 22 , 1960; Joseph W. Miller, letter to Associated Booking Corporation, Oct. rd th 3 , 1960; and Caroline Peine, letter to Associated Booking Corporation, May 5 , 1961. 150 th James L. Rogers, letter to Charmian Slade, Jan 14 , 1964; Barbara Casey, letter to Brubeck, c. 1956. 151 rd Anita Este, letter to Associated Booking Corporation, Mar. 23 , 1964; Ken Morris, letter to th th Brubeck, July 17 , 1964; Coleen Dimmith, letter to Derry Music Co., Apr., 30 , 1964; Caroline th Peine, letter to Paul Bannister of Associated Booking Corporation, May 30 , 1961; and Arved st Larson, letter to Brubeck, July 21 , 1964. 152 th ―‗College‘ Jazz Enthralls All,‖ Times-Picayune [New Orleans] (Mar. 28 , 1957), unknown page. Found in DBC (Reviews). 153 th Leslie R. Zeddie, letter to Brubeck, Sept. 30 , 1958; Joseph Keogh, letter to Brubeck, Dec. th th 26 , 1956; and James L. Durel, letter to Brubeck, Nov. 12 , 1958. 154 Richard Schaefer, letter to Iola Brubeck, c. May, 1954. 175 At Night We Wail: KNOB-FM and the Ideology of Jazz Radio In January of 1957, the Hollywood-based periodical Theme published their reader‘s poll in jazz for the previous year. West Coast jazzmen dominated the number one positions in virtually every instrument category, illustrating the popularity of the musicians and their music in the Los Angeles area. Yet as elemental as Shorty Rogers, Gerry Mulligan, Hampton Hawes, Bud Shank and other top honors recipients were in the formation and visibility of a distinct West Coast jazz culture at the time, it was the category titled ―Contributed Most to Jazz in 1956,‖ in which no West Coast jazz candidate claimed the number one spot. In fact, the winner wasn‘t even a musician. 1 The category featured 32 recipients of reader votes including radio personalities, critics, concert promoters, jazz organizations, to television shows and even an ordained minister. Of the 4 radio personalities, Steve Allen was ranked number one; in fact, he was ranked number overall. Allen, whose omnipotence as a voice of jazz emanating from New York and reaching worldwide distribution at the time, proved a formidable opponent to any other radio deejay candidate. However, there were two radio personalities based in Los Angeles who made the list: Howard Lucraft and Sleepy Stein, ranked second and third, respectively, out of all deejays. Interestingly, both ranked higher than even Al ―Jazzbo‖ Collins, perhaps the most recognizable name in jazz radio emanating from New York City. Another of the nation‘s most recognizable voices in jazz stationed in California, Chuck Niles, failed to make the list altogether. Despite being outranked by Allen along with other West Coast jazz musicians like Dave Brubeck, the favorable location of Lucraft and Stein in local public opinion illustrates the significance of radio in relation to the process of jazz-making in Los Angeles. Both men were later to become among the most prominent deejays at radio station KNOB (nicknamed ―The Jazz 173 Knob‖), Los Angeles‘s—and indeed the world‘s—first all-jazz format radio station (Stein was also part-owner and co-founder). Its establishment coincides with the advent of FM radio, a medium struggling to find its niche as a potent alternative to AM, and of which Stein himself became an ardent promoter. KNOB also stands as an example of the relationship between the artistry of West Coast jazz and the economics of the music business, particularly jazz‘s role in commercial advertising. Lastly, KNOB was a crucial instrument in the promotion of the West Coast jazz style given the close relationship between the station‘s deejays, its sponsors (including jazz record labels and jazz venues) and West Coast artists. In essence, in serving to coordinate the reception and representation of West Coast jazz, KNOB not only stands as a fixture in the music‘s history, but illustrates the challenge of jazz radio as well. Who‟s Sleepy?: Alex “Sleepy” Stein and the Origins of Jazz Radio ―He had the guts to put his money where his mouth was.‖ - 2 Chuck Niles The inspiration and motivation behind the establishment of an all-jazz format radio station came wholly from Alejandro N. Stein, the son of an American news correspondent living and working in Havana, Cuba. Though his early life was spent primarily in Havana, Stein was actually born in Savannah, Georgia, his father‘s hometown, but resided there only long enough to be born before heading back to Havana. Stein‘s father was adamant that his son be born and raised as an American. One day while in Havana he asked young Alex a question in English to which he replied in Spanish. Worried that young Alex was losing his American sensibilities, 3 Stein, Sr. sent his son to Miami, where he attended high school at Miami High. Alex then returned to Cuba to attend University of Havana. 174 After graduating with a degree in Linguistics, Stein entered academia, where he quickly became cynical at the occupation. According to Stein, ―I was interested in teaching in linguistics and I found it to be a complete bore because you‘d get a class of maybe 20 or 25 students and 2 of them really wanted to learn something. The rest of them were there because either they had to be there or someone forced them to be there… Meanwhile I got an offer from a radio station to do some translating, and radio was fascinating to me and it paid a lot more money than teaching so I just drifted into radio.‖ 4 Stein translated for WIOD in Miami before relocating to New York City where he freelanced and worked in radio not as a disc jockey, but as an actor. His skills as a linguist meant an adeptness at dialects, and Stein found work in daytime soap operas. His westward migration began soon after with a move to Chicago‘s WIND, where he was employed as the station‘s news director during World War II. At this time, many radio stations like WIND were operating around the clock as the city‘s wartime industry had converted to a 247 basis. To accompany wartime employees working the graveyard shift, WIND featured a disk jockey named ―Wide Awake‖ Widoe, whose name derived from the irony that he spoke as if he were half-asleep. Despite his narcoleptic nature, Widoe was drafted by Uncle Sam, leaving the late-night spot open for a new deejay. Stein later recalled his boss approaching him, asking: ―‗How would you like to take over that spot from midnight till 4 in the morning?‘ And I said, ‗Do you want my resignation in writing or will you accept it verbally?‘ And he said, ‗Well it pays about twice what you‘re making.‘ And I said, ‗When do I start?‘ So he said, ‗Well can‘t call you Alex Stein, that doesn‘t make any sense. We‘ve got to have 175 something like ‗Wide Awake‘ Widoe, who is anything but wide awake.‘ And he said, ‗You‘re anything but Sleepy so we‘ll call you ‗Sleepy‘ Stein.‖ 5 After some time at WIND, Sleepy became asthmatic. His doctor advised him to travel further West in the hopes that a milder climate would do him good. After seeing an ad in Broadcasting magazine for a general manager position at KARV in Mesa, Arizona, Stein jumped at the opportunity, believing the desert air would ease his symptoms and that the growing Phoenix area audience would prove ripe for jazz broadcasting. He was proved wrong about the latter when found the musical aesthetic of the station‘s general manager came into conflict with his own. According to Stein, ―The owner of the station wanted nothing but great music. And I said, ‗Fine, would you define great music for me?‘ and he said, ‗Organ, accordion, and choral groups half the time,‘ and, he said, ‗Country music the other half.‘ And I thought, ‗I‘m not going 6 to last long in this job.‘‖ Aside from problems stemming from differences of opinion in terms of format, the station suffered from various technical and financial difficulties and was eventually sold. The new owners had in mind to replace the current staff with their own and thus, after 4 years at KARV, Stein began freelancing again. Thus time, however, he had finally entered the world of jazz broadcasting, turning his extracurricular interests into a full-time career which he would hold for the next two decades. In 1950, former Arizona deejay Steve Allen was working for the CBS owned station, KNX, in Los Angeles doing a music-and-talk format show. Having been so well-received— partly due to his interviews with famous movie stars and his natural ad lib qualities—he was summoned to New York to WCBS, the network‘s television hub in New York City. While freelancing in the Phoenix area, Stein got word that Allen had been promoted to television, leaving his KNX slot open for new talent. As in Chicago, the absence of a prominent deejay 176 meant a golden opportunity for Stein. He auditioned for the job, but realized the station wanted to simply replace Steve Allen with another Steve Allen. Stein told the stations heads, ―Well, all I can do is my show and if you want another Steve, well, I‘m sorry.‖ 7 Almost immediately, Stein rebounded, landing a job at KFOX, a 1000 watt independent station in Los Angeles. KFOX was an eclectic station in terms of its programming format, broadcasting everything from jazz, to pop, to country. Rhythm and blues records were spun by deejay Johnny Otis, who according to Stein, ―turned out to be a very good friend and one of the nicest people I‘ve ever met.‖ Otis‘s show ran from 7 to 9pm, then went immediately to Stein‘s jazz show titled ―Sleepy‘s Hollow.‖ Often, when one of the two needed a day off, the other would fill in. Stein said of Otis‘s show, ―I couldn‘t get too enthused about the music, but it was fun, and I spent a couple hours with Little Richard and that bunch and the Platters. But when I hear some of the rock and roll they‘re doing today, why, the rhythm and blues of those days was 8 pretty darn good.‖ KFOX was also home to another radio great, Chuck Niles, who was considered by many—Stein included—to have the best voice in the business. Niles, at the time did not have a jazz show. In fact, aside from Stein only one other deejay, KLAC‘s Gene Norman, had a jazz radio show in Los Angeles. This was complicated by the fact that both men broadcast at the same time, further limiting total jazz airtime in the area. At this time Sleepy began developing a deep interest in the West Coast jazz style, frequently spinning records of some of its most prominent members, Gerry Mulligan, Howard Rumsey and the Lighthouse All-Stars, etc. The East Coast stars were there too; Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and others, but not in as heavy a rotation. Explains Stein: ―You couldn‘t play too much hard bop or you‘d get complaints from the management. Not from the listeners, from the 9 management. But we‘d work them in when they weren‘t looking, of course.‖ The general 177 manager of KFOX, as it turned out, was not a jazz fan, and often told Stein to ―keep it quiet.‖ 10 Nevertheless, the rules on allowable content at KFOX were much less rigid than at KARV. Stein was soon frequenting jazz venues, befriending artists and forming some lucrative business associations. One of the first such associations was with Howard Rumsey who owned the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach. After becoming fast friends with the bassist, Stein began what was to be a rewarding financial arrangement between himself, Rumsey and KFOX. As Stein explains: ―[The Lighthouse] was my favorite jazz spot and Howard was one of my favorite people and I‘d spend a lot of time talking to him between sets at the Lighthouse and I asked him once whether they had ever had any thought about doing any live broadcasts of the group from the Lighthouse. And in those days the union rules were such that you could do it and it wasn‘t prohibitively expensive. And we got to talking and of course I‘d had him on my show on interviews from time to time, and the more we talked about it, the better it sounded. So we finally worked out a situation where Howard had this booth in the Lighthouse that he was gonna build and he decided to go ahead and they built it. And they put the booth up. It was right past the bandstand if you remember, hanging from the ceiling. And it was set up so it could be used for a radio show or as a recording studio for recording the band. And we made a deal with KFOX and I started doing my shows from the Lighthouse instead of at the studios in Long Beach.‖ 11 Stein endeared himself to West Coast musicians personally and professionally not only out of his genuinely likeable personality, but out of his love and tireless promotion of their particular music. Artists returned his kindness in ways which illustrate the close interconnectedness of the various aspects of the music industry at the time. Aside from agreeing 178 to be interviewed on his shows, some wrote songs in Stein‘s honor: Bob Cooper‘s ―Who‘s Sleepy?‖, Mat Mathews‘s ―Not So Sleepy,‖ Walter Perkins‘ MJT + 3‘s ―Sleepy,‖ and Buddy Collette‘s ―Santa Monica,‖ later to be re-titled ―Sleepy Slept Here‖ and recorded by the Chico Hamilton Quintet. 12 In the liner notes to Collette‘s Buddy Collette: Man of Many Parts (1956), the artist praises Stein as ―a wonderful D.J. and friend of mine in Los Angeles.‖ 13 In a few cases these songs became themes to Stein‘s shows throughout his jazz radio career. Cooper‘s ―Who‘s Sleepy?‖ was the first of these featured on Stein‘s KFOX show. The song was recorded on the album Howard Rumsey‟s Lighthouse All-Stars, Vol. 6 (1955) and the liner notes make direct reference to Stein. Though the theme was suggested by Rumsey and the music written by Cooper, it was Stein‘s wife, Olivia, who gave it its title. Stein used the song to introduce his show for almost 2 ½ years, throughout his entire tenure at the Lighthouse. 14 By the mid-1950s, Stein‘s remote broadcast from the Lighthouse had become a unique mainstay of jazz radio in Los Angeles. Soon however, the contract between the Lighthouse and the station ran out. But Stein continued his remote broadcasting from the Stroller‘s Club, a former sailor bar owned by Harry Rubin, who decided almost on a whim to feature jazz. The move was prompted purely by the sensation caused by the group stationed there lead by drummer Chico Hamilton. ―They had an entirely different sound,‖ Sleepy recalled: ―They had a classical cello with Freddy Katz, for example, which had never been done before. It was done later by Oscar Pettiford. He picked up on cello with his own groups. And Buddy Collette was one of the mainstays of the group. They really had a wonderful group. And we made a deal with them to do the same sort of thing we had done at the Lighthouse. The ceiling wasn‘t high enough to put a booth up there so we put it right up 179 against the bandstand and we did the show from the booth and live broadcasts 2 or 3 times a week.‖ 15 As before, Stein endeared himself to this new group of musicians. When he took over broadcasting at Stroller‘s, Stein was still using Cooper‘s ―Who‘s Sleepy?‖ as his show‘s theme, but realized it made more sense to have Hamilton‘s group do the honors. ―Sleepy Slept Here,‖ then became the theme. The song, written by Collette, was featured on Hamilton‘s The Chico Hamilton Quintet in Hi Fi (1956). The album‘s liner notes were written by Stein, but ends with the Hamilton‘s words: ―We‘ve all heard of the actor‘s actor, the character‘s character, the musician‘s musician. There is even a disc jockey‘s disc jockey, but I would like to add a new category. Sleepy Stein is the musician‘s disc jockey. That is my very highest praise.‖ 16 Stein‘s involvement in West Coast jazz extended into the record production arena, most notably on two albums released in 1956. The first, titled Tanganyika, by the Buddy Collette/ Chico Hamilton Sextet, was not only produced by Stein, but features his liner notes as well as his likeness in a photograph on the reverse of the record. Also in the photograph is fellow KFOX deejay, Johnny Otis, whose record label, DIG Records, issued the album, and who is responsible for its album cover design. 17 Not surprisingly, the album ends with the group playing a rendition of Otis‘s ―Coming Back for More.‖ Stein also acted as promoter of the record, writing a record review of it in his column ―Wailin‘ Wax‖ for the small, Los Angeles-based teen magazine coincidentally called DIG. Though Stein issued basic facts about the album, he refrained from a critique having noted his conflict of interest in the matter. 18 The second was another record produced by Stein and Otis for the DIG label titled Wiggin‟ with Wig by the Gerald Wiggins Trio. The album cover features pianist Wiggins—known as ―Wig‖ for short—along with bassist Joe Comfort and drummer Bill Douglas punning on Wiggins nickname by wearing English 180 barrister wigs and making silly faces. Stein appears on the reverse, wigged, with a cigar wedged between a toothy grin highlighted by his trademarked mustache. Stein commented on the record in DIG, ―The cover is a gas and the photos are too much (even if I do look like Groucho).‖ 19 Stein‘s promotion of jazz is further illustrated in the full-scale articles he wrote for DIG as well, such as those dedicated to single artists like Dinah Washington, Chico Hamilton, and Stan Kenton. Though he spends considerably more time critiquing the fashion sense of Washington rather than that of Hamilton or Kenton and relegating his articles to overly biographical information, the reviews are positive and enthusiastic. 20 Stein also contributed to other teenage and jazz-related periodicals like The Coaster, Teen, Theme, Metronome, and Down Beat. The point for Stein in penning such articles on West Coast artists was to introduce them to audiences outside of the Los Angeles area who rarely heard their music. In that vein, Stein did more than just spin records of those artists he admired, but increased their exposure nation-wide in the interest of promoting their style of jazz. th These endorsements did not go unnoticed by Stein‘s artist faithful. On January 26 , 1955, KFOX‘s Public Relations Department sent out letters to jazz listeners on their mailing list. The letter, hailing from ―Southern California, Modern Jazz Mecca,‖ penned by Rumsey himself on KFOX letterhead, praises Stein as ―anything but sleepy,‖ and reminds listeners of the times and the format of his show broadcast from ―our sanctuary of sounds,‖ the Lighthouse: ―Friend, I don‘t have to tell you that a show of this kind has been one of my pet projects for some time and now that it is a reality, John Levine and myself are thrilled to be able to pass this news along to you. To be associated with Station KFOX and Sleepy Stein is in our opinion a real pleasure and we hope it means much of the same for you and your friends in ‘55.‖ 21 181 This document is an example of the kind of mutually beneficial marketing of West Coast jazz that existed between radio, record companies, and jazz venues in which Stein was heavily involved. This document is not simply a ―reminder‖ but a keen promotional tool to advertize not only Rumsey‘s group at the Lighthouse, but KFOX and Stein‘s radio show specifically. This kind of ―back-scratching,‖ though not particularly underhanded, is in part what allowed the West Coast jazz style to proliferate: local record companies record local artists, distribute their records for sale to retail outlets or for play to local deejays who broadcast the music, and buy advertising time on their stations; retail outlets advertize on radio in return and vice versa; deejays create demand for live performances of these artists which supports local jazz venues; jazz venues support the radio stations by buying airtime, etc. Artists of course play a role in that they benefit from this promotion and often, in turn, promote radio stations in agreeing to interviews or holding benefit concerts, etc. Thus, in this kind of marketing, everybody benefits because each unit is dependent on the other. Aside from being popular among musicians, Stein evidently garnered a large and dedicated listenership. One industry survey conducted at the time indicates the popularity of th Stein‘s jazz radio show in relation to its competitors. From Monday the 24 to Saturday the 29 th of October, 1955, The Pulse, Inc., a New York City-based firm, measured radio listening in the greater Long Beach area including the Lakewood and Bellflower areas from 7am till 11pm, recording 32,000 quarterly hour reports via the ―personal interview roster‖ method, or, door-todoor surveying. 22 Specifically, the survey focused on three time slots: 7am-12pm, 12pm-6pm, and 6pm-11pm. The firm reported that in the 6pm-11pm time slot, KFOX ranked first out of over 11 surveyed radio stations broadcasting in the area, garnering 17% of total listenership. 23 remarkable, considering not only that KFOX was an independent station capable of only 182 This is broadcasting at 1000 watts, barely covering more than the greater Long Beach area, but that its closest competitor in that time slot, the CBS affiliate, KNX, broadcast at 50,000 watts, covering virtually the entire Los Angeles area, and only garnered a 16% share. More interestingly, the survey found that at no time between 9pm and 11pm, the broadcast times of ―Sleepy‘s Hollow,‖ did his rival, Gene Norman, receive a higher share than Stein. 24 The Pulse survey from May of 1956 found the same trend with one exception: Stein held an even greater share of listenership on average in the 9pm-11pm time slot than in October of 1955. 25 These surveys spoke volumes to Stein, who did not hesitate in using these findings as marketing fodder in testament to his—and jazz‘s—natural advertising qualities. The business of radio in the 1950s, particularly at an independent station, demanded that deejays be responsible for their securing own advertising accounts. A great deal of tenaciousness and salesmanship was required in order to build a reputation among local and national clientele. By the mid-1950s Stein understood the art of the sell well, as exemplified in several advertisements at the time intent on painting Stein as an experienced pitch man. These advertisements, most likely published in nationally distributed trade magazines describe the selling power of Stein and the medium of jazz. Usually 2 to 3 pages in length the ads are whimsically humorous. Much like the comic book medium at the time, the ads feature only 2 to 3 colors while cartoon characters appear at key positions on the pages in relationship to specific text on the page. For instance, one such ad asks ―…are you burdened with programming kittens?‖ while orange felines, backs turned, sit among the text. The ad proclaims Stein as ―a programming tiger,‖ featuring a sphinx-like caricature of the man (the face of the deejay atop the body of a tiger). The pitch, ―Sleepy is a rating giant… here‘s proof,‖ is set next to a smiling cartoon giant in animal unitard, holding a 183 wooden club and posing spryly as if ready for portrait. Below the figure are the tables ripped from the two Pulse surveys, offered as credible evidence with the following testimonial: ―The Hooper ratings for all of Los Angeles County show SLEEPY‘s tremendous strength despite the fact that KFOX can‘t be heard by half the audience in the area covered and has limited coverage in other portions of the area tested.‖ 26 The tiger theme appears several times, particularly at the end of the ad with the pitch, ―If you want a real programming tiger by the tail... buy the tail of Sleepy Stein,‖ in which two tigers menacingly growl at the reader, pulling their master by their leashes. 27 This ad also injects a degree of seriousness via certain other pitches, particularly when introducing the medium of jazz. Lines such as ―Sleepy Stein means promotion‖ notes that promotion of Stein‘s show as well as the station appears in ads in those above mentioned teenage and jazz-related magazines. Also mentioned is Stein‘s experience in album production, which the ad believes could be parlayed into a powerful promotional tool. Product-based albums sponsored by Stein, according to the ad, ―could be titled ‗Jazz at Your Station‘ ‗or Your Product JazzTime.‘‖ Thus, with Stein as company pitch-man, advertisers have the advantage of greater market penetration in appealing to a wider audience than just radio listeners. The pitch, ―Sleepy‘s programming is different!,‖ frames the jazz medium as crucial to Stein‘s marketing tactics. Mentioned is his record collection of over 18,000 jazz records; ―the cream of new releases and oldies that have weathered the test of time.‖ This music, the ad follows, is ―far superior to the Ten-Top-Tunes and Rock and Roll type shows. Sleepy‘s past success has proven that in order to get the Lion‘s share (or should we say Tiger‘s) of radio listeners and in order to pry them away from their T.V. sets (and Hi-Fi sets) you‘ve got to give them SOMETHING DIFFERENT.‖ 28 Finally, the pitch, ―Sleepy Stein means HIGHER ratings 184 and more national accounts… and what‘s more Sleepy can sell… make him prove it!,‖ is set above graphics of some of the various products sold by Stein on his programs: Coca-Cola, Breakfast Club coffee, Motor King car batteries along with television sets, automobiles, tires, and beer. The ad ends with a note directing correspondence to Stein‘s home in the Hollywood hills. In another similar ad, the use of slang, indicative of that of the Beat generation, appears throughout, exemplifying Stein‘s underground credibility as well as his ―soft sell‖ methods. Beginning with the question, ―Is Stardust jazz?,‖ the ad attempts to draw a connection between hipness and record buying. It responds to the question, saying ―Ask anyone this question. Anyone! If he answers yes or no, he is a square. Squares are identified in this manner for a single square [an arrow pointing toward a cartoon portrait of spectacled, older man in a square frame] or in this manner [an arrow pointing toward a portrait of several of the same men in a square frame] for a whole roomful of squares (it‘s a square room of course). A square, he interjects, ―is an authority on any and all objects, including Jazz, yet when a square expounds at length on Jazz (he‘s agin‘ it!) he either has practically no knowledge of the subject or, more often, is talking about something else all together.‖ 29 The proper answer of the hip, according to the ad, is: ―depends on how you play it.‖ Furthermore, ―The squarest squares (double squares or octagonals) will tell you that Jazz is no good. Too noisy. Well, some of it is pretty noisy, but there is good Jazz and bad Jazz (square Jazz?)‖ Artists like Dave Brubeck, Les Brown, Erroll Garner and others constitute ―good Jazz,‖ it says. ―All this is Jazz and none of it noisy, because GOOD jazz is pretty, listenable MUSIC!‖ Once again Stein‘s ad emphasizes that jazz radio is a sellable medium in its ability to entice 185 consumers to ―desert their T.V. sets where there [is] no jazz (square pictures) to dust off their radios every night and listen to two hours of wonderful music (Jazz) on the Sleepy Stein Show.‖ The hip are apparently also registered in the ubiquitous Pulse survey statistics. The 16% share of listenership recorded from May through July of 1956 on KFOX at the 9pm-11pm slot means, according to the ad, that ―16 out of every 100 listeners DO like Jazz and the largest audience at the above time is the unsquare (hip) audience of Ind. Station A.‖ Here, the ad keenly differentiates the jazz audience of KFOX as serious listeners and serious buyers as opposed to those tuned into pop or classical music, news, sports, or religious programming. It also notes the popularity of Stein‘s show among its listeners in another way; in noting the program once ―pulled 1100 pieces of mail in one week.‖ The ad ends with a definitive statement regarding Stein‘s ability as an advertiser: ―Sleepy is a phenomenal air salesman, who has a way with a commercial which is a thing of beauty to sponsors and a joy to agencies everywhere. Sleepy has the ONLY type of program that not only guarantees a large audience rating, but delivers the Negro audience en masse, together with a healthy slice of other segments.‖ And, ―Sleepy brings a wealth of promotion to any program or station with which he is associated. He writes for many publications and is an editor of the largest teen-age magazine in the country. He is nationally known as a leading Jazz authority and is a top favorite among thousands of people who don‘t know Jazz from Crisco, but just like GOOD MUSIC.‖ 30 With a Little Help from His Friends: Founding the First All-Jazz Radio Station 186 ―Like most jazz disc jockeys on AM we had the eternal problem of fighting with the commercial dept and they were trying to tell us what jazz was and what to play and we decided the only way to play what you want was you had to get your own station… so we did.‖ - Sleepy Stein on Stars of Jazz 31 One business venture on the part of Stein is notable above all others. In 1957, Sleepy got word of a tiny 100 watt station called KNOB, the oldest independent FM radio station in the Los Angeles area (established in 1949) which broadcast out of Signal Hill, a remote, oil-rich area of Long Beach. Signal Hill was also known by its nickname, ―Porcupine Hill,‖ due to the glut of oil th rigs which dotted the landscape in the early 20 century. The station owner, Ray Torian was also its general manager and chief engineer, and was a whiz with electrical bric-a-brac. With Torian‘s technical know-how and Stein‘s advertising skills, radio experience and knowledge of jazz, the possibility of an all-jazz station seemed on the horizon. According to Stein, ―Ray didn‘t know much about the business end of radio but he knew plenty about the technical end, and he needed somebody who knew the business end of it and the programming end, and I talked him into trying an all-jazz thing.‖ 32 From the outset, turning KNOB into an all-jazz station was a perilous venture. Firstly, according to Stein, the FM band was, for the most part, uncharted radio territory. Secondly, at 100 watts, the station only had a 3 block signal range; ironic for a station located on ―Signal 33 Hill.‖ Thirdly, and most importantly, was one particular impediment: money. A Stein recalls, ―We were thinking and thinking and thinking how we could raise the money because I just didn‘t have that kind of money to do it and I didn‘t have any rich friends at the time. I had an idea which had been in the back of my head for a long time about bringing the 187 Kenton band, for a reunion, back to Balboa. Johnny Otis was involved with some concert promoters and they thought it was a great idea. So I got together with Stan and told him what I had in mind and I asked him what sort of an arrangement I could make with him to bring the band back to Balboa. And Stan‘s answer was that we had played a lot of his records, we were good friends, and he would bring the band back to Balboa for one or two nights. We finally decided to make it 2 nights… And that he would go partners with us on it, that he would furnish the band and we would pay the band, pay for the hall, all of the expenses, off the top and split what was left which was an unbelievably, fantastically good offer.‖ 34 The concerts were a startling success. According to Stein, ―Both nights you couldn‘t get in, it was so jammed, and when it was all over with there was enough money for my share to buy my portion of KNOB. Just like that.‖ 35 The first night of this celebration offered a gesture of gratitude to Kenton. Stein had the idea to secretly contact all of the original members of Kenton‘s big band as a ―Back to Balboa‖ twist to the proceedings without the bandleader‘s knowing. According to Stein, ―Howard [Rumsey] got on the phone and was able to locate almost all of the original members of the band and I think about 80% of them were able to make it for this. The furthest one that had to go… Chico Alvarez was in Las Vegas, and he came down from Las Vegas and all the rest of them were local. There were a few in New York that couldn‘t come but it was pretty well populated as far as the band was concerned and… I think it was [Howard Lucraft] or someone else, took Stan out for a drink during the intermission we put the old band on the stand and the lights were off and Stan came back 188 to start the second half of the concert and the lights went up and I‘ll never forget his face. All these old geezers sitting there. It was marvelous.‖ 36 Indeed, only Stan Kenton could have made this benefit possible. Though there were other name musicians in the Los Angeles area who would have been more than willing to help, none but Kenton had the drawing power to generate enough public interest to raise the funds necessary to clear overhead costs. Moreover, very few musicians in the area could have afforded to form a business partnership of this sort with anyone, let alone Stein. Nevertheless, Stein has noted since, ―I‘ll never forget Stan Kenton for 50 reasons and that‘s only one of them.‖ 37 KNOB was already operational at that time, of course, though without the all-jazz th formatting. On June 13 of 1957, Down Beat reported that Stein had ―virtually finalized a deal securing for himself a substantial interest‖ in the station. 38 Stein however would have to wait until the end of the year to possess controlling interest. In December of 1957, Stein partnered with Torian and a third party, Frank James, the owner of KSPA in Santa Paula, CA, comprising the Cerritos Broadcasting Company (originally formed by Torian and John W. Doran) with Torian as majority share holder. 39 Then in January of 1958 the broadcasting license and construction permit were transferred to the Company with Stein and James paying $4000 for part of Torian‘s share of stock, thus giving the two controlling interest in the station. 40 th On Monday, August 19 , 1957, KNOB went live. Shortly after 8pm, the voice of a familiar name in West Coast jazz took to the air. ―Hello,‖ said drummer Shelly Manne, ―I want to let you know that there is a new knob on your radio, that station KNOB, is going to bring you the best jazz, all day, every day, every week. I know that all of the jazz musicians really appreciate what the station is doing. We need more radio stations to 189 play jazz, so that people can hear what we have to offer. And when I say ‗we,‘ I think I‘m talking for all the jazz musicians in the United States. My best wishes, and theirs, are all for KNOB.‖ 41 The inauguration continued throughout the night with words from other musicians. Bassist Red Calendar, hailed it ―a wonderful place of news for jazz listeners and jazz musicians,‖ pianist Paul Bley, called it ―a dream come true,‖ and trumpeter Shorty Rogers noted, ―We‘ve been waiting for this a long time.‖ Pianist Dave Brubeck and local deejay Gene Norman were particularly happy there was now ―a station where jazz can be heard at all times.‖ 42 Listeners must have felt like they were witnessing a jazz cavalcade as an all-star lineup of West Coast jazz artists processioned to the microphone to say their piece in support of the station. Howard Rumsey, Buddy Collette, Chico Hamilton, Terry Gibbs, Russ Freeman, Paul Desmond, June Christy, and many others all gave their thanks. Even Mode Records president, Red Clyde, praised the station saying, ―We‘ve had to worry about where our music would be played after it was on record… In Southern California, our solution is easy now. KNOB is the answer.‖ 43 Stein was not satisfied in opening the station with one night of pageantry before subjecting the public to a steady diet of spinning records. Nor was he interested in operating the station in the condition in which he found it. He had already totally overhauled its musical orientation, yet still major upgrades and modifications were needed. In only its first few months of operation KNOB would undergo drastic changes. In fact, even by late September of 1957 the station had already bumped its wattage to 320 watts while solidifying plans to further increase signal wattage, widen its broadcast schedule, change its broadcast frequency, and expand its programming to include more shows. Henceforth, KNOB began what was in many respects the archetype for jazz radio to come. 190 Perhaps the most important early development in KNOB‘s tenure was expanding the station‘s low wattage output. Stein, of course, had planned to boost the station‘s wattage to compete with the major AM stations in the Los Angeles area (around 50,000 watts) even before its opening day. 44 However, it would take several incremental increases to reach his desired output given the lack of a signal tower and transmitter that could support that amount of wattage as well as the federal guidelines which required a proper license. Stein had already acquired the FCC license to expand its broadcasting power. It was the present tower that was the more pressing issue; power could be expanded only so much without having to find a more powerful one. The first boost, from 100 to 320 watts, made little difference in terms of coverage area. The th second increment, from 320 watts to 3,500 watts effective in March 9 , 1958, was much more substantial. ―Our boost in wattage will allow us to saturate the complete Los Angeles area,‖ Stein 45 reported to the Los Angeles Times. To celebrate, KNOB held a four hour long event featuring yet another cavalcade of jazz artists. ―We are going to have more big time names on this show than any other radio or 46 television program has had in the history of jazz,‖ Stein told the Culver City Star News. Indeed, around 60 jazzmen and women, many of those who appeared for the station‘s opening day ceremonies—Dave Brubeck, Shelly Manne, Jimmy Giuffre, Shorty Rogers, Chico Hamilton, Bob Cooper, etc.—emerged for the festivities which were emceed by none other than Stan Kenton and Duke Ellington. 47 Preceding the event was a three hour long jazz program featuring top jazz artists from the San Francisco Bay area such as Cal Tjader, Vince Guaraldi, Virgil Gonzalvez and Earl Hines, and led by deejay Pat Henry in honor of KNOB‘s achievement. 48 The capstone to the event, however, was an hour long program on the history of jazz, sponsored 191 by Theme. 49 Down Beat hailed KNOB‘s wattage boost, writing, ―Slowly, ever slowly, it appeared, the cause of jazz on FM radio in southern California was being advanced apace.‖ 50 With the increase in wattage came a change in frequency, from 103.1 to 97.9 megacycles, which was simply rounded up to 98 for advertising‘s sake. 51 97.9, however, was the frequency for which Stein had been licensed to expand its wattage to compete with other broadcasting giants like KNX. According to Stein, ―We had a possibility of getting a high frequency spot on the FM dial that Ray Torian, my partner, had dreamed up. He was a very good research man and he found that there was one spot still open and available for 79,000 watts. So we applied for it, and we got it… amazingly.‖ 52 Again, the major impediment was the broadcasting apparatus itself: ―The problem we had was we needed a 79,000 watt transmitter and a new tower and we didn‘t have any money. So I started making deals. I bought a used transmitter from the Middle West and I made a trade deal with a moving company in Long Beach to bring it out here for us.‖ 53 The tower, standing 420 feet rd above average terrain, was then overhauled and erected on Signal Hill at 2411 East 23 Street. Thus, in increasing from 3,500 to 79,000 watts, KNOB had become the most powerful FM broadcaster in the region. By May of 1959, its signal reached as far north as Santa Barbara, as far east as San Bernardino, and as far south as San Diego. 54 Only KNOB‘s deejays seemed to change more than its signal wattage. Though its ―jazz only‖ orientation did not waiver, from the start the station featured a revolving door of radio personalities who deejayed a large variety of jazz programs. Its executive level employees— there were very few of them—rarely changed. Of those, Sleepy did the bulk of the work. He was 192 not only the driving force behind the day-to-day operations, but was an integral part of its programming and its financial transactions as well as holding down his usual job of deejaying a nightly show. Though the station‘s tower was located on Signal Hill, broadcasting for Stein‘s show was done, as always, remotely. This time, however, he would not be broadcasting from a live jazz venue but from behind the bullet-proof window of Sam‘s Record Store at 5162 West Adams, south of downtown. In fact, many of the shows broadcast on KNOB in the early days were taped at Sam‘s and shipped down to Signal Hill to be broadcast. Later in the station‘s tenure, Stein stopped taping at Sam‘s and broadcast from his home in the Hollywood Hills. Because most of the programs were taped, live shows were more of a rarity. Moreover, taped shows made more sense economically and aesthetically. Taping shows allowed time flexibility among its deejays rather than holding them to fixed schedules throughout the week. Deejays could record shows in their off time or between other job commitments. Also, given Stein‘s ―all day, every day‖ programming vision for the station, there were many time slots to be filled. So as not to recycle music throughout the day, as was common in pop music radio, a diversity of radio personalities as well as programming was necessary. Stein addressed both needs through taped shows. Programs came from deejays not only in the Los Angeles area but from far off places, from San Francisco to New York City. The list of deejays read like a ―who‘s who‖ in jazz and jazz radio. For instance, in its early days, Stein programmed taped shows by the likes of Pat Henry, who hailed from San Francisco and was voted the #1 deejay in America by a 1957 Metronome poll, George Laine, a newspaper columnist for the Pasadena Independent Star News and contributor to jazz periodicals like Metronome, and John Tynan, the West Coast editor for 55 Down Beat. 193 The long time jazz educator, author, composer and critic for Down Beat, Leonard Feather, took up roost at KNOB. Feather‘s column, ―The Blindfold Test,‖ was a regular column for Down Beat before he adapted it for radio at WABC in New York City. FM & Fine Arts Guide reported in December of 1960, ―It may never replace charades, but the KNOB Blindfold Test on Sundays from 9 till 10 pm has caught on in a big way. Each week, a big name jazz musician or layman stakes his reputation as the moderator spins a record cold, then challenges the guest to make his guesses.‖ 56 On occasion, Stein was scheduled to guest on the show such as when West Coast jazz was the theme. 57 Initially, KNOB broadcast tapes of the show to its audience. However, after Feather moved to Los Angeles in 1960, shows were recorded on the West Coast and shipped back to New York City to be aired there. Feather reported in Down Beat in February of 1961, ―The Blindfold Test is now a radio program. Some years ago, as New York readers will remember, I used the idea for a while on WABC… From now on, many of the interviews you read on this page will be edited from broadcasts. The radio version, of course, enables you to hear the record immediately even before you have the blindfoldee‘s reaction to it.‖ 58 Howard Lucraft remembered Feather‘s show fondly, saying, ―His great knowledge and ability to discourse on jazz was something which we greatly admired and was a great feature on KNOB.‖ 59 That same month, Stein added shows from Jimmy Lyons and Ralph Gleason from KHIP in San Francisco. Lyons‘ show, though taped, presented various live musical selections from the Monterey Jazz Festival in Monterey, California, of which he was the founder. 60 Locally, though, KNOB featured a wealth of professional as well as semi-professional deejays whose shows not 194 only paralleled their particular interests in jazz but their personalities as well. The number of KNOB deejays over its near-decade long run was tremendous. Because of the commitment to taped shows along with deejays‘ often semi-professional—not to mention, transient—status, there are almost too many to document. Many deejays spent as little as a couple months at the station (either taping shows in Los Angeles or shipping in taped shows from elsewhere) before moving on to other vocations. However, according to Lucraft, ―A unique aspect of the Sleepy Stein creativity was the variety and contrast of his KNOB programs.‖ 61 Variety and contrast were not only necessary to appeal to the widest audience possible, but essential in presenting jazz in its many forms. On occasion, KNOB would promote itself as the ―best in jazz,‖ citing this variety and contrast in the form of brochures listing its weekly show schedule. In these brochures, short biographies and photos of deejays appeared along with a sponsorship from various record labels, many of them located on the West Coast. These labels were almost as long as the number of deejays: Gene Norman Presents, Fantasy Prestige, World Pacific, Contemporary, Riverside, Good Time Jazz, Hi Fi Jazz, Audiophile, Jazz Archives, Jazzland, and New Jazz. This deejay-record label association did not require deejays play only music from that label, however. The monikers more properly symbolized the wide variety of jazz styles broadcast on the station; there was a great deal of difference between the music of World Pacific and the East Coast label, Prestige, for instance. One brochure from the early years of KNOB lists 11 deejays. Interestingly, Stein appears twice, deejaying two shows (Stein was one of the few with multiple shows on the station). His 8pm, Monday through Saturday show, ―Sleepy‘s Hollow‖—the mainstay of the station— featured Prestige artists Miles Davis, Red Garland, Mose Allison and the Modern Jazz Quartet. 195 For his other show, Stein went by the pseudonym, ―El Dormido,‖ or ―the sleepy one‖ in Spanish, playing, according to the brochure, ―Latin with a feeling, jazz with a Latin beat‖ and featuring Fantasy artists like Cal Tjader and Pete Terrace. For the Gene Norman Presents label, Amador ―Lover‖ Solis also played ―Latin jazz‖ but mixed in other modern jazz sounds as well; from Rene Touzet to Buddy DeFranco, Paul Bley and Lionel Hampton. Pat Henry spun records by Andre Previn, Shelly Manne, and the Lighthouse All-Stars on Contemporary and while also deejaying for ―Jazz Conversations,‖ a show usually featuring three jazz artists discussing pressing issues in jazz of the day. 62 John Brophy featured Riverside artists Thelonius Monk, Sonny Rollins, Kenny Drew, and Kenny Dorham. ―Professor‖ Bob Kirstein‘s ―Jazz Archives‖ show featured Dixieland jazz on the Good Times Records label like Bob Scobey, the Firehouse Five and the Castle Jazz Band. Paul Kidd‘s ―Kidd Jazz‖ show on Sunday nights at midnight played more aggressive stylings of jazz from such Prestige artists as Benny Green, Curtis Fuller and Gene Ammons. The brochure also lists KNOB‘s program log as follows: Table 4.1 10 a.m. 11 a.m. 12 p.m. 1 p.m. 2 p.m. 3 p.m. 4 p.m. 5 p.m. 7 p.m. 8 p.m. 9 p.m. 10 p.m. 11 p.m. 12 Mid. KNOB Program Log, late-1950s Monday-Friday Dixieland A.M. Jazz for Housewives Howard Lucraft Pat Henry John Brophy Dixieland P.M. Dinner Jazz El Dormido Sleepy‘s Hollow Saturday Dixieland A.M. Jazz Archives 63 Sunday Jazz Goes to Church Jazz Potpourri Pat Collette Howard Lucraft Pat Henry Swing Street Amador Solis Sleepy‘s Hollow Don Hamilton Pat Henry Knob Knightcap Knob Knightcap Paul Kidd 196 Other brochures are constructed in the same format, featuring Stein, Kirstein, Collette, and Lucraft as well as new names. Chico Sesma is listed as the Latin jazz man on ―Jazz for Moderns,‖ playing Latin jazz artists like Bobby Montez and Jack Costanzo on the Gene Norman Presents label. Al Riemen‘s ―Jazzband Ball‖ featured Dixieland artists like Red Nichols and Doc Evans for the Audiophile label. Dick Jones‘ ―Jazz Potpourri‖ featured the traditional jazz of Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, as well as Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson from the Riverside-Archives series. Vern Stevenson held the midnight to 2am slot. ―The most relaxed voice in radio‖ played ―jazz for night people:‖ Prestige and Bluesville artists like Eddie ―Lockjaw‖ Davis, Arnett Cobb, Willis Jackson and Al Smith. Pete ―The Swinger‖ Smith, spun the modern sounds of Donald Byrd, Herbie Mann, Hank Mobley, Kenny Drew and Gigi Gryce on the Jazzland label. Dick Whittington, ―the shabby little man in the harlequin suit,‖ presented, according to the brochure, ―three hilarious hours of jazzy jokes and some very serious music‖ from 9pm to midnight including New Jazz artists Phineas Newborn, Benny Golson, Stan Getz, Jackie McLean, Johnny ―Hammond‖ Smith, and the Modern Jazz Disciples. 64 One brochure from March of 1960 also lists KNOB‘s program log as follows: Table 4.2 th KNOB Program Log, March 19 , 1960 65 Monday-Friday 8 a.m. 9 a.m. 10 a.m. 11 a.m. 12:45 p.m. 1 p.m. 2 p.m. 3 p.m. 4 p.m. 5 p.m. 6 p.m. Saturday Sunday Jazz Goes to Church Dixieland A.M. Jazz For Housewives Dixieland A.M. Jazz Archives Jazzband Ball Jazz Potpourri The Navy Swing The Pete Smith Show Young in the Afternoon Young in the Afternoon Dixieland P.M. Latin for Lovers Dinner Jazz The Jazz Classroom Latin for Lovers Dinner Jazz 197 Collector‘s Showcase Latin for Moderns Howard Lucraft Show Table 4.2 (cont‘d) 7 p.m. 7:30 p.m. 8 p.m. 9 p.m. 10 p.m. 11 p.m. 12 p.m. Sleepy‘s Hollow Sleepy‘s Hollow The Jazz Calendar Just a Little Jazz The Jazz Calendar Just a Little Jazz Jazz International Jazz on the Potomac The Critic‘s Ear Dick Whittington Show Just a Little Jazz These are just a small sampling of the various shows to appear on KNOB over the years. The list also includes Bob Shayne‘s ―Shayne-illa Jazz,‖ Don Mupo‘s ―The Kenton Hour,‖ and Larry Stein‘s ―Jazz Panorama.‖ Other Los Angeles notables held deejaying positions at KNOB as well, like Bill Brown, the day city editor for the Los Angeles Examiner, who hosted ―Jazz Beat,‖ or Dave Larson, the former promotion director for the Jazz and the Philharmonic concert series. The list of deejays also includes the likes of Wes Bowen, Will Thornbury, Paul Werth, Ray Coombs, Gabriel Figueroa, Gary Dolphin (who also owned the Downey Music Store), Gaylord Neff, Dennis Smith, Al Fox, Alan Harvey, Rex Stewart, Jimmy O‘ Valle, and Hub Stevens, just to name a few. While the majority of KNOB deejays were white, the station employed a large number of African Americans. This is significant as, according to Johnny Otis, by 1960 KNOB and KGFJ were the only local radio stations to hire African Americans. Moreover, out of its seventeen hours per day of broadcasting, seven hours at KNOB were programmed by African American deejays. 66 ―Discrimination is rampant in the radio-TV industry,‖ said Otis, ―and it‘s nice to know two of our local stations have a fair employment policy.‖ Pat Collette, Don Hamilton, Paul Kidd, Vern Stevenson, Amos Green, and Joe Adams were among the more well-known African American deejays at KNOB. Pat Collette and Don Hamilton came from musical pedigree; their brothers are Buddy Collette and Chico Hamilton, respectively. The Hamilton‘s in particular 198 came from a noted and successful African American family. Their brother Bernard was an acclaimed dramatic actor and their other brother, Tommy, owned a Richfield gas station. Don had attended Jefferson High School and the Los Angeles Junior College of Business before working as a salesman for Golden State Mutual Insurance and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. He was also extremely active in the local African American community, volunteering for various fund-raising benefits or other non-profit work. Upon his hire at KNOB, the Los Angeles Sentinel glowed over his accomplishments, calling him an ―asset‖ to the community. 67 Joe Adams, however, was the most acclaimed African American deejay at KNOB. Hailed as the ―Dean of Negro Deejays‖ by Otis, ―the world‘s most well-known Negro jazz disc jockey‖ by the Los Angeles Sentinel, and ―the suavest of the wax whirling clan,‖ by the California Eagle, Adams had built a reputation as the first African American deejay West of Chicago and the first to host a weekly nationwide program for NBC, ―Parade of Bands.