John F. SzwedCritiques

I grew up in Baltimore. Sun Ra was based in Philly during alotof of my adult yrs there. He played in Baltimore fairly often. There was a club on N Charles St called the Famous Ballroom. Sun Ra & the Arkestra played there. It was dark, w/ one of those "disco balls" - those multi-faceted things that spin & have light reflecting off them. It wasn't a big place but the stage cd manage to hold the Arkestra. I have a very fond memory (that must be around 30 yrs old by now) of sitting at the Ballroom at a round table witnessing the Arkestra playing in full force - w/ dancers & whatnot. At the end, Sun Ra came out into the audience (it was up-close & personal) leading a snake-dance & tilting a "rain-stick" by people's ears so they cd hear the sand pouring from one end to the other of the bamboo tube. He did it to me. If I didn't love him for 10 zillion other reasons I think I might just love him for that alone. They sold records at the concerts - white ones w/ hand-done covers of their more 'far-out' stuff & black ones of the more traditional stuff. Lardy knows I was dirt-poor in those days but I still managed to buy one of each - as I recall, they weren't that expensive. What an incredible person! What incredible music! What incredible philosophy! What incredible imagination! What incredible humor! When I think of all the sadness & trouble that the people I respect have gone thru it makes me ever so angry. Sun Ra, I wish there were a paradise for you to go to where yr immense creativity cd flourish even more than it did on this shithole of a human cesspit that some people have the audacity to call "society". If ever a person has deserved bliss in my bk, it's certainly you & yrs!!

Lady Sings the Blues Extended
Review of the Penguin Books paperback (2016) of the original Viking hardcover (2015)

February 2022 became a Billie Holiday discovery month for me, starting from when I first listened to the podcast Billie Was a Black Woman (2021), which was excellent on the present day inspiration and influence of the singer, but had very little biographical content. That led me to read the interview collection Billie Holiday: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (2019), her own autobiography Lady Sings the Blues 50th Anniversary Edition (orig. 1956) and now this combination biography and musical analysis book by John Szwed.

The Musician and the Myth is best read as an addendum to Holiday's autobiography as it is not a complete biography in itself. It does provide some excellent context and clarification about the censored passages in the 1956 book. These were primarily due to Hollywood lawyers and agents who threatened to sue if their clients names were left in the book. There were also passages about Holiday's bisexuality which were deemed to be too revealing for that era. It is actually somewhat surprising that a complete uncensored edition has not appeared in the present day, as Szwed is able to quote entire lengthy passages of the original censored content, so it presumably all exists in the vaults of the original publisher Viking (or those of whomever owns that imprint these days).

Szwed divides his material into a front half discussing the "myth" and then a very detailed back half on the "musician". The latter isn't a full sessionography, but it does provide quite a lot of information about which other bands and session musicians Holiday worked with over her career. It breaks this down into what are now the conventionally accepted 3 periods of Holiday's recordings: roughly the early Columbia (& associated labels) years of the 1930s, the middle Commodore & Decca recordings of the 1940s and finally the Verve recordings of the 1950's. Szwed makes a case that the final 2 recordings for Columbia constitute a 4th period in themselves, regardless of how brief. This is especially so for the controversial Lady in Satin (1958) with its mostly non-jazz string arrangements, yet which many listeners still regard as their favourite Holiday album.

Soundtrack
These were the main Billie Holiday albums that I was listening to while reading Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth:
1. Billie Holiday - 5 Original Albums A bargain priced 5 CD box set of 5 original LPs from 1956 to 1958 in mini-LP cardboard sleeves including original liner notes and session musician details.

Box set cover image sourced from Discogs.

2. Lady in Satin: The Centennial Edition (orig 1958/reissue 2015), the second last album in an extended 3 CD edition with previously unreleased tracks and takes. Released to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Billie Holiday's birth in 1915.

Disc image sourced from Discogs.

"His first UK performance... was one of the most spectacular concerts ever held in this country. Not spectacular so much in terms of effects, which were low on budget but high on strange atmosphere; spectacular in terms of presenting a complete world view, so occult, so other, to all of us in the audience that the only possible responses were outright dismissal or complete intuitive empathy with a man who had chosen to discard all possibilities of a normal life, even a normal jazz life, in favor of an unremitting alien identity." -David Toop

"Don't have nothin' to do with that. Stand your ground." -Sun Ra

Such an exciting, literate, well-researched and beautiful biography.

The quintessential Billie Holiday biography that focuses on the musician, not the tragic life.

I got a notice from the library that this had come due, and I was going to return it without finishing it, as it's so dense, but just now I was dipping in, and there are so many gems and vignettes, I think I'll renew it and see if I can't read a little more, glean a little more.

...Okay, I did give up on this. Outside of the section on Alan Lomax's friendship with Zora Neale Hurston (which was fascinating), I found the rest of the book too dense with moment-by-moment facts, events, and people; I guess I wanted more of a narrative? Less information? I'm not sure. The things I liked best were the actual quotes from folksongs and descriptions of places he visited.

