Special Editorial to Jazz Number

Special Editorial to Jazz NumberAuthor(s): Chris ClarkSource: Fontes Artis Musicae, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Juli-September 1989), pp. 168-177Published by: International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres(IAML)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23507399 .

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168

Special Editorial to Jazz Number

Chris Clark (London)*

Jazz was admitted to the academic agenda in America years ago but elsewhere its accept ance by equivalent institutions has been slow, even reluctant. Such a view naturally excludes the part played by those dedicated individuals who, on both sides of the

Atlantic, have been documenting the history of jazz right from the start — indeed some

Europeans would claim that their contribution has been the more significant, particu

larly in the field of discography. But let us not begin this special issue of Fontes on a

note of dispute when its most important message concerns cooperation, now and in the

future. For it is now apparent that a worldwide "community" of jazz archives has

evolved and this issue of Fontes, for the first time, serves as a forum for the exchange of

information concerning the preservation of the jazz heritage.1

Cooperation was also the message of Derek Langridge's paper, "A survey" given at the

1983 IAML Conference and published in Fontes 31/1 (1984) and he, in turn, referred in

this paper to Studies in Jazz Discography (Institute of Jazz Studies, 1971), which

brought together the proceedings of three conferences devoted to jazz discography and

the jazz heritage. Both of these publications have influenced my thinking and inten

tions in preparing this issue.

The Conference on the preservation and extension of the jazz heritage took place at the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University on July 27 1969. This jazz issue of

Fontes can therefore be considered a 20th-anniversary tribute to that singular event and

to the peerless work of its host organisation. Mindful of the generalist audience for Fontes, I resisted the temptation to commis

sion interviews with favourite jazz musicians and also rejected the bio-biblio-disco

graphic format which might be expected of a serial for music librarians. This issue has,

instead, been designed to achieve two overall objectives:

1: to share knowledge of the achievements and experiences of organisations and

collectors engaged in developing and extending the jazz heritage and, thereby, to

establish a channel for future communication and cooperation between them.

2: to provide information on and insights into the network of activities which

surround the creation and performance of jazz.

In other words, this issue is devoted to the "second liners", to those who follow the

musicians as they progress, supporting and, one hopes, encouraging them to greater achievements.

The articles in this issue are grouped according to these stated objectives but they are,

essentially, interdependent. The first group has representatives from a number of jazz archives and collections worldwide giving information about current activities, achievements and prospects and, in certain cases, looking in some detail at a specific

topic of interest to the music library community. This section is, unfortunately, less

comprehensive than planned. The trio of British organisations (an apparently successful

cooperative venture) is insufficiently balanced by similar representation from the

U.S.A., although at least we have an excellent contribution from the Institute of Jazz

* Chris Clark is Jazz Curator for The British Library National Sound Archive.

1 The term "jazz heritage" is not entirely satisfactory with its connotations of property and, in the U.K., of the sentimental attachment to old buildings, but there would seem to be no better alternative to express collectively the recordings, writings, collections, services and archives which constitute the theme of this issue.



Chi. Clark: Special Editorial to Jazz number 169

Studies. To have tried to do justice to the work of all the American jazz archives would

have required that the whole issue be devoted to that area; I trust that other celebrated

American institutions, such as the William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane, the

Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound and Schömberg Center at the

New York Public Library, the Center for Black Music Research (Columbia College

Chicago) and the Library of Congress will not be offended at not being asked to contri

bute.2 I was very keen to get copy from the Woodson Regional Library in Chicago about

their holdings of Negio Music Journal and other early black music periodicals. Infor

mation about Woodson's periodical holdings in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz

suggested that a useful addendum could be provided in this issue to Walter C. Allen's

"The negro newspapers as source materials" (Studies in jazz discography, op. cit.

p. 64—71); some other time, perhaps.

Fortunately, it has been possible to compile an article on behalf of The Smithsonian

Institution. John Edward Hasse, Curator of American Music at The Smithsonian,

visited London last year in order to promote their set of recordings "The Classic Hoagy

Carmichael". During his visit to me at the National Sound Archive he provided me with

enough information about their current activities, specifically those concerned with

their wonderful Ellington acquisition in 1988, to enable me to compile the article which

appears below. The information was subsequently checked and verified by phone.