‖ 68 Aside from devoting 10 of his 17 years in radio announcing for KDAY in Los Angeles, Adams was known for his acting roles on stage, screen and television, appearing in productions of Amos and Andy, Sheena of the Jungle, Her Highness and the Bellboy, and Otto Preminger‘s Carmen Jones. He also produced for television, including such programs as ―Adams‘ Alley‖ for KLAC-TV and ―Joe Adams Presents‖ for KTTV. 69 Adams was also manager to pianist Ray Charles. In recognition of his achievements and civic contributions, Adams was named ―Man of the Year‖ by Fem magazine in 1955, received the Foreign Correspondence Press Association Award in 1956, and on March th 13 , 1953, the Los Angeles City Council declared it ―Joe Adams Day.‖ 70 No doubt the notoriety of Collette, the Hamilton‘s and Adams, along with its equal opportunity employment practices, brought to KNOB an air of legitimacy as well as a good deal of African American listeners. 199 KNOB not only featured some unique radio personalities, but featured some very original programming as well. Don Hamilton held a Sunday night spot featuring Fantasy artists like Paul Desmond, Dave Brubeck and Elliot Lawrence. Pat Collette deejayed a highly touted Sunday morning program, aptly titled ―Jazz Goes to Church,‖ spinning religious music of Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharp, the St. Paul‘s Baptist Church Choir, George Lewis, Lee Charles and other rhythm and blues or gospel artists. 71 ―This program,‖ Stein said, ―will emphasize the impact that religious music has had on jazz and perhaps, we hope, even take the listeners into the churches where gospel stars are singing.‖ 72 When asked why a religious themed show, Stein responded, ―I‘m going to do a church show because I believe there is more communication with a man‘s soul in music than in any kind of speech. It‘s just the way I believe.‖ 73 ―Jazz on the Potomac,‖ a show presented by the U.S. Marine Corps‘ Don von Buelwitz, featured a variety of military-related fare. 74 Chuck Carey, a Dixieland as well as modern jazz enthusiast, was the host of ―Themes in Jazz‖ and co-host to ―Jazz Panorama‖ along with fellow UCLA alumnus Larry Stein until he entered the Navy in the late 1950s. Fortunately, he continued his vocation while on assignment aboard the USS Northampton (CLC-1), broadcasting ―The Ensign Carey Show‖ over the ships radio, NCYO. 75 In June of 1960, after his discharge, Carey re-assumed his role as KNOB deejay, taking over the ―Jazz Archives‖ show on Saturday afternoons and featuring many of the European jazz albums acquired from his travels abroad. 76 Also broadcasting international jazz was Howard Lucraft‘s ―Jazz International,‖ which featured Victor Feldman, Jimmy Deauchar, and other international jazz artists. According to Stein, the show promised to ―spotlight the best in foreign jazz plus recorded interviews with Ted Heath and similar leading overseas musicians.‖ 77 200 th Don Fisher, a teacher of 11 grade Basic Science and U.S. History at Dominguez Senior High School in Compton, CA held a Saturday afternoon show called ―The Jazz Classroom.‖ The program was particularly unique not only in that it was an educational show consisting of news, music, record reviews, interviews and even contests, but that it was regularly advertized in various high school newspapers around Los Angeles, often boasting that it was a show ―designed with young people in mind.‖ 78 Jim Fischer, the ―purveyor of pretty sounds,‖ deejayed perhaps the most original show, ―Jazz for Housewives‖ (originally titled ―Jazz for Tired Housewives‖). According to Stein, the show featured ―quiet, pretty, Shearingesque things. We wait until night to play the experimental and way out stuff.‖ 79 One KNOB brochure read, ―Whether you‘re a housewife of not, you‘ll still enjoy the relaxing Hi Fi Jazz performances of Ben Webster, Cappy Lewis, Jimmy Witherspoon, Harold Land and Paul Horn.‖ 80 Eventually Ed Young would come to deejay the show as well as his own creation, ―Young in the Afternoon.‖ He was recalled by Lucraft as having a keen sense of humor: ―He could make you crack up with just about two words as so many of us did as we were driving along.‖ 81 It‘s possible that Young seemed a better fit given the show‘s comical attitude towards gender roles. Nevertheless, critic Mimi Clar, a Los Angeles native, UCLA graduate and jazz columnist, expressed her frustration at the show, not out of any concern over the obvious paternalism in the show‘s title, but that its content condescended to true jazz fans: ―I cannot help becoming a trifle impatient with some of the music catering to housewives that is frankly commercial… I prefer ‗after midnight‘ jazz which, generally speaking, is ignored during the day, even at KNOB…Surely there must be some who, like myself, 201 cannot always stay up late enough to catch the shows in the wee hours and would therefore like their after-midnight jazz the following morning.‖ Clar also offered an interesting reading of the show‘s sequence of music: ―The ‗Housewives‘ show repeatedly builds to musical peaks and then descends: Sinatra and Ray Bryant might start a portion of the program and would gradually work up to Herbie Mann, Modern Jazz Quartet and 82 finally, Sonny Rollins.‖ These ―peaks‖ and their accompanying valleys have a strange orgasmic quality (as do the symbolism in Sinatra‘s foreplay and Rollins‘s penetration), as if the music somehow compensates the household‘s lack of male presence with a device which can satisfy (and contain) feminine urges. An FM listing in the Los Angeles Examiner advertized the th show‘s January 12 1959 airing dedicated to jazz in film as a program that ―promises to get your mind off what it‘s on.‖ 83 One of the more whimsical shows bordered on the bizarre. ―The Fisher Hour,‖ sponsored by The Fischer home audio equipment, was one such show. The show romanticized the jazz enthusiast as a modern dandy and the music a soundtrack to the life of a well-to-do swinging bachelor. According to Lucraft, ―We had a program called ―The Fisher Hour.‖ Now, Sleepy gave that to me because it was some sort of snobbish thought that a British voice was more the type of thing for the Fisher program. They wrote the commercials and they did it this way, it was sort of… ‗Well as you leave your Roll Royce and come in for dinner you sort of have to have the right kind of high class music and only the high class music can be played on Ficher equipment.‘ So that was ―The Fisher Hour‖ and Howard Lucraft had to be the one to say the words!‖ 84 202 Charles Weisenberg‘s ―The Critic‘s Ear,‖ however, was strictly serious, and featured, according to Lucraft, ―very powerful criticism… he never pulled any punches.‖ 85 The show was especially important as it was one of the few jazz criticism outlets on the West Coast. Later renamed ―Jazz Commentary,‖ the show featured an extraordinary amount of criticism (mostly positive) directed toward the West Coast jazz style specifically; something rarely seen from East Coast media outlets. Weisenberg‘s criticism was not relegated to the music per se, but was directed at the writing of jazz histories, as well as other related topics such as jazz artists and drug use, race and jazz, jazz and the other arts, jazz venues, corruption in the music industry and even extra-musical concerns like nuclear weapons, political campaigning, and religion in the early 1960s. Special themed shows often interjected KNOB‘s programming. At times, regular programming would be interrupted when a well-known jazz artist would stop by the station. On those occasions, interviews with the artist would segue in and out of selections from their entire repertoire or from their current album. Often, shows dedicated to one particular artist occurred without that artist‘s presence at KNOB or often without their awareness of its airing. In general, special themed shows or spotlights revolved around a several themes: single artists (ex. Stan Kenton, Hampton Hawes, Anita O‘Day, the Memphis Five), a particular theme or phenomenon th in jazz (ex. Shakespeare and jazz, jazz on 18 century instruments, sounds from the New York scene, East and West Coast piano players) or special live performances, sometimes featuring unreleased material, broadcast in their entirety (ex. Wilbur de Paris‘ Boston Symphony Hall concert). 86 On holidays KNOB was known to celebrate with jazz as a soundtrack to the festivities. This concept dates back to Stein‘s tenure at KFOX, where he was involved in week-long jazz 203 celebrations over Easter at the Lighthouse. These eventually evolved into the Easter Week Jazz Festival in 1953. The following year, the Lighthouse held a competition featuring six local college jazz bands as participants and members of the Lighthouse All-Stars as judges. According to Stein, ―For the 1955 Festival, we anticipated another competition of five or six groups when suddenly things began to pop…the calls began coming in and before we knew wha‘ happened, nine modern jazz groups from California colleges were in. Then, on Friday before the Festival, another call came in—it was a quartet from the University of Alabama! They had read about the Festival and had all driven out in one car with the bass tied on top. Our Festival had taken on a national character!‖ 87 Stein also revived another KFOX invention at KNOB, a three-hour Christmas Eve celebration th called ―Cool Yule.‖ For the December 24 , 1960 show, Stein played more than 40 arrangements of ―Jingle Bells,‖ including Will Bradley‘s ―Jingle Bell Boogie,‖ Pete Rugolo‘s ―Jingle Bells Mambo,‖ Pearl Bailey‘s ―Jingle Bells Cha Cha Cha,‖ and Gene Ammons‘ ―Boppin‘ with Santa.‖ 88 Almost every year since inception, KNOB aired taped shows from the Monterey, Los Angeles, and Newport Jazz Festivals as special programs. At the request of George Wein, director of the Newport Jazz Festival, Stein attended the event in July of 1960. Along with Dave Larson, Stein taped highlights of the performances, mailing the tapes back to Los Angeles via air mail to be aired principally on Stein‘s ―Sleepy‘s Hollow‖ show. Wein also tapped Stein to serve as advisor to the Monterey Jazz Festival (initially titled the Carmel Jazz Festival) in that year. 89 KNOB was also instrumental in launching the Los Angeles Jazz Festival (later to be titled The Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival) held at the Hollywood Bowl. In 1959, the festival featured Count 204 Basie, George Shearing, Sarah Vaughn and Nina Simone. 90 In 1960, the event grew considerably, featuring jazz luminaries such as Duke Ellington, Ben Webster, Horace Silver, Art Blakey and others. KNOB also promoted the event, taking out a full page advertisement on the back of the festival program. 91 Commenting on this lineup, FM and Fine Arts Guide reported, ―This kind of action ought to tie up those freeways.‖ 92 Stein also organized lower-scale programs throughout the Los Angeles area, such as one th held on December 11 , 1959 and held at the Van Nuys Unitarian-Universalist Church on Victory Blvd. and Kester Ave. Titled ―Journey Into Jazz,‖ the event featured the Bill HolmanMel Lewis Quartet and featured Stein as both master of ceremonies and lecturer, narrating the program as well as treating the audience to a history of jazz and offering demonstrations to benefit the church‘s adult education program. 93 nd Another event, held on April 2 , 1960, titled ―Adventures in American Music: From Jubilee to Jazz,‖ was presented by the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center, featuring Stein as moderator along with the music of the Buddy Collette Quintet and the Barney Kessel Quintet. 94 KNOB shows did not stay within the boundaries of the Los Angeles area. In fact, many shows were shipped to Eastern and Midwestern radio outlets for broadcast to those markets. Stein‘s show was perhaps the most distributed KNOB show, making regular airings on stations like KPEN, Berkeley, California‘s non-commercial FM station. 95 Not only were individual shows in demand, but the syndication of KNOB‘s jazz programming format appealed to other stations as well. In fact, within the first few years of KNOB‘s operation, Stein harbored the idea to establish a franchise of FM affiliates across the nation. Detroit was one such city. In June of 1960, the first steps were taken as an antennae began construction atop Detroit‘s Cadillac Tower 205 for WIPE-FM to broadcast at 10,000 watts at 92.3 on the dial. Stein, along with Torian, KNOB manager Don Propst and advertising executive Tom Mullins were said to have invested between $15,000 and $20,000 into the station, hiring a fixture in Detroit radio, Ollie McLaughlin, as preeminent deejay. Around McLaughlin, KNOB would furnish the taped shows to fill out the programming schedule. 96 In September of 1960, Stein told the Los Angeles Times that 1960-1961 would see major changes. ―First,‖ he said, ―we want to get our affiliate in Detroit on the air. Then we‘ll be able to exchange tapes with them and broaden our programming. Of course, we‘ve got thousands of other ideas, too—all we need is money.‖ 97 In May of 1961, the Sunday Tribune reported that Stein had in mind to expand to 7 affiliate stations; the FCC maximum. Unfortunately, it also reported that the Detroit station was still under construction. 98 To date, it is unclear as to whether WIPE began broadcasting jazz or even began operation. One KNOB affiliate station that did see the light of day was WAZZ-FM in Pittsburgh, st PA. The station began broadcasting on September 1 , 1961, though only offering an initial three hour block of jazz. Gradually, however, the station increased to ten hours a day thanks to taped shows shipped in from its parent station in Los Angeles. KNOB also offered one of their deejays to WAZZ, John Eastman, on a six month loan to oversee its daily operations. In return, Eastman shipped tapes of his WAZZ shows back to Los Angeles, thus offsetting the loss of his presence and preserving his audience there. 99 Spreading KNOB‘s programming across the nation was not dependent on establishing franchises, however. Stein told Billboard Music Week ―the KNOB service does not have to go necessarily to all-jazz operations, but is available to any outlet, regardless of their programming 206 policy.‖ Stein believed KNOB‘s programming could be spread more widely via contracts with non-jazz stations. ―The reason for this,‖ according to Stein, ―is the fact that the non-jazz operation, seeking to round out its programming fare with a sampling of good jazz, will realize that it lacks jazz programming know-how. As a result… such stations will welcome shows programmed by experts in the jazz field.‖ The charges are so inexpensive,‖ said Stein, and are within easy reach of any station; AM and FM alike. 100 That KNOB shows were in demand at other radio stations and distributed across the country is just one indicator of the popularity of the station. While KNOB rarely conducted ―inhouse‖ measurements of its station‘s presence or the nature of the reception of its programming (positively or negatively) either locally or nationally, other evidence exists which are suitable indicators in determining the scope and depth of radio audience demographics in Los Angeles and point to extent of the station‘s significance as a popular musical institution. As mentioned previously, musicians were largely in agreement in their response to KNOB‘s founding; their sentiments were immensely positive. Perhaps the only negative criticism of the station came from Bud Shank, who complained that in its early days he was unable to receive its signal from his home in the Hollywood Hills. 101 Certainly, this problem was corrected when KNOB boosted its power. Along with musicians, serious jazz enthusiasts were also a vital part of KNOB‘s demographic. According to several periodicals of the day, KNOB‘s audience was ―a satisfied one,‖ and ―not the types who call or write for requests nor for information.‖ 102 The variety of KNOB‘s programming meant that listeners‘ favorite songs or artists would air without a long wait. But some listeners did call into the station. Many of whom were not musicians or jazz enthusiasts, but lay jazz listeners; perhaps the largest segment of its audience. According to 207 Stein, KNOB received over 1,100 pieces of mail in the first week of operation. 103 If these were not enthusiasts, they were casual listeners who responded enthusiastically. After the initial shock, however, KNOB received little unsolicited feedback from their audiences. In1999, Howard Lucraft described what he called ―one of the pluses‖ of working at KNOB: ―A lot of lonely girls used to call up at night… and demand to come over to the station.‖ He also reported that the station‘s signal would sometime run errant into the atmosphere, unintentionally reaching jazz listeners from far off destinations. Commenting on the power of KNOB‘s signal, he said, ―I even got a call one night from Oklahoma. They heard it bouncing off the mountains or something, which was pretty great.‖ 104 Some audiences thought the station too good to be true. One Redesa housewife wrote to the station, ―This music is wonderful. In fact, it‘s so great to hear jazz all day long, that my husband and I are both wondering if it can last.‖ To quell fears of its listening public, in February of 1958, Stein, Torian and ad man Verne Archer issued a statement to its listeners. Among the announcements were reassurances that the station had acquired the services of top deejays from around the country including Henry, Lucraft and others, and that it had already received permission from the FCC to expand its signal strength to 79,000 watts. Archer also added that KNOB had a requisite number of sponsors even before its opening day—enough to sustain the station throughout 1958—and that, financially speaking, it had been solvent since day one. 105 On one rare occasion, the station asked listeners to write in as a means of measuring its audience. In 1958, the periodical of the organization, SESAC (Society of European Stage Authors and Composers), placed KNOB‘s listenership within the 21 to 45 year old range, adding that when the station asked its listeners on the air to write in so station managers might determine the extent of their college student audience, they received mail from 41 different colleges and 208 106 universities. Stein himself has offered various insights into the station‘s widespread popularity. He once reported that his dentist had his office‘s radio dial tuned to KNOB; this, without knowing that Stein even owned the station. Moreover, Stein has argued the success of any jazz radio station is dependent on the particular market‘s cosmopolitan racial composition. Los Angeles and its large African American population, Stein believed, comprised the most faithful listeners and had a great deal to do with KBOB‘s success. 107 Listener response to one unfortunate event in 1958 stands a particularly interesting th indicator of KNOB‘s popularity. On April 12 a cat burglar broke into the Signal Hill studio stealing the entire record library. The library comprised around 1500 LPs weighing 700 lbs and valued at $7500. Station deejays compensated by bringing in records from their own libraries as well as buying or borrowing records from elsewhere. In response, and in demonstrating their loyalty to the station, over 100 phone calls were made to KNOB from listeners offering to loan records from their own collections. 108 The success of KNOB can also be measured in terms of the mark it made among Los Angeles city officials. KNOB made a particular impression on Councilman Charles Navarro, th who on March 30 , 1959 and on behalf of the City Council of Los Angeles, presented and passed a resolution praising KNOB as an important local institution. On top of recognizing the West Coast and Southern California as ―an important center of jazz creativity,‖ the resolution congratulated the station in becoming the country‘s first all-jazz station, in boosting its power to 79,000 watts, and presenting ―jazz programming in a tasteful manner.‖ 109 Navarro, in fact, was also a guitarist and a member of Local 47. After his resolution as passed, KNOB invited Navarro to read the resolution on the air and to discuss his musicianship on Stein‘s program. 209 110 th Interestingly, Navarro‘s appearance raised the ire of his political opponent in the 10 District election, Dr. D. Overstreet Gray, Sr., who called the station demanding ―equal ‗political‘ time.‖ The station refused the request, citing the fact that Navarro did not discuss his politics, but rather his interest in jazz. Not to be deterred, Gray amended his request to discuss only jazz, but apparently to no avail. 111 KNOB‘s influence resonated further into the world of jazz radio specifically and FM radio in general; both of which were seen to model themselves after the station in the years to come. Writing for Metronome, George Laine reported that ―since KNOB instituted its unprecedented programming, three new jazz programs have appeared on West Coast radio,‖ citing, among them, KRHM-FM‘s new jazz programming and its hiring of deejays Frank Evans and Benson Curtis. 112 Not only did KNOB impart influence on multiple format stations, it activated the tremendous expansion of single format stations in California and elsewhere. At the time of KNOB‘s establishment in 1957, there were four single format stations in Los Angeles: two Country Western stations, one classical station, and one Spanish language station. 113 These formats should come as no surprise in some respects given the large Mexican-American population, the flourishing agricultural industry, and the surfeit of attention among cultural centers to European high art which were abound in Los Angeles at the time. However, none of these stations were FM. The first of these musical styles to emerge on a single format FM station came in 1959 nd with the establishment of KBCA, a classical music station, which began airing on March 22 . Like KNOB‘s appeal to serious listeners, the station promised to limit airing ―Blue Danube‖ to once yearly, and, on the word of station manager Ward Glenn, never to air ―Flight of the 210 Bumblebee.‖ 114 On Sunday mornings, KBCA programmed religious music (te deums, masses and choral works) in the same manner of KNOB‘s ―Jazz Goes to Church.‖ Columnist for the Los Angeles Examiner, Earl F. Holbrook, commented that the show fashioned an alternative to those faithful seeking the comfort of their own homes on the day of worship, thus making ―Sunday morning considerably more sufferable for many.‖ 115 By 1960, the number of single format FM stations had risen to seven: four classical, two religious, and one jazz (KNOB). 116 Outside of Los Angeles, other all-jazz stations began to appear. Philadelphia‘s WHAT broadcast its all-jazz format on its FM signal while simultaneously broadcasting a variety of music on its AM frequency. Likewise, San Diego‘s KFMB, an AM station, acquired an FM signal exclusively in order to broadcast jazz. While KFMB broadcast at 22,000 watts, the station‘s programming director, Don Ross, stated that its signal would not reach the Los Angeles area. Conversely, according to Stein, KNOB‘s signal not only reached San Diego, but that 10% of its fan mail came from the city. 117 Perhaps the most important outgrowth of KNOB‘s innovations was the establishment of KJAZ at 2909 Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California, just a few blocks from the University of California campus. The station was founded in 1959 by two KNOB deejays, Dave Larsen and Pat Henry. Bakersfield native, Henry, was already a well-known deejay before his joining KNOB and Larsen, from Minnesota, was one-time program director for KNOB as well as handled advance promotion for the Jazz at the Philharmonic series. It was undoubtedly their experience at KNOB that was the source of inspiration behind establishing KJAZ. Although Henry called it ―a realization of a long time dream that both Dave and I have had for many years,‖ KJAZ was a virtual copy of KNOB. KJAZ featured the same programming, the same business model and the same attitude towards jazz. 211 Its programming of a variety of jazz styles was drawn from the KNOB model, featuring traditional, Dixieland, swing, modern jazz, etc. Moreover, it even featured exactly the same shows as KNOB, only with different deejays, many of whom were from the San Francisco Bay Area such as Bud Payne, Jeanie Blevins, Wally Ray, Joe Agos, and Jerry Dean. As with KNOB, local columnists transitioned into deejaying roles at KJAZ. C.H. ―Brick‖ Garrigues from the San Francisco Examiner, Russ Wilson from the Oakland Tribune, and Dick Hadlock, Down Beat‘s local editor, were featured regularly. Though the station implemented some original programming—like Garrigues‘ ―Jazz Off Campus,‖ a show featuring local high school and college talent—the vast majority of the shows were ripped from the KNOB playbook. Among the shows which were transitioned to KJAZ were ―Jazz for Housewives‖ with Garrigues, ―Dinner Jazz,‖ and ―Jazz Goes to Church‖ with Boston‘s ―jazz priest,‖ Father Norman O‘Connor. Replicating the KNOB shows of Lucraft and Weisenberg were two programs; an international jazz program with Frank Evans and a show featuring jazz criticism with noted semanticist, S.I. Hayakawa, called ―The Language of Jazz.‖ Also making the leap were Henry‘s ―Jazz Conversations‖ and the U.S. Marine Corps‘ ―Jazz on the Potomac.‖ 118 Broadcasting taped shows was par for the course at the station. At KJAZ, taped shows were oriented toward presenting particular jazz scenes throughout the country. O‘ Connor‘s show came from Boston, Ralph Berton from New York, Don Gold from Chicago, Leigh Kamman from Minneapolis, and Evans from Los Angeles. In this way, KJAZ not only extended its fan base nationally as KNOB had in shipping its shows and deejays from coast to coast, but presented itself as a station dedicated to variety and in jazz‘s many manifestations outside the Bay Area. 212 In accord with KNOB‘s appeal to enthusiasts, KJAZ‘s press releases state their intent to broadcast serious music to serious listeners. Here, Henry and Larsen are framed as ―crusaders‖ or jazz missionaries intent on featuring programming ―with a definite ‗egghead‘ tendency.‖ 119 According one press release: ―The stereotyped phrases such as ‗cool,‘ ‗crazy,‘ ‗dig you, man,‘ are missing from the KJAZ vocabulary…The setup is as ‗cool‘ as the San Francisco air. But you won‘t get anywhere with Henry or Larsen with jive talk… They‘re playing it straight, serious and… oh well, cool.‖ 120 The station also offered a monthly subscription called ―Jazz Guide‖ to tie-in with its programming. The publication featured a calendar of live events, record reviews, guest columns, and interviews with celebrities; information catered to jazz enthusiasts, not the casual listener. Even Henry‘s enthusiasm for jazz and his experience in radio was promoted in the same manner as Stein. Like reportage on Stein when forming KNOB, KJAZ‘s press releases make obvious mention to his record collection: ―To Henry, jazz is a necessity. His personal record library is just about the most complete jazz library on the West Coast, with over 40 feet of LP‘s (back to back, not side by side), neatly catalogued.‖ 121 Unlike KNOB, however, KJAZ stood the test of time, broadcasting jazz from the same location until its demise in 1994, when the station encountered financial difficulty, and was eventually sold. Another measurement of KNOB‘s influence is in its economic impact on the local music business. Record companies were one avenue to rush to support the station. Within the first year of operation, only one of more than 50 of Southern California‘s wholesale record outlets, California Record Distributors, had refused to supply their records to KNOB. 122 The most interesting example, however, is that of Sam‘s Record Store, where many KNOB shows were taped. For two and a half years, Sam‘s was a regular sponsor of KNOB, airing two advertising spots a day on the station and spending $26,000 a year. As a result, Sam‘s became the largest 213 volume record dealer on the West Coast and was forced to relocate its operation to a new site with ten times the space; a result Sam himself attributed directly to KNOB. Sam even opened up a second store devoted to hi fi and FM sets. 123 In fact, the sales of FM radios overall in LA were due in large part to the KNOB audience. According to the Jazz Review, as a reaction to KNOB‘s founding, four major Los Angeles record stores reported a huge surge in FM radio sales. 124 Of course, the relationship of KNOB with FM was a mutual one. Not only did the station generate new FM consumers, it benefitted from a booming FM market in Los Angeles. Studies assessing FM penetration and FM radio usage in major metropolitan areas in the late 1950s reveal the context in which KNOB flourished financially. One study conducted by E.L. Merritt, Jr. of FM Unlimited and published in Television Magazine in September of 1958 appraised these cities in terms of population, number of households, radio equipped homes, homes equipped with FM radios and percentage of FM market saturation. New York was ranked atop the list with a population of 14,428,500, comprising 4,326,180 households. Of those, 4,239,656 households were equipped with radios and 2,497,157 with FM sets. Ranked second was Chicago, with a population of 6,161,000, comprising 1,854,200 households. Of those households, 1,817,116 were equipped with radios and 745, 018 with FM sets. Los Angeles was third, with a population of 5,913,300, comprising 1,968,480 households. Of those households, 1,829,110 were equipped with radios and 877,973 FM sets. 125 It is clear from these figures that New York represents the largest market, ranking highest in each category and holding the largest saturation of FM radio homes at 58.9%. That Los Angeles is ranked third in the study is more ambiguous, as the city boasted more households, more radio equipped homes, and more FM sets than Chicago. It also represented a more 214 saturated marked; 48% to Chicago‘s 41%. In this light, Los Angeles actually outranked Chicago as the second most fertile market for FM. Moreover, the study fails to consider the proximity of Los Angeles radio stations in relation to Orange County. A Pulse study conducted in 1957 found that the number of Los Angeles and Orange County households came to 2,100,700. Of those households, 1,008,336 were equipped with FM sets, comprising 48% saturation of the market. It also found that the number of radios used during the average week amounted to 605,001 or 60%. Lastly, a study by the Los Angeles Electric League reported the number of homes equipped with FM sets rose by more than 4,000 sets each month. including converters. 127 126 Stein once put this number between 6000 and 7000, not Pulse conducted similar studies in other major California cities. In December of 1957, the firm concluded the percentage of FM saturation in the San FranciscoOakland area stood at 47.3%, comparable to Los Angeles, while in San Diego that number stood at 37.9% in May of 1959. 128 Thus, KNOB was not only positioned in the second largest FM market in the country, but perhaps the fastest growing one as well. Surveys like those of E.L. Merritt, Jr. and others are limited in another way; they measure only in-home FM consumption. In fact, the FM revolution was largely due to its installation in car radios. As Stein has noted, ―FM in those days was practically ‗in home.‘ If you wanted it in your car there was no FM radio made in the United States… you had to buy a German radio. There were no Japanese FM radios either. So you bought a Blaupunkt or something like that. And those were expensive for the time. I think a Blaupunkt would cost you around $200 and that was and that was a lot of money in the 1950s. But we got the high power on just about 215 the time they started hitting with FM-AM car radios here and that helped build the audience very quickly.‖ 129 In 1950s Los Angeles, with its fragmented metropolitan landscape and poor public transportation, the car was king. According to the Los Angeles Examiner, one study determined that 8% of Southern California FM listeners had FM radios in their cars. ―This is a high percentage,‖ they determined, ―however it‘s understandable when one takes into consideration the number of cars in the nation‘s No. 1 FM market, and the number of miles driven daily by the average motorist.‖ 130 Cars were not the only major player in the FM boom. As George Laine observed, ―In the rush for sets that pick up this revolutionary medium, many restaurants have installed FM instead of Muzak, trains and airlines employ it in the same manner.‖ 131 Furthermore, he reported, ―The Federal Communications Commission has indicated that it has ‗literally hundreds‘ of applications for FM transmitters and stations around the nation with a good portion of them destined for California. Most of them, the FCC said, will probably be approved.‖ 132 Thus, the boom in FM radio was likely the source of KNOB‘s early financial success. In the first six months of operating in its jazz-only format, KNOB‘s sales were up 500% over that same period the previous year with a dollar volume totaling $30,000. Within roughly the first year of operation, sales increased by 100%; up 10% in November of 1958 over the previous month. According to SESAC, was the station was financially ―in the black since it went jazz.‖ Its Los Angeles FM audience had risen in the rankings from dead last in January of 1957 to third in August of 1958 and, most importantly, by February of 1959, KNOB was reaching 160,000 133 listeners. 216 Art, Advertising and Activism: The Jazz Ideology of KNOB The success of KNOB cannot solely be attributed to a pre-existing local audience, FM or otherwise. Further, to say that KNOB was successful only due to the immense size of the Los Angeles population, the heightened attention to the West Coast jazz movement at the time, or its existence in a saturated FM market would be short sighted. KNOB‘s success is directly related to Stein himself. It was his vision—his ―jazz ideology‖—which was the keystone to the station‘s success, its very existence, and its importance as a jazz institution. Together, Stein‘s jazz aesthetics, his business savvy, and his altruism towards humanity at large formed the basis of this ideology. The primary concern of his station, and the main component to Stein‘s jazz aesthetics is that ―the music broadcast on KNOB [must] have a specific relationship to jazz.‖ 134 Specifically, the station must constantly strive to present jazz not only as a form of high art, but as a distinctly American art form with broad national as well as global implications and interpretations. In this way, KNOB not only catered to, but helped shape serious jazz enthusiasts as opposed casual jazz listeners. Stein laid out his aesthetic principles in newspaper interviews in his own columns during the early years after KNOB‘s founding. The whys and wherefores of starting such a station after securing what must have been a highly regarded, financially stable situation at KFOX did not go unquestioned by local columnists: why leave a cushy AM radio gig to gamble on a tiny, 100 watt FM station? Stein responded to Mimi Clar in the pages of the Jazz Review: ―I quit because I was forced to play junk.‖ 135 Sleepy uttered the same sentiments to George Laine in his ―Jazz Lab‖ column for The Independent in 1957 when asked why he jumped ship: ―That‘s easy,‖ he said, ―I just got damn sick and tired of being told that the station didn‘t care to degrade itself with jazz or 217 that I could do a show if I wouldn‘t play noisy jazz… They left me with no alternatives. I had to start a station.‖ 136 To recognize ―good jazz‖ Stein believed one must consider ―what moves you,‖ forming an intimate relationship between the artist and audience. ―Jazz is emotional,‖ he wrote in the Citizen-News, ―the artist is conveying to you what he feels from the music—just as the modern artist paints not only what he sees but how he sees it. It takes a lot of thought on the part of the musician and listener.‖ ―In jazz,‖ he went on, ―the artist takes a theme and uses it for his own creative expression; he composes as he plays. Often he blows so far away from the melody you wonder if he‘s coming back (hence the term ―way out.‖) He comes back, never fear.‖ 137 Thus, the main purpose of KNOB was to facilitate an intimate relationship between jazz and the listener. In forming an alternative to ―junk,‖ Stein also concentrated on variety; programming quality standards did not preclude a wide selection of jazz styles. In 1959, Frontier magazine quoted Stein as saying that the station ―gives many people their first chance to hear good jazz,‖ adding that ―listeners to KNOB are exposed to every kind of jazz and near-jazz available on record.‖ 138 The establishment of KJAZ brought these aesthetic concerns to the San Francisco Bay Area. Stein happily received the station into the world of jazz radio, saying, ―I welcome them to the fold. I feel the more stations that offer Jazz, the better it is for the listener: he gains a variety of choice.‖ 139 But broadcasting a wide selection of jazz styles—even those of high quality—was only the beginning. The station‘s relationship to jazz must go further to convey to an essential American character. In other words, KNOB would not simply broadcast a variety of ―good jazz,‖ 218 but jazz which spoke to their audience‘s high art sensibilities; those which could be linked to other high art forms of the world. According to Charles Weisenberg, Stein‘s idea for an ―all jazz, all day‖ radio station was from the outset based on his belief of jazz‘s ―growing popularity and its cultural importance as America‘s most distinctive contribution to the world‘s art forms.‖ 140 Likewise, Stein thought of presenting a variety of good jazz as part of an Americanization process. In the Culver City Star News, Stein explained the link between KNOBs programming sensibilities in recalling why he established the station. Specifically, he identified radio, in particular KNOB, as the best medium in which to present jazz as a high art form: ―Most radio stations, unlike magazines, are trying for the largest possible audience, and in trying to present programs that appeal to everybody, they end up pleasing no one. The only way to program in this manner is to reduce all forms of music and entertainment to the lowest common denominator of mediocrity, so that offense can be offered to no one. This thinking is particularly relevant in television, and, with a few isolated exceptions, the programs bespeak this ghastly philosophy.‖ Magazines fare no better: ―Take a look at your neighborhood magazine stand! If you like detective stories, you‘ll find many periodicals devoted to your choice. The same goes for Western stories and all the others, but who would try to produce a magazine with one detective story, a Western, a science fiction tale, a love story and maybe an adventure saga thrown in? They would lose their literary shirts on such a venture and they know it. Consequently, magazine editors go after one specific portion of the reading public and let it go at that. If a 219 publishing house wants to reach everyone, they don‘t try to cram it all in one book. They put out half a dozen different magazines, each devoted to a specific audience.‖ Newspapers, in fact, are just as devoted to nothing in particular: ―A paper such as this one has a column on jazz, delves into politics, prints the social whirl, lists the stock quotations, etc. Surely, no individual wants or is interested in all of that. That is entirely correct, but when you read your favorite newspaper, you select the items of interest to you and skip the rest. The only way you can skip a radio program is to turn the darn thing off until something else comes on or tune to another station. That‘s why the intelligence of the radio or TV fan can be measured by the amount of wear and tear on his dial. Discriminating listeners and viewers spend more time tuning than watching and listening.‖ ―One answer,‖ he says, ―is the specialized radio (and TV) station—a station devoted to the tastes of one particular segment of the audience with no desire whatever to please ‗everybody.‘‖ Thus, Stein creates an analogy of KNOB‘s programming as representing core American values like freedom of choice and ends with a statement which reflects back his jazz aesthetics: ―KNOB is the station devoted entirely to America‘s number one and only art form… only jazz is a complete, home grown native American product. Surely this is worthy of a radio station‘s complete attention. We think so—and apparently, so does a substantial portion of the available audience.‖ 141 In Stein‘s mission statement lay a popular culture critique not atypical of the period; that to mass produce jazz is to devote oneself to commercial interests and appeal to the casual listener, whereas to particularize jazz is to devote oneself to elite community interests and to appeal to active, discriminating listeners. As Stein told the Culver City Star News, ―We know we 220 can‘t please everybody, so we are going to aim for the enthusiast and the music lover and if we can please them I‘ll be happy.‖ 142 Moreover, Stein refused to even consider background music listeners as constituting an ―audience.‖ He told the Los Angeles Times that ―an audience is not people who listen to background music because they don‘t have an interest in it. Pulse, which surveyed approximately 50% of the FM sets used in Los Angeles found that KBIQ, KCBH, KFAC, KNOB, and KRHM are the leading stations. None of these are background.‖ 143 Thus, in an effort to forgo ―pleasing everybody,‖ Stein effectively cemented KNOB‘s underground, enthusiast status as one which took aim at fashioning a distinct jazz subculture. Stein further believed that playing good jazz also meant appealing to audience intelligence. For instance, in refusing to air all-singing or heavily produced advertising spots, KNOB refrained from condescending to its listeners. ―When we play good music,‖ he said, ―we are crediting our audience…there will be no off key singers and booming drums to drive our listeners away.‖ 144 ―We could make more money if we accepted ‗screaming‘ or singing commercials, but we have avoided this in hopes of keeping FM a respectable medium.‖ 145 KNOB‘s own advertisements boasted of its connoisseurship. One ad promoting Stein‘s ―Rare and Tasty‖ show appeared in the Los Angeles Examiner with the heading, ―KNOB Plays Hard to Get Jazz for Connoisseurs‖ and featured a cartoon rendering of two security guards standing in front of an armored truck clad in uniform and shotguns ready to defend a giant stack of KNOB records. The caption read: ―Featuring rare and tasty modern jazz that is: impossible to buy, discontinued LPs, foreign labels, things you‘d die to have in your collection!‖ 146 ―Jazz connoisseurship‖ also meant elevating the music above other popular culture forms, particularly rock and roll, which Stein and company saw as ―bad‖ music. What‘s more, it was up to KNOB and other jazz enthusiasts to maintain a cultural front against the profusion of any bad 221 music: ―If it weren‘t rock and roll,‖ he said, ―it would be something else equally bad.‖ 147 Stein believed rock and roll could be neutralized by promoting ―good‖ jazz. In early 1958, he represented his jazz nationalism with a new ―battle cry,‖ ―Help Stamp Out Rock and Roll,‖ a phrase he attached to KNOB bumper stickers and parlayed into a promotional campaign. 148 Also in that year he complained of the Newport Jazz Festival which featured several rock and roll performances, noting its jazz enthusiast audience booed and walked out during the songs. ―It was simply out of place at a jazz festival,‖ he said. Weisenberg likewise noted the music produced behavior uncharacteristic to such an audience; sitting quietly and attentive to the music was a mark of the serious listener, even when that music offended one‘s sensibilities. 149 Don Fisher was one KNOB deejay with less tolerance for rock and roll. In his quest to educate the public on jazz through his organization, the American Jazz Society, Inc., Fisher told the Los Angeles Examiner, ―Everyone complains about juvenile delinquency. This is a constructive program to combat that problem. Our club gives teenagers something worthwhile to belong to. Rock ‗n‘ roll is trash. We hope to improve teenagers‘ musical appreciation.‖ 150 Thus, in committing his jazz enthusiasm to the print medium, Stein was able to appeal to readers‘ sense of nationalism. In some cases, he was blunt and to the point in regards to his belief of jazz as distinctly American, as he had in the Citizen-News: ―Jazz is strictly American. The furriners [sic] borrow it from us. It is our only native art form…‖ 151 Stein was more often pointed, however. Commenting on the high cost associated with good live jazz (ticket and liquor prices, etc.), Stein told the Los Angeles Times, ―Jazz clubs could go a long way toward perpetuating America‘s only native art,‖ adding that that club owners should abstain from ―forcefeeding the patron the instant his glass is empty.‖ 152 222 This is another example of Stein‘s ―art over commerce‖ predilection, this time critiquing the commodification of culture (that jazz is often sold as one would Brillo pads or other commodity) while framing the serious jazz listener as one who is intent on cultivating the relationship between himself the art form, not in a booze-drenched night of simple entertainment or distraction. Stein was even known for turning down sponsors who were disposed to pay for non-jazz programming on the station. According to Weisenberg, ―Refusing is no easy task for Stein whose idealism is mixed with big portions of realism. He is obviously aware that KNOB is unique only as long as the jazz policy is maintained and that policy is paying off with a rapidly growing audience.‖ 153 Be that as it may, Stein was less preoccupied with financial success than with financial feasibility and sustenance. The music took precedent: ―I may not be getting rich, but I‘m having a ball, anyway.‖ 154 Stein also stuck to his principles when it came to fair business practices with local distributors and labels. Within the first few weeks of KNOB‘s jazz reformatting, the station instituted a controversial policy regarding its stance toward one record distributor, California Record Distributors. The policy effectively banned all record labels distributed by the company from airplay; labels like Pacific Jazz, Contemporary, Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside, and Fantasy. The owner, Jack Lewarke, complained to Down Beat that the ban was the result of KNOB‘s ―pay for play‖ attitude. ―Ridiculous,‖ Stein retorted, ―A completely erroneous statement. It‘s simply a question of co-operation. Naturally, a distributor who buys airtime on KNOB is entitled to more record plays. But not only did Lewarke refuse to buy time at our present low rates, he 223 saw fit repeatedly to express the opinion to others in the trade that the station with its temporary low output is of little or no value to a distributor.‖ 155 To Stein, accepting Lewarke‘s business would result in a loss of integrity. ―I play ball with those who play ball with me,‖ he said. ―Lewarke refused to go along with the station, so the staff felt the station shouldn‘t go along with him.‖ 156 The ban was not long to be, the rift between Stein and Lewarke was eventually smoothed over, and California Record Distributors were among the many local and national record distributors to supply the station. Indeed, ―art over commerce‖ was an ideology subscribed to by KNOB‘s deejay workforce and applied to its daily operations as well. Stein was adamant that his deejays‘ primary interest be in jazz. A deejay without this enthusiasm would be an exercise in futility. ―Everyone who works at this station has to dig jazz,‖ he said. ―There is no sense in anyone suffering. Even the guy who cuts the lawn has to dig.‖ 157 After this prerequisite was met, however, there was little to no micromanagement on Stein‘s part in regards to programming. In fact, the clearest example of his ―art over commerce‖ ideology is in the free reign that deejays enjoyed in programming of their own shows. ―I never tell my men what to play,‖ he said. ―Can you imagine me telling Joe Adams or Verne Stevenson what to spin? I‘d be crazy!... I just hire the right man for the job and let him go… It works out fine, and the people enjoy the music.‖ 158 In the context of industry corruption at the time, such as the infamous Payola scandal, free reign carried critical cultural cache. If the purity and authenticity of KNOB‘s broadcasts were undermined by such conflict of interest, the maintenance of the relationship between jazz and its enthusiast audience would also be destabilized. Commenting on a recent case of payola involving a Northern California deejay who refused to play Duke Ellington‘s records without compensation, Ralph Gleason noted, ―Generally, jazz seems to inspire the sort of fanatical and 224 unselfish devotion to all good art does… That‘s why it‘s all the more disgusting when some disk jockey who is parading as a patron and supporter of jazz turns out to be just another mooch with 159 his hand out.‖ Johnny Otis‘s commentary on free reign in programming echoes Gleason as well as Stein‘s nationalist-enthusiast rhetoric of ―freedom of choice‖ as an important signifier of serious jazz listeners: ―In a day and age when one man tells all DJs on a station what to play and when, [KNOBs] freedom of programming choice is a blessing to the listener who hearing the disc jockey‘s personality come through.‖ 160 At times, however, the pressures of the music industry bore on the station such that the rule of free reign in programming was rethought, often backfiring. One occasion described by former deejay and program director, Bob Shayne, illustrates these kinds of instances. Shayne had instituted a rule that every deejay play at least one track from Sam‘s Record Store‘s list of the top ten jazz albums of the week. ―Well, when I was program director I decided to assert my authority, which I thought I had,‖ he said. Stein had initially supported Shayne in the decision though it was more often met with a mix of disinterest and anger: ―Ed Young, who was on during the day, refused to do it. I actually got into an argument with him about it. And Sleepy, who had backed it up, didn‘t do it either on his show.‖ According to Shayne, this ―suggests [Stein] was more into the music than into the sales.‖ 161 To keep business afloat, however, the station required a modicum of income which it gained through a variety of avenues. According to Maurice Haws of the local periodical Angel City, though the station had its advertisers, programming was supported largely by other means: ―Most of the airtime is purchased on a co-operative basis by the manufacturers and distributors. In addition, [Stein] has a long-term contract with [Sam‘s Record Store] to play records on his shows from the stock in the retailer‘s store. The store owner in turn 225 contracts distributors of jazz LP‘s and also record manufacturers. With this unique set-up the major cost of operation is covered.‖ 162 While the operation costs of the station were minimal, so it turned out were the wages. Those few deejays that were adept at selling products over the radio set up their own accounts either with Stein or with advertisers. Chuck Niles was one of those few. According to Charles Weisenberg, ―Now there were a few people like Chuck Niles who had hours and hours or great disc jockeying and [was] a wonderful guy… I think part of the way he got paid—which was something I was not interested in doing—was he would go out and sell air time, then he would get a commission for the sale of the airtime. So he, in addition to being a deejay on the air, was selling time and getting commission that way.‖ 163 Howard Lucraft was another deejay who learned the art of the sell: ―I was very popular with the advertisers. I bought an Austin Healy sports car from the local Long Beach sports car dealer here and I was able to say ‗I drive a Healy myself, in fact coming to work today I was so and so…the Healy is just so perfect and so safe.