Swingin On Central Avenue

Author : Peter Vacher
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 375 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2015-09-17
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780810888333

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Swingin' on Central Avenue by Peter Vacher Pdf

The development of jazz and swing in the African-American community in Los Angeles in the years before the second World War received a boost from the arrival of a significant numbers of musicians from Chicago and the southwestern states. In Swingin’ on Central: African-American Jazz in Los Angeles, a new study of that vibrant jazz community, music historian and jazz journalist Peter Vacher traveled between Los Angeles and London over several years in order to track down key figures and interview them for this oral history of one of the most swinging jazz scenes in the United States. Vacher recreates the energy and vibrancy of the Central Avenue scene through first-hand accounts from such West Coast notables as trumpeters Andy Blakeney , George Orendorff, and McLure “Red Mack” Morris; pianists Betty Hall Jones, Chester Lane, and Gideon Honore, saxophonists Chuck Thomas, Jack McVea, and Caughey Roberts Jr; drummers Jesse Sailes, Red Minor Robinson, and Nathaniel “Monk” McFay; and others. Throughout, readers learn the story behind the formative years of these musicians, most of whom have never been interviewed until now. While not exactly headliners—nor heavily recorded—this community of jazz musicians was among the most talented in pre-war America. Arriving in Los Angeles at a time when black Americans faced restrictions on where they could live and work, jazz artists of color commonly found themselves limited to the Central Avenue area. This scene, supplemented by road travel, constituted their daily bread as players—with none of them making it to New York. Through their own words, Vacher tells their story in Los Angeles, offering along the way a close look at the role the black musicians union played in their lives while also taking on jazz historiography’s comparative neglect of these West Coast players. Music historians with a particular interest in pre-bop jazz in California will find much new material here as Vacher paints a world of luxurious white nightclubs with black bands, ghetto clubs and after-hours joints, a world within a world that resulted from the migration of black musicians to the West Coast.

Author : Sean J. O'Connell
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2014-05-26
Category : Photography
ISBN : 9781439645369

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Los Angeles's Central Avenue Jazz by Sean J. O'Connell Pdf

From the late 1910s until the early 1950s, a series of aggressive segregation policies toward Los Angeles’s rapidly expanding African American community inadvertently led to one of the most culturally rich avenues in the United States. From Downtown Los Angeles to the largely undeveloped city of Watts to the south, Central Avenue became the center of the West Coast jazz scene, nurturing homegrown talents like Charles Mingus, Dexter Gordon, and Buddy Collette while also hosting countless touring jazz legends such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Billie Holiday. Twenty-four hours a day, the sound of live jazz wafted out of nightclubs, restaurants, hotel lobbies, music schools, and anywhere else a jazz combo could squeeze in its instruments for nearly 50 years, helping to advance and define the sound of America’s greatest musical contribution.

Author : Clora Bryant
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 502 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : History
ISBN : 0520220986

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Central Avenue Sounds by Clora Bryant Pdf

Here too are recollections of Hollywood's effects on local culture, the precedent-setting merger of the black and white musicians' unions, and the repercussions from the racism in the Los Angeles Police Department in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Author : Ricky Riccardi
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2020-08-05
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780190914134

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Heart Full of Rhythm by Ricky Riccardi Pdf

Nearly 50 years after his death, Louis Armstrong remains one of the 20th century's most iconic figures. Popular fans still appreciate his later hits such as "Hello, Dolly!" and "What a Wonderful World," while in the jazz community, he remains venerated for his groundbreaking innovations in the 1920s. The achievements of Armstrong's middle years, however, possess some of the trumpeter's most scintillating and career-defining stories. But the story of this crucial time has never been told in depth until now. Between 1929 and 1947, Armstrong transformed himself from a little-known trumpeter in Chicago to an internationally renowned pop star, setting in motion the innovations of the Swing Era and Bebop. He had a similar effect on the art of American pop singing, waxing some of his most identifiable hits such as "Jeepers Creepers" and "When You're Smiling." However as author Ricky Riccardi shows, this transformative era wasn't without its problems, from racist performance reviews and being held up at gunpoint by gangsters to struggling with an overworked embouchure and getting arrested for marijuana possession. Utilizing a prodigious amount of new research, Riccardi traces Armstrong's mid-career fall from grace and dramatic resurgence. Featuring never-before-published photographs and stories culled from Armstrong's personal archives, Heart Full of Rhythm tells the story of how the man called "Pops" became the first "King of Pop."

Author : Howard Reich
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2010-09-30
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780810127050

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Let Freedom Swing by Howard Reich Pdf

"Let Freedom Swing is a wonderful title for a book and the contents also swing."-Marian McPartland --

Author : Aaron Lefkovitz
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 227 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2018-06-20
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781498567527

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Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis by Aaron Lefkovitz Pdf

This book examines Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis as distinctively global symbols of threatening and nonthreatening black masculinity. It centers them in debates over U.S. cultural exceptionalism, noting how they have been part of the definition of jazz as a jingoistic and exclusively American form of popular culture.