On the European continental scene there is good and bad news. The Archives Sonores

of the Discothèque des Halles has an encouraging tale to tell of instant public access

to jazz recordings but an unfortunate misdirection of correspondence meant that the

Phonotèque Nationale, also in Paris, was unable to contribute an article about the

Charles Delaunay bequest, surely one of the most significant collections of jazz record

ings and documents to have been left so far to a European institution. However, I

recently had the opportunity of talking to the Phonotèque's Director, Marie-France

Calas, a personal friend of the late Charles Delaunay, and she informed me of a number

of projects connected with the collection. These include the publication of a disco

graphy, compiled by Michel Ruppli, of the Swing label (formed by Delaunay in 1937), a discography of the Vogue label (for which Delaunay directed artists and repertoire

from 1948), an exhibition and a series of concerts dedicated to his memory. Following

the "That's Jazz" exhibition in 1988 at the Internationales Musikinstitut in Darmstadt,

West Germany, I had hoped for more encouraging news of developments, particularly in

view of their acquisition of the Joachim-Ernst Berendt collection via the International

Jazz Federation (IJF), the Secretariat of which is also in Darmstadt: but instead I received

a phone call from the Secretary Annette Hauber to say that funding of the jazz archive

had been withdrawn, that all work on the collection had been suspended and that the

city would no longer give support to the IJF Secretariat. Finally, in May, I heard more

encouraging news from former IJF President, Charles Alexander, that negotiations with

the Mayor of Darmstadt had resulted in agreement to restore the Secretariat and

renewed commitment to developing the jazz archive from the beginning of 1990.

Things look promising once again.

Sweden and Holland both have fine jazz archives in the Jazzavdelningen vid Svenkst

Visarkiv3 (Jazz Department at the Swedish Centre for Song and Folk Music Research)

2 The many excellent jazz collections and archives in the U.S.A. are listed and described in: The New Grove

Dictionary of Jazz and bibliographic citations are given where available, some notable recent examples being:

Catalog of the William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive. — Boston, 1984; W. R. Schurk, "A description of the sound

recordings at Bowling Green State University", in: ARSC Journal xiv/3 (1982) p. 5; R. Lawn, "From Bird

to Schoenberg: the Ross Russell Collection" [i.e. at University of Texas in Austin], in: Library Chronicle, new series no. 25-6 (1984), p. 137. 3 A recent article on the Swedish archive's work is fan Bruer, "Collecting historical Swedish jazz material", in: Phonographic Bulletin, no. 46 (november 1986), p. 36—8.



170 Chr. Clark: Special Editorial to Jazz number

and National Jazz Archief in Amsterdam respectively. Both were contacted but, un

fortunately, copy did not arrive in time.

Australia has always proved fertile ground for jazz and the article from Ross Laird

is particularly welcome with its promise of institutional endeavour building on the

valuable work of individual enthusiasts.

The second group of articles includes contributions, again on a worldwide basis, from

those who might be termed, the "producers" of the jazz heritage — record companies,

book publishers, magazines —

plus a related duo concerning jazz education. In commis

sioning material for this group I had to be ruthlessly selective. I decided to feature those

companies or organisations which, in my view, had something extra-ordinary to offer.

Thus, when it came to record companies, the documentary emphasis and acknowledged excellence of Mosaic Records and Harlequin were clear choices. Here we see the dedi

cated individual, or group of individuals, continuing to play a decisive role in the

advance of jazz knowledge, showing the way for the institutions [pace The Smithsonian

Institution) to follow.

Michael Cuscuna and Charlie Lourie have brought a lifetime's experience and know

ledge of the jazz recording industry to bear on their series of definitive reissues of Ameri

can jazz since the late 1930s. Similarly, record producer Bruce Bastin and programme researcher and collector Rainer E. Lötz have continued to break new ground with their

"Jazz and hot dance" series of reissues. Both of these reissue series should be present in

any library collection of jazz recordings. As a discographer of the non-American early jazz scene, Rainer E. Lötz is unrivalled.

His German ragtime & prehistory of jazz — volume 1: the sound documents (Chigwell:

Storyville, 1985) was a landmark in jazz discography and should have been reviewed as

such in these pages at the time.

It was, however, fortunate that this issue coincided with the long-awaited appearance of the first volume of Jazz records 1942—80 by Eric Raben. As an updated version of J. G.

Jepsen's well-known general discography of the same name, we now have a discography of the modem period which is more detailed than Walter Bruyninckx's 60 years of recorded Jazz (which continues to receive updates and to appear in alternative separate, style-specific volumes) and which fully complements the still standard work of Brian Rust on the earlier period [Jazz records 1897—1942. — 5th ed).