‘ Well, I was better than that then. And I was able to talk about them, which they loved.‖ 164 Most deejays, however, were paid by the station on an hourly, part-time basis as most shows lasted for two or three hours long. Those that lasted an hour appeared more often on the weekends and were taped. Nevertheless, considering most were less than three hours long, it‘s no surprise those deejays were considered part-time. Shayne recollected he was paid $2 an hour while Weisenberg remembered the amount being around $5 an hour for his deejaying services. In either case, it was certainly not enough to cover one‘s living expenses even in those days. 226 165 On the other hand, having to sell one‘s own airtime would have been an inconvenience among the many part-time employees who had little experience in radio. Weisenberg, for instance, recalled, ―I mean, I only had one hour, first of all. And it was just distasteful to me to go out [and sell airtime]… and I don‘t know who would sponsor [my show]. There may have been record companies or book companies, but I just never did that in part because I had a daytime job.‖ 166 In fact, most KNOB deejays had ―day jobs‖ or sources of supplemental income. Weisenberg, for instance, was public relations director for the Los Angeles Public Library and later the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He was also a journalist, writing on jazz for everything from Frontier magazine, to the Culver City Star News, to Hi Fi/ Stereo Review. His radio show was more or less a simple translation of what he did in print form and thus his ―day job‖ was not altogether different from his work on Sunday evenings. ―Everything I did in jazz was after work,‖ he maintained. 167 ―I was writing for a few publications and newspapers but not enough to make a lot of [money].‖ ―The finances,‖ he went on, ―were not important to me, what was important was that I would be a little more involved in the jazz world.‖ 168 Likewise, Howard Lucraft was not only a deejay on the station but a steadily working jazz composer and concert promoter, as well as correspondent for Advertising Age and Metronome. Others were compensated in less synergistic ways, like Bob Shayne, who worked one, sometimes two, part time jobs while at the station such as producing television shows for charity and other jobs in the TV and radio industries. 169 At one point he was working for another radio station concurrently and being paid in FM car radios which he then sold to make ends meet. Said Shayne, ―I had to sell the radios in order to have food on the table. And I sold one to a guy who was brother of a girl I was dating and he always had difficulty tuning it in and he ended up crashing his car trying to tune in that radio. He never forgave me.‖ 227 170 These side projects or supplemental occupations we seen as part of the reality of working at a station like KNOB. As Lucraft explains, ―Not everything I did to make money was stuff I lived to do. I wrote arrangements sometimes for two or so up and coming rock singers. I don‘t even remember their names now, you know, whether they got anywhere. As a matter of fact, a lot of the writing I did was for library music for producers and directors who had to go and pick out the music they wanted for certain spots. In fact, a terrific amount I did. And the rock stuff I did sold better than anything. It went very well.‖ 171 Thus, jazz enthusiasm and connoisseurship carried only as far as it was financially feasible. For Lucraft, it was his other sources of income combined with his radio work which afforded his Austin Healy, not his work at KNOB alone. ―There‘s no money there,‖ he said of KNOB, ―I mean, none to speak of.‖ 172 When asked whether KNOB deejays worked at the station out of their devotion to the music as opposed to its financial security, Lucraft responded, ―That‘s right. Oh, yea. We all loved the station and loved the thing, you know.‖ However, as he put it plainly, ―We have to earn a living, you know… a lot of it is to earn a living, let‘s face it.‖ 173 There was really only one way in which KNOB deejays benefitted economically from their work: due bills. As Shayne explains, ―A lot of sponsors weren‘t willing to give money to FM stations but they were willing to give credit.‖ 174 In exchange for airtime, businesses who advertised on KNOB would compensate the station with goods or services practically free of charge. At times, Stein would pass along the rewards to his deejay staff, keeping the many of them afloat. ―When I started my show, of course I wanted to get paid,‖ Weisenberg remembered, ―but Sleepy didn‘t have any money.‖ In addition to his meager $5 a show, however, Weisenberg 228 collected due bills from an array of KNOB advertisers. He described exactly how this credit worked: ―Now one of the ways I could use those credits was, they did a lot of advertising for the jazz clubs in Los Angeles on KNOB. Now the two big clubs were the Crescendo and the Interlude which were on Sunset Blvd, run by Gene Norman. The Crescendo was the big club downstairs and the Interlude was a more intimate club upstairs. Now the deal we ended up with was I could go to those clubs and charge food and booze, sign the bill and pay nothing. Now at the Crescendo you had Dave Brubeck, the Modern Jazz Quartet, you had Ella Fitzgerald, you had Mort Sahl. The Interlude had many of the same people on a more intimate setting. But the problem was I could not sign for the tip. I had to pay the tip in cash. Well if I went to the Interlude… the only thing I would eat in a place like that would be a steak. Food was not something that jazz clubs were very good at. So let‘s say I took my wife there and we had two steak dinners and drinks. We would run up a big bill and I would have to pay the tip. The tip I would have to pay cash. That was not easy. So I would go to a friend of mine and say ‗Old dear friend, how would you like to be my guest to go hear Elle Fitzgerald at the Crescendo. You and your wife or date come with me and Rene, eat anything you what on the menu, drink whatever you want in the house; it‘s all on me. You just have to pay the tip.‘ And I did that for years!‖ Many of these clubs were not particularly local, however. According to Weisenberg, ―We also had a due bill with Bonanza Airlines. So I was able to fly, say, to Las Vegas… We had a due bill with the airline; it was a free flight. We had a due bill at the Firebird Hotel. In those years, the late 50s, early 60s, there were fewer hotels. Firebird was a major location on the strip. And again, I could sign for the room, the food, the booze. The 229 only thing it‘d cost if I went to Las Vegas on vacation was the taxi from the airport to the hotel and the tips. And I couldn‘t find anybody to share the tips with me. So those I had to pay cash. And so KNOB allowed me to go hear a lot of good music live.‖ 175 Shayne tells a similar story of his devotion to jazz satisfied by due bills: ―Two hotels in Las Vegas had this kind of trade-out arrangement with the station. I don‘t remember which hotels now. And we had a piece of paper that was called a ‗due bill,‘ which basically says that the hotel owes us this much credit. So one weekend Sleepy… maybe during the week… Sleepy gave me due bills from both hotels so I could go spend a couple of days in Las Vegas. And I drove down there and I had almost no money.‖ 176 His motive was to see a young, virtually unknown Barbara Streisand, set to open for Liberace. ―I was in love with Barbara Streisand…,‖ said Shayne, ―And I wanted to see her and I went down and I saw her show and when she finished I got up and walked out of the main showroom because I really didn‘t want to be there to watch Liberace…And I went into the bar and there was this guy sitting at the bar who I recognized as her then husband Elliot Gould and, having a mad crush of Barbara Streisand, I was very jealous to see Elliot Gould… And so I stayed and bought a drink and I was noticing I was getting really low on money. So I went up to a couple at another table and I told them I had this due bill, I don‘t have to pay money for these drinks so I‘ll make a deal with you; I‘ll buy your drinks if you‘ll leave the tips, because the tips weren‘t covered by the due bill. And they said, ‗OK, sure.‘ And to this day I think they‘re going around telling this story about this drunken kid in Las Vegas who got the bill so we let him buy us our drink. You know, they must have thought I had to pay it when I checked out of the hotel.‖ 177 230 Even Stein himself engaged in this practice of credit, trading for cars, clothes, and even the station‘s transmitter; ―He lived on those due bills,‖ said Weisenberg. 178 Building and maintaining a business on the barter system was precarious. But this was the nature of FM radio in the early years, as Shayne points out: ―You know, FM was small at the time. AM was the dominant radio and FM was sneaking up the charts…But compared to AM it was a tiny thing.‖ 179 Moreover, if opening a station committed to jazz only programming was risky, it was even more so to open an FM all-jazz station: ―Well, it was a gamble I think especially because of the choice of playing jazz. The successful FM stations at the time played elevator music of various stripes… I think that FM was like digging for gold. You could come out very rich if you hung in there. But to choose jazz was like digging for gold in the wrong part of the world. There‘s not a great chance of ever getting rich doing that.‖ 180 To be a KNOB deejay required one to be a ―fly-by-night‖ type. According to Shayne, the lack of gainful employment along with the requisite fanaticism elevated the community of KNOB employees to the level of a cult: ―It seems to me in retrospect that it was all kind of a cult thing. It was never a chance to be really financially successful there unless you were a great salesman. If somebody had a contract with Sleepy to sell their own time and get 50% of the profits and was a great salesman, and great at getting the money actually delivered, he‘d probably also have to be great at breaking legs to get the money to do pretty well.‖ 181 In the end, being successful in FM jazz broadcasting was like trying to squeeze blood from a stone: 231 ―The irony of it is… it occurred to me years later that we were trying to make a living… we, the station and the employees, were trying to make a living by getting money out of the owners of jazz clubs. And today those same jazz clubs, the ones that exist, get promoted for free on public stations like KLON—that‘s now KKJZ—because they don‘t have any money either. So it was crazy to try to make a living from those people there. You know, every jazz club was a fringe business and the people who owned those clubs were probably there for the same kind of cultish reasons that we were there. They loved jazz, they loved the atmosphere, not because it was a way to make a lot of money.‖ 182 More often than not, those deejays that left to pursue better opportunities in the small niche market came up short. Said Shayne, ―I think we found out the hard way and I think for most people it wasn‘t a stepping stone. I don‘t know anyone who went on from there to mainstream popularity.‖ 183 Mainstream popularity was achieved by the many West Coast jazz artists that KNOB promoted, however. As previously noted, Stein along with other station deejays formed an intimate relationship with the local jazz community. This went far above simple promotional tactics of spinning their records at the appropriate times, interviewing them on the air, or having them guest deejay on special occasions. KNOB and its deejays acted as ambassadors to or missionaries of the West Coast jazz style and West Coast jazzmen in particular. KNOB‘s interest in promoting jazz across the country was a major concern. Commenting on local support for all-jazz programming, Stein said, ―I feel that the beginnings we‘ve made in Southern California are going to provide a working example that will be copied by other parts of the country, places where jazz is a vital, daily necessity.‖ 184 Perhaps the clearest example is in Stein and company‘s criticism of the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958. In the course of attending 232 the festival with his wife Olivia in order to record selections of its performances for broadcast over KNOB, Stein commented to TV-Radio Life, ―It was great, on the whole. We enjoyed it very much… but we were disappointed that so few West Coast artists took part.‖ 185 The only West Coast groups to make an appearance at the festival in that year were the Chico Hamilton Quartet and the Jimmy Giuffre Trio; both of which made the journey easily having already been on tour on the East Coast at the time. George Wein, who headed the festival committee, responded to Stein saying that economic constraints were to blame; that while he didn‘t object to paying West Coast artists in principle, the transportation costs associated with moving a five-man group from the West Coast out East would cost around $2000. Stein was fully aware of the magnitude that publicity from the Newport Jazz Festival provided attending artists. At the 1958 festival it was reported that 65,000 concertgoers attended, along with 518 press representatives from all manner of news service outlets including 21 foreign newspaper writers. There even jazz editors to Field & Stream and Bride & Home 186 magazines. Moreover, proceedings from the festival were broadcast by Willis Conover, the ―Voice of America,‖ over dozens of affiliate radio stations nationwide and beyond. The appearance of West Coast jazz artists at a festival of this scale could increase attention to the music exponentially. After all, according to George Laine, ―the idea‖ of KNOB ―is to gain more 187 exposure for jazz.‖ In reaction to this predicament, Stein vowed that West Coast artists would be well represented at the 1959 festival. Before the festival, TV-Radio Life reported, ―Sleepy will conduct a contest over KNOB. Listeners will vote for their favorite group. The winner‘s transportation will be paid for by KNOB.‖ 188 Thus, along with his involvement in the Monterey Jazz Festival and Los Angeles Jazz Festival in the years following, Stein was instrumental in providing the venues for the promotion of the West Coast jazz style. 233 Similarly, Don Fisher also used his position as KNOB deejay to support and propagate jazz. By 1960, his American Jazz Society operated on 68 college campuses in 36 states as well as Canada. In that year, Fisher brought an all-star high school jazz orchestra to the Monterey Jazz Festival. To fund the journey, he held a series of concerts at Whittier High School with proceeds going toward scholarships for the most promising musicians. 189 Charles Weisenberg was no less enthusiastic about West Coast jazz and in the propagation of jazz in general. Referring to the latter, his ―The Critic‘s Ear‖ and ―Jazz Commentary‖ shows often began with a similar tagline: ―A program dedicated to the belief that independent jazz analysis is essential for the continuing growth of this music.‖ Weisenberg often devoted entire episodes to the work of West Coast jazz like Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Chico Hamilton, Shelly Manne, Shorty Rogers and Stan Kenton. Even when he dedicated episodes to the importance of a single instrument in jazz, West Coast jazzmen stood out. For instance, in his critique of the piano in jazz, the music and ideas of Dave Brubeck dominate. 190 While Weisenberg‘s view of West Coast jazz was resoundingly affirmative, his show was not simply a record revue but a critical analysis of jazz. Weisenberg strived to hold his criticism of the music to the highest level of intellectual scrutiny. Unlike many East Coast jazz critics, however, his criticism did not necessarily preclude him from speaking positively of the music. Criticism, to Weisenberg, was not an inherently negative act, but a positive gesture of respect; to hold a piece of art to below this standard would be not to take it seriously. Thus, Weisenberg‘s respectful yet enthusiastic criticism of West Coast jazz stands as a rarity in this era of jazz writing. Howard Lucraft went another step further in his association with the Los Angeles Jazz Festival. For the 1960 festival, he wrote, arranged, and conducted his own group, the Howard 234 Lucraft Hollywood All-Stars (billed as the Hollywood Jazz Greats) featuring Art Pepper, Teddy Edwards, Frank Rosolino, Bill Perkins, Pete Jolly, Red Mitchell, and Stan Levy. Especially for the event, Lucraft wrote a 12-bar blues called ―Los Angeles Jazz Suite‖ which purposefully suited the improvisational strengths of its local talent. According to Lucraft, ―What happened was somebody ran a jazz festival at the Hollywood Bowl. I don‘t know who he was. Sleepy found him somewhere or he found Sleepy and they put him in touch with me and he said, ‗Well… we‘ve got the bands…‘ I think they had Stan Kenton‘s band and all the big [names]… and they said, ‗There‘s so many great single soloists in Los Angeles and Hollywood, we‘d like to have something to feature them…‘ So they said, ‗could you write something?‘… So I wrote it just to give them a basic feature.‖ 191 The main theme, called ―Civic Centre,‖ is separated by six short vignettes linked together by counterpoint allowing each artist (except for Levy) to be featured individually. 192 Featuring local jazzmen in his original composition was a labor of love for Lucraft: ―West Coast jazz was terribly fundamental to good jazz. I mean really I don‘t think it‘s really got as much credit as it should. All those people at the Lighthouse, the Rosolinos, the Bud Shanks, you know Shelly Manne, all those. But they‘re great additions to jazz, 193 wonderful additions to jazz.‖ Contrary to popular opinion, he believed, West Coast jazz ―wasn‘t a copy‖ of East Coast varieties, but was influenced by it. ―It was wonderful jazz music,‖ he said. ―It‘s sort of looked upon sometimes ‗oh West Coast jazz, whatever.‘ I think it was wonderful. I think it was a great addition to the development of jazz.‖ 194 This enthusiasm and endorsement did not go unnoticed by KNOB‘s audience, who looked favorably on this missionary work, often hailing Stein in particular as a West Coast jazz 235 ambassador. One fan from National City, CA (near San Diego) to whom KNOB‘s signal reached illustrates the pride that West Coast audiences had in their particular strain of jazz and in Stein as their spokesman. Writing to the San Diego Union, I.L. Jacobs wrote, ―Sleepy Stein is the very model of a jazz disc jockey—urbane, knowledgeable, witty yet laconic. Contrary to a certain local individual who spins records and apparently believes that jazz was born at Minton‘s, Mr. Stein appreciates all good jazz from many sources and eras. He digs roots—and I‘m not referring to his gardening ability…‖ 195 Adding that, contrary to other FM stations which are ―a mish-mash of Muzak and Mantovani,‖ KNOB ―continues to program true jazz with no delusions or concessions…‖ 196 Another way in which KNOB formed a relationship to jazz was in its recognition of the music as a powerful cultural impulse found around the world. Stein and company did not confine its jazz advocacy to within the boundaries of the United States. Rather, gaining more exposure for jazz meant raising its awareness on an international level. Given the larger context of America‘s international ―soft power‖ political policies, specifically the State Department sending American jazz luminaries to foreign countries for the purposes of securing diplomatic relations and often resulting in the deployment of imperialistic notions of culture, KNOB‘s embrace of international jazz in this country, along with its view of jazz as an international phenomenon, stands as a unique incongruity to the jazz mainstream. Again, the shows of Stein, Lucraft and Weisenberg provide clear examples. For many years prior to starting KNOB, Stein was connoisseur of foreign jazz and a collector of foreign jazz records. Around the mid-1950s, Stein placed an ad in the Los Angeles Examiner offering to trade jazz records with enthusiasts around the world. One of those respondents was Rod Ingall, the advertising manager of the Bay of Plenty Times in Tauranga, New Zealand. According to the 236 Examiner a few years later, ―Sleepy sent him the first 45 RPM record player and records to arrive in New Zealand, also the first LP disc.‖ 197 In October of 1961, he debuted a new show called ―Jazz—Rare But Well Done.‖ The program was similar to his ―Rare and Tasty‖ show but with an international flavor featuring ―classics of the art, both foreign and domestic.‖ According to the Los Angeles Herald and Express, ―[Stein] will play tapes made during foreign jazz festivals and recording sessions that are not too easy to obtain… And there will be works on labels that have been long unavailable. Cannonball Adderly‘s first album will be played. There‘ll be Oscar Peterson‘s discovery from Japan, pianist Toshiko [Akiyoshi]. And Alice Babs with her ‗Alice in Wunderban‘ will be heard.‖ 198 Weisenberg‘s shows were also keen to jazz developments outside the United States. In particular, he focused at least two episodes to jazz in Sweden, of whose musicians he was particularly fond. At the end of one of these shows he summarized, ―It is a good thing for us to realize that jazz has excellent spokesmen throughout the world and that this talk of jazz being an international language really means something.‖ 199 Years later Weisenberg commented on his focus on international jazz: ―My view of jazz was and is that it is an art form and art forms have no nationality. Art does not necessarily have to have nationality… So I guess in a sense I was always interested in giving jazz an aura of respectability and importance because I think it is an important art. Europe plays an extremely important role in jazz.‖ 200 Sweden and Denmark made particular sense for the jazz internationalist. According to Weisenberg, ―Both of those countries were countries that welcomed jazz musicians early. One of Louis Armstrong‘s oldest film clips was from a concert in Copenhagen and a number of 237 musicians in the 50s went and lived in Sweden. People like Quincy Jones led orchestras in Sweden.‖ 201 Sweden was perhaps the most historically important country in Europe in terms of jazz: ―Sweden, probably more than any other European country developed modern jazz musicians of quality… There were some good jazz musicians in Denmark, France, later in Germany. But I think Sweden really was a leader and it started early on. Sweden had Dixieland bands. They weren‘t great Dixieland bands but they were good and they were fun to listen to. ‖ 202 Weisenberg noted that Europe‘s heightened racial tolerance in relation to the United States played a role in his formation of the former‘s important contribution to jazz: ―When Louis Armstrong was treated badly in this country he was welcomed in Copenhagen as a major artist in the 1930s for God‘s sake! In the 1930s, he couldn‘t go into a white hotel! So the European in jazz is long and is frequently very positive.‖ 203 Thus, he concluded, ―It just seemed natural for me to want to play that music and talk about it because I was trying to move jazz into an international art form of respectability and creativity… It was just to me part of the expansion of jazz throughout the world. ‖ 204 Lucraft was also no stranger to jazz in this part of the world. Born in Finchley, a northern suburb of London, England in 1916, Lucraft‘s affair with international jazz began before he settled in America in 1950. During World War II he served in the Royal Air Force, playing in the RAF Central Band, later recording and leading musicians for the British Forces Network. 205 Prior to coming to KNOB, he was a deejay for Radio Luxembourg and the host of the ―Hollywood Star‖ program on South African Radio. By the late 1950s, he was syndicated on 170 radio stations across the United States. In addition, since 1953, Lucraft has been a member of the 238 Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) and has written on (as well as photographed) jazz for a variety of international news outlets, particularly in the England, including the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the Daily Herald (London), Disc, Jazz Journal, Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Odhams Press (London) and Sun (London Daily). It was perhaps his status as a British émigré which concentrated his focus on jazz around the world. In 1954 he formed an organization which would define his role in the music thereafter. As Lucraft recalls, ―Stan Kenton and I talked a lot. When he was here we used to go and have a drink. And we talked a lot about jazz in the world and how important it was because, you know, he was so thrilled to go to Europe when [he] went the first time… we thought there should be some organization to knit everything together over the world, and it seemed to make sense. So he said, ‗we‘ve got to think of a name, Howard.‘ And all of a sudden I came up with the idea of Jazz International. So he said, ‗oh that‘s terrific.‖‘ And that was it.‖ 206 The organization became an enterprise for Lucraft, hosting his own ―Jazz International‖ program on KNOB and producing a program hosted by Stan Kenton for the Armed Forces Radio Service which reportedly garnered 100 million listeners. 207 Speaking on his KNOB show, Lucraft reported receiving records from around the world: ―I used to get a lot of jazz even from Czechoslovakia… to play on my Jazz International show, to play on the radio, you know.‖ 208 Eventually, the ―Jazz International‖ show spawned a televised version on KTTV in Hollywood. 209 As Lucraft explains, ―What happened [was]… what was then Jazz City on Hollywood Blvd., owned by Maynard Slowter, a drummer, a very good drummer… he booked the people from New York like Billy Holiday, Jimmy Smith. And he made a thing in their contract that they 239 had to give an hour‘s program on local TV which I was in charge of and of course I called it the Jazz International Show. And we had in the studio… a pseudo night club scene with tables and chairs, you know, and I was a sort of MC and every Saturday… we had somebody different come in from New York… But we had different people, stars from back East and local stars too of course.‖ 210 Unlike Weisenberg‘s international concerns, Lucraft‘s television show featured only interviews and music. Occasionally, Lucraft would spot a celebrity from the audience and include them in the show: ―There was a 5 minute interview of somebody who might be sitting in the audience… Quincy Jones I interviewed in the audience on one program. He was sitting there as a customer, as it were.‖ 211 Reminiscent of Weisenberg‘s show, however, Lucraft had a special interest in jazz in Sweden, having devoted an entire radio broadcast of Jazz International to ―Swedish 212 modernists.‖ said. ―It just happens that the Swedes took up jazz and did so much with it,‖ he 213 Connecting KNOB‘s audience to international jazz went even beyond its programming. Sometime in the late 1950s/ early 1960s, the station announced on the air an opportunity for its listeners to participate in an ―International Jazz Junket‖ in Europe lead by deejay Rex Stewart. One article of correspondence mailed to those listeners interested in attending the junket reminded them that, should they attend, ―a variety of pleasant and intriguing surprises await you.‖ 214 For a deposit of $100, reservations would be secured for such surprises as: ―Visits to ‗Hot Clubs‘ all over Europe………. River boat concerts on three of the world‘s most renowned waterways… the Thames in London, the Seine in Paris, and the Rhine in Germany…………. Get-togethers with American jazz artists now residing in Europe.................... 240 PLUS!!! A Deluxe motorcoach tour of Europe which includes ALL rooms with bath in first-class hotels, ALL meals, transfers, sightseeing—in fact, EVERYTHING—to allow you to obtain the maximum pleasure from your ‗jazz junket.‘ And last—but not least— the opportunity to enrich your life with the music you love entertaining you throughout your junket and a chance to meet some of the most interesting and informative people you have ever come across.‖ 215 The economic pillar of Stein‘s jazz ideology concerned his interest in commercial advertising and in making FM a relevant radio format for jazz. If his belief that jazz should be promoted and broadcast around the world was to succeed, it required not just a media outlet that could accommodate his aesthetic vision but one which could attract lucrative commercial interests as well as an enthusiastic audience. Recognizing early on the potential that FM had in satisfying each qualification, Stein invested more than just time and money into his own station. His tireless promotion of the FM radio format drove at the heart of this principle of his jazz ideology. In 1960, while expounding on the importance of KNOB, Johnny Otis cited this important link between jazz and FM radio. In his column, ―Let‘s Talk,‖ for the Los Angeles Sentinel, Otis implored his readers, ―If you love jazz and can‘t get enough of the real McCoy on your radio dial, here‘s a little tip… Get an FM radio. Or get a radio that has both FM and AM.‖ For those who were not attuned to the benefits of FM, Otis offered to shed ―a little light on the subject‖ by retracing FM radio‘s inception: ―It all started in 1930 when a Major Armstrong was trying to eliminate static. After much hard word [sic], he came to the conclusion that it was impossible eliminate static in AM radio broadcasting. FM was invented by Armstrong accidently, in the course 241 of experimenting. By chance he came up with a circuit that eliminated static and created a whole new concept of broadcasting. Basically what he did was to change the frequency of the signal instead of the amplitude (height). By 1940 there were around 600 FM stations on the air. Something was missing though, nobody had radios with Fm receivers. This was about to be solved however, as radio manufacturers were all set to mass produce FM radios. Then came the real monkey wrench… Pearl Harbor! With the outbreak of war, the government put the manufacturers producing for the military and FM radio was back on the waiting list. The men who owned the active FM stations decided they‘d wait ‗till after the war, then really go to work. They had bad days coming though because after the war, instead of the manufacturers mass producing FM radios, they went hog wild turning out a new invention… Television! This drove FM to its knees and by 1950 there were less than 250 stations left on the air, and most were owned and operated (simulcast) by AM stations. The broadcasting industry said a few words over the memory of FM, and, at the time, that seemed to be it. As sick as it was though, radio‘s stepchild wasn‘t dead yet. During the ‗50s, HI-Fi LP‘s became the rage. People became very Hi-Fi conscious. The way to listen to the exciting sounds of the new, long playing albums was on High Fidelity consoles. FM tuners for Hi-Fi sets came into demand. There wasn‘t much left on FH [sic] radio other than classics, but when the Hi-Fi enthusiasts got a dose of FM clarity and faithful music reproduction, Major Armstrong‘s baby had arrived! The more people listened to Hi-fi records, the more they listened to FM radio and the more FM stations came into existence. Today in metropolitan L.A., over 50% of radio listeners have FM sets (whether they know it or not).‖ 242 216 While Otis greatly exaggerates the number of licensed FM stations by 1940—the number by 1950 was around 250—his claim that jazz‘s relationship to FM radio was vital to its status as an art music is on point. According to Otis, the jazz enthusiast demands clarity of sound quality in accordance with his close analysis of the music; an activity made more difficult on the AM band. Fidelity, then, should be a chief concern: ―FM (which means frequency modulation) is the Hi-Fi of radio. In today‘s recorded music, and especially jazz, the frequencies go up as high as 14,000 cycles. FM reproduces them all accurately. When you get up to 7 or 8,000 cycles on AM, you begin to interfere with the adjoining stations, so Hi-Fi is not for AM. In a way of speaking, you only get half of the record on AM, but ALL the sound on FM. There are two basic kinds of interference that plague radio reception. One is caused by electric appliances, neon signs, electric razors, etc. The other is caused by other radio stations cutting in. Eighty percent of the man-made interference (appliances, neon signs) is AM type… you can‘t hear it on FM. On FM, the problem of interference from other stations is eliminated because you can only hear one station at a time EVER.‖ 217 Deejays were not alone in their advocacy for fidelity in the recording and broadcasting of jazz. West Coast jazz artists also shared their interest in the FM format, particularly in the areas of Hi-Fi recording. Drummer Shelly Manne was perhaps the most active and the most vocal of musician endorsers. ―The only radio listening I enjoy is FM. In fact, nearly everyone I know has an FM tuner,‖ he wrote to a local Los Angeles newspaper. 218 The most obvious advantage, to Manne, was that FM broadcast in Hi-Fi. But he observed other qualities as well: ―First, [deejays] can play the whole track. The FM disc jockey is not limited to two or three minutes for each record. If it takes 20 minutes or a half-hour, that‘s what he plays, and without interruption.‖ 243 219 Moreover, on FM stations there is more time allotted for extended improvisation. ―On FM there is no limitation on a musician‘s expression of himself, and that is the main reason listeners tune to FM—to hear good music as it should be presented.‖ 220 Also eliminated from the FM band was the ―double spot,‖ or, doing two commercials (i.e., spots) consecutively without any program content in between. ―That means more balance and less tiresome talk between records,‖ said Manne. 221 Lastly, FM had the advantage of AM in the area of specialization: ―Now, in the Los Angeles area, some stations program nothing but classical music. And, praise be, we have here the world‘s only all-jazz station. This means you can always hear what you wish on FM. You needn‘t wait for a specific program; if you want classics, or jazz, they await your pleasure. Specialization is highly important in radio, for the time is always now; nobody wants to wait for his kind of music. And—if it‘s a specific tune you want to hear—you always have the phonograph. But you don‘t have to change records on FM. And, once you turn in to what you‘re in the mood for, FM entirely eliminates dialhopping.‖ 222 Manne sums up in saying, ―I enjoy FM enormously; it has taken all the restriction off the jazz player and given the biggest boost in a generation to America‘s only native art.‖ 223 Manne also let his playing do the talking when came to promoting Hi-Fi. From February th nd 18 -22 , 1959, the Biltmore Theater—with sponsorship from the Kierulff Sound Corporation, Heathkit, Acoustic Research, Contemporary Records, and KNOB—hosted an event labeled as the ―greatest ‗sound spectacular‘ of the year.‖ 224 For a mere $1, attendees could visit a range of 244 Hi-Fi attractions. At the Heathkit exhibit visitors could survey the latest in the company‘s Hi-Fi and stereo gear including ham radio, marine, and testing equipment as well as receive help from Heathkit engineers for customer support and other radio kit-related projects. Also at the Heathkit exhibit was a KNOB station which featured a mock sound station complete with all the necessary equipment for airing records. Stein, of course, was there greeting patrons and obliging the press. 225 Also at the exhibit patrons could meet an array of West Coast jazz artists in person including Stan Kenton, Howard Lucraft, Terry Gibbs, Shorty Rogers, Leroy Vinegar, and Red Mitchell. The main attraction, however, was a demonstration (or more correctly, a ―battle‖) of live versus recorded sound featuring both Shelly Manne and the Roth String Quartet, respectively. An advertisement for the event printed in a local Los Angeles newspaper publicized this face-off, writing, ―Hear the most fabulous ‗battle of sound‘ ever staged before a theater audience! Hear the dramatic ‗live vs. recorded‘ performance using the professional skill of Contemporary Record Company engineers and the finest in stereo recording equipment. Enjoy and compare ‗live‘ and recorded music played back on the latest Heathkit home preamplifiers & amplifiers, and by Acoustic Research AR-3 acoustic suspension speakers. The live musical performance will be alternated with the stereo taped sound without (it is hoped!) missing a beat. It is expected the audience will not be able to tell the difference in the sound except by watching the musicians.‖ 226 Reporting on the event for the Wilshire Press, Monty Muns took stock of the sheer size of the event, writing ―It would not be surprising to learn that a good part of the city‘s population visited the five-day show, a show which was both colorful and interesting from an aesthetic as well as 245 technical point of view.‖ 227 ―As we walked along the carpeted corridors, dodging other strollers,‖ he said, ―we could hear a cacophony of sound, which was the result of ten or twenty demonstrations going on at the same time. But, to the real stereo fan, these sounds were ‗routine‘ things.‖ 228 Shortly after the 5-day Stereo Concerama, Stein attended another industry exhibit, this time for Southern California Hi Fi Commission, of which he was a member. In typical fashion, Stein remotely broadcast from the event for KNOB. According to Melody Maker, ―Nearly all the West Coast jazz stars did radio interviews over KNOB at this show, during which Shelly Manne and his Men gave a demonstration of a stereo recording.‖ 229 Manne, however, did not merely show up at Hi Fi or FM radio events for appearance‘s sake. Indeed, his words indicate his enthusiasm for quality sound and good jazz. Likewise, Stein‘s involvement went beyond shaking hands and kissing babies at industry events. They had a deeper purpose; to promote FM radio and its advertising potential would result in more exposure for jazz and inevitably bring about a musical renaissance. As one writer for the Sunday Tribune has noted, ―Several times [Stein] has gone into hock up to his ears to promote two 230 media-FM and jazz.‖ Stein‘s attendance at a luncheon hosted by Harry Maizlish at the Beverly Hilton hotel in the Fall of 1957 is one example. There, the area‘s FM operators met and, according to Media Agencies Clients, ―unanimously decided on several types of combined effort designed to promote their medium.‖ 231 The most interesting of these was the appointment of a committee designed to promote sales of a device called the Regency FM TeleVerter, ―which makes any TV set an FM receiver at the flip of a switch.‖ Since television reception does not interfere with the FM signal, the quality of high fidelity sound would remain intact (television speaker quality 246 notwithstanding). Since the TeleVerter required minimal production costs, it retailed for only $19.95; ―the lowest figure yet for FM listening.‖ 232 Stein‘s involvement in another organization, the FM Broadcasters Association, stands as another example. In the spring of 1962, Stein was elected as co-director of the organization. 233 In this role, Stein assumed a variety of responsibilities in the promotion of FM radio, ranging from the banal to the inventive. Among the more commonplace activities were strengthening ties with other FM radio industry outlets, such as Stein‘s working relationship with The Prompter, a Los Angeles-based industry magazine which informed the public of FM broadcasting. In praise of the magazine, Stein has written, ―The greatest gap between FM broadcasting and FM listening has been communicating the programs and when they may be heard. Listeners cannot be informed, and the stations cannot inform them, without the type of publication [they] have 234 instituted.‖ A more innovative strategy to promote the FM format came in May of 1961, when the Association instituted a bumper sticker campaign similar to KNOB‘s ―Help Stamp Out Rock and Roll‖ campaign a few years prior (perhaps an indication of Stein‘s presence in the organization). The orange and black stickers read ―Vote Yes on FM.‖ This served a dual purpose; as a publicity campaign (for FM radio in general but also perhaps for KNOB) as well as a means by which to indicate to related FM radio agencies the number of FM listeners in the area. In conjunction with issuing bumper stickers, the association gave away $10,000 in prizes, such as FM car radios and other appliances, for those lucky enough to have their license plates noticed by the organization‘s staff. According to the Los Angeles Times, over 10,000 stickers had been requested by FM radio 235 listeners. While the majority of Los Angeles‘s journalists recognized early on Stein‘s service to FM, this campaign quieted some critics. Retorting to Times‘ columnist, Ron Tepper, Stein 247 proclaimed, ―Listen, you‘ve been saying that we aren‘t doing anything to publicize FM. Well, now we are!‖ 236 Some critics at the time believed the heavy promotion of FM would inevitably force AM radio into extinction. In August of 1957, George Laine reported that in the establishment of KNOB, the station joined ―a number of other FM stations now blanketing the Southland with high fidelity music of such consistently high quality that it has already cut (commercial) radio listeners deeply into the ranks of AM and is now showing increasing signs of making even further inroads on that audience.‖ 237 Stein also responded to these and other critiques that FM was in direct conflict with AM radio. ―It‘s all radio,‖ Stein commented to the Los Angeles Times. ―FM and AM are not competing, because both are radio. FM will never replace AM and it certainly won‘t replace television. But FM can carve out a notch for itself as an entertainment medium. And that‘s just what it‘s doing!‖ 238 Conversely, Stein believed the boom in jazz programming on AM radio in the Los Angeles area from the time of KNOB‘s establishment is evidence that, rather than creating competition for FM, AM radio had aroused listener interest in jazz. 239 Even so, Stein was convinced FM was the better medium for jazz. Aside from the benefits of sound quality, its immunity to interference, and its variety of programming, FM presented another advantage in the arena of commercial advertising which complemented its commitment to creating an enthusiast audience. Several surveys taken within the first few years of KNOB‘s founding indicate not only FM radio‘s advertising potential but FM audiences‘ response to that advertising. In November of 1957, Media Agencies Clients surveyed the state of FM radio as a commercial advertising 248 medium in the Los Angeles area. ―The key to FM‘s major strides during the past year,‖ it reported, ―has been its new-found ability to attract and sell important national and local advertisers. Some of the firms have either debuted on FM or made greater use of the medium during the past year are Admiral Corp., Time Inc., 7-Up Bottling Co., KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Bonanza Airlines, RCA Records, Pioneer Flintkote, Breast-O‘-Chicken, Holmes Tuttle, Nestle‘s Instant Coffee, Capitol Records, Mercury Records, Relax-A-cizor, House of Sight and Sound, Pierce Brothers, Cinzano Vermouth, Joseph Sachs Records, etc.‖ 240 The magazine also observed the programming and advertising traits of the 14 full-time commercially operating FM stations. They determined that these FM stations ―differ from AM operations on several fronts. However, the sharpest split between FM and AM is in the restrictions placed on commercials.‖ 241 In response to its queries to these stations, the magazine reported that ―eight of the 14 told MAC that they will not accept any singing commercials. And the 6 which indicated an affirmative attitude towards jingles all qualified this acceptance by stating that many singing spots would not be acceptable.‖ 242 Moreover, it was found that ―nine of the FM stations have placed a one-minute maximum on the length of commercials.‖ 243 But there were other restrictions as well, the magazine reported: ―no objectionable material, high class quality commercials only, soft sell single spoken voice, no real hard pitch or noise.‖ Also, ―all of the stations adhere to a strict policy of no double or triple spotting.‖ 244 Among those responding FM stations was KNOB, whose advertisers included record companies like RCA Records, Mercury Records and Capitol Records, as well as other nonmusical related companies like Burgermeister Beer, Gallo Wines, Western Airlines, Hamm‘s 249 Beer, and North American Van Lines. 245 In either case, commercials were ―limited to one minute,‖ provided they conform to its ―no singing, real hard sell or noisy announcements‖ policy. 246 One KNOB document shows Stein and company capitalized on the Media Agencies Clients survey as a means of representing the station‘s cultivated audience as a powerful commodity buying demographic. Titled ―Twist of the KNOB,‖ the document adds to the long list of new and more prevalent FM advertisers saying, ―This list grows larger each week as more and more smart businessmen discover that the soft, sensible, simply spoken sales message sells best to the discriminating buyer. They have also learned that good music, free of excessive commercialism is the safest, surest, radio sales vehicle that can be used to reach the discriminating listener…FM‘s discriminating listener.‖ 247 Also quoted in this document are studies conducted by General Electric through its agency, Maxson, Inc. and University of Southern California‘s Department of Telecommunications. Maxson Inc.‘s nationwide survey of FM found that, as opposed to AM audiences, FM audiences tended to be composed of adult listeners, with higher levels of education, hailing from higher income backgrounds, working in more elite occupations, and tended to be home owners; all findings substantiated by the USC study of Los Angeles FM audiences. 248 One of KNOB‘s only—yet no less important—audience surveys came on February 15, 1962. The survey, conducted in the form of mailed questionnaires, returned results which, for the most part, jibe with those of the earlier external surveys of the local FM radio audience. They read as follows: 250 Table 4.3 th KNOB Audience Survey, February 15 , 1962 Questionnaires Mailed Questionnaires Returned Replies Married Single Average Age Children Per Family College Grads Attending College Are College Educated Are Hi School Grad or More Annual Income (Excluding Students) Leading Occupations Favorite KNOB Programs Hours Listened Daily to KNOB Listen Only to KNOB Most Often Listening Times Total Hours Daily Listening Daily AM Hours Never Listen to Radio Listen to FM in Place of Business Patronize KNOB Sponsors Type of FM Radio Equipped for Stereo Equipped for Multiplex Average Spent Monthly Own Domestic Cars Imported Cars Own 2 or More Own Home Rent Live with Relatives Have Vacationed Outside of USA Have Immediate Plans 249 948 344 36.3% 48.2 47.7 30 1.7 32% 27.6% 86.3% 96.8% $9,098.00 Professionals: 20.1%, Business Execs: 43.5%, Skilled Craftsmen: 17.7%, Salesmen: 8%, Students: 11.7% Sleepy‘s Hollow: 33.1%, Dinner Jazz: 12.8%, Latin Jazz: 11.9%, Young in the PM: 11.6%, House Wife Jazz: 10% 3.7 19.5% 6-9AM: 9.2%, 9-5PM: 17.9%, 5-12Mid: 57%, After Midnight: 15.9 5.2 1.7 42.1% 25.7% 70.2% Table Model: 27%, FM-AM Console: 20%, Components: 45%, FM Portable: 7%, FM Auto Radio: 20% 50.5% 19.4% 75% buy $10.90 in records, 49.7% spend $21.04 in jazz night clubs, 70.1% spend $31.50 in restaurants, 55.3% spend $7.66 for movies 68.4% 51.6% 24% 36.7% 42.7% 12% 56.5% 15.5% 251 Table 4.3 (cont‘d) Vacation Travel Business Travel Smoke Cigarettes Smoke Cigars Smoke Pipe Drink Hard Liquor Drink Beer Drink Wine Imbibe Soft Drinks Air: 41%, Car: 81%, Boat: 10%, Train: 7%, Bus: 5% Air: 36.5%, Car: 61.6% 52% 25% 30% 71.5% 79.6% 54% 75.5% Included in the survey were the audiences‘ brand preferences of KNOB advertisers: Table 4.4 52% Smoke Cigarettes 71.5% Drink Hard Liquor 25% Smoke Cigars 79.6% Drink Beer 30% Smoke Pipe Tobacco 54% Are Wine Drinkers 75.5% Use Soft Drinks 45% Use Mix th KNOB Audience Brand Information, February 15 , 1962 250 Marlboro: 13.6%, Kent: 12.5%, Pall Mall: 12.5%, Camel: 9.3%, Salem: 7.1%, Lucky Strike: 6.0%, Winston: 6.0%, Viceroy: 4.4%, Parliament: 4.4% Curry Sark: 13.0%, Seagrams VO: 8.5%, Canadian Club: 6.5%, Jim Beam: 5.7%, Jack Daniels: 5.3%, Smirnoff Vodka: 5.3%, Beef Eater Gin: 4.9%, J&B Scotch: 4.1%, Haig & Haig: 3.7%, Gilbey Gin: 3.3%, Bellentine‘s: 2.8%, Old Grandad: 2.8%, I.W. Harper: 2.8% Dutch Masters: 20.6%, Hav-A-Tampa: 16.1%, Roi Tan: 9.2%, El Producto: 8.1%, Robert Burns: 7.5%, Crooks Bros.: 4.6%, Garcia Vega: 3.5% Coors: 17.6%, Budweiser: 15.0%, Olympia: 10.9%, Miller‘s: 10.1%, Hamm‘s: 8.3%, Schlitz: 7.9%, Lucky Lager: 5.6%, Country Club: 3.7% Mixture 79: 24.4%, Sir Walter Raleigh: 4.4%, Edgeworth: 3.5%, John Cotton: 3.5% Paul Masson: 15.3%, Gallo: 5.8%, Almaden: 5.3%, Christian Bros.: 4.7%, Manischewitz: 2.6% Coca Cola: 27.3%, 7-Up: 22.5%, Bubble-Up: 7.9, Dr. Pepper: 3.9%, Squirt: 2.8%, Vernors: 2.5%, RC Cola: 2.9%, Hires: 2.0% 7-Up: 19.3%, Canada Dry: 15.5%, Club Soda: 14.2%, Schwepps: 9.7%, Bubble-Up: 6.5%, 252 Table 4.4 (cont‘d) White Rock: 3.9%, Squirt: 3.9%, Canadian Club: 3.2% Ford: 22.3%, Chevrolet: 17.9%, Olds: 16.1%, Plymouth: 7.1%, Buick: 5.7% VW: 17.3%, MG: 15.0%, Porsche: 10.4%, Jaguar: 7.3%, Austin Healy: 6.4% 68% Own Domestic Cars 51.6% Own Imported Cars Realizing the significance of these findings, KNOB instituted strict policies regarding advertising. According to the ―Twist of the KNOB‖ document, ―Banished forever was the dissonant drone of the ‗top thirty‘ tunes. Also missing from KNOB is the announcer that fancies himself a home-spun humorist, a character often found on present day AM radio. Absent too are conventional radio‘s brash, hard sell commercials which are often crowded together, three at a time. On KNOB you‘ll discover an entirely different type of entertainment, a fresh style of radio fare, aimed at the discriminating ADULT listener. Using only the finest technical equipment, KNOB presents a full schedule of high fidelity programs, bridging the gap between ‗mood music‘ and the more serious classics. Certainly, you‘ll hear commercial announcements on KNOB, but each one possessed the creative subtle qualities of the ‗relaxed sell.‘ After all, you are trying to relax! In short, KNOB is radio in good taste which gives its listeners credit for some of the same.‖ 251 Sleepy elaborated on this policy in local newspapers. ―Unlike AM radio or television, we have discovered our listeners won‘t stand for the so-called ‗hard-sell‘ commercials, he commented to the Los Angeles Times.‖ 252 This was not because his enthusiast audience rejected commercials altogether, however. ―If we tried to put the screamers on FM or fell into the trap of trying to crowd commercials into the schedules,‖ he said, ―we most certainly would lose our 253 audience.‖ 253 ―We‘ll have commercials,‖ Stein told The Independent, ―lots of them—but they‘ll not insult the audience. They‘ll be in good taste.‖ 254 Other requirements were similarly in tune with KNOB‘s enthusiast audience. ―We‘re not going to cut records in the middle… we‘re not going to down a tune so the announcer can tell what it is.‖ 255 Despite his insistence that that FM was not in competition with AM, Stein did recognize AM‘s disadvantages as a source of FM‘s strengths. ―If FM radio IS competing with AM,‖ he said, ―its winning factors are in the style of programming and its choice of commercials.‖ Furthermore, he stated, ―the AM stations in this area have been of great assistance in helping FM along the road. And if AM continues in its present schedules and keeps throwing those nauseating commercials at the audience it will make me extremely happy! And it will place FM were AM once was—on a pedestal!