Author : Roger W. Lotchin
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : History
ISBN : 025206819X

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The Way We Really Were by Roger W. Lotchin Pdf

The customary picture of the World War II era in California has been dominated by accounts of the Japanese American concentration camps, African Americans, and women on the home front. The Way We Really Were substantially enlivens this view, addressing topics that have been neglected or incompletely treated in the past to create a more rounded picture of the wartime situation at home. Exploring the developments brought to fruition by the war and linking them to their roots in earlier decades, contributors address the diversity of the musical scene, which arose from a cross-pollination of styles brought by Okies, blacks, and Mexican migrants. They examine increased political involvement by women, Hollywood's response to the war, and the merging of business and labor interests in the Bay Area Council. They also reveal how wartime dynamics led to substantial environmental damage and lasting economic gains by industry. The Way We Really Were examines significant wartime changes in the circumstances of immigrant groups that have been largely overlooked by historians. Among these are Italian Americans, heavily insular and pro-Fascist before the war and very pro-American and assimilationist after, and Chinese American men, who achieved new legitimacy and entitlement through military service. Also included is a look at cultural negotiation among multiple ethnic groups in the Golden State. A valuable addition to the literature on California history, The War We Really Were provides an entree into new areas of scholarship and a fresh look at familiar ones.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 150 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 1981
Category : Electronic
ISBN : NWU:35556030780134

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Juan Tabo Blvd Extension from Wagon Train Drive to Central Ave, Albuquerque by Anonim Pdf

Author : Sean J. O'Connell
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : History
ISBN : 9781467131308

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Los Angeles's Central Avenue Jazz by Sean J. O'Connell Pdf

From the late 1910s until the early 1950s, a series of aggressive segregation policies toward Los Angeles's rapidly expanding African American community inadvertently led to one of the most culturally rich avenues in the United States. From Downtown Los Angeles to the largely undeveloped city of Watts to the south, Central Avenue became the center of the West Coast jazz scene, nurturing homegrown talents like Charles Mingus, Dexter Gordon, and Buddy Collette while also hosting countless touring jazz legends such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Billie Holiday. Twenty-four hours a day, the sound of live jazz wafted out of nightclubs, restaurants, hotel lobbies, music schools, and anywhere else a jazz combo could squeeze in its instruments for nearly 50 years, helping to advance and define the sound of America's greatest musical contribution.

Author : Mel Watkins
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 370 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2010-07-14
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780307547507

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Stepin Fetchit by Mel Watkins Pdf

In the late 1920s and '30s Lincoln Perry, aka Stepin Fetchit, was both renowned and reviled for his surrealistic portrayals of the era’s most popular comic stereotype–the lazy, shiftless Negro. Perry was hailed by critic Robert Benchley as “the best actor that the talking movies have produced,” and Mel Watkins’s meticulously researched and sensitive biography reveals the paradoxes of this pioneering actor’s life, from Perry’s tremendous popularity to his money troubles and rowdy offscreen antics. As later generations come to recognize Perry’s prodigious talent and achievements, in Stepin Fetchit, Mel Watkins brilliantly and definitively illuminates the life and times of a legendary figure in American entertainment.

Author : Sherrie Tucker
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 425 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2000-06-06
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780822380900

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Swing Shift by Sherrie Tucker Pdf

The forgotten history of the “all-girl” big bands of the World War II era takes center stage in Sherrie Tucker’s Swing Shift. American demand for swing skyrocketed with the onslaught of war as millions—isolated from loved ones—sought diversion, comfort, and social contact through music and dance. Although all-female jazz and dance bands had existed since the 1920s, now hundreds of such groups, both African American and white, barnstormed ballrooms, theaters, dance halls, military installations, and makeshift USO stages on the home front and abroad. Filled with firsthand accounts of more than a hundred women who performed during this era and complemented by thorough—and eye-opening—archival research, Swing Shift not only offers a history of this significant aspect of American society and culture but also examines how and why whole bands of dedicated and talented women musicians were dropped from—or never inducted into—our national memory. Tucker’s nuanced presentation reveals who these remarkable women were, where and when they began to play music, and how they navigated a sometimes wild and bumpy road—including their experiences with gas and rubber rationing, travel restrictions designed to prioritize transportation for military needs, and Jim Crow laws and other prejudices. She explains how the expanded opportunities brought by the war, along with sudden increased publicity, created the illusion that all female musicians—no matter how experienced or talented—were “Swing Shift Maisies,” 1940s slang for the substitutes for the “real” workers (or musicians) who were away in combat. Comparing the working conditions and public representations of women musicians with figures such as Rosie the Riveter, WACs, USO hostesses, pin-ups, and movie stars, Tucker chronicles the careers of such bands as the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Phil Spitalny’s Hours of Charm, The Darlings of Rhythm, and the Sharon Rogers All-Girl Band.