Also in the field of jazz publications, Quartet Books from the U.K. were an obvious

choice, their number of jazz titles only matched by Da Capo in the U.S.A. I asked Chris

Parker, who was once a librarian, to concentrate on the policy and marketing aspects of the firm; his article again reminds us of the depth of enthusiasm among individual

jazz lovers, one of the most obvious ways of finding an outlet for their passion being to write a book!

Having featured a British imprint for books I decided to look elsewhere and to non

English language when it came to choosing a current jazz magazine. Each magazine caters for the musical tastes of its readership

— this, of course, does not apply to the

scholarly jazz journals, such as Jazzforschung and Annual Review of Jazz Studies which reflect areas of research rather than taste — but some are more general than others and the Italian magazine Musica Jazz, besides being one of the most long-running titles, also offers a recording with each issue. It is also probably one of the less well-known jazz magazines and I would be surprised if any music library outside of Italy subscribed to it: read the article by its editor and give it some consideration.

The promotion of the jazz heritage is also closely linked to education. The educa tional material issued by Jazzwise Publications seeks to aid the development of impro vising skills through active participation and listening and offers a preferable alternative to the more traditional approaches to instrumental tuition which tend to subordi nate self-expression to technique or to produce clones of outmoded ways of playing.



Chr. Clark: Special Editorial to Jazz number 171

Charles Alexander's recommendations in his article are based on many years of experi

ence in jazz education.

Charles Alexander and Digby Fairweather both mention the new educational oppor

tunities for learning how to improvise and play jazz in the U.K. but draw different view

points. Digby sees the new curriculum as the prime justification for his new archive at

Loughton (National Jazz Foundation Archive) while Charles stresses the continuing

lack of places to meet the increasing demand. The U.K. is still light years away from

offering the kind and level of educational opportunities enjoyed in the U.S.A.: there is

no equivalent to Berklee, nor, on a less formidable level, to the Penfield Music Com

mission Project which encourages its students "not only to take chances in their own

playing but... take chances on new composers' music",4 a development which can only

be beneficial to the future of jazz. However, it must be said that the most successful

British groups of recent years, Jazz Warriors, Loose Tubes and Human Chain, have had

minimal contact with formalised musical training. Instead they have resorted to solving

their own musical problems using the group as a conservatoire/music academy in much

the same way as did the orchestras of Duke Ellington and Count Basie.

Above all, jazz education, to me, means instilling an awareness of the heritage of jazz

music and improving our knowledge of its creators and their achievements which will

then serve as a foundation for new creativity. The Internationale Gesellschaft für Jazz

forschung, Graz, Austria, in its proud, provincial isolation, has harnessed the tech

niques of musicology to this end. Some very interesting jazz has been emanating from

Central Europe of late and many of the musicians involved have clearly benefitted from

the Graz method. In Graz, as at Rutgers, the preservation of the jazz heritage goes hand

in hand with its dissemination through education in courses run on the same site, a

purposeful conjunction which has clear advantages compared to those, like the trio of

British jazz archives, which exist in relative academic isolation.

Finally, returning to the anniversary theme, twenty years after the IJS call for more

cooperation between jazz archives, there is little evidence of anything other than friend

ly contacts being developed. This, however, is a start, and while institutions grapple

with the problems of understaffing, underfunding and consequent backlogs, maybe one

should not expect more and just take heart from what has been achieved individually to

date. I do believe, nevertheless, that we have progressed from the "confluence of

apathies" identified by Roy Kidman, former University Librarian at Rutgers University, in "Realities of library operation", Studies in Jazz Discography, op. cit. p. 94, and that

the time is now right to re-think and re-plan inter archival developments. One step

which I would most like to see, as a result of this issue, is a move towards establishing a

regular forum for the exchange of information and ideas about the jazz heritage. This

might start with the formation of a IAML Project Group for Jazz which could then incor

porate its business into the IAML organization. This has obvious advantages over set

ting up a new independent association.

There would certainly be no shortage of business. Duke Ellington has become some

thing of a rallying figure for international meetings and conferences of late; annual

Ellington conferences have been held either in the U.S.A. or U.K. since the mid 1980s

and could well provide an example to be followed with regard to annual conferences.

Such conferences, in my experience, are fun and provide many opportunities for making

contacts and exchanging ideas but they also have a tendency to be celebratory to the

extent that evaluative criticism rarely gets a look in. The agenda for conferences there

fore needs to be wider than the work of a selected jazz musician. It also needs to be

4 Carol Strickland, "Penfield Music Commission Project", in: "Talent + Study = Innovation: three stories

of music education", in: Down Beat v. 56, no. 6 (June 1989), p. 24.