‖ 256 As George Laine saw it, the gains FM radio had made on AM were entirely due to AM‘s shortcomings. AM ―brung it all on itself,‖ he said: ―The fact that [AM] for many years has had a listening audience at its mercy occasioned the rise of the shouted, overlong commercial, the bunching of commercials into spots at the rate of three and sometimes even four at a time, and the abuse of power in playing bad music for financial recompense. On the other hand, FM radio programs for quality. The advertiser will purchase a half-hour of time, identify himself as the purchaser of that time maybe three times during the period, and let the weight of the entertainment he sends to the public be his best advertising pitch.‖ 257 Thus, KNOB‘s relationship with its enthusiast audience stretched into the realm of commercial advertising in ways that appealed to that demographic‘s maturity, intellect and 254 buying power. The synergy between serious music, serious listeners, and serious advertising demonstrates the complex nature of the station‘s relationship with the Southern California jazz scene with Stein as one of its creative forces. The ―activism‖ element of Stein‘s jazz ideology centered on KNOB‘s relationship with political activism and grass-roots community involvement. Despite the occasional audience survey, the station‘s ―all jazz, all day‖ policy limited the station‘s direct contact with the local Los Angeles community outside of jazz-related activities in its early years. Programming of course was relegated to music, with the possible exceptions of Weisenberg‘s ―Jazz Commentary‖ show, which featured talk as well as music, and the occasional interview with jazz musicians. In fact, most of the non-jazz elements broadcast on KNOB came in the form of commercials, which were few and kept to a minimum length. In particular, the station managed to avoid any news broadcasts or public announcements within virtually its entire first year of operation. nd That is, until May 22 , 1958, when the station pre-empted its all-jazz format for the first time after a massive explosion at the Hancock Oil refinery located at the foot of Signal Hill rocked KNOB‘s studio, jettisoning deejay Chuck Niles out of his chair. 258 40 seconds after the blast, KNOB was back on the air covering the event while deejay Jim Fisher rushed down the hill to survey the scene. For the next 12 hours until sign-off KNOB worked with the Signal Hill police and broadcast warnings to listeners to steer clear of the area even before local TV and AM stations could reach the scene to cover the disaster. According to the Citizen-News, ―a number of Hancock employees, whose cars were trapped and demolished by the blaze, appeared at the station, where word of their safety was relayed to worried family members.‖ 259 It is unclear whether the event sparked in Stein an even deeper awareness in regards to the welfare of the local community or whether it spurred his interest in performing social work in 255 the area. What is certain is that in the years to come, Stein was as active in fund-raising and charity events outside of KNOB as he was in the promotion of the music, the station, and the FM medium. Perhaps the best example of this is seen in his involvement with the Disc Jockey Wives Association. The non-profit organization formed in 1958 to raise funds to benefit City of Hope, a world-renowned medical center in what is now Duarte, CA. Its committee boasted wives of 22 of the most notable male deejays in Southern California. Among them were, Mrs. Don Lamond, President and General Chairman; Mrs. Mel Baldwin, Secretary; as well as the wives of Jameson Brinkmeyer, Chuck Cecil, Ben Hunter, Bob Kerr, and Johnny Otis. By 1959, the organization had expanded to 72 total members, with a committee featuring Jo Anne Knoepp, wife of KFMU‘s Mel Knoepp, Secretary; Myke Crofford, wife of KPOL‘s George Crofford, Ways-andMeans Chairman; Marcie Quillan, wife of KFWB‘s Ted Quillan, Vice President; Beverly Caroll, wife of KABC‘s Roger Carroll, Treasurer; and several KNOB wives including Mrs. Pete Smith, Mrs. Paul Werth, and of course, Stein‘s wife, Olivia, President. 260 The purpose of founding the Association was to establish an Alex Cooper Memorial in the form of a recreation center for teenagers on site at City of Hope. Cooper was a highly respected Los Angeles deejay who lost his battle with throat cancer in 1957. 261 With planning beginning a year in a advance and with great assistance from Phyllis Lamond, daughter of Larry Fine (one of the Three Stooges), the Association organized their first benefit on Friday, February th 20 , 1959 at the Shrine Auditorium in order to raise $30,000 for the memorial. 262 The benefit was hailed as the ―Show of the Year‖ by local newspapers. Using their industry connections, husbands of the Association‘s members culled an all-star line-up of stage and screen celebrities to appear including Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Dennis Day, 256 George Burns, Peter Ustinov, Louise Jordan, Billy Daniels, the DeCastro Sisters, Jim Backus, Gloria Wood, Ballet Concerto, the Maverick Brothers, James Garner, Jack Kelly, Sam Cooke, the Lester Horton Dancers, and Les Baxter and His Orchestra. 263 Following the festivities at the Shrine, a banquet dinner with the stars was held at the Hollywood Palladium, with further entertainment beginning after that. 264 Newspapers described the undisputed success of the event; the audience had packed the 6000-plus seat Shrine Auditorium, and the Rosemead Review reported the event ―could scarcely have an equal.‖ 265 This success immediately prompted designs to establish a yearly City of Hope fundraising gala. With Myke Crofford at the helm, the Association planned a movie premiere and a grand ball for the following year. 266 Stein‘s association with City of Hope did not end there. Along with wife Olivia, Stein was member of the executive board of Show People United, an organization which reciprocated City of Hope by acting as its sponsor and promoter in return for aid given to its members in the theater arts and adjunct fields. Unlike the Disc Jockey Wives Association, Show People United refrained from including its members in fund raising activities, believing it to be a conflict of interest. According to one of its requests for cooperation among members of the entertainment industry, ―We are appealing to all members of our profession to cooperate with us. This cooperation will take the form of such assistance as laymen would give to any organization of which they are members. It shall not be as performers or artists, since it is the definite and absolute purpose of this organization to avoid any exploitation of its members by performances in the theatrical profession or by direct solicitation of funds within the industry.‖ 267 257 In this regard, industry leaders were able to contribute to the organization simply by allowing their names to be added to Show People United promotional campaigns without any other obligation. ―Certainly,‖ their appeal concludes, ―the use of your name will give Show People United the stature it must have if it is to be a complete success.‖ 268 In the first few years of KNOB‘s tenure, Stein was indeed active in an array of charitable organizations. On the air however, the station‘s programming remained largely insulated from local as well as national social and political issues. This changed by the early 1960s, when the FCC instituted a new policy which required radio stations to broadcast in the public good. This meant stations like KNOB needed to service communities beyond simply broadcasting music to include segments which constituted a philanthropic relationship with its audience. At its most basic, the station began issuing ―rip-and-read‖ newscasts about once an hour via wires from the Associated Press and United Press International. 269 But Stein often went far beyond the minimum requirements. He shrewdly accommodated the FCC‘s regulation by tapering his interest in the welfare of those in the entertainment industry to fit within the boundaries of the public good. Thus, one of the earliest breaks in jazz-only programming at the station concerned one of jazz‘s great problems: drug use. By the early 1960s, of course, drug usage among jazz musicians in America was not uncommon. Many well-known West Coast jazz musicians in particular were among the most prominent addicts. Pianist Dick Twardzik died of a heroin overdose in Paris in 1955 at the age of 24 of while on tour with Chet Baker. Baker was using at the time, battling off and on with addictions to cocaine, heroin and a variety of prescription drugs for over 30 years before his mysterious death in Amsterdam in1988. Art Pepper shared with Baker movie star looks as well as heroin addiction and multiple prison sentences, including two stints in San Quentin. In his 258 autobiography, Straight Life (1980), Pepper describes his life as anything but straight, detailing his misadventures in the world of jazz and the seedy underworld of drugs in California at the time. In the book, Pepper makes mention to his involvement with a local drug rehabilitation center called Synanon. Along with guitarist Joe Pass, Pepper was one of its most recognized patients. Founded in 1958 by former Alcoholics Anonymous member Charles E. Dederich, Synanon preached reform through self-analyzation and communal support in the manner of A.A. Its similarities with A.A. end there, however. Though the organization required a two-year stay in residence at its Santa Monica compound, Synanon‘s concept of ―lifetime rehabilitation‖ confined addicts to treatment for life; a concept unrecognized by most modern therapeutic institutes at the time. Its technique of self-confession, called the ―Synanon game,‖ wherein members humiliated each other to expose weaknesses in character, was especially controversial. Combined with its advocacy of an ―alternative lifestyle,‖ the organization quickly took on the characteristics of a cult, eventually transforming itself into the ―Church of Synanon‖ in the 1970s. 270 Neither Pepper nor Pass, however, was involved in its more ―alternative‖ activities. Unlike Pass who kicked his habit for good, Pepper‘s addictions stretched out for years. Nevertheless, Stein became aware of Synanon and was convinced of its benefits to those West Coast musicians with which he felt he had a relationship. As Bob Shayne recalls, ―Sleepy asked me to do a documentary on Synanon… And it was run by a guy named Chuck Dederich. I don‘t know if he had any psychology degree. I suspect he didn‘t. But he was like the guru of this place and apparently did a lot of good for a lot of recovering drug addicts. I went down and I interviewed him. I interviewed Joe Pass I think, and other people who lived there and worked there. 259 271 Synanon began to hold jazz concerts featuring a group composed entirely of its more musically talented patients. More importantly, the jazz world organized a variety of benefits for the organization. The most interesting of these came in 1961 with the Pacific Jazz recording, Sounds of Synanon, featuring the original compositions of Synanon band members Joe Pass, Arnold Ross, Dave Allan, Greg Dykes, Ronald Clark, Bill Crawford, and Candy Latson. Shayne, for one, didn‘t share Stein‘s wholesale support for the organization: ―Unlike Sleepy, who thought this was like the best thing in the history of the world, I came away feeling like Chuck Dederich was a cultish, controlling, manipulating maniac. And I couldn‘t say that out loud because I was supposed to produce this show that showed how wonderful this place was… And many years later Chuck Dietrich ended up arrested and put in prison for putting a poisonous snake in somebody‘s mailbox or something like that and kind of lost his reputation. But he probably did a lot of good for people along the way.‖ 272 By 1963, Stein and company became more conscious of the transforming social and political landscape of the nation, particularly given the growing civil unrest around issues of freedom abound at the time. It was around this time that KNOB finally registered its political positions on these topics in the public arena. In June of 1963, KNOB declared it ―Civil Rights Month‖ at the station with Stein delivering regular station breaks to include editorials stating its nd position on racism in America. The first, airing on June 2 , which opened by admitting the project was ―long overdue,‖ spoke directly to individual listeners: ―KNOB believes that good people are often responsible for bad government by simply doing nothing, by failing to take an active interest in government, ―the time has come for this station and every one of its listeners to actively join the fight to preserve American democracy,‖ and ―Every American who accepts the 260 freedom of living as we do, must also accept his obligations.‖ Throughout the month, KNOB provided ―specific, concrete suggestions‖ for individual and collective action; to ―contribute money, to join organizations, to write letters, send wires, to do volunteer work.‖ Monies collected by the station went to fund the sponsors of the announcements, usually local and national civil rights organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the American Civil Liberties Union, and were occasionally presented by local jazz musicians. ―There is something every citizen can and must do,‖ said Stein, ―and KNOB believes we must act before it is too late. Those of us who sit quietly doing nothing will, in the long run, be giving aid, support and comfort to the racial bigots.‖ 273 For those audience members who may have been reluctant to answer its call to action, th th KNOB‘s second editorial broadcast on June 9 and 10 appealed to them, framing civil rights as a universal problem as opposed to ―Negro problem,‖ while bringing the problem of racial discrimination home to the Los Angeles area. In the second editorial, Stein, quoting James Balwdin (―morally (and) actually, there is no distance, between Birmingham and Los Angeles‖), urged listeners to show support for two anti-discrimination measures, Assembly Bills 1240 and 15, currently in consideration by the State Legislature in Sacramento: ―We the white residents of Los Angeles, cannot escape our guilt by saying that the Southern white man is no relation to us. We cannot condemn our national, state, or local officials for their lack of action until we the citizens have made our feelings known. KNOB is stating its position as clearly as we can and we hope every listener will do the same. The time has come for all Americans to state quite clearly that we will no longer permit a minority of bigoted, biased, and immoral white men to corrupt the principles of 261 our national heritage. The apathy that prevails in Southern California is just as destructive as any Mississippi segregation law. KNOB urges you to write, write [sic] or call your elected representatives and demand action. It doesn‘t make any difference whom you write so long as you make your voice heard. President Kennedy said this is a nation of laws—well the, let‘s have some laws.‖ 274 If KNOB‘s civil rights editorials appear well-informed, passionate, and highly critical, this is largely due to their author, Charles Weisenberg. While every editorial stated the position of the KNOB management, and by extension the station, their language came exclusively from Weisenberg. ―It was not reviewed by anybody,‖ he recalled years later. ―It was never challenged. I mean I would write it, it would be my opinion, but it went off on the air… I had nothing to do with it because [neither] my name nor my voice was involved with it. It was a KNOB position. I was writing positions for the station.‖ 275 Weisenberg‘s positions were not simply fodder for appearance‘s sake where the FCC was concerned. While deejaying at KNOB, Weisenberg served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Southern California chapter of the ACLU. ―I had a real commitment [to civil rights],‖ he said, ―When I lived in the 60s in the San Fernando Valley, I became president of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the ACLU which provided me a seat on the board, and I served on the ACLU Board of Directors for about 8 or 9 years and felt a very strong commitment to those issues. And therefore when issues like that would arise, it would be an opportunity for me to express my opinion in a much broader marketplace. I would call Sleepy or go down and talk to him about it and say ‗this would make a great editorial‘ 262 and he would agree, and I don‘t think he ever did anything but read the editorials as I wrote them.‖ 276 Despite Weisenberg‘s sole authorship of these announcements, Stein and the station were well behind his ideas on civil rights: ―It was something I did because [KNOB] wanted community service points with the FCC but also it would be reflecting viewpoints that I [believed in], and I knew Sleepy and the station [did as well], and I think it‘s fair to say that for the most part the jazz audience is probably more liberal than it is conservative, so long as you‘re not talking about 277 Dixieland music.‖ Interestingly, KNOB found itself in defense of the right of free expression as well; not only on the part of the general public or itself, but on behalf of other radio stations in California. One editorial on the subject, written by Weisenberg, came at the behest of Stein. More than any other deejay at KNOB, Stein had his finger on the pulse of the radio industry and, according to Weisenberg, ―on a number of occasions,‖ approached him about an editorial, ―in which case,‖ Weisenberg said, ―I would sort of interview or talk to Sleepy and then write something about it which would really begin with his viewpoint. Because it would have something I wouldn‘t have been really on top of; you know, the intricacies of the broadcast industry.‖ 278 th Airing 4 different times (11:30am, 2:30pm, 8:30pm, and 11:00pm) on January 20 , 1963, KNOB notified the public of a case involving the alleged censorship of California radio by the FCC. In the week previous, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee opened an investigation opened which targeted a non-profit radio network known as the Pacifica Corporation. Days later, the Federal Communications Commission would decline to renew the broadcasting licenses for Pacifica‘s KPFA in San Francisco, KPFK in Los Angeles, and WBAI 263 in New York. KNOB responded by siding with a New York Times article which called the move ―harassment:‖ ―We do not always agree with what is said or played on KPFK, but we do feel more secure in the knowledge that here in American people can say out loud that they think and feel—even if it is a minority of unpopular idea. It is not the practice of this station to become involved with the affairs of other broadcasters; however the issue here is of freedom of speech and freedom of the press…KNOB can no longer remain silent in the face of this danger. If the harassment of the Pacific stations succeeds in inhibiting their programming we cannot help but wonder who will be next. Perhaps KNOB…We sincerely hope the Pacifica Foundation is not being punished for giving a platform to unorthodox ideas, if that is the case then KNOB may be attacked for playing what somebody considers unorthodox jazz. Is it our duty to make room for the off-beat, the unorthodox and the uncommon that has made American great—let‘s keep it that way.‖ 279 In sum, Stein‘s jazz ideology represents an important point in the constellation of modernist practices that together form the foundation of West Coast jazz. Stein‘s commitment to American nationalism and high modernism, with his doctrine of enthusiasm and embrace of technological innovation, created not only an aesthetic forum for West Coast jazz but an economic and political forum as well. That he was able exploit elite jazz audiences‘ sense of connoisseur consumerism to fuel a radio station broadcasting for the public good, for example, testifies as much to Stein‘s salesmanship as it does to the ability of jazz to stretch beyond its popular culture status and to local audiences‘ approval of the blending of high and low cultural 264 sensibilities. The West Coast jazz movement lasted as long as it did in part due to the environment that KNOB helped to create. Jazz and the Abstract Truth: A Historian‟s Dilemma and the Decline of a Jazz Scene ―When my wife and I spent Christmas with Sleepy he seemed in great shape,‖ Howard Lucraft said in 2000. ―Then when I spoke to him a few weeks ago he told me he had just learned of his terminal illness; 6 months to 2 years. But somehow I really thought and prayed the doctors were wrong.‖ Stein passed away on July 27, 2000 from cancer. His death deeply affected his family and friends, and especially his former fellow KNOB employees, several of whom produced an hour-long documentary of Stein for radio station KLON in Long Beach, CA. ―We were all absolutely devastated at his very certain death,‖ said Lucraft. Chuck Niles remembered, ―He really believed in what he was doing and he kept that whistle cooking for about, let‘s see, for about 8 years or so.‖ ―We have lots to thank Sleepy Stein for,‖ he concluded, ―and the main thing is: all jazz, all the time… I was there from the beginning till the end. It was an experience that turned out to be very valuable to me and so I just want to say thank you, Alex ‗Sleepy‘ 280 Stein.‖ Howard Lucraft ends the documentary with a eulogistic remembrance: ―You know, Sleepy brought me and so many others into jazz radio. I never met anyone that didn‘t admire and love Sleepy Stein. He was just one of those wonderful human beings. Kind, ultra creative… a winning personality and, of course, a brilliant mind: Sleepy Stein. Jazz radio and the ―jazz knob‖ will always be synonymous Dr. Sleepy Stein. Your life has been an inspiration to us all. We‘re sure that, along with Stan Kenton, you both have a jazz knob in the sky.‖ 281 265 The words of Niles and Lucraft are indeed glowing and impassioned. Stein‘s contributions in the world of jazz broadcasting are indeed matched by few. Aside from oral histories, we know much of Stein‘s exploits from periodicals like Down Beat and FM & Fine Arts magazine and from newspapers like the Los Angeles Times. Further, we know the basics of daily operations at KNOB; the deejays, their backgrounds, their shows, etc. We also know the station‘s missionary zeal and the influence it bore on the local, national, and international landscape of jazz culture. Its history is palpable and of great historical significance. But is the history of KNOB and Sleepy Stein as seamless and free from conflict of dissent as we might glean from these sources? From KLON‘s documentary we see there is little question that Stein was endearing to many. But was he loved and admired by everyone? In other words, does the collection of available material on Stein and KNOB provide a complete and accurate portrait of Stein and the station and should we place full faith and credit into them? These sources tell of the ―glory years,‖ but were they really so glorious? Should we blindly trust any source which tells us so? For the historian, such questions are par for the course. Though they do not require us automatically to doubt every source, an assessment of any source‘s integrity should be at the forefront of one‘s inquiry. I wish not to enter into a debate over whether the Los Angeles Times is a reputable newspaper or whether certain former co-workers of Stein can be trusted in issuing an unbiased viewpoint per se; merely to present a polemical view with regard to the financial stability of KNOB in the context of an already declining jazz industry by the late 1950s. Perhaps the crux of the problem lies not in the verity of sources pertaining to KNOB per se but in what sources are available at the time of study. At the time of writing, few of KNOB‘s former employees are alive. Those that are alive have been difficult to track down. Some, but 266 certainly not all, are less than thorough in their recollections. Neither case is exceptional of course; aging and death are inevitable, and reaching 40 years in the past to detailing one‘s own exploits is not often an easy task. Thus, these tendencies are entirely forgivable. Nevertheless, these are factors that limit the available material with which to piece together this phenomenon. The lack of material is just one side of the historical coin; what sources are available is also of critical concern. Before he died, Stein had amassed a collection of memorabilia and reportage on KNOB into several massive oversized scrapbooks which document the station‘s origins and operations. These documents are now located at the Los Angeles Jazz Institute archive at California State University, Long Beach. The vast majority of available sources on KNOB reside in this one central repository. On first inspection, this is a dream scenario for the historian. Stein has conveniently begun the historical legwork in documenting a virtually untouched avenue of jazz history seemingly in anticipation of future inquiry. This makes the investigator‘s job all the more easy. However, the fact that these documents were compiled by Stein himself should warrant closer inspection. While they provide us with evidence of a history that would not likely have been told otherwise, and while they confirm Stein‘s passion for jazz and jazz radio, they also suggest that Stein was a man concerned with his own legacy. Granted, these are sources are, in large part, clippings from reputable, nationally distributed periodicals, newspapers, etc. Thus, their integrity is not at issue in this context. The issue is whether Stein‘s collection of these sources focuses our view so narrowly that we fail to see the larger canvas. From a broader view, these sources ultimately beg the question: at what point do we see what Stein wants us to see? Yet even if we assume the accuracy of these sources there is still room for further interrogation, particularly whether these sources happen to be positive or negative of Stein and the station. While they provide us with a great deal of fact in 267 terms of ―who,‖ ―what,‖ ―when,‖ ―where‖ and ―how,‖ from a more cynical perspective, they offer another side of Stein‘s marketing intellect; one which aims not at the jazz listener or consumer, but the jazz historian. Save for a few newspaper articles, almost all of the sources in his collection speak positively of Stein and the station. This is not so out of the ordinary, as it would not follow that someone interested in preserving his legacy would include so much negative criticism as to upend his reputation in the future. Nevertheless, we might be naïve in believing that Stein did not premeditatively assemble these documents with his image in mind or that these are simply a loose interpretation of his accomplishments not meant to substitute for history or autobiography. There seems to be more motivation behind his collection than that. Another problem for the historian is that many of the sources which Stein draws from were authored by columnists who were concurrently or were at one time employees of the station (ex. George Laine, Charles Weisenberg, etc.) or close friends of Stein (ex. Johnny Otis, Shelly Manne). Again, this is not to say that Stein and company are stretching the truth. It is simply that we must consider theirs as authorial sources while noting that their agendas might conflict with the historian‘s quest for verifiable data. Aside from these problems which plague historical writing from the outset, a view of the broader canvas yields a deeper set of problems concerning Stein character. In particular, the question remains as to whether Stein was not so much a great jazz promoter, but a master manipulator. In my view, KNOB would likely not have seen the light of day without someone with a great love of jazz. Further, we know from the surfeit of evidence that Stein was a supporter of jazz of the highest order. However, the task of establishing an all-jazz radio station also necessitated someone with a keen business sense, and in that realm Stein was perhaps the 268 only person in the area capable doing so. Nevertheless, it would be naïve to not suspect Stein‘s skills in promoting and advertising jazz, as well as his media connections, could be used to advance his image and personal wealth. Again, this possibility does not necessarily implicate Stein as a greedy self-promoter, in outright lying to the media or, of foul play in the world of business. Rather, in cases where financial success or prestige could be reaped, it is possible that Stein used those opportunities to overinflate the status of both himself as well as the station in the eyes of advertisers and of the press. We see several instances of this through documents found in Stein‘s collection which, if scrutinized closely, corroborate this view. The KFOX advertisements which touted his abilities as pitch man for instance read more like a sermon in praise of Stein rather than his curriculum vitae. The ads might correctly reflect the nature of all advertising at the time, and the inclusion of verifiable statistics from Pulse, Inc. seem to corroborate Stein‘s abilities. However, the ad carries the tenor of a man struggling to generate enough business to stay afloat; as much a sales pitch to the industry as the one he would make to consumers over the radio. Likewise, the various mentions of Stein‘s idea to syndicate the KNOB format and to establish affiliate stations across the country resonate similarly. In particular, his attempt to establish WIPE in Detroit as a sister station appears more an attempt to generate media hype and improve both his and his station‘s status than in actually establishing the station in the first place. It is possible that Stein had every intention of growing the KNOB brand nationwide. On the other hand, these designs do appear to be pipe dreams or get-rich schemes which, whether they actually materialized, would at least prove marketable for KNOB alone. It is former KNOB program director, Bob Shayne, who remains most skeptical of Stein and the KNOB experiment. ―Sleepy was promoting the station with every breath he took, let 269 alone everything he wrote or said to reporters,‖ he said in 2009. 282 One of Shayne‘s recollections demonstrates the ambiguity of Stein‘s public persona in relation to his private life despite the surfeit of positive reportage; the two were not necessarily mutually exclusive: ―Sleepy was considered by many in the record industry to be a conman. Word among record distributors was that he was getting many free copies of new releases and then selling them to Sam‘s Records to sell to customers. Is that true? I have no idea. But I know it was a strong rumor believed by many. I suspect it wasn't nearly as true as they thought because we needed a copy at the transmitter, a copy in Hollywood and a copy at Sleepy‘s house just to be able to play the album on any of our programs. And several deejays, those that pre-taped shows and tried to sell time, had their own collections, part of which also came from distributors. So perhaps the rumor was all based on the legitimate needs we had because the transmitter and studio in Signal Hill were so far from where most of us lived and preferred to work (especially at the low rates we were getting paid).‖ 283 Aside from these rumors, Shayne is also cynical about Stein‘s promotion of KNOB as a financial stable institution: ―I, for one, don‘t believe that the station was ‗solvent since day one.‘ In my time there, which, granted was later on, circa 1961-63, it appeared to me the station was never solvent. It always seemed to be scraping by at best, hoping for money that was owed to come in so that Sleepy and Ray could meet their meager payroll, which was mostly me and Ed Young and whoever was the evening board runner at the moment.‖ 284 Shayne has also commented that, during his tenure at the station, not only did KNOB play singing commercials, the policy of refusing singing commercials stemmed from the fact that 270 there were no national sponsors willing to buy time on the station. 285 In this light, the station‘s policy seems to be one of convenience or a hollow gesture to market the station to serious listeners. In actuality, KNOB was financially unwieldy. As an example, Shayne describes exactly how he became the station‘s program director: ―Sleepy called me in and… [he] says ‗I‘ve got a new job for you. There‘s this magazine called FM and Fine Arts, it‘s going to come out every month and it‘s going to have all the listings of what‘s going to come out on FM and what they‘re doing each hour of the month and all of our DJs are going to supply lists of some featured album that they‘re playing each month. And I‘d like to compile that and type it all up for the month so we can send it to FM and Fine Arts and I‘ll pay you‘… I don‘t remember what they‘re paying me an hour… ‗I‘ll pay you $2 an hour‘ or something ‗for the time it takes you to do that and make you program director.‘‖ 286 Shayne‘s promotion is just one example of the kind of tactic Sleepy used to pacify his employees who demanded better pay. The title of ―program director‖ of course, meant little in the workplace environment. According to Shayne, ―Sleepy appointed me program director in return for my doing the menial task of typing up the entire month's program listings each month to submit to FM & Fine Arts magazine. I gladly accepted the work and the title. I took it very seriously. But…I was probably the only one who did. I realize that now much more than I did then.‖ 287 Another example surrounds the use of due bills. Unbeknownst to his employees, due bills in Las Vegas served a dual purpose for Stein. ―Nobody was getting paid,‖ Stein recalled in 1999. ―We had trade deals with Las Vegas hotels and any time somebody kept bugging me too much to be 271 paid, I‘d send them to Las Vegas where he could live in a penthouse suite and get all the booze and food he wanted!‖ 288 Shayne also recalls the poor salaries KNOB paid its employees led to the station‘s tremendous turnover in on-air personalities: ―There simply was very little money to be made. Probably most deejays started out with a deal in which they either didn‘t get paid anything but could keep a good piece of whatever commercial money they brought in, or else got a very low salary and kept a smaller percentage of the commercial time they sold. And because it was a jazz station, and because FM wasn‘t yet the booming business it would become a few years after KNOB went off the jazz format, there was a very limited amount of money to be funneled into advertising on the station. Period. So deejay after deejay would try it, strike out and quit in order to work somewhere they might make a living wage. Those who stayed the longest, Dave Larsen, Chuck Niles, Ed Young and me, were young and being paid salaries, not primarily brokering time.‖ 289 ―The biggest week I ever had at KNOB, I made $70 because a set of commercials I'd sold got paid for belatedly,‖ he said. 290 Thus, business operations tended to be messy and chaotic. If money often came belatedly, it sometimes never came at all. His attempt to sell KNOB airtime in promotion of comedian Lenny Bruce stands as one example: ―A promoter named Herbie Cohen (later Frank Zappa‘s manager) booked a small playhouse in Hollywood and promoted nightly concerts by Lenny Bruce. I sold them commercials on KNOB. I went every night to watch Lenny talk. He blew me away. He learned I was a disc jockey and asked me to secretly record the jurors of his latest trial while he talked to them at their front doors. I declined. It sounded illegal to me. I can‘t 272 remember now if the trial was still in session. Probably not, in which case it probably wouldn‘t have been illegal. But in any case, Lenny and Herbie never paid for those 291 commercials. To this day Lenny Bruce owes me, or actually the station, $700.‖ It was these working conditions that in effect bore on the living conditions of the deejays. That is, seemingly all but Stein. According to Shayne, ―Sleepy and Olivia lived in a beautiful modern house on Pacific View Drive off of Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills. I don't know how they paid for it. Olivia was an artist and, I think, did portraits. She might have made a lot money from that. I don't know. But then Sleepy might have made a good deal of money if, indeed, the station was solvent... If so, he and Ray were very good at hiding it when it came to our offices and their demeanor. Sleepy‘s house might have been a clue that it really did make money. Or not. But everything else suggested otherwise.‖ 292 Meanwhile, Shayne‘s own living conditions were not atypical for the many that attempted to eek out a living at KNOB: ―I lived with a roommate in a one-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood. We had a signal of putting a coat hanger on the front door if my roommate, whose bed was in the dining room, had a girl in there. I once spent the night watching double feature horror movies at a rundown theater on Hollywood Boulevard till all hours until I could go home. 293 It was like being in college, not being a grown-up.‖ As part owner of the station, and an often heard voice on the air, it is not out of the question that Stein would take the biggest cut of the station‘s revenue. Despite this, questions remain for Shayne. ―I don‘t think Sleepy was a conman,‖ he said. ―I think he was very serious about promoting the music. But I wonder about some of these things…‖ 273 294 These instances shed light onto the human side of KNOB as well as Stein himself. More importantly, they help to peel back the layers of sheen painted by Stein‘s relentless posturing and marketing. The station is neither the Hollywood success story of lore, nor its deejays knights errant to jazz and jazz radio. Their lives were hard, and the station‘s finances were shaky. Part of the problem was that KNOB debuted at a time when audiences were shying away from jazz. As Shayne has noted, ―Jazz was, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, already very much a dying popular art form. It was very small compared to several kinds of more current pop music: pop, rock, country, elevator music were all much more the music of the day than was jazz. In my mind, jazz undermined its potential as pop music with the invention of bebop. It was instantly too complex and too dissonant for the general population to access.‖ 295 While Shayne‘s characterization of jazz as a ―dying art form‖ at the time is a dubious one, he is correct when he asserts that KNOB ―was already an anachronism the day it went on the air as a jazz station:‖ ―It was fighting against the tide. It was the little artist amid big commerce. It was the upholder of the pure and good art against the corruption of culture and society that was called pop. And personally, I find rock quite pure and wonderful. But the major record company-produced crap that passed as pop in those days was the worst of the worst. ―How Much Is That Doggie in the Window‖ and ―Come-a My House represented it. Mantovani and the like were called ―semi-classical.‖ Bullshit. That was simply music for people who didn't like music.‖ 296 To Shayne, KNOB was ―the little engine that thought it could, against the greed and cultural manipulation of the major corporations‘ stations.‖ 297 274 KNOB was a grand experiment for a good cause, but failed under the weight of the sheer implausibility of its dream. As Shayne put it, ―It was a noble experiment that never really caught fire. It could exist in the marketplace seven or eight years until a competitor came along and did it better, did it smarter, and captured enough of the audience to take away commercial sponsors and undermine KNOB‘s ability to sell enough commercial time to stay afloat. At that point the station was sold and the format went to something much more commercial.‖ 298 KNOB, like West Coast jazz, did not thrive for long. By the early 1960s, both the music and the station experienced a steep decline. Youth interested in jazz waned somewhat due to the advent of rock and roll, though Stein was adamant that there was still a sizeable jazz audience in Los Angeles until the 1970s. 299 One reason seems to be that, after 1959, jazz fans began to shift their gaze (or ears) towards the new jazz stylings of African America, particularly hard bop and its variants as well as free jazz. In April of 1961, Stein wrote to Billboard Music Week that ―the jazz most popular with 300 listeners today is the so-called ‗soul‘ or ‗funk‘ jazz.‖ ―Its true form,‖ he said, ―has an earthy quality that goes back to original blues and this basic quality, with its simplicity, is probably the primary reason for its current popularity.‖ 301 Unfortunately, this was one of the few types of jazz KNOB was unused to playing; none of its deejays specialized in the style. According to Bob Shayne, it was KNOB‘s competitor, KBCA, an all-jazz FM station founded by Saul Levine which switched from classical to jazz in 1961, that ―tended to play more newer albums and funkier albums.‖ 302 Shayne has further suggested that race played another role in KNOB‘s demise. ―Over time,‖ he said, ―I believe [Levine‘s] ratings became better than KNOB‘s ratings. And his secret seems to be that he hired mostly black deejays and they tended to play blacker 275 sounding music and they had blacker sounding voices.‖ 303 When asked whether KNOB‘s rating slump stemmed from its struggling to cultivate the advertising revenue, Shayne replied, ―I don‘t know about sales slumping but I think the ratings slumped. Or at least… you know, FM was growing by leaps and bounds so it may be that our ratings never went down. But as everybody‘s ratings were growing, KBCA passed us. So ours may have not gone lower but… we became the only jazz station, then we were the dominant jazz station, and then we were the less dominant jazz station.‖ 304 Nevertheless, another important factor lies in the political and economic pressures affecting jazz in Los Angeles at the time. Most problematic was that the sustainability of jazz venues became ever more difficult. Nightclubs, as has been indicated by Shayne, Weisenberg and others, were extremely important to the economic success of the station and vice versa. Thus, a downturn in jazz venues meant the depreciation of a West Coast jazz scene. Weisenberg in particular has noted that the increase in local support for the concert hall forces economically minded musicians to migrate away from jazz‘s proper venue: the nightclub: ―In Southern California, jazz clubs have had a very difficult time making a profit, even a small profit. It has been the inability of the area to support a substantial number of first rate jazz clubs that had kept it from becoming the undisputed jazz capitol of the world. Too frequently a jazz club is opened by a good bartending businessman who views jazz as just another operating expense. The result has been bad business and poor music.‖ 305 In relocating to the concert hall, musicians benefit by evading the nightclub‘s ―clanging cash register, whirling malt machines, and clinking glasses,‖ but fall prey to its unsuitable acoustics. 306 ―If one is noisy and filled with distractions,‖ he says, ―the other fails to establish the intimacy between musicians and audience that is necessary for good jazz.‖ 276 307 Until a concert hall can be designed with jazz musicians and audiences in mind, he concluded, ―jazz enthusiasts will have to seek out the enlightened club owners and concert promoters for their ration of live 308 music.‖ Stein himself was known, through his advocacy of jazz, to comment on the problems of finding proper venues for the music. Outside of Weisenberg and Manne, Stein was the most vocal of critics of jazz nightclubs in the area. Like Weisenberg, he not only believed the nightclub to be the rightful venue for jazz, but that its current state was proving detrimental to the music. In 1959 he wrote in the Los Angeles Times, ―There is a tremendous amount of jazz talent in this area which is getting no hearing because of the absence of jazz clubs charging rates the average jazz fan can afford… San Francisco has 12 clubs producing good live jazz without hustling the patrons. Why can‘t this city, virtually the jazz capitol of the world, do likewise?‖ 309 In response to the decline of the nightclub scene, many West Coast jazzmen left Los Angeles altogether for the jazz boomtowns of the East Coast or even Europe in pursuit of greater economic security. Chet Baker, for one, except for a few intermittent U.S. recording and tour dates as well as a brief retirement from music altogether in the late 60s/early 70s, remained in Europe for the rest of his life. The exodus of so many West Coast jazz artists out of Los Angeles placed a great strain on those nightclubs still surviving in Los Angeles which began to feature less talent, if not lesser talent. Thus, with its ties to those local artists dwindling, the less-than-gainful employment it provided its deejays, the rise of jazz in the concert hall placing pressure on nightclubs, waning interest in jazz in general, and the advent of a second all-jazz station in Los Angeles—one which perhaps better attracted the local African American community and whose owner was far more commercially minded—combined to spell the end of KNOB‘s jazz radio experiment. On 277 September 13, 1965, a majority of the shareholders of the Cerritos Broadcasting Company, the th parent company of KNOB, elected to wind up its affairs and voluntarily dissolve. By June 15 , 1966, KNOB was no more. 310 Stein has since been steadfast in his reasons for selling the station, citing neither the competition from KBCA nor the declining interest in jazz were factors. ―The reason that we sold KNOB was the fact that I wanted to go back to school and get my doctorate,‖ he said. ―I was hoping it would remain a jazz station. As a matter of fact, I tried to sell it to Gene Norman and he almost bought it. But unfortunately it didn‘t go through.‖ 311 Relentless until the end, Stein‘s marketing tactics upheld the station‘s image in the minds of the public long past its demise. Stein never returned to jazz radio. In 1966, he formed Group LA, an advertising firm selling time on FM stations throughout the Los Angeles area. Eventually, he gave up radio all together, transitioning into a successful career as a stock broker. 312 He did, however, earn a doctorate in Linguistics, which he employed late into his life, making regular trips to Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland to translate texts and documents written in ancient Gaelic. 313 For nearly 10 years, with Stein at its helm, KNOB was more than a jazz radio station; it was a scene-making machine and the mouthpiece of a movement. In accordance with Stein‘s jazz ideology, the station elevated jazz to a form of high art, presented jazz in its highest quality form, intensified the bonds between the music and its audience, and positioned the music among a broader local, national, and international culture. Its story offers us insight into Los Angeles radio history and indeed coincides with several firsts in radio; it illustrates the importance of technological advances in wireless communications in the post-World War II years; it reveals 278 jazz radio as a powerful commercial advertising medium; and it helps us to understand West Coast jazz and the Los Angeles jazz scene in finer detail. KNOB was an important point of departure for jazz in California. Like Howard Rumsey‘s Lighthouse, KNOB was a ―beacon‖ which facilitated the flow of cultural practices from one point to another within the complex constellation of jazz modernisms at the time. More than his station, it was Stein himself who was a part of that constellation. 1 ―Jazz Poll: 1956‖ Theme Vol. 4 No. 1 (Jan. 1957): 16-18. 2 Ken Borgers and Howard Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy?‖ (Long Beach, CA: KLON, 2000). 3 Sleepy Stein, ―Knights at the Turntable: West Coast Jazz on the Air.‖ Jazz West Coast II: A Musical Celebration of West Coast Jazz, Hyatt Newporter Resort, Newport Beach, California, (Panel 2: Ken Borgers, moderator, with Sleepy Stein, Gene Norman, Chuck Niles, and Howard th Lucraft, May 28 , 1999). Material located at the Los Angeles Jazz Institute archive at California State University, Long Beach; henceforth, LAJI. 4 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 5 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 6 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 7 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 8 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 9 By ―hard bop,‖ Stein is not referring to the style of jazz by that name as exemplified by Horace Silver, Lee Morgan and others in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Rather, he is referring to the more aggressive, experimental or ―hot‖ style of bebop from artists at the time like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. See Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 10 Stein, ―Knights at the Turntable: West Coast Jazz on the Air.‖ 11 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 12 See, for instance, Mat Mathews, The Modern Art of Jazz, Vol. 2, Hi Fi, 1956, DLP-1104, LP; Walter Perkins, Walter Perkins‟ MJT + 3, Vee Jay, 1060, LP-1013, LP. 13 Buddy Collette, Buddy Collette: Man of Many Parts, Contemporary, 1956, C 3522, LP. 14 At one point, according to Stein, he was using Stan Kenton‘s ―Eager Beaver‖ as his show‘s theme song: ―I was featuring a lot of things by Kenton who I thought had by far the [most] outstanding orchestra in the country in the jazz context. And I got to know Stan and I liked him very much, and I told him I was going to use one of his compositions with his permission as a theme, and I hadn‘t been able to make up my mind yet which one, and he said ‗Well, it‘s obvious you‘re an eager beaver. Use it!‘ And it turned out to be a perfect theme, had just the right spots to fade on it, and it worked in very well‖ (Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy‖). 279 15 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 16 The Chico Hamilton Quartet, The Chico Hamilton Quartet in Hi Fi, Pacific Jazz, 1956, PJ 1216 LP. 17 The Buddy Collette/ Chico Hamilton Sextet, Tanganyika, DIG, 1956, J-101, LP. 18 Sleepy Stein, ―Wailin‘ Wax,‖ DIG (January, 1957): 30. According to one DIG press release, Stein was appointed the magazine‘s sole record reviewer, whose feature, it promised, ―will span the entire recording field from classical to rhythm and blues… agilely avoiding being tagged graybeard or bebopper‖ (document located in the Sleepy Stein Collection, or ―SSC‖ hereafter, at the Los Angeles Jazz Institute archive at California State University, Long Beach). 19 Stein, ―Wailin‘ Wax,‖ DIG (January, 1957): 30. 20 Sleepy Stein, ―Dinah Washington,‖ DIG (July 1957): 31; Sleepy Stein, ―Chico Hamilton,‖ DIG (September 1957): 22-23; Sleepy Stein, unknown title, DIG (unknown date): 29, found in SSC. 21 th ―News about KFOX,‖ Public Relations Department, KFOX (January, 26 , 1955), found in SSC. 22 The Pulse, Inc. ―The 100% Yardstick,‖ (Long Beach-Orange County, Vol. 3 No.1, October, 1955), page 2, found in SSC. According to the survey, ―During the course of the day, Pulse interviewers were instructed to revisit homes that were unoccupied at the time of the initial visit between 4 and 8pm. In each case, all initially unoccupied homes were revisited two times later the same evening. 7.9% of the homes contacted for the survey were unoccupied at the time of initial visit and the two revisits and could not be interviewed.‖ 23 The Pulse, Inc. ―The 100% Yardstick,‖ page 3. 24 The Pulse, Inc. ―The 100% Yardstick,‖ page 4. 