Author : Herbert G. Ruffin,Dwayne A. Mack
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
Page : 424 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2018-03-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780806161242

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Freedom's Racial Frontier by Herbert G. Ruffin,Dwayne A. Mack Pdf

Between 1940 and 2010, the black population of the American West grew from 710,400 to 7 million. With that explosive growth has come a burgeoning interest in the history of the African American West—an interest reflected in the remarkable range and depth of the works collected in Freedom’s Racial Frontier. Editors Herbert G. Ruffin II and Dwayne A. Mack have gathered established and emerging scholars in the field to create an anthology that links past, current, and future generations of African American West scholarship. The volume’s sixteen chapters address the African American experience within the framework of the West as a multicultural frontier. The result is a fresh perspective on western-U.S. history, centered on the significance of African American life, culture, and social justice in almost every trans-Mississippi state. Examining and interpreting the twentieth century while mindful of events and developments since 2000, the contributors focus on community formation, cultural diversity, civil rights and black empowerment, and artistic creativity and identity. Reflecting the dynamic evolution of new approaches and new sites of knowledge in the field of western history, the authors consider its interconnections with fields such as cultural studies, literature, and sociology. Some essays deal with familiar places, while others look at understudied sites such as Albuquerque, Oahu, and Las Vegas, Nevada. By examining black suburbanization, the Information Age, and gentrification in the urban West, several authors conceive of a Third Great Migration of African Americans to and within the West. The West revealed in Freedom’s Racial Frontier is a place where black Americans have fought—and continue to fight—to make their idea of freedom live up to their expectations of equality; a place where freedom is still a frontier for most persons of African heritage.

Author : Peter Townsend
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
Page : 267 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2009-03-02
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781604731477

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Pearl Harbor Jazz by Peter Townsend Pdf

This book is a study of a crucial period in the life of American jazz and popular music. Pearl Harbor Jazz analyses the changes in the world of the professional musician brought about both by the outbreak of World War II and by long-term changes in the music business, in popular taste and in American society itself. It describes how the infrastructure of American music, the interdependent fields of recording, touring, live engagements, radio and the movies, was experiencing change in the conditions of wartime, and how this impacted upon musical styles, and hence upon the later history of popular music. Successive chapters of the book examine the impact of these changed conditions upon the songwriting and music publishing industries, upon the world of the touring big bands, and upon changing conceptions of the role of jazz and popular music. Not only the economic conditions but also ideas were changing; the book traces a movement among writers and critics which created new definitions of 'jazz' and other terms that had a permanent influence on the way musical styles were thought of for the rest of the century. The book deals in some depth with the work of a number of important artists in these various fields, including, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Johnny Mercer and Frank Sinatra, looks at the growing presence of bebop, the rise of country music, and the contemporary musical scenes in such locations as New York and Los Angeles. The book combines detail of the day-to-day working lives of musicians with challenging views of the long-term development of musical style in jazz and popular music.

Author : Carmen Fields
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2023-06-08
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780806192512

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Going Back to T-Town by Carmen Fields Pdf

Countless young people in the Midwest, South, and Southwest went to dances and stage shows in the early to mid-twentieth century to hear a territory band play. Territory bands traveled from town to town, performing jazz and swing music, and Tulsa-based musician Ernie Fields (1904–97) led one of the best. In Going Back to T-Town, Ernie’s daughter, Carmen Fields, tells a story of success, disappointment, and perseverance, extending from the early jazz era to the 1960s. This is an enlightening account of how this talented musician and businessman navigated the hurdles of racial segregation during the Jim Crow era. Because few territory bands made recordings, their contributions to the development of jazz music are often overlooked. Fortunately, Ernie Fields not only recorded music but also loved telling stories. He shared his “tales from the road” with his daughter, a well-known Boston journalist, and his son, Ernie Fields Jr., who has carried on his legacy as a successful musician and music contractor. As much as possible, Carmen Fields tells her father’s story in his own voice: how he weathered the ups and downs of the music industry and maintained his optimism even while he faced entrenched racial prejudice and threats of violence. After traveling with his band all over the United States, Fields eventually caught the attention of renowned music producer John Hammond. In 1939, Hammond arranged for recording sessions and bookings that included performances in the famed Apollo Theater in New York. Ernie finally scored a top-ten hit in 1959 with his rock-and-roll rendition of “In the Mood.” At a time when most other territory bands had faded, the Ernie Fields Orchestra continued to perform. A devoted husband and family man, Ernie Fields also respected and appreciated his fellow musicians. The book includes a “Roll Call” of his organization’s members, based on notes he kept about them. Going Back to T-Town is a priceless source of information for historians of American popular music and African American history.

Author : Steven D. Jamar,Lateef Mtima
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 1019 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2023-12-31
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781108652995

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The Cambridge Handbook of Intellectual Property and Social Justice by Steven D. Jamar,Lateef Mtima Pdf

Protection for intellectual property has never been absolute; it has always been limited in the public interest. The benefits of intellectual property protection are meant to flow to everyone, not just a limited population of creators and the corporations that represent them. Given this social-utility function, intellectual property regimes must address issues of access, inclusion, and empowerment for marginalized and excluded groups. This handbook defines an approach to considering social justice in intellectual property law and regulation. Top scholars in the field offer surveys of social justice implementation in patents, copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, rights of publicity, and other major IP areas. Chapters define Intellectual Property Social Justice theory and include recommendations for reforming aspects of IP law and administration to further social justice by providing better access, more inclusion, and greater empowerment to marginalized groups.