172 Chr. Clark: Special Editorial to Jazz number

? /

The author of this article Reprinted from

and his dancing partner, Pearson's Magazine Miss Betty Blake, ^ (April 1919), n. 280.

in "The Boy."

The author of this article

and his dancing partner, Miss Betty Blake, in "The Boy."

Reprinted from

Pearson's Magazine

(April 1919), n. 280.

Here is one of the

so-called Jazz Steps;

nothing but the old

Heel and Toe step in

the Maxixe, shown

from two different

points of view.



Chi. Clark: Special Editorial to fazz number 173

A simple Valse step, which is danced to

any Jazz tune; here is the usual position.

Reprinted from Pearson's Magazine And here is one slightly more complicated,

(April 1919], n. 280. but quite possible in a ballroom, if the

dancers know how to manipulate their arms

when changing attitudes.

A simple Valse step, which is danced to

any Jazz tune; here is the usual position.

And here is one slightly more complicated, but quite possible in a ballroom, if the

dancers know how to manipulate their arms

when changing attitudes.

Reprinted from Pearson's Magazine

(April 1919), n. 280.



174 Chi. Clark: Special Editorial to fazz number

The Twinkle, in the L The Toe Hitch in the Fox-Trot — still another

jm,^3L Fox-Trot. This, after version of "Jazz". This smooth steps taken

step consists of one ji forward, shows the

step forward, and two / man lifting his part sharp steps back, with a

' /Ksf ner. It is nothing but

decided pause on the an old step which is forward step. ll$2Sl found in the Tango,

Maxixe (in a more

violent form] and

Fox-Trot.

The Glide — more Fox-Trotting.

Here is a short step taken forward,

always on the same foot; while the

opposite foot is dragged along, by

both dancers.

The Twinkle, in the

Fox-Trot — still another

version of "Jazz". This

step consists of one

step forward, and two

sharp steps back, with a

decided pause on the

forward step.

The Toe Hitch in the

Fox-Trot. This, after

smooth steps taken

forward, shows the

man lifting his part ner. It is nothing but

an old step which is

found in the Tango, Maxixe (in a more

violent form) and

Fox-Trot.

The Glide — more Fox-Trotting.

Here is a short step taken forward,

always on the same foot; while the

opposite foot is dragged along, by both dancers.



Chr. Clark: Special Editorial to Jazz number j 75

Nothing but old

familiar steps — four

different attitudes —

all taken from the

Tango. —

— You can recognise —

in the order named — the

famous Half-Moon, in two

positions, the Scissors, and

the Tango Dip. —

— Why not call these steps by

their real names? — always

remembering that Jazz is a

noise, not a Dance.

Nothing but old

familiar steps — four

different attitudes —

all taken from the

Tango. —

— You can recognise —

in the order named — the

famous Half-Moon, in two

positions, the Scissors, and

the Tango Dip. —

— Why not call these steps by

their real names? — always

remembering that Jazz is a

noise, not a Dance.



176 Chi. Claik: Special Editorial to Jazz number

wider than the traditional institutional preoccupations with housekeeping —

catalog

uing and preservation — and "useful projects", such as jointly produced biblio

graphies. I would therefore like to suggest some items with wider resonance: — How do

the musicians see their work? I have rarely encountered any statement by a jazz musi

cian which justifies marketing terms such as "jazz masterworks" or "indispensable

recordings". These are terms borrowed from elsewhere and could introduce to jazz an

unwelcome notion of pre-eminence for the few at the expense of the many, such as has

persisted in the history of western art music with regard to the Austro-German musical

tradition. Although I am sure that most jazz musicians would welcome some of the

prestige and recognition which goes with such labelling, the prime motivation behind

jazz creativity, I believe, is group improvisation rather than individual prescription. — What makes jazz popular? It lost a large part of its audience in the late forties,

particularly from the black community, and people stopped dancing. In the 1980s

people in London have again been dancing to jazz, the major record labels have per ceived a profitable market and the New Jersey jazz radio station WBGO topped the

1988 Arbitron ratings as the most widely listened to public station in the U.S.A. Some

thing's cooking! — What is the role of "the jazz archive" in the new age of "lifestyle consumerism"?

In Western Europe and the United States there has been a steady breakdown of "civic

culture", best seen in the plight of any publicly-funded institution devoted to the arts.