25 The Pulse, Inc. ―The 100% Yardstick,‖ (unknown volume and number, May, 1956), page 2, found in SSC. 26 The particular Pulse survey in mentioned here does not mention ―Los Angeles Country‖ or ―Southern Los Angeles‖ as a part of the Long Beach area study. The study does mention Orange Country in relation to Long Beach on the report‘s cover page but not directly in the findings. It is unclear where ―Los Angeles County‖ and ―Southern Los Angeles‖ figure in Stein‘s claim. Nevertheless, Stein does not appear to have manipulated the numbers. ―Programming Tiger,‖ nd Sleepy Stein ad for KFOX show, unknown date, 2 page, found in SSC. 27 ―Programming Tiger,‖ 4 page. th 28 ―Programming Tiger,‖ 3 page. rd 29 st ―Is Stardust jazz?‖ KFOX ad for Sleepy Stein show (unknown newspaper and date), 1 page, found in SSC. 30 nd ―Is Stardust jazz?‖ 2 page. 31 32 th Stars of Jazz. Television program. Los Angeles: ABC Television, April 7 , 1958. Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 280 33 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy;‖ Stein, ―Knights at the Turntable: West Coast Jazz on the Air.‖ 34 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 35 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 36 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 37 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 38 ―All-Jazz Radio Station,‖ Down Beat (June 13 , 1957): 11. 39 40 th th Broadcasting (December, 30 , 1957), 75. Broadcasting (January, 1958), page unknown, found in SSC. 41 George Laine, ―Radio Station KNOB Is Doorway to New Jazz World,‖ Metronome (March, 1958): 30. 42 Brubeck and Norman are quoted as using the same phrase in Laine, ―Radio Station KNOB Is Doorway to New to New Jazz World,‖ 31. 43 Laine, ―Radio Station KNOB Is Doorway to New to New Jazz World,‖ 31. 44 Don Page, ―Outlook for FM Fans,‖ Los Angeles Times (August 18 , 1957): 14. th 45 Boots Lebaron, ―KNOB Ups Wattage, Will Offer Top Stars of Jazz,” Los Angeles Times th (March 9 , 1958): unknown page. Found in SSC. 46 th Charles Weisenberg, ―Jazz Notes,‖ Culver City Star News (Wed., Jan. 29 , 1958): unknown page. 47 Lebaron, ―KNOB Ups Wattage, Will Offer top Stars of Jazz,‖ unknown page; ―All-Jazz Station Boosts Power,‖ Independent Press Telegram, Long Beach, Calif. (Sunday, March 9, 1958): B2. 48 Dave Larsen, ―The Morning After,‖ The Flight Jacket (U.S. Marine Corps Air Station, El Toro, Calif.): unknown page. Found in SSC. 49 th ―Sleepy Stein… gives a new twist to KNOB,‖ TV-Radio Life (March 15 , unknown year): 19. Found in SSC. 50 th ―Don‘t Turn This KNOB,‖ Down Beat (May 29 , 1958): 12. 51 ―New Twist to KNOB,‖ Los Angeles Sentinel (Thursday, March 6 , 1958): unknown page. th 52 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 53 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 54 th Weisenberg, ―Jazz Notes,‖ Culver City Star News (Wed., Jan. 29 , 1958): unknown page. A document found in the SSC provides a clue as to when KNOB made the leap to 79,000 watts. An invitation to a cocktail party hosted by Gene Norman and featuring the Bud Shank Quartet and Howard Rumsey‘s Lighthouse All-Stars at the Interlude on Sunset Blvd. provides the date th th Tuesday, May 26 (year unknown). Tuesday, May 26 has only appeared once between 1953 (before KNOB began its all-jazz format) and 1964 (well after its move to 79,000 watts): that year was 1959. See ―Gene Norman Invitation,‖ found in SSC. 281 55 th ―‗Jazz Only‘ is L.A. Airer‘s New Policy,‖ The Billboard (September 30 , 1957): 26; ―KNOB (FM) Sets All-Jazz Format,‖ Broadcasting (September 2, 1957): 96; ―‗Jazz Goes to Church‘ As th Well As On All Other KNOB Casts,‖ Variety (Wed., Aug 14 , 1957): 17. 56 ―From the Stations…‖ FM & Fine Arts Guide (December 1960): 22. 57 th ―KXLU Returns to the Air,‖ Los Angeles Herald and Express (Saturday, July 9 , 1960): unknown page. 58 nd Leonard Feather, ―The Blindfold Test,‖ Down Beat (February 2 , 1961): 45. 59 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 60 ―From the Stations…,‖ FM & Fine Arts Guide (February, 1961): unknown page. 61 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 62 Mimi Clar, ―KNOB: Twenty Four Hours of Jazz a Day,‖ The Jazz Review (August, 1959): 37. 63 ―Best in Jazz: Burgie!‖ KNOB brochure circa late 1950s. Found in SSC. 64 See SSC for other brochures. 65 ―Best in Jazz: KNOB FM98,‖ KNOB brochure, March 19, 1960. Document located in the Charles Weisenberg Collection, or ―CWC‖ hereafter, at the Los Angeles Jazz Institute Archive, California State University, Long Beach. 66 Johnny Otis, ―Let‘s Talk,‖ Los Angeles Sentinel (Thursday, August 11, 1960): 4A. 67 Hazel La Marre, ―Don Hamilton Gets Set for Brilliant Career in Radio,‖ Los Angeles Sentinel nd (Thursday, Jan. 2 , 1958): Sec. A, page 9. 68 Johnny Otis, ―Let‘s Talk,‖ Los Angeles Sentinel (Thursday, August 11, 1960): 4A; ―Adams th Moves Show to Daily FM Slot,‖ Los Angeles Sentinel (Thursday, July 28 , 1960): C-1; th ―‗Chazz‘ Crawford Soundtrack,‖ The California Eagle (Thursday, July 28 , 1960): 9; ―From the Stations…,‖ FM & Fine Arts Guide (September, 1960): unknown page. 69 th ―Adams Moves Show to Daily FM Slot,‖ Los Angeles Sentinel (Thursday, July 28 , 1960): C-3; ―From the Stations…,‖ FM & Fine Arts Guide (September, 1960): unknown page. 70 th ―Joe Adams Mc‘s Ralph‘s 8 Avenue Market Opening,‖ The California Eagle (Thursday, August 17, 1961): unknown page. 71 ―KNOB Wide Awake with Sleepy Stein,‖ SESAC Vol. 18 No. 11 (Nov. 1958): unknown page; ―All-Jazz Radio Station Opens Here,‖ Tribune (Wed., August 21, 1957): unknown page. 72 ―KNOB-FM Offers Full Time Jazz Fare,‖ TV-Radio Life (October, 10 unknown year): 33. 73 George Laine, ―Sleepy Maps Southland Jazz,‖ The Independent (Saturday, June 27, 1957): 13. 74 ―New Jazz Show on KNOB,‖ Los Angeles Herald and Express (Saturday, February 25, 1961): unknown page. 75 ―The ENS Carey Show,‖ Scanner (March 15, 1959): unknown page. For mention of Carey‘s work on ―Jazz Panorama,‖ see Chuck Carey, ―Jazz Notes,‖ Daily Bruin (Wed., March 12, 1958): M-4. 76 ―KNOB Makes Changes,‖ Los Angeles Herald and Express (Saturday, June 18, 1960): 10. 282 77 ―Lucraft to KNOB,‖ Songsmith (April 1960): unknown page. 78 The Fourty Niner (November 12, 1959): unknown page; Harbor Hawk (Friday, November 6, 1959): unknown page; ―Dons Swing with Fisher,‖ Don News Vol. III No. 2 (Nov. 6 1959): unknown page. 79 th Will Jones, ―Radio & TV,‖ Down Beat (Feb. 6 1958): 34. 80 ―All Jazz,‖ KNOB brochure circa late 1950s, found in SSC. 81 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 82 Clar, ―KNOB: Twenty Four Hours of Jazz a Day,‖ 38. 83 ―FM Dial,‖ Los Angeles Examiner (January 11, 1959): unknown page. 84 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 85 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 86 ―The World‘s Best in Jazz,‖ unknown periodical (Thursday August, 27, 1959): unknown page; ―FM Dial,‖ Los Angeles Examiner (January 11, 1959): unknown page; ―FM Program Highlights,‖ FM & Fine Arts Guide (April 1960): 103; and ―FM Dial,‖ Los Angeles Examiner (Sunday, November 20, 1960): 11; 87 Sleepy Stein, ―Jazz Festival at the Lighthouse,‖ unknown periodical, date, year and page number. Found in SSC. 88 Bob Brooks, ―Actress, FM Owners Have a Cool Yule,‖ Los Angeles Mirror (Thurs., Dec. 22, 1960): unknown page. 89 ―KNOB-FM to Cover Newport Jazz Festival,‖ TV-Radio Life (June 21, 1958): 21. 90 Los Angeles Philharmonic, ―100 Most Noteworthy, Interesting, and Remarkable Hollywood Bowl Moments,‖ http://www.laphil.com/press/press_kits/hb_pk_2005/bowl_100.pdf (accessed Sept. 3rd, 2009). 91 nd 2 Annual Los Angeles Jazz Festival program. Found in SSC. 92 Nathan Fry, ―The Man Behind the Music,‖ FM and Fine Arts Guide (May 1960): 14. 93 ―Jazz Concert Calendared at Church Friday,‖ Los Angeles Times (Sunday, Dec 6 , 1959): 5 94 95 th See concert program in SSC. Ralph Gleason, ―Perspectives,‖ Down Beat (December 12, 1957): 26. 96 ―KNOB Turns to Detroit,‖ unknown periodical (July 21, 1960): unknown page. See also Nathan Fry, ―The Man Behind the Music,‖ FM and Fine Arts Guide (May 1960): 14. 97 Ron Tepper, ―Sleepy Stein Had Jazz Buffs Awake,‖ Los Angeles Times (Sunday, Sept. 11, 1960): unknown page. 98 Alan Anthony, ―KNOB Expands Its Leadership in Jazz,‖ Sunday Tribune (Sunday, May 28, 1961): unknown page. 99 ―Pitt Snares KNOB Jazz,‖ Billboard Music Week (August, 14 1961): 24. 100 ―Pitt Snares KNOB Jazz,‖ Billboard Music Week (August, 14 1961): 52. 283 101 George Laine, ―Radio Station KNOB Is Doorway to New to New Jazz World,‖ Metronome (March, 1958): 31. 102 Mimi Clar, ―KNOB: Twenty Four Hours of Jazz a Day,‖ The Jazz Review (August, 1959): 37; ―KNOB Wide Awake with Sleepy Stein,‖ SESAC Vol. 18 No. 11 (Nov. 1958): unknown page. 103 George Laine, ―Radio Station KNOB Is Doorway to New to New Jazz World,‖ Metronome (March, 1958): 31. 104 Howard Lucraft, ―Knights at the Turntable: West Coast Jazz on the Air.‖ Jazz West Coast II: A Musical Celebration of West Coast Jazz, Hyatt Newporter Resort, Newport Beach, California, (Panel 2: Ken Borgers, moderator, with Sleepy Stein, Gene Norman, Chuck Niles, and Howard th Lucraft, May 28 , 1999), at LAJI. 105 Mimi Clar, ―KNOB: Twenty Four Hours of Jazz a Day,‖ The Jazz Review (August, 1959): 37. 106 ―KNOB Wide Awake with Sleepy Stein,‖ SESAC Vol. 18 No. 11 (Nov. 1958): unknown page. 107 Mimi Clar, ―KNOB: Twenty Four Hours of Jazz a Day,‖ The Jazz Review (August, 1959): 36, 37. 108 ―‗Jazz Cat‘ Moves out with $7500 in Discs,‖ Los Angeles Times (Sun., April, 13, 1958): unknown page; Mimi Clar, ―KNOB: Twenty Four Hours of Jazz a Day,‖ The Jazz Review (August, 1959): 38. 109 th City of Los Angeles Resolution, March 30 , 1959. Found in SSC. 110 st ―Council Praises Jazz Station,‖ Los Angeles Examiner (Wed., April 1 , 1959): 2, Sec 1. 111 rd Art Ryon, ―It Seems to Be the Silly Season,‖ Los Angeles Times (Fri., April 3 , 1959): unknown page. 112 George Laine, ―Radio Station KNOB Is Doorway to New to New Jazz World,‖ Metronome (March, 1958): 31. 113 nd ―KNOB (FM) Sets All-Jazz Format,‖ Broadcasting (Sept. 2 , 1957): 96. 114 Earl F. Holbrook, ―First FM Classical Station Debuts Today,‖ Los Angeles Examiner (week of March 22, 1958): unknown page. 115 Earl F. Holbrook, ―First FM Classical Station Debuts Today,‖ Los Angeles Examiner (week of March 22, 1958): unknown page. 116 Johnny Otis, ―Let‘s Talk,‖ Los Angeles Sentinel (Thursday, August 11, 1960): 4A. 117 ―Specialized Radio: Jazz,‖ See/ Hear (Sept. 5-11, unknown year): 8. 118 ―Listen Sees… Jazz‖ Unknown periodical: 16-17, in SSC. 119 120 121 KJAZ Official press release, unknown date: page 2. Found in SSC. KJAZ Official press release, unknown date: page 3. Found in SSC. KJAZ Official press release, unknown date: page 1. Found in SSC. 284 122 George Laine, ―Radio Station KNOB Is Doorway to New to New Jazz World,‖ Metronome (March, 1958): 31. 123 KNOB Wide Awake with Sleepy Stein,‖ SESAC Vol. 18 No. 11 (Nov. 1958): unknown page; ―Favorable Mentions,‖ U.S. FM (September, 1960): 9. 124 George Laine, ―Radio Station KNOB Is Doorway to New to New Jazz World,‖ Metronome (March, 1958): 31. 125 Leon Morse, ―FM—The Promise and the Reality,‖ Television Magazine (September 1958): 63. 126 Quoted in ―Twist of the KNOB,‖ document, page 2, found in SSC. 127 Ron Tepper, ―Background Music vs. Foreground,‖ Los Angeles Times, unknown date and page. Found in SSC. 128 ―1959: A Growing Up Year for California FM,‖ Media Agencies Clients (December, 1959): 68. 129 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 130 Nathan Fry, ―Hi-Fi in Motion,‖ Los Angeles Examiner (Sunday, June 18, 1961): unknown page. 131 George Laine, ―FM‘s Success May Be Death Knell for AM,‖ The Independent (Monday, August 19, 1957): 14. 132 George Laine, ―FM‘s Success May Be Death Knell for AM,‖ The Independent (Monday, August 19, 1957): 14. 133 Media Agencies Clients (Tuesday, September 8, 1959): 78; ―FM Radio Becomes Important New L.A. Advertising Medium,‖ Media Agencies Clients (November, 1957): unknown page; ―KNOB Wide Awake with Sleepy Stein,‖ SESAC Vol. 18 No. 11 (Nov. 1958): unknown page; Mimi Clar, ―KNOB: Twenty Four Hours of Jazz a Day,‖ The Jazz Review (August, 1959): 38; Monty Muns, ―Metronome,‖ The Wilshire Press (Thursday, February 26, 1959): unknown page. 134 Charles Weisenberg, ―Radio (FM) Music,‖ Frontier (April 1959): 21. 135 Mimi Clar, ―KNOB: Twenty Four Hours of Jazz a Day,‖ The Jazz Review (August, 1959): 38. 136 George Laine, ―Sleepy Maps Southland Jazz,‖ The Independent (Saturday June 27, 1957): 13. 137 Sleepy Stein, ―Way It‘s Played Makes it Jazz, Authority Says,‖ Citizen-News (Saturday, June 21, 1958): 7. 138 Charles Weisenberg, ―Radio (FM) Music,‖ Frontier (April 1959): 21. 139 ―Specialized Radio: Jazz,‖ See/ Hear (Sept. 5-11, known year): 8. 140 Charles Weisenberg, ―Radio (FM) Music,‖ Frontier (April 1959): 21. 141 Sleepy Stein, guest columnist for Charles Weisenberg in ―Jazz Notes,‖ Culver City Star News (Wednesday, February 5, 1958): unknown page. 285 142 Sleepy Stein, guest columnist for Charles Weisenberg in ―Jazz Notes,‖ Culver City Star News (Wednesday, September 4, 1957): unknown page. 143 Ron Tepper, ―Background Music vs. Foreground,‖ Los Angeles Times, unknown date and page. Found in SSC. 144 Sleep Stein, guest columnist in ―Jazz Notes,‖ Culver City Star News (Wednesday, September 4, 1957): unknown page. 145 Ron Tepper, ―Background Music vs. Foreground,‖ Los Angeles Times, unknown date and page. Found in SSC. 146 KNOB ad, Los Angeles Examiner (Sunday, October 1, 1961): unknown page. 147 Merle Sherr, ―Focus,‖ Centaurian (January 21, 1958): unknown page. 148 Sleepy Stein, guest columnist in ―Jazz Notes,‖ Culver City Star News (Wednesday, February 5, 1958): unknown page. 149 Charles Weisenberg, ―Jazz Notes,‖ Culver City Star News (Wed., June 16, 1958): 20. 150 ―Teachers Take Jazz to the Pupils,‖ Los Angeles Examiner (February 21, 1960): unknown page. 151 Sleepy Stein, ―Way It‘s Played Makes it Jazz, Authority Says,‖ Citizen-News (Saturday, June 21, 1958): 7. 152 Sleepy Stein, ―Price of L.A. Jazz Too High,‖ Los Angeles Times (Sunday, June 14, 1959): unknown page. 153 Charles Weisenberg, ―Radio (FM) Music,‖ Frontier (April 1959): 21. 154 Maurice Hawes, ―It‘s Sleepy Down South,‖ Angel City (Dec. 1960): 25. 155 ―Twist of the KNOB,‖ Down Beat (October 31, 1957): 11. 156 ―Twist of the KNOB,‖ Down Beat (October 31, 1957): 11. 157 George Laine, ―Sleepy Maps Southland Jazz,‖ The Independent (Saturday June 27, 1957): 13. 158 Johnny Otis, ―Let‘s Talk,‖ Los Angeles Sentinel (Thursday, August 11, 1960): 4A. 159 Ralph J. Gleason, ―It Doesn‘t Pay to Play the Reciprocity Game,‖ San Francisco Chronicle (Tuesday, July 21, 1959): unknown page. 160 Johnny Otis, ―Let‘s Talk,‖ Los Angeles Sentinel (Thursday, August 11, 1960): 4A. 161 162 163 164 th Interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. Maurice Hawes, ―It‘s Sleepy Down South,‖ Angel City (Dec. 1960): 25. nd Interview with the author, July 2 , 2009. st Interview with the author, July 1 , 2009. 165 Interviews with Shayne and Weisenberg. Shayne recollects ―around $2 an hour, or something like that‖ and Weisenberg believed ―it could have been as little as $5 a show.‖ 166 nd Interview with the author, July 2 , 2009. 167 nd Interview with the author, July 2 , 2009. 286 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 nd Interview with the author, July 2 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. th Interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. st Interview with the author, July 1 , 2009. st Interview with the author, July 1 , 2009. st Interview with the author, July 1 , 2009. th Interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. nd Interview with the author, July 2 , 2009. th Interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. th Interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. nd Interview with the author, July 2 , 2009. th Interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. th Interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. th Interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. th Interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. th Interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. 184 George Laine, ―Radio Station KNOB Is Doorway to New to New Jazz World,‖ Metronome (March, 1958): 31. 185 ―Too Few West Coast Jazzmen Heard,‖ TV-Radio Life (August 2, 1958): 10. 186 ―Too Few West Coast Jazzmen Heard,‖ TV-Radio Life (August 2, 1958): 10. 187 George Laine, ―Radio Station KNOB Is Doorway to New to New Jazz World,‖ Metronome (March, 1958): 31. 188 ―Too Few West Coast Jazzmen Heard,‖ TV-Radio Life (August 2, 1958): 10. 189 ―All-Star High Jazz Festival Set Saturday,‖ Mirror News (Monday, March 7, 1960): unknown page. 190 Charles Weisenberg, ―Pianos,‖ The Critic‟s Ear (Long Beach, CA: KNOB, unknown date): page 1, found in CWC 191 st Interview with the author, July 1 , 2009. 192 ―Howard Lucraft,‖ Crescendo (unknown date), quoted from http://www.howardlucraft.com/crescendo.html; (accessed September 9, 2009). 193 st Interview with the author, July 1 , 2009. 194 st Interview with the author, July 1 , 2009. 195 Donald Freeman, ―Science Fiction‘s TV Woes Related,‖ San Diego Union, unknown date and page. 196 Donald Freeman, ―Science Fiction‘s TV Woes Related,‖ San Diego Union, unknown date and page. 287 197 Earl F. Holbrook, ―From Globe, Ariz., a Global Jazz Hoard,‖ Los Angeles Examiner (Sun,, Feb. 2, 1958): page 6, Sec. 1, Part B. 198 Ron [unknown surname], ―KNOB Bows New Show, KUSC Bows,‖ Los Angeles Herald and Express (Saturday, September 30, 1961): unknown page. 199 Charles Weisenberg, ―Script #3,‖ The Critic‟s Ear (Long Beach, CA: KNOB, unknown date): page 9. 200 nd Interview with the author, July 2 , 2009. 201 202 203 204 nd Interview with the author, July 2 , 2009. nd Interview with the author, July 2 , 2009. nd Interview with the author, July 2 , 2009. nd Interview with the author, July 2 , 2009. 205 Howard Lucraft, http://www.howardlucraft.com/morebio.html (accessed September 9th, 2009); Howard Lucraft, http://www.howardlucraft.com/asherecalls.html (accessed September 9th, 2009). 206 st Interview with the author, July 1 , 2009. 207 ―Howard Lucraft,‖ Crescendo (unknown date and page), quoted from http://www.howardlucraft.com/crescendo.html; (accessed September 9, 2009). 208 st Interview with the author, July 1 , 2009. 209 ―Howard Lucraft,‖ Crescendo (unknown date and page), quoted from http://www.howardlucraft.com/crescendo.html; (accessed September 9, 2009). 210 st Interview with the author, July 1 , 2009. 211 212 213 st Interview with the author, July 1 , 2009. ―Comedy Tonight,‖ FM highlights from unknown newspaper clipping, found in SSC. st Interview with the author, July 1 , 2009. 214 ―He Who Hesitates is Lost!!!‖ KNOB official correspondence, found in SSC. 215 ―He Who Hesitates is Lost!!!‖ KNOB official correspondence, found in SSC. 216 Johnny Otis, ―Let‘s Talk,‖ Los Angeles Sentinel (Thursday, August 11, 1960): 4A. 217 Johnny Otis, ―Let‘s Talk,‖ Los Angeles Sentinel (Thursday, August 11, 1960): 4A. 218 Shelly Manne, ―Approval Given By Shelly Manne,‖ unknown newspaper, found in SSC. 219 Shelly Manne, ―Approval Given By Shelly Manne,‖ unknown newspaper, found in SSC. 220 Shelly Manne, ―Approval Given By Shelly Manne,‖ unknown newspaper, found in SSC. 221 Shelly Manne, ―Approval Given By Shelly Manne,‖ unknown newspaper, found in SSC. 222 Shelly Manne, ―Approval Given By Shelly Manne,‖ unknown newspaper, found in SSC. 223 Shelly Manne, ―Approval Given By Shelly Manne,‖ unknown newspaper, found in SSC. 224 ―Stereo Concerama: Live vs. Recorded Concert,‖ ad in unknown newspaper, found in SSC. 288 225 Monty Muns, ―Metronome,‖ The Wilshire Press (Thursday, February 26, 1959): unknown page. 226 ―Stereo Concerama: Live vs. Recorded Concert,‖ ad in unknown newspaper, found in SSC. 227 Monty Muns, ―Metronome,‖ The Wilshire Press (Thursday, February 26, 1959): unknown page. 228 Monty Muns, ―Metronome,‖ The Wilshire Press (Thursday, February 26, 1959): unknown page. 229 ―On the Beat,‖ Melody Maker (March 14, 1959): 4. 230 Alan Anthony, ―KNOB Expands Its Leadership to Jazz,‖ Sunday Tribune (Sunday, May 28, 1961): unknown page. 231 ―FM Radio Becomes Important New L.A. Advertising Medium,‖ Media Agencies Clients (November, 1957): unknown page. 232 ―FM Radio Becomes Important New L.A. Advertising Medium,‖ Media Agencies Clients (November, 1957): unknown page. 233 ―Newly-Elected Officers,‖ Media Agencies Clients (Monday April 20, 1962): 11. 234 Sleepy Stein, official KNOB correspondence to The Prompter, unknown date, found in SSC. 235 Ron Tepper, ―Bumper Banners to the Rescue!‖ Los Angeles Times (Sunday, May 14, 1961): unknown page. 236 Ron Tepper, ―Bumper Banners to the Rescue!‖ Los Angeles Times (Sunday, May 14, 1961): unknown page. 237 George Laine, ―FM‘s Success May Be Death Knell for AM,‖ The Independent (Monday, August 19, 1957): 14. 238 Boots Lebaron, ―Two Systems Not Rivals—Sleepy,‖ Los Angeles Times (Sunday Sept. 21, 1958): Part VII. 239 George Laine, ―Radio Station KNOB Is Doorway to New to New Jazz World,‖ Metronome (March, 1958): 31. 240 ―FM Radio Becomes Important New L.A. Advertising Medium,‖ Media Agencies Clients (November, 1957): unknown page. 241 ―FM Radio Becomes Important New L.A. Advertising Medium,‖ Media Agencies Clients (November, 1957): unknown page. 242 ―FM Radio Becomes Important New L.A. Advertising Medium,‖ Media Agencies Clients (November, 1957): unknown page. 243 ―FM Radio Becomes Important New L.A. Advertising Medium,‖ Media Agencies Clients (November, 1957): unknown page. 244 ―FM Radio Becomes Important New L.A. Advertising Medium,‖ Media Agencies Clients (November, 1957): unknown page. 245 Media Agencies Clients (Tuesday, September 8, 1959): 78 289 246 ―FM Radio Becomes Important New L.A. Advertising Medium,‖ Media Agencies Clients (November, 1957): unknown page. 247 Quoted in ―Twist of the KNOB,‖ document, page 3, found in SSC. 248 Quoted in ―Twist of the KNOB,‖ document, page 3, found in SSC. 249 ―KNOB Audience Survey,‖ (February 15, 1962), found in SSC. 250 ―KNOB Audience Brand Information,‖ (February 15, 1962), found in SSC. 251 Quoted in ―Twist of the KNOB,‖ document, page 4, found in SSC. 252 Walter Ames, ―Soft Sell Proves Profitable for Static-Free FM Radio,‖ Los Angeles Times (unknown date): unknown page, found in SSC. 253 Walter Ames, ―Soft Sell Proves Profitable for Static-Free FM Radio,‖ Los Angeles Times (unknown date & page), found in SSC. 254 George Laine, ―Sleepy Maps Southland Jazz,‖ The Independent (Saturday June 27, 1957): 13. 255 George Laine, ―Sleepy Maps Southland Jazz,‖ The Independent (Saturday June 27, 1957): 13. 256 Boots Lebaron, ―Two Systems Not Rivals—Sleepy,‖ Los Angeles Times (Sunday Sept. 21, 1958): Part VII. 257 George Laine, ―FM‘s Success May Be Death Knell for AM,‖ The Independent (Monday, August 19, 1957): 14. 258 Broadcasting (June 2, 1958): unknown page. 259 ―Station on Hill Switches to News,‖ Citizen-News (Friday, May 23, 1958): unknown page. 260 ―Joan Winchell,‖ Los Angeles Times (Tuesday, Feb. 17, 1959): Part II, page 4; Marjorie Montgomery, ―Wives Sponsor ‗Show of Year,‘‖ Citizen-News (Monday, February 9, 1959): 6; ―Disc Jockey Wives Install Mrs. Crofford in Key Post,‖ Rosemead Review (Thursday May 7, 1959): unknown page. 261 ―Alex Cooper Fund Show Packs Shrine,‖ unknown newspaper, found in SSC. 262 John G. Houser, ―Disc Jockey Wives to Raise Money for Recreation Center,‖ Unknown newspaper (Sunday, February 15, 1959): Sec. 8, page 5; ―Alex Cooper Tribute to Aid City of Hope,‖ Los Angeles Examiner (Tues., Feb 17, 1959): unknown page. 263 ―Show of the Year‖ unknown newspaper advertisement, found in SSC. 264 Jack Lait, Jr., ―‗Divorce Hearing‘ Debuts on Ch. 5,‖ unknown newspaper, unknown date, found in SSC. 265 ―Alex Cooper Fund Show Packs Shrine,‖ unknown newspaper found in SSC; ―Disc Jockey Wives Install Mrs. Crofford in Key Post,‖ Rosemead Review (Thursday May 7, 1959): unknown page. 266 ―Disc Jockey Wives Install Mrs. Crofford in Key Post,‖ Rosemead Review (Thursday May 7, 1959): unknown page. 267 ―Show People United for the City of Hope,‖ document found in SSC. 290 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 ―Show People United for the City of Hope,‖ document found in SSC. th Bob Shayne, interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. See Synanon, DVD, Dir. Richard Quinn. Columbia Pictures, 1965. th Bob Shayne, interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. rd KNOB editorial, June 3 , 1963, found in CWC. th th KNOB editorial, June 9 and 10 , 1963, found in CWC. nd Charles Weisenberg, interview with the author, July 2 , 2009. nd Charles Weisenberg, interview with the author, July 2 , 2009. nd Charles Weisenberg, interview with the author, July 2 , 2009. nd Charles Weisenberg, interview with the author, July 2 , 2009. th KNOB editorial, January 20 , 1963, found in CWC. 280 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 281 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. Stein, ―Knights at the Turntable: West Coast Jazz on the Air.‖ th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, email to the author, Oct. 13 , 2009. 299 Sleepy Stein, ―Knights at the Turntable: West Coast Jazz on the Air.‖ Found in LAJI. 300 Sleepy Stein, ―Programming Panel,‖ Billboard Music Week (April 24, 1961): 36. 301 Sleepy Stein, ―Programming Panel,‖ Billboard Music Week (April 24, 1961): 36. 291 302 303 304 th Bob Shayne, interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. th Bob Shayne, interview with the author, June 27 , 2009. 305 Shelly Manne, quoted in Charles Weisenberg, ―Thoughts on Jazz,‖ Frontier (April 1960): unknown page. 306 Shelly Manne, quoted in Charles Weisenberg, ―Thoughts on Jazz,‖ Frontier (April 1960): unknown page. 307 Shelly Manne, quoted in Charles Weisenberg, ―Thoughts on Jazz,‖ Frontier (April 1960): unknown page. 308 Shelly Manne, quoted in Charles Weisenberg, ―Thoughts on Jazz,‖ Frontier (April 1960): unknown page. 309 Sleepy Stein, ―L.A. Jazz Price Too High,‖ Los Angeles Times (Sunday, June 14, 1959): unknown page. 310 Notice to all shareholders, creditors, and claimants of Cerritos Broadcasting Company on September 13, 1965, found in CWC. 311 Sleepy Stein, ―Knights at the Turntable: West Coast Jazz on the Air.‖ 312 ―Stein, Alex ‗Sleepy,‘‖ http://www.laradio.com/wheres.htm (accessed, September 21st, 2009). 313 Borgers and Lucraft, ―Who‘s Sleepy.‖ 292 “Local Boys Draw Comment”: Race and Authenticity in the Criticism of West Coast Jazz ―What is the emotion? What is the Feeling? Who are it feeling are it a ‗humming‘… Our emotion, not its not the witch training not the denials of self and family not the isolated dead corpse negro accepting the hating cup… But the us emotion the love emotion the love heat, snowball, heat, movement, life, yeah, vitality‖ - 1 Amiri Baraka, Class Struggle in Music (1) ―‗Negro-ness,‘ by the fifties, for many Negroes (and Whites) was the only strength left to American culture.‖ - 2 Amiri Baraka, Blues People Of course I mean to be provocative by opening with a quote from the great polemicist‘s socio-aesthetic study of black music in America. Published in 1963, at the beginning of a transitional but fruitful stage in Baraka‘s (then LeRoi Jones) life, Blues People is not only a comprehensive account of African American music from slavery to then present-day but also represents a personal struggle to locate an essentially black art on an axis that extends away from the white avant-garde. His ruminations resulted in the first major publication to extensively argue 287 that the blues—and its offshoots, namely jazz—is essentially the music of African Americans. The blues, Baraka argued, was not simply a music, but a world view; less a performance method and more a way of life, and a means by which African Americans could communicate with one another by participating in a common tradition. While the jazz-as-black-music ideology was nothing new by 1963—in the 1940s Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker called their brand of jazz ―our music‖—Blues People was singular in its attempt to claim African American culture as a political strategy known today as 3 Afrocentric Essentialism. The book was immediately well-received among not only the white jazz critic elite, but soon after by those within the budding Black Nationalist movement as well, 4 with whose political strategies Baraka later aligned. By the 1950s, there was a well-established tradition of appropriating African American art forms by whites and as a result many blacks felt the need to claim (or reclaim) those cultural forms which they called their own without the participation of whites. Demonstrating the Afrocentrist perspective, Baraka attempts to identify the essential elements of the African American in the African. In other words, the essential nature of the African American must flow from some quality inherent or historically-derived in all black people. This link between African American blackness and African blackness was inspired by the life work of anthropologist Melville Herskovits whose hypotheses on African American culture played an integral part in Baraka‘s formulation of jazz criticism and theory. Herskovits proposed that African American culture is periodically renewed by African culture; that the African aesthetic exerts powerful influence in the construction of African American cultural forms. 5 288 Blues People, however, did not espouse a biological essentialist view. Baraka did not presuppose, as some critics did, that all African Americans were born with a special biological condition necessary to constructing jazz. Rather, he implied that jazz was the product of African American‘s historical/social experience. Only when one understood and appreciated this experience could he play jazz. Thus, in using a socio-anthropological approach to the blues and its ―parallel developments‖ (i.e. jazz), Baraka believed, ―something about the essential nature of the Negro‘s existence in this country ought to be revealed.‖ 6 But Baraka‘s search for blackness in music during the 1950s and early 1960s was not the product of Herskovits‘s publications 20 years earlier per se, nor was it the subsequent work of Herskovits‘s student Richard Alan Waterman, whose study of African influences in American 7 music in the early 1950s extended his research. Moreover, his investigation was not provoked by a desire to contribute to the annals of scholarship in art history or to the study of the African American experience. In fact, Baraka‘s search represents less a need to elucidate black culture, and rather a need to possess it. Blues People is more appropriately deemed as part and parcel of a mounting body of intellectual responses to a new cultural movement which threatened white society‘s investment in and access to ―blackness.‖ By the 1950s, as Baraka asserts, many whites were expressing themselves in terms of ―blackness,‖ or ―Negro-ness.‖ This was seen by their participation in various modes of African American expression; the blues, jazz, socio-linguistic patterns (the ―black vernacular‖), fashion, etc. Blues People, through considering and interrogating jazz, called into question whether whites were allowed (or even able) to access and define themselves by the body of aesthetics and behaviors seen as ―Negro.‖ For certain middle-class whites, the preservation of blackness was vital as it supported their withdrawal from modern society, while for many African Americans, it 289 symbolized their socio-historical experience and maintained the system of communication and unity between them. While white participation in black culture existed for some time prior, their investment in ―blackness‖ came to a head in the 1950s as a result of the civil rights movement and the ensuing consciousness on the part of black society around it to preserve segments of African American culture threatened by white advancement. What resulted from this new societal context was an impulsion to discuss—or argue over—the legitimacy of white participation in African American culture. A key battleground for which the ―blackness‖ debates took place was in the idiom of music. In this chapter, I want to place jazz within the crossfire of rhetorical exchange. More specifically, I am interested in the criticisms of the West Coast jazz phenomenon which appeared in Down Beat magazine in roughly 1953. Predating the Black Power movement of the 1960s, as well as Blues People, this body of criticism confronts the growth and rapid proliferation of the 8 style. My contention here is that in examining the ways in which West Coast jazz was received in that periodical—mainly among its professional but at times, by its readers as well—reveals some of the cultural priorities, anxieties, and preoccupations of the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that the analyses of the critics of West Coast jazz offer a window onto the larger matter of race relations and the intellectual pursuit of authenticity in music, specifically in jazz. The West Coast jazz debates essentially transcend the discussions of whether the music was simply ―good‖ or not. Critics of West Coast jazz, in their opposition to the music, were saying something much more complex. In arguing that the music was ―bloodless‖ and lacks ―emotion,‖ these critics saw the music as void of, and in direct opposition to, ―blackness,‖ one inextricably tied to ―authenticity‖. The authentic jazz then, was emotional; ―fiery,‖ and played ―with guts‖ or with ―black emotion.‖ An authentic jazz, moreover, must demonstrate its 290 inclusion of a requisite number of elite African American practitioners. West Coast jazz, performed mostly by white musicians, was seen by its very appearance—the racial composition of its practitioners—as inauthentic. Therefore, the music could not escape its label as a style for whites. Moreover, the charge that corporations—the Hollywood film industry and West Coast record labels like Pacific Jazz and Contemporary—had created the music as simply a commodity to appeal to popular consumption or to lay jazz listeners also fueled critics‘ belief in the music‘s invalidity and its inauthenticity. This preoccupation with all things West Coast inevitably led to an East vs. West polarization, wherein the ―emotional‖ be-bop style jazz played in New York by mostly black musicians was considered more real than the white California aesthetic. By the end of World War II, New York was arguably the center of the jazz world and home to just about every aspect of the jazz idiom: the musicians, the music publishers, the record labels, and most importantly, the critics. The West Coast jazz movement in California, much the reception of beat poetry on the West Coast at the time, was seen not only as a distant polluter of black culture or an offbeat attempt to replicate Harlem or Greenwich Village, as Harry Roskolenko saw it, but as an oppositional force to black cultural autonomy. 9 A powerful and sweeping stereotype is at work here, one which connects ―blackness‖ and African Americans to emotionality. To play authentic jazz, it follows, one must ―play black,‖ play with ―black emotion.‖ The idea that dynamic emotionality is a characteristic of all African Americans was certainly a not new concept in the 1950s. During the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s for instance, many whites accepted the idea that blacks were more capable of expressing emotion than were whites. 10 The criticisms of West Coast jazz in the 1950s exhibited the same 291 thinking. They forged a link between African American musical traditions and race; between what Baraka calls the ―blues impulse,‖ and the ―primitive mystique.‖ The stereotype of blacks as ―simple exotics‖ and ―charming savages‖—court jesters existing only for white entertainment—corresponds with the stereotype of emotionality. It belies the complexity of African American musical traditions and affirms their dominant emotional capacities while condescending to an entire racial group with the idea that only a primitive savage can play authentic jazz: an arrangement which whites are obviously incapable of. Thus, this concept of the African American‘s deep and unbridled emotionality is juxtaposed with the stereotype that they are incapable of higher thought. As James Lincoln Collier has suggested, the opinion that African Americans were endowed with innate qualities that allowed them to play th jazz better than whites proliferated during the 20 century due to the dominant stereotype that ―blacks could feel but not think, while whites could think but not feel.‖ 11 Scholars have for many years debated the influence of jazz and blues in white America. Somewhat famously, a plethora of scholarship exists on why the Beat Generation identified Charlie Parker and bebop and later why white middle-class folk enthusiasts embraced Leadbelly and other black blues artists in the 1950s. What they have looked at less is this parallel development; this opposing group (mostly but not limited to, a white critic elite) who, while whites streamed in to black culture via Beat or ―folk revival‖ influence, voiced serious doubts as to whether it was a good thing for black music and for black people. Critical attacks on the more prominent members of the ―cool school‖—Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Paul Desmond, Shorty Rogers, etc.—reveal an often overlooked but significant cultural anxiety of the 1950s and 1960s: the fear of whites appropriating and, in turn, representing black culture. 292 The sniping rejection of West Coast jazz as ―inauthentic‖ jazz represents this fear because of the genre‘s departure from African American musical approaches and the fact that the movement itself was largely composed of whites. This fear was not exclusively exhibited by African American thinkers such as Amiri Baraka who wanted to preserve jazz as central to African American culture and identity. In fact, disapproval flowed freely from white intelligentsia stationed in Down Beat magazine and similar periodicals. Many jazz critics, white and black alike, were—to varying degrees—fearful of the mass appropriation of jazz culture from each other because the result would likely represent a challenge to their own racial identity which they wished not to reckon with. Whites playing in the manner of African American artistic expression—or, whites ―playing black‖—was not particularly threatening, though it did force some blacks to answer the question, by playing jazz, were whites stealing a fundamentally black art. Rather, it was the opposite condition, the appropriation (and the likelihood of representation) of jazz and black aesthetic traditions by whites, that would require reconsideration and revision of racial-cultural roles in America. Furthermore, many critics felt that fusing both aesthetic traditions together was verboten because of the racial implications—desegregation and race mixing—but also that pairing the two traditions would somehow water-down jazz, make it illegitimate, or act as a pollutant. In this way, critics of jazz in general often failed to see beyond the black-white dynamic; that there could be other possibilities, other racial categories, other strains of jazz that could be created as a result of unrestricted contribution from both groups. Nevertheless, criticisms of West Coast jazz point not only to a need to preserve aesthetic ―blackness,‖ but authenticity in music as well. One aspect of these criticisms is particularly fascinating: they reveal a conversation that mostly whites are having with other whites. One then must ask, what incentive does the white 293 jazz critic elite have by preserving—and benefiting from—―blackness?‖ The blacks-as-moreemotional-than-whites stereotype did not preclude whites from joining in and participating in black culture. More whites than ever before were appropriating African American music, linguistic practices, and exploring other modes of artistic expression with the intent of identifying with the African American experience. In fact, the jazz critic elite (virtually all of whom were white, at the time) defined themselves and the very music they surveyed in terms of blackness or ―Negro-ness.‖ Supporting blackness in jazz, to these critics, was a way of asserting oneself, one‘s intellect and ―hipness‖ or oneness with the African American experience. It also reinforced notions of manhood. In a very real sense, these critics fashioned meanings of masculinity and authenticity—―manliness‖ and ―legitimacy‖—in terms of the African American aesthetic. The criticisms that West Coast jazz was a ―meatless‖ or ―vegetarian‖ jazz style because of its often quiet, ethereal, laid-back approach and conclusions that it was therefore ―not black,‖ these critics were effectively constructing masculinity in terms of an African American brand of blackness. Through their criticisms, Down Beat critics in particular—Nat Hentoff, Ira Gitler, Barry Ulanov, Ralph Gleason, and others—used questions of authenticity in jazz to engage in a conversation about race. How can jazz—a historically black art—be authentic when it has experienced mass appropriation by whites who now appear to represent the music and who have implemented their own measure of aesthetic influence upon it? Essentially, the stakes in defining ―jazz‖ reveal an interesting anxiety of these critics to preserve their own intellectualism, masculinity and ―black cultural citizenship.‖ Both professional critics and lay listeners alike believed they shared an interest in preserving the integrity and authenticity of jazz alongside blacks because of their professional/intellectual positions (respectively), their participation in and 294 understanding of the culture—their black cultural citizenship—and out of a need to safeguard their own identities from fringe cultural movements (i.e. West Coast jazz), contradicting jazz analyses, or alternate answers to their own questions of authenticity in jazz that they desired not to consider. As stated before, black and white critics alike attacked West Coast jazz. However, it was criticisms from white America which seemed to offer the most peculiar and contradictory of attitudes in terms of whites participating in black culture. Remarkably, these critics did not demand that white musicians only play jazz within their own racial-aesthetical traditions. Rather they encouraged the opposite; that they ―play black.‖ ―Playing black‖ is considered the primary responsibility of any jazzman who attempts the music regardless of racial background. This is done by engaging in the (historically-speaking) African American techniques of constructing music, acknowledging and playing in the styles of past elite black jazzmen, and constantly honing ―chops‖ or virtuosic expertise on one‘s instrument in their vein. Most importantly, it means engaging in the African American performance method or aesthetic. The criticisms of West Coast jazz reflected a motivation by its white critics to appropriate these and other black cultural forms while chastising those who did not as ―moldy figs‖ or as cultural interlopers. However, while on one hand white critics were lauding the accomplishments of those white musicians who performed in the black aesthetic and denouncing those who incorporated European musical traditions or whose performance owed more to Anglo aesthetical traits, at the same time these critics were fearful of blacks seeking ownership of jazz; a predicament that could potentially shut whites out of participation. Thus, while much of West Coast jazz criticism seeks to preserve the ―blackness‖ of jazz, it also attempts to hold the door open for whites to participate in the music—including within the idioms of jazz publication, record pressing, record 295 company ownership, night club ownership, etc.—without addressing the pleas for black cultural autonomy, or at least some black ownership of jazz. Therefore, central question surrounding these criticisms and debates is: what is the danger if whites (and ―whiteness‖) represent jazz? The responses recorded in the pages of Down Beat signify different ways of talking about this issue within the context of a highly volatile period in U.S. race relations. In turn, these discourses say something important about race and authenticity in jazz and of race-based culture of the time. A word here on source material: Down Beat is the ideal location for inquiry and research as it yields the greatest insight into this phenomenon. As perhaps the most influential music periodical of this time period, Down Beat‘s history is almost as long as the music it praises. Not only is it one of the oldest jazz periodicals in the country, but in its near century-long history it has produced more jazz thinkers, advocates, and readers than any other. Its list of contributors reads like a ―who‘s who‖ of the world‘s most notable jazz intellectuals: Andre Hodeir, Ralph Gleason, Leonard Feather, Nat Hentoff, Barry Ulanov and Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), to name a few. Its power in recording the changing musical tastes and attitudes are also equally as influential. Before any major work of jazz criticism had been published, Down Beat amassed a body of jazz history dating before the magazine‘s inception. Thus, even before Andre Hodeir‘s Jazz: Its Essence and Evolution (1956) was published and distributed in the United States, Down Beat writers were busy discussing West Coast jazz and its socio-musical implications. In the 1950s and 1960s, the magazine was published on a bi-weekly basis, a frequency which implies a large societal need for music literature and an equally large magazine buying demographic. Today, bi-weekly magazines are among the most widely read in the country (what Sports 296 Illustrated is to sports and People is to celebrity gossip today, Down Beat was to American music only a few decades ago).Thus, Down Beat was the chronicle of popular music of the time. “„White Man‟s Music?‟: The Eurological/Afrological Aesthetic of West Coast Jazz” ―How do white jazz musicians come to grips with living artistically in a black world, using the blues and African-American rhythms as the basis of their music? For some, a fascination with African-American culture is a central part of their involvement in the music, while others have little connection to black culture. Some white musicians are aware of the irony involved, while others rarely question their life in a black world playing blues licks. Some white musicians have dedicated their careers to imitating African-American artists or writing in an authentically black idiom, while others have taken the styles of African-American musicians as the springboard for the development of a music with white and African-American influences.‖ - Charley Gerrard in Jazz in Black and White 12 1953 and 1954 were seminal years for the California jazz scene. They marked the beginning of considerable national attention to a movement spurred by its modernist lineage, regional differences, and the rise of a new musical aesthetic. Gerry Mulligan with his ―pianoless quartet‖ and was heralded by jazz editor Ralph Gleason as having ―the freshest and most interesting sound to come out of jazz in a long time.‖ 13 Chet Baker won the Down Beat readers‘ poll for best trumpeter of the year in both years. Howard Rumsey and Stan Kenton were perhaps the most recognizable local Los Angeles bandleaders to make a name for themselves on a national stage, while Pacific Jazz and Contemporary prevailed among the few record labels based on the West Coast to produce a record of the movement. Magazines such as Down Beat, as 297 well as other newspapers and jazz press publications across the country tuned in to a new, very different kind of jazz. California had the ears of America listening intently to its distinct new sounds. However, this new jazz attracted praise as well as controversy; enthusiastic supporters as well as potent detractors. While many listeners were struck by the ―West Coast sound,‖ many in the East—from professional critics to musicians to lay jazz listeners—were not so inspired. Many simply could not relate aesthetically to the West Coast school, and even more believed that West Coast musicians‘ style came from inexperience in tackling the more complex bebop-based music and thus were relegated to play a tasteless, ―low brow‖ brand of jazz. While these were common perceptions, they are more a matter of personal preference or plain lack of knowledge than criticism per se. In fact, the most prevalent and engaging criticisms spoke directly to several important historical/cultural anxieties or preoccupations of the post-WWII era: namely concerns over integration, mass culture, and the search for an American postwar identity. Thus, in the contexts of Cold War race-relations and integration, an expanding mass commodity/consumer market and armed with the critical theory in which many of the academy-trained intellectuals and (jazz) critics at the time were schooled (see Adorno, Marcuse and the Frankfurt School, etc.), the criticisms of West Coast jazz were subject to perhaps the harshest scrutiny of any jazz style which came before or since. 14 Firstly, the very location of this jazz movement and the overall racial composition of its practitioners there called into question the ―authenticity‖ of the music. For instance, to East Coasters, says Ted Gioia, author of West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 (1992), San Francisco ―represent[ed] not the Mecca of modern jazz, but rather the last bastion of white traditional jazz, a final haven for the ‗moldy figs.‘‖ 298 15 Los Angeles musicians in particular were the prime targets, however. Critic Max Harrison, for instance, once referred to Mulligan‘s group as ―an ensemble style for white jazz.‖ 16 Interestingly, many of the critics who at first praised West Coast jazz, like noted San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Ralph Gleason, quickly turned sour in their judgments after witnessing the excess of time its white jazzmen spent in the spotlight. In his later years, Gleason was swayed by the more nationalistic brands of music criticism, leading him to refute altogether the legitimacy of white involvement in historically African American musical forms. Thus, as Robert Gordon, a preeminent figure in the study of jazz in California suggests, the over-saturation and hyper-publicity of West Coast jazz ―practically guaranteed that any music coming out of L.A. in the late 1950s or early 1960s would be undervalued.‖ 17 More than manifesting any Cold War ideology or in representing its geographic home, it was the notion that this jazz was a part of a Hollywood-generated campaign to pitch music as a cheap commodity to the emerging 1950s commodity culture which baited criticism from culture critics and other intellectuals along the East Coast like those at Down Beat. To them, West Coast jazz represented a vapid, conformist bourgeois lifestyle within a musical milieu where more nationalistic or openly defiant strains of jazz like bebop (a music dominated by African Americans outside of California) were considered to be the liberating force; avant-garde, organic and somehow free from the polluting effects of commercialization and ―straight‖ society. Of course, 1950s America saw a surfeit of popular musics from hard bop, calypso, skiffle, third stream, rock and roll, and folk, etc. to receive immediate fame as well as the moniker, ―fad.‖ In this context, West Coast jazz could not escape its branding as a frivolous music, or worse: a jazz for those who didn‘t like jazz. 299 Also, underway since the 1940s, was a movement in jazz which called for a look backward into jazz history in pursuit of the ―original‖ and the ―authentic;‖ a return to roots of jazz. Fueled by more than an appetite for nostalgia, musicians along with the jazz press began a search into the past to solidify jazz‘s present and to predict its future. This preoccupation with the development of jazz into the 1950s ultimately held the prospect of the right to define the essential elements of jazz. Those within the ―roots‖ movement ―were not just interested in hearing their music,‖ says Gioia, ―but also wanted to hold it up as a model, assert its primacy, and to use it to oppose the ‗enemy‘ in the other camps.