I got a notice from the library that this had come due, and I was going to return it without finishing it, as it's so dense, but just now I was dipping in, and there are so many gems and vignettes, I think I'll renew it and see if I can't read a little more, glean a little more.

...Okay, I did give up on this. Outside of the section on Alan Lomax's friendship with Zora Neale Hurston (which was fascinating), I found the rest of the book too dense with moment-by-moment facts, events, and people; I guess I wanted more of a narrative? Less information? I'm not sure. The things I liked best were the actual quotes from folksongs and descriptions of places he visited.

Allan Lomax loved to find wonderful music made by (extra)-ordinary people. He opened up many worlds of music for all of us.

Sun Ra, wrapped in the mythology of ancient Egypt and glittering with the sheen of space-age technology, seemed too far out. He claimed to come from Saturn, and he was at least three planets distant from Earth: as an African American (Mars), a jazz musician (Jupiter) and an avant-gardist (there’s Saturn). And then there is his personal vision. Ra was a brilliant musician who mixed and melded music from the entire history of jazz with classical, African and electronics. His performances were unforgettable multi-media extravaganzas that featured chanting, dancing, wild costumes, poetry and fabulous music.

Ra was no fool. He built a big band and kept it working for fifty years, long after the more famous bands had folded up. He was perhaps the first African American to own his own label – Saturn. He controlled his own publishing and distribution (mostly). He made two films, one of which has become a cult classic (Space is the Place).

This collection by John Sinclair, former manager of MC5 and a producer of many of Ra’s concerts offers a tantalizing introduction to Sun Ra. Memoirs by the Arkestra, reviews of major concerts, essays on the Ra’s place in cultural history will send you running to find the music. Interviews with Sun Ra himself both mystify and demonstrate the originality of his thinking. Ra-inspired poetry by Amiri Baraka (Leroy Jones, prose by DJ Steve Fly Agaric 23, and a collection of graphic art add other dimensions.

Sun Ra remains a fascinating figure, a composer and performer whose work is becoming better known through the release of new compilations and restored recordings. This book is both inspired and inspirational and offers important insights into the work of this unjustly neglected artist.

el libro tiene mucha informacion buena y tiene sus meritos. me parecio bueno el espacio para el jazz europeo. (me hubiera gustado tambien algo sobre brazil y cuba, que a todas luces han hecho contribuciones mas relevantes). me parecio interesante las discusiones del jazz post bop (aunque hay mucha gente que hubiera querido oir discutida). el autor es medio pedante y el libro tiene un afan revisionista que no me interesa para nada. la estructura es rara. las partes tecnicas son aburridisimas.½

John Szwed’s introductory book is described (both explicitly and implicitly by the title) as an entrée to the world of jazz for the beginner. While the book is written at exactly the right level of difficulty and complexity for this purpose, I don’t think the book is successful.

The information in the book can be divided roughly into two categories. The first, smaller, portion of the work comprises descriptions of the various styles of jazz. In this regard, the book is begging for a companion CD. In the audio book format (this is what I used) the sound clips could have been embedded. Unaccompanied textual descriptions of a sonic medium work no better than would an Art History book without pictures. For example, having someone attempt to describe the characteristics of swing notes leaves the reader wondering if they truly understand the rhythmic implications or if their imagination has wandered off the path. Szwed does provide recommended listening lists. However, this approach turns reading an introductory book into a significant investment of time (and money) in attempting to locate these selections—especially since many of them are out of print or hard to find.

The second, and major, portion is a recounting of the history of the music and attendant societal changes. While this informative, the author’s approach to providing examples is mind-numbing. He is never content to say, “Here’s a fact; as seen in the music of Artist A.” Instead, we get, “Here’s a fact, as seen in the music of Artist A on Tune 1, Tune 2, Tune 3, and Artist B on Tune 4, Tune 5, Tune 6, and Artist C on Tune 7, Tune 8 and Tune 9.” These lists of examples can occupy minutes of an audio book and, one must presume, paragraphs of text. While it might be gratifying to know that there are several examples one could consult for illustration, the effect is to turn the experience into one of reading a laundry list.

I think that it is this characteristic of the book that indicates how it should have been billed: a Recommended Listening List. Its strength is not as a ‘101’ course on jazz, it’s as a reference work providing a wide and varied list of good artists and recordings that the jazz novice might choose to enjoy. A correct level set of the reader’s expectations would make the book more successful with the reader...though, in my particular case, it would have left it unread because I was looking for an introductory reading on jazz, not a “100 Best Jazz Tunes” list.½

(the audiobook) If you're a jazz head you'll probably like it. If you're not, I don't know. I doubt if I could have read the book. But it's a good listen for a long drive. Naturally, I disagree with a whole lotta stuff on it. But that's to be expected.