Cultural forecasts, such as those conducted regularly by the Henley Centre for Fore

casting, point to a "consolidation of home-centred culture" and "highly diverse uses of" increased "leisure time".5 Where does jazz, a social music, fit into this, and if there is a

demand for more jazz in the home, should archives become more engaged in the market and compete with the impressive "instant definitive collections" offered by companies such as Mosaic and Harlequin? The Smithsonian Institution has shown that it can be done without compromising scholarly principles.

With feedback from those of you who are reading this editorial, progress could be made towards a regular international forum (even if only through the medium of fax machines and newsletters!) this year.

I have appended to this editorial the illustrations and captions from an article pub lished in 1919 in the British society magazine, Pearson's Magazine. Entitled "The Jazz Spoof" and written by dance teacher Jean Castaner (whose main claim to fame was that he taught the King of Spain to tango), it is one of the earliest attempts to define in print the new music from America known as jazz. I spare you the complete tirade; the cap tions alone suffice to indicate the author's prejudicial distaste, but his final, climactic outburst bears quoting:6

"I sincerely hope it [i. e. this article] may help to abate the Jazz craze, which to me has become somewhat irritating

— a huge piece of spoof, in which the public have laid themselves out to be gulled and misled, on the strength of a novel kind of band from across the water. It is only a question of sufficient drumsticks, tin

cans, hooters, and yelling performers — and there you have the length, breadth,

and height of Jazz".

Another reason for including this reprint is to indicate, on the seventieth anniversary of its publication, the extent to which jazz has attained the academic respect it always deserved.

5 Quotes from Frank Morton, "The writing on the wall", in: New Statesman & Society (12 May 1989), p. 40-1. 6 Jean Castaner, "The jazz spoof", in: Pearson's Magazine (April 1919), p. 274—277.



V. Pelote: The Institute of Jazz Studies 177

Apart from occasional outbursts of bigotry in response to attempts to broadcast jazz to a wider audience, we are now spared such arrant nonsense and begin to glimpse that

time when jazz may be more widely appreciated and understood in the terms of current

jazz master Anthony Braxton:7

— There's a long history to how black culture has been reduced to terms of "black

exotica", and black people seen only in terms of their sexuality. It's happening to

white women too in the Western media today. The music has always been associ

ated with the red-light district and all of that mentality, as if the music was an

affirmation of lower partials, or sin, when in fact in every phase all of the masters

had a viewpoint about humanity, and the music that was solidified — the science

and vibrational dynamics of that music — held forth the most positive alternatives

for the culture.

I said earlier that this issue was devoted to those who promote and advance the jazz

heritage — the second liners. This issue is dedicated (if that does not sound too

presumptuous] to the jazz musicians without whom none of what follows would even

have been dreamable.

7 Graham Lock, Forces in motion ... London: Quartet, 1988, p. i

The Institute of Jazz Studies

Vincent Pelote (Newark)*

Founded in 1952, the Institute of Jazz Studies is the largest jazz archive in the world. Publications

include the Annual Review of Jazz Studies, the monograph series Studies in Jazz, published in

conjunction with Scarecrow Press, and the computer produced microfiche catalogue 1JS Register St Indexes.

A number of grants have enabled several projects to be launched and sustained in the areas of

cataloging, preservation, oral history and transcription and an endowment has enabled them to

establish a research fund to assist jazz scholarship and lectures at the IJS. The most significant acquisition to date was the Harold Flakser Collection in 1986: this

includes recordings on non-American jazz labels from the late 10s to the mid-40s, more than

300 periodical titles, many of which are unique to the IJS, and 3,000 books on jazz including many

early foreign titles.

Current emphasis is on preserving this collection through microfilming and binding and funds

are being sought to prepare an annotated bibliography of periodical holdings up to 1950.

The Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) of the Rutgers University Libraries in Newark is the

largest jazz archive in the world. It was founded in 1952 by the late Marshall Stearns, a

professor of medieval English literature at Hunter College and the author of two essen

tial jazz books.1 In 1966 Rutgers University was chosen as the IJS's permanent academic

home. The collection, which since has grown considerably, presently contains more

* Vincent Pelote is Librarian of the Institute of Jazz Studies/ Rutgers University.

1 Marshall W. Stearns, The Story of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956) and Jazz Dance: The Story

of American Vernacular Dance, with Jean Stearns (New York: Macmillan, 1968).



Documents

Special Editorial to Jazz Number