‖ 18 To the practitioners of the ―authenticity‖ paradigm inherent in this look backward, however, swing, bebop and other hot jazz styles were to be brought to the center of the ―jazz mainstream,‖ while West Coast jazz would remain on the outside looking in. Combined, these broader contexts exerted a powerful influence upon the reception of West Coast jazz, such that the historical record has gone largely unrevised since the heyday of the music. As Grover Sales put it as early as 1984, ―most of the West Coast group recordings from Contemporary and Pacific Jazz strike us today as bloodless museum pieces, a neatly packaged soundtrack for the cold war.‖ 19 Contrary to popular criticisms, West Coast jazz indeed sprung from an identifiable and legitimate music culture. Its musicians were not attempting to create their own musical aesthetic specifically, but their style does embody the distinct modernist Californian sensibilities of the era, which in many ways were openly defiant to strains of modernism emanating from the East Coast. In fact, the West Coast music scene by the early 1950s was extremely conducive to creating art which did not adhere to basic principles of modern jazz. San Francisco, for instance, a city with a distinct modern jazz tradition, was also a hotbed of activity for New Orleans and 300 Dixieland jazz, featuring ―revivalists‖ like Bob Scobey, Lu Watters and Turk Murphy. According to Gioia, the California musical landscape was, in general, a refuge for the antiestablishment, a place where local modernists could out-modern the Eastern avant-garde. 20 Several Angelino jazz musicians in their commentary at the time explained this quality. Gerry Mulligan, for example—whose group was based in Los Angeles—once commented to an interviewer about his music, ―You‘ll have to excuse us…We‘re progressives.‖ 21 Art Pepper, an artist noted for living and playing within both bop and cool idiom, described this reactive quality of West Coast jazz: ―I really dug Bird but I didn‘t want Bird to destroy me...I had to be modern.‖ 22 In essence, West Coast jazz musicians felt the modern paradigm of jazz—bebop—was no longer so modern or so relevant in the California context, and that its potential to broaden, expand, and experiment had been somewhat limited. Though many of the West Coast jazz musicians like Mulligan and Pepper were bebop enthusiasts, they were not to be complacent with experimenting only within the bebop idiom. As a result, they drew inspiration from a preexisting, highly experimental West Coast art scene to create a new musical aesthetic. Simultaneously, however, these musicians on the coast were consciously responding to the bebop establishment. On that score, West Coast jazz often exhibited an ambiguous relationship with bebop. While West Coast artists held bebop with high esteem, they often reorganized it around the sensibilities of California modernism, instituting a withdrawal from the many of the African American aesthetic practices which undergirded it. In augmenting bebop slightly they created a new style of jazz, challenged bebop as the dominant style in the region while at the same time remixed the language of bebop into a new form constitutive of an organic, native Californian art. 301 As Gioia explains, West Coast jazz shared with bebop many of the same musical values: ―an allegiance to contemporary trends in music, a predilection for experimentation, a distaste for conformity and a view of jazz as an underground movement.‖ 23 But from there the music departed marketdly. The roots of its cool aesthetic extend back to the stylings of a few noted jazzmen of the late 1940s. In terms of individual sound, tenor saxophonist Lester Young, whose breathy, ballad-like playing was highly influential among the young saxophonists of the movement. Likewise, the compositions of the Claude Thornhill Orchestra, the classical-infused jazz of pianist Lennie Tristano, as well as those of the Stan Kenton Orchestra, who also utilized Latin stylings and instrumentation, and a highly progressive arranging style, were also important influences. In fact, the Thornhill and Kenton bands featured artists who later made names for themselves in the cool genre headlining their own groups: Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Shorty Rogers, Art Pepper, and Shelly Manne, to name a few. While the roots of West Coast jazz can be attributed traced to musicians living and working in California after World War II, it was Miles Davis‘ Birth of the Cool (recorded, 1949; released 1957), recorded on the East Coast by a St. Louis-born trumpeter, which aptly characterized the aesthetic which would come to define the West Coast style. Though Davis‘ name graced the cover, it was the accompanying musicians, most of whom were presently rooted as members of the Claude Thornhill Orchestra of 1946-49, which were the heart of the group. Davis, who had been Charlie Parker‘s trumpeter for the last few years and who was known primarily as a bebop musician, could nevertheless identify with and express the cool aesthetic with the rest of the group due to his previous collaborations with pianist Gil Evans. Davis had called upon Evans, along with Gerry Mulligan and Gunther Schuller—all Thornhill Orchestra 302 men who later embodied the cool style in the 1950s—to do the composing and arranging of most of the tunes. The nine-piece group, as a result, bore a distinctly Thornhill-esque sound. From the outset, this experimental nonet sought to expand beyond the boundaries of bebop. Whereas big bands of the era were too large to exhibit all its musicians‘ improvisational talent and placed more emphasis on melody, harmony and arrangement, bebop groups conversely utilized more improvisation and placed less emphasis on the song‘s melody, composition, etc. Since the ―Birth of Cool‖ nonet was larger than the standard bebop group but was smaller than typical big bands, the resulting music emphasized experimental arranging and, at the same time, showcased more improvisation of its members. While improvisation was highly regarded by the group, it was thought that solos should be realized in the context of the aesthetics of the composition. 24 In essence, individuality would be subordinate to group performance. The group also employed the individual sections of the band (rhythm section, brass instruments, and wind instruments) to play among (or against) each other using contrapuntal melodies, alternate meters and compartmentalized melodies. Moreover, the nonet lacked a tenor saxophonist (a complete aberration in jazz groups of the 1950s), yet employed a tuba (a near noshow in jazz groups since its New Orleans days of the early part of the century), and a French horn (an instrument rarely found outside the symphony orchestra). Ultimately, however, Birth of the Cool was too experimental for most jazz audiences and the group lasted only long enough to play a few live dates in New York after its recording. Nevertheless, the cool aesthetic (like its musician practitioners) was heading westward, developing an experimental sound recording and helping to establish a West Coast jazz movement. Indeed, many of those from the Thornhill and Kenton bands settled in Los Angeles (most notably Gerry Mulligan) and exerted powerful influence on the local music scene. Their 303 music proliferated in California due to the growing number of jazz institutions like the Blackhawk in San Francisco, the Lighthouse, a Los Angeles seaside club, the Haig on Sunset Blvd. where Mulligan‘s group was a fixture, as well as due to two new California record labels, Pacific Jazz and Contemporary, which signed the most prominent West Coast musicians. Local musicians too were no doubt inspired by the Davis Nonet sessions. Men like Pepper, Shelly Manne, Bob Cooper, Jimmy Giuffre, and Paul Desmond were native Californians and found a common musical sensibility with men like Mulligan, Chet Baker, and Shorty Rogers who had made the move west. Together they found the West Coast to be a fertile, tolerant atmosphere in which to develop their music. While noting it is ―impossible to describe,‖ at the same time Grover Sales—somewhat paradoxically—does an apt job in explaining the sound of Birth of the Cool: ―The mood is cerebral, reflective, and understated. Timbres are blended and indistinct, floating in and out on quiescent waves. The trumpet, alto sax, and trombone are void of vibrato, more akin to the symphonic sound cultivated by Gunther Schuller‘s French horn. Gil Evans‘s arrangement of the pop tune, Moon Dreams, appears to waft on swirling mists; the low rumbling brass in Move and Godchild evokes the good-natured romps of a German marching band.‖ 25 Accordingly, the cool approach of the 1950s followed suit. In Jazz in the Sixties: The Expansion of Resources and Techniques (1990), Michael J. Budds says the cool style: ―was characterized by a relaxation of intensity, a toning down of bop‘s hard drive. This softness was reflected in the acceptance of a subdued, controlled tone quality, breathy, often muted, and with little vibrato. Impressionistic-like harmonies became the favored vehicle for the accommodation of coloristic effects and pastel moods. Slower tempos 304 permitted soloists to create long-lined, lyrical melodies. The rhythm section was encouraged to make coloristic contributions, such as the use of brushes on the snare drum and the use of the bow on the string bass. The polyphony of triple meter (the jazz waltz) led to an interest in other meters, such as 5/8 and 9/8. The casting of jazz in structural designs borrowed from European art music, much as the rondo and fugue, also appeared.‖ 26 Thus, the cool style drew heavily on symphonic or European musical styles and did away with the heavy vibrato, screeching sounds and quick melodic compositions found in the ―hot‖ or bebop style of playing. Playing ―hot‖ is accomplished in a few ways. If playing a woodwind or brass instrument, this is performed by blowing a high volume of air through the horn, often playing rapidly and at full volume, choosing notes high in the register, and with a tone which cuts through the timbre of the rhythm section. For percussion instruments, this is done by aggressively attacking the instrument; banging the piano keys, plucking guitar strings, beating the drums, etc. Playing ―hot‖ is also accomplished by utilizing complex improvisational methods, emphasizing the blues scale and engaging in various blues signifiers (bending notes in the manner of black gospel singers, etc.). Moreover, ―Hot rhythm‖, says Budds, ―is the result of the presence of the property of ―swing‖…a process by which ―European‖ weak beats are emphasized as the expense of strong beats.‖ 27 ―Swing‖ is a problematic term, and definitions—depending on the source—are occasionally widely variant. In his book Early Jazz (1968), Gunther Schuller defines swing based on its uniqueness from European musical traditions; as a disregard for the European approach to making music. Thus, swing is: ―(1) a specific type of accentuation and inflection 305 with which notes are played or sung; and (2) the continuity—the forward-propelling directionality—with which individual notes are played together.‖ 28 Swing is often the result of ―hot‖ jazz stylings. Therefore ―hotness,‖ in this sense, is a major component of the African American approach to jazz. Many white musicians and bandleaders in jazz often toned down this musical trait, leading many to believe whites and blacks naturally played distinctly different styles of jazz as a result of their racial makeup. According to James Lincoln Collier, as early as the 1920s, jazz was split largely into two styles: symphonic jazz of white musicians like Paul Whiteman and the ―hot‖ jazz of black musicians. These categories represented more than musical approaches, they articulated the belief that blacks were more capable of emotionality than whites. ―Most whites, musicians and fans,‖ he says, ―were willing to grant to black jazz musicians an edge in ‗hotness‘—I can think of no better term—that fit with the idea that blacks were more emotional than whites.‖ 29 This stereotype was not exclusively a white understanding of jazz. For instance, in his memoirs, Dizzy Gillespie invoked the stereotype in his discussion of the Birth of the Cool album and in the implications to playing either ―hot‖ or ―cool.‖ ―The record was called ‗Birth of Cool,‖ he said, ―because the guys in California sort‘ve played not hot, but ‗coolish.‘ They expressed less fire than we [in bebop] did, played less notes, less quickly, and used more open space, and they emphasized tonal quality.‖ 30 Diz further remarked: ―Musically speaking, the cool period always reminded me of white people‘s music. There was no guts in that music, not much rhythm either. They never sweated on the stand, Lee Konitz, Lennie Tristano, and those guys. I guess the idea was not to get too ―savage‖ with it. But that‘s jazz to me. Jazz to me is dynamic, a blockbuster. They sorta softened it up a bit…‖ 306 31 Elsewhere in his memoirs, Gillespie added that the cool style picked jazz apart, taking elements which were compatible with white musical aesthetics and discarding the African elements, much to his chagrin. He also noted that while Davis played in the cool style, he nevertheless acknowledged his ―roots.‖ ―Miles wasn‘t cool like that anyway,‖ he said. ―Miles is from that part of St. Louis where the ―blues‖ comes from. Just part of his music is played like that, cool. [The cool school] copped that part—the cool—but let the rest, the blues, go, or they 32 missed it.‖ In confining the blues to a limited role and abstaining from the ―hot‖ approach, Gillespie felt the cool school was outright rejecting African American culture. The ―hotness‖ and ―guts‖ essential to jazz were to be maintained as preservation of a cultural history. 33 Part of this crisis involved the heightened significance of European and African musical approaches. These two musical approaches are very distinct and in some ways oppositional. According to one prominent musicologist of the 1950s, Ernest Borneman, the European tradition employs a fixed and systematic approach to constructing music. This, while ―in [African] music, the… tendency towards obliquity and ellipsis is noticeable: no note is attacked straight; the voice or instrument always approaches it from above or below, plays around the implied pitch without ever remaining any length of time, and departs from it without ever having committed itself to a single meaning.‖ Thus, ―while the European tradition strives for regularity—of pitch, of time, timbre and of vibrato—the African tradition strives precisely for the negotiation of these elements.‖ 34 These observations were understood by jazz critics as well who have noted their respective expressive implications. In Blues People, Baraka compared the styles of two jazz alto saxophonists, Paul Desmond, a prominent West Coast jazzman and Charlie Parker, the progenitor of bebop, not only to illustrate the different musical traditions, but to depose the stereotype that black 307 aesthetics are subordinate to white aesthetics. He concluded that while Desmond (as with all white musicians) played ―‗softer,‘ or with ‗cleaner, rounder tones,‘‖—a sound that he called ―legitimate, or classical‖—Parker played in a ―raucous and uncultivated‖ manner. ―But Parker‘s sound was meant to be both of those adjectives,‖ he noted. ―Parker also would literally imitate human voice with his cries, swoops, squawks, and slurs, while Desmond always insists he is playing an instrument, that it is an artifact separate from himself.‖ 35 Baraka goes on to compare the styles of Bix Beiderbecke and Louie Armstrong to argue that whites ―playing black‖ is merely an attempt at appropriation and an exercise in imitation at best. However hard Beiderbecke tried to ―play black,‖ he still could not escape the pitfalls of European aesthetic traditions specifically because he was a white man. Thus, his music was never quite black. In the late 1960s, Frank Kofsky likewise attempted to define the two traditions but went further in suggesting that blacks and whites play essentially different brands of jazz altogether. While the jazz played by African Americans is set on ―heightening the emotional intensity,‖ the jazz played by whites is based on ―incorporating new technical devices into jazz as ends themselves.‖ 36 Especially European jazz critics elevated this binary to critical importance. In his landmark book, Jazz: Its Essence and Evolution (1956), Andre Hodeir links the cool aesthetic‘s European influence with the departure from the African American musical traditions. Cool, he says: ―represents a striving toward a certain conception of musical purity. This effort, which implies a rejection of the ‗hot‘ style of playing… finds its justification in the new element it contributed, a kind of modesty in musical expression…Even when the performer seems to be letting himself go most completely…, a sort of reserve… marks his creative flight, 308 channeling it within certain limits that constitutes its charm… Analytically speaking, [their] conception shows three principle characteristics: first, a sonority very different from the one adapted by [bebop]; second, a special type of phrase; and finally, an orchestral conception that, without being essential to the style, is not its least interesting element.‖ 37 He goes on to explain that the dynamic characteristics of bebop, or ―hot‖ elements, were ―regarded as essential characteristics of the negro‘s sonority,‖ and that avoiding such elements was an attempt to distance the music from African American traditions. 38 Similarly, Eddie Meadows notes in Bebop to Cool: Context, Content and Musical Identity (2003) that ―the instrumentation, orchestral concepts, articulation and phrasing, and the refusal to pursue fast tempos permeated with hard-driving polyrhythms also helped to contrast with Bebop‖ and suggests that ―some performers may have felt more comfortable playing Cool because it enabled them to avoid the trap of appropriating from or emulating African American musicians.‖ 39 These two traditions, African and European, were understood to express two very different musical schools (bebop and cool) and, to a large degree, were practices by two very different racial groups (black and white) and it is precisely from that observation which the cool criticisms stem. Simply put, the prevailing ideology of jazz criticism in the 1950s and 1960s was that ―European,‖ and ―white‖ equaled ―bad,‖ whereas ―African‖ and ―black‖ meant ―good.‖ But, as I argue, this notion extends far beyond ―good‖ or ―bad‖ evaluations. Importing European traditions into African American music was cause for anxiety over jazz‘s authenticity. The implication being that the more ―white‖ jazz is, the more illegitimate it becomes. “A Species of the Genus Credibility”: West Coast Jazz and the Trope of Authenticity 309 ―What concerns me here is not so much how good or bad their music has become… but how much of it has remained jazz-which may be another way of saying the same thing.‖ - Jazz critic Barry Ulanov in Down Beat 40 As the 1950s bore on, bebop was perceived more and more a nationalistic (and ethnocentric) music, representing the embodiment of the African American socio-historical experience (slavery, Harlem, racism, economic exploitation, etc.) and articulated through black modes of performance practice. 41 A music centered in Los Angeles, played by mostly whites, void of ―blackness‖ and nationalistic tendencies, and what seemed to only support a white establishment was bound to meet with fervent criticism from jazz ―purists‖ fearful of jazz ―whitening‖ and evolving from its present state into something unidentifiable and un-relatable to them. Thus, jazz criticism increasingly stressed the importance maintaining the integrity and authenticity of jazz by stressing its essential (and non-applicable) elements as a means to maintain control over the meaning of jazz. At the forefront of this dialogue were professional critics like those in Down Beat magazine, though their sentiments were by no means exclusive to their small community. Indeed, the notion of jazz as an essentially ―black‖ music widely circulated in African American communities which, as with Baraka, fueled attacks on West Coast jazzmen as the latest and most egregious violators. Moreover, it was Down Beat‟s broad readership which echoed their over ―blackness‖ and ―authenticity‖ in jazz who were allowed entry into the debate via letters to the editor or to the magazine‘s ―Chords & Discords‖ section. Thus, while the critics of West Coast jazz hailed from very different professions and racial backgrounds, and carried very different credentials, they critiques nonetheless seem to invoke the same rhetoric of race, mass culture and the authenticity. 310 These criticisms revolved around several points: 1.) it was too European; it was ―classical,‖ 2.) it didn‘t swing, 3.) it was the music of whites, 4.) virtually no African Americans participated in the music, 5.) it was void of ―black‖ emotion, 6.) it was void of ―soul,‖ 7.) it was merely an imitation; an inauthentic jazz, 8.) it was emasculate, and 9.) it was exploitative. What they all had in common was a belief that West Coast jazz was inauthentic because of its exclusion of many African American aesthetic traits commonly found in bebop jazz. Many of these criticisms are expressed through coded language like ―lack of vitality,‖ ―bloodless,‖ ―pipeand-slipper jazz,‖ and ―no swing.‖ Moreover, this criticism surreptitiously revolves around the perception that too many whites, and in turn European musical traditions, are representing jazz (which is implied in the language) and that, if allowed to continue, jazz would somehow cease to be ―black‖ or even legitimate. Other criticisms are more bold-faced and articulate, exhibiting a sense of urgency and in some cases even raw anger. Essentially, West Coast jazz criticisms fall within two themes: those which criticize the music for denying African American musical traditions and those which criticize the music for incorporating European musical traditions. These themes are most often engaging in citing the long historical discourses which involve the topics of ―classical‖ music and ―emotion.‖ In either case, the common thread is to rhetorically delegitimize West Coast jazz. In fact, in terms of the whole of jazz criticism of the 1950s, these criticisms do not deviate from the norm. According to Gioia, critics reached for what they thought was the most effective device available. During the 1950s, ―in the jazz press,‖ he says, ―interviews and reviews were now interspersed with polemics and philosophical musings on the ‗validity‘ of these various forms of improvised music [including West Coast jazz]. The most time-honored approach since the advent of bop, was to deny that the opposition‘s music was ‗real jazz.‘‖ 42 311 Criticisms of any music expressing the cool aesthetic—West Coast jazz aside--were targeted, even Davis‘ Birth of the Cool. In recent decades, Birth of the Cool has received a great deal of scholarly interest as well as critical acclaim, though it received barely a footnote or a short paragraph of critique in Down Beat at the time. It is Winthrop Sargeant, in subsequent editions of his book Jazz, Hot and Hybrid (first ed., 1938), who encapsulated the reception of Birth of the Cool, writing that it sounded as if it were written by an impressionist composer and could not even be considered jazz. ―The music sounds more like that of a new Maurice Ravel than it does like jazz,‖ he wrote. ―If Miles Davis were an established ‗classical‘ composer, his work would rank high among that of his contemporary colleagues. But it is not really jazz.‖ 43 This criticism is particularly interesting because Sargeant‘s assessment is not particularly so negative. In fact, he thought the music was ―charming and exciting;‖ just not jazz. 44 However, his critique is not atypical of most cool criticisms in that he does not believe importing European traditions into jazz can actually constitute ―jazz,‖ let alone ―good‖ jazz, as most critics have asserted. In Sargeant‘s view, if one incorporates European or ―classical‖ elements into jazz, it then simply ceases to be jazz. Nevertheless, that there exists criticism that does not directly denigrate cool jazz as ―bad music‖ or as a passing fad points to the fact that even music that is pleasing to the ear can be excluded from the cult of authenticity. Conversely, most criticisms employ the opposite condition; one that considers cool to represent both ―bad‖ music and inauthentic music. The West Coast school‘s cool aesthetic and their occasional dabbling in European classical music more often received more hostile reviews. Barry Ulanov‘s quote above—made th on February 8 , 1956—demonstrates the anxiety over West Coast jazz‘s introduction of European classical themes into jazz. He quotes vibraphonist Red Norvo in a conversation the two 312 had: ―If jazz approaches classical music from its own point of view, uses what it wants or needs, but always stays jazz-that‘s fine,‖ he says, ―but if it goes the other way, if musicians move from classical music into jazz, that‘s awful; it‘ll make for terrible music.‖ 45 Norvo was somewhat ambiguous, neither a particularly cool nor hot player. His words contrast with those of Jack Montrose quoted in the same article. Montrose, a saxophonist and West Coast musician based in Los Angeles signed to the local Pacific Jazz label, believed ―There is no danger in jazz losing its identity to classical music providing the music is written and played by jazz musicians. Whatever devices the jazz musician uses are valid. So long as the 46 music is the work of a jazz musician, it will come out jazz.‖ Ulanov disagreed. In fact, his criticism in this particular article is emblematic of virtually the entire body of West Coast jazz criticisms in that it practically spans the spectrum of every aforementioned point on which West Coast jazz was dismissed. He calls the music boring, ―monotonous,‖ ―little more than the exploitation of a mechanical composing method… hollow as anything in or out of jazz,‖ and a ―clumsy and 47 somewhat snobbish attempt to impose classical procedures wholesale upon jazzmen.‖ He contradicts Montrose by stating ―the music… no longer seems to be written and played by jazz musicians… a terrible stiffness, like unto death, has set in.‖ 48 Then Ulanov does something almost uncharacteristic among most critics of West Coast jazz in that he not only notes what the music seems to be lacking, but is explicit in terms of what it needs to remain ―jazz‖ as well. ―The coast musicians, I think, could assure themselves of a richer, fuller, more thoroughly jazzlike jazz in their experimental composing and playing by the adoption of two procedures, patterns, ways of musical life or whatever you—or they—might like to call it. In the first place, the Californians of whom I have been writing can do with a 313 greater variety of musicians, can make greater use of many more members of the Negro community of southern California than they have and benefit much musically in consequence.‖ 49 Thus, the basic problem as Ulanov sees it: not enough ―Negroes:‖ ―They need the power these musicians might give them, the change of pace and diversity of sound and novelty of idea,‖ he said. ―That might go a long way toward breaking up the monotony of some of their performances.‖ 50 In conclusion, Ulanov says of West Coast jazz, ―The ultimate product should be a more jumping jazz as well as a more straightforward, a more provocative and absorbing one.‖ 51 ―Jumping jazz‖ evidently refers to the ―hot‖ swing style of big bands in the previous decade and bebop of modern day. Thus, Ulanov makes clear his disagreement. West Coast jazz is ―bad‖ music, but it is bad because it is ―illegitimate.‖ In particular, the fact that the music is void of the requisite ―blackness,‖ and that it has been tainted with European classical influence condemns it, in his eyes, to illegitimacy. Ulanov is not alone in his feeling that Europeanism threatened the purity and authenticity of jazz. In 1958, Down Beat critic Leonard Feather asked readers to complete a survey featuring various questions on jazz which he composed. He revealed some of his readers‘ answers in the th March 20 , 1958 column of ―Feather‘s Nest.‖ He asked, ―Do you think jazz and classical music are moving together? If so, do you approve of the trend?‖ Of the readers who submitted answers, 80% percent believed jazz and classical music were moving together; 24% said they disapproved of the trend while 38% said they approved. The remaining 38% percent found no such fusion. Overall, however, it was determined that 4 out of 5 jazz fans agreed that jazz and classical music 314 were ―headed to a possible merger.‖ 52 From these percentages it is reasonable to assume that most jazz fans found Europeanism non-threatening to jazz. This contrasts with the criticisms of Down Beat critics in particular who were made uneasy by the fact that roughly one third of most jazz fans found no problem with jazz allowing for the experimentation of European musical techniques. At this stage of West Coast jazz‘s popularity, the ―public‘s ear‖—so to speak—was still open and absorbing the music while those of the critical elite were beginning to close. While several Down Beat readers‘ comments approved of jazz merging with classical on the grounds that jazz musicians would benefit from studying classical theory and hone their technical abilities on their instruments, most of the comments reflect the growing anxiety of Europeanism encroaching upon jazz. Ken McKinzey, of Oklahoma City, wrote, ―I approve of serious study of each by the other, but I disapprove of using a jazz group with a symphony orchestra. Each loses its character and there is a sacrifice on the part of each. In other words, I approve of integration but not intermarriage.‖ 53 Apropos of the times, this last line demonstrates the implied connection between classical music with ―white‖, and jazz with ―black.‖ The choice of language here is clear and deliberate; ensuring that seemingly different and opposing musical styles flourish but never co-mingle is suggestive of the rhetoric against racial integration of the time. Interestingly, examples of the use of coded language to invoke a larger discussion of racial tolerance and integration are found elsewhere in jazz and in the jazz publication world. In Jazz Review for instance, critic Dick Hadlock attended the 1958 Monterey Jazz Festival in Monterey, California and witnessed Andre Hodeir‘s Around the Blues, an opus written for the Modern Jazz Quartet. Hadlock noted the piece ―has as its chief virtue the integration of jazz instrumentalists into the guts of the score, rather than the usual condescending juxtaposition of 315 two musics (‗Separate but equal‘).‖ 54 While Hadlock approves of this ―integration,‖ his criticism nevertheless invokes that Ulanov and others, calling Hindemith‘s Jazz Fugue ―unenlightened‖ and offered: ―Sunday afternoon was devoted to a curious mixture of overrated ‗classical‘ compositions, smatterings of good jazz, and alternatively abortive and provocative attempts to combine the two, all surrounded by the atavistically solicitous awe that persists with jazzmen confronted with ‗respectable‘ music. There are those who insist this was a red-letter day for jazz. Perhaps so, but only if it was an equally important day for ‗classical‘ music-which it probably was not.‖ 55 Down Beat reader, Jorgen Rasmussen of Madison, Wisconsin also echoed these sentiments. ―Jazz musicians are trying too hard to prove that they can play serious music,‖ he said, ―and in the process seem to be robbing jazz of its vitality.‖ 56 Interestingly, Feather‘s call for answers to his queries prompted responses from other professional jazz critics. Mimi Clar, a classically trained musicologist from UCLA and whose album reviews had been featured in Down Beat and Jazz Review, wrote in: ―I disapprove of turning to the classics for inspiration… Classical music and jazz have entirely different standards, techniques, goals, and esthetic objectives—too many who borrow from the classics fail to realize this, and turn out dirges, which are neither good jazz nor good classical.‖ 57 This encapsulates the prevailing view that jazz musicians who borrow from classical music traditions are watering-down jazz to the point of inauthenticity. Another article demonstrates the overall anti-classical sentiments of the jazz critics. In an open letter to the editor, Dr. Ed Otis Prat condemned the practice of jazz‘s flirtation with classical concepts and calls for a ―Return to Jazz‖ movement to preserve the integrity of the 316 music and to rescue it from ―an increased demagogue.‖ Titled ―Sycophantic Jazz on the Rise‖ by the editor, Otis wrote, ―there has been a disturbing trend on the rise in recent years to impute all kinds of high-faluting interpretations to jazz presentations by various artists… Those who would play in the pseudo-classical style are quite at liberty to do so, but for heaven‘s sake, let us not 58 call it jazz.‖ He goes on: ―To me, and a lot more like me, jazz is a simple art form, vibrant and simple, a complete expression of the emotions within. This was true from its inception, when it did not resort to gimmicks to get the message across-when this snob-complex of aping the erudite was not deemed a necessary adjunct. I am not decrying the attempt to improve one‘s technique, but did all those jazz greats from King Oliver through Louie Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Basie, Parker, and Hampton, etc. have to lean on Mozart and other Caucasian artists to find interpretation for an emotion which is essentially or 59 fundamentally Negro?‖ Aside from perceptions that ―classical‖ and ―European‖ translated to ―white‖ to most jazz enthusiasts, West Coast jazz was singled out specifically because the music seemed to lack—or at least, taper down in emphasis and frequency—one trait in particular seen as essential to jazz and commonly found in the African American aesthetic: swing. The musician most criticized for his lack of swing was pianist Dave Brubeck. Brubeck more than any other West Coast jazzman incorporated classical elements into jazz, and as such, became an easy target for attacks on the West Coast experiment in Europeanism. A native Californian, Brubeck attended College of the Pacific in Stockton, CA where he received a university music education, something particularly unique to jazz musicians of the previous era. He also studied extensively with classical composer Darius Milhaud, whose influence is readily 317 apparent in Brubeck‘s compositions. Thus, while Brubeck‘s straight-ahead compositions passed through critics‘ ears without complaint, often his music bore a ―not-quite-jazz, not-quiteclassical‖ sound which limited African aesthetics while emphasizing European musical traits. By the mid 1950s, Brubeck experienced a slump in positive critical reviews. According to Down Beat editor and contributor Ralph Gleason, this was due to the fact that he was now at the center of a raging controversy. ―Opinion is divided,‖ he said, ―as to whether Brubeck is actually jazz at all, whether he swings, whether he has been favored by publicity over other groups, whether he is ‗mainstream‘ and divers other propositions.‖ 60 The impetus for this was largely due to the fact that the editors of Time had chosen to feature Dave on the cover of their magazine in early 1955. Gleason felt this event ―crystallized the resentment of thousands of jazz musicians and fans.‖ 61 He also added that ―one of the things that bugs [these] musicians the most is the knowledge that jazz music must swing and Dave doesn‘t and they do and he‘s made it and they haven‘t.‖ 62 Gleason could have easily added: ―… and Dave‘s white and they aren‘t.‖ Brubeck had been winning polls and receiving critical acclaim since 1949, but was now thrust into the national spotlight and many African American musicians felt insulted that the magazine had snubbed a Duke Ellington or a Count Basie. 63 As a result, he was often forced to confront his criticisms which were now becoming more heated and more frequent. In one 1955 Down Beat interview entitled ―Brubeck Answers his Critics,‖ Brubeck pointed out that ―we always swing-sometimes we don‘t swing very much, but it‘s always enough to be considered jazz. That much I guarantee.‖ 64 He also complained of one nameless critic whose main criticism was that Brubeck was ―not a Negro.‖ ―Tell me,‖ he vented, to Down Beat writer Don Freeman, 65 ―what does that have to do with the music we play?‖ 318 Perhaps it is everything though. Whether Brubeck‘s music was ―swinging‖ nonetheless had everything to do with whether it was, in fact, ―jazz.‖ Similar criticisms of Brubeck rained in from all corners of the critical world. In an interview with Down Beat critic Nat Hentoff, Miles Davis once remarked about Brubeck, ―Do I think he swings? He doesn‘t know how.‖ 66 Alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, who, in a critique of Brubeck‘s Darien Mode, said though it was easy to admire Brubeck‘s accomplishments in terms of experimentation, his jazz lacked essential swing. ―Maybe they call it soft swing, but it didn‘t swing at all for me,‖ he said. ―In its own context it‘s a five-star group every time, but I think it‘s a very blah thing.‖ 67 th In the July 25 , 1957 issue of Down Beat, Ralph Gleason entertained readers with a plethora of Brubeck criticisms (for and against). Tony Scott of Melody Maker magazine said, ―Brubeck is childish. In classical music he‘s childish, and it‘s the same in what he calls his jazz;‖ John Mehegan of Down Beat reviewed Brubeck‘s Brubeck Plays Brubeck album and noted, ―there is not one swinging moment on the entire record;‖ Mike Butcher in Contemporary Jazz wrote, ―They (Brubeck‘s recordings) never come within miles of the mainstream of jazz;‖ and Andre Hodeir, as much as he admired the West Coast school, wrote in his book Jazz: Its Essence and Evolution: ―Brubeck thought he was showing originality in borrowing from ‗classical‘ piano technique and procedures… Brubeck reminds Delaunay of those piano players in bars (cocktail pianists) who can interpret popular songs of the day or classical pieces in the style of such and such pianist, but he differs from them in having managed to build this amalgamation into a real system.‖ 68 These criticisms were straightforward enough; ―classical‖ meant a lack of swing, and a lack of swing meant ―not African American‖ and ―not African American‖ meant not ―real jazz.‖ 319 But some of the language extends further. This lack of swing or ―hotness‖ translated to the ―emasculinity‖ or ―childlike‖ tendencies of West Coast jazz musicians. Ralph Gleason once noted ―[Brubeck‘s] group didn‘t swing for me and was lacking a certain masculinity,‖ and that ―Dave as a pianist produced no sensations in me at all.‖ 69 Gleason interestingly had the same complaint of Gerry Mulligan in his 1953 column of ―Perspectives‖ entitled ―Ralph Mulls Mulligan, Finds Overrated Child.‖ 70 Hodeir‘s ―cocktail pianist‖ comment—as with those of Tony Scott—is also consistent with ―emasculate‖ jazz piano playing but is perhaps more concerned with the legitimacy of such playing. ―Cocktail piano‖ or ―cocktail lounge‖ discussions appear frequently in criticisms of masculinity. Trombonist Bill Russo, in a blindfold test of Chet Baker‘s ― Someone to Watch Over Me,‖ felt the group exhibited a ―cocktail lounge rhythm section‖ and added the ―Little Lord Fauntleroy‖ elements of his singing emasculated the music. 71 Some musicians were uninterested in the racial/gender-specific implications of Brubeck‘s music, however, like the race-conscious and liberally opinionated bassist Charles Mingus. When asked whether Brubeck swings, he noted, ―It‘s factually unimportant…at Newport and elsewhere, Dave had the whole house patting its feet and even clapping its hands.‖ 72 Perhaps the most scathing criticism of Brubeck came from Ira Gitler upon the release of Brubeck‘s time-honored and highly influential album, Time Out. Gitler was charged with th reviewing the album and revealed his views in the April 28 , 1960 issue of Down Beat. Contrary to the liner notes, Gitler says, the album is, in fact, not a jazz ―milestone‖ because of its exploration into alternate time signatures. The music, Gitler says, must first constitute ―jazz.‖ 73 The compositions, he says, ―should engender a jazz feeling‖ rather than sounding like they were 320 played by ―a cat playing whorehouse piano‖ and that though he himself realizes you can‘t swing hard all the time, ―when the underlying tenor is more like drawing-room music, I leave the drawing room and go to the bar.‖ 74 Gitler goes on: ―In classical music there is a kind of pretentious pap, sometimes called ‗semi-classical,‘ which serves as the real thing for some people. As a parallel, Brubeck is a ‗semi-jazz‘ player. There is ‗pop jazz‘ with no pretensions like that of George Shearing [another classically trained jazz musician] and everyone accepts it for what it is. Brubeck on the other hand, has been palmed off as a serious jazzman for far too long.‖ 75 Gitler then proceeds to pick apart the album song by song. He calls ―Blue Rondo a la Turk‖ ―corny Chopin-esque,‖ with a theme that is ―far from jazz.‖ He calls Brubeck‘s ―block chord‖ method of piano playing ―particularly unrewarding‖ and notes, ―swing must have ended for him when Raymond Gram died.‖ 76 He heavily criticizes ―Take 5‖—Brubeck‘s most recognized tune—set in 5/4 time featuring a ―vamp‖ figure throughout. 77 ―This turns out to be like Chinese water torture. If this is what we have to endure with experimentation in time, take me back to good old 4/4,‖ and ―[Joe] Morello‘s solo…sounds like the accompaniment to a troupe of trampoline artists.‖ 78 ―Three to Get Ready,‖ a tune featuring two revolving time signatures, is, in his eyes, ―alien to jazz‖ and concerning ―Kathy‘s Waltz‖ he says, ―It‘s a bore.‖ 79 Finally, as if to put the nail in the coffin, he counters Steve Race‘s liner notes which say of the album, ―something great has been attempted… and achieved,‖ with: ―If Brubeck wants to experiment with time, let him not insult his audience with such crashing-bore devices as mentioned. Better still, if he wants to experiment, let him begin with trying some real jazz.‖ 321 80 Brubeck continued to challenge his criticisms throughout the 1950‘s by contributing lengthy articles for Down Beat examining jazz history, theory and technique to better illustrate how his music fit into the jazz landscape and where he intended to take it. Though he was convinced that the criticisms of those like the nameless critic in 1955 were baseless because they took race into consideration, race, nevertheless, was gradually becoming an issue more central to discussions of authenticity in jazz. While the body of criticisms opposing European and ―classical‖ music influences found in West Coast jazz formed a case against the validity of the music, it was undoubtedly those which focused on the music‘s lack of ―emotion‖ (―hotness,‖ ―fire,‖ ―soul,‖ etc.) which were the most important and omnipotent. Those who criticized West Coast jazz on the grounds of a lack of ―emotion‖ did so stealthily employed a strategically placed signifiers to discuss race and authenticity in jazz. Some of the signifiers involved the terms ―lack of vitality‖ or ―lifeless‖ to describe the music‘s withdrawal from the black aesthetic. The ―emotion‖ criticisms also exhibited a keen sense of the differences between African American and European musical aesthetics. But more so, they revealed the growing tension between white involvement in jazz and calls for black cultural autonomy. Nat Hentoff, perhaps the preeminent Down Beat critic of the 1950s offered a mixed bag of criticisms of West Coast jazz during his tenure at the magazine. On the whole, however, he offered far more his disdain than praise. Two reviews by Hentoff written within roughly 6 months of each other illustrate his conclusions of West Coast jazz‘s withdrawal from the African American aesthetic. In fact, his findings parallel that of the vast majority of West Coast jazz criticisms of the time. The two reviews interrogate two new albums by jazz trumpeters: Baker and Strings (1953) by Chet Baker, and the other, an untitled album on the Prestige Records label 322 by Jon Eardley. Baker‘s album, although featuring some of the biggest names in West Coast jazz, was, according to Hentoff, ―largely soporific.‖ 81 Of the individual performances, he notes Baker ―runs the gamut of emotion from A to B. The two stars in the rating are for stubborn signs of life and vitality exhibited by [Zoot] Sims, [Bud] Shank, and the rhythm section… I‘ll take Turk Murphy any day instead of this.‖ 82 He went on to comment that ―the writing and execution are uniformly cool, clever and bloodless [emphasis mine]… to put it plainly, it lacks guts.‖ 83 ―Runs the gamut from A to B,‖ ―stubborn signs of life,‖ ―lack of vitality,‖ ―bloodless,‖ and ―lacks guts‖ all imply that Baker and company exhibit little (or none) of the requisite African American ―emotion‖ (or ―hotness,‖ etc.). The resulting sound is ―soporific,‖ i.e. tending to cause sleep or marked by sleepiness or lethargy. By contrast the Eardley review is quite the opposite. Eardley, as previously mentioned, was signed to Prestige Records, owned by Bob Weinstock. Hentoff opens his critique saying ―Another valuable edition to Bob Weinstock‘s New Jazz series,‖ referring to a collection of modern jazz albums featuring a few of the cool artists. 84 Hentoff reports, ―Eardley comes on with a fire and uninhibited joy in playing unfortunately lacking in such of his contemporaries as Chet Baker and Tony Fruscella.‖ 85 Eardley, by playing with ―fire,‖ vibrant ―emotion‖ (and other African American signifiers) approaches jazz via an African American aesthetic whereas Baker‘s employs an opposite aesthetic approach. This, as in other ―emotion‖ criticisms, holds that Eardley sounds and plays how all jazzmen essentially should. Interestingly, a little more than a year earlier, Hentoff had written a piece called ―Weinstock Judges Stars By Emotion, Musicianship‖ for the Down Beat column series ―The Search for Talent.‖ Interviewing Weinstock himself, Hentoff noted the Prestige Records president looks for two characteristics in the musicians he signs. The most important is ―whether 323 a man has that emotional factor. Some men I record just because they hit me emotionally, not because I feel like studying their music.‖ 86 From 1954 to roughly 1960, Hentoff left a long trail of criticisms of West Coast jazz which demonstrate a concern over jazz withdrawing from African American musical traditions. th In the June 16 , 1954 issue Hentoff reviewed Gerry Mulligan‘s release with Chet Baker under the ―Gene Norman Presents‖ title. ―I have had a surfeit of this kind of pipe-and slipper jazz,‖ he says, ―but most people haven‘t, so the legion of Mulligan fans will find more of their vegetarian delights here.‖ 87 Yet even more racial signifiers appear here. ―Pipe-and-slipper jazz‖ here became an often-used slight to describe Mulligan and other West Coast musicians in general in the 1950s. In fact, the phrase was used somewhat sardonically by Mulligan himself in a Down Beat interview the month before with Bob Martin while reporting that he liked jazz that is ―easy and quiet with a subtle swing.‖ 88 A man wearing pipe and slippers listening to jazz conjures images of the ―establishment;‖ a ―moldy fig,‖ a listener who cannot truly ―dig‖ jazz, and a style of jazz for lay listeners. ―Vegetarian‖ is no less vitriolic, again implying the music is effete or emasculate; a jazz without vigor or potency. On April 6 th, 1955, Hentoff reviewed Paul Desmond‘s first record independent of the Dave Brubeck group and cited its main weakness as ―too little excitement in the musicians or for the listeners. In short, it‘s too damn polite.‖ Despite Desmond‘s warm lyricism, he wished ―someone had gotten a bit excited (even if a bit vulgarly) just once.‖ 89 th Then on May 7 , 1956 he reviewed Chet Baker‘s Jazz at Ann Arbor (1954) and said of Baker, ―he lacks (as of 1954) the ability to express deeply driving emotions.‖ 90 324 Hentoff was joined by a variety of contributors, musicians and readers who wrote in to Down Beat with dissatisfaction at West Coast jazz‘s lack of ―emotion.‖ Pearl Bailey, then wife of drummer Louie Bellson, in a 1953 review of Mulligan‘s ―Bark for Barksdale‖ noted, ―I wouldn‘t buy it. One Star.‖ 91 Others echoed Hentoff‘s comments as to the music‘s soporific nature, as did one unnamed author in a review of Gerry Mulligan‘s tune ―Mulligan‘s Too.‖ The music was, according to the author, the kind of music the musician‘s could perform in their sleep, ―and [they] probably were.‖ 92 Mulligan bored Ralph Gleason enough to incur his wrath in rd a Sept. 23 , 1953 column of ―Perspectives.‖ Although Gleason once hailed Mulligan‘s group as the best new sound to appear in a long while in the early 1950s, he now regrets, ―unfortunately, them first kicks can wear kind of thin…they were boring me silly…the tinsel is already dulled,‖ and ―there is a definite limit to the pleasure I, at least, can get from this music.‖ He also noted, ―I frankly think that the Mulligan Quartet is, with one exception, the most overrated small band in jazz…Mulligan with or without a piano or his pretentious explanations of what he‘s doing, is still a child when racked up to men like Duke.‖ 93 Likewise the words of reader Clint Hopson featured in ―Chords and Discords‖ wrote that ―lifelessness‖ and ―emotionless‖ characterized the entirety of West Coast jazz. Using Jimmy Giuffre as an example to critique the current state of the cool aesthetic in jazz, Hopson noted that Giuffre is ―dull and uninteresting.‖ ―Giuffre‘s excitementless Three,‖ he says, is: ―A sad comment on the state of jazz in the west...This dullness seems to permeate most of the west coast scene; the lack of vigor, and all too obvious coyness makes the spirited blowing of Blakey, Monk, Jackson, Silver, Thompson and the old stars much more attractive. A diet of nothing but tapioca is tiresome; I prefer the curry of the easterners.‖ 325 94 Hopson also pointed to the feature of John Coltrane on the CBS network‘s ―The Sound of th Jazz‖ program on Dec. 8 1958 (one month prior to his letter) and commented that Coltrane‘s jazz was ―real jazz.‖ This was in part due to the fact that the program—the music—was ―exciting‖: ―The program was dedicated to the blues and featured for the most part, many of the middleroaders, but there was an excitement present in every tune, no, in every bar, that caught one up in the action.‖…[Host] Jack Crosby deserves some sort of award for the only nationwide presentation of an all jazz program that was pure jazz and, most of all, intelligently done.‖ 95 Here and elsewhere the blues is considered the embodiment of ―black emotion;‖ the necessary component for constructing real jazz. In Jazz Review for instance, Bill Crow assessed Dave Brubeck‘s Reunion (1957), opening his critique by noting the compositions and their solos were ―seriously undermined by the lack of vitality in the sound of the saxophonists.‖ Theirs was ―thin, weightless, and often a whiny little complaint with no energy behind it.‖ 96 Crow then launches into a jazz history lesson of sorts, reminding readers (and perhaps answering Brubeck himself) of ―what jazz is‖ and ―where it came from.‖ ―Jazz form,‖ he says, ―grew out of the blues, a sort of musical complaint that is satisfying because it is energetic… feeling expressed without vitality can only lead to more of the same; the music that results is an uninteresting catalogue of sickness rather than the cry of life.‖ 97 Paul Desmond, who plays alto sax on the album, was targeted as well. Though Desmond‘s solos were indeed blues drenched, he fails to play the blues ―correctly,‖ noting Desmond was too ―stiff‖ (or ―without swing‖). ―The blue notes he plays—the bends, the funky little figures, the moans—become caricatures. He may be expressing pique or disdain or vague 326 longing, but certainly not any feeling as overwhelming as the blues.‖ 98 Finally, like Ira Gitler‘s critique of Brubeck‘s Take 5, Crow counters the album‘s liner notes which describe the group‘s ―unfettered vigor and emotion‖ arguing that even if he hadn‘t heard of Charlie Parker or Louie Armstrong or Fats Waller, et. al., he would have to be drunk to sense the album‘s emotion. ―It would still take the mental state brought on by multiple Martinis to allow me to refer to the music on this album as an example of unfettered vigor and enthusiasm.‖ 99 Musicians themselves contributed their own criticisms of West Coast jazz, of course. Jonah Jones, an established African American musician seen playing in both New York‘s concert halls as well as on television in the 1950s, commented on Chet Baker‘s rendition of ―It Never th Entered My Mind‖ in the August, 6 , 1959 issue of Down Beat. ―Maybe that‘s the sound he was trying to get, but it doesn‘t sound lively to me…I like better tone than that… Maybe that‘s what they call tone today… It lacks vitality.‖ 100 Perhaps the strangest of criticisms from fellow musicians came from the great Louie Armstrong in a review of Shorty Rogers‘s tune ―Morpo‖ wherein he called the music ―jujitsu music:‖ ―You better give him one star. That‘s what causing music today to do bad… I didn‘t like none of the solos, because they tried to be too out of this world…this generation that‘s coming up, shoot, they don‘t have no chops within 6 months time. No, man, there‘s no way you can preserve yourself with that kind of music. And that‘s not even progressive 101 jazz!‖ The issue of ―preservation‖ likely to implies that Rogers either lacks the ability to honor the great jazz predecessors by playing in their style or that his style of playing is simply not ―real jazz.‖ Armstrong‘s talk of looking backward into jazz history is, again, tied to the blues and 327 ―hotness.‖ Experimenting with jazz, to critics like Armstrong, must be performed within certain musical constraints. Whatever the methods for experimentation, two aspects of jazz above all others must be honored; the blues and ―hot‖ playing in jazz must be considered essential elements. th Johnny Green‘s comments in the Sept. 5 , 1957 issue of Down Beat encapsulate this view. He reviewed the renditions of ―I Cover the Waterfront‖ by both Cannonball Adderley and, interestingly, Red Norvo. Norvo‘s version was not good enough to warrant more than two stars: ―There‘s one thing against this record against which I have a prejudice: even in slow jazz there should be, despite the emergence of the cool or quiet school, the impulse to tap one‘s foot, to put it cornily-that which our fathers and grandfather‘s called ―toe-tapping‖ 102 music. It seems to me this is a sine qua non of jazz.‖ Green‘s ―impulse‖ signifies the fixation on ―hot‖ playing being necessary to produce jazz. As a ―sine qua non,‖ this ―impulse‖ embodies the essence of ―real jazz‖ and lays the basis for the ―emotion‖ criticisms of West Coast jazz as well. Literally translated, ―sine qua non‖ means ―without which not,‖ usually seen with the prefix conditio or ―condition.‖ Together they translate to the English as: ―indispensable.‖ Basically, Green‘s impulse—―hotness‖—is ―indispensable,‖ i.e. ―vital‖ or ―essential‖ to jazz. As early as 1953 some groups were reacting against West Coast jazz and the cool aesthetic by playing music which emphasized ―hotness.‖ The Jackson-Harris Herd, whose sixpiece unit attempted to sound like a twelve-piece by playing ―hot,‖ were making a conscious decision to revitalize jazz in the wake of the cool aesthetic‘s popularity. ―We want to bring back that old roar,‖ said Harris. ―There‘s been too much coolness in jazz. We want to bring back that old feeling when jazz was anything but cool. When it was exciting....backed up by a roaring, 328 shouting, swinging thing that lifts up every foot in the club, makes everybody move his body, all you can do is shout ‗GO!‘‖ 103 More importantly, by the late 1950s there began a significant musical-ideological move on the part of African American musicians specifically to revolt against the ascendancy of this music and any non-African American musical processes in jazz. Echoing the criticisms of Amiri Baraka, Grover Sales has framed this move in terms of ―soul.‖ ―Disdaining ―cool‖ as ―white man‘s music‖ that had meandered far afield from the ―soul‖ of African Americans—the ―downhome body-based impulse of black music‖—these ―hostile‖ musicians, Sales says, attempted to restore the gospel-blues roots of jazz by accentuating the ―funk,‖ or the ―immemorial slang for 104 the unwashed rutting odors of working-class blacks.‖ In fact, soul, in socio-aesthetic terms, is often explained as a reaction to the cool style, or ―a back-to-basics affirmation of black musical priorities,‖ which received mounting currency among the growing African American nationalist intelligentsia in the 1960s. 105 This concept of black ―soul‖ (and West Coast jazz‘s lack thereof) became a significant focal point of West Coast jazz criticisms in the late 1950s and early 1960s. According to these particular criticisms, ―soul‖ was the product of ―black emotion‖ and thus a necessary component of jazz. In essence, what ―swing‖ is to ―the blues‖, ―soul‖ is to ―emotion.‖ ―Soul‖ jazz and ―funky‖ jazz were also known as ―hard-bop,‖ which was seen as the most current affirmation of the ―blackness‖ of jazz in its emphasis of African American musical traditions. Hard bop rejected European mannerisms; it was heavily blues based, emphasized ―rhythm‘ n‘ blues‖ rhythm patterns, featuring hard-swinging grooves, emphasizing beats on 2 and 4 of each bar (as with rock and roll and R&B), and utilized ―the rich vocabulary of melodic nuances and inflections-the tradition of black vocal practice‖ found in black churches. 329 106 th Down Beat critic John Tynan explains this new movement in jazz in the November 24 , 1960 issue. In fact, his piece entitled ―Funk Groove Soul‖ is interwoven with numerous references to ―emotion‖ and authenticity. Upon witnessing Ray Charles in concert in Los Angeles, Tynan said he ―sensed an emotional, even spiritual desperation‖ and affirmed in the article that this was the main technical device of ―soul‖ jazzmen. 107 Tynan believed the reasons behind playing ―soul‖ jazz or ―funky‖ jazz, etc. was obvious, and he is correct when he says, ―The motivation, in my opinion, can be traced to more racialistic feelings as Negroes than to further the development of jazz as art. It is as if they hurl the challenge at their white colleagues: ‗Copy this, if you can.‘‖ 108 Tynan also makes an accurate assessment of ―soul‖ jazz‘s religious influence and the distinct playing style the music encompasses: ―Despite an apparently growing impression, ‗soul‘ as a way of playing and the Gospel influence are not necessarily connected. And the use of the term ‗soul‘ by some nationalist-minded Negroes confirms this.‖ 109 Thus, ―soul‖ jazz does not express any faith per se, but rather communicates togetherness and solidarity among other blacks through probably the most recognizable institution in black America: the church. From here, however, Tynan‘s aligns himself in the more nationalist vein. He says, ―‗Soul‘ simply means heart and conviction, an unconscious feeling for jazz roots that emerges in a musician‘s playing and makes it authentic.‖ 110 But, to be sure, these so-called ―nationalist- minded Negroes‖ were attempting to reserve the ―soul‖ feeling for other ―nationalist-minded Negroes,‖ not other whites. ―Soul‖ was fashioned out of a need to affirm the ―blackness‖ of African Americans (and not of whites) and was executed through a style of playing that utilized black signifiers. It had less to do with inventing a new style of jazz, and more to do with a 330 growing socio-aesthetic intelligentsia among African Americans wishing to create a new black space, contrary to Tynan‘s statement. Moreover, Tynan opens up an entirely different set of problems by inserting authenticity into the mix. He proposes that the emphasis on the emotional characteristics of ―soul‖ was merely attempt to reaffirm jazz‘s essential element. ―Soul‖ jazz, he says, ―is a healthy restoration of a basic prerequisite of jazz that was lost in the be-bop revolution and banished almost beyond recall during the Cool Era.‖ 111 In this light, Tynan aligns himself with the reigning paradigm of critics who demand authentic jazz remain a ―black‖ one. Few white musicians were bestowed with the honorable title of ―soulful.‖ Jimmy Giuffre, th reported Tynan and Hentoff in the November 30 1955 issue of Down Beat, was one in particular whom Miles Davis hailed as having ―soul.‖ 112 For the most part however, the West Coast musicians were considered very un-soulful. The lack of ―soul‖ in West Coast jazz was also articulated by comparisons of humanity versus artificial life; i.e. mechanization. Exemplary of this criticism, is that of an unknown Down Beat critic with the initials ―D.N.‖ who reviewed Shorty Rogers‘s album Jazz Waltz (1963). The author‘s criticism is based on his perception that Shorty‘s album sounds as if it was almost too mechanical. To be sure, he articulates this perception by presenting it in a sniping and excessively unfair manner. He writes: ―Shorty Rogers is at this big machine see? Guy walks over and says, ‗Shorty, baby, give me 10 hip waltzes.‘ ‗Right,‘ says Shorty, and turns to the machine. He presses buttons. He levels bubbles. He observes flashing lights. All of a sudden 10 styli begin to move over copy paper and then, at various times, charts pop out from the back. They are very neat. Lush here, very Gospel there, correct, all slick. Only a couple of troubles. Some of them sound like they came out of adjoining circuits (Fishin‟, Wild Side, Children); others don‘t sound comfortable at all in waltz time (Witchcraft, Laredo). There‘s only one thing, 331 though, that Rogers can‘t do by himself: the solos. After all, he wouldn‘t want everything to come out Shorty Rogers. So he gives all his soloists their time at the machine. Some do okay. Some like Richards, Bunker, and Horn, do more than okay. Mondragon and Lewis twist the right dials too. But somehow it always seems as if it‘s from a machine.‖ 113 Rogers‘s music, according to the author, has no ―soul.‖ His tunes were composed by a computer (a machine) and his group‘s solos were equally as mechanical. This criticism says, in effect, ―this music was composed by a machine, and since machines are lifeless creations, void of intelligence and compassion, this jazz therefore has no soul.‖ Ralph Gleason likewise felt jazz without soul was a danger to the integrity of the jazz rd world. In a January 23 , 1957 issue of Down Beat, Gleason admitted that there were those jazz musicians (i.e. the West Coast school) who ―whether they like it or not, are really doing little more than Lawrence Welk—just grinding it out, manufacturing ―emotion‖ and ―art‖ at so much per hour.‖ 114 ―We hear so much about ‗soul‘ in jazz,‖ he says. ―If ‗soul‘ is anything it is truth in emotion and how can you have this when you consciously strive for effect like an advertising agency copywriter selling the new look in autos; newer, lower, wider, longer ad nauseum?‖ 115 Nat Hentoff too, in his 1976 book Jazz Is, reflected on the cool aesthetic as ―largely arid‖ and ―mechanical.‖ 116 African American musicians were, as with critics of the time, conscious of these musicians‘ deficiency in ―soul.‖ Pianists Hampton Hawes and Earl ―Fatha‖ Hines, respectively, felt both Dave Brubeck and Lennie Tristano lacked this quality. Says Hawes, ―[Brubeck‘s] feeling about modern is different from most, a bit more scientific. Personally, I feel that you can‘t be too scientific about music. You‘ve got to feel it in your soul always.‖ 117 Similarly, according to Hines, Tristano‘s Yesterdays was ―not actually from the soul, but more 332 from the mechanical side of it,‖ and of Brubeck‘s September Song, he says ―I can‘t seem to get his or her idea because it seems as though [he or she is] not playing from the soul.‖ 118 The Critics‟ Coda: New Strategies in the Era of Racial (In)Tolerance ―Diz felt that blacks had it in the blood for their musical talent and performance. And I tried to argue that it wasn‘t in the blood, but it was in the culture. He said Chano Pozo couldn‘t speak a word of English, but as soon as he gave the downbeat, Chano picked it up and could play. So he said it must have been in the blood. I said, ‗No, it wasn‘t in the blood,‘ but the traditions were similar, though the language wasn‘t the same.‖ - Dr. Lawrence Reddick, quoted in Gillespie and Fraser, To Be or Not… to Bop: Memoirs 119 In the 1960s the debate raged on, but not without the addition of African American critical responses and not without the appearance of deeper and more controversial essentialist strategies, many of which have their roots in the 1950s. Gillespie‘s quote from his memoirs represents one such strategy: the biological essentialist. These new strategies were the result of the changing social context in which the debates took place, as society around it was being challenged by the civil rights movement and pressures from black intellectuals, musicians and critics to take back the racial idiom of jazz. While the biological essentialist critics numbered very few in the 1960s, most critics—like Baraka—were thinking in terms of cultural ―ownership.‖ Specifically, Baraka challenged the white critics‘ methodological approach to evaluating jazz as a means to curb their control over black culture. His featured piece in Down Beat in 1963 entitled ―Jazz and the White Critic‖ virtually lifted the immovable veil of secrecy which had 333 previously protected the white critic elite from encroachment upon their ideas of jazz theory and criticism. A late precursor to Blues People, ―Jazz and the White Critic‖ laid a theoretical foundation to a new school of Afrocentric approaches to evaluate African American art forms. 120 The inherent problem of their critical method, as Baraka saw it, was that whites approach jazz with the idea that it has no African American socio-cultural value and does not spring from an African American intelligentsia. Therefore, whites see the music only in terms of white ―middle class-dom‖ and not from within the construct that created it, making their role in the music more valid and their participation in jazz culture easier to access. It is here that Baraka reveals perhaps his most important observation as to the involvement of whites in an essentially black music. Specifically, he identifies a strain of racism—one which Richard Dyer has since suggested ―secures its dominance by seeming not to be anything in particular‖ 121 —which emanates not from racial conservatives or white supremacists, but from the defenders of white democratic liberalism: colorblindness. The rhetoric of colorblindness has been a more prevalent feature in jazz discussions of race than is commonly thought. It occupies discussions of history and criticism, assuming the tropes of universality, democracy, and, contemporarily speaking, the American ―culture wars.‖ It has influenced artistic sensibilities, culture-building processes, and the political and economic sectors of the jazz industry as well. Moreover, it engages a huge cast of players, involving critics and historians, white hipsters and black jazz musicians, over-acute writers and lay jazz audiences th throughout the 20 century and today. Since its inception, colorblindness has taken different shapes to conform to dominant social and political ideologies through the ages. However, 334 examining its manifestations in the early Cold War era can illustrate the ways in which the ideology shaped discourses of West Coast jazz. Essentially, colorblindness is intended to preserve white participation in jazz in the face of black freedom struggles. Colorblind rhetoric uses the language of an ―equal playing field‖ in that it fashions a race-neutral, free space for jazz where all people are considered equal and can participate. On deeper inspection though, race inequality thrives in this environment. While colorblindness is racially conscious to the extent that it challenges segregation, it nevertheless allows white privilege to persist precisely because it does not consider systems of racism. On this view, the beating of Rodney King, for instance, becomes the product of individual hate, and not exemplar of widespread systemic police violence against African Americans in the Los Angeles. It is this aspect which is so appealing to whites who wish to assuage their ―liberal guilt,‖ and yet so problematic for African Americans who demand justice and equality. Thus, as Ruth Frankenberg notes, colorblindness involves ―a double move toward ‗colorevasiveness‘ and ‗power evasiveness‘‖ which purposefully distracts us from critically interrogating disproportionate distributions of land, wealth, class, status, etc. 122 It simultaneously encourages us to ignore race as a factor in societal ills, just as it constructs racial identity (i.e. whiteness). In other words, colorblindness authorizes the containment of African 123 Americans through the remapping of their cultural forms. The logic of this cooptation of the jazz world involves, in almost every sense, as George Lewis notes, ―the destruction of family and lineage, the rewriting of history and memory in the image of whiteness.‖ 124 This evasiveness in addressing race does two things: it allows whites to indirectly support a system of white privilege without being labeled a racist (i.e., you can‘t be a racist if you can‘t see race), and it sustains current unequal distributions of resources—freezing them in place— 335 while closing off future access or debates over reparations. In jazz, African Americans become faced with the challenge of affirming and denying their blackness simultaneously: on one hand they want freedom and racial equality with whites, but on the other hand, they also want credit for and some ownership of jazz. The latter requires open discussions of systemic racism and an expression of the racial idiom of jazz (the ―blackness‖ of African American art) which colorblindness won‘t allow. Thus, pleas for racial equality go either unnoticed or criticized by ―race-neutral‖ white jazz audiences. It was the broad-sweeping social changes brought about by the Jazz Age and New Deal, according to ―Whiteness‖ scholars George Lipsitz, David Roediger, and others, which coalesced various then non-white ethnicities (Italian, Irish, etc.) into a singular non-ethnic, Pan-White racial identity. Then, critics and musicians alike seemed obsessed with defining jazz as a high modernist art from, and in so doing, reflected racial anxieties of the time. 125 This is significant, as colorblind liberalism assumed ―‗black‘ and ‗modern‘ were incompatible,‖ and therefore ―many critics could only elevate jazz to modernism by dissociating it from black culture.‖ 126 Colorblindness of this era was more often issued to avoid the tag of ―race man,‖ as appropriating Black cultural forms was still very much taboo and rarely carried the cultural cache as it would in the Cold War era. 127 By contrast, several exchanges between critics, musicians, and audiences in the interwar and WWII years illustrate the growing rhetorical potency of colorblindness. In the late 1930s, reader Otis Ferguson questioned critic John Hammond‘s supposed racial liberalism in the New Yorker. Hammond had recently made the statement that no white jazzman could swing as well as African American jazzmen. The statement produced a colorblind response: ―He is all for the working class. Fine. He‘s dedicated to the cause of the Negro. Fine. But …when he goes around 336 saying ‗White jazzmen‘ the way you‘d use the term ‗greaseball,‘ he…starts the Jim Crow car all over again, in reverse.‖ 128 ―Jim Crow… in reverse‖ marks perhaps the first appearance of charges of ―reverse racism‖ in jazz literature; ―race-specific measures, designed to remedy existing racial discrimination, that inconvenience or offend whites.‖ 129 Another reader, B.H. Haggin, also levied criticism against Hammond in 1939 in Nation: ―Hammond began with his mind, his sharp ears, his fine musical sensitiveness fixed on the music,‖ but had waned from the path of sensibility with ―innumerable extraneous and irrelevant considerations such as whether a company‘s plant was unionized or a player was a Negro.‖ 130 ―Colorblindness,‖ according to John Gennari, ―was the ideology that grounded [critic Leonard] Feather‘s Jewish liberalism.‖ 131 Feather was staunchly opposed to supremacist notions of race and culture. In 1957, for example, he responded to a letter written to Ebony magazine by a young woman who claimed that those African Americans who played everything but the blues essentially and embarrassingly rejected their racial heritage. Feather recognized that the woman‘s naivety sprang from her ―total lack of understanding, not only of the Negro, but of the true meaning of the blues.‖ 132 One of her main points, according to Feather, was that African Americans were biologically predisposed to playing jazz as they are born with ―natural talents;‖ in other words, African Americans have innate, genetically-activated qualities that allow them to play jazz better than others, they in fact have no artistry. Feather noted in his response that among those who believe that African Americans have ―natural‖ or ―innate‖ talents are those ―white southerners who believe their darker brother is ‗born singing and dancing,‘…spoiled by too much education and was happier before his emancipation.‖ as the blues,‖ he said, ―are social, not racial in origin.‖ 337 134 133 ―Cultural manifestations such Most exemplar of Feather‘s colorblind attitude, however, came in the early 1940s, when he created his ―Blindfold Test‖ column for Metronome. In the column, musicians would be played a track without any knowledge of the artist‘s racial background. Supposedly, when guessed incorrectly, the guesser‘s notion of racial composition as a prerequisite to play jazz would be challenged. This was Feather‘s way of empirically debunking notions of ―scientific racism.‖ Yet it is precisely because Feather avoids any serious analysis of systemic forms of racism that this test becomes an exercise in colorblindness. The ―Blindfold Test‖ succeeded only in affirming to white readers that they could play jazz as well as African Americans, regardless of their whiteness. As America emerged from WWII, colorblind rhetoric reached such a critical mass that, according to Ronald Radano, jazz ―often removed from its African American cultural referent and defined in deracinated terms as a respectable expression of American democracy.‖ 135 This was partially a response by the new Cold War intelligentsia (many of whom were white, middleclass jazz critics) who not only saw themselves as gatekeepers to the art form but as ―as agents of cultural, moral, and political leadership.‖ 136 In privileging white hipness, they often committed Stuart Hall‘s ―essentializing moment‖ by relating African American culture to natural, base desires. A prime example is Mezz Mezzrow‘s in his book Really the Blues (1946): ―Everything the Negro did… had a swing to it‖… ―His whole matter and bearing was simple and natural.‖ Here, the African American signifiers for jazz are ―torn from [their] historical, cultural, and political embedding and lodged in a biologically constituted racial category.‖ 137 Many of these intellectual critics, from Martin Williams to Whitney Balliet, were schooled in the literary method known as New Criticism. New Criticism is of great importance since it often undergirds the rhetoric of colorblindness at this time. According to Ross and Ray, 338 New Criticism is ―a type of formalist literary criticism that treats a work of literature as if it were a self-contained, self-referential object. Rather than basing… interpretations of a text on the reader‘s response, the author‘s stated intentions, or parallels between the text and historical contexts… New Critics perform a close reading [of] relationships within the text that give it its own distinctive character or form…‖ 138 However, New Criticism came to represent an establishment political culture of the Cold War era, spawning a relationship between theoretical discourse and Cold War politics. The New Critical views of the autonomous literary object and the separation of author and reader, says Tobin Siebers, are less concerned with the balance of literary devices than with Cold War anxieties about ―emotional chaos, mob psychology, soul cultivation, mass hallucination, and charismatic leadership.‖ 139 Similarly, Terry Eagleton has annunciated New Criticism‘s colorblind stance: ―Reading poetry in the New Critical way meant committing yourself to nothing: all that poetry taught you was ‗disinterestedness,‘ a serene, speculative, impeccably even-handed rejection of anything in particular (emphasis mine). It drove you less to oppose McCarthyism or further civil rights...It was, in other words, a recipe for political inertia, and thus 140 for submission to the political status quo.‖ This New Critical method, in fact, privileged colorblindness through viewing jazz and jazzmen as ―objects‖ while avoiding history and culture. We see evidence of this in many jazz periodicals of the 1950s, many of which were shifting their discourse from pure journalism to intellectual analysis. Jazz Review, for instance, reoriented itself around New Criticism‘s ―end-ofideology consensus‖ and its ―rejection of the social and the historical.‖ 141 Probably the most important New Critic of jazz criticism was Jazz Review editor Martin Williams who studied with Leavis at Columbia University in the early 1950s. His New Critical approach, commitment to 339 high modernism, and liberal integrationist background were the basis of his colorblind rhetoric. ―I was really drawn to literary criticism,‖ and ―was [particularly] influenced by the New Critics. They were talking about a novel as if it were a novel, a poem as it if were a poem, a play as if it 142 were a play,‖ he commented in Jazz Panorama. In fact, ―Williams dismissed all talk of social context as an unfortunate Marxist intrusion and sublimated his considerable interest in race into a notion of the transcendence of art over race.‖ 143 The New Critics‘ anti-mass culture stance and Cold War paranoia ultimately lead them to affirm the high cultural values of the jazz in order to construct ―a realm of creative freedom insulated against the contingencies of politics, ideology, and history.‖ 144 Williams accordingly was fervently against political cause-making and instead championed individualism and artistic excellence; ―individual genius‖ rather than the collective racialized meanings of jazz. Thus, the failure of New Criticism is a colorblind one. Interestingly, jazz periodical readers were some of the most notorious colorblind advocates during the Cold War era. Often when race was raised as a pertinent element in jazz evaluations, reactions sprang from white America claiming ―Crow Jim,‖ or ―reverse discrimination.‖ Jake Russell‘s letter to Jazz Record in 1947 titled ―Jim Crow—Upside Down,‖ ―accused the Esquire poll critics of reverse discrimination because of their excessive preoccupation with ‗the fight against Jim Crow.‘‖ Russell was shocked that critics gave only a 145 measly one third of their votes to white musicians. Another clear example involves the publication of The Story of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band by H. O. Brunn. On August 4 th 1960, Down Beat asked its readers to consider Brunn‘s motives for writing a book—originally thought to be well-researched—that made no mention of African American musicians or their contributions to jazz. Withholding any historical analysis was, to the editors, intentionally racist. 340 Brunn wrote back to the magazine in defense: ―My efforts at keeping color controversy out of jazz history are evidently not appreciated by your present corps of jazz ‗critics,‘ who seem only too anxious to seize upon almost anything as a racial issue.‖ 146 In keeping race out of his book, however, Brunn offers a significantly abridged version of history and rejects any black ownership of jazz. Of course, white musicians complained as well of a bias against them in the 1950s. Stan Kenton‘s letter to Down Beat in 1956 read: ―It‘s obvious that there is a new minority group, White jazz musicians.‖ 147 Also in 1956, one year after Dave Brubeck had been chosen to grace the cover of Time magazine, the musician insisted he hires musicians not in terms of color but in terms of ―individuality.‖ 148 These sentiments appear again in Playboy in 1964 when a panel of critics and musicians gathered to discuss hot-button topics in jazz of the day, ―Crow Jim‖ dominating the conversation. Foreclosing all debate, Gerry Mulligan‘s words stand out here: ―People get themselves so worked up over things like this, but I don‘t give a damn if a man is green or blue.‖ 149 The ideology even made its way onto the world stage as the State Department began its program of ―soft power‖ diplomacy, using jazz tours to the Middle East, Asia, and Africa to promote U.S. democracy and capitalism. According to Penny Von Eschen, U.S. officials ―would simultaneously insist on the universal, race-transcending quality of jazz while depending on the blackness of musicians to legitimize American‘s global agendas‖ in order to ―promote a vision of color-blind American democracy.‖ 150 Government officials and Cold War intellectuals alike believed that, like jazz, ―abstract art was synonymous with democracy‖ and on ―‗our side‘ in the Cold War struggle.‖ 151 Of course the paradox was that while the State Dept. believed jazz was a 341 race-neutral art form representing ―freedom,‖ this notion clashed with artists‘ ―belief that jazz was deeply embedded in African American history and culture.‖ 152 By the 1960s, colorblind attitudes persisted even as moral authority shifted towards African Americans in the struggle for racial equality. According to Ingrid Monson, ―The reaction of white critics and musicians to this new atmosphere of politicization‖ indicates that their colorblind ideology was being threatened by politicized ethnic politics that threatened to exclude 153 them.‖ In essence, ―color-less‖ attitudes towards African American culture were poised as an answer to those attitudes and criticisms of nationalist-minded critics like Baraka beginning to gel in the late 1950s, signifying a new strategy to quell black petitions for cultural ownership; fighting race-consciousness with race-neutrality. Leonard Feather for instance, reviewed Baraka‘s Blues People (1963), accusing it of being ―a curious distortion of Hitler‘s theories‖ and decried that ―black nationalist leaders and the American Nazi Party had a relationship of mutual respect.‖ 154 The most notorious instance of colorblind rhetoric is seen in the case of Ira Gitler‘s review of Abbey Lincoln‘s album, Straight Ahead, in Down Beat in1962. The album signified Lincoln‘s protest against racial inequality and expressed African American solidarity in the civil rights movement. Gitler called the album ―propaganda‖ and chastised Lincoln as a ―professional Negro‖ for her activism in jazz. 155 A roundtable of jazz notables, Nat Hentoff and Lincoln‘s drummer Max Roach sat down to discuss Gitler‘s review and the state of race in jazz as well. While a groundswell of outrage at the review precipitated the roundtable, both the magazine as well as those participating in the roundtable itself, continued to feature reactions of colorevasiveness. 342 Reader Bob Yeager found the article, and Lincoln‘s ―militancy‖ particularly threatening. ―In my opinion,‖ he wrote to Down Beat, ―both Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach should confine themselves to singing and drumming respectively and shut up about this racial business. There is no room for this kind of talk in this world-particularly in the world of music.‖ 156 Reactions from other Down Beat critics were similar. Gene Lees and Dom Cerulli ―repeatedly raised the issue of discrimination against white musicians‖ while at the roundtable. 157 According to Don DeMichael, ―We might as well use the term Crow Jim… to me, a lot of the Negro jazzman have limited… the people they will hire—to Negroes.‖ 158 In the distant frontier of jazz criticisms, or perhaps as a result of West Coast jazz criticism, were those which incorporated an economic critique. Marxian approaches, for instance, were seen in small doses during the 1950s but were espoused more frequently in the 1960s, most notably by those within the Black Power movement and those militant white critics like Frank Kofsky. One Down Beat reader, Leroy Mitchell of Detroit, told the ―bitter truth,‖ as he put it, of a simple reality that the magazine was only too vague to properly articulate. ―Jazz is primarily a Negro art form,‖ he says, ―if Negro musicians don‘t live, jazz has a poor chance of living or broadening.‖ 159 Mitchell went on to explain that for every black musician to ―broaden‖ or in some way advance jazz, a white musician has followed closely on his heels (in an imitating manner) only to receive more credit and more financial wealth than his black counterpart. This, Mitchell points out, is the basis for the economic disenfranchisement of African American artists. The creativity of Duke Ellington, Jimmy Lunceford, and Lester Young ―was crushed under the ‗white man‘s‘ insatiable urge to make money and take credit for everything under the sun….If half the money 343 and encouragement was put behind Negro creators as was and still is put behind white imitators, America could do for jazz what Europe has done for symphonic music.‖ 160 Brunn‘s ―Negro-less‖ book, for example, and his remarks in Down Beat seem to confirm this phenomenon. The offshoot of white profiteering, says Mitchell, was a disillusionment on the part of African Americans—a lack of confidence or pride—over the loss of ownership of their predominant art form of the time and their self-imposed exile out of swing and bebop and toward developing a new art form inaccessible to white influence or ―thievery.‖ The fact that in the 1950s very few African American artists existed outside the performance idiom of jazz and the reality that fewer still received the same pay as whites for performing the same gig, confirmed— or at least supported the belief in, to many African Americans—the economic arm of white privilege manifest in the jazz world and provided many of them the motivation to seek out a new ―black‖ art form. By the middle 1960s, language such as Mitchell‘s was adopted by a greater number of African Americans inside as well as outside the musical arena. In the end, it was the shifting aesthetic reception of jazz which put white critics of all types on the defensive after years of resistance to alternative voices, histories and cultures. Responding to the criticisms of Baraka and others, critics cried ―bloody murder,‖ charging some musicians and critics with asserting racial bias that favored African Americans or for illicitly holding monopolies on (black) art forms. Most importantly, they adopted a defense strategy (a new slogan of resistance to maintain white participation in jazz) that claimed ―reverse racism‖ against whites: ―Crow Jim.‖ 161 In the new era of African American freedom struggles, Baraka‘s ideas of a white stronghold on jazz criticism were buttressed by the resulting demands of African American musician/activists like Roach and Lincoln and the unifying power of the Black Power movement. Hence, jazz criticism evolved from rhetorical signifiers in the 1950s to direct and 344 often aggressive arguments over the right to access and control the cultural aesthetics of jazz into the next decade. By the early 1960s, however, the California jazz scene was in peril of disappearing altogether. The backlash against West Coast jazz forced many of its musicians into obscurity while others simply left the region, moving either to New York City where work was still plentiful, or to Europe, where they could live and work in a place where their music was generally appreciated more than in the United States. In the 1960s the issues over cultural ownership and authentic ―blackness‖ continued without these musicians at the center of the debate. Rock and roll in particular became the locus of criticism for white participation in African American culture. Moreover, though men like Max Roach continued to express the racial idiom of jazz, as did others like Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Archie Shepp, a new mouthpiece—the Black Power movement—however, would soon incorporate the African American struggle for unity and prosperity (in jazz and elsewhere) into a generic public persona and cohesive thought process. In essence, the Black Power movement came to speak for those African American musicians who had previously defended each other as African American musicians and not within the broader racial context of a ―movement‖ per se. Nevertheless, the criticisms of West Coast jazz sparked an inquiry into the cultural lives and interactions between whites and African Americans at the time. They shed light onto the larger historical contexts of the Cold War, the production of race, conceptions of ―authenticity,‖ and the role of print media institutions which provided the platform for jazz critics, listeners and musicians alike to engage them all. Most importantly, they tell us of the extent to which jazz writing had on the rise and fall of West Coast jazz. 345 1 Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Amina Baraka, The Music: Reflections on Jazz and the Blues (New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1987), 96-98. 2 LeRoi Jones, Blues People: Negro Music in White America (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1963) [reprinted 1980], 220. 3 See Charley Gerrard, Jazz in Black and White (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998) for a similar meaning but with slightly different terminology (i.e. ―Afropurist Essentialism‖). 4 See Frank Kofsky, Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music (New York: Pathfinder, 1970); Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) et. al., ―Jazz and Revolutionary Black Nationalism,‖ in Jazz (April, 1966-July 1967); Alan Goldberg, ―The Jazz Musician as Preacher‖: Afro-American Music and Social Change,‖ in Proceedings from the Central States Anthropological Society, selected papers, v. 3 (1977), 23-30; Ingrid Monson, ―Abby Lincoln‘s ‗Straight Ahead:‘ Jazz in the Era of the Civil Rights Movement‖ in Between Resistance and Revolution: Cultural Politics and Social Protest (Rutgers University Press, 1997); ; Angela Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday (New York: Pantheon, 1998). 5 See Melville J. Herskovits, Myth of the Negro Past (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941). Herskovits was probably the first to argue that African culture continually replenishes African American culture. For the art historian perspective, see also Robert F. Thompson, Flash of the Spirit: Afro-American Art & Philosophy (New York: Vintage Books, 1984). Thompson reveals how the Yoruba, Kongo, Dahomey, Cross River, and Mande cultures of Africa have shaped the development of African (and African American) culture. 6 Baraka, Blues People, x. 7 Richard Alan Waterman, ―African Influence on the Music of the Americas.‖ In Selected th Papers of the 29 International Congress of Americanists, Vol. 2: Acculturation in the Americas. Sol Tax, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 211. 8 A word here on definitions: it is a mistake to use the terms ―West Coast jazz‖ and ―cool jazz‖ interchangeably, or using ―cool jazz‖ as a blanket definition for all California jazz. Musicians and critics alike have been confusing the two since the early post-WWII era. ―Cool jazz‖ is incorrect terminology to describe ―West Coast jazz‖ because it suggests the California jazz scene was somehow monolithic. This is obviously not the case. Musicians like Harold Land, Lennie Niehaus, Don Cherry, Billy Higgins, Sonny Criss and Ornette Coleman, for instance, were practitioners of bebop, hard bop and free jazz, respectively, and their music thrived at the same time and place as cool jazz. Moreover, I consider ―cool‖ to express an approach to playing jazz and not a jazz subgenre or movement, as in West Coast jazz. 9 Harry Roskolenko, ―The Sounds of the Fury‖ Prairie Schooner XXXIII (Summer 1959), 148153. 10 See Nathan Irvin Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971). 11 James Lincoln Collier, Jazz: America‟s Theme Song (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 187. 12 Gerrard, Jazz in Black and White, 105. 346 13 Quoting Richard Bock from Pacific Jazz Records, The Genius of Gerry Mulligan Pausa 9010 [reissue of PJ-8] in Robert Gordon, Jazz West Coast: The Los Angeles Jazz Scene of the 1950s (London: Quarter Books, 1986), 104. 14 See for instance, Grover Sales, Jazz: America‟s Classical Music (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984), 2; Theodor W. Adorno (with Richard D. Leppert and Susan H. Gillespie), ―On Jazz‖ (1936) and ―On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening‖ (1938) in Essays on Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); and Theodor W. Adorno, ―Perennial Fashion—Jazz‖ in Stephen Eric Bronner and Douglas MacKay Kellner, eds., Critical Theory and Society: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 1989); and John Gennari, Blowin‟ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), see Chapters 3 and 4. 15 Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 62. 16 Joe Goldberg, Jazz Masters of the Fifties (New York: Collier-Macmillan Limited, 1965), 13. 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Gordon, Jazz West Coast, 201. Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 278. Sales, Jazz: America‟s Classical Music, 2. Gioia, West Coast Jazz, 62, 69. Goldberg, Jazz Masters of the Fifties, 22. Goldberg, 129. Gioia, The History of Jazz, 280. 24 Eddie S. Meadows, Bebop to Cool: Context, Content and Musical Identity (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003), 251 25 Sales, Jazz: America‟s Classical Music, 165. 26 Michael J. Budds, Jazz in the Sixties: The Expansion of Musical Resources and Techniques (Iowa City, IO: University of Iowa Press, 1990), 10. 27 Budds, Jazz in the Sixties, 2. 28 29 Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 7. Collier, Jazz, 186, 187. 30 Dizzy Gillespie and Al Fraser, To Be… or Not to Bop: Memoirs (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1979), 359. 31 Gillespie and Fraser, 360. 32 33 Gillespie and Fraser, 360. Meadows, Bebop to Cool, 247. 34 Ernest Borneman, ―The Roots of Jazz‖ in Nat Hentoff and Albert McCarthy, eds. Jazz (New York: Rinehart, 1959), 23-24. 35 Baraka, Blues People, 30. 347 36 37 38 39 40 Kofsky, Black Nationalism, 36n. Andre Hodeir, Jazz: Its Essence and Evolution (New York: Grove, 1956), 118. Hodeir, Jazz: Its Essence and Evolution, 119. Meadows, Bebop to Cool, 244, 255. th Barry Ulanov, ―Barry Ulanov,‖ Down Beat (Feb. 8 , 1956): 34. 41 The subtitle here draws from Joel Rudinow, ―Race, Ethnicity, Expressive Authenticity: Can White People Sing the Blues?‖ Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52, No. 1 (Winter, 1994), 127. Rudinow, a professor at Sonoma State University describes authenticity as ―a value-a species of the genus credibility.‖ He posed his question to his students and they believed overwhelmingly that blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn was proof whites could play the blues and that African Americans could not ―own‖ culture. 42 Gioia, The History of Jazz, 278. 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 Winthrop Sargeant, Jazz, Hot and Hybrid, third ed., (New York: Da Capo Press, 1975), 257. Sargeant, Jazz: Hot and Hybrid, 257. th Ulanov, Down Beat (Feb. 8 , 1956), 34. th Ulanov, Down Beat (Feb. 8 , 1956), 34. th Ulanov, Down Beat (Feb. 8 , 1956), 34. th Ulanov, Down Beat (Feb. 8 , 1956), 34, 36. th Ulanov, Down Beat (Feb. 8 , 1956), 36. Particularly interesting is Ulanov‘s inference that more ―Negroes‖ are necessary in making cool a better music. Apparently, he presumes that the entire African American musician community in Los Angeles plays jazz, as it would be ridiculous for one to play anything else; i.e. classical. 50 th Ulanov, Down Beat (Feb. 8 , 1956), 36. 51 th Ulanov, Down Beat (Feb. 8 , 1956), 36. 52 Leonard Feather, ―Feather‘s Nest,‖ Down Beat, (March 20 , 1958), 34. 53 Feather, ―Feather‘s Nest,‖ Down Beat, (March 20 , 1958), 34. 54 Dick Hadlock, ―Monterey Jazz Festival 1958,‖ Jazz Review, (Jan. 1959), 50. 55 Hadlock, ―Monterey Jazz Festival 1958,‖ 27. 56 57 th th th Feather, Down Beat, (March 20 , 1958), 34. th Feather, Down Beat, (March 20 , 1958), 34. 58 Dr. Ed Otis Prat, ―Chords and Discords,‖ Down Beat (Feb. 28 , 1963), 10 th 59 Prat, ―Chords and Discords,‖ 10. 60 Ralph J. Gleason, ―Brubeck: For the First Time, Read How Dave Thinks, Work, Believes, and th How He Reacts to His Critics,‖ Down Beat (July 25 , 1957), 13. 61 Ralph Gleason, ―Perspectives,‖ Down Beat (Apr. 6 , 1955), 18. th 62 Gleason, ―Perspectives,‖ Down Beat (Apr. 6 , 1955), 18. th 348 63 64 Gioia, West Coast Jazz, 66-67. Don Freeman, ―Dave Brubeck Answers His Critics: A Lot of Them Are Being Unfair, Insists th Jazz‘ Controversial Pianist,‖ Down Beat (Aug. 10 , 1955), 7. 65 Freeman, ―Dave Brubeck Answers His Critics,‖ 7. 66 Nat Hentoff, ―Miles: A Trumpeter in the Midst of a Big Comeback Makes a Very Frank nd Appraisal of Today‘s Jazz Scene,‖ Down Beat (Nov. 2 , 1955), 13. 67 th Leonard Feather, ―The Blindfold Test: Julian (Cannonball) Adderley,‖ Down Beat (Dec. 24 , 1959), 48. 68 th Gleason, Down Beat, (July 25 , 1957), 13. 69 th Gleason, Down Beat, (Apr. 6 , 1955), 18. 70 rd Ralph Gleason, ―Ralph Mulls Mulligan, Finds Overrated Child,‖ Down Beat (Sept. 23 , 1953), 8. 71 th Leonard Feather, ―The Blindfold Test,‖ Down Beat (July 27 , 1955), 37. 72 th Gleason, Down Beat (July 25 , 1957), 14. 73 Ira Gitler, ―In Review,‖ Down Beat (Apr. 28 , 1960), 37. th 74 Gitler, ―In Review,‖ Down Beat (Apr. 28 , 1960), 37. 75 Gitler, ―In Review,‖ Down Beat (Apr. 28 , 1960), 37. 76 Gitler, ―In Review,‖ Down Beat (Apr. 28 , 1960), 37. th th th 77 The term ―vamp‖ refers to a figure (usually 1-4 bars of music which is repeated over and over) which is played in accompaniment to a lead instrument, in this case, the solo instrument. 78 th Gitler, Down Beat (Apr. 28 , 1960), 37. 79 Gitler, ―In Review,‖ Down Beat (Apr. 28 , 1960), 37. th 80 Gitler, ―In Review,‖ Down Beat (Apr. 28 , 1960), 37. 81 Nat Hentoff, ―Jazz Reviews,‖ Down Beat (July 14 , 1954), 15. 82 Hentoff, ―Jazz Reviews,‖ Down Beat (July 14 , 1954), 15. 83 Hentoff, ―Jazz Reviews,‖ Down Beat (July 14 , 1954), 15. 84 Nat Hentoff, ―Jazz Reviews,‖ Down Beat (Mar. 9 , 1955), 12. 85 Hentoff, ―Jazz Reviews,‖ Down Beat (Mar. 9 , 1955, 13. th th th th th th 86 th 88 th Nat Hentoff, ―Weinstock Judges Stars By Emotion, Musicianship,‖ Down Beat (Jan. 13 , 1954), 31. 87 th Nat Hentoff, ―Jazz Reviews,‖ Down Beat (June 16 , 1954), 11. Bob Martin, ―‖Pipe-and-Slipper Jazz Is For Me: Gerry Mulligan,‖ Down Beat (May 18 , 1954), 2. 89 th Nat Hentoff, ―Jazz Reviews,‖ Down Beat (Apr. 6 , 1955), 12. 90 th Nat Hentoff, ―Jazz Reviews,‖ Down Beat (May 7 , 1956), 18. 349 91 Down Beat, ―The Blindfold Test,‖ (Apr. 22 , 1953), 43. 92 Down Beat, ―Jazz Reviews,‖ (June 17 , 1953), 14S. 93 nd th rd Gleason, Down Beat (Sept. 23 , 1953), 8. 94 Cliff Hopson, ―Chords and Discords,‖ Down Beat (Jan. 23 , 1958), 4. 95 Hopson, ―Chords and Discords,‖ Down Beat (Jan. 23 , 1958), 4. 96 97 98 99 rd rd Bill Crow, Jazz Review (June 1959), 20. Crow, Jazz Review (June 1959), 20. Crow, Jazz Review (June 1959), 4. Crow, Jazz Review (June 1959), 4. 100 Leonard Feather, ―The Blindfold Test,‖ Down Beat (Aug. 6 , 1959), 31. th 101 Leonard Feather, ―The Blindfold Test,‖ Down Beat (Aug. 1, 1954), 15. 102 Leonard Feather, ―The Blindfold Test,‖ Down Beat (Sept. 5 , 1957), 31-32. th 103 rd Ralph Gleason, ―We‘re Just Trying To Be Natural: Jackson-Harris,‖ Down Beat (June 3 , 1953), 6. 104 Sales, Jazz:America‟s Classical Music, 169. 105 106 Budds, Jazz in the Sixties, 118. Budds, Jazz in the Sixties, 11. 107 John Tynan, ―Funk Groove Soul,‖ Down Beat (Nov. 24 , 1960), 19. 108 Tynan, ―Funk Groove Soul,‖ 19. 109 Tynan, ―Funk Groove Soul,‖ 18. 110 Tynan, ―Funk Groove Soul,‖ 18. 111 Tynan, ―Funk Groove Soul,‖ 19. 112 Nat Hentoff and John Tynan, ―Jim Giuffre,‖ Down Beat (Nov. 30 , 1955), 9. 113 D.N., ―Jazz Reviews,‖ Down Beat (Mar. 28 , 1963), 30. 114 Ralph Gleason, ―Perspectives,‖ Down Beat (Jan. 23 , 1957), 38. 115 Gleason, ―Perspectives,‖ Down Beat (Jan. 23 , 1957), 38. 116 117 th th th rd rd Nat Hentoff, Jazz Is (New York: Random House, 1976), 119. John Tynan, ―Hampton Hawes: A Rising West Coast Pianist Discusses Bud, Oscar, Brubeck, th Jazz In General,‖ Down Beat (Dec. 28 , 1955), 9. 118 rd Leonard Feather, ―The Blindfold Test,‖ Down Beat (Sept. 23 , 1953), 19. 119 Gillespie and Fraser, To Be… or Not to Bop, 363. Reddick was one of the first historians to conduct oral histories with ex-slaves. In one such study Reddick interviewed 250 ex-slaves but the project never bore much fruit due to assistants who were not well-versed in conducting oral histories. Nevertheless, Gillespie and Reddick‘s ―very fine intellectual argument‖ inspired this chapter. 350 120 See Amiri Baraka ―Jazz and the White Critic,‖ Down Beat (Aug. 15 , 1963) 16-17, 34. th 121 Richard Dyer, ―White,‖ Screen Vol. 29, No. 4 (Fall 1998), 44. 122 Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 14. 123 John Panish, The Color of Jazz: Race and Representation in American Culture (Jackson: University of Mississippi, 1997), 45. 124 George E. Lewis, ―Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives,‖ in Krin Gabbard, ed., The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue, (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2004), 149. 125 See Gennari, Blowin‟ Hot and Cool, 56. 126 Penny Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 19. 127 According to Burton Peretti, ―Twenties whites often vehemently denied that African Americans had made any contribution to the creation of jazz.‖ Nick LaRocca, a member of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band often ―made it a point of honor never to mix with black musicians or acknowledge their talents.‖ Ironic, since the all-white group was intent on copying the styles of all-Black bands of the era. Likewise Paul Whiteman, in the high modernist tradition, defended his belief that ―jazz was ‗modern‘ concert music, [while] systematically ignore[ing] black Americans.‖ Music critics at the time echoed these sentiments. Carl Engel, for instance, gave the glory to Jewish songwriters of Tin Pan Alley while Sigmund Spaeth ―argued that it was traditional (white) American individualism that had given birth to jazz.‖ Ssee Burton Peretti, Jazz in American Culture (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1997), 42-43. 128 Quoted in Gennari, Blowin‟ Hot and Cool, 43. 129 George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Benefit From Identity Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006) 20. 130 B.H. Haggin, ―Music,‖ Nation (Oct. 14, 1939), 420. 131 Gennari, Blowin‟ Hot and Cool, 56. 132 Leonard Feather, ―Feather‘s Nest,‖ Down Beat (July 11 , 1957), 7. 133 Feather, ―Feather‘s Nest,‖ Down Beat (July 11 , 1957), 7. 134 Feather, ―Feather‘s Nest,‖ Down Beat (July 11 , 1957), 7. th th th 135 Ronald Radano, New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton‟s Cultural Critique, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 12-16. 136 Gennari, Blowin‟ Hot and Cool, 167. 137 Panish, The Color of Jazz, 52; Ingrid Monson, ―Abbey Lincoln‘s ‗Straight Ahead‘: Jazz in the Era of the Civil Rights Movement,‖ in Richard G. Fox and Starn Orin, Eds., Between Resistance and Revolution: Cultural Politics and Social Protest (East Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 175; Mezzrow, quoted in Panish, The Color of Jazz, 53. 138 The Definition of New Criticism,‖ http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/poetry/critical_define/crit_newcrit.html (accessed Mar. 351 18th, 2007); see Murfin, Ross, and Supryia M. Ray. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997. 139 Tobin Siebers, Cold War Criticism and the Politics of Skepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 38. 140 nd Terry Eagleton, Literary Criticism: An Introduction, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2 ed., 1997), 50. 141 Steven B. Elworth, ―Jazz in Crisis, 1948-1958: Ideology and Representation‖ Krin Gabbard, ed. Jazz Among the Discourses (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 71. 142 Quoted in Gennari, Blowin‟ Hot and Cool, 186. 143 Gennari Blowin‟ Hot and Cool, 170. 144 Gennari, Blowin‟ Hot and Cool, 168. 145 Jake Russell, ―Jim Crow-Upside Down‖ Jazz Record (Apr., 1944), 47. 146 H.O. Brunn, ―Chords and Discords,‖ Down Beat (Aug. 4 , 1960), 6-7. th 147 Quoted in Elworth, ―Jazz in Crisis, 1948-1958,‖ 70. 148 Robert Walser, Keeping Time: Readings in Jazz History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 280-90. 149 Walser, Keeping Time, 290. 150 Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World, 4. 151 Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World, 17. 152 Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World, 160. 153 Monson, ―Abbey Lincoln‘s ‗Straight Ahead,‘‖ 187. 154 Quoted in Gennari, Blowin‟ Hot and Cool, 57. 155 Ira Gitler, ―Gitler‘s Review,‖ Down Beat (Mar. 29 , 1962), 22 156 Bob Yeager, ―Chord and Discords,‖ Down Beat (May 10 , 1962), 5-6. 157 Monson, ―Abbey Lincoln‘s ‗Straight Ahead,‘‖ 187. 158 Quoted in Monson, ―Abbey Lincoln‘s ‗Straight Ahead,‘‖ 174. 159 Leroy Mitchell, ―Chords and Discords,‖ Down Beat (Mar. 7 , 1952), 10. th th th 160 th Mitchell, ―Chords and Discords,‖ Down Beat (Mar. 7 , 1952), 10. 161 st See Leonard Feather, ―Feather‘s Nest,‖ Down Beat (Sept. 1 , 1960), 43-44; Don DeMicheal, nd ―Inside the Cannonball Adderley Quintet: Part 2‖ Down Beat (June 22 , 1961), 16-18, 41; and th Ed Mulford, ―Chords and Discords,‖ Down Beat (Mar. 15 , 1962), 8. 352 Creative Advertizing: The Album Art of West Coast Jazz While the virtual erasure of the critical texts and institutions of West Coast jazz by the early 1960s has ensured that no California jazz movement of the same magnitude has seen surfaced to date, West Coast jazz endures today—albeit in a significantly abridged form—in popular memory through a slightly different set of texts and intuitions. The most powerful in reconstructing our memory of West Coast jazz since its demise have been its album art. Since disappearance of most of its essential support networks, it is these records which have proliferated since the movement‘s end. Records tend to linger in circulation long after the music they contain is rendered irrelevant. They are traded from one hand to another throughout the ages, particularly among the collector set, and as a result are able to transport and transfer history and culture on to future generations. Record albums in particular comprise perhaps the most definitive archival evidence as to the existence of any musical movement. What‘s more, in the age of digital music and online specialty records outlets, record albums can be located and purchased with great ease and anonymity today. While West Coast jazz record albums are finite, having ceased production along with the music, jazz literature on the other hand is a seemingly limitless field which has continued steadily since that time, though not always incorporating the history of West Coast jazz. Like record albums however, jazz histories can now be accessed easier and purchased at a cheaper cost due to the rise of internet bookstores and read in new digital formats. Internet outlets are also known to contain hordes of rare and out of print material; book or record alike. What‘s more, with the rise of internet blogging, virtually anyone, from enthusiasts to casual listeners, can engage in dialogue from far-flung regions of the world; a powerful medium in facilitating the 350 reconstruction of the past. In other words, in the age of digital commerce, new media is updating the old in ways which shape the terrain of knowledge and consumption of jazz‘s past. Given this, it seems pertinent to understand how record albums function as today‘s critical texts in order to understand the ways in which they represent—accurately or otherwise— this bygone jazz movement. As with the criticisms of West Coast jazz in the 1950s and 1960s, however, these institutions have been no less problematic in their representations of either the music or the movement. At their best, these texts reveal the important links between the movement and its modernist context. At their worst, however, these texts reduce the movement and its music to a punch-line; perhaps the most common representation. Far from conspiratorial, record albums nevertheless continue to popularize West Coast jazz in ways that its contemporary critics initiated nearly six decades ago. Indeed, it is specters of the past that hold present understandings of the movement hostage. Jazz criticism and historiography cannot pay the balance of the blame for West Coast jazz‘s excription from serious intellectual inquiry. In its own way, its album art is partly responsible. While there were many images of West Coast jazz abound in the 1950s and 1960s, the most influential were those found in its album art. Indeed, while the movement was often identified and defined by its particular sound recordings, it was those iconic representations on the album covers which created an ambience or musical lifestyle for its artists. More than any other visual medium, the album art of record companies like Pacific Jazz, Contemporary, and Fantasy was responsible for reflecting and distributing this movement across the country and beyond. However, while much of West Coast jazz album art stands as a testament to its cultural potency and relevance, in perpetuating stereotypes of California as a vacant and substance-less 351 region and its jazz artists as cornball vaudevillians, this album art also played into the hands of its harshest critics. As with almost any kind of advertising, the album art of West Coast jazz is problematically nestled between the sometimes cold, heartless world of business marketing and the pulsating, life-blood of artistic freedom. On one hand the album art could be used a canvas on which to recreate or to parallel the aesthetics of the West Coast jazz movement and on the other to help distinguish its brand image in order to sell records to those consumers outside of the West Coast unaware of the contents of the record they were considering. As such, the packaging and marketing of West Coast jazz often clashed with the more artistic interests of its designers. Thus, while West Coast jazz produced album art of obvious artistic merit, much of it bore little synergy with the music it was charged with promoting. The latter of course became the target of a jazz world still beset on fermenting the East Coast as the cradle of ―real jazz.‖ In 1993, Ted Gioia described the context into which the album art of West Coast jazz was situated. Specifically, he explained the ―battle over images‖ or ―marketing war‖ which West Coast jazz album art engaged in with rival record companies from the East Coast like Blue Note 1 which, he says, ―expressed the mystique of the intensity of the jazz experience.‖ It was one of Blue Note‘s most important album art designers, Reid Miles, who defined Blue Note‘s album art style, often shooting musicians in clubs, ―working,‖ almost preaching or orating, standing larger 2 than life, etc. ―The players are perspiring while they‘re playing, the lights are dim. All together, 3 these covers portray the image of jazz as intense hard work,‖ said Gioia. These images were contrasted by West Coast album art which often took musicians out of the nightclubs and placed them into unfamiliar settings or simply didn‘t show the musicians at all. When musicians were present, they were sometimes placed into casual or even clownish situations which belied the 352 seriousness of their art. Thus, the branding of West Coast jazz often backfired in its attempt to align with the distinct jazz culture flourishing in California. The album art of West Coast jazz commonly revolved around several themes. Firstly, it can be placed into main two categories: photography or painting. In the case of painting, either original work was commissioned or the rights to reproduce images of well-known paintings of the day were secured. In virtually all cases involving photography, original work was commissioned or done in-house. Secondly, this album art can either feature musicians themselves in a variety of settings (photography), it can feature forms of modern art (either nonthematic art or, in some cases, cartoon figures), or, in lieu of or in addition to musicians, it can feature female models usually in sexually suggestive situations. From here, they assume five or six themed categories: representing the local Los Angeles geography or natural environment; musicians at work in the studio; jam or practice sessions in musicians‘ homes; musicians at play; future themes, and experimental photography featuring new technologies or invention. The most problematic album covers involved future themes, musicians at play and female models. In most cases, these covers reflected the tasteless and absurdity of advertizing executives whose poor verbal acrobatics, comedic references, B-movie sensibilities or ―sex sells‖ marketing zeal conflicted with the seriousness of the music, the musicians and other artists involved with the movement. Albums like Shorty Rogers Meets Tarzan (MGM E3798 [1959]) by Shorty Rogers, sees the trumpeter held in the arms of Tarzan himself—loincloth and all—for the soundtrack to the movie remake of the 1938 original; Martians Come Back (Atlantic 1232 [1955]), also by Rogers, shows Rogers wearing a suit and tie, donning a futuristic space helmet with flugelhorn in one hand and a cigarette in the other; Exploring the Future (Dooto DTL 247 [1958]) by Curtis Counce features the man in outer space holding his concert bass and clad in 353 space suit; Everybody Likes Hampton Hawes Vol. 3 (Contemporary C3523 [1956]) by the Hampton Hawes Trio features an cartoon alligator sipping a drink at a café, eyes closed and tapping his fingers on the table presumably to the music; More Swinging Sounds: Shelly Manne and his Men Vol. 5 (Contemporary C 3519 [1956]) by Shelley Manne features a cartoon cat literally swinging from a chandelier; and Surf Ride (Savoy MG 12089 [1952]) by Art Pepper features a drawing of a bikini-clad girl riding a wave towards the beach. The latter is illustrative of one particular subset of the more ridiculous West Coast jazz album art not only in its failure to relate surf culture to jazz (a relationship virtually non-existent in early 1950s Los Angeles) but in its fanciful take on Los Angeles leisure culture and in its use of sexualized images of women. In fact, ―cheesecake‖ photos of oversexed women, says Gioia, 4 were among the more problematic album covers, not to mention the most visible : Chances Are it Swings (RCA Victor LPM1975 [1958]) by Shorty Rogers features a woman stopped in midstride by Roger‘s flugelhorn sounds; Coop!: The Music of Bob Cooper (Contemporary 3544 [1957]) by Bob Cooper features a woman whose excited lips painted with bright pink lipstick pucker into an ―O‖ shape to Cooper‘s playing in the background and form the second ―O‖ in the word ―Coop!‖; Zounds! (Contemporary 3540 [1957]) by Lennie Niehaus features two female models on the beach holding a giant seashell to their ears presumably to listen for Niehaus‘ alto saxophone; and a ―stereophonic demonstration album‖ of various artists titled Something for Both Ears features a woman in black evening dress holding two pipe horns to her ears (World Pacific HFS-2 [1958]; While these examples may comprise an element of humor to them, some of the more egregious examples do not. Howard Rumsey‘s Lighthouse All-Stars Lighthouse at Laguna (Contemporary 3509 [1955]) features nothing but a woman reclining on her side in a bathing 354 suit; no surf, sand, landscape or backdrop of any kind; Tjader Plays Mambo (Fantasy 3-18 [1954]) by Cal Tjader also features a lone woman dancing but without any visual backdrop; Bud Shank and Bob Cooper‘s The Swing‟s to TV (World Pacific WPM-411 [1958]) features a scantily-clad woman reclining on a bearskin rug while watching TV; The Mastersounds‘ Kismet (World Pacific WP-1243 [1956]) features a woman in full belly-dancer regalia on her knees seductively positioning a finger to her lips; Grand Encounter (Pacific Jazz 1217 [1956]), an album by John Lewis, Percy Heath, Bill Perkins, Chico Hamilton and Jim Hall, features a young woman on her back presumably in a barn nestling into a pile of hay and coyly beckoning the viewer in. Here, the double entendre, ―encounter,‖ is taken ostensibly to describe the musical meeting of East Coasters Lewis and Heath with West Coasters Perkins, Hamilton and Hall but also reveals a tongue-in-cheek reference to a more sexual kind. Less poetic is Chet Baker-Art Pepper: Playboys (World Pacific 1234 [1956]), which features a woman nude from the waist up, covering her bare breasts with only two hand puppets. Perhaps the most egregious example is that of You Get More Bounce with Curtis Counce! (Contemporary 3539 [1957]) by Curtis Counce which features a woman wearing only an unbuttoned white doctor‘s coat, her head tossed backward with mouth gaping and one hand running through her hair as if in the throes of orgasm, while listening to her heartbeat through a stethoscope. According to Gioia, ―These pictures were obviously marketing devices to capture what people in Iowa thought of the West Coast ambience. But they also created an image of the West Coast musician as less intense. The problem was, lots of people would look at the West Coast album covers and think that since they were so frivolous, maybe the music was frivolous 5 too.‖ 355 Though West Coast album art was inextricably tied to the selling of records, often belying the work it attempted to reference and leading ultimately to the dismissal the of the music in general, it also offered license and opportunity for local modern artists, designers, photographers, etc. aligned with the movement to more accurately represent its musical aesthetics, lifestyle, and to experiment with new artistic techniques in keeping with the midcentury modernism of the area. There were many responsible for this caliber of West Coast album art, but perhaps the most important figures came from the local Los Angeles area. They ranged from record company employees like Pacific Jazz‘s Woody Woodward, designers like Armand Acosta, jazz photographers like William Claxton, to abstract painters like Bob Irwin and John Altoon. Together these artists created album art which helped develop and define West Coast jazz more appropriately as a modern art movement expressive of the jazz-shaped culture of Los Angeles by mid-century. Photographer and album art designer William Claxton was responsible for some of the most artistic and inventive jazz photography in the history of the music. Though Claxton was responsible for several of the more problematic album art designs and photographs, on the whole his work comprised the most positive, realistic and uncompromising portrayals of West Coast jazzmen, even when placing musicians in non-traditional scenes or spaces: Gerry Mulligan, seen in the studio dwarfed by his gigantic baritone sax and a piano nowhere to be found; Chet Baker, a tragic, James Dean-like figure whose relaxed swing and buttery tone matched his croonerinspired singing, shot noodling at the piano with wind-swept hair, stereotypically mimicking Ludwig von Beethoven; Art Pepper, who split time between cool, bebop, and free jazz, a rival to Charlie Parker (both in musical ability and in drug addiction) and another figure with Hollywood 356 good looks but whose life story read like a ―phantasmagorical autobiography,‖ struggling to walk uphill on a lonely, dusty road in Los Angeles in pursuit of his next drug score, etc. 6 Consider a swath of album art designed and/or photographed by Claxton. Claxton was perhaps the most region-conscious Angeleno designer, often referencing the distinctiveness of the Southern California jazz tradition in his work. Superficially, Claxton‘s photographs and designs may seem absurd or trite but on closer inspection they have more in common with the serious modernist art being produced there than the hackneyed marking practices of industry admen. Among his geographic references we find Chet Baker‘s Chet Baker & Crew (Pacific Jazz 1224 [1956]) featuring Chet and company on a yacht off the California coast in a summery day, Chet standing on the sail facing the coast with one hand gripping the rigging, leaning starboard at an almost 45 degree angle, and the other hand holding his trumpet to his lips as if to announce to 7 port his arrival. An album of various artists titled Jazz West Coast Vol. 3 (Pacific Jazz JWC-507 [1957]) again features the coast; a man in scuba-diving gear (snorkel, trident and all) emerging from the surf holding—what else—a trumpet. Again, it is a bright, sunny California day, as the camera points out to sea towards the horizon. 8 A three-part album set by saxophonist Bud Shank features three shots of almost the entire Los Angeles basin (Pacific Jazz 1205 [1954]; Pacific Jazz EP4-36[1955]). In the foreground is a major highway (perhaps Hwy 405) and the famous Hollywood Bowl music amphitheater which was built right into a section of natural landscape known for its brilliant acoustics. While each album in this set features the same photo, they reflect a different color or hue, together imitating 9 Warhol‘s ―Campbell‘s soup‖ period. The Poll Winners (Contemporary S7535 [1957]) by Barney Kessel, Shelly Manne, and Ray Brown punning—holding giant poles—with nothing but sky and a sprawling view of Los Angeles in the background. 357 10 Claxton‘s particular homage to the region appears in countless examples of his designs for West Coast album art. Howard Rumsey‟s Lighthouse All-Stars Vol. 6 (Contemporary C3504 [1955]) features a photo by Richard McCowan of Rumsey and crew, instruments and all, playing on the beach; again camera pointed out towards the sea on—what else—a sunny California day. 11 Trumpeter Howard McGhee‘s Maggie‟s Back in Town (Contemporary 3596 [1961]) features a smiling McGhee in the foreground posing next to a swank convertible parked on a Los Angeles city street (perhaps Central Ave.?) with the hills (Hollywood?) in the background. 12 Rumsey‘s Music for Lighthouse Keeping (Contemporary C3528 [1956]) on Contemporary sees Rumsey sitting naturally on a fire hydrant in front of the lighthouse in Hermosa Beach where the club which bears the band‘s name is located. 13 Claxton also shot the Cannonball Adderley Quintet for their live engagement at the Lighthouse for Riverside Records; the band in summer attire, shades and happy faces, posing under a giant beach umbrella with the camera again, pointed to sea. 14 And of course, Thelonius Monk‘s Alone in San Francisco (Riverside RLP 12- 312 [1959]) sees the pianist riding the rails on a San Francisco street car. 15 Thus, geography in West Coast album art reflected not only iconic elements of those specific areas but the sort of lush life promised by the earlier booster era, luring Easterners and Midwesterners to the oasis in the desert. Far from an attempt to shamelessly capitalize on stereotypes, Claxton‘s photographs and designs show the region‘s reverence and relevance. Part of the reason for this is due to Claxton‘s assessment of West Coast jazz culture itself: ―Photographs of jazz musicians in hot, smoke-filled clubs and studios with perspiration running down their faces were, in my mind, too stereotypical and not 358 even honest anymore, certainly not on the West Coast. So I began to shoot clean, distinguished, rather sedate portraits of stars…‖ 16 In this way, Claxton‘s departure from the aesthetics of those record companies stationed on the East Coast comprised an attempt to normalize, even humanize his subject. Rather than shoot jazz figures in the heroic way, Claxton focused his photography on artists‘ relationship with their instruments and in settings where music was conceptualized, practiced, developed, and nurtured, without the mediation or veil of commercialism. According to Dave Hickey, Claxton ―understood and exploited the fact that jazz music usually takes place in settings of stunning visual banality—in poorly lit rooms with linoleum floors, acoustic tiles, random wires, equipment, cheap curtains, and battered furniture.‖ Moreover, ―he understood that jazz musicians do not so much dress as disguise themselves, so that they are never not in costume and never not, in some sense, incognito.‖ Thus, the ―romance‖ of Claxton‘s photography is that it is particularly unromantic.‖ 17 Exemplar of this approach is Claxton‘s photographs of musicians at practice or in the studio. None better represents the former than his photo of a Sunday jam session at the North Hollywood home of vibraphonist Terry Gibbs in 1960. The scene reaches the height of informality. The musicians gather in one corner of the carpeted living room. It is sparsely decorated to say the least; no ornaments don the walls save for a light fixture. The curtain to the sliding glass door is thrown open to the backyard. Bassist Paul Chambers is wearing shorts and Gibbs, the host, is shirtless watching the event from the floor of the opposite corner. The entire photograph is washed in a golden hue as a result of the mid-day sun shining through the sliding glass door. Here is the California lush life; the practice of jazz-making—the jazz process— without pretense or ornamentation. 359 Likewise, studio shots were common place in Claxton‘s album art repertoire. For Picture of Heath (Pacific Jazz 1234 [1956]) by Chet Baker and Art Pepper, Claxton, with Woodward as designer, presents Baker, Pepper and company candidly in the recording process, featuring simply the musicians themselves, their instruments, along with music stands and a microphone. For Jack Montrose‘s album Arranged by Montrose (Pacific Jazz 1214 [1955]), Claxton shoots Montrose from the ground upward towards the ceiling of the studio to give gravitas to the artists who, while contemplation during playback, is posed entangled in a cluster of various microphone stands, giving them the appearance of an Alexander Calder mobile of the era made of sheet metal, rod, and wire. 18 As before, album art for which Claxton was not responsible followed suit: Gerald Wilson conducting his big band in rehearsal; John Hendricks reviewing a score with his bandmates; or the vocal group the Hi-Lo‘s grinning widely from beyond the glass of the sound room, the engineers hard at work (Pacific Jazz PJ-34 [1961]; World Pacific WP-1283 19 [1959]; Starlight 7005 [1955]. Claxton‘s album covers, like his photography, emphasized this state of normalcy and realism. Whether it meant shooting Shorty Rogers sitting high up in a tree, Bud Shank playing for a neighbor‘s child outside his Los Angeles home, or Chet Baker in the studio singing the words he reads from the music stand (Atlantic SD-1270 [1957]; World Pacific 1286 [1960]; Pacific Jazz PLJP-11 [1954]). 20 Claxton‘s imagery mimicked the realness, candor, modesty and relaxedness of the music of West Coast jazz which, according to Hickey, ―presented itself as everyday life under optimum conditions, steady and cool:‖ ―It was a quiet music at a time when it was loud (more Chico Hamilton then Miles, now that I think about it). It was played midrange and midtempo even though playing fast and high were icons of jazz mastery at the time. It did not 360 manifest honks, squawks, and stinging vibratos that, in that moment, were signifiers of effort, struggle, and ‗self-expression.‘ To have done any of these things…would have been hypocritical. It would have brought the outside in. It would have posited resistance where, in that space, there was none. It would have conjured up a nonexistent state of repression for pure effect, as a journalistic sidebar.‖ 21 Claxton was also known for his inventiveness with respect to new techniques not seen in album art at the time. For two albums by the Russ Freeman Trio (Pacific Jazz EP4-19 [1954]) and the Chico Hamilton Trio (Pacific Jazz EP4-20 [1954]), he produced prints which, according to the photographer, ―were created on the enlarger easel by projecting the photographs and then dodging in the light, permitting only parts of the photograph to be exposed on the paper.‖ 22 The result gives the musicians in the photo the appearance of being drawn with a pencil and sketch pad or barely chiseled into stone like a two-dimensional relief. The cover of Chet Baker Ensemble (Pacific Jazz PJLP-9 [1953]) was ―created by projecting a photograph of a trumpet slightly out of focus onto the printing paper and then moving the printing paper with intermittent exposures, thus forming a ‗dancing trumpet.‘‖ 23 Also in that year Claxton produced photos which, taken together, could be a case study in modern photography. By this time, Claxton had switched from using a 4 x 6 Speed Graphic to a Rolleiflex camera which was dependant on only available natural light which gave his photos a rawness but also expanded the boundaries of artistic possibility. Appearing on albums by Chet Baker, Bob Brookmeyer, Gerry Mulligan, Bud Shank, and Bengt Hallberg, Claxton experimented with stage lighting using the Rolleiflex. In some cases, the photos blur out of focus, reflecting strange light patterns in geometric block form that mimicked the contemporary 361 ―hard-edge‖ abstract paintings of likes of John McLaughlin or Mark Rothko (ex. Pacific Jazz 24 PJLP-15 [1954]). In other cases they appear as headlights from automobiles dotting a distant, darkened freeway (ex. Pacific Jazz PJLP-16 [1954]; Pacific Jazz PJLP-14 [1954]). In other still, they appear like Morse code; streaks and dots intersecting linearly as Piet Mondrian‘s jazz25 inspired paintings of the early modernist era (ex. Pacific Jazz EP4-17 [1954]. In short, Claxton‘s photography remixed prominent art schools into a new modernist medium. The second area of importance with respect to album art is the way in which it aligned with the burgeoning abstract art community of Los Angeles at the time. Album art became not only the vehicle to broadcast this local art but the aesthetic behind that art as well. This essentially links the jazz music on the record with the painting (and, in some cases, sculpture) on the album cover. A plethora of local artists contributed to album cover design: Zoe Ann Fischer supplied her ―Extensions‖ for the cover of the Clare Fischer Orchestra‘s album Extension (Pacific Jazz PJ-77 [1963]); Pauline Gannon‘s drawing of Bud Shank graces the cover of one of his albums (Pacific Jazz 1215 [1956]); and Saul White, once the record librarian at KFWB, one of Los Angeles‘s earliest jazz radio stations, offered ―The Fox‖ to be featured on The Harold 26 Land Quintet‘s album of the same name (Hi Fi Jazz 612 [1959]). Many of these album covers take obvious cues from more well-known modernists. For instance, the album art for Shelly Manne and His Friends (Contemporary C3525 [1956]), designed by Guidi/Tri-Arts bears striking resemblance to Picasso. 27 John Altoon‘s cover art for the Chet Baker Big Band (Pacific Jazz 1229 [1956]) could have easily been assembled by Matisse himself during the time of his ―Jazz‖ (1947) collection or by jazz-painter Stuart Davis th while in New York City during the earlier half of the 20 century. 362 28 Hyde/Hannan‘s artwork for Claude Williamson‘s „Round Midnight (Bethlehem BCP 69 [1956]) album is as minimalist as Mondrian and features the experimental light photography indicative of Claxton. The photograph is of a tenement building, revealing light emanating from only a select few windows colored in either blue or yellow reminds one of Mondrian‘s Broadway Boogie Woogie (1943) painting. 29 Catherine Heerman‘s art for Lennie Niehaus‘ Vol. #3, the Octet #2 (Contemporary 3503 [1955]) bears striking resemblance to Saul Bass‘ artwork for the film The Man with the Golden Arm (1955); the soundtrack to which features Shorty Rogers and His Giants as well as Bass‘ original artwork. 30 Lastly, Woody Woodward‘s design for the various artists album This is the Blues Vol. 1 (Pacific Jazz PJ-13 [1960]) perfectly details Jackson Pollock‘s bebop-inspired ―drip technique.‖ 31 One of the more interesting features to West Coast album art is the attention to one particular strain of abstract art at this time: assemblage. We see evidence of this technique in a plethora of West Coast albums. James Sewell‘s composition for Rey Demichel‘s For Bloozer‟s Only! (Challenge CHL-610 [1959]) features a towel stretched between a doorway, pinned to the sides on all for corners, on the surface of which is the face of a musician. Outstretched from the face is a trumpet which springs three-dimensionally outward to the viewer. Also in the scene are other, seemingly random, objects—a woman‘s hand, a lock of blonde hair, etc.—all which seem to lend a surrealistic quality to the scene. 32 Also, Peter Whorf‘s artwork for Gerald Wilson‘s The Golden Sword (Pacific Jazz 10111 [1966]) which features Wilson standing amidst a collage of bullfighting posters/advertisements; some appear to be pinned to a wall which isn‘t there while others relax between the floor and this missing wall in the manner of Dali‘s ―Persistence of Memory‖ (1931). 33 The cover of Harold Land‘s Harold in the Land of Jazz (Contemporary C3550 [1958]) by Walter Zerlinden features the artist playing in front of the most important 363 assemblage piece in Los Angeles (now a Los Angeles historic monument), the Watts Towers, designed and built by Simon Rodia. 34 Perhaps the exemplar piece of assemblage cover art was conceived and designed by William Claxton for Chet Baker‘s Chet Baker Sings and Plays (Pacific Jazz 1202 [1955]). It is a black and white photograph of objects pinned to a wall which itself features photographs of Baker; beach scenes of couples or groups along the shore; a doilie or tea napkin; a rose; a cropped picture of Chet and his girlfriend at the time, Halema; a postcard of Hollywood, CA; a drawing of a cupid in pink; a photo of what appears to the main terminal for the Los Angeles train station; a pocket watch; a ribbon tied into a bow; a magnifying glass; a photo of the Roman Coliseum; the letters ―C.B‖ etched into to the wall within an outline of a heart; drawings of a woman and a fairy figure; and a paper with the album song titles composed as one would a ransom note (i.e. by cutting out letters from a magazine and pasting them onto a blank page). 35 The other important feature about the use of abstract art for West Coast jazz album covers is the interconnectedness and interplay between the music and other art forms. Take, for instance, the photo cover art for the Art Pepper Quartet‘s album simply titled Modern Art (Intro 36 ILP 606 [1957]). Here we see Pepper in suit and tie (the jazz sophisticate) in the living room of a middle-class home with modern furnishings, his sax on the coffee table in front of him, in quiet contemplation. Behind him is a painting of exactly the kind of mid-century abstract expressionist painting popular at the time and featured on West Coast jazz album covers. 37 Hence, we see synergy between the album‘s title, artwork, and music. Likewise, the cover photo for the Bud Shank Quartet in 1957 (Pacific Jazz 1230) designed by Claxton features Shank with horn strewn out over the comics section of the Sunday newspaper, thus linking together graphic and sonic 38 arts. Perhaps the clearest example of this interplay between the arts is in World Pacific 364 Records‘ (a subset of Pacific Jazz) Jazz Canto Vol. 1 (World Pacific 1244 [1958]), an album of poetry readings with musical accompaniment featuring, among others, the poetry of San Francisco beat writer Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The album features of the music of West Coast musicians Gerry Mulligan, Chico Hamilton, Fred Katz and Jack Montrose, and the poetry is interpreted by local Los Angeles artists John Carradine, Hoagy Carmichael, Ben Wright, Roy Glenn, and Bob Dorough. 39 From 1955-1959, Pacific Jazz issued their ―West Coast Artist Series‖ which featured some of the most abstract art of any of their album covers. Artists included Sueo Serisawa, Keith Finch, Edmond Kohn, and two artists of particular significance: Ferus Gallery members John Altoon and Robert Irwin. Along with William Claxton, it was Acosta, Altoon and Irwin who were the principle figures featured on West Coast album covers. The Ferus Gallery was probably Los Angeles‘ most important modern art institution in the 1950s, founded in 1957 by two artists, Walter Hopps and Edward Keinholz, and was one of the first in the nation to feature a stand-alone exhibit of Warhol‘s pop art. Before he joined the Ferus Gallery, Altoon studied at Chouinard Art Institute, the Otis Art Institute and the Art Center of Design, all in Los Angeles, and had made a name for himself in the abstract expressionist vein. 40 Altoon‘s work had been featured on other Pacific Jazz albums like The Jazz Messengers‘ Ritual (Pacific Jazz PJM 402 [1957]), an abstract composition of black, white, and gray with a heavy brush strokes in the manner of Japanese Kanji or pictographic writing. 41 Likewise, for Russ Freeman-Chet Baker Quartet (Pacific Jazz 1232 [1956]), Altoon sketches the artists in black behind a fire engine red backdrop. 42 For the West Coast Artist Series, Altoon submitted work for albums by both Chet Baker in 1955 and a compilation called The Sound of Big Band Jazz in Hi Fi (World Pacific 1257) in 1957. The latter is particularly important here. As opposed 365 to his work for Baker‘s album, this work is an abstract object study in which Altoon riffs on the saxophone in the manner of Picasso, deconstructing and whimsically replacing body parts, though to a lesser degree. 43 Altoon‘s album cover art also serves as a reminder of the fusion of various strains of modern art in California at the time. In one memorable album cover for Jim Hall‘s Jazz Guitar (Pacific Jazz 1227 [1957]), Hall sits quietly playing his guitar while Altoon himself is featured in the background painting an abstract rendering of Hall‘s pose while he plays. Photographing the 44 event was William Claxton. A similar album cover was shot by Claxton for the Chico Hamilton Quartet in 1956, where the sculptor Vito goes to work on a star-shaped composition as the group plays in the background. 45 Likewise, Bob Irwin‘s art was often featured on Pacific Jazz‘s West Coast Artist Series. On the reverse side of The Trumpet Artistry of Chet Baker (Pacific Jazz 1206 [1954]), Irwin‘s bio is featured: ―At present, there are many things important to Irwin: sun, skin-diving, Bartok, Carlos Chavez, football, skiing, and Chet Baker. Of Chet Baker‘s music, as his own art, Irwin says: ‗[He] always leaves one-fourth unsaid…he does not try to say everything for everyone…[his art] is left to the individual to interpret.‘ 46 Wallace Berman was another of the local radical artist set—a close-knit figure within the Ferus collective—who contributed to album art. Berman‘s jazz art was far different from most of his contemporaries; it carried an unabashed sense of ironic horror to it, as in one drawing of local Los Angeles jazzman Slim Gaillard. Berman painted the artist in 1947 (titled Jazz Drawing) as if he were part Dali, part Stephen King. According to Rebecca Solnit, ―In the portrait of Slim Gaillard, the black musician smiles while blood pours from his mouth, a hypodermic held by a white hand injects the pupil of his eye, a monster creeps over his cap, and a Christlike figure in a 366 hospital gown, with mutilated arms outstretched, rises from the monster‘s head.‖ 47 Here Berman de-romanticizes the jazz world far more than Claxton. Berman employed the same technique in his album art, such as in the 1947 Dial Records release of various artists called Bebop Jazz: With the All Stars of the New Movement (Dial D 1); a biomorphic composition featuring among other segments, jazzmen, a saxophone and a webbed-footed creature. Interestingly, Berman made impressions on the rock idiom and the world of film as well, befriending Michael Cooper who designed the Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper‟s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1966) (who included Berman in the collage) and Dennis Hopper (who gave him a bit part in the movie Easy Rider (1969). 48 The importance of these artists carries even further than their individual art. Their connection to the jazz world was not based strictly on commercial enterprise, nor were they simply ―fellow travelers‖ to jazz, but in fact saw the interconnectedness of jazz music and their painting/photography and they often ran in jazz circles. Their art reveals the complexity of West Coast art of the era; a deep interconnectedness among people and among the various arts, the extent to which modern art shaped the West Coast jazz industry, and to the ways in which West Coast album art represented the music itself. Of central importance is that this album art was predicated on the same aesthetics which characterized the music West Coast jazz. Technological innovation and experimentation with several art forms, the pursuit of synaesthetic possibilities; these elements align not only with those processes found within the music itself but with the larger context of California modernism. The searching, regionalist, and modernistic sensibilities of Claxton, Altoon, Irwin and others parallel Brubeck, Rumsey and Baker, etc.; their musical counterparts. On and off record, theirs is indicative of the jazz cadence of mid-century California. 367 1 Ted Gioia, in Fred Setterberg, ―A Different Drummer: Exploring the Bay Area‘s Jazz Legacy,‖ th Express: The East Bay‟s Free Weekly Vol. 15, No. 22 (March 12 , 1993), 11. 2 Lewis MacAdams, The Birth of the Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant-Garde (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 63. 3 Gioia, in Setterberg, ―A Different Drummer,‖ 11. 4 Gioia, in Setterberg, ―A Different Drummer,‖ 11. 5 Gioia, in Setterberg, ―A Different Drummer,‖ 11. 6 Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 41. 7 William Claxton and Hitoshi Namekata, Jazz West Coast: Artwork of Pacific Jazz Records (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-Sha, 1992), 17. 8 Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 35. 9 Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 54. 10 11 Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 86. Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 84. 12 Graham Marsh, and Glyn Callingham, California Cool: West Coast Jazz of the 50s and 60s: the Album Art (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992), 84. 13 Marsh and Cunningham, California Cool, 94. 14 15 16 Marsh and Cunningham, California Cool, 96. Marsh and Cunningham, California Cool, 103. Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 10. 17 Elizabeth Armstrong, Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury (New York: Prestel Publishing, 2007), 141. 18 Alfred Appel, Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 88-89, 103. 19 Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 21, 39, 60, 69, 84. 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 9, 36, 29. Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 138. Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 24. Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 25. Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 42, 89. Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 26. Claxton and Namekata, 76, 57; Marsh and Callingham, California Cool, 77. Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 58. Marsh and Callingham, California Cool, 56. 368 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Marsh and Callingham, California Cool, 80. Marsh and Callingham, California Cool, 74, 105. Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 67. Marsh and Callingham, California Cool, 78. Marsh and Callingham, California Cool, 48. Marsh and Callingham, California Cool, 94. Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 19. 36 This album was also issued as The Complete Art Pepper Aladdin Recordings, Vol. 2 (Blue Note CDP 7 46848-2) with design credits going to, interestingly enough, Reid Miles. 37 Marsh and Callingham, California Cool, 12. 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 16. Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 143. See his ―Fay‘s Christmas Painting‖ (1959) in Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 78. Armstrong, Birth of the Cool, 76. Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 59. Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 50. Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 52. Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 53. Claxton and Namekata, Jazz West Coast, 118. Solnit, Secret Exhibition, 8. Solnit, Secret Exhibition, 106. 369 Conclusion It would be a mistake to think about the history of West Coast jazz purely in terms of a ―rise‖ and ―fall‖ as one would ancient civilizations. To be sure, no definitive start and end date can bookend the movement with any accuracy. Moreover, such formulations would inevitably uncomplicate the multifariousness of the movement in the manner of the more problematic jazz history books which deploy the language of ―organicism.‖ In any event, a history of the movement cannot be assembled with any seriousness and significance based on such minutiae. In this study, I have strived to provide detail insofar as it adds nuance to the larger canvas; the institutions, ideologies, art forms and of course, people of West Coast jazz. Nevertheless, perhaps the most important point one can make against a ―rise and fall‖ approach is that there is simply too much work yet to be done on the history of West Coast jazz. For instance, the history of radio station KNOB alone could fill a book-length study. The jazz criticism of Charles Weisenberg, Howard Lucraft‘s Jazz International organization, the bibliophilic memory and interview prowess of Will Thornbury, to name a few, could each fill dedicated chapters. Further studies could concentrate on Local 767, Los Angeles‘s local musicians union, and the ways in which it impacted the political and economic wings of the movement. Studies on jazz in the California domestic sphere—Hi-Fi electronic devices, stereophonic equipment, sound acoustic enthusiasts, etc.—could further position jazz as a soundtrack to modern living. Women in the West Coast jazz movement seem to play a much larger role than previously thought; participating not only as musicians but as nightclub owners, managers, lyricists, and critics. Certainly a more thorough study on this subject would bring their voices to the forefront of jazz history. Even the history of jazz in California prior to the West 370 Coast jazz movement is slim. Thus, there continues to be a great many of areas ripe for further inquiry. Making California‘s jazz past accessible for future audiences can be a difficult one. Since the advent of the 1960s, most of the major institutions of West Coast jazz have either downsized to considerable degrees or stopped operation altogether, receding into memory. Jazz at the Philharmonic ceased production in the early 1980s, Shelly‘s Manne-Hole, born at the tail end of the movement, perished during the disco years, and after a long hiatus, Howard Rumsey‘s Lighthouse (now the Lighthouse Café) resumed their policy of live jazz but only on the weekends, mainly during their Sunday brunch and without a fixture band like the one Rumsey himself led for many years. The Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival, which lasted for only a couple years around the turn of the 1960s, has been replaced by the Playboy Jazz Festival, which, after its inaugural debut in 1959, resumed in the 1979 and has been held annually ever since. Despite a massive public campaign to save the station, KJAZ in Berkeley went belly-up in 1994, leaving the San Mateo-based KCSM the only dedicated jazz station in the entire Bay Area. In 1957, Pacific Jazz Records was sold to Liberty Records, which maintained the label and its new imprint, World Pacific Records, into the late 1960s until it was purchased by EMI. Ironically, its back catalog is currently controlled by the New York City-based Blue Note Records (a subsidiary of EMI), which today releases only reissued material from its catalog. Contemporary Records managed to weather the 1960s and 70s—though with increasingly fewer releases—under its founder Lester Koenig and later, his son, John Koenig. Interestingly, it was the latter who sold the company in 1984 to Fantasy Records, the San Francisco-based jazz label founded by Max and Sol Weiss in 1949 (who signed the likes of Dave Brubeck and Cal Tjader), 371 which recently merged with the Concord Records in 2004. Like Pacific Jazz, Contemporary lives on only in reissues of its West Coast jazz catalogue. However, future studies of jazz in California need not dwell solely on the past. Despite the insistence of its harshest critics, many Californians believe the music has neither ―died‖ nor ―moved to another address.‖ Vital institutions remain in California, albeit not to the same degree as in those golden years of the movement. While there are far too many jazz clubs, festivals, organizations, radio stations/programs, record labels, etc. to name here, perhaps the most interesting are those which exhibit the ―nonprofit‖ moniker. For instance, among the more successful and highly regarded jazz clubs that operate in the state today are the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz and the Jazz Bakery in Santa Monica. These nonprofit entities double as performance spaces as well as educational centers, bringing in performing artists, clinicians and teachers regularly, and even sponsoring jazz camps for student artists. Likewise, the Monterey Jazz Festival, which has operated continually since its founding in 1958, provides more than live jazz. Today, the MJF, provides year-round jazz education programs including clinics, summer camps, artist-in-residence programs, school instrument fundraisers, and student internships. In 2007, MJF partnered with Concord Records to produce Monterey Jazz Festival Records, a nonprofit record label, in order to present some of its best recorded performances. Other nonprofit record labels have founded since the catalogues of Pacific Jazz and Contemporary shifted into reissue mode in perpetuitum. The Los Angeles-based Resonance Records, for instance, is a division of the Rising Jazz Stars Foundation and is dedicated to locating and recording new jazz talents in the state and worldwide. 372 Several nonprofit jazz radio stations are among the remaining jazz institutions in California. Of those, KCSM and KKJZ (formerly KLON) are arguably the new flag bearers of jazz radio in the state, housed and licensed at the College of San Mateo and at California State University, Long Beach, respectively. While the KNOB of Sleepy Stein‘s creation is no more, the station lives today offering ―all day, every day‖ jazz in cyberspace through its website and maintained by former KLON program director and longtime Los Angeles jazz radio deejay, Ken Borgers. The institutionalization of jazz in California in recent years has forged close linkages among many of these nonprofit entities. Perhaps the strongest exist between jazz societies (institutes, organizations, foundations, etc.) and festivals. Among the numerous nonprofit jazz societies operating in the state today are the Los Angeles Jazz Society, the Los Angeles Jazz Institute, the California Jazz Association, the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation, the San Francisco Jazz Organization (SFJAZZ) and the San Francisco Jazz Heritage Center (JHC). Of these, it is SFJAZZ and the JHC which signal the extent to which San Francisco has surpassed Los Angeles as the hub of jazz today in terms of jazz education, preservation, and presentation. In addition to the live performances, clinics, workshops, benefit galas, etc. which one commonly finds offered by nonprofit jazz organizations, SFJAZZ is host to the San Francisco Jazz Festival, one of the largest and most prestigious in the country. Moreover, it is also exceptional in the respect that, as opposed to many organizations which sponsor jazz festivals once a year over a period of a few days, SFJAZZ hosts live jazz programs virtually year round, from the three-week long Festival, and a Spring Season lasting from March through June, to the annual Summerfest from June to October. 373 As a testament to the central importance of jazz in the region and indeed the world, SFJAZZ recently launched their ―The World is Listening‖ campaign, announcing plans to break ground on what could become the most important jazz complex in the world. The SFJAZZ Center, to be situated at the corner of Franklin and Fell Streets, will feature a state-of-the-art, made-for-jazz auditorium, a digital learning lab, a series of rehearsal, performance and administrative spaces, as well as a sidewalk café and retail shop. Most importantly, the center will serve as a hub for SFJAZZ‘s artistic and educational programs. The JHC compliments SFJAZZ in several ways, functioning simultaneously as museum, art gallery, concert venue, and research center. Located in the Fillmore District, an area also known as the ―Harlem of the West,‖ the JHC resides in one of West Coast jazz‘s most vibrant jazz micro-regions; a virtual Central Avenue of the Bay Area. Accordingly, the center celebrates the long history of Fillmore jazz in configuring its galleries, exhibits, and film screenings, etc. to feature the art and artists of that region. Conveniently, the ground floor of the JHC, located near Eddy St. and Fillmore St., is home to the San Francisco branch of the Oakland-based Yoshi‘s Jazz Club, perhaps the most recognizable jazz venue in the Bay Area. Also, as if by no coincidence, the JHC complex stands adjacent the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church where worship service includes Coltrane liturgy and, of course, live jazz. Like their mid-century counterparts, these institutions tend to harbor an enthusiast, connoisseur-like appetite for jazz. Ironically, they somehow manage to function at once as public spaces and private enterprises, dedicated to nationalistic, high art sensibilities and charitable causes, yet always retaining a sense of underground, subcultural cache. Moreover, nonprofits such as these cater overwhelmingly to a largely white, male, middle to upper-middle class demographic. In other words, to those who prefer to ―keep jazz alive‖ via their charitable 374 donations rather than buying power. Nevertheless, without this move into the nonprofit sector, California‘s jazz past and future would be much more difficult to excavate. But this is not the case, and there is so much left to learn about West Coast jazz. There is simply too much to be gleaned from renewed attention to the movement to allow the continued focus on other style-regions. Yet while there is ample source material, there is little time. With each passing year the constraints amplify: less state and federal funding for the arts hampers the production of new jazz artists and scholars, fewer of its participants remain alive to tell of their contributions, and increased opportunities for important materials to be lost. In jazz parlance, ―now‘s the time.‖ The people, the institutions, and the music itself wait to be revisited. As it has always been, California is fertile soil. 375 BIBLIOGRAPHY 376 [unknown surname], Ron. "KNOB Bows New Show, KUSC